n a world where everyone is born with magical power, and societal status is determined primarily by magical potential, 17-year-old Kazuki Shikimori is the lowest of the low. Every individual has the inborn ability to use magic only a certain number of times; once their magic is used up, they instantly die and turn to ash. Most people's potential—which can be determined through a simple examination—is limited to maybe 100 magic uses, but students at the prestigious Aoi Academy average around 8,000 uses each, with power levels up to at least 140,000. Kazuki, by contrast, has the ability to use magic a mere eight times.
Kazuki's lack of potential is no secret—his classmates mention it every few minutes to remind him of his dim future, and he himself brings it up constantly out of disgusted resignation. But then one day he finds a nearly naked girl in his dorm room, proclaiming that she's now his wife. Shortly thereafter, hugely overendowed school powerhouse Kuriko Kazetsubaki throws herself on him, graphically propositioning him. Samurai-costumed underclassman Rin Kamishiro announces that she's been ordered to marry Kazuki, but his abysmal performance as a student and magician prove he's unworthy, so she must kill him to escape her fate. The next thing Kazuki knows, the three girls are fighting over him with explosive magic.
And the chaos doesn't even come close to ending there. As school doctor Haruaki Akai explains, Kazuki's lineage includes some of the greatest magicians in Japanese history. His children will have incredible potential. Suddenly, every girl in Kazuki's class wants to bear his children, and every boy is infuriated at him for hogging all the hotties. More spell-slinging battles ensue, ripping the school apart. The class unanimously denounces Kazuki's "marriage" to his first suitor, Yuna Miyama, and demands he play fair and give the other boys a shot at her, and the other girls a shot at him. They all know Kazuki is defeatist, meek and easily bullied, but none of them know about the history he and Yuna share. ...
We heard you the first time ...
The opening episodes of Maburaho are agonizingly redundant: Kazuki's eight shots at magic are mentioned over and over, sometimes many times in the same short scene, and the three main competitors for his attention play through the same basic squabble over him every time they meet. Some complicated family politics are introduced, along with a stable of curious background characters and a truly unique world, but very little progress gets made as the show obsessively covers the same tiny patch of ground dozens of times.
Things sputter into motion with episode three, which introduces a ghost, and episode four, which introduces a monster. The self-contained, episodic, simplistic adventures feel like filler, but most nods back to the overplot are just more noisy repetition without progress, so new subplots are a bit of a relief. Still, all Aoi's students have their own dynamic, visually flashy magical styles, and in spite of their ticking internal magical countdowns, all of them use magic nearly constantly, for everything from carrying boxes to shapechanging to get to school faster. The series' best moments often involve more protracted duels, or even mild disagreements that rapidly become Project A-Ko-level battles royal. The slightly garish animation gets intense when things are actually happening, so it's often a grind when the exposition starts up and the plot slows down, or people waste time constantly repeating information we already know.
Maburaho has been typed as an anime Harry Potter, thanks to the kids-at-magic-school plot, but it's closer to a blend of Magic User's Club and a particularly hyper incarnation of Tenchi Muyo!: It's got the latter's "hapless boy surrounded by aggressive, dangerous, possessive females" dynamic, and the former's weird blend of drama, comedy, fan service and off-color anatomy humor. It just isn't as immediately charming as those series, in spite of its genuinely nifty premise. Later installments of this 24-episode series take the story in interesting directions, but for this first volume, Maburaho comes across as a comic, manic, action-packed series that spends far too much time spinning its wheels.
One neat feature on the Maburaho DVD is the 15-minute interview with the series' translator, who explains his process and philosophy, and clears up some of the more obscure visual and textual jokes. Among other things, he explains that "Maburaho" isn't actually a Japanese word: It's sort of a mixed-up mesh of words for "magic" and "love."
— Tasha
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