魔法少女隊アルス the Adventure 05
Magic Girl Squad Arusu: The Adventure 05
Tweeny Witches the Adventure 05

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Back in the days before Alice came to the world, a small dragon named “Dragon-chan” lived with a young witch named Eva. Eva had a small home and otherwise lived alone and apart from the other witches. One day while out gathering lavender for the Day of Sleep ritual that the witches where soon to perform, she is attacked by a Mekku Sprite and saved by a girl named Sheila, who happened to be out looking for Sprites to capture for spell ingredients. The Mekku’s thorn is used for time-stop magic. Eva is thankful and gives “Sheila-chan” some of the flowers after being introduced. Sheila isn’t thrilled to be addressed as such, but gives Eva a Mekku thorn in exchange.

Eva starts coming by the dorm where Shelia lives, bringing presents and food. This annoys Sheila, who doesn’t want to be bothered, though her dorm mates love the cakes and food. Eva tells Sheila that she looks up to strong witches like Sheila since Eva isn’t strong. Sheila tells Eva that she hates people who call themselves weak. Thus her attempts at friendship with Eva fail.

It is time for the Day of Sleep ritual and all the witches in the Witch Kingdom go to sleep. It is then that a robot enters Witch Heaven and attempts to rouse someone, saying an emergency is at hand. The only witch awake is Eva, who couldn’t fall asleep. The robot convinces her to help, so she takes the small Dragon-chan with her and off they go. They arrive at a hidden base in the middle of the desert where the hospitality robot (named Jiji) escorts her in. However, they are soon stopped by the base’s security robots and attacked. Jiji and Eva try to escape but are trapped and Dragon-chan gets zapped. However, this does not kill the little dragon, but instead makes him immediately grow to adult size.

Eva is shocked when Dragon-chan can speak, the dragon telling her and Jiji to go on to the main computer to stop the automated attack. As Dragon-chan battles the robots, Jiji and Eva make it to the main computer, where they are unable to stop the program. A young warlock enters, telling is hospitality droid that it is pointless. Dragon-chan forces his way through the wall and offers to smash the computer. The warlock states that this would simply assure the destruction of the Witch Kingdom, which was his deceased father’s plan after which his father planned to destroy the Warlock Kingdom. The only thing that can stop the program is a time-stop spell.

Dragon-chan and Jiji go back to Eva’s house to look for the Mekku thorn but since Jiji can’t find it and time is of the essence, Dragon-chan simply inserts himself into the house and flies the whole thing to Eva. Now equipped with the proper ingredient, Eva casts the spell as Jiji and the young warlock work to disengage the program. The spell takes a lot of power and Eva loses it for a while until Dragon-chan encourages her, after which Eva finds power reserves to allow Jiji and the warlock to end the program just before the battle robots attack Witch Heaven. Eva returns to where the witches are just waking up. She calls down to Sheila, who’s impressed that Eva not only has a large dragon, but that Eva’s entire house can fly. Thus granting Sheila’s request for a ride, a friendship starts.

Thoughts/Review:

You know, this is the one series where I will sometimes what the pre-OP sequence with that beautiful, haunting music repeatedly. I also watch the OP and ED themes for this series too every time. There is no other series that I do that for. Man, I love the musical score for this franchise and really need to buy the CD once I’m off the dole. ^_^; In fact, that may be my “welcome back to the workforce” gift to myself.

Yay! The nice character designs were back this time! Finally. Let’s hope the final episode has them as well.

As to the episode itself, I have to say I like this one a fair amount, not because Alice is gone (though Dragon-chan’s referring to Alice as annoying cracked me up), but because we got to see how Eva and Shelia became friends and roommates as well as how the Dragon House came about. I don’t remember “Dragon-chan” speaking in the TV series, but I could be mistaken. I’m pretty sure that EBARA Masashi (Alastor from Shakugan no Shana) is the voice of Dragon-chan and he is a good choice.

By the way, why didn’t Dragon-chan extract himself from the house after the mission? I suppose that would be the only way for him to stay with Eva, but it seems rather odd in retrospect.

It was also nice seeing Eva take the sole lead role since Shelia was a supporting character this time. The idea of the Witch Kingdom needing to sleep for an entire day (thereby making them vulnerable to attack) is just nutty on a believability scale but that was the only way to get Eva to be the star I guess. The warlock kid’s seeming wish to destroy the Witch Kingdom before changing to wanting to help Eva seems contrived at first until I remembered that his father, Joker-sama, wanted to destroy both the Witch Kingdom and the Warlock Kingdom. So while the anime ‘t emphasize that point, it made sense that to save his own kingdom, he’d save the Witch Kingdom.

While I’m thinking of it, what happened to all the attacking robots once they shut down? Seriously, I expected Sheila to come out after waking up and ask, “What the heck happened here?” Instead, there are no robots to be seen, only Dragon-chan now part of Eva’s house. That alone is enough to wow Sheila into moving in with Eva and becoming friends with her I guess. Again, that is a bit of a stretch but at this point, I have to remind myself the same thing I had to remind myself of during the TV series run — this show is geared toward girls.

One more thing, I chuckled at Sheila’s reaction to being addressed with the “chan” honorific by Eva. Considering how proper Sheila is, it makes sense to me that she wouldn’t care for that, but obviously makes allowances as she befriends Eva.

In the end, a fun episode and a joy to watch despite those story logic problems.’