Moetan - Reviews

Lolicon magician is exiled to the human in duck-form and grants magical powers to Ink Nijihara in order to accrue enough good-deed points to return home. It's a perfectly fine show but it really ratchets up the loli-leering and so is really only for fans of the genre.

I like it when a character in a show gives a perfect one-line review, this occurs when the cat says "What hell kind of anime is this?" And I think that sums up my feeling at times. But it gives a nod and a wink to the watcher with some parody and lines like "now for some random nudity!"

Saccharine fun.

 Magical Change! Two loli girls do their magical transformation meanwhile two magicians polymorphed into a duck and a cat drool and get nosebleeds from watching. Yep, basically what this show is about is taking the mahou shojo genre and creating a hilarious parody. If you find a klutzy girl teamed up with a perveted duck who practically swims in pools of his own drool funny then you'll enjoy this show.

Story: 4.5

Ok, there's not much to the story on this one. Number one magician Arks is expelled from the magical kingdom, transformed into a duck and dropped on earth. There he teams up with Ink Nijihara, a highschool girl that looks and acts like a gradeschooler. Using the powers granted to her by Arks she transforms into Pastel Ink! Thus begins their outrageous adventures such as fighting a giant octopus and bringing an old guy a glass a water after he overeats rice balls! They basically do everything they can to make fun of the mahou shojo genre and it usually comes out being pretty funny. The usual male hero that comes out of nowhere to save the day in these kinds of shows is replaced with a suspicious guy in a trenchcoat but Ink is so oblivious she doesn't notice how creepy he is.

Animation: 6.5

Lolis transforming into magical girls and using amusing powers is the height of this show's animation. There's nothing too spectacular in this department, but its not bad either.

Sound: 7

The voice actors did a decent job on this show. Ink's voice is about as cute as it gets and Arks and Karks have pretty funny voice actors. The Opening and Closing songs are pretty good too.

Characters: 7.5

The characters in this show are hilarious. Klutzy and easily embaressed Ink has a big crush on her precious Nao-kun who has a good foot and a half on her in the height department. This makes her dreams of being together with him hilarious because it looks like he's a highschooler hanging out with a little kid. Ink's rival Sumi and her maid add a lot to the comedy. Sumi enjoys her sleep while her maid enjoys pulling pranks on her while she sleeps which can be hilarious. Then there's Dandy-san, random guy in a trenchcoat who stops to help out Ink from time to time before being chased off by a policeman. Last but not least there's Arks and Karks, lolicon magicians that can't get enough of watching the girls' magical transformations. There are a few minor characters as well that also add to the humor.

Overall: 6.5

So this show isn't exactly a masterpiece. It's still funny to watch even if you're not a fan of the mahou shojo genre. When it comes to mahou shojo parodies this is the funniest one out there, if you've seen shows like "Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha" and "Mahou Shojo Madoka Magica" you'll see a lot of jokes that reference these shows. For all the unexplainable things you usually find in the mahou shojo genre Arks says in the show "Don't worry about the details"

Ink Nijihara has a crush on her classmate Nao, but her shyness and clumsiness always get in the way of their meeting. She becomes a "mahou shoujo" upon meeting a talking duck, a magician from another world, and masquerades as Pastel Ink to spend time with Nao, becoming his tutor in English, while doing various superhero-like deeds on the side. Interestingly, this ecchi comedy is based on a set of English language study guides geared towards otaku.  

Once more the Japs prove what kind of weird people they are by taking an English learning franchise and turning it into a perverted series of complete randomness and loli-fetished situations.

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 8/10 [Learning English while fondling the boobies of 10 year-old girls… Yeah, like that would work!]

What I liked in the series was the parody of the mahou shojo genre, boosted with loli jokes and bold ecchiness, only a perv who has seen hundreds of mahou shojo and hentai anime would appreciate. Seriously, you get really fed up with the same shitz happening in almost all the series and start to yearn just for a bold version of the whole fuss. This series is one of those cases. Here is what I mean:

When I watched Card Captor Sakura, several years back, the famous moe-moe feeling of watching the overly cute Sakura doing her overly silly stuff got me big time. The thing is, that series had no freaking story! It was just slice-of-life and a bit coming-of-age, dressed with a lot of magic, kawai dresses, an apocalyptic event that never happened despite being promised a hundred times over and lots of implied sexual paranormality just for the sake of attraction. It was a storyless series full of porn innuendo; don’t fool yourselves of thinking it was just a kiddie romance. I yearned for a clearer version of what that series really was. JUST DROP THE ACT AND GIVE US THE JUICE DAMMIT!

Then this series came along, which was exactly that! It clearly showed that it is not a series with a “supposed” story and “implied” sexual paranormality. IT REALLY IS A STORYLESS SERIES WITH OBVIOUS SEXUAL PARANORMALITY! Yeah baby! No more feeling stupid for having to undress a cute fairy tale just to get to the dark point.

Another point is the parody of the mahou shojo. The series clearly took every cliché in the book and made a joke out of it. Just imagine the typical fuzzy mascot animal that gives magical powers to a normal 10 year-old girl, to be a sleazy lolicon, who drools from ecstasy every time the girl transforms with the usual action clip of losing her clothes. Or imagine most monsters to have tentacles. Or imagine the magical girl to be the usual klutz female lead, who keeps tripping and falling every 5 minutes and revealing her teddy-bear underwear or dropping with her butt on the face of some poor guy, in quite the ecchi fashion. Pure gold! Such things are very typical in ecchi series but being presented as a joke of that said typicality is hilarious!

Not to mention the so-called English learning lessons. The series is humorously advertising English catch phrases that have to do with anime-productions. Of course, I hardly learned any English (or Japanese) words, as they were all very hard to comprehend (on purpose) and all the focus was on the ecchi to begin with.

The thing is, the humor ends up repeating too often and ruins some of the enjoyment. There is no real escalation or development in the plot, so you will like this a lot less than I did if you expect a good story or developed characters. Well, this is not a series that was aiming for such things, so I don’t mind much.

STORY & CHARACTER SECTIONS: 3/10 [Quickly! Strip naked and rub yourself on me… I mean, go save the world!]
Being a parody, means that the story is not much. Being an ecchi series aiming at lolicons, means that you wouldn’t pay attention to the story, even if there was one. As said before, characters and story are not the focus of the series. The story is the usual magical kingdom sending magical mascots to Earth, in order to create magical girls who protect both worlds from some menace. Just imagine a twisted and more simplified version of Cardcaptor Sakura and Sailor Moon and you get the picture. Yes, we have klutz girls turning magical and doing all sorts of silly stuff in order to protect the world. In reality, the story goes nowhere; it is just ecchi jokes with lolis. To be honest, the characters DO get colorized a lot (they are not at all cardboards) and the story DOES head into something (world threat and revelations). Yet, when the series is over you just realize it was just all very superficial and the only thing that mattered were the sleazy jokes. I mean, nothing is truly resolved or ends without possible room for a sequel. Anyway, the characters were likable without being anything much and the story went by like a breeze.

ART SECTION: 7/10 [Cosplay was never so fun.]
Moe-moe everywhere! Cute girls, lots of cosplay magical uniforms and butt-naked scenes every 5 minutes! Yup, everything feels moe enough to melt you. From the SD reactions, to the boldly naughty scenes, it is all aiming to make you feel like you are in a wet dream or ero-game or twisted fairy tale, full of cuteness and complete randomness. The bright colors, the fuzzy animals, the rainbow visual effects, the cutely faces, they all work fine into giving you that illusion of “if you don’t get caught, it is not illegal” feeling. Hi hi, very pleasing to watch. Still, it ain’t epic or awesome in any way. It is less than the average anime series of today; It is just very pleasing to watch.

SOUND SECTION: 7/10 [“Magical change, H is for heroine!” Hilarious!]
Oh, those cute voices the girls and the mascot animals make are to die for. So are the naughty things they say, despite the innocent looks they have. And the music themes, my God, so stupid and yet so funny. Full of English words that are “supposed” to teach you things, when in fact they provide just more wackiness. Marvelous! Oh, and the names of the magical girls! Pastel ink? Tempera Sumi??? God, it was hilarious! Finally, a series that doesn’t take itself seriously and yet does not feel stupid in a bad way. As above, none is great in any way but do their job nicely.

VALUE SECTION: 4/10 [How much for that half-naked figurine?]
Well, I doubt I will ever watch it again. The jokes repeat too often and the story goes nowhere. Plus, I have watched far more twisted stuff to actually treasure this one in any way. It is nice for one watch but not for a second. Other than that, it is very memorable for its silliness.

VERDICT: 5.5/10
Guilty pleasure! You can go this time. But I won’t forgive you twice!

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