Magical girls. They're the guardians of the people, vanquishers of witches, and defenders of the innocent―all while putting on flashy spectacles of mass-marketable entertainment. However, things aren't always so family-friendly behind the scenes! When the villains get too gruesome for Saturday morning TV, the youthful protectors are protected in turn by…middle-aged men? They might be a bunch of old farts, but these grizzled geezers have one job: using their wealth of experience (and some kick-ass magic) to support the mystical maidens from the shadows!

Magical Midlifer has art by Nemumi Haiba and story by Maki. Andrew Hodgson does the English translation, and the lettering is by Brandon Bovia. Published by Yen Press (November 4, 2025).

Kevin Cormack
Rating:

Inhabiting an odd liminal space between Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc.and Magical Girl Incident, with a vague hint of From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad's Been Reincarnated!, this is yet another skewed take on the thoroughly abused magical girl genre. Clearly, we've come a long way since Fairy Princess Minky Momo, and the world we're living in is a very weird place. The premise of Magical Midlifer is implicit in the title – it follows a presumably fifty-something salaryman who, in the years approaching his eventual retirement, acts as a support for magical girls. In this world, magical girls are sponsored by streaming services, their sparkly, colorful battles against evil witches broadcast to millions. The setup isn't dissimilar to last anime season's To Be Hero X, with corporations in control of magical heroes.

The problem is that magical girls are only useful against relatively weak witches. The bereaved animal familiars left behind following their mistress's demise grow more powerful in secret, and can only be defeated by stealthily powerful veterans like the unassuming, boring suit-wearing protagonist Tanaka. Looking completely out of place with a cartoony magical wand, he dispatches monstrous beasts and rescues distressed magic girls daily, all the while being denigrated by those who don't know his true power.

It's a fairly amusing gag-based manga, with Tanaka frequently groaning about his sore back because of overdoing a fight, or him taking cellphone calls from demanding bosses while in the midst of battle. The magical girls themselves are generally portrayed as pretty faces for the camera without much skill or awareness of danger, blundering into life-threatening situations only for Tanaka to seemingly effortlessly save the day.

There are plenty of daft visual gags mixed in with some surprisingly dark material. Thankfully, Tanaka's so comically overpowered that (a late volume limb-severing aside) most of his wards escape without horrific injury. It's not Magical Girl Site dark, thank God. Tanaka himself is drawn with barely any detail to his face – he's mostly blank spectacles, large eyebrows, and an absence of a nose. The other characters have a lot more detail to them. This isn't the most amazing magical girl spoof I've ever read, but it is amusing. I don't feel much compulsion to read beyond this volume, however. I feel I've got about as much out of the main joke as I want to.