Tatsumi Kagura is a young college student who had a promising career as a professional athlete ahead of him up until he injured himself and had to leave school. He gets a job working at a publishing company in a boring city called Wonderland and finds a new home at a nearby boarding house. Its here that he meets Ureshiko Asaba the granddaughter of the houses manager. Shes older than he is but shes kind and gentle and he soon begins to fall for her. But little does he know what kind of tightly guarded secrets are standing between them. For you see Ureshiko is really Agnes Bell a magical girl from another world and the reason she can never return his feelings is because it would only take a single kiss to rob her of all of her magic powers for the rest of her life. Now on the surface this may seem like yet another schmaltzy little fanservicefest a borderline harem with the barest ghint of a willtheypwontthey plot to hold some semblance of a story together and that the magical girl element is only there to justify a bunch of highly sexualized transformation sequences. But the truth is this well runs surprisingly deep. For starters Ureshiko is 26 years old at least ten years older than your typical magical girl which makes the transformation sequences significantly less creepy than they could have been. Directly related to this is the fact that a much younger more traditionally aged magical girl has come to Ureshikos territory to force her into retirement and assume her position. And for some reason this girl has little to no regard for the safety of nonmagical people. Oh and that kiss thing? It isnt just some silly little tension builder. There are actual consequences to it. See the other thing about Ureshiko that prevents her from loving Kagura is the fact that shes still married to another man to whom her marriage actually crumbled due to her inability to kiss him. Theyre separated but not divorced properly and yes hes involved with another woman. Yeah. Didnt expect THAT out of your harem romp did you? Okusama had a moderate animation budget but it was managed extremely well Still frames are used sparingly where they mostly wont be noticed so that the bulk of the budget could be dumped into some amazing action scenes and hilarious motion cycles. Its fluid and graceful when it needs to be but never goes too far overboard placing every single yen where it belongs. The artwork is just that Its art. The backgrounds are highly detailed to the point that every single landscape Even those that are only on screen for seconds at a time Appears to have taken hours to complete. The blend of colors is elegant and precise giving an impression of almost gritty realism to it. The character designs are also colorful attractive and well thought out. In short this anime looks really pretty. Im afraid I cant talk about the dub because after nine years there still isnt an English dub to speak of. The subs sounded great though my American ears arent entirely reliable. I can tell you if nothing else that the seiyou for Ureshiko and her estranged husband give performances that were nothing short of perfect. Everything else sounded like typical anime voicings so I guess no comment is a good comment. But as pretty as it may be no anime can stand on its own without good writing Well except for Angel Beats but thats another review. Anyway when it comes to Okusamas writing the first thing about it that really strikes me is how mature it is. I dont mean mature as in tons of adult content I mean mature as in Mature. The characters are mostly adults dealing with complex problems that a lot of similar anime wouldnt even consider as possible topics. They grow and develop in ways that dont become evident to the viewer until after the fact and yes all of our noteworthy characters have gone through some very distinct changes by the end of its thirteen episode run. Theres no true villain to this story just opposing viewpoints that clash endlessly with no true compromise in sight. nobody is completely right nobody is completely wrong and as you learn more about the situation brewing between them youll find yourself constantly shifting between sides. The romance is also handled really well developed at a steady pace with just enough reasonable doubt to make the end result feel a lot less predictable than it should have felt. I dont want to give away any serious spoilers but the plot evolves and develops just as gradually as the characters do Every single twist is delivered naturally without a hint of exposition and as each layer is peeled itll reveal just enough information about whats going on to leave you hungry for the next one. Although this could also be considered Okusamas biggest downfall as several really important questions are dangled in front of us for a really cruel amount of time without ever being answered. Okusama carries a very strong theme about growing up and how difficult it can be to leave your former self behind in the process. This is explored not only through the perspective of the individual giving up her old responsibilities to a younger generation but also from the perspective of that younger generation as she takes on the pressure of the older generations responsibilities leaving behind all sense of ego as she does so. It teaches that time doesnt wait for anyone and that as long as both generations can trust and respect each other they may just be able to live together in harmony. Okusama wa Mahou Shoujo Or the literal translation Madam is a Magical Girl Bewitched Agnes is a very obscure anime series from 2005. Its never been licensed for an English distribution so I unfortunately cannot recommend watching it in any kind of legal way. It took me a long time to find a sub that wasnt in French and it wasnt even a very well translated one. Trust me if there was a legal way to watch it Id be recommending that instead. You can also buy the Malaysian bootleg off of Ebay but the quality of those things are always a gamble. Bewitched Agnes Which is the name Ive come to assign to it Is a very mature well written show that offers a surprisingly gripping experience. It falls apart towards the end starting with a somewhat insulting deusexmachina event and slowly losing all sense of the dark pyschologically complex reveals that it could have easily reached. Its a fun ride but we never learn anything substantial about the magical world or about Wonderlands relationship to it or how this bizarre system came to be in the first place. And thats a pretty big blight on an otherwise awesome series. Some people wont mind this but for me it drops the show down by about two points to an overall score of 7/10.