Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka
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Nordhmmer
Posts: 1028 |
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And part of the budget saved from the last episode seems to have gone towards Asuka & Kurumi fight scenes in ep 11.
In case anyone is left watching,and are wondering about whom the bombshell is,that's the 5th of the Magical Five. Why she's not Chinese?-reasons. |
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1779 Location: South America |
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Whoa, this show is br00tal, it almost makes Goblin Slayer appear tame in comparison! I am loving it, as it is just my thing. Of course people more used to less extreme forms of entertainment might not enjoy this. In my case I find it hard to find something that attracts my attention for long enough to get me into the main plot, this show does it.
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DangerMouse
Posts: 3984 |
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Same here, I think this show is quite good, I really like it. |
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TanyaTheEvil
 Posts: 332 |
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Finally someone who is liking this anime. I have been loving this anime from episode one and it seems like most are giving it bad reviews, even the anime news network was giving magical girl spec-ops bad reviews. I am gald that I am not the only one who is liking the anime |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18252 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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^
Oh, I like the series a lot - in fact, it's probably my favorite of the season - but it does significant and easily-assailable flaws. The animation for too much of the series has been crap, the tonal disconnect between its cutesy elements and gross brutality is too jarring at times, and the graphic content is over-the-top at times. Still, its strong points more than make up for that for me. |
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 2619 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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^And they largely don't for me, but I wouldn't say that I hate the show. I dislike how it's handled some of its aspects, so it's the thing I least like this season. (I don't think I've given any episodes lower than a B-?) And in all honesty, parts of it have been hard to watch for me; I'm not generally a dark-and-grim viewer. It's not my thing, but it isn't full-on bad.
(Except maybe Kurumi. I dislike her intensely.) |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18252 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I can totally understand that. The way that past cruelties can warp a person seems to be a recurring theme for the series, and the series is implying that they have pushed her into yandere territory. She's as creepy as any of the villains are. Still, I did like the way she found her resolve in this most recent episode. |
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Phrunicus
Posts: 34 |
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I wasn't sure if it's really true resolve, or if Chisato just hit Kurumi's Berserk Button (or maybe her Trauma Button)... |
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DRosencraft
Posts: 666 |
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In minor defense to this series, it's handling of Asuka's trauma is pretty much in keeping with all of anime's manner of handling questions of this nature; forget everything else and keep fighting until there's no fighting left to do.
It seems like every season I wait to see how much further down the rabbit hole the dark magical girl genre will go, and every season a new lower level is unearthed. This last episode in particular seemed like it wanted to take every last trope it could and shove them all into one, overlaid with whimsical monologues and conversation you'd sooner expect to hear a shounen hero shouting at the big bad villain during their final fight. There was so much wrong with this show in terms of narrative, tone, visuals, that i can't even be bothered to go through it all. It just kept treading so close to the edge of being reasonable that I hoped it would veer out of foul territory before hitting the base, but it didn't happen. It's a foul ball. Time to get back in the box and wait for the next season to pitch another dark magical girl series and see how that goes. |
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Sisyphusson66
Posts: 96 |
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From what I can tell, in this last episode especially, there was a number of scenes that were anime original, or scenes added to tease events later in the manga. Some of these scenes were relatively harmless and were probably positive inclusions. However, there were still scenes added that were actively harmful to the enjoyment of the episode.
Specifically, the first part of the Chisato torture scene. In the manga, Kurumi doesn't actually torture Chisato (the first half does not happen at all), the manga only includes the latter part when Kurumi walks in with the other illegal magical girl. While there are still some issues with Kurumi as a character and some tonal problems, the way the manga has it shows just a bit more mercy towards Chisato and knows not to torture her, since that would be woefully gratuitous. Whereas the anime goes ahead and tortures Chisato for no real reason, both harming an already tortured character beyond plot necessity and making Kurumi out to being worse than she should be. |
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Animerican14
 Posts: 963 Location: Saint Louis, MO |
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Been following Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka since the early part of the season. It's been an interesting ride that's kept me engaged week-to-week, if a trashy and dumb one that I wish I took less seriously from its start. It's definitely encouraged me to check out some of the manga the other day, so uh, mission accomplished (in part)?
That said, I almost can't believe the manga author, and even a key script-writer/series compositor, was Makoto Fukami . Why didn't I find out that the other half of Pscyho-Pass's creative team (for season one & most of four movies) was behind Asuka until Friday? And shouldn't his work in Psycho-Pass demonstrate he's better than this? If there are some greater intentionally moral points to be made in Asuka, one that's not merely left to the audiences to guess or vaguely infer, the anime clearly didn't have time for much of any, or the wherewithal to put such points on the same level as the trashier elements.
Fukami (again, the original author) was credited as the screenwriter for episode 12, so I guess his approach when revisiting material he already penned in the manga was to further engage in his apparent torture fetishes. 
And speaking more on episode 12: it really is a shame that we get so little about Pei-Pei in the end. If she was going to be featured in the OP/ED/promo materials like she has, it might've been more preferable for the staff to do a more original take on her, and introduce her pre-episode 12 via something more than a short cameo in a shower scene. Instead, we get that shower scene where she was sure to remark on the growth of her breasts before looking at the news in Okinawa, and then... whatever those scenes in Shanghai/Thailand were supposed to amount to, in episode 12. What are we supposed to take away on Pei-Pei from the anime itself, outside of her being teaser-material for the rest of the manga and/or a season two that may never come? That she's a live-by-her-own-rules mercenary/assassin that dons a gyaru aesthetic? That's nice, but then we see this obviously younger girl that's working with her and.... what?
Are we supposed to believe from this exchange of this scene (adapted from an "extra chapter" of the manga btw) that Astrologer is actually a sexual partner of hers, which would kind of make her a pedophile? (According to the manga, it was only two years ago spoiler[that Pei-Pei saved her at her father's request in the Kashmir region, right before he died by explosives vest courtesy of some Indian intelligence agent)]) Is she just a serial sexual harasser/groper like all those schoolgirl lesbians in this and other shows we see? Or are we to think that Astrologer's taken around town as a voyeur to Pei Pei's sexual exploits? All these possibilities are all pretty bad in their own way, but I'd "like" to think that it's more the last possibility (which happened to be my first guess), if only that's a bit less gross to me. |
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Sisyphusson66
Posts: 96 |
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I did not know that, sadly that makes that scene even more depressing, knowing it was probably bastardized by the original author.
I think the purpose was to show that she had a connection still to the the other Magical Five members, as they showed her thinking about them. But it was pretty weak, and I don't know why they didn't just include her whole backstory with Astrologer. They had plenty of time to do so.
Yeah, this scene certainly happened. I want to think that it is just a translation issue here (I am not a translator, nor do I know Japanese, but I am comparing the anime and manga translation), as in the manga translation at least, it is "something lewd" instead of explicitly sex in the quote. It doesn't make the scene much better, but at least it is more ambiguous. |
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jenthehen
 Posts: 835 Location: Cincinnati, Ohio |
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Maybe all the magic in these girls' bodies makes them extra horny
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18252 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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While I am sorry to see this series finish, as I have enjoyed it week-to-week, I have to agree that this final episode was mishandled almost as badly as the last ep of The Price of Smiles was. I do also have to agree that there was a lot of room to do much more thematically.
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Galap
Moderator
 Posts: 2354 |
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All in all a decent series. For the cons, I could definitely have done without the torture porn. And I could have done without war nurse in general; the whole Yandere thing was never my thing. Also I can't help but get the impression that the author is a bit of a 'Call of Duty Gun Expert', in that he is into all that tacticool stuff but doesn't really understand real strategy etc. all that much.
It sounds like I'm hating on this show a lot, but somehow despite all those things I didn't like I found it charming and compelling in general. |
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