Case Number 05560: Small Claims Court

NURSE WITCH KOMUGI: WE NEED A MAGICAL GIRL, STAT! (VOLUME 2)

The Charge

Let's hope Komugi wins the fight to make the Earth safe again --
stat!

The Case

Nurse Witch Komugi is a character from Soul Taker, a dark and
relatively serious anime. The concept of Komugi, an über-cute girly who
flies around on a giant syringe (instead of a broomstick) and dispenses medical
cure-alls for those in need, is about all that comes over into her series. She
is essentially completely recast in Nurse Witch Komugi as a cosplay
actress who is given magical girl powers (magic powers that are activated by a
precisely spoken phrase) and a spiffy floppy-eared costume to ramble around in.
Her madcap adventures lead her through a series of anime parodies, sight gags,
and confrontations with her foe, a magical maid who wants to do Komugi in.

The series opened with an evil overlord about to unleash a battalion of
viruses upon the earth. A goddess from the Vaccine World, Maya (who always makes
a hilarious entrance by announcing herself, then immediately asking, "Oh,
you think I'm that beautiful?" before anyone can say a word), sends
her helper, Mugimaru, to find a champion who can heal the damage wrought by the
virus. You guessed it -- the champion is Komugi, and, in a weird twist of fate,
her best friend Koyori is made the unwitting perpetrator of the infection when
she is turned into Magical Maid Koyori. Komugi and Koyori go head to head often
in the series, although not without first going through a magical transformation
into their respective magical uniforms.

I get exhausted just watching this show -- the action is fast, and the
colors are so bright and strobing that the eye is constantly darting to catch
all the goings-on. Couple this with in-your-face tomfoolery and homages to other
anime thrown in until they are thicker than the chunks in a chocolate chunk
cookie, and you have one crazy series.

I still don't know if I like it or not.

Generally, I'm up for any sort of anime parody. I like to see anime
conventions turned on their ear and even outright made fun of. It's fun, and if
I can pick out the references, it brings the thrill of sharing an inside joke.
Still, Nurse Witch Komugi didn't really entertain me the way I thought it
would. I think the problem was that it just does too much, if that makes
any sense. It's not just a magical girl anime, it's also a parody anime, and a
cosplay anime, on top of rolling in a lot of other mini-genres as it parodies
various aspects of anime. It's like watching a slide show on high speed.

What worked: I could listen (in the English dub) to Mugimaru, the perverted
rabbit sidekick to Komugi, all day long -- that rabbit was hilarious (and
I have a soft spot for characters who repeat words or add words to the end of
their sentences, like the little sister in Super GALs who always says,
"You bet, You Bet!" as if she's talking to someone named You Bet). I
also loved the magical maid and her little sidekick Posokichi, and about died
from laughter over a throwaway joke where she announces with a flourish that she
has this big revelation and has been training like a maniac to confront Komugi,
and after this dramatic pan-up and close shot the new skill is...is...she taught
Posokichi to speak. "It was certainly worth the three months of
training!" she says, deadpan, before Komugi delivers a crushing blow.

I also enjoyed the bookend episodes on this DVD, which started with Komugi
dying and tormenting her coworkers at Kiri-Pro as a ghost. A scene with her
sitting on Mibu's chest while he's napping flashes by in a second, but her look
of satisfied glee at his troubled sleep is priceless. The third episode involves
a child who wants to know what it's like to be an adult, so she turns herself
into a teacher and puts everyone she comes in contact with under her thrall. Not
gut-bustingly funny, but her enormous...um...frontal area is goofily amusing --
the sort of thing a chestless young girl would do if she were creating an
adult-sized body to inhabit.

What didn't work: basically, the second episode. The self-referential humor
left me cold. Komugi starts the episode as the voice for Muscle Cutie Komugi,
even though a much better-endowed athlete actually gets into the ring as Muscle
Cutie. This gives her the bright idea to create a Muscle Cutie anime where she
can do the voice. The rest of the episode is a standard "let's watch the
poor, poor animators slave away and come in just under deadline while the anime
they create gets marketed to bejeebers and back." Characters visiting an
anime studio, talking to an arrogant (and deliberately gross) script writer who
is drunk on his fame and riches, a stuttering animator who is prone to accidents
due to a lack of sleep, and so on. Not funny. Meant to be funny, but not funny.
Makes me talk in incomplete sentences due to the unfunniness. I kind of smiled a
little when the staff is revealed and they all look like popular anime
characters, but this is parody on a level too high to really hold my interest or
attention.

Apparently, the voice actors were none too interested, either -- even though
Episode Four is the episode that features the voice commentary, it is
scene-specific only in the opening and closing few minutes. Otherwise, Kira
Vincent Davis (Koyori) and Lucy Christian (Mugimaru) join ADR voice director
Scott McClennan for an interesting recap of voice acting prep and recording, and
vocal performance motivations. I consider ADV's actors to be some of the best
for English dubs, and I never miss a chance to hear their talent talk about the
business. This is another excellent commentary in what is becoming a tradition
of quality commentary for ADV. (This is much improved over the "early
days" of anime voice commentaries, which was usually just the voice actors
getting together to laugh and comment on how outrageous the action was in
whatever they were watching.)

Speaking of voice acting, the English dub is excellent -- I laughed just
listening to the voices, and the actors obviously gave 110%, as usual. The 5.1
surround track is robust and does a good job of using all channels for dialogue
and ambient sound. The Japanese 2.0 track is also quite good, but I found that I
actually preferred the English track here -- voices in too high a register grate
on my nerves just a little, and I like the bubbly, high-energy voices from the
English dub (which didn't get into those super-high registers as often) much
better. Other than the commentary, extras include clean opening and closing
animation, production sketches, and a seemingly endless reel of Japanese TV
spots. This latter feature is interesting to view if only to see a typical
marketing campaign, but these spots tend to flash by even quicker than the
anime, so I had to beg off after three or so segments.

In a nutshell, I think Nurse Witch Komugi is an acquired taste. If
you love fast-paced action and parody anime that throws gags and references at
you faster than you can process on the first viewing, Nurse Witch is a
title you will want to check out. The entire series runs for only five episodes
(there are three on this DVD, Episodes Three through Six), so there isn't a huge
investment if you want to watch it, either. However, if the go-go-go, strobing
color and light show effect of whiplash-frantic pacing isn't your cup of tea,
this probably won't be as delightful to you as other cosplay/parody animes such
as Cosplay Complex.