It’s a Whole New Beginning!
What They Say
Komugi Yoshida wants to be famous, but her efforts as an idol don’t seem to be working out so far. Unlike her prim friend Cocona or her tomboyish rival Tsukasa, both of whose idol popularity is soaring, Komugi seems to be getting only the bottom-tier jobs, like pitching pharmaceutical products to the locals. However, everything changes when Komugi discovers an injured creature named Usa-P who offers her a chance to be something bigger: a magical nurse! With awesome powers and a cute outfit to boot, Komugi might just be moving up in the world, but is she going to be able to handle the stress of saving the world, being an idol, AND keeping up in school? Find out as the universe of SOULTAKER and NURSE WITCH KOMUGI is reborn in an all new adventure: NURSE WITCH KOMUGI R!
The Review!
Audio:
I would say that the audio for Nurse Witch Kagumi R is above average in terms of sound quality. I believe it has something to do with this being an idol anime—sort of. While it’s standard Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0, you can definitely tell they spent a lot of time on the sound… and the sound track.
Video:
The video is 480i / 16×9 Anamorphic, so it’s not gonna be high-definition no matter how much people might wish otherwise. That said, it’s not the end of the world. The line quality isn’t the greatest, and some of the scenes that are heavy on the line art look a little odd, but most of this series is visually appealing enough that I didn’t mind the drop in quality from the standard 1080i I’m used to watching anime in.
Packaging:
The front cover features Kagumi, the heroine, Cocona, her friend, and two strange creatures that look like giant pillows, a rabbit and a tanuki respectively. Being the heroine, Kagumi is up front, while Cocona is behind her and smaller. The background is a clear blue sky and a school with trees. The title is in front of Kagumi on the bottom. Kagumi and Cocona are both in their magical girl outfits. As expected, Kagumi’s outfit is a magical curse. Cocona is a maid. Traveling diagonally across the back are pink, blue, and black strips. In the front at the upper right corner is Kagumi in a jumping pose, and the anime description is to her left. Down below her screenshots, followed by information about the anime.
Menu:
With three discs, the menu for each disc features one of the three magical girl characters, Kagumi, Cocona, and Tsukasa in their magical girl forms of Nurse Witch, Magical Maid, and Magical Sister. The first disc is the only one with the special features. The others allow you to choose from the list of episodes.
Extras:
This doesn’t have many special features. Outside of the clean opening and closing animations, it only features a number of trailers for more Sentai Filmworks anime.
Nurse Witch Kagumi R is an anime that I feel could have been entertaining if it had 12 more episodes, but kind of lacks any definite “oomph” with only 12. The story starts off simply enough. Kagumi, our lead character, is singing at the Tokyo Sky Dome, where all Japanese idols aspire to sing. Her really bad CGI performance is cut short when a weird villain appears, but Kagumi defeats him—and then wakes up from her dream. While I have to hand it to the creators of this anime for throwing in a lot of magical girl tropes, such as having a ditzy main heroine and a sequence that is eerily reminiscent to Sailor Moon after the main opening, I feel like this anime doesn’t know what it wants to be.
We cut to Kagumi attending school, where we are introduced to her friend and fellow idol, Cocona. Now, Cocona is a lot more popular than Kagumi. While Kagumi is singing in front of stores and playing corpses for TV shows, Cocona is singing in concerts, has lead roles in television shows, and does a lot of interviews and commercials. Of course, Cocona also has her own really terrible CGI animated dance routines as well. The CGI scenes are actually what I take one of the biggest issues with. I’m not sure if they did it on purpose, but the CGI artwork really clashes with the normal 2D artwork. I don’t have any issues with CGI in anime. I’ve seen it done to great effect with some idol shows. However, those anime do a much better job than this one did.
Sometime near the beginning as Kagumi is trying her hardest to become a top idol, she runs into Usa-P, a strange, rotund creature with bunny ears. Usa-P wants her to become a Cam-P Girl… which is basically a magical girl. Kagumi doesn’t want to and runs away, but she soon agrees when Usa-P blackmails her by not agreeing to save her from a cockroach unless she becomes a Cam-P Girl. After that, Kagumi has to become a magical nurse and fight the forces of evil! Well, I say evil, but actually it’s just magical cards that cause some minor but harmless pranks. Think of them as less dangerous versions of the cards found in Cardcaptor Sakura.
After the bad CGI, my biggest issue with the series is that it tries to combine too many anime at once. It’s a magical girl series, but it’s also an idol show, a slice of life, a comedy, and a parody. This would be fine if it was given enough episodes to develop all of these genres into something truly amazing, but it doesn’t. It has 12 episodes to mix these genres together, give its characters proper development, and tell its story. Sadly, while some scenes are funny, it never manages to really capture the essence for any of these genres and thus falls flat.
As is the case with most magical girl anime, Kagumi’s two friends, Cocona and Tsukasa, soon become magical girls as well. Cocona is the hardworking idol who tries her best every day, while Tsukasa is the masculine idol with a secret girly side. Both are standard archetypes found in idol anime, though I’d say Tsukasa is a tad more bland than Cocona, who reveals that she has a sadistic side when she transforms into Magical Maid.
In Summary:
Because the series doesn’t seem to know where it’s focus should be, a lot of the episodes feel like filler. Nothing really happens until the very end, where we’re introduced to the character who I guess is the main villain—though I hesitate to call this character an antagonist. This anime wasn’t all bad. There were a few scenes that entertained me, but I think that, overall, this is one of the greatest examples of what not to do when making a magical girl, idol, slice of life, romantic comedy, anime.
Content Grade: D
Audio Grade: B
Video Grade: C
Packaging Grade: A
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: B
Released By: Sentai Filmworks
Release Date: May 2, 2017
MSRP: $59.98
Running Time: 300 minutes
Video Encoding: 1080p
Aspect Ratio: 16×9 Anamorphic
Review Equipment:
55″ Class AQUOS HD Series LED TV LC-55LE643U, Xbox 360 DVD player