actually very inspired by a scene from Episode 1, the one where Yuna introduces herself." Tsukiji was amazed with how skillfully anime director Shinichiro Kimura and the voice actors were able to express each of the girls' personalities. Media Novels The novel series Maburaho is written by Toshihiko Tsukiji and illustrated by Eeji Komatsu. The novel is serialized in Gekkan Dragon Magazine and 30 volumes of Maburaho have been published as of February 2011. The anime series had adapted the storyline until "The Volume of Being a Spirit – Part 3". Anime In 2003, an anime series was produced by J.C.Staff and was broadcast on the Japanese network, WOWOW. Consisting of 24 episodes, the series first aired on October 14, 2003, with the episode "They Came..." and concluded on April 6, 2004, with the episode "It Was Over...". On March 8, 2004, ADV Films announced that it had acquired the license to the animated series. The first DVD volume, also available with an artbox, was released on April 19, 2005, and concluded nearly a year later with volume 7. ADV Films later released a Thinpack of the entire series on April 3, 2007. Theme music Opening by Ichiko Ending We'd Get There Someday by Ichiko (ep. 1–23) We'd Get There Someday by Hitomi Nabatame, Yuki Matsuoka, and Yuka Inokuchi (ep. 24) Reception The English language release of Maburaho was met with mediocre reviews. Many critics comment that Maburaho was a typical "by the book" harem comedy that added little originality to the genre. "Maburaho feels like more of an unfinished prototype for the harem genre than an actual anime series", states Anime News Network critic, Carlo Santos. "The plot is there, but it lacks any defining elements besides the general theme of magic; the characters are there, but they don't have any particular traits apart from being, well, the one loser guy and the cookie-cutter hot girls chasing after him." Santos goes on to state. Chris Beveridge, critic for AnimeOnDVD, comments, "Maburaho has some cute quirks to it, very nice character designs and it's a show that actually took a risk midway through the series by changing the nature of the lead character." However Beveridge goes on to say, "While it has these good points, it didn't capitalize on them and instead worked hard towards keeping with a mediocre series of events and scripts. ... It's a by the book