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MachiMaho: I Messed Up and Made the Wrong Person into a Magical Girl!, Vol. 1

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By Souryu. Released in Japan as “Machigatta ko wo Mahou Shoujo ni Shite Shimatta” by Shinchosha, serialization ongoing in the online magazine Kurage Bunch. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by David Musto and Wesley Bridges. Adapted by Jennifer Geisbrecht.

Longtime readers may be rather surprised I’m reviewing this at all, as I’ve made no secret of my distaste for the current genre of “Magical Girl Splatter”. Technically starting with Madoka Magica (which I have far less of a problem with), the more recent Magical Girl titles – all meant to be read by teen or adult men – seem to have an audience that wants to see cute girls get mentally broken and then killed off in gory ways. It’s not so much a deconstruction of the genre as a carpet bombing of it – “see, girls? THIS is what happens to magical girls! Dream of something else!” So I was not all that thrilled when I saw that Seven Seas had picked up another take on “magical girls for men”. And indeed, for the most part that’s exactly what this is. Still, there’s at least something here that made me finish the title and be curious for more.

Myu, one of those classical magical girl mascots who speaks cutely and acts as a catalyst for the plot, is being chased by a killer demon. Myu needs to find a magical girl fast, and spots a seemingly cute young girl with princess girls. Quickly it makes her the chosen one… whereupon she pulls out a cigarette and starts smoking, complaining about her teacher and acting like a stereotypical delinquent. Whoops! The demon shows up, and honestly she’s able to give it a good pounding just using her own power and lust for violence. She’s not really all that happy with the transformation either, given it strips her in the classic magical girl tradition. Now Myu has to deal with a grumpy, video-game obsessed heroine and continue to fight the bad guys… whose attacks now center entirely on Earth, allowing other mascots to take a vacation and leave it all to Myu. Even worse, the class president of another school has been turned into a dark magical girl… maybe? Who’s the dark one here?

First things first: after reading only about 15 pages of this title, you will have more panty shots than most other series put in an entire volume. If you thought “this is one of those authors where everything else he’s ever done has been porn”, you’d be absolutely correct. There’s also a relatively high body count, as (typically for the “male” magical girl genre) there are lots of victims gorily killed by the demons… or indeed by the magical girls… who don’t magically come back to life later. All of that said… it is nice to see that Kayo, the titular magical girl, is not here to be anyone’s tragic victim, and the delinquent guy who’s in love with her is essentially her lackey and whipping boy. (As a sign that this is not meant to be taken entirely seriously, the “pointy delinquent hairstyle” he sports is a wig, and he’s actually a bishonen underneath it.)

I don’t recommend this to anyone but the intended audience, let’s get that straight. That said, if you’d like a somewhat lighter, or at least more amusing, tone of nihilism in your magical girl splatter manga, MachiMaho is entirely up your alley.

Invaders of the Rokujouma!?, Vol. 16

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By Takehaya and Poco. Released in Japan as “Rokujouma no Shinryakusha!?” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Warnis.

We’re now in the 2nd half of this long series of light novels, and the author is taking the time to wrap up the plots. Sanae was first, mostly as her plot tied into others and was fairly easily resolved. Yurika and Maki’s has honestly barely been touched beyond introducing various strata of evil magical girls, and there’s a sense there’s much more to it. Theia’s is, most like, the main plotline, and thus is not wrapping up anytime soon. And that leaves Kiriha’s, and unfortunately, it’s really not as good a climax as I’d like. I mentioned last time that Kiriha’s antagonist was a classic laughing villain type, and thus he’s pretty dull. He’s so dull that the more interesting villains assisting him just wander off when it becomes clear he’s going down. We’re also introduced to “surprise villain”, but he barely ties into the cast and no one really cares. The battle scenes are cool, though.

The plot is divided into two parts, as Kiriha and Koutarou head underground to deal with the villains trying to use a giant earthquake machine to destroy the world (the fact that I had to type that sentence out in a review that is not about MST3K says a lot about this arc), while Theia and her group head to the machine itself to try to destroy it. Everyone gets to use their powers to do something cool, and we get to see that the reason our heroes are always able to succeed so easily is their empathy and compassion. There’s a lost of discussion of justice in this book (actually, there’s a lot of lecturing about justice in this book), and the idea that justice means you are doing the right thing only works if you’re not, say, a cackling madman convinced that the right thing is to RULE THE WORLD!

Honestly, when all is said and done this feels like the ending to a sentai series or something like that. Even Kiriha is not immune to the tropes, giving Koutarou her trading card back in a blatant “I am going to sacrifice myself and die so that you can all be happy” ploy, which the reader will be unsurprised to hear gets her yelled at by EVERYONE afterwards. The addition of the sentai rangers also helps to sell this as being along the lines of a pastiche, which is fine in and of itself, but if we’re genuinely resolving the issues that make up Kiriha’s arc in the series (as we seem to here), it feels rather undercooked. There is a very nice scene at the end, despite some Yurika abuse for comedic affect again (could be a concussion… eeeeh, she’ll be fine) where Kiriha essentially proposes while admitting the status quo has to stay the way it does. The romance in this series is still well handled.

The next volume appears to be a “let’s do a lighter book” type, as it’s summer and we’re all going on a vacation. I look forward to that, but I also look forw3ard to getting back to the alien and magical girl plots, both of which seems to have more dramatic heft than the underground dwellers did.

Plus-Sized Elf, Vol. 1

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By Synecdoche. Released in Japan as “Elf-san wa Yaserarenai” by Wani Books, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Gum. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jennifer O’Donnell. Adapted by David Lumsdon.

As those who follow me on Twitter know, I frequently make comments about manga as I’m reading them, before I do a review. This are usually glib, off-the-cuff, and not meant to be taken seriously. Case in point: while reading Plus-Sized Elf, I noted that it was an odd combination of a fetish manga and an exercise manual, and several people actually sounded more interested in it than they were. So I want to clarify here: we’re talking about 85% fetish manga and 15% exercise here. You have to really, really like seeing large breasts, large butts, and the women who possess them, as they’re on pretty much every page. That said, when I heard that this was a title that ran in Comic Gum, I was actually expecting much worse than I actually got. Plus-Sized Elf is, in the end, goofy fun, and far more interested in gazing at plump girls than in doing anything sexual with them.

That’s our heroine on the cover, clutching her McDonald’s fries and glaring at us. She’s Elfuda, an elf (the names are not exactly world-beaters in this title) who has come to the human world to eat, because additives and preservatives are unheard of in fantasy land, and things TASTE SO GOOD with them. Unfortunately, this means she’s gained more weight than she’d really like. She ends up at an osteopath clinic and meets Naoe, a young man who does a combination of massage therapy and diet/exercise advice. After taking care of her horribly out-of-alignment bones, he recommends a diet that works… at first, but Elfuda quickly backslides. As the title goes on, we meet more fantasy creatures that are hanging out in Naoe’s town, all of whom have various reasons for being on the hefty side: a dark elf who’s standing at her job all day, a mandragora girl whose large flower on her head (and possibly other large things) leads to poor posture, an ogre who loves booze, etc.

As I said above, there’s something that so far is very obviously missing from this title, and that’s any sense that it’s a “harem” series. Naoe clearly appreciates full-figured women, and he can be seen blushing a number of times. But none of the girls who he helps and meets up with really seem to be that into him. This is not about a guy amassing a bunch of women, it’s about a bunch of women and the guy who hangs around them. The manga also manages to walk that fine line between finding amusement in Elfuda’s inability to resist junk food and keep weight off without actively mocking her for it. And a lot of Naoe’s advice is pretty good, too – there is a BIT of exercise manual in here, as I said. Again, this is still a title you should only get if you don’t mind fanservice – there’s several shots of the women eating food and getting massages that are basically orgasm face art. But if you don’t, Plus-sized Elf proved to be more fun than I expected.