Review: Gushing Over Magical Girls

In the world of shy, average teenager Utena Hiiragi, magical girls become celebrities by openly fighting to defend cities from evil organization Enormita. Utena adores and idolizes Tres Magia, the trio which protects her city, so she jumps at the chance when mascot Venalita offer to make her able to transform, too. To her dismay, she becomes the scantily-clad, S&M-themed villainess eventually known as Magia Blaiser and must fight Tres Magia. However, becoming Blaiser unlocks Utena’s subconscious desires, leading to her discover (again, to her dismay) that she takes great delight in humiliating Tres Magia. She eventually becomes the leader of a trio which Tres Magia struggle against, though the superiors in Enormita that the trio eventually meet take a dim view of Baiser’s tease-but-don’t-defeat approach. But as even they discover, opposing Blaiser’s fully-unleashed kinks is no simple matter.

So goes the premise and plot of the series which isn’t just the raciest of the Winter ’24 season; it’s arguably the most explicit anime TV series since 2020’s Interspecies Reviewers. It makes no pretense about what it is, either, with the first defined nudity coming during transformation scenes just 2½ minutes into the first episode and each of the 13 episodes containing defined nudity to some degree. Throughout the series’ run it explores all manner of sexual fetishes (including some that may be fairly obscure) and even features a full-blown lesbian sex scene for good measure. It’s absolutely lurid, so that means means it must be trashy as hell, right?

That’s actually a debatable point. While the content is clearly meant to be titillating, there is a purpose and method to it. For Utena, becoming Baiser is very much a sexual awakening. It forces her to confront that the love she has for magical girls isn’t necessarily platonic and unleashes the big bundle of kinky desires that she has gradually started to develop and understand. Some of her encounters with Tres Magia (and, initially, with ally Leoparde) can even easily be interpreted as sexual experimentation. She has to assume her Baiser identity (i.e., role-play) to fully bring out her desires, but even in her normal identity she starts to take an interest in things like porno mags.

Utena isn’t the only one on a journey of sexual discovery, either. Tres Magia member Azure gradually discovers masochistic thrills through various times Baiser binds and/or blindfolds her, which she mightily struggles to come to terms with, and defensive specialist Sulfur is heavily implied to relieve her frustrations by going on the offensive. Later on, two characters are essentially forced into a lesbian scenario by Basier, but as their backstories come out, that scene could easily be looked at as them being pushed to act on something that they were already inclined towards doing with each other. Tres Magia leader Magenta, though the purest and most straight-laced of the trio, also discovers her own kink at one point. A lot of commentary could also probably be made on S&M play in general here, but I don’t feel knowledgeable enough about that realm to engage in that discussion.

A certain amount of plot is present in the story, though prior to the appearance of the Enormita elites in episode 8, it mostly involves the implication that Venalita is scheming something big that he’s not letting his girls in on. (But do pay attention to news broadcasts early on, as one point brought up in them becomes significant later on.) Even after the elites show up, the series is still largely character-centered, with nearly every recurring character except the mascots getting a good amount of attention. Easily the most interesting developments involve Utena/Baiser and, to a lesser extent, Azure. As much as Baiser gets off on tormenting and humiliating Tres Magia members, she is never actually interested in beating them. In fact, the series’ strongest scene comes when she takes great offense to Azure seeming to give up and succumb to being Baiser’s slave – an act that, if allowed to finish out, is strongly implied would be Azure’s downfall as a magical girl. Utena doesn’t want that; even in Baiser form, Utena still idolizes magical girls, so she expects them to fight back and eventually triumph. That doesn’t mean she’s above perving out on her own growing lesbian tendencies, but she’s never more happy than when the magical girls rebound and show greater strength.

The personalities also keep things lively. Each side gets an earthy, foul-mouthed girl (Leoparde for the villain side, Sulfur for the magical girl side), and those two are constantly at each other’s throats whether transformed or in civilian identities in school. (The magical girl transformation gives the girls on both sides recognition filters, so neither side knows the other’s civilian identities.) Their sharp words and attitudes definitely give the series some extra spice. Haruka/Magenta, meanwhile, is the epitome of the good-hearted outgoing type who is also effectively the team mom; not hard to understand why she was the first picked to be a magical girl. Neroalice is the quiet, elementary school-aged girl who isn’t subjected to the fan service displays that the other girls are, but some of her reality-bending dollhouse play ends up being edgy, too. Of the Enormita members who show up later, the nun is irritating and the overall leader is more generic in nature, but that may well be deliberate. One quirk of the setting is that there are no male characters at all, not even in most crowd shots.

As might be expected, the technical merits focus their greatest efforts on the fan service, with animation and artistic quality being somewhat erratic outside of that. Baiser in particular gets a collection of great expressions, though, and kudos go to Fuka Izumi for a wonderful performance as Utena/Baiser. (I was shocked to learn that this was her first major role, much less lead role. It won’t be her last.) If this series eventually gets an English dub, this will be a hard performance to duplicate. The musical score also shines in the way it keeps a near-constant playful note even when being dramatic.

In all, Gushing Over Magical Girls is absolutely not for everyone. Even setting aside the rampant nudity, certain aspects may be too edgy for some audiences. If you can handle the ecchi aspects, though, then the series can be appreciated either as a simple, lively ecchi romp or as a bold illustration of burgeoning sexuality.