The Tales of Women Who Couldn’t Be Magicians is an anime that ought to have been longer.
Tailored from an online novel, the story of Mahonare (because it’s identified for brief in Japanese) follows Kurumi Mirai, a woman who has all the time dreamed of being a magician, however didn’t get into the magic program of the distinguished Rettoran Academy. Attending the college’s non-magical observe, a crestfallen Kurumi and the remainder of her class quickly meet their homeroom trainer, the unusually petite and eccentric Minami Suzuki, who guarantees that she’s going to educate them magic, regardless of widespread sense saying that it must be unattainable.
There’s one collection above all others that Mahonare jogs my memory of: the great Ojamajo Doremi. Whereas the magic facet is one thing they clearly have in widespread, the similarities additionally embrace the model of presentation. From the pastel-like filters to the opening narration every episode to the theme songs themselves, Mahonare significantly resembles the morning women’ anime of the late 90s and early 2000s that embrace Doremi but additionally issues like Ashita no Nadja and Fushigiboshi no Futagohime.
However the extra vital approach that the Mahonare attracts upon the custom of Doremi is the best way it builds up a powerful forged of characters, each main and minor, that contributes to world constructing and story. Although we get just a few glimpses of some characters, every gives the look that they’d have their very own attention-grabbing tales to inform if given the prospect. One woman in Kurumi’s class is meant to be a part of the magic elite, solely to have come brief. Others are extra completely satisfied to simply be attending even when they’ll’t forged spells, desirous to pursue their passions whether or not it’s cooking, music, or vogue.
Furthermore, whereas the teenagers have teen troubles, the adults have grownup troubles, and the intersection between them creates conflicts about every part from pursuing your goals to ethical quandaries that reduce to the center of their society. One of the attention-grabbing plot factors entails the positives and negatives of the magic notebooks which have change into ubiquitous. Their widespread adoption encourages magic to be transformed to easy-to-use apps that don’t require essentially understanding fundamentals, mirroring issues over the best way smartphones and tablets have remodeled how youngsters develop up with electronics.
However that resemblance to Doremi is precisely why I believe Mahonare ought to’ve had extra episodes. It appears like a 52-episode work that was condensed right down to 12, and the present suffers for it. Little crumbs of plot improvement that would have been sprinkled in right here and there as an alternative come one after the opposite. Character bonding moments occur very quickly as nicely, versus increase progressively and subsequently with extra weight. Whereas I perceive that the truth of present anime manufacturing means only a few anime get that privilege, I can nonetheless lament the lack of that risk for Mahonare nonetheless.
This actually isn’t the primary time {that a} collection has acquired a truncated adaptation, and a few even go on to have a extra thorough model be made later. I can solely hope that The Tales of Women Who Couldn’t Turn into Magicians falls into this choose class.
