Gushing Over Magical Girls Is the Most Surprising Anime of Winter 2024

Summary:

• A lot of people treat Gushing Over Magical Girls as a dumb ecchi series.
• It does have sexual elements, but it’s not limited by them.
• The series also has great character development and writing.

If you’ve ever seen at least one of the trailers for Gushing Over Magical Girls (Mahou Shoujo ni Akogarete), you might have gotten an idea of what the series will be like. And for the most part you’re right, of course, this is an ecchi series. But there’s something very surprising about it.

It’s good at marketing

Straight from the beginning, Gushing Over Magical Girls chose the right marketing strategy: it decided to attract fans with its sexual content and pretty half-naked anime girls. And it worked, the series has become really popular and talked about even outside the ecchi fanbase.

However, the surprise part stems from the fact that sexual innuendo is not the only thing this series has to offer. Turns out, fans are pleasantly surprised with the quality of the adaptation.

The visuals of Gushing Over Magical Girls are great, and fans are really enjoying the character design and all those clever camera angles. The anime is an eye-candy, and this is always a nice touch.

Series takes character development seriously

But this is not the thing that surprised viewers the most. As they say, Gushing Over Magical Girls is not only good at pleasing horny fans, it also takes character development and story seriously. Well, as seriously as the format of the anime allows.

Despite the entire series being extremely sexual and sometimes in the weirdest possible ways, it doesn’t forget about its characters, either. There are conflicts, clear motivations and even drama.

Fans absolutely love the difference between various villains in the series. The main protagonist, Utena, treats Magical Girls in a lot of disturbing ways. She’s a sadist and likes to use pain and torture to achieve her goals.

However, her motivation is quite surprising. First of all, she’s the biggest fan of Magical Girls, and she uses their discomfort to actually help them in the most bizarre ways. Utena uses pain to force other people to reach a clearer mind and a deeper level of self-understanding.

We also have the Lord, whose ways are rather similar to Utena’s. But she doesn’t have any good intentions when it comes to her sadism: she just wants to be feared.

Such a contrast reminded fans once again why this series is not just a horny fest for ecchi lovers, Gushing Over Magical Girls pays attention to its characters and worldbuilding. Well, in between throwing bulks of fan service at you, of course.

That doesn’t mean Gushing Over Magical Girls is something that can compete with the Vinland Saga of deep, of course. But it does make the anime surprisingly well-written and even worth your attention.