Becoming a magical girl isnt always easy. Not only is it a challenge but its also a competition and you have to win that competition before youre even allowed to travel to Earth to take up the position. Yes that means all Magical Girls are aliens but well go ahead and gloss over that fact. Padudu an innocent kindhearted preteen girl from Sea Heaven has just moved to the world of Sweetland to face these challenges so that she can live out her dream of going to Earth and spreading happiness wherever she goes Alongside her in this quest is her loyal familiar Oukochi a giant hollow fish that she wears as a coat and occasionally feeds on. She also winds up traveling with Pipin a girl with a bunny as her familiar/backpack and MyuMyu and older girl whos familiar is a pair of cats that she wears as a bikini. Did you bring the drugs? Cool. Along their quest as both friends and rivals theyll have to compete in bizarre challenges where they protect small areas of territory from sumodriven catastrophes eat the most food grant the most wishes survive as flat minorities in a 3D CG world make the most money and more as they fend off attacks from the underhanded Queen Pirilun and her useless minion Zucchini a twelve year old boy with a sunflower around his neck and a fetish for physical pain. Also pursuing them are two police officers a veteran named Ketchup and her rookie partner named Mustard but fear not for the silent wanderer Nonononn is on their side to protect them Whenever she happens to be around. At the forefront of their path to destiny lies a battle for dominance in a Wonderland so bugnuts that even Alice would give up and go fetal. Magical Play was produced by Anime International Company otherwise known as Studio AIC. This might sound a little polarizing to those of you familiar with them because AIC is somewhat of an unpredictable producer. Theyve put out several great looking anime before such as Now and Then Here and There Bamboo blade Kotourasan Shows that look simple at first glance but had generous budgets poured into them. Theyve also been known to take on really artistic projects like Humanity Has Declined where the focus is more on eyecatching visuals and ambiance than expensive movement. Then the majority of the work particularly the ton of ecchi titles theyve put out were made as cheaply as hell and have no problem showing it. Magical Play was originally released on the internet as a series of twentyfour shortlength episodes that were pretty much designed to fall into obscurity. I cant imagine AIC intended to impress anybody with it which is why I expected it to fall into the third of those categories Oddly enough it seems to have fallen equally into all three. The animation has a very cheap aesthetic and it can look really awkward in the beginning but the budget management does seem to get better through the course of the series. It starts out with a lot of frozen talking heads and static backgrounds but before long the motion has improved to the point that they were able to use fullblown walk cycles and everything. It looks as decent as it needs to never really going out of its way to impress anybody Except for the CG scenes. Yes every so often theres 3D animation in this show. Its sparse for the first few episodes and is removed enough from the real story to not be too distracting But in the beginning of episode four theres an entire mini episode where Padudu and MyuMyu have mysteriously walked into a 3D land despite the two of them being two dimensional. I guess I should say right now that this is early 2000s Japanese 3D animation so it looks a lot like RWBY but with better looking hair and quality control. The juxtaposition of two flataspaper characters walking around a 3D rendered world is a surreal image that I dont think Ive seen very often outside of one episode of Gravity Falls and while I would complain about how awful the 3D animation actually is the episode itself already makes ruthless fun of itself complete with animation glitches and a scene where somebody literally crashes reality. Theres a common misconception Well common among the people whove actually heard of this show That it shares a creator with Azumanga Daioh. While its true that Kiyohiko Azuma did work on this he didnt really do all that much He was the character designer and nothing more. The humor and animation are obviously not his style but the rounded facial structures and familiar hairstyles are so similar to his iconic work that once you notice it youll never not be able to. And honestly the character designs are one of the best things about this series so kudos to him he clearly put a lot of imagination into what the outfits of a bunny cat and fishbased trio of magical girls would look like and Nonononns shark design is absolutely stunning. Its even mentioned in the commentary that the heads of MyuMyus cat bra look very similar to the mysterious dream character Chiyodaddy. The music is fairly standard and forgettable made up of a lot of plinky upbeat slice of life music with that all too common hint of whimsy thrown in for good measure. The opening is your typical bouncy childrens tune with a video full of easygoing visuals the characters moving across the screen and smiling And some near nudity followed by a nosebloodsplurt with the power of a rocket. The opening in other words is a perfect representation of the show but well get to that later. The English dub is well Its awful from just about every angle. None of the actors seem to have been blessed with any talent and about three quarters of them perform their roles like the director was sitting right outside the booth with a gun saying LOUDER MORE SCREECHY EITHER THE GLASS BREAKS OR YOU DO Most of the socalled actors in this thing are unknown names with the one exception being Larissa Wolcott whos only really known by ADV snobs. You may remember her as the actor that took on the role Excel Sagas title character who was only able to match her predecessor in terms of pace and was otherwise a dreadful replacement for a renowned power actor. Aside from her theres somebody who played a minor character in Fairy Tail a bunch of people who only did enough anime voice roles to be counted on one hand and the girl playing Pipin who sounds voicewise like Hillary Haag but is such a bad actor that comparing any further than there would be borderline sacrilegious. I would say the only saving grace with any of these performances is that they do sound accurate to the Japanese performances. The writing in the dub on the other hand is anything but accurate as entire exchanges are rewritten to the point of abandoning the intent behind them entirely. For an early example Padudu encounters Pipin in the desert and the hyper bunny girl says Youre lucky I allowed you to rescue me now Ill do one favor for you When in the dub she says How dare you show your face to me Lets fight Or something along those lines. Its bizarre because at no point in the series can I decipher the reason that any of the dialogue was changed as drastically as it was. I mean I guess some of it was removed because Japanese folklore would be inaccessible to American audiences but the stuff they replaced it with is rarely any better. Whether you watch this show in Japanese or English its equally as baffling so just pick whichever one sounds better to you. Off the top of your head Id like to hear what you think the most random anime of all time would be. Youd be forgiven for picking FLCL as it switches styles on a dime features a borderline incomprehensible story. You might have picked the Revolutionary Girl Utena movie or perhaps Excel Saga and its spinoff Puni Puni Poemy. Sorry guys but Magical Play beats them out. FLCL may be insane but it has a primary setting and a sense of continuity with interwoven themes between the episodes. It has a beginning and an end which Magical Play doesnt. Utenas movie held several deep themes and is loaded with symbolism which Magical Play isnt. Excel Saga may have attributed each episode to a different genre but there was structure there. Puni Puni Poemy as well had a sense of direction and focus. The anime that comes closest to Magical Plays level of insanity is Humanity Had Declined which is a nonlinear story revolving around the human and elf? races between whom no bizarre stunt is too crazy to work as an episode but theres a sense of development as we learn more about our heroine and her little friends. Magical Play doesnt even do that. It takes anything the viewer may have learned about storytelling throws it out and tries instead to emulate the Oscar winning short Rejected. Okay its not AS random as Rejected was but there was no moment in this show where a swarm of ticks bursting out of somebodys nipples would have felt out of place. The plot of the series is thus In order to become a magical girl you have to win fight complete tasks and succeed in competitions through all of which you win Flower Marks little stickers that were going to be calling Star Chips because thats basically what they are. Padudu falls from the sky and lands on Pipins head taking her out right after she won a fight thus stealing her victory. She wins Pipins star chip earning herself a lifelong rival. She then meets MyuMyu who decides to use Padudu as a patsy and human shield. Thats where any semblance of a plot ends and from then on out the whole Star Chip thing just serves as a backdrop for everything our three main characters do to fill out air time. That end of the plot by the way isnt even halfway through episode 1. From then on the series is essentially a collection of subplots and running gags intermingled with each other. Padudu is always eating meat from her fishcoat Pipin is always complaining about her lost Star Chip MyuMyu cheats and manipulates them MyuMyus bikini cats wander away to embarrass her with outofframe nudity the Dandelion boy atempts to attack her and Nonononn but is always foiled by either his ACME equipment malfunctioning or MyuMyus boobs giving him a nosebleed the cops suck at being cops and the three main girls do random stuff that is at best halfassedly connected to a message. As far as payoffs go nobody ever wins another Star Chip Piriluns beef with Nonononn is never resolved and the hapless cops never catch a break. The only resolution we ever reach is with Oukichi who is sacrificed for a massive feast just so the sadistic Padudu can find out whatll happen when his meat gets depleted. We get two backstory episodes which is the only real derivation from the running gags and subplots but neither of them are particularly important. The first one deals with Padudus life in Sea Heaven how she met Oukichi and how she first started to eat his insides. The other one goes into the childhood friendship of Nonononn and Pirilun and while Ill admit that its a surprisingly somber tale without much laughs it ends up meaning jack shit in the long run as it doesnt connect to anything that happens afterward or before. Ill give the show some serious credit for only being four episodes long because otherwise it might have lost its shock value and become dull like Hare + Guu did but still its hard to come away from it feeling anything other than empty. It has its moments of course and I particularly loved the segment where an attempt to grant wishes went overboard and caused Armageddon. But overall theres too few laughs to be a comedy and no real depth to justify its slow casual insanity. At least it made for a good AMV Hell 3 clip. Magical Play is available from ADV Films now known as Sentai Filmworks. There are two different DVD collections available one that was released in 2004 and a more recent one from 2013 and while I dont know quite what the difference is the 2004 one can be found ridiculously cheap online. Theres a fifth episode that doesnt fit into the canon of the first four and its an all CG tale where Padudu teams up with Nonononn to fight a fat dancing Jamaican woman and if that sounds appealing to you its available on both releases. Its also available like the main show to be viewed for free on Crunchyroll. In addition theres apparently two manga adaptations but I cant find information on either one. From what Ive said thus far youve probably guessed that I have a negative opinion of this show. In a way youre right. There arent a whole lot of positive things I can say about it apart from it having decent looking characters and some funny moments. Its not a good show but I just cant help recommending it. Its so bizarre and batshit crazy that if nothing else its worth watching for the experience alone. Im not gonna lie the second I saw on the DVD cover that the main character wore a sentient fish coat that she ate pieces of meat from it was as good as purchased. There is no better anime to showcase just how weird and random the medium can be so I feel like watching it at least once is something every anime fan should do like School Days and Garzeys Wing. Its a bad show but its just the right kind of bad to be ironically important. I give Magical Play a 4/10.