The business and politics of magic in Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc

Spoilers for Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc Season 1 and manga volumes 5 and 6

In Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc—one of our staff favourites from 2024—being a magical girl means joining the corporate world. The series playfully imagines a setting where magic is an industry, with trade expos showing off the latest transformation tech, spellcasting programmers swapping business cards, and office karaoke parties after a hard week of fighting monsters. But there’s also a more serious undercurrent about the dangers that come when magical heroism becomes intertwined with business models and profit margins. The Kaii, the in-world monsters, are mutating into increasingly formidable enemies, but, as the series continues past the ending of the anime, its true villain might actually just be corporate greed and corruption.

From early on in the story, Big Business looms as an antagonistic force. Mega-corporation AST, and its CEO Koga, are introduced to provide a stark contrast to the plucky start-up Magilumiere where protagonist Kana finds her first job. AST prioritizes efficiency over the safety of its operatives and won’t offer help in a Kaii attack if they haven’t been commissioned to do so—in other words, even though their cutting-edge magic tech means that they’re best placed to save lives, they won’t lift a finger to do so if they aren’t getting paid. In fact, Koga is introduced in a scene where he fires a magical girl for not making him enough money, dismissively telling her that she’s literally not worth his time. This is a jarring juxtaposition to Magilumiere’s president, Shigemoto, who takes a kind and supportive approach to managing his employees, and is in the magical girl industry out of a genuine desire to protect people rather than make money.

Koga refers to Shigemoto as a naïve, foolish idealist because he sees magical girl-ing as a form of heroism and a force for good, rather than strictly business. Of course, these two characters have a mysterious shared history that no doubt fuels their animosity on a more personal level. But their differing ethos underlines the themes of Magilumiere more broadly: when money is a key motivation, ethics and the greater good are quickly abandoned. This theme is apparent in Season 1 of the anime, bubbling away ever-present in the background as Kana learns the magical girl trade, but comes to the forefront in subsequent material when the manga really starts to dig into the politics of the magical girl business.

And here, politics and business are very much intertwined. Magical girls were a public service in the past—which makes sense, given that they are essentially emergency service workers—but the magic industry was privatized 15 years earlier, following an event known only as the Kaii Calamity. As with other changes in the industry, such as introducing age limits and preventing children from fighting increasingly dangerous monsters, this was put down to advancing threat and scale. However, given the shady dealings that this story arc reveals, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there was a more nefarious incentive behind this switch. 

While magic is now the realm of private industry, there is still a degree of government oversight and it’s clear that many business owners have politicians in their pockets, or vice versa. This greedy symbiotic relationship and the corruption it heralds is demonstrated in Volume 5, where the Federation of Magical Organizations is introduced. The Federation is made up of magical girl company CEOs and politicians, seemingly formed with the aim of providing consistency in the industry and ensuring that magical policy meets the needs of the public. However, as Shigemoto’s visit reveals, the decisions made here are far from objective, and personal and financial stances—not to mention clashing personalities—clearly influence the policies and strategies the Federation develops. 

When Shigemoto pitches them a new “magic-efficient” tech that will, if successful, revolutionize the industry and make work much safer for magical girls in the long term, it’s met with suspicion and stubbornness. After all, any changes to the current system, let alone a full overhaul, would be expensive to orchestrate and would mean a loss in revenue. The Federation reluctantly agrees to a demonstration, largely because it may benefit a particular company president. It looks like Magilumiere has been given a chance… and then councilmember Tatsumi sidles up to magical girl Koshigaya and tries to bribe her into deliberately botching the showcase.

The motivation behind this ploy is, of course, money. Tatsumi explains that there are plans in motion to loosen regulations on magic usage: to do away with the government’s existing annual cap and allow companies to blast as much magic as they like. If Magilumiere proves that Kaii can be exterminated with less magic than the industry standard, there won’t be any need for this deregulation bill. And this would be a real shame, Tatsumi explains, because “there’s a tremendous amount of money and influence” tied up in this plan. Never mind that using more magic may be what’s making the Kaii mutate. With this pesky government overhead out of the way, companies can use more magic, and thus they can sell more magical services. 

Just like how Koga is introduced as an archetypal greedy tech CEO (in a turtleneck sweater, even), Tatsumi is a fairly tropey portrayal of a cowardly, callous, pencil-pushing politician, hiding his smarm behind big glasses and flinching in fear from Koshigaya. There’s a stark and deliberate contrast between Koshigaya’s brash, no-nonsense heroism and Tatsumi’s weedy wordsmithing as he attempts to blackmail her. He’s clearly villainous, perfectly willing to needle her potential family trauma and, more glaringly, endanger her life. Not content to leave this at the conceptual level, Tatsumi physically sabotages the lab in which Magilumiere’s tech demo is taking place, making the Kaii even more deadly and difficult to fight. If emotional manipulation didn’t work, well, why not just get the magical girls killed to make his point? The ends, for him, clearly justify the money-making means. 

It may seem a little over-the-top, this depiction of slimy, money-grubbing businessmen manipulating policy and putting people in danger, disregarding attempts at improving the system in favor of making stacks of cash. But, as with many works of fantasy, the speculative element serves to shine a light on very real issues. While we may not have magic and monsters in the real world, there is unfortunately a prescient reflection of our current political reality in this arc. The creative duo behind the manga no doubt have their own culturally specific inspirations for this, though I’ll say, from my perspective, it’s certainly interesting and unsettling reading this arc in a time when politicians and billionaire business owners are very publicly cozying up to one another, actively impacting policy and shifting the distribution of power. Magilumiere’s depiction of greedy tech CEOs influencing politics seems downright restrained when the news is full of images of Elon Musk standing gleefully in the Oval Office. 

Not to mention the many, unfortunately, well-documented cases of big companies being perfectly willing to prioritize profit over the safety of the people working for them. It’s been widely publicized, for example, that Amazon pushes their employees to work in dehumanizing conditions and flouts safety regulations in the pursuit of productivity and profits, and that the mega-company makes every effort to bring this same business culture overseas even when it actively breaks local laws. My colleague Cy observed that AST may be the Amazon of the Magilumiere universe, though rather than trapping them in a warehouse they expect their employees to fight Kaii with inhuman efficiency and without regard for their safety. Again, the fantasy element allows the narrative to exaggerate things, but less than you might initially think. If Tatsumi’s deregulation plan pans out, AST’s ruthlessness risks becoming the industry standard—much like how companies attempting to compete with Amazon are engaged in a “race to the bottom” that makes work increasingly dangerous (and for lower pay).

It’s also hard not to draw comparisons between the mutating Kaii and real-world climate change. Kaii have gotten stronger over the years, historically weak enough to be dispelled by young shrine maidens but gradually evolving into the city-damaging monsters they are today. The running theory, in-universe, is that the more magic humans use, the quicker Kaii mutate, leading to their horrifyingly rapid growth over the past few decades. This likely caused the Kaii Calamity of 15 years prior, and is represented by the frightening, super-powerful “Type 3” Kaii that our heroes fight for their tech demo. Resident magical girl/magical researcher Akasaka suggests that while Kaii may have always naturally evolved, their interactions with human magical technology have sped up their mutations. Shigemoto makes this observation, too, and this is the motivation behind his more “magic-efficient” spellcasting system. The rapid growth of human industry is causing a rapid increase in disasters, and thus, only human intervention can slow or stop the danger. 

And yet, despite the scientific evidence, the Federation largely turns their nose up at Shigemoto’s proposal. Implementing an experimental new magic would be a massive upset to the status quo, you see, and that changeover would be inefficient and expensive. Most importantly, it would mean a loss of business and revenue for the companies who currently supply industry partners with their magic tech. The heads of these companies are significantly more buddy-buddy with the Federation’s politicians, too, so they have a level of influence that Shigemoto simply does not. Shigemoto is met with a general sense of greedy reluctance, even before Tatsumi drives the point home with his attempts at sabotage.

This parallels how real-world environmentally-friendly energy solutions often get knocked back under similar pretences. Renewable energy sources like solar and wind power have essentially been proven to be viable, but their rollout is consistently stalled by policy and pressure from dominant industries that risk getting replaced—and losing all their money. As a prescient example from my home turf, former Australian Prime Minister Scott “Scotty from Marketing” Morrison famously loved the coal industry so much he brought a lump of coal to parliament, mocking his Opposition’s commitment to renewable energy and arguing that “staying competitive in a global market” was more important than trying to slow climate disaster. This industry-before-sustainability ethos is echoed all over the world and all throughout recent history. This has been an issue for so long that this satirical headline from a decade ago is unfortunately still perfectly relevant today. 

But what are we to do about it? Well, Magilumiere resolves this arc on a positive but not naïve note. The magical girls successfully use Shigemoto’s new magic-efficient system to take down the Type 3 Kaii, in spite of Tatsumi’s meddling, and in spite of AST’s reluctance to collaborate and change their ruthless and cost-effective methods. The system, however, doesn’t immediately save the world. Sure, this fight proved its effectiveness, but it will take more than one chaotic trial run to convince stakeholders and implementing it industry-wide will still be a massive, expensive undertaking that can’t possibly happen overnight. Still, while there’s very little tangible progress, there’s a sense of cautious optimism, both from individual characters and in the narrative overall. Maybe, bit by bit, change is possible—but only if we put the effort in and work together. 

Tatsumi himself is also caught and kicked off the Federation. However, the characters acknowledge that he’s unlikely to be the last person who tries to manipulate the business and politics of magic for financial gain. Where there’s money to be made and power to be gained, ethics and a general respect for humanity become a lower priority, be that in the short or the long term. While the evolving Kaii remain a threat, it’s this ideology that our magical girl heroes truly need to fight against to save the world. 

Magilumiere is clearly having some fun, riffing affectionately on the magical girl genre and imagining a world where becoming a pretty guardian is akin to working in the tech industry. However, as the series progresses, its thread of sharp social and political commentary becomes increasingly clear. From callous mega-corps like AST to outright demonstrations of political corruption, Magilumiere is not shy about depicting corporate greed as villainous. Its parallels to the real world’s capitalist hellscape are pointed (and in some cases, seemingly less over-the-top than reality) and it’s grimly rewarding to see these forces portrayed as being even worse than literal monsters.

However, rather than suggesting that the world is entirely doomed under this form of capitalism, Magilumiere draws on its magical girl genre roots to suggest that the power of hope, working together, and a genuine desire to protect people can, if not save the world outright, certainly be forces for change. Cruelty and corruption run rampant, and both industry and policy are full of bad actors willing to hurt people and the planet if it means more profit for them, but things don’t have to be this way. If anything, we have a duty to resist this ethos and fight for a better system. It may not always be easy, but it is possible. This seems to be the central message of Magilumiere, driven by the determination of its central characters. Can this truly save the world? With these strong foundations laid, it will be exciting—though uncanny—to see where the series goes from here.