Ep 0 came out first, as a teaser for the series, but I've been holding off on watching it. Finally, tonight, curiousity got the better of me.

I wonder if ep 0 is actually canon. I guess that'll become clear as time goes on. The main point of it was to give us a look at the characters and to let us see the kind of magic they do.

The main thing I'm wondering about is Soushirou, Misa's brother. In the first two episodes, he doesn't believe in magic. In ep 0, he clearly does know about it.

Anyway...

Misa is kind of a flake. She follows the two old rules: 1. Don't sweat the little stuff. 2. It's all the little stuff.

She's a master of "modern magic", magic done with the assistance of computers.

Yumiko is a user of traditional magic, the kind that involves chanting. Her magic tends to the violent. She also has something of an emotional bonding to the traditional way of doing things, and doesn't like Misa's way of doing spells.

Kaho is one of Misa's students. In the two eps we've seen so far and in ep 0 we haven't seen her do any magic. On the other hand, she seems to be a whiz at computer programming and understands how to write the kinds of computer programs that Misa uses. I wonder if she really has any magical power?

Koyomi is a puzzle. She's got one thing she can do. Unfortunately, she seems completely hopeless at learning anything else. But the thing she can do is potentially more important than it first seems: she can absorb a spell cast by someone else, and transform it into a spell that materializes a metal wash basin.

The wash basins are useless, but the ability to cancel other people's magic is not useless, and we've seen her use it three times now to stop very powerful magic spells. Twice that happened in ep 1, when she stopped attacks from the mysterious stranger. And once in ep0, when she cancelled a really powerful weather spell that Yumiko created and, apparently, lost control of.

I thought that Koyomi's voice sounded familiar and I was right: it's the same seiyuu that did Konoka's voice in the Negima series.

Kaho as a character seems familiar, too. In fact, she seems a lot like Yue. She's sharp, and she's deadpan, but she's not cynical. She likes Koyomi; they're friends. She isn't contemptuous of Koyomi's strange spell. She doesn't seem to get freaked out about things. I like her.

I'm not sure I do like Misa; she seems like a bit of a manipulative bitch, especially in the way she treats Yumiko and in the way she treats Soushirou.

On the other hand, I think I do like Yumiko, even though she says watakushi and, as best I can determine, uses archaic speech patterns.

Another question about whether ep 0 is canon: Yumiko's magical power is shown as being pink, whereas Koyomi's power is baby blue. In fact, it's the same color as the force field that appeared to protect Koyomi and the idol in ep 2. Haven't yet got an unambiguous read on what color Misa's magic is, though.

Some series grab my imagination. This one is doing it.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 09:11 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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