Sometimes you have to scrape the bottom of the barre. Magic Woman M is what’s left on the underside of that barrel.
What They Say:
Her wand is bigger than yours! Meruru is a sexy sorceress lost in a forest of unsavory characters. But these lustful beasts are in for a surprise. When aroused, Meruru attains the state of ultimate ecstasy and unleashes an explosive power from within!
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release etains both of its languages tracks from the original Anime 18 release so we get a pair of stereo mixes encoded at 192kbps.. Being something of a low budget production in Japan, it’s a basic stereo mix with little to really do. There isn’t a lot of directionality to be had here as it’s an older show but what it conveys comes across as well as can be expected. Pretty much everything feels center channel based, but it’s all pretty clean and clear to hear. We didn’t notice any dropouts or distortions.
Video:
Originally released in 1998, the transfer for this two episode OVA is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. This release replicates what we had with previous editions so there’s no differences in encoding here. For a show released in Japan in 1998, there’s not a heck of a lot to recommend here, especially in comparison to other adult shows from this time period. From the transfer perspective, it’s pretty accurate in presenting the low quality of the show. There’s more grain here in this one show than I’ve seen in anything else recently. The show also features some rather poor color palette choices, giving it a really bad 80’s anime feeling to it. But the grain was just the really big distracting part.
Packaging:
In a lot of ways, the cover for this release continues to be a shame because a show like this shouldn’t have such a great looking design for it. The illustration used of Meruru here, naked with just her hat on and a staff in hand, is very appealing in a classic fantasy sense. It’s got a lot of good soft colors to it and a nice amount of detail within the layout. Meruru looks good and it’s the kind of cover that you give a second and third look at. The back cover provides a good fully clothed shot of Meruru in her gear and a few shots from the show along the right above a very brief summary of the show. Features and other specs are pretty clearly listed here as well. No reverse cover is provided here nor are there any show related inserts to it.
Menu:
A little more animated than usual, this is a pretty decent looking menu with some nice mixing of menu animation and cel animation. Selections are listed along the right and have great access times and move fast between each of the submenus.
Extras:
Due to one of the extras, I’m not sure I can really grade the overall selection of extras. We get some of the usual array of things, such as a meet the characters section and a little art gallery. Spells and stuff shows off the various spells used in the show. But the audio commentary. Oh lord, the commentary. It’s not a feature length commentary, but a separate section where four segments of the show are presented and the characters, uh, comment on it. Such as the ogre talking how once you have an ogre you never go back, but in much more rough fashion. And in the ogres dub voice. It’s one of those “I can’t believe they did this” kind of moments.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Sometimes things come out of Japan that shouldn’t, and Magic Woman M is one of those titles. It’s exceedingly rare when I practically beg that a license be lost, burned and disappeared into the ether. When the two part show was released in 1998, it already felt dated, like it belong back in the late 80’s at best, but even then that felt like it wouldn’t be right. Getting this release originally in 2003 or so from Anime 18, it didn’t mesh well with the large wave of digital productions that had been coming through for a couple of years so it looked even worse since the digital shows were finding their groove when it came to the colors and painting.
Magic Woman M is a pretty weak tale overall. We’re introduced to the supposedly capable 19 year old Meruru, who’s out adventuring in the world seeking experience in the ways of magic and life. While out in the world, she stumbles into an area where an ogre has been rampaging and killing. In fact, he had just finished wiping out a small army it seems and has taken the only surviving female warrior back to his lair where he has his way with her. He’s also got a stash of women villagers whom he keeps for food.
Meruru, after freeing one of the female warriors elsewhere, searches out the ogre with her. Said ogre comes, overpowers her, and takes her. Takes her there and takes her back to his lair to be taken again. Or used as food. There are segments of the show where in the second episode you see a human sized fish with “members” having their way with our cast of women.
The show a lot of times looks a lot like a high school animation project and high school scripting mentality. The look of the show is pretty far down the list, enough so to make Adventure Kid look good. The scripting even manages to make that show look good. The character designs border on slightly cute, but the actual artwork and animation tends to be poor, especially in the coloring department.
In Summary:
There’s a lot of good hentai out there. Unfortunately there’s a lot of really bad hentai, but gems like this are rare finds indeed. Watching this show again and again over the years has proved most assuredly that it hasn’t aged well at all. It was awful to start with and it only seems to get worse. There are tales out there about the awfulness of this production and what was involved in localizing it and there is that kind of curiosity factor to seeing just how awful it could really be. I really just want to run a late night panel and have people watch it just so they get it, all without commentary. Because it needs none. These are the things that cannot be unseen.
Features:
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles, Meet the Characters, Art Gallery, Audio Commentary, Spells and Stuff
Content Grade: F
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: C
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: B+
Released By: Critical Mass Video
Release Date: January 6th, 2015
MSRP: $14.99
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
