![]() Sempai doesn’t care what people think of her, or what the “culture” might think of her, she just want do magic. You don’t go to watch Sempai to get the latest war update in the battle of whatever people are bitching about on twitter, you sit down and watch because you want to see a cute teenage kid fail the rope trick for the fifteenth time, or to drown yourself in her endless optimism and dedication to her passion. The fact that the show is able to do that, and stay in that lane is what kept me coming back to the story, and what kept Sempai sticking around in my head even when other shows presented far more well developed female characters.īecause I think, there is a lot of joy that can be brought from seeing a female character just be herself, without any of the cultural baggage creators (and viewers) often assign to their shows. She’s just a character, a dumb teenage girl who really REALLY wants to be a magician. There isn’t any attempt of trying to make the show about “something,” or have Magical Sempai be another entry in whatever “culture war” is being fought online today. The creators and anime adapters are all on the same page and they just go for it. The reason is, I think, is that Magical Sempaiis a show that knows exactly what its goal is. The entire series over the last twelve weeks has just been a series of mini episodes showing how Sempai keeps failing at trying to do magic tricks, and the exasperated response of her friends.Īnd it works, it works really well, but why? There are no hidden motives, no backstory, no reason for her being other than the fact that she just wants to do magic. That’s it, that’s the entire character summed up. ![]() She wants to be a magician, but sucks at it because she suffers from stage fright. Sempai is not a deep character, in fact she barely has any depth at all. Sempai is the perfect example of the creative freedom that anime is blessed with, that many shows in the west are not. ((For the sake of avoiding confusion, I will now refer to the lead character as just ‘Sempai’)) Also winner of best walking animation 2019. After the cut let’s take a character dive into the titular lead of Magical Sempai: Magical Sempai. Most of all though, they are allowed to be just be people, and the best example I’ve seen lately came from the most unexpected place. I’ve noticed that female characters are often given far more creative liberty and freedom to encompass a wide range of archetypes. ![]() As the medium is almost neatly split down the middle, with a large, respected and well entrenched female fan-base. They are always judged by how they contribute to “the cause,” whatever that cause may be.Īnime I’ve seen, doesn’t suffer from that problem. They can’t just be normal, they can’t be people full of flaws or virtues. Female characters have to adhere to silly shallow ideas of “strong” and “independent” and aren’t allowed the vast creative freedoms offered to male characters. ![]() One thing that I’ve noticed in the last few years, is that in the west, there seems to be a real battle over the depiction of women in cartoons and media, and while I am absolutely not an expert in that field, I’ve been coming to the conclusion that, in terms of the west, female characters often seem hampered by the need to be about “something.” Too often I find that female characters are often held to impossible standards, and that they must spend more time constantly justifying their existence or fighting for a “cause” than just being actual characters. ![]() Is that weird? Kinda, but we all got our interests I suppose. While I never directly engage with it to protect both sanity (and because I don’t have the time to waste on that bullshit) I have always enjoyed watching the “discourse” evolve around entertainment and the people involved in it. I have long been an observer of the pop culture landscape. ![]()
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