Dai Mahou Touge Anime Review

In November, I joined anime-planet, a website that give excellent recommendations and review for anime lovers. There are both "official," or staff written, and "community," or user, reviews. For the fun of it, I decided to try my hand at reviewing. Here's one I did a few days ago, reviewing Dai Mahou Touge:

The Meat of the Review

If you’re looking for an innocent little magical girl anime, Dai Mahou Touge is not for you. However, if you want dark humor, parody, and violence, look no further! Tanaka Punie-chan is a princess from Magic Kingdom, blonde, cute, and… so violent and scary, she scared off a big god-beast-thing.

The fun starts with the opening theme, where we see clips of Punie-chan in front of burning buildings – including the landmark largest wooden house. Oh dear! The actual content is great, too, each episode unveiling new parody of magical girl anime with as much bone-cracking as you can handle. It has killer moves, evil little sisters, and even suicidal vegetables. No, Potato-dono, don’t do it! Your have so much to live for! And then the credits roll, and you hear the absolutely perfect battle cry music, accompanied by fiery war scenes. You simply must see Dai Mahou Touge for yourself because, as the end song states, “There is honor in bending bones to their limit!”

Story – 9/10

The four OVAs (eight 12-min episodes) are episodic, but that’s just what they’re meant to be: perfect for parody. I do think the OVA would have benefitted from a bit more connecting plot. However, it’s a careful balance. Too deep of a plot would have taken away from the whole point of the production: an outrageous take on magical girl anime.

Animation – 6/10

I watched a very low quality version Dai Mahou Touge, so I’m trying to score it based on the points when the video was at its best.

The animation did its job. Punie-chan’s facial expressions were priceless. Some of the “bad” girls were painful to look at, but they were supposed to be. Character designs were, for the most part, typical. Again, that was probably part of the parody. I think the action was smooth, but the quality is always the worst during action scenes.

While animation wasn’t amazing, it did its job and made me laugh.

Sound – 8/10

The music, especially the opening and ending themes, was the best, most fitting music I’ve ever heard in an anime!

The voice actors, while good for the most part, did leave a little to be desired, particularly with Punie-chan’s friend, Tetsuko Koku.

Characters – 10/10

The main character, Punie-chan, played a perfect role as a magical princess with a violent personality twist. Other characters were either wonderfully stereotyped (like Tetsuko), or twisted (like the queen and Paya-tan).

Overall – 8.4/10

Wonderful, simply wonderful. There are a few moments of cruder humor, but not enough to make me dislike the anime. The majority was dark humor – my favorite. I recommend this anime to anyone who loves magical girl, hates the genre, or, like me, is looking for rather random, satisfyingly violent humor.

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You can find more of my reviews (and my anime blog) at http://www.anime-planet.com/users/Annalyn