Magical Girl Apocalypse – Vols. 8-9 (Manga Series)
Written by Kentaro Sato
Illustrated by Kentaro Sato
Published by Seven Seas Entertainment
Suitable for ages 16+
While reminiscent of Puella Magi Madoka Magica insomuch that it involves a darker take on magical girls, Magical Girl Apocalypse is still its own unique thing. Madoka Magica can be compared to an acid trip combined with magical girls fighting to save the world. While Magical Girl Apocalypse is more like “The Walking Dead” meets lolita fashion meets “Doctor Who” (trust us, it’ll make sense in a moment).
When we reviewed the first seven volumes of Magical Girl Apocalypse, we gave it four and a half stars. We mention this because with the current two volumes up for review (eight and nine), it almost feels like starting over.
Three chapters into Volume Eight of Magical Girl Apocalypse, we are confronted with a few title pages announcing the end of “Season One.” The rest of the volume is in “Season Two.” This is a little jarring since that terminology is mostly reserved for anime and not manga. However, after reading Season Two, it becomes apparent why this decision was made. From the end of Volume Eight to the beginning of Volume Nine onwards, Magical Girl Apocalypse gets a sort of hard reset. The characters we’ve been following thus far have been transported to an alternate future, where the magical girl apocalypse has not yet happened. They’re in their 20s/30s in this future, and a brand new cast of additional characters has been introduced.
There’s nothing like taking an already multi-faceted plot and slapping some wibbly wobbly timey wimey time travel on it. Couple that with alternate dimensions, and you’ve got some good old fashioned “what the fuck” in store. Thankfully, while still weird, Magical Girl Apocalypse manages to pull off this transition fairly well. There are familiar faces slowly introduced in this futuristic alternate reality to tie into the previous story.
The new characters are reasonably linked to the old, so it’s familiar enough to make sense. Nonetheless, we do have to recognize that this is a sudden influx of new characters in a short period of time. Magical Girl Apocalypse really doesn’t hold your hand, and there might be times that you forget someone. The small descriptions of characters at the beginning of the book will probably prove crucial from here on out. It’ll be interesting to see too if Magical Girl Apocalypse sticks with this current timeline, or does some more timey wimey… stuff.
If you can successfully make the switch to the new story, Magical Girl Apocalypse will still hook you in. As we’ve said, this new time period is positioned fortuitously right before the magical girl apocalypse happens. There is one corporation behind the doomsday event called “Wahre Liebe.” Translated from German it means, “true love.” The pharmaceutical company touts this tagline to show how much they care about and for their patients. It’s a thinly veiled commentary on the problems with monopolies, and large corporations having such huge impacts on society. Thinly veiled or no, the message still stands. Wahre Liebe is the corporation that caused the end of the world, and they did so by delving into some things they really shouldn’t have. For a company that has already cured cancer, that’s saying something.
Let’s take a hard right here since there’s no easy way to say this, so we’ll just be blunt about it. There are moments in Volumes Eight and Nine of Magical Girl Apocalypse that might disturb some people. This is your trigger warning. There is one scene that involves a potential rape, and plenty of others involving awkward sexual situations. Akuta Rintarou is back in full force, and his sexual perversions are as bad as ever. Quick SPOILER ALERT, he humps a high school girl’s bed to completion. His moments are small blips in the rest of the story, but for some that might be enough to ruin everything.
As if Magical Girl Apocalypse wasn’t a wild ride already, Volumes Eight and Nine sure bring on the crazy. This series is truly unique. There’s nothing else on the market right now that fits into the Magical Girl Apocalypse mold. Just like the first seven volumes, you really can’t judge this book by its cover. Inside these pages is a no holds barred plot that smacks you in the face and leaves you wanting more. These two volumes introduce some time travelling/alternate dimension madness, but the hard reset keeps the plot fresh this far into the series. There are many new (and old) characters to keep track of, so that will most likely get a little confusing in future volumes. But that’s nothing a little refresh of the previous volumes can probably fix. If you’ve loved everything from Magical Girl Apocalypse so far, Volumes Eight and Nine will scratch that itch even more.
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Manga
Categorized:Reviews
