First Impressions / Magikano

OP Sequence

OP: 「もっっと！」 by 野川さくら(Nogawa Sakura)

Summary:
Going to school one day, Yoshikawa Haruo encounters a beautiful girl across the street from him. But then wind and smoke obscure his vision, and the girl disappears. Haruo thinks he’s seen a ghost until the next day that same girl, introduced as Mamiya Ayumi, transfers into his class. Her seat is right behind his, and Haruo feels uneasy for the rest of the day as Ayumi glares at him at every chance. Despite that, he sees her getting picked on and stands up for her, only to get beaten himself. Ayumi finally steps in and uses her magical powers to send the thugs flying, but disappears afterwards. Somehow the students all think that Haruo knocked out the thugs in the process of saving his sister Maika.
When he gets home, Haruo is surprised to find Ayumi sleeping the couch. After waking her up, he’s even more shocked when she leans up and kisses him. She tells him that she is his fate, and claims that he’s going to be reborn by her hand. Their talk is interrupted by the arrival of Haruo’s sisters (also witches) Chiaki, Fuyuno, and Maika, who knock their brother out. Ayumi explains that she’s here to work as their maid, and even produces a labor contract from the Ministry of Magic. Getting to work, Ayumi uses magic to create a big dinner for everyone, but laces it with something.
That night, Ayumi remembers her past, where she saw Haruo in a mirror. But that mirror was a mirror that showed the future, and it carried a terrible curse that would eventually strip her of her magical powers. And the solution to the curse lay in Haruo. With this in mind, she sneaks into his room in the night and gets on his bed, but his sisters, who were hiding in the closet, interrupt them. It turns out that Ayumi laced Haruo’s dinner with a potion that makes him fall in love with what he sees when he wakes up. In the ensuing chaos, Maika summons an eel – which Ayumi hates – and when Haruo wakes up, he falls in love…with the eel. After all four knock him out, Ayumi tells the sisters of the curse, and Maika decides to let her stay.

ED Sequence

ED: 「マジスキMAGIC」 (Magisuki MAGIC) by クローバー (Clover)
The opening song, sung by Nogawa Sakura, is kind of catchy, but I just don’t like the ending song – who knows, maybe it’ll grow on me. The OP sequence introduces all of the characters while the ED one has all of them dancing and recaps the episode.

The story here is that Ayumi needs Haruo, the perpetual loser who attracts girls around him, to rid herself of the curse. As moyism pointed out to me, Nogawa Sakura is doing another role that’s reminiscent of her Shiho (Mai-HiME/Otome) performances. Her character is always plotting something, and I guess the three sisters, led by Maika, will be there to defend their brother from Ayumi’s plans. Overall, Magikano is a lot crazier than I thought it’d be, particularly the last fourth of this episode. The manga didn’t quite have that feel, but it does have more fanservice than the anime.
It’s still too early to tell if this is going to be a comedy series or if they’ll try for something more. The first episode has left me fairly intrigued, enough to stay tuned for a few more weeks even though I really didn’t laugh at anything. Oh yea, for those of you caught off guard, like me, this was AT-X’s special New Year’s broadcast of the first episode. The normal first broadcast for this should still be TV Saitama, so episode two will air on Tuesday, January 10th. That episode looks to be about the student council president, Kurosu Yuri – material from volume two, but I guess they’re not exactly following the manga.

30 Comments

  14. I think its a good idea if you avoid reading manga for a few shows cause when you do and then watch the show to see they change the plot or events a little you get disappointed fairly easy compared to the non manga readers you views it as something new.

    Fury
    Reply

  15. Looks good enough to follow since there isn’t that much shows in winter anyway.

    IMO, I view manga as something to enhance your experience if you like it’s anime since almost 100% of the time, if you love the story and watch the anime after the manga, you’ll defiantely be disappointed just by little things like changing the order of events, or in cases like Ichigo100%, butchering the story. It’s funny since it was designed to be the other way around.

    ayyo
    Reply

  17. just watched the episode some parts was comic like the part of the eel i also agreed to be intrigued so i will see some more of this serie maybe would be a good serie after all,yes the ending is kinda weird i didn’t like it feels like they were trying to do something as the black cat ending

    bakaro
    Reply

  22. do you guys think this program is crazy??????
    look at that episode from pani poni dash where the party make a hole on earth and goes to brazil to dance SAMBA(LOL)
    THAT was crazy fan service for me!!!^_^

    Dark_Schneider
    Reply

  26. “Would someone care to explain for me what “fan service” is? ^^”

    It’s just what the words say. A fan service shows what a stereotypical fan wants to see e.g. naked characters.

    Rasmiel
    Reply

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