Magic Users Club #1: I'll Follow You! Mediablasters 60 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles 03/27/2001

I don't usually go into anime without having a single damn idea what it's about. You know, usually I've read a review or two.** At least I've read the back of the box. Not so with Magic Users Club or Maho Tsuki Tai for whatever reason, they decided to include the Japanese title with the American for this release. Why? I don't know, that's why I said "for whatever reason". Like I was saying, I had no idea what this was about. I did a broad spectrograph and decided, based on the results, that it was probably magic being used in some sort of club fashion. Knowing anime it probably included teenagers, high school, big breasts, and outrageous hair colors. I wasn't too far off. I did miss one very key thing though, androgynous men. Yes, high school senior Aburatsuro is not only very womanly, but openly gay. But more on that later.

 

Sae Sawanoguchi is one of the newest members of the Magic Users Club, she's a clumsy ditz kinda like half of the rest of the female anime population. She joined with her best friend Nanaka Nakatomi. Sae seemingly wanted to be a magician since she was cheered up by some phantom magic user in the forest after running away because she destroyed her sister's birthday cake. However, Nanaka (being her best friend) just joined because Sae did. Nanaka is the smart one, Sae is the impulsive but gifted deep down one. It's really standard anime logic. Among the other members we have Aburatsuro, the fruity one. Takakura is the president of the magic club and always hot for the ladies. Takeo Takakura is definitely hot for the ladies, he needs to get laid once or twice and calm the fuck down. In a scheme to impress his female underlings he declares that they are going to destroy the... the BELL!

 

Wait, you don't know what the bell is? Let me digress. Awhile ago, a giant alien spacecraft the human race calls "The Bell" attacked and destroyed the Earth's defense force without taking a scratch. This scene confused the hell outta me because it was the first in the show and all the fighter pilots were talking in English even on the Japanese track. But anyway, eventually we found out that if we don't attack the bell, it doesn't attack us. It even obeys traffic signals! So Takakura's an obvious flop, because no matter how high esteemed he is by Sae, there's still the fact that he ain't a goddamn Merlin here, and that Bell is pretty big. So in the end Sae and Nanaka face the "crisis" of leaving the magic club, turning in their witches costumes, their brooms, and their weird pointy staff things and joining something more sane like the Tennis club...

 

Hey, I'll be honest and say that I enjoyed it, that it was pretty good. I'll admit I like cutey girls. The pseudo-tentacle rape parts were kinda scary though. Good thing this isn't a hentai show, hentai scares the crap outta me. At least, the tentacle stuff does. It's only 60 minutes long but Mediablasters went a cool route here in making the MSRP $24.99, so it doesn't feel like as much of a rip off as some 2 episode discs do. It's weird as hell, but this show is really kick ass. Cutey sugary fun to the extreme, but the jokes are there and they're nonstop. Enormous globs of fun is backed into sixty minutes of anime. Magic Users Club isn't a must see, but it's a more than worthy purchase, even if the clear keepcases give me CPM flashbacks.

**You know, so I can steal their ideas and catchy phrases.