It’s not often that an anime manages to leave me nearly speechless. It’s even rarer that said lack of speech is due to the downright absolute absurdity that it’s providing. My anime list is already stacked to the bone this season, but I couldn’t resist checking out Magical Destroyers based on the artstyle and animation displayed in the opening and ending. They both looked quite appealing to me, uh, well except for the second half of the opening from the audio side of things where it’s just a bunch of distorted noise being injected into your ears. But apart from that, it looked captivating. And by god, captivating it was. I had no idea what to expect, however in three episodes’ time I’ve seen bondage, drug-induced hallucinations of fights between girls and body pillows, otaku concentration camps, masochistic behavior, and “cringemobile drivers” being shown off to normies like a zoo animal. Truly nothing could have prepared me for this anime and its parody of the magical girl genre.
Time to get the party started.
Personally, the comedy and animation have been so fantastic so far that I’ve already decided to stick with this for the entire season. Every episode has me bewildered at the amount of psychotic behavior and logical fallacies being put on display for twenty minutes. The only complaint I’ve seen is that the story is absolute dogshit so far. Some even went as wild as to say the animation is “wasted” on this series. This got me thinking about the nature of parodies in general. Let me be clear, usually I don’t find much enjoyment in them. Most parodies offer little real writing value. They are altering something to make fun of it, but writers quickly find out there’s a reason it’s way harder to make a masterpiece of media than it is to just parody something popular. With parody, making fun of something usually only goes so far, and without any real message or cohesive vision it often ends up being a fun watch yet nothing audiences remember or grow passionate for. To me if you are going the parody route and don’t seem to have a clear goal with your work, you’ll likely soon be forgotten. That being said, Magical Destroyers has done such a good job at playing on so many anime tropes and obliterating them into the ground while keeping the animation crispy that I’ve been engaged every second. At this point of three episodes I don’t really see the story ending up anywhere meaningful, but this is a rare scenario where I think other aspects (comedy, animation, soundtrack) are done so well that it’s still worth the watch regardless.
My bad, NOW we can get the party started.
Alright, that’s enough writing for today. Time to get back to watching the mountain of anime that’s piled up around me. This season isn’t letting anyone breathe, but I hope some of you may still take the time to peep this series. It’s certainly the most… unique I’ve seen this season. Are you watching Magical Destroyers? Do you enjoy parodies, or do they get old quick? What makes for a successful parody? Take some drugs, transform yourself into your magical form, and slaughter the government in the comments below!
