The Stories of Girls Who Couldn’t Be Magicians – Episode 1

Content Consideration: possible eye-strain

What’s it about? Kurumi Mirai has loved magic ever since she was small, and carries a magic notebook with her from a fateful meeting with a magician; but despite getting the top score on the mock exam, she fails to get into Rettoran Academy’s prestigious Magumi program. Seems Kurumi is destined to be an average, non-magical student…except for all the strange happenings behind the scenes.

Put this up on the “sure wish this had a dub, so people could watch it with their kids” board. The Stories of Girls Who Couldn’t Be Magicians has all the makings of a solid magic school story for older kids, from its determined heroine and quirky side cast to some adorable-yet-sinister animal antagonists.

The specter of Witch Hat Atelier does hang a little over this premiere, with its focus on drawn sigils and gated access to magical ability, but that’s down to hype for that series’ long (and still) awaited anime as anything; you might as easily pull out the magical school elements akin to Little Witch Academia or the animal-based oddities and rumbling conspiracy of Princess Tutu. There’s a familiarity to these beats, no doubt, but they’re polished up and draped in a fairytale pastel mantel that’s hard to resist, even for an older viewer.

There’s clearly a lot of setup going on in this first episode—so much so that it often leaves poor Kurumi to the side in order to drop another thread of conspiracy for later. It’s a delicate balance. Right now Kurumi knows quite a bit less than the audience, but she’s curious enough that her ignorance isn’t frustrating; at the same time, her relatively level persona is a respite when more bombastic characters are bouncing around. Her classmates in particular are introduced by a strict one-quirk rule, and it’s times like this that I once again lament the de-standardization of the 24-episode count.

We get a lot of proper nouns and ideas, but the scope is so broad that it’s a little difficult to speculate on the kind of show this will become. A monster-of-the-week magical girl title? A slice-of-life mystery? An adventure-hobby show? Probably it’ll dabble in all of these things, but I’m fairly confident in it keeping its footing. Kanasugi Hiroko’s worked a steady hand writing on other magical girl (and boy) titles in the past, and her episodes of Muteking: the Dancing Hero were some of my favorites.

This might be the peak of the “check back later” style of show. There’s a lot of potentially interesting female characters, and some budding themes about class and education access, but I’m mostly commenting on the table setting and the lovely smell in the air while I wait for the actual meal to arrive. If you like magical girl shows I’d say it’s probably worth closing your eyes and jumping in, especially if you’ve got younger (subtitle reading) loved ones you watch with, but if you need a slightly heftier conceptual hook to hang your interest on, maybe check back in to see whether this is going to be a “chill hang out” or “crying with feelings” kind of show.  

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