Gushing Over Magical Girls

Episode 10

I should probably expect something of this show going into any episode where the title is just the name of a ship. After Utena and the audience were able to put together how Loco and Leber really felt about each other last week, this episode of Gushing Over Magical Girls leads by listing itself as "Loco X Leber." Hopefully, this lets you mentally prepare for what (and who) is to come a bit more than those once-bad-now-less-bad girls. Then again, this is the Gushing show. Ten weeks in, everybody knows exactly why they're here.

Except for me, of course. I'm here for the cool magical fights and the escalating plot!

However, this episode finds Gushing having to reckon with how it presented its material over these past couple of months. This has always been a series that, as a vibe necessity, treated sexuality and the often extreme perpetration thereof as flippantly for humor's sake. Yes, there's my oft-mentioned point about it dancing around the more intriguing interrogations of fetish and kink material. But hovering above even all that was the potential question of sexual orientation in general. Magical girl shows as an institution are certainly no stranger to homoeroticism. Utena's established unholy worship at the altar of that material, the very fact that she found herself "gushing" over these magical girls, would certainly seem to indicate that she and others like Sayo who got carried away by her games might be acknowledged as lesbians—but as with so many cases in played-straight magical girl series, that acknowledgment seemed content to sit in the realm of extremely overt subtext.

Of course, that couldn't possibly be the case forever. Utena's a sexually awakened teenage fan of magical girls; she's strapped on her yuri goggles and written a fanfic or two, erasing the "sub" from that "subtext" (and nowadays, replacing it with a completely different kind of "sub"). Utena's "punishment" of Loco and Leber might undoubtedly be penance for them hunting and defeating her beloved transforming heroines. But it's also easy to see ulterior motives in her trapping the duo in a suspiciously familiar white-tiled room where they can't leave until they both experience euphoria. She's going to get someone together canonically in this show, and if that's also accompanied by a full-on lesbian sex scene in the middle of the episode, well, at least she's taking care of all of you in the audience as well.

It is only a little funny to have an example of mature content that's downright vanilla by Gushing's established standards but still feels like one of the most graphic indulgences yet. The framing is kind of sweet, imparting a sense of romance to the rocky relationship between Loco and Leber. It's anchored by that heartwarming sad-cute revolving around seeing two simply sad lost souls find each other and grow closer. Its canonizing of yuri elements also prompts questions about where Utena fits into all this. She's always had a voyeuristic element to her escapades, but it seems like she might like watching more than joining in for herself here. Or maybe she's not into Kiwi that way to accept her multiple hotel-trip offers. It's a pity since I think they're cute together at the job they've been doing raising Korisu. Even if it turns out Kiwi didn't understand what a model kit was.

As that aforementioned plot part of this plot ramps up, the focus on Kiwi, her affection for Utena, and how that ties into her powers and desire to prove herself becomes another point of this episode. That's the part that winds up being just straight-up cool to me. At first, I was dooming at Kiwi tripping her death flag by promising that deserved hotel trip with Utena after holding off Sister Gigant. But then, as Kiwi escaped being crushed by the cleavage of the two-ton nun, I found myself cheering at the clothing-destroying reveal of her actual villainous power level. It's not exactly on the level of Noriko's climactic shirt-shredding in Gunbuster, in that this moment is also at least partially for fanservice's sake. But it was still pretty dang hype, alongside finding out the true reason for Kiwi's villain code name of "Leoparde." Here's hoping Utena is into furries.

As effectively managed as all its wild elements are in this episode, with the hardcore lesbian sex scene only taking up a couple of minutes, this entry is held back by the restrained simplicity of its presentation. Most of the fanservice stuff is powered by plenty of panning (and you'll notice the censored audio that HIDIVE gets stuck with), and the action that ramps up in the second half is back to the show's jankier style. I'll presume this is the anime conserving its energy before heading into finale territory. Plus, they updated the ending sequence to account for Loco and Leber formally joining the team. I can appreciate that since I've been endeared to them now.

Rating:

It's funny; years ago, I'd need to seek out duplicitously released uncensored airings of a show like Gushing Over Magical Girls if I wanted to know what I was missing compared to the broadcast version. But living in the future, I now wonder what this episode's standard, non-AT-X versions did with a full-on graphic sex scene. I guess we'll just have to use our imaginations.

Gushing Over Magical Girls is currently streaming on HIDIVE.

Chris is hoping that following this series at the same time he's keeping up with Precure won't result in him being put on a special list. Please direct any call-out posts to his increasingly decaying Twitter, or whip him into writing more quality material for his blog.