Okusama wa Mahou Shoujo: Madam is a Magical Girl ~Bewitched Agnes~

[Munsu]

I've heard this is a good series, 8 episodes have been released thus far by Undine.

"The story starts in an old castle town. It looks like other towns, but there is one thing different from others. People called Magical Girls are living there. They come from another world, Realm. For them, our world is just a temporary world, and they call our world Wonderland.

Some magical girls wish to make our world into what they want to be. Asaba Ureshiko is usually a bit absentminded. However, she is actually a magical girl named Agnes Belle came from Realm, and she is also an administrator of Wonder Land.

She married Asaba Tamotsu, who is a normal man in this world, keeping the secret that she is a magical girl. But, she hasnt kissed him although theyve been married because it is said that the magical girl loses her magical power by kissing a man. In addition, she has to save this world secretly."

Episodes:
http://www.baka-updates.com/se...0Shoujo&type=title (http://www.baka-updates.com/search.php?keyword=Oku-sama%20wa%20Mahou%20Shoujo&type=title)


Info:
http://www.mahousyoujo.com/
http://anidb.info/perl-bin/ani...how=anime&aid=2650 (http://anidb.info/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=anime&aid=2650)
http://www.animenewsnetwork.co...edia/anime.php?id=4382 (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=4382)
http://www.animenfo.com/animet...c,okusama_wa_maho.html (http://www.animenfo.com/animetitle,1677,zxeepc,okusama_wa_maho.html)

[dark maginn]

looks like a intresting series

[Ryllharu]

I really like this series, mainly because I just got back into mahou shoujo series. But this one shows what goes on after a magical girl grows up (or in Ureshiko's case refuses to grow up while still existing in an adult world).

Not to mention Kikuko Inoue is like the hottest seiyuu.

Eps 7 was one of my particular favorites, I won't spoil, but history repeating itself was pretty interesting (you'll know what I mean if you watch it). Looking forward to eps 8 as I type this.

[Munsu]

I watched the first 2 episodes...

As of now I'm enjoying it for what it is... I'm not a fan of these type of series, but I think it's pretty good for it's genre, so if you like a bit of comedy, a bit of drama, some ecchi, some double sense jokes; then you should like this...

[Munsu]

Episode 9 is out

http://www.datorrents.com/down...8DA3057%5D.avi.torrent (http://www.datorrents.com/download.asp?id=2319&name=%5BUndine%5DOkusama_wa_M ahou_Shoujo_-_09%5BE8DA3057%5D.avi.torrent)

[Munsu]

Just watched episode 3 after I noticed that all 13 episodes have been released by Undine..

I'm enjoying this series quite a bit, and will finish it hopefully this weekend...

Anyone else watched or is watching this?

[Windice06]

I watched it; enjoyed it; it is an overall good story - quite similar to Ah! MY goddess. But I didn't like the part when she transformed, kind of weird and stupid.

[aznroyale]

im gonna dowload it after school

[Munsu]

Alright... Just finished watching this series...

And I have to say that this was an awesome short series... Very well done...

Good drama, romance, and a some good action... And the fanservice was very welcomed in this series, and I usually hate fanservice in a series... But it was well done here...


For this type of genre, I give it a 10/10...

[Kraco]

Hmm... I wonder if I should have a look at this. In general, I haven't considered pure mahou shoujo my cup of tea, not after I made the terrible mistake of watching the first episode of that Tenchi Muyo spinoff show, Magical Girl Pretty Sammy... Damn, that instantly killed my interest in magical girls. I did like AA! Megami Sama TV (who wouldn't), Mai Hime, and some others, though, but I didn't classify those as pure magical girl shows (perhaps it's just my prejudice, though).

But who knows, maybe a high quality show - like this seems to be based on your writings - would do something to repair the damage Pretty Sammy caused...

[Munsu]

Well, this is not really your typical "Magical Girl" show... It really tries to go beyond that as a pure drama type series (with some ecchi)... It just so happens that the main character is an adult who refuses to come of age and stop being a Magical Girl... Of course, she has a very good reason to do so...


I don't like magical girls shows either... But I'm a big fan of a good story...


Edit: If you use IRC, you can get the series off the dont_rape_me bot...

http://rorikonjyanai.net/?a=packlist

[Ryllharu]

One you realize its not really a drama, and not really a mahou shoujo series either, its a lot more enjoyable.

It's a twisted version of both, since Ureshiko is way too old to still be a magical girl, but still acts like a child. I thought it was a really intersting spin on the genre, like a "Where are they now?" special.

Plus, when Sayaka turned herself into a 16 year old to try and seduce Tatsumi, then it all backfires on her and she does exactly what Ureshiko did in nearly the exact same spot in town. Ai Shimizu sounds so attractive there.

[Munsu]

I know it's not really a drama... but they try to make it as such...

It has alot of different elements in it, and the drama portions are the ones of interest for me...

[Kraco]

The first episode was promising. Certainly it didn't have anything unpleasant in it. I will watch it all (and not only because I got it in a batch containing it all...). I think this show will indeed remedy some of my prejudicies.

And Kikuko Inoue is certainly an excellent seiyuu, and it's nice to hear her again. Hmm... Perhaps it's because of Aa! Megami-Sama, but she will always sound very chaste to me. I don't know how this series will develop, but I trust that strong connotation won't be a problem. I would hate clashes here. Obviously I don't exactly share Ryllharu's opinion of her, either: I can't picture her voice as hot, unless it's the kind of hot a beautiful nun would be...

[Ryllharu]

Well, I couldn't stand Ah My Goddess, I found it incredibly boring and somewhat cliche, (admittedly, at the time it was written it was not, but that's the price of being 'classic') so I've never gotten that impression.

I first heard the lovely voice of Kikuko Inoue in Onegai Teacher, so I have more of a nervous newlyweds who get stuck in ecchi situations impression from her voice, similar to her role as Yukariko is Mai-Hime.

It helps if you see what she looks like in real life.

http://img475.imageshack.us/img475/2369/kikukoinoue9ef.jpg

and a link to her website (http://manbow.ponycanyon.co.jp/menu.html)

But that's just me I suppose. The differences in first impressions.

[Munsu]

Well Kraco, hopefully you'll enjoy it...

I just simply liked the premise of taking a general idea that's considered childish and portrayed in a more mature manner, it was a pretty fresh series to what I usually watch.

[Kraco]

This was a very nice series. I don't think it really tried not to be a magical girl show, but it certainly succeeded in appearing so that simply being a magical girl was far from being the center of the story. It was an enjoyable drama with soft action and twists. What comes to twists, I have to say the council and its actions were very well made. When they first appeared, I thought they were indeed worthless old geezers, but obviously the plot tricked me quite badly (they were still old geezers, but not worthless...).

Ureshiko doesn't refuse to grow up. She's behaving like an adult more or less all the time. If you think about how this show presented the responsibilities of a mahou shoujo, there's nothing childish about them. Quite the contrary: The successor had to grow up during the series to become responsible enough to handle the position right. Her companions in the last eps showed the contrast between how she started and ended up.

But damn those magic wands were bloody ugly!

[Ryllharu]

That's a good point, I forgot how childish Saya was when she first showed up. She matured pretty quickly though, after the attempt to seduce Tatsumi. She got to a level that was only just higher than Ureshiko was at the beginning. Ureshiko was like a child, not understanding that she needed to let go sometimes, and start to accept change.

Children can act like adults too, but Ureshiko needed to learn the lesson that separates the two, accepting change (which is very evident for most adults, simply due to the passage of time). She stubbornly latched onto the town, and refused to have it changed, at the cost of everything else she wanted.

[Kraco]

Hmm... Yes. That's actually very true. It could certainly be said that her refusal to understand the very concept of change is childish, although in general that kind of thinking is pretty widespread among adults in the real world: Thinking your own view of things is the only right one, thinking nobody else can appreciate something as much as you can, and lastly the main problem in the Ureshiko-Saya relationship: Lack of trust, and thus incapability to hand thing over as they should be.

However, one thing this series lacked was any explanation why only young girls could be real mahou shoujos. Now they need to create a world, when they are young and inexperienced, and just when they get the real hang of things, they must give the responsibility to the next generation, who does it all again. It does indeed seem those rules serve to amuse the council. If they were to educate and train magic girls, surely the girls wouldn't just be dumped like that when they grow up.

I must be badly overanalyzing this... i/expressions/face-icon-small-tongue.gif

[Ryllharu]

I think the series is a lot deeper than a lot of people who were turned off by it early on would later miss.

I always thought the managers of Wonderland were young mahou shoujos for the concept of 'a child's wonderment.' Ureshiko had kept it 'normal' as her mother had, but you got the feel from Saya's early meddling that it was like a dollhouse or a world that was created for the purpose of being all fluffy, frilly and generally something only young girls like. Like what the evil girls were using Saya to do. The old guys seemed to want it that way too for whatever reason.

Their concept of what change needed to be was too radical, and Ureshiko was too deadset on preserving her mother's status quo, of course, not for any other reason other than her mother was now deceased, and any change in Wonderland would be forgetting her mother.

In the end, it took Ureshiko's childish attitude of not accepting change to bring a change to the ideas of the council. The people change in the town, gradually. Radical, sweeping changes aren't necessary. A few people can change the town just by moving in. Tatsumi changed just about everything, allowed Ureshiko let go of and divorce her husband, who was able to let her go as well, Saya's attitude, etc. Saya moved in and catalyzed the changes that would rock the little universe they lived in. The baseball kid's determination changed Saya from thinking Tatsumi was who she wanted into seeing that the guy right beside her was probably more appropriate (she was trying to grow up too fast, and didn't care about the people her own age).

The council never saw that small changes can affect a place as easily as drastic ones.

Now we're both thinking about this series too much...but the evidence is there.

This series is like a sleeper hit. It seems boring and slow paced, but if you look really deeply at it, there's a lot more to series like these than the more popular ones that are overall vapid but filled with lots of action and plot twists. That's the reason I like Aria so much now. I thought it would be boring, but there's a lot to that series too.

[Kraco]

Actually the council's role in the story was even simpler than your give them credit for, yet paradoxically enough the very simplicity of their intentions required elaborate twists and the greatest shows. When you think about the whole story, the council wanted nothing more than get the ring from the old manager to the new one. It's true at a certain point that they appeared as if they wanted to erase the city or wanted things to change in the city. It looked like as if that had been their main reason to get the new girl in power. However, I don't think that was their real intention at all.

They just wanted Ureshiko to hand over the ring. Thus they staged a dramatic play that eventually forced Ureshiko to face the truth that she can't keep things unchanged forever, because it wouldn't even be in anybody's best interests. This is best revealed by the fact that the council stopped all action immediately when Saya got the ring. And as the ending proved, they didn't care whether Saya used the ring to erase everything and create something totally different, or whether she chose to keep things pretty much as they were. So, the council only wanted the ring to pass on, and you can't say their actions weren't quite smart in the end. No character in the show had a clue.

[Ryllharu]

Right, except for the old grandma after everything was said and done. I forgot about that completely.

Good eyes..er..ears..both.