The Spring 2023 Manga Guide

Magical Girl Incident

What's It About? 

As a little boy, Sakura Hiromi once dreamed he could be a hero. Now…he's simply your everyday office worker, toiling away for the sake of his company. Though he longs for his childhood dream, it seems so far out of reach—until he decides to step up and save a child one fateful day. Suddenly, fantasies become reality as Hiromi finds himself transformed into…a magical girl?! 

Magical Girl Incident has story and art by Zero Akabane with English translation by Caleb Cook and lettering by Phil Christie. Yen Press will release the first volume both digitally and physically on May 23.

Is It Worth Reading?

Christopher Farris

Rating:

The subversive sex-swap magical girl story is hardly new ground tread in the manga sphere. Even before you realize how its premise is set to turn out, there's a feeling of going through the motions at the beginning of Magical Girl Incident. The adorably named Hiromi Sakura seems like a decent dude, sure, and we can empathize on a base level with him getting worn down by that oppressive office life. That's one distinctive spin, really, that the dude getting unconventionally transformed into a magical girl in this case is specifically a burnt-out salaryman. From there it unfolds into figuring out What's Really Going On Here and seeing where exactly the series might go with its magical gender-change element.

Magical Girl Incident's handling of the gender-swap elements probably comes across as the most refreshingly modern component of it. Comparatively little time is spent on Sakura getting flustered or embarrassed by his transformation. Instead, his love of heroism in general, alongside his buddy Yuzuru's unironic enthusiasm over the situation, avails the manga of the choice to just lean into the action-heroine angle. Magical girls are cool, Sakura knows how to act like a cool hero, so we get to see some relatively played-straight monster fights without acting like the very premise is entirely based on humor. There are some light allusions to the Gender of it all in how Sakura feels in the magical girl's body, but even that's set to lead into some surprisingly strong familiar rapport with Yuzuru, who feels effectively portrayed as a genuine if extremely eccentric, friend.

It's all set for a solid little setup that could carry this whole first volume, but then it's like Magical Girl Incident gets distracted immediately after. Suddenly we're thrust into the built-up psychological issues of Sakura's new co-worker Shibata. The series seems to nearly forget about the whole magical girl thing and become a mildly energetic office drama. It becomes clear partway through that this is working to provide a personable window into the story's monster-manifestation mechanics, but between the forty pages it takes to get there and the other askance allusions like the sudden appearance of some acid rain, it comes across as Magical Girl Incident sideswiping into overcomplexity earlier in its run than it needed to. Zero Akabe clearly has a range of material he can effectively present, including some neat horror vibes late in the volume. But it ends up distractingly jumbled in a story that was already doing a couple of things in a perfectly entertaining way.

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

This is one of those series that I suspect will get better with each volume, or at least with a second volume. The premise isn't that far off from other magical girl spoofs we've seen – Magical Girl Ore immediately springs to mind, although it isn't a perfect comparison. But protagonist Hiro ends up switching genders when he takes on a new heroic form, and while it's mostly in the development stage right now, it isn't without potential.

Hiro's problems are all things considered, mundane, although no less awful for their normalcy. His work may be killing him by inches, with an incompetent blow-hard boss who piles on the work while failing to do his own properly and bullying new hires. Hiro's at about the end of his rope when we meet him, feeling like his dreams of being a super sentai hero are dust in the wind, because even his attempt to save a kid from getting run over works against him. But then when a monster appears, Hiro's simple act of tugging off his tie transforms him into…a magical girl! Most of the book is concerned with him figuring out how all of this works alongside his ultra-wealthy pal, and if it isn't laugh-out-loud funny, it definitely has its moments.

The story is actually stronger when it focuses on Hiro's new coworker, a young man even more beaten down by the office system than he is. While Hiro has years of armor, Shibata is vulnerable in the extreme, and it's not hard to feel bad for him. Shibata desperately needs a hero, and he feels like he's found a workaday one in Hiro, which almost certainly is going to work in his favor when magical girl Hiro shows up after the villain has taken advantage of Shibata's torment to monsterize him. Is Shibata the Tuxedo Mask figure who shows up in the end? That's my guess because his pal wouldn't necessarily be best utilized that way. I hope that we don't fully lose Shibata's angst angle, but turning burnt-out and desperate salarymen into superhero(ine)s is a gimmick that really could work given some more development.

Basically, this is a series that could go places, both as a genre spoof and as a statement about the culture of overwork, albeit in a lighter sense. It's worth giving a second volume to grow into itself.

Jean-Karlo Lemus

Rating:

Initially, Magical Girl Incident was shaping up to be a shallow but enjoyable series, with the silly central joke of an office drone turning into a magical girl carrying the series. Then something magical happened: the story gave the characters room to breathe. We can see Sakura rise to the occasion as a senpai to a new coworker, as well as the struggles of a new employee trying to adapt to an office environment and the crushing despair that can come with it. When Misaki Suga enters the picture, we see how she gets away with turning people into monsters so easily; when life has you feeling that low, who wouldn't wish for an escape?

Magical Girl Incident is at once goofy and heartfelt in its characterization, never allowing a joke to get in the way of good storytelling and its razor-sharp wit. The artwork is functional, but Sakura's magical girl design doesn't have much that makes it stand out. Nonetheless, the story rings true and breezes by. I definitely recommend this.

MrAJCocplay

Rating:

What if the creator of One-Punch Man made a magical girl series? That is genuinely what I was thinking while I was reading this series and I actually had to check to make sure that it wasn't drawn or written by the creators of One-Punch Man. I don't think they are, which just makes the very obvious homage and ripped jokes from that series all the more obvious. It's borderline egregious and probably knocks the series down a few points in terms of originality but I'm thankful the book has other elements of humor to balance that out.

Stories about a guy transforming into a woman via a magical girl transformation are definitely nothing new in 2023. There was a time when that used to be kind of a cool novelty but now you definitely have to do a bit more in order to stand out amongst all the other subversions and deconstructions of the genres that have come out in the past 10 years. While I do think the presentation and overall story are very basic, the humor and borderline narrative self-awareness definitely stop it from falling into pure mediocrity. In some ways, I felt like I was watching an adult cartoon version of Cardcaptor Sakura with our main character having a rich best friend that supports them in more ways than would ever be realistically possible. There is an underlying theme about repressed emotions bubbling to the surface as everyday people try to make the best of their lives when they're constantly put down by those in power. However, it's very surface level and you can see every plot point in the story a mile away. I don't think I'll be returning to this one in the future but if you do like magical girl comedies, I think there's just enough here to satiate you for an hour.