Rental Magica

By: Robert Murphy

Our story opens on a group of abnormal looking people who are being chased by a specter of some sorts that they are attempting to capture and purify and everyone has their part unfortunately though that includes Itsuki Iba. All of them are part of Astral, a company that’s part of the Mage’s Society that take on cases from people and Itsuki is the President but he is anything but a Mage. His poor spiritual powers are picked up right from the get go but there’s more to him than meets the eye and hopefully it’ll be enough to keep the bills paid and the company from being bankrupt.

Now right from the start I noticed the classic signs of an anime cliché, Itsuki is a shy and timid teenaged boy that is surrounded by an assorted collection of girls who for some reason have an odd attraction to him. Sounds familiar right? It’s a classic harem set up right from the get go but what makes it worse is the fact the characters themselves have no appeal to them whatsoever. Two of the girls that are infatuated with Itsuki and also work with him are Adilisia and Honami who are inexplicably like minded and act the same way constantly on screen that you’d almost think they were twins. The fact that the two are so much the same character wouldn’t be so bad  if they were stronger characters but it makes things so much worse because they’re just so stale and flat as characters. The final character at Astral is Nekoyashiki who is like the Kakashi sensei of the group from Naruto. But this comparison was short lived, while Nekoyashiki is the most appealing member of Astral, he has an unhealthy affection towards cats and doesn’t break out of that one attribute enough during the show to make him a solid character.

As for Rental Magica’s story, there isn’t a whole lot to tell in the way of innovation or creativity. The whole idea behind an organization helping people with their other worldly problems that occur from time to time is nothing new and the show doesn’t break away from this concept in any way. Episodes consist of the group getting a new case from someone, fighting the spirit or a rival organization and then the case being closed with a happy ending and a pretty bow on top. This happens over and over again, episode after episode and its simply mind numbing, sometimes the evil Mage Organization comes in and tries to change things up a bit but the characters are just as un-engaging as our main cast. Theirs no underline bad guy in the show just the other organizations that appear to be much better than Astral and the evil Mage group causing more spiritual trouble and mucking about. Its boils down to a simple formula we’ve all seen before and Rental Magica makes no attempt to even hide that face.

I went into Rental Magica with no expectations at all, I hadn’t even heard of the show before I stumbled across it on Hulu and decided to give a go. What I received was a very sub par anime; the story is very simple to start off with and doesn’t do anything to break the mold as each episode is the same thing over and over again. The characters are all very bland as well, Itsuki glows through a classic Shonen character transformation where he starts out humble and meek and gains some power to impress his little harem. Nekoyashiki was maybe the only semi passable character to me but that’s about it, so in conclusion I wouldn’t advise you watching this one everyone.

Good:

- Nekoyashiki is an okay character, I guess

Bad:

- Very formulaic story

- Classic harem and Shonen feel to it that’s almost mind numbing

- Characters are unappealing and in some cases are exactly the same

- I could have seen something good coming from this set up but you know it just never happened

Scully Rating: 1.0 out of 10