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Nurse Witch Komugi R (TV).




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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15457
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sun Jan 10, 2016 12:35 pm Reply with quote


Nurse Witch Komugi R (TV)

Genres: comedy, magic
Themes: idols, magical girl

Plot Summary: Komugi Yoshida is a somewhat clumsy second-year middle-school student whose strong point is her spiritedness. She performs as an idol like Kokona Saionji (her classmate and close friend) and Tsukasa Kisaragi (an idol who dresses in male clothing). However, unlike Kokona whose popularity is skyrocketing and Tsukasa with her charisma in male attire, Komugi's only gigs are low-end ones like those at the local shopping district. Still, Komugi has her "dream" as she lives her dual lives as a idol and a middle school girl. One day, a mysterious injured creature named Usa-P appears before Komugi and asks if she wants to be a Legendary Girl who can use magical powers. She reluctantly becomes Magical Nurse and fights waves of masked figures. Meanwhile, a Magical Maid and a Magical Sister also show up.
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Episode 1

It starts off with a concert in full CG, just throwing us into the plot. That is cliché, this show cannot be serious. And that is exactly right this was incredibly not serious, it is a parody. And actually kind of a special parody from this first episode in how it can look like it is actually doing something pretty normal for genre, all the while sneaking in little jokes at the expense of the cliché tropes that it is using.

Actually when I started watching the episode I had thought that it would be great if it did something like the magical girl in sideshow and Yuru Yuri, and the I think it actually started doing exactly that. She is shamelessly made to be both an ordinary girl, an idol, and pretty good at all her subjects, at first kind of eye rolling, until it pulls the same trick by ramping it up for her friend who is made an average girl, but is a more popular idol, the best in the grade, the student president, and a beginning actress. This could appear that it is unimaginative, but it is actually super mocking the genre while pretending it is not.

We have classic female classmates, plus one who raps for some reason, who talk about doing ridiculous named volleyball moves. She has a concert, but all fans the elderly, the three most active in stereotypical fan attire and putting in way too much energy for their age. She barely reacts to seeing a magical creature mascot. Said mascot forces her to become a magical girl when she is at the mercy of something as insignificant as a cockroach she could easily avoid.

She simply in easily gets a part in a "movie", wherein she gets praised for remembering the lines (it is more like one simple line hinting her character gets killed straight away). A camera monster in a toilet. Her suddenly copying the mascot character's tic because that apparently is a good cover someone hearing it speak. A lack of enthusiasm to be a magical girl and needing to read a card to say the bunch of magical words to transform. A sudden out of nowhere serious narrator explaining the scientific/technical parts of her magical girl transformation. Uncharacteristic violence for a magical girl, along with an obviously overpowered Nanoha like finishing move.

And if it was not enough to realise this was a parody, her role for the movie was actually taken by the chauffeur who is enthusiastically getting praised for the part of "pretty school girl" despite clearly unfitting with the clothes. That was about the most blatant joke, most is hidden under simple winks at the audience of saying "isn't this part of the magical girl genre silly?. I totally laughed at this, silly little jokes like teacher doing cliché hand to head grip to later showing her actively doing hand exercises to practice such grips simply touch my funny bone, along with off base conversation that not only should their teacher do wrestling she apparently did try.

I kind of like this on the surface serious adaption yet underneath one big purposeful joke. Osomatsu-san similarly started off with one over the top concert, and likewise knows exactly how it is worth kind of making fun of.
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FenixFiesta



Joined: 22 Apr 2013
Posts: 2581
PostPosted: Sun Jan 10, 2016 5:06 pm Reply with quote
A significant issue with this show is the nature that it is a remake or whatever of the original OVA which itself was a satiric love letter to the progenitor series of Soul Taker as well as blatantly mocking the idea of Idols, Magical girl shows, and many other concepts within the Source OVA's hat.

If this show was say going on to parody modern hits such as Love Live and Madoka Magica as well as hit upon the modern anime industry in a joking fashion... you are going to want to look elsewhere as it plays out as a generic magical girl who happens to be an idol anime.

For my viewer stand point the issue isn't so much that this is bad as it is generic and if I want to want to watch magical girl idols I can watch a plethora of other series occurring THIS season or simply catch up on the latest Precure.

I will watch the next episode to see if there is even a hint beyond the standard affairs, but likely this show is dropped.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
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Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sun Jan 10, 2016 9:13 pm Reply with quote
FenixFiesta wrote:
A significant issue with this show is the nature that it is a remake or whatever of the original OVA which itself was a satiric love letter to the progenitor series of Soul Taker as well as blatantly mocking the idea of Idols, Magical girl shows, and many other concepts within the Source OVA's hat.



If anything idols though are more relevant than ever. We have Idol M@aster, Love Live, AKB0048, Symphogear, Locodol, and really all the anime that might throw in an idol character like it is par the course. Usually the role of just happening to be an idol does seem to fit with a different character, which seems to be why her friend is one while she is the idol of pharmacy with three old guys way into her idol career.

True it feels decidedly less modern for magical girls, things like getting the cards seem to be a direct reference to Cardcaptor Sakura, kind of like we are going back to the Nanoha pre-Madoka days which had parodies like Magical Witch Punie-chan. But Madoka is really only in the more otaku side, while the more child side has things like Pretty Cure. It really only has been the first episode so we cannot really know whether it might decide to mock the dark magical girl side.


FenixFiesta wrote:
If this show was say going on to parody modern hits such as Love Live and Madoka Magica as well as hit upon the modern anime industry in a joking fashion... you are going to want to look elsewhere as it plays out as a generic magical girl who happens to be an idol anime.

For my viewer stand point the issue isn't so much that this is bad as it is generic and if I want to want to watch magical girl idols I can watch a plethora of other series occurring THIS season or simply catch up on the latest Precure.

So you are saying that it is both not being parody of shows that are out that and modern, but also not standing out because if you wanted to watch a magical girl idols you would have a lot of choice? Could you not simply say this is a show parodying those other choices?

There seems to be something weirdly about this after watching the first episode. It feels on some levels generic, but clearly it is parodying although it really is not following the formulae a parody should take, I would say that it almost completely lack the zaniness or the characters straight up It feels like none of the jokes are actually telegraphed, none of the characters bring attention to them.

For example, her starting off having a dream of being a big idol is not that odd for being a hopeful idol herself. But this is a magical girl anime, the dream she have been about her being a magical girl, yes she transformed in it but she did not do anything decidedly magical girl like. Yes a enemy did appear, but it was her alarm clock, the standard cliché part that ends those kinds of dreams, and she was going to take it on with a punch.

It kind of feels like it is taking it seriously that you could mistake it for that, but when you analyse different parts you realise how not right it is. A nurse should not put magical girl energy into putting on some kind of patch on an injured old man. Her friend is too perfect, but at the same time acts like it is not bringing that much attention to it because she seems like any other kind of character. The weirdness that her fans are old people is never focused on. And as much as the scene is trying to convey to us that she is in danger from a creature that has to be censored, actually follow what is going on and you can see that there really is not any threat and she is just overreacting.

It seems completely normal because really there seems to be no straight man in this, I think instead the audience to be it. You have to think there is something odd about her career, her school life, about an old camera just lying out and the camera monster starting off in the women's toilet.
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Nom De Plume De Fanboy
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 13, 2016 1:57 am Reply with quote
I hate to say it, but compared to the original, this seems dull. If it isn't going to at least be as snarky as the original, I don't see the point.

It's a shame, I was hoping this would be my 'stupid funny' show for this season.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15457
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sun Jan 17, 2016 11:08 am Reply with quote
Episode 2

One would expect her perfect and super nice friend would be her kind ally as a magical girl. Instead she got sadistic and turned into an ojou-sama. Awesome.

"So there wasn't a stalker." No, I am pretty sure that tanuki is a stalker, he was pretty much perving on her the whole time, stealing her bra and food. Also apparently the random point of view in the drain was a human instead of the mascot which would have made sense.

Also, apparently you can make a living of tying cherry stems with your tongue, and her adult manager can moonlight as a 14 year old idol somehow.

And what was that random news story about mascots appearing?
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Nom De Plume De Fanboy
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 19, 2016 1:05 am Reply with quote
Some improvement over ep one. Kokona Saionji ( girl 2 ) has a character change from this show's milquetoast personality that is a bit more interesting than in the original. There, she was a good bit more nasty, straight up, if I remember right. And girl three is new in this show, so I'd like to see what she will be like. So I'm still watching, at least for another ep.

One thing, I think I saw the 3D-to-2D animation that Justin mentioned in one of the Answerman columns being used in the singing set that Kokona did. The shot rotated around the singer, which I thought was hard to do in 2D. The arms looked a little weird, but the layered costume moved very well, much better than I would expect for hand drawn 2D.
It looked a little bit different, but not enough to be off putting to me. I'm not a stickler for good animation - I spot most short-cuts when they're used, but they don't bother me a whole lot - so maybe other people would find this not good enough yet. Ya know, your mileage may vary.
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DuskyPredator



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PostPosted: Sun Mar 27, 2016 11:14 pm Reply with quote
Episode 12, Finale

This last arc came on kind of suddenly, I don't think there were any hints in the actual show itself that there would be this plot of a main villain. Maybe even contributing to the problem is that the OP had been setting up Lilia as an enemy the whole time, but she only showed up in the last two episodes. The ending somewhat corny, but it is so in a way that this show has always been, unashamedly running right into clichés. It pretty much makes it a parody as the show tells you that it is fully aware of it, but parodies don't tend to be this not to follow the cliché still. If I had to describe it, Nurse Witch Komugi R probably has a strong sense of irony. Komugi herself is pretty much a standard type of energetic heroine, between times she actually does break out of it when the show tries to go too far (like perv on her). And despite doing things like being parody like such as making the magical girls rivals to each other rather than friends, they are still not antagonistic to each other because that would be too much energy. And yet their human personas have kind of normal friendship building.

There are a lot of cameos that got extra strong in this last episode, which I really have little knowledge of except some I saw in Yatterman Night (they tended to be a bit old school). There is some humour I liked, exemplified by the first episode where there was things like wrestler teacher and such, and it is kind of why I watched the OP every episode. But it kind of never really went anywhere from there, never taking anything to the next level. You do occasionally see some stealth dark comedy like in the valentines day episode a fan being suspiciously specific in denying that the chocolate she was giving had human hair in it, and no one seems to react to it.

This show was not the strongest, it was barely worth talking about a lot of the time, but I still enjoyed the odd moment that did tickle my sense of humour in playing with common tropes. Take for instance Tsukasa, the tomboyish girl that everyone in the show assumes she has a thing for the feminine girl, but then we find out that she actually might be the most feminine character and is the one with a crush on the male character. As a rating I go for So-so (5/10), it really is not that much attention grabbing, but I also think it was not so low to actually count as being bad.
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