Machimaho: I Messed Up and Made the Wrong Person Into a Magical Girl! - Reviews

I’m aware of few series, which tried to spice up mahou shoujo stories or represent it for different audience, but I think this series does it the best. At the core the narrative has still a lot of mahou shoujo elements, but heavily mixed or partially rewritten with fighting shounen, comedy and lewdness.
This is where the series is interesting, aside from some pretty good sensual art of magical girls, it’s comedy and rule of cool. There is decent number of things and moments that put smile on my face. The series in nonchalant way mocks many of mahou shoujo tropes. On the other hand, the way main girl deals with some situations is pretty badass. The MC, Majiba Kayo, is full of surprises and so far, pretty much each volume reveals some of her rather strange background [1]. She is an opposite of typical mahou shoujo protagonist. On first look she is foul mouthed high school delinquent, bored in the class, nicotine addict, which she is intaking during recess in school. Yet, she is not mere sociopath, but deep down she cares about her friends. In this story she is a rouge element, which both sides at play are trying either to use or obliterate before it becomes their undoing. Manga doesn’t waste the time to show how it tries to have fun with magical girl stereotypes. Before magical being [2] grants her power to transform, she brutally murders a monster herself. She even doesn’t like the transformation to the point she doesn’t do it unless absolutely necessary or if she wants to use it to do her hair quickly. It frustrates the magical guardian god to no avail. One of the reasons is the fact the transformation destroys her clothes before donning her in magical shoujo dress. She also hates guardian’s long and elaborate explanations and cutesy suffixes (myu). There is a great deal of violence in this series just from that.
As the story continues a group of side characters slowly accumulates. The first and probably the most interesting is a guy, Masanido Rei, who seems like typical delinquent, but again the manga does show he is not exactly like that [3]. MC saves his life, when his high school – with poetical double meaning, when using phonetical reading of kanji, that could translate into “really shitty high school” – is attacked by monster. He becomes her servant and sidekick.
Next is another girl, Shuusai Nako [4]. She is in a sense polar opposite of MC or at least she seems to be. She is very diligent, beautiful, admired and student council president of course. What I like about the series, when a school gets destroyed it stays destroyed. There is no magic to undo damage. So, students have to go to different school and mangaka uses the fact to his advantage [5]. Aside from those two girls their respective friends do play more or less some role in the story.
The last character in the group is another magical girl from the USA. She speaks English too. Unlike in most series the English is pretty real and plentiful, relatively speaking. It’s actually written in the dialog bubbles with Japanese translation under it. It’s interesting thing, I don’t think I have seen similar approach in other manga series at least to the extent this series does it. There are few other characters I’m not mentioning, because either they are less significant or it would be big spoiler in itself.

Surprisingly for a series with heavy focus on fun and over the top characters, it has quite interesting main story. As the story unravels it shows conflict between order and chaos. Unlike in classical mahou shoujo way the “bad guys” aren’t all bad and “good guys” aren’t all that good. Even the magical guardian gods have to do some serious choices. The story was going without any slowdown until the ninth volume, which is uneventful [6] in comparison. I’m not going deeper into the story, because I don’t want to spoil it.

I like the art, it sways between calm, sometimes even soothing and excessive expressions. It ranges from average character drawings to high fidelity body and pantsu panels. Majiba smoking cigarette panels are precious. There are lot of panty scenes so if you are allergic to it or don’t want to see censored nudity [7] avoid this manga like a plague. The ecchi tag is here for reason. Gore is quite graphical as well. Landscapes and buildings are pretty good too, but not so common in the series. There is great deal of destruction and flashy Dragon ball like attacks and auras.

Japanese difficulty 5/10 (see my profile for details about various difficulty scores)

The series mostly does not have furigana and if it does, it’s for unusual/non-standard readings. The vocabulary is mostly average Japanese. For this difficulty you should be at least on JLPT N3 unless you won’t mind reading at snail’s pace with going through vocabulary drawing kanji most of the time.

The series is still ongoing see below number of volumes I’ve read before writing review. So far, I enjoy the series and It’s pretty awesome. I’ve bought all volumes into my humble manga collection. The series reminds me or it has elements of Madoka Magica, Mahou Shoujo Tokushusen Asuka combined with History Strongest Disciple Kenichi over the top characters, Dragon Ball fights with lewdness up to levels of Prison School.

I’ve re-read up to the latest 9th volume, before writing this review.

Spoilers

[1] For example why she lives in very odd empty underground apartment, why she has the aptitude for magical powers to begin with.

[2] Actually, they are more like gods of order.

[3] Under the veneer of stereotypical delinquent with ridiculous hair, which is only a wig. He is ikemen cook apprentice in a small restaurant with a very macho owner, who looks like prison inmate.

[4] She becomes a magical girl accidentally.

[5] This means both Nako, her friend and Rei end up in the same school eventually.

[6] Given the previous volume was a pretty intense battle, a high point, this volume feels like in between two arcs segment, where characters gather to prepare for next challenge.

[7] Can’t lie Rei and Monster getting question marked black rectangle over their groin, when Majiba undergoes transformation was pretty hilarious.

The author of this story clearly had their light bulb flash full of motivation after reading Hirohiko Araki guide to creating a enjoyable manga.
This story take many aspects from the Magical girl genre and Combine it with a jojo-esqe style that will give any reader a wild experience.