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Magic User's Club
Magic User's Club is a 1996 OVA and 1999 TV series that I completely missed at the time and only came to know about years later. Even after knowing about it, and generally feeling a strong fondness for late 90s anime, I never actually got around to watching it until just recently. Now, 30 years later, I have thoughts about it. Lucky for me I have a website to put my thoughts into.
The OVA
A giant extraterrestrial cylinder, called "The Bell", has come to earth and defeated our every attempt to repel it. This includes an outer space sequence where orbital lasers get shrugged off in silence, causing me to repeatedly think there's something wrong with the video file. Lucky (?) for us the giant cylinder parks itself off the coast of Japan and is generally benign as long as we don't bother it.
Completely unconnected to the alien invasion, a guy named Takeo Takakura is the president of a pitifully small magic club at his high school. For reasons that are barely explored, he knows real magic and is teaching it to his classmates. His gender nonconforming friend Ayanojou Aburatsubo is his vice president and is aggressively gay for him in a 90s anime way that has aged poorly. The two of them are training three girls who have just joined the club, Cool and boy-crazy Akane Aikawa, Tomboyish Nanaka Nakatomi, and our cute protagonist Sae Sawanoguchi. Sae is a huge klutz because that is the only socially acceptable flaw for a female protagonist. Nanaka is Sae's best friend since kindergarten and is gay for Sae in a much more low-key way than Ayanojou. Akane is barely connected to anyone else and is mostly there to be the one person who is naturally good at doing magic.
You would not believe how little time is spent on how or why these five characters have come together to be in this club. In fact, the only two people in the club who have any actual enthusiasm for magic is Takeo and Sae. Takeo, because he happened across an ancient grimoire in a coastal cave, and Sae because as a preschooler she encountered a mysterious mage named Jeff. Jeff comforted her with a teddy bear, also named Jeff, that she talks to as if it were the mage. The true identity of this mage and the possibility that he might be related to Takeo's grimoire is never addressed. The fact Sae is the only person out of any of them who has ever met anyone else who can do magic is also never addressed. Would it surprise you to learn that the protagonist of an anime is quietly the most powerful character, but lacks the self-confidence to reach her full potential? It's more likely than you think.
I suppose it is not unusual for an OVA series to go all-in on big concepts that are never adequately explored, but this was 6 episodes that contain surprisingly few character moments. The meatiest moment that sticks out to me is when Nanaka decides she's attracted to Ayanojou, who very gently shuts her down by pointing out that the reason she finds him interesting is because they both hold hopeless crushes on their best friends. Magic User's Club is full of missed opportunities and I think an Ayanojou that was not so often just a homophobic joke would have really shined.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, Takeo's only other trait is his tendency to lapse into perverted fantasies. I suppose I should recognize these fantasies are the only real source of "fanservice" in the series, meaning the camera (and the viewer) rarely indulge in leering at the characters in the way it is common for anime to do. Not that this is an excuse, of course, but making it an aspect of a character rather than the show itself is the tiniest fig leaf. To top it off, the fantasies themselves are variations of "Haha what if we all stripped down to our underwear?" which is such an innocent teenage fantasy to have that it's almost endearing.
Anyway, for reasons that are, unsurprisingly, poorly explored Takeo has decided magic is the key to defeating the alien menace not currently threatening the earth. His attempts to use magic against the Bell and its high-tech probe agents mostly cause the threat to become a whole lot more threatening. For some reason the show spends an extended sequence spelling out what the aliens are doing, despite it being pretty obvious that they're looking for potential threats and are finding magic very threatening indeed. Valuable time that could have gone to Jeff instead spent on the characters using magic to confirm a bunch of assumptions everyone was already making!
There are also sub-plots involving Takeo's tormentor and president of the Manga club Mizuha Miyama, and a completely unrelated alien-obsessed journalist Minoru Minowa. The less said about these folks the better, though Minoru is a key part of one of the funnier jokes in the series when the desperate mages have to use their broom-riding spell on two volunteers to human broom their way to safety. Also, it's strongly indicated that Takeo and Sae are crushing on each other which is the most boring character direction for both of them. Despite being teenagers Sae acts like she's 8 and Takeo acts like he's 12; it's hard to think of two characters less prepared to be in a romantic relationship.
I have a tendency to find flawed media compelling. On some level I would rather something be almost, but not quite, good rather than objectively good. Thinking about the ways a story could be sanded and filled in with another pass pleasingly engages my brain. Magic User's Club is almost, but not quite, good. I suppose the fact I haven't commented on the animation is meaningful. The animation is outstanding, the best you could hope for from a 90's anime. It's a pile of interesting ideas that is pleasing to look at, and for me at least, pleasing to think about.
The Series
A few years after the OVA, a 13 episode series was produced. I haven't watched it yet. Hopefully it addresses some of the issues I had with the OVA. I'll update this article once I've had my fill.