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Mahou Shoujo Tai Alice: The Adventure

When I watched Mahou Shoujo Tai Alice (and yes, I know Media Blasters says “Arusu” but whatever), it wasn’t a show that I rated as a “Buy” at Community Anime Reviews. I rated it as a “Rent” because there is a lot of good stuff in the series — the eerie beauty of the art, the hauntingly beautiful music (including the wonderful ED theme “DuDiDuWa*lalala” by KOTOKO, which takes Johann Strauss’s “The Beautiful Blue Danube” as a tune, changing it from a 3/4 time waltz to 4/4 time regular song), and the mostly fun story. However, it was not a title that I felt any strong pull to purchase, especially when Media Blasters scored the license and they weren’t going to produce a product I wanted.

Still, the enjoyment of the TV series was not lost on me so when I read back in 2007 about a new series being created (thanks to the defunct Anime News Service site), I knew I would want to at least watch this series. It took nearly two years to watch this series from when I first heard about it, but now I have watched it and I am reminded of those things I absolutely loved about the TV series. However, not everything about these six side stories is good.

Thankfully, the music used is the same as the TV series. This is one of the rare anime titles that has a musical intro before the OP music. Also rare is that I always listen to both songs and don’t skip them. The intro song is hauntingly beautiful and does something really good music should do — evoke emotions. It just so fits the world of witches that the series takes place in and is a joy for me to hear. Follow that up with the OP theme, which is also a joy to listen to, but in a different way. The incident music is also nice to hear and at some point, I would like to purchase the soundtrack for this anime.

The first “fail” for the series are the character designs in episodes three and four. Seriously, episode three looks like people with hand tremors drew the characters and they are ugly. Episode four is a bit better, but still ugly. Episodes five and six get better. Judge for yourself with the following image grabs from each episode.

From episode 01:

Now, from episode 02:

Now, from episode 3:

Now, from episode 4:

Now, from episode 5 (no Alice in this episode):

Now, from episode 6:

So you see, most of the time things look fine, but episodes three and four — not so much.

Story-wise, the first two episodes are just fun side-adventures involving the main characters. Episode three’s terrible character designs killed a lot of the entertainment, but it was interesting seeing how Sheila was in the past. Episode four’s tale of the current Grand Master is an interesting concept, but I felt it was poorly handled and written. Episode five is the best of the lot with the back story on how Dragon-chan became part of Eva’s house. Episode six was OK with the giant Googoo-chan, but not much beyond a simple adventure. So on the whole, the stories are a mixed lot at best, but good if you can’t get enough of Sheila-chan, Eva-chan, and Alice-chan. ^_^

Still, despite the flaws, in the end I did enjoy this return to the world of Mahou Shoujo Tai. However, I did not enjoy it well enough to ever want to watch this OVA series again. Watching the OVA also satiated any desire I had to rewatch the TV series too. The music is obviously my favorite part of the OVA. So in the end, I’d give this 3 out of 5.