t was in another world, during a magical time full of mystery, wonder, and ancient power. It was a place known as high school.
This tongue-in-cheek teaser pretty much sums up the divergent themes and tones of Magic User's Club (also known as Maho Tsukai Tai!, or I Want To Use Magic!), a six-episode OVA series that pits five semi-skilled student magicians against a force of mysterious alien invaders. Each episode begins with a chillingly silent pre-title sequence, showing the arrival of the Bell--a titanic cylindrical spaceship armed with unprecedented high-tech weaponry. As the opening episode explains, the Bell arrived on Earth and broadcast a message that it had arrived to take over the planet. It easily obliterated the military forces sent to fight it. Then it settled in off the Japanese coast and made itself at home.
The series begins a year later, when Earth has gotten used to the Bell's presence. The ship does not act unless provoked, and its ubiquitous probes, which wander around the city exploring, even obey traffic signals. Most people ignore it entirely. But Takeo Takakura, the awkward, geeky, lust-stricken president of the Kitanohashi High School Magic Club, can't help showing off for the group's new members, three cute younger girls (who bring the club's total membership to five). Hoping to impress them, Takeo imprudently suggests that the club should use its powers to get rid of the Bell.
Since the club's new members--clumsy, apologetic Sae Sawanoguchi, her practical, competent friend Nanaka Nakatomi, and preternaturally beautiful Akane Aikawa--haven't even mastered basic broomstick flying, fighting an unknown, immensely powerful enemy is going to be an uphill battle. Takeo is only barely up to the challenge of facing the imperious attitude (and intimidating bustline) of the president of the Manga Club. Meanwhile, four of the members have severe cases of unrequited like--Sae and Takeo share a mutual crush and a mutual inability to acknowledge it, due to their lack of faith in themselves. Nanaka thinks the club is silly, but hangs around because of her own crush on the club's other male member, the strikingly pretty, flirtatious club vice president, Aburatsubo--who also is attracted to Takeo, and spends most of his time in aggressive pursuit. Only the mostly absent Akane, usually off with an older boyfriend, is oblivious to the tiny emotional storms her friends are undergoing on a daily basis.
Mixed-up media and a pureed plot
Magic User's Club is a charming but utterly unpredictable series that mixes genre conventions at will and at random. The antagonists are faceless robot probes and a monolith out of a sci-fi thriller. The magic club members use powers out of high fantasy, but they're the exception to the rule in an unperturbably mundane world that seems neither shocked by nor at all used to the concept of magic. At times, the series threatens to turn into a gushy teen romance; at other times, it's a fast-paced, kid-friendly comedy along the lines of Project A-ko; then again, it turns risqué at the drop of a hat, as cartoony boob jokes abruptly enter the picture. In a world where a cute, feminine, long-eyelashed, pink-haired boy is both a cheap gay stereotype and the most consistently competent and confident member of the cast, nothing can be taken for granted.
The series' design is similarly unpredictable. The pre-title sequence mixes computer animation and highly realistic cel work in a style completely unrelated to the cutesy bubble-gum visuals of the Sae-and-company sequences. Visual slapstick abounds, as when Takeo's distress is literally written across his face, or as he falls helplessly into wild fantasies in which everyone ends up naked. The characters are exaggeratedly gawky and thin, with Sae's visual design standing out as particularly strange; her hair, which falls in huge, square locks with bright white highlights, doesn't look remotely human. Some sequences in the series are beautifully detailed, while others are stylized slapdash. The entire series gives off the impression of a bunch of random scraps of other series
thrown into a blender together.
But somehow, the mixture works. Where some overly ambitious shows try for too much and fall flat, Magic User's Club seems intent on doing everything at once, but also willing to enjoy the effort and not take itself too seriously. The series' ingratiatingly sweet nature and its very capriciousness work together to produce something that may not be stellar, but is at least charmingly unique.
