First Impressions / Series Introduction / Snapshots

Summary:

Nijihara Ink is a high school girl who dreams of having a relationship with a guy named Tezuka Nao, but for now, she really wants to be able to walk to school with him. While she’s not paying attention one morning though, he walks off without her, and she trips as she tries to chase after him. After an odd looking man helps her back onto her feet, Ink goes to school alone with a bruise on her head and tells her friends about what happened. They decide to help her out by calling Nao over, citing that Ink has something to say to him. Nao notices the bruise and applies a band-aid to her forehead, but the conversation doesn’t help along their relationship any, much to the disappointment of Ink’s friends. After class, Ink tries to get Nao to walk home with her, but it turns out that Nao has to meet with the teacher because of how poorly he did on his English test. Hearing that Nao is considering not going to college and finding a job instead, Ink rushes off to the nearby shrine to wish for him to go to college. She then hears a cry out from above her, and a duck suddenly lands at her feet. This duck had previously been a powerful mage in another world who had been on trial for a crime he claimed he was innocent for. He had been sucked into this world after escaping the trial and doesn’t realize that he’s a duck until Ink provides a mirror. He faints from the shock of realizing what he is, so Ink brings him home and waits for him to wake up again.

After introducing himself as Arks, the duck declares that from today on, Ink will be a magical girl to help people in trouble. Ink eventually decides that she can use her transformed self to help Nao study, and he won’t find out that it’s her, so she agrees to being a magical girl. After he teaches her how to use a special cell phone to transform, she changes into Magical Teacher Pastel Ink. Ink immediately wants to go help Nao, so Arks tells her how to use her staff to fly, and the two take off. They crash into Nao’s room, with Ink landing right on Nao’s face, and he almost immediately kicks her out. She convinces him to let her help him with his English, and their studies work out very well until Arks notices the erotic magazines and figurines in the room. Ink gets embarrassed looking at all the stuff, and in the end, Nao kicks her out again. Once she’s returned home and transformed back to normal, Ink takes a bath and remains determined to go to the same college as Nao. To her surprise, the duck joins her in the bath, so she smacks him out the window for being perverted. Unbeknownst to her, another girl has arrived in town looking for Arks.

OP Sequence

OP: 「魔法少女マジカルたん」 (Mahou Shoujo Magical-tan) by 田村ゆかり, 戸松遥, 名塚佳織 (Tamura Yukari, Tomatsu Haruka, Nazuka Kaori)
Watch the OP!: Mirror 1, Mirror 2
They stuck the OP at the end of this episode, so there was no ED this week. Overall, the opening (song and animation sequence) gives off a very magical girl feel to the show, which wasn’t what I had been expecting.

With the exception of the first minute or so that took place in the magical world, I spent almost all of this first episode thinking that this was a very well animated episode of a mahou shoujo show with some (minor) English elements. It wasn’t nearly as funny as I had hoped it’d be, and parts of it were way too loli for my tastes. As they point out several times, it’s hard to believe that Ink is in high school with the way she looks. My opinion of the show, however, changed quite a bit in the “Moetan Corner” part at the end because today’s phase was “”It’s great that the animation staff go all out with the quality of an anime’s first episode.” It took me several minutes to stop laughing from that, and I think the show needs more jokes of that caliber. Still, as much as I appreciated that, it’s not enough to keep me watching the series. I was hoping for a more English-phrase based comedy, but this ended up being more of a mahou shoujo-based show where English phrases didn’t play nearly as big a part. I guess that’s probably better for the show overall if they’re trying for an actual plot. In any case, Jaalin appreciated Moetan a lot more than I did, so he has volunteered to take over writing about this show starting next week.

35 Comments

  4. THIS SHOW IS HILARIOUS – SINCE IT’S ON THE WEEKEND I MIGHT JUST PICK IT UP

    DON’T YOU THINK THAT MAGICAL GIRLS LOOK THE SAME EVEN AFTER THEY TRANSFORM? LOOOOL

    jaalin
    Reply

  20. too sweet (without the actual sugar), too much fwapping-material… not to mention all the ingurisu I’ll be learning.. it’s a win-win-win situation. boy I’m gonna be so thin by the end of this show… as well as ready for my IELTS conversation test.

    Jayars
    Reply

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