Magical Destroyers

Episodes 1-3

Take a minute, if you will, to put yourselves in the shoes of a wide-eyed and innocent young James Beckett, circa 2010. You've just graduated from high school, the world feels at once incredibly boundless and utterly terrifying, and you have just begun to really get into anime again to try to cope with the existential muchness of it all. What's more, streaming services like Crunchyroll have just recently become genuinely viable sources of brand-new broadcasts, fresh from the Land of the Rising Sun, which means you have a truly unholy amount of cartoons to catch up on. Since you haven't yet begun your career as a bonafide critic, you're nowhere near as all-consumed with the industry goings-on as you one day will be, so you don't actually know much about what there is to see these days (aside from the previews that you catch from trusty old Anime News Network, naturally). Suddenly, while scrolling through the season's newest offerings, you discover the strangest-looking show: Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt. It's supremely stylish and creative, while also being one of the most gloriously idiotic things you've seen this side of South Park. It combines all of that gross, edgy humor that your nineteen-year-old self can't get enough of with all of the bonkers anime nonsense that you also can't get enough of, yet you've never seen anything quite like it. It's exactly what you're looking for.

I won't say that Magical Destroyers is quite so mind-blowing as that first viewing of Panty and Stocking was, since I'm much older and far more jaded, now, and the whole “R-Rated Twist on Magical Girl/Otaku Culture Tropes” wasn't even the most original premise back when Trigger went wild with it in 2010. Still, Magical Destroyers contains the same devil-may-care energy and manic self-indulgence that some of my favorite anime comedies have possessed, and that's what made the premiere such a treat to behold, even if it is perfectly happy to alienate 90% of its viewers with its unapologetic devotion to taking it's particular brand of Dumbass Anime Bullshit™ to its most extreme possible conclusions. I make no apologies for loving this stupid, stupid show, but I also won't attempt to defend its…um…more “aggressive” creative decisions. Anarchy isn't just the name of its lead magical girl after all; it is the ethos of the series unto itself. Magical Destroyers doesn't seem content to rest until it has truly destroyed all of the sacred cows and boundaries of good taste that would seek to confine it.

If the apocalyptic dystopian war against otaku culture that the first episode presented didn't already clue you into the specific wavelength of humor that this show is operating on, then its second and third episodes are more than happy to make up for any unintentional ambiguities by spending as much time and energy as possible losing their shit for the whole world to see. Have you ever wanted to see a punk-rock magical girl badass and her disastrously horny sister-in-arms take hallucinogenic drugs in order to do a psychosexual mind battle with their gas-mask-wearing comrade? No? Then, surely you would be eager to see this trio of bizarre “heroes” tie up their revolutionary leader, Otaku Hero, shibari-style so they can quasi-nonconsensually tick him enough to get him to jizz his pants hard enough to cry uncle? You're right, that's way too stupid and crass for us mature adults to find any comedy in. We'd be much better off with the extended action scene that sees the Magical Destroyers defeating a brainwashed car-otaku's giant robot by giving it an erotically charged magical enema with a syringe and a giant mallet.

I cannot stress enough that the strength of Magical Destroyers lies not in the quality of its jokes and stories, but in the cracked-out confidence of their execution. Series creator Jun Inagawa and the creators at Bibury Animation Studios clearly know exactly what kind of anime they want to make, and the strength of their willfully idiotic vision has been enough at least to conquer this critic's sense of shame and professional self-respect. The jokes about Magical Girl Blue getting all worked up over finding a “personal massager” on the ground to play with, or Pink's inability to communicate in anything other than “Gobo-gobo” onomatopoeia wouldn't work if it weren't for the series' knack for comic timing. Surreal battle sequences like the fight against Pink wouldn't be compelling if it wasn't for the crew's ability to conserve their artistic budget and stamina for the most crucial and bizarre sequences while getting by the rest of the time on a much cruder (but still fitting) aesthetic.

It is a series that is, at its best, nearly critic-proof. I mean, what am I supposed to say? “This show is frequently janky as hell, and a lot of its jokes are apt to inspire horrified groans as much as any belly laughs. It's gross and weird, and it probably isn't going to appeal to anyone except for the small niche of weirdos who eat this shit up for breakfast.” Sure, why not. Except Magical Destroyers would just as likely spit back, “No duh, loser! That's punk rock as hell. Now go play bingo with all of the other sad old losers that can't mosh to the beat with the rest of us!”

Thankfully, I'm the kind of old loser who still likes to put on his favorite old rock band tees from time to time so he can mosh and headbang one out, from time to time, in the privacy of his own home (at a reasonable time and volume, so as to respect his neighbors, of course). My main worry, honestly, is that this show is liable to fizzle out before it crosses the finish line at the end of the season—there's a reason most of the great punk albums are less than forty minutes long, after all. Still, so long as Magical Destroyers can keep up this wicked, cartoonish energy, I'll be here to devour it with a smile on my face, week after week.

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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.