It’s time to settle into the cute magical girl formula, with the dark themes that have become a popular part of it recently.
What They Say:
Since ancient times long past, this world has been ruled by two tarot cards. Diablos Tarot—The tarot of the devil that feasts on the souls of living humans and uses that nourishment to bring countless pain and suffering. Elemental Tarot—The tarot that draws its energy from the power of nature in order to oppose the Diablos Tarot.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As evidenced by the “illusion” theme prevalent in all the titles of this show, there’s a very mysterious undertone to it all, clearly the element meant to keep the audience intrigued. With this being such a big part of the show, there’s no way this episode wouldn’t touch upon it. However, for the most part it’s a pretty straightforward episode of an anime enveloped by the tropes of the “cute girls” and “magical girl” themes that have been so popular in anime. It’s much darker than many of the classics associated with these themes, but that’s been an element popularly thrown into that mix enough recently that nothing really feels original here.
After spending a day at a school that they note feels incredibly normal despite being made to house these select special magical girls tasked with fighting evil monsters, our core group of cute girls encounter their monster of the week, and go through all their transformation sequences before fighting. These scenes are often some of the most impressive in series of this genre, but they seem fairly unremarkable in this one.
The episode was still alright, and most importantly, while it doesn’t give quite the same air of mystery that the less clear scenes do, it’s good to really learn about the story, rather than forever being shown a series of scenes which may be fascinating, but don’t necessarily mean much in the end.
I may actually find the monster designs to be somewhat more interesting than the magical girl transformation sequences in this series. It looks like the series will be following the formula of having a new monster to fight every week, so seeing each new monster may mix things up more than most of the other elements. Hopefully they can remain different and interesting enough to make that a compelling part of the show’s appeal.
While it’s not on the level of the work of some of the really great composers out there and can’t really hold the series together on its own, the music remains possibly the strongest element of the series. Although the background music and theme songs are completely disconnected in this series, as with many, I include the opening as part of the reason for that, because it’s still probably my favorite minute and half out of every twenty-three minutes and forty-one seconds that make up an episode of this series.
In Summary:
This episode doesn’t seem to be offering anything special. We’re introduced to a surprisingly normal school with a group of cute girls we’ll be spending our days with. By night, they go through their transformation sequences to become magical girls and fight their monster of the week. The dark mood remains extremely important in this series, even with much of the episode seeming pretty light, and along with a strong set of background music, that at least makes it interesting.
Grade: C
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Custom-Built PC, Sceptre X425BV-FHD 42″ Class LCD HDTV.
