Thursday 4 April 2013

Completed: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic

if you've read any of my other reviews you will notice that despite my best efforts to spell check i am terrible at spelling.

three reasons for this

  1. I went to french immersion for K-6 only switching into English classes in grade 7, learning french didn't make me bad at spelling but it makes me think of spelling things a little differently (read as i tend to put Es where they don't belong)
  2. My current keyboard some of the keys tend to get stuck down (which is odd cause i never have food near it so i dunno why it does that) and i don't always notice that the button didn't properly press down... or it's holding down and doing something like eeeeeeeeeeeeeee, a side not to this is i move my right hand more when typing so my left hand can hit buttons faster resulting in ING looking like Ign and Like looking like liek. i try to catch that one but sometimes i miss it. 
  3. English is stupid and has some really stupid rules that for the life of me i will never understand... how is Djinn pronounced Genie? HOW?? ok i know how and thats not fair cause it's trying to pronounce another language but there are times where i have the word i want to say and i try spelling it and i get the red line o' doom and i try to fix it but the computer has no idea what i was trying to say so i look it up and find out that it looks NOTHING like how i would have spelled it. 
Essentially all that is saying this review may be a little worse for spelling for the others.... and i don't care.

unfortunately that is not the only spiel i have to make before the review.

You may notice that as far as my personal taste goes i tend to not be a huge fan of shonen.
While i have nothing against shonen i just find it incredibly boring... most of it puts me to sleep.
But how can something so action packed and more often then not full of fighting be boring?
simple
in the end you always know who's going to come out the victor.
a character may die or get hurt but in the end the hero almost always in one capacity or another wins.
cause we like to see people who we are cheering for win.
I'm not criticising this, it sucks when a character goes through their arc and yet continues to be beat down and punished *cough Apollo's Song cough* but it does make a series more predictable.
I greatly dislike knowing the outcome, any time i guess the ending to something i get irritated because i like being surprised.
so essentially that's why i stay away from shonen, anime... hell any story that revolves around fighting in my eyes is boring.

ok... i think i've put my personal Bias out for you guys so you can understand where i'm coming from.

Magi is.... it's okay... i guess.

It has some really good parts and a lot of really funny and character driven moments but there are also moments that make me ask "ok... but why do i care?"

The basic story is that the world is driven by 'destiny' as a theme, a little more on that later... but essentially there is the life force that's in everyone, some more then others and there are also these people known as Magi who have and endless stream of this stuff and they end up being the ones who pick kings.
not all Magi or people are good or evil... a lot of time they have to fight the darkness in their heart especially when you consider that destiny may mean everything is just predetermined... if it's all going to come to pass whats the point of it all?
still perhaps the idea of destiny is misconstrued and they must work together to steer destiny in the right way.
and it all seems to be on the shoulders of some blond street rat named Alibaba.
oh.... oh.... great.

I would say more but it would get into spoilers so i'll leave it at that...
yeah i didn't describe the plot at all but i found the Theme of this series infinitely more interesting then the plot.
i mean if you wanna know the plot its The magi Aladdin finds the street rat Alibaba and helps him conquer a dungeon and get a Djinn which is the first step to making him king, adventure ensues.

The good:
I'm realising how important music is to my enjoyment of media... sad that it took nearly two years of writing these to see that i almost always focus on music.... anyways the music in this is a lot of fun and fits the mood and even helps with then more heartbreaking moment.
I found myself getting really invested in some characters so when they were down on their luck i believed it and i think i may have cried once.
The animation while i bit floaty in fight scenes can be extremely pretty and detailed... it just has such a neat style to it.
Some really funny burst out laughing moments, also as a contrast scenes with no fighting and just character development are also really well handled... Someone i watch online recently said that the most boring thing about sinbad movies/tv is sinbad.... i found sinbad in this to be quite amusing if not a little overpowered. 

The not so good:
In one of my past reviews i said that if i got behind by 3 episodes i would probably just give up... this one was the opposite... i kept falling behind and after three new eps were out i'd finally tell myself that i should go watch it cause i was enjoyable...
however.... again... i find shonen a little boring... this show was no exception.
it has some character driven moments and those are golden but it's just overshadowed by the sheer amount of fighting and oh no i'm being overpowered but no in the end i'll look into my soul and realise something and overpower you even though the odds are against me EVERY SINGLE TIME.
ugh... i like the show... i really do... i just.... it's SO predictable... maybe if the story was shorter? (cause this is only completed season 1.... season 2 will air in the fall) but no... every time.... i hate anime that revolves around fighting.

The bad:
if you don't like jokes about someone who looks ten snuggling well endowed 'big sisters' well then some of the elements in this show may turn you off.
if you hate anime that revolves around fighting or around making your weapon stronger through will power... then you will absolutely hate this show.
if you hate the "but i'm not left handed" trope you will hate this show.
this is personal to me but too many characters who i couldn't even tell you their names if i tried

The show is in no way bad.... i know a lot of people really like it... and i can see why... it's got this adorable charm to it that i find lacking in a lot shonen titles.
It's not really for me, i may or may not watch the second season cause i'm kinda in this odd place of "yeah i liked the show but i don't really care what happens next" so we'll see how it goes.
but if you like shonen titles i think you'd be robbing yourself of a really good one if you didn't give this show a shot.

like everything else this season it's streaming at crunchyroll and the final episode will be free for viewing next week minus one day cause i had some catching up to do and didn't get to watch it till just now.

wow this was.... longer then i expected... probably cause of my rambling nonsense at the start... sorry about that.

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