What They Say:
The battle between Al-Thamen, and the Kingdom of Sindria is underway. The Eight Generals are countering Al-Thamen’s assault. Dunya is in Full-body Dark Djinn Equip mode. As Isnan goads him into despising his own fate, Alibaba’s soul begins to vacillate.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The final arc for this season of Magi has certainly followed through on what the rest of the series is like in that each arc is quite different from the other. There’s been a decent bit of layering throughout the series when it comes to the kingdoms and the political nature of things, especially in the arc before this with Balbadd and what the Kou Empire was up to. But as this arc got further along, it started to turn more into a big action fest as a wide variety of characters showed up and expanded on the narrative. But it wasn’t for the better for me as it just added more people running around and a greater amount of magic involved as so many people now wield abilities, which reduces some of the charm and pleasure you get from watching Aladdin’s simplistic use of it.
The first half here largely follows up what came before in the previous episode as we have so many magic wielders in the area now and they’re throwing themselves into it full, whether in their air fighting gargoyle like creatures or spilling down thousands of swords from the sky like rain onto the land below. It’s such an overdose of people fighting that it does become problematic to actually keep track of who is who. I even found myself looking at some of them wondering if they really were introduced before or if this was the first time they were in the series. But even with that problem, there’s still a lot of enjoyment to be derived from the quality of the animation itself and the choreography of the fights, though it means more when it’s characters that are among the first tier of the cast.
Events do build up well here as the fighting goes on and it gets pretty intense and personal as the losses start to hit with it. There’s a beauty in the violence to be sure and the challenge that Alibaba has to face with just how far he can go to do what needs to be done is definitely there. But there’s also an intriguing flashback sequence where it reworks the view of witches in a way as we see an ancient uprising take place that could be mirrored in the present as well, which solidifies a bit for Alibaba what the fighting is all about. But with the way he’ connected to Rukh, it’s something that could draw him deeper into darkness and the bad side of things, which is where his internal challenge really is. The parallels to past and present are fairly clear as it gets further along here and it does make for some engaging material.
In Summary:
As Magi nears its end, it’s interesting to look at the way the series has grown and change over the course of its run, as well as that of its characters. Some are more obvious than others and those changes can be found in clearer fashion in the midst of battle, which doesn’t always happen .Most of this episode is worth watching just for the action, animation and choreography here as it presents something that’s just visually engaging throughout. It has, admittedly, lost me a fair bit in the story department with this arc as it’s simply throwing too many characters out there and minimizing a lot of the role of the primary characters that I tune in each week for. It’s not made the show bad, and I can imagine it might flow better when watched all together, but I feel less of a connection to the show now compared to the first half of its run.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
