Manga Review: Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. #3 story by Sekka Iwata, art by Yu Aoki
On an alternate Earth where magic was discovered/rediscovered fifteen years ago, magical monsters called Kaii menace the public. Combating these monsters are magical girls, young women with magitech brooms to fly on and wands that cast spells to bind and destroy the kaii. However, these wands cast preprogrammed spells or ones that magical software engineers create on the fly, so a magical girl needs a sponsor to create those spells. Thus, the profession of magical girl is backed by a number of corporations, from international giants who just have it as one of their product lines, to feisty startups working out of a converted garage.
Magilumiere is one of those startups. Led by founder Kouji Shigemoto, who is highly competent but feels more comfortable in frilly magical girl outfits than standard corporate suits, they pursue an ethic of adapting on the fly to new situations, and causing the minimum of collateral damage. On the support side, they also have painfully shy but brilliant and innovative engineer Kazuo Nikoyama, and sales/PR rep Kaede Midorikawa.
Their field agents (as of this third volume) are Hitomi Koshigaya, a young woman with some rough edges that make her seem intimidating, but is good at her job, and rookie Kana Sakuragi, who is naive but has a photographic memory.
At the beginning of this volume, Kana is shadowing Lily Aoi, a magical girl from a cosmetics company. They’re fighting a Kaii in a construction site and having some luck with water blasts. But then the monster mutates, and Aoi decides to call in assistance. This turns out to be Tsuchiba from AST, the largest of the magical girl corporations.
Tsuchiba is no-nonsense, but kind of cold, and prefers to work solo, sending the other magical girls to evacuate civilians. She is displeased when, that job completed, Kana returns to help out. The spell she uses is overwhelmingly powerful but takes a lot of set-up time. Kana protects Tsuchiba during this process, even though the other woman doesn’t want her to.
Afterwards, Tsuchiba insults Kana and her company for focusing on non-essentials like kindness and damage control. She considers these aesthetic fripperies a way of defrauding the customer. After Tsuchiba leaves, Lily shows up and talks about her own more inspirational approach to magical girl work.
Shigemoto and the cosmetics company CEO talk about the fact that Kaii mutations are becoming more common. The other company leader suggests that Shigemoto may want to communicate with Koga, the leader of AST, but Shigemoto is clearly reluctant to do so.
Then it’s time for a field trip to the Magic Industry Expo, a convention where the various companies involved with magical girls and magical girl accessories show off their wares. (Magilumiere’s too small to have their own booth.) It’s casually mentioned that men also have the ability to tap into magic, but there’s an excessive output problem and as yet there’s no technology developed enough to moderate the damage done.
The team decides to attend a presentation by Satisfac Corporation on mutation-fighting magic. This involves mutating a very weak Kaii in captivity, then subduing it. Unfortunately, the previous tests were done under controlled laboratory conditions and the stray excess magical energy from all the other exhibits causes the Kaii to mutate faster and stronger than the nurse-themed magical girl in the demonstration can handle.
The Kaii breaks free and panic ensues. Over at a booth on the other side of the exhibition hall, Koga of AST refuses to budge unless he gets a contract. AST gets paid or no action; but hey, there’s probably some idealistic fool that will take care of the problem for free.
Sure enough, Magilumiere steps up. While Shigemoto and Midorikawa work behind the scenes to get retroactive permission, Kana and Koshigaya battle the Kaii with on-the-fly programming support from Nikoyama.
They make a good team, but Nikoyama runs into a problem–his laptop simply doesn’t have the processing power to send out the new spells to the girls as fast as they need them. After we get a flashback about his past and why he joined the company, (it involves the difference between criticism and feedback), Nikoyama is able to get help from other developers using spare laptops, and the day is saved!
Koga finally shows up and tries to hire away Magilumiere’s magical girls. Not so much because he actually needs them, as that it would cripple the smaller company. The young women react appropriately, especially the feisty Koshigaya. Shigemoto refers to the shared history between him and Koga but we don’t get details right now.
It’s clear that something is up with these Kaii mutations, but that’s a mystery for next volume!
There’s a bonus comic about the difference between what Lily Aoi means her morning cosmetic routine to be, and how it often comes out in reality.
This shounen urban fantasy manga leans more towards being a workplace drama than an action series like Geobreeders. There’s effort put into thinking about legalities and corporate structure and workplace ethics. Sure, there are magical girls and monsters running around, but it’s structured through businesses. The various characters’ quirks are there for flavor rather than constant gags.
It also acknowledges that the quirkiness of the characters can sometimes get in the way of their career advancement. Nikoyama loses a school contest for programming not because his work was less good (it’s clearly the best entry if you were just looking at the result) but because he failed to trim the length to the maximum allowed.
The art is pretty good, though the monster designs are lackluster.
I understand this manga is getting an animated adaptation in fall 2024, so you might want to check that out.
Recommended to fans of urban fantasy that like verisimilitude in their settings.
