Nurse Witch Komugi-chan R 01 Review
ナースウィッチ小麦ちゃんＲ episode 01

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Local idol YOSHIDA Komugi wakes from a dream where she has become a big time idol, only to have her concert interrupted by costumed things. After breakfast and seeing her doctor father in his clinic, she arrives late at school. She recounts her dream to her best friend Kokona, who’s become a bigger idol and is even starring in movies. After lunch, Komugi hangs with her other friends while Kokona goes to do her duties as student council president. After school, Kokona is taken to her movie set while Komugi heads to a concert at a local street market. Komugi finds an injured rabbit-like creature and tends to it. She’s shocked when it talks and says she’s perfect to become the legendary magical Tombo-E Girl.

Komugi flees, so Usa-P transforms into a hair accessory and attaches himself to her. Komugi has her concert, which gets the old men going, after which she heads home. On the way, Usa-P reveals himself again, citing her idol costume as proof she could wear the embarrassing Tombo-E costume. When a C bug shows up, Usa-P deals with it in exchange for Komugi’s cooperation. Komugi’s agent arrives to get Komugi to Kokona’s movie set as a small part for Komugi has been created. As she waits her scene, a movie camera on a nearby set becomes a monster and transforms things. Usa-P instructs Komugi on how to transform into her cute magical nurse costume. With Usa-P’s further instruction, she defeats her enemy, which turns into a Fan-C Card. However, doing this causes Komugi to lose her scene in the movie, which her male agent does in her place.

Thoughts/Review:

The original Nurse Witch Komugi-chan OVA’s were done as a parody of the mahou shoujo genre of the day. The parody elements worked fine there, but when it tried to have a plot, the series didn’t work so well. Unfortunately, Nurse Witch Komugi-chan R is trying to do a plot while trying to do a parody, but it isn’t coming off too well on either end. If it is trying to parody the idol industry, it isn’t doing that too well either.

I’m not sure if this is because of Crunchyroll’s subtitles or not, but the dialog seems to be trying to be too clever by half. Using “Tombo-E” instead of “Tomboy” or “Fan-C Card” instead of “Fancy Card.” How Crunchyroll handled the adaptation may have been the intent of the Japanese production team, but it just came off as weak to me.

As to the characters, Komugi doesn’t do anything for me. She’s not really endearing, though I will admit that her needing to read her transformation lines rather than reciting them amused me for some reason.

Konoka is the perfect girl who leaves little impression on me. She’s supposedly a major idol, but oddly enough, the movie studio she’s working for is just in the neighborhood and filled with people Komugi knows. So it never seems like Kokona is an A-list idol to me.

Komugi’s and Kokona’s friends are fairly generic, the exception being the hip-hop blond girl, yo. But that’s just because she’s hip-hop, yo. You know what I mean, yo? However, saying “yo” after every sentence isn’t much to go on, yo.

And speaking of sentence ending terms, there’s Usa-P, pyon. Well, what’s a magic girl mascot without some kind of quirk, pyon? Saying “pyon” at the end of every sentence isn’t much to go on either, pyon.

The other character that showed up a fair amount is the possible trap (or reverse trap) Tsukasa. He/she was dressed as a boy for one movie’s scene, then in Konoka’s movie, he/she seems to be dressed as a boy with breasts. However, the eye catches seem to show this character in a partial girls school uniform, and then as a magic girl, as a blonde babe with long hair.

As to the plot, I was rolling my eyes at the silliness of things. Then to make it even more whacked, it looks like Komugi and company are going to become Cardcaptors and collect 100 Fan-C Cards. *_* If this were done as a pure parody, it might have worked. But the series doesn’t really go all out on the parody front, and that leaves the plot, which is “weak as water.”

In the end, Nurse Witch Komugi-chan R 01 was rather disappointing and just a bit tedious. Outside of a few minor humor moments, there just wasn’t anything here. We’ll see if it improves.