The Fall 2024 Anime Preview Guide

The Stories of Girls Who Couldn't Be Magicians

Kurumi Mirai is a freshman in high school. In the Letran Magic and Magecraft School, the one institution that trains the top-class "wizards" of the International Mage Alliance, she has already secured top marks since middle school. And yet, when she reached high school and took the selection exam to get into the "Magic Group" class that trains wizards, she did not get in. In the next class, there were students taking the test to become fully-fledged wizards, and among them was a student whom Kurumi admired.

The Stories of Girls Who Couldn't Be Magicians is based on the Mahō Tsukai ni Narenakatta Onna no Ko no Hanashi novel series by Yuzuki Akasaka. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Fridays.

Hey Nick, I really wish we could hear what you had to say about your pick for the most anticipated show of the season.

The Stories of Girls Who Couldn't Be Magicians has one particularly strong asset that sets it apart from, well, every other show this season: its animation. It's not the only visually striking show of the season—hi, Dan Da Dan is right there—but it has a style all its own. It's colored almost entirely in pastels, which would ordinarily run the risk of making it look washed out. However, brilliant work by its animation team, including color designer Mika Funahashi, brings it together with the occasional splashes of contrasting bright and saturated shades. The backgrounds have been textured to look like watercolor painting, and the overall effect is something that looks like it jumped off the pages of a storybook or a Heikala painting

Of the three magical girl offerings this season, The Stories of Girls Who Couldn't Be Magicians (what a mouthful – is there a convenient abbreviation yet?) is more majokko in magic school than strictly mahou shoujo. I'm sure the other reviewers will draw comparison to Little Witch Academia and Witch Hat Atelier because, well, it's obvious. The story is pretty boilerplate magic school shenanigans—with a heroine who has promise in some ways but has been hampered by something. It's not going to blow any minds, but honestly, that's fine. My favorite thing about these kinds of stories has been what they have to say about learning and education, and Failed Magician Girls brings its own perspective in that way. Kurumi is upset and resentful that she wasn't accepted into the privileged magic group but as one of her regular classmates, just getting into the school is an accomplishment her schoolmates are excited and proud of. While it's fine for her to be privately frustrated, her bad attitude and elitism is crapping on all their hard work.

It's an unusual perspective, something of a fine balance between a setting with powerful people that ignores them in favor of the ordinary folk; and a story that focuses on the elite to the exclusion of the “support” characters. Importantly, Kurumi's classmates are a colorful lot, with a lot of foreshadowed mysterious goings on. Even the background figures promise to bring energy and life into the proceedings. Even if A Tale of Unmagical Girls' journey ends up a familiar path, the Regular Group will be fun companions to have along the way.

Man, all I can say is that a show as gorgeous as The Stories of Girls Who Couldn't Be Magicians has no right being this boring. I mean…just look at it! Every frame is literally a painting! Not to mention that the whimsical design of the fantasy setting is charming as heck, and the character designs are awfully fun on top of all that. I need at least three or four Atelier-style games set in this universe, with this art style, ASAP.

Unfortunately, the characters themselves just don't have that spark that a story needs to feel seriously compelling, and the plot isn't doing The Stories of Girls any favors, either. It's not a terrible story, nor are the characters repellent or obnoxious; there just doesn't seem to be much substance behind any of this shiny, sugary frosting, and it's a damned shame. Kurumi is your typical heroine who is spunky, dedicated, a prone to bouts of loud crying and yelling. Granted, the girl got rejected from her dream magic class despite outscoring every last one of her peers in the exams, so it's not like she's got nothing to cry about, but… I don't know, she doesn't doesn't manage to make an impression, in spite of how big her personality can be. It doesn't help endear us to her when so much of the premiere consists of Kurumi and her roommate walking around and spouting inane exposition, either. Then there's Yuzu, the appropriately sour Mean Girl of the cast, but again, she manages to check all the boxes of her archetype, but nothing more.

I can tell that this anime is trying to channel some of that Little Witch Acedemia magic, and while it is difficult to pinpoint the specific things that the show does wrong, it nonetheless fails to come together into something truly, well, magical. There is one scene though, that spoke to the potential still brimming underneath all of this bubble bubble. The incredibly drawn flame dragon that shows up to cause trouble for a moment may exist only as a minor nuisance for the quirky new teacher to extinguish with her oh-so-unexpected non-computerized magic, but it is still incredible to behold. I can already barely remember a thing that happened in this opening story, but I'll be thinking about visuals like that dragon for a good while. If The Stories of Girls can lean on its aesthetic strengths and craft a meatier story to prop all those beautiful visuals up, then we might end up with a show that is worth our time.

Everything in this episode leads me to believe that there is more going on here than meets the eye—and I'm not talking about the conspiracy of magicians that are turning into animals to cause trouble. We're told time and again that Kurumi was the top-of-the-top when it came to prospective students, yet, she didn't make the state magician program. Neither did several others who clearly were expected to. With just over 130 students in the freshman class (yes, I counted) and 30+ in each homeroom I suspect what we're seeing here is the school testing out a new curriculum. The 30 most promising students were put in Kurumi's class while the next 30 were put in the standard state magician program—just to cover their bases.

In a time where magic is largely automated, teaching magicians in the old ways of drawing spells might produce magicians with superior understanding of magic. It's an interesting setup—one that makes it obvious why so many of the students would be angry, and why finding a suitable teacher would be a major task.

Of course, I could be totally off about all of this, and reading into things far more than intended. However, this is what I was mulling over in my head during the episode because, other than this, I found it rather boring. The characters are all one note at the moment—including our protagonist. There's nothing in the episode that particularly makes me care about her or anyone else—and without empathy there's no deeper connection to the story.

I will say, however, that the episode does have one other saving grace: the art style. The opening in particular—with its watercolor pencil look—was beautiful enough that I feel like the episode was worth watching just for it alone. But when it comes down to it, I have to admit that I won't be coming back next week. Magic school anime are a dime a dozen, and if I want to watch a group of misfit student mages, I'll just go rewatch Little Witch Academia.

I love the way this episode looks, especially the beginning. The faux-hand-drawn images, the pastel shades, and the gentle lines all give it the feel of an animated picture book, something only enhanced by how the opening plays out. It has the same sort of feel as the start of Little Witch Academia and, to a less ominous degree, Witch Hat Atelier. Kurumi's deep and abiding love of magic and deep-seated desire to become a magician come through clearly.

Things take a more mundane turn when we jump forward in time to what appears to be Kurumi's first year of high school. It's not that the story is mundane by the dictionary definition, but more that it stops being about wonder and returns to familiar story beats of thwarted ambition. It's true, as the song my father liked to quote at my sisters and me goes, "You can't always get what you want." It's right there in the title – the show isn't called Kurumi Goes to Magic School and Fulfills Her Ambitions. But it's just such a letdown when she ends up on the magicless track of the school she applied to that it feels, if not quite depressing, then very close to it. I don't doubt that this is intentional, but between that and the introduction of your standard Mean Girl and Aspiring Reporter, two tropes I've had quite enough of, thank you, it really brought the episode down.

Still, there's a lot to be excited about here. Even before part of their secret is revealed, the clear shots of a dog and an owl watching Kurumi are intriguing, and her encounter with the mysterious witch in the past is wrapped up in it. There's also a set of twins who are clearly up to something – one has taken it upon himself to join the standard course instead of the magic one, like his brother, and that's very suspicious. And so, when you come right down to it, is the fact that Kurumi didn't get into the magic course, something everyone is startled by. This is a show to keep an eye on, and even though this episode didn't fully wow me, I'll be sticking around to see where it goes.