Mahou Sensou (Magical Warfare): ANIME REVIEW

Can somebody please remind me to never watch a Madhouse anime ever again. I am grateful to Madhouse for producing many good anime, but can they please finish the anime in a second season instead of leaving us at an enormous cliffhanger every time at the end of the first one. Now I have one more anime on my completed list without knowing how it actually ends and it doesn't even have a manga, just a light novel, and to be honest the anime is not worth reading it. Why? Find it out in today's anime review. This time on Mahou Sensou or Magical Warfare. Enjoy!

STUDIO: Madhouse

GENRE: Action, Fantasy, Magic

EPISODES: 12

LINKS: MY ANIME LIST | PV TRAILER 

PLOT AND STORY LINE 📜

When I saw this anime and read the synopsis I knew that I shouldn't expect much of it. It is just another, average fantasy and  magic anime, with a mainly shallow story and characters, a poor romance, predictable events, annoying shoujo and fan-service elements and an even more irritating brother-complex story in the beginning. Still, the show manages to pull it self together and actually improve in the second half, but just a little bit. Here's what happens...

It all starts when our protagonist Takeshi Nanase stumbles upon an unconscious girl, Aiba Mui that after waking up casts magic and accidentally turns Takeshi also into a magician. He then realizes that the world he lives in is far more different from what he actually thought. What has always been one world is now revealed to be divided into two: the one he used to live in and the one destroyed in the First Magic War. Now with new powers, Takeshi and his two friends (also turned accidentally into magicians) Isoshima and Ida are trying hard to fit in into the new world by training hard and overcoming new obstacles. Also in their way, one of the magic communities called the Ghost Trailers that are using their powers to gain superiority in both worlds. As magicians, Takeshi and his friends are trying to stop the Trailers in order to maintain peace and prevent the beginning of the Second Magic War. 

As I said, the anime isn't any good, at least in the beginning but it does start to get a little better after the 6th or 7th episode. The first half is revolves around Aiba chasing after her brother who doesn't remember who he actually is and some pretty annoying shoujo drama involving a love triangle between the main characters. I really don't know how I didn't drop this mess of a shallow plot and story line full of plot holes, but I didn't. And true I can't say that it became much better, but it does get a far more interesting story, I mean it gets an actual story that makes sense. 

It reminded me of an anime that is probably better known to you than Mahou Sensou. It is Charlotte. They both start with a non-sense and mostly boring story that is not leading us anywhere, but it then turns into something that might even be worth watching. Mahou Sensou becomes an emotional, moving and somewhere intriguing story about the destiny of two brothers. Secrets are uncovered, everything starts to tie together and Takeshi realizes that it wasn't just an accident that brought him to the magic world. 

And just as the anime introduced this new, fresh story, some amazing fights and new hints on what this anime is really about, it ends. Mahou Sensou ends with an enormous cliffhanger and I am pretty sure the makers are not planning on making another season. What's funny, even the author of the novel Mahou Sensou, Hisashi Suzuki hates the anime and thinks that it wasn't a good idea in first place. 

CHARACTERS 👩👦

Oh my, so many shallow, useless and annoying characters. All the characters are so simplistic and we have seen personalities like these in so many other anime. The two main characters, being Takeshi and his brother Gekkou are the only ones that kinda stand out with their personalities, but they're still nothing special or unique. The only unique thing that the makers did in the anime is that the useless side-kick is not a girl but a boy, Takeshi's best friend Ida. The female leads of the show, Mui and Isoshima were both pretty annoying and useless picturing the average teenage girl that only has one thing on her mind-love. Isoshima (gif above) does get a character development later and actually becomes a more vital part of the story. I guess we'd have seen more if the anime actually had a second season. Bute yeah...

ANIMATION AND STYLE 💻🎨

I hoped that they would at least do the animation good but this was horrible. I thought the whole time that my laptop charger was defect and that the laptop automatically decreased the brightness after it stops charging. But no, it was the animation of the anime that dimmed the brightness from time to time. In addition to that, I was looking forward to good fight sequences because I love magic action, but instead I got horribly animated fights that looked like a bad flip-chart movie.  The animation style was also nothing special and pretty disappointing on the whole. 

CONCLUSION 📋📌

Magic/ School anime having a mainstream plot, a boring story line, shallow characters and average animation should definitely have their own name. I suggest something like Mainstream Magical and Magical Warfare would definitely be their first representative. It is pretty obvious that I don't want to recommend this anime to anyone so you better go watch other anime. And if you really want to watch an anime with a school/magic setting, then go watch Tokyo Ravens or Charlotte, because everything is better than Mahou Sensou. Trust me.