Magical Destroyers

Episode 9

I'm just going to lay out the general premise of the latest Magical Destroyers Joint, just so I can confirm that you all watched the same show I did, and I didn't just have some kind of exhaustion induced fever dream: In “LOVE IS NIGHTMARE”, the gang spends the entire episode fighting some mutually suicidal/homicidal and incestuous underaged siblings, with the brother of the pair being a shapeshifting disembodied head in the style of a classical Japanese yokai. Also, at one point, after Pink and Blue dose up and trip out on those performance-enhancing drugs that Dr. Chogo made way back in Episode 5, the girls decide to graft the brother's head onto the body of a comically busty inflatable sex doll. This is, of course, before the climactic action scene where the previously mute younger sister declares her deranged love for her possibly-pedophilic brother and fuses with his head to transform into a truly disgusting spider creature thing (that the sister later makes out with before getting her skull pulverized by Slayer's umbrella).

So, yeah, Magical Destroyers is definitely having normal one, this week.

On the plus side, this show is at its best when it is going positively bug-nuts berserk and letting its id run wild. If nothing else, it is a much more entertaining venture than the mixed results of last week's more introspective journey into the mind of Otaku Hero. Our main guy takes a backseat this week, alongside Anarchy, so that Blue and Pink can hog the spotlight and deal with the very…peculiar situation that the gang has found themselves in. This mostly means that the plot development goes way down but the pace of the jokes and the liveliness of the action goes way up, which I'm all for.

For one, while I still don't know if we can say that the show's production looks good, at this point, “LOVE IS NIGHTMARE” certainly feels good, with the show's limited resources working in tandem with the imaginative storyboarding and wackadoo tone that allows even the jankiest looking exercises in madcap buffoonery to be a good time, all around. The jokes land more often than not this week, too, which is either a sign that the writing is on point compared to prior episodes, or just further proof that Magical Destroyers is causing me permanent brain damage. Either way, I laughed a lot at what I was seeing here, though I cannot for certain tell you whether it was out of amusement, shock, or begrudging respect for the sheer, boundless stupidity of what was unfolding before my eyes. Probably a mix of all three, to be honest.

Also, just so we're all remaining on the same page, the world of Magical Destroyers is definitely a simulation, right? Or, if not, some kind of purgatory, or alternate dimension, or pre-death dreamworld that Otaku Hero is living out before his brain finally boils over? It's something that I'm sure a lot of us have been suspecting for a long time, now, what with the generally insane and unreasonable nature of the entire setting and story (plus all of the hints in the ED), and we get even more clues this week. Not only does TV Head Guy seem shocked when the incest siblings seemingly gain “consciousness”, but there's that creepy shot of Blue's lifeless, static eyes at the very end of the episode. One thing's for sure, though: Magical Destroyers has some plans up its sleeve. I'm interested to see if (and how) they pay off, in the end.

Rating:

Magical Destroyers is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.