Review of Gushing over Magical Girls

I yearn for a good fanservice anime that knows how to balance the act between sexual content and storytelling, but usually, such things don't often go well together especially when the story is so haphazardly done like Chained Soldier with little time to breathe in between. Of course, it also gets some pretty hefty backlash because trying to support a character that is constantly getting lewd seems to be something people find difficult to do (as for those who might haven't watched Kill la Kill) or viewers hating on a character for being too horny to be accepted like Mushoku Tensei's protagonist. Why am Isaying this? After through brushes and searches of more cultured anime, who would have thought an anime called "Gushing over Magical Girls" show up on the list?

I'll say this right before I go into my appreciation for this anime. Do not watch this anime if you're not okay with:
* Middle school girls being sexualized
* Weird BDSM shit in every episode
* Typical magical girls (really, do not expect a subversion in terms of mature writing)

Meet Hiiragi Utena, she's a real diehard 'otaku' when it comes to magical girls until some random deus ex machina comes in and tells her she's going to help her idols she worshipped, and by that, they meant by helping create chaos so that she can meet them in every single shenanigans she directly (or indirectly) caused. It's another one of those cases where she didn't intend for things to get this way and somehow she has to fulfill a bigger role to play in the grand scheme of the world (usually, stories that do this have to be creative or set up good Chekhov's Guns for some good payoffs.) Thankfully, this anime did have some form of creativity.

This is where the fanservice mainly kicks in and oh dear, it never felt lacking in any other way. Being promised a show meant for tasty content and delivering it is something that most animation production studios or even any studios working in any industry have done miserably. For that, we have to give credit to Asahi Production for being able to consistently provide 'good' content without assorting to ridiculous plot armor or fallacies, betraying character traits for plots, and making every word being put into your face without the simple deed of show, not tell. I'm not saying this anime is completely clean from flaws (there's still plot armor, but I mean every show has that), but there's very little that it never seems that my immersion never got cut off from any bad aspects.

A lot of my enjoyment stems from the CRAZY performance and SPECIFIC characters which the anime takes pride in, it's done splendidly and impeccably oozing with unhinged madness to watch. The experience of finishing a single episode of Gushing over Magical Girls is your classic dose of great voice-acting, especially from Utena's and Sayo's, these VA's performances were so good that they ended up stealing the show when they got the time to thrive. The precious screen time they are given is used well and rarely did I feel I waste a second watching it.

There are still some rough segments of the show which doesn't sit right with what the show excels at, the so-called romance and comedy. I think it's normal to have an anime that generally doesn't land its comedy well since most of the anime don't do it well and even if some are praised, it's very few and far between. But much of my criticism is on the Girls Love aspect of the story. I'll say this clearly, the show lacks an understanding of how to build genuine chemistry and proper relationships. A lot of times, you'll see characters just doing their one quip when they interact with one character or another, a lot of jokes are reliant on those exhausted jokes that died in the first episode. Kiwi's whole screen time is spent on her being a crude rebellious bitch that gets way too clingy on the MC. Haruka's character is your typical optimistic magical girl which I think is supposed to be the BUTT of the joke since she gets embarrassed ridiculously along with her comrades by Utena. But then again, who would expect that when you're watching something this unhinged?

It's an anime that tries to hit its small difficult target and did that with an ace on their hands. The anime perfectly encaptures what Ecchi anime is supposed to accomplish rather than just having bits of uncensored boobs or buttcheeks shoved on your face with a supposed male MC just taking it like it's his privilege. I get that people might not be able to take it well considering it's another one of those shows that still insists on blurring the boundary between what is safe and what is considered porn, however, if you're someone who wants tasty fanservice and good craziness, you should try this out.

Thank you for reading.