Yokuwakaru Gendai Mahou (Comprehensible Modern-Day Magic), originally a light novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, with illustrations by Miki Miyashita. It began airing on on July 11, 2009 with the studio Nomad behind it.

I know this is a bit late, but my excuse is that my Internet stops working once every month - the thing is that this time it kept on failing for weeks. But it was my birthday this past Thursday, so I’m feeling obliged to post crap. And you know what the thing is? Yokuwakaru Gendai Mahou is crap.

I don’t know if you people watching it realize, but I had to sit on my  ass and wait for a story that never showed up. All in all, it was a typical anime cliché featuring annoying brats with annoying voices, stereotypical large-breasted women with complexes and utter randomness. I’m an intellectual person, and I didn’t understand shit. What just happened? Is someone going to explain that? Why is that happening? I’m just sitting there watching people go down Shit Creek and back up and I can just stare. Well… Let me give you a quick review in case you haven’t watched this.

The story revolves around Koyomi Morishita, a clumsy high school freshman girl who is often mistaken for a grade-schooler because of her shortness (OHH, we’ve never heard that one before). Koyomi becomes a disciple of Misa Anehara, a 25-year-old graduate student who happens to be one of the most powerful modern-day magicians.

Now, the story begins in a quite intriguing way. It starts right in the middle of an epic fight between a grown man and two children (argh), all of them performing magic. It takes about three or more episodes before you find out where they are and why they’re fighting, because you get taken back some hours earlier in order to get to know the characters involved in the fight. It takes one episode, and after that, you get to see one of the characters (that one being Koyomi Morishita, which was not seen as the protagonist in my eyes until it was obviously shown in the opening) a whole lot years later, she being the same age as in the first episode. You get to see the little girl she was protecting, all grown up into a woman. Obviously, some time travel had been involved. The thing is, it won’t be mentioned until some episodes later. In other words, the first episode was completely useless.

Koyomi tries to learn how to use modern-day magic referred to as Codes, which resides in every technological item and perhaps even in any kind of material. If you rewrite the Code, you can transform things, create things, remove things, and so on. It’s like magic, in other words, except you use things such as cellphones, computers etc. Anyway, during these episodes while we’re waiting for the story to get back to the interesting part in the beginning, everything feels like fillers even though they’re not. Koyomi’s high-pitched voice is shrieking through episodes of typical fanservice, shopping, turtle backpacks, bathing suits and random magic… stuff. It’s like an academy anime without the academy. And the students. There’s just one. And she’s annoying enough.

SPOILERS AHEAD

So anyway, I’m supposed to talk about the ending. Suddenly, after all this cutesy-shputesy washbin magic Lala Land and the explanation of the time travelling as well as the fighting events in the first episode, this chinese wannabe appears along with the man from the beginning, who is an old magician who specializes in normal magic (as we know it, I mean). He’s currently in another body called a Ghostscript. It’s basically like a ghost. People can’t see it unless it’s insanely strong, apparently. Well, to get to the point, these guys have plans to resurrect an old rampaging magician hag and they need Anehara Misa’s body for that. Shit goes down, she dies but she doesn’t really die, because she turned into a Ghostscript but she’s actually somewhere else watching TV (I’m not joking) and she’s just a little hurt, and the one who “killed” her is Koyomi’s friend whom she saved in the beginning, Yumiko Cristina Ichinose. Yikes. SUDDENLY, the show gets serious in… a bang. No one expected that, and I for one couldn’t take it seriously. After the flat, non-existing storyline, you expect me to believe you can perform something epic?

Something went wrong, so Yumiko gets the evil witch in her body and they synchronize. But she lets Koyomi live because she’s Yumiko’s friend. A big hole appears by Misa’s hand in order to drag her down into another dimension (oh no she didn’t…) but that way Yumiko would have to go too since it’s her body. Koyomi grabs hold of her with the help of Misa’s insignificant brother and the hole disappears. The power of her friendship and shrieking voice is so strong that the evil witch is kinda moved because she’s oh-so-lonely and the only reason for her rampaging was that she was bullied and had no friends. Touching. But no. So the witch leaves with a request that Koyomi should take care of Yumiko as a friend, and as Koyomi is an idealistic (or at least they tried to make her idealistic), naïve fool, she immediately considers the evil witch a friend too and will not forget her.

… Uh. Why?

… No one knows.

THE KINDA END.

… I have to say… Beautiful character design. I love the colours and the hair. Then again, there’s absolutely nothing original about it. But the seiyuus? Heard them. Heard their tactics, ways and skills. I need to be surprised, and most seiyuus have gone to seiyuu school which means they all have the same methods and tactics, because in Japan, voice acting is like a strategy meeting. I like the opening music, but that’s about it. The concept… meh. It’s fine, I guess. I like magic sometimes, if a good story is involved that doesn’t further destroy the art of magic itself.

Why did I keep watching this?

Because I’m the Cynical Anime Critic. That’s why.