Recap: Some time has passed since we last saw Mogiana, and she is now traveling with a caravan headed toward her homeland. Before Morgiana reaches her destination the caravan leader tells her that they are going to avoid that town due to stories of thieves in the hills. Morgiana ventures off on her own to clean out these thieves so that the caravan may continue.

Inside the camp of thieves Morgiana easily takes down a bunch of thugs before being incapacitated by poison, and captured. When she awakens she finds herself bound in chains that are to strong for her to break. When a sick slave girl who reminds Morgiana of herself is stung up to feed the dogs Morgiana has a vision of Goltas, and manages to free herself, and save the girl scaring off the dogs, and slavers while killing tigers with her bare hands and feet. In the end it winds up that Aladdin was also captured. After freeing Aladdin Morgiana, and Aladdin travel together to the next town.

Loose the tigers? More like loose the Morgiana.

Lifesong’s Thoughts: I was worried that Morgiana wouldn’t be able to carry an episode on her own, but I was oh so wrong. This was probably the strongest episode of Magi yet. Watching Morgiana break free not only of her physical bind’s but her mental ones really helped to establish her character.

Probably the biggest disappointment of this episode is that the old man with the pokemon looking thing on his shoulder didn’t get to do anything, he looked like a badass. I am loving this anime, and while I am probably not quite as in love with this episode as Zigg I will let him say the rest.

It’s a shame the bloodthirsty beast on this man’s shoulder did not get any action.

Dragonzigg’s Thoughts: I want every single person who watches or makes anime to sit down and watch this episode, because there’s so much that could be learnt from it. About how to write strong, emphatic female characters who aren’t used as eye candy but as believable human beings. About the ways you can express emotion and resilience from your characters, and bring them closer to your audience. About good plot structure. About subverting your viewers expectations. About just making a damn good bit of TV.

I’d noted before that one of Magi‘s greatest strengths is that it’s taking time to flesh out its characters before putting them on the main plot thread, and once again that pays enormous dividends here. Though we’ve seen a lot of Morgiana already, it’s mostly been through other people’s eyes. Here we get an entire episode centered around her, and it’s incredibly compelling to see how she’s adapted to a way of life entirely alien to her.  Though she’s still awkward, her clear strength and determination to forge this new existence are admirable and compelling. Not to get on my high horse here, but so often anime resorts to making females trophies or excuses for the hero to come dashing in on a white stallion. Here Morgiana faces up to her problems and solves them through her own force of will.  That’s not to say she’s flawless – what’s interesting are characters who make mistakes but then take the responsibility of fixing them. The scene where she’s thrown into the cage with the little girl is a powerful example of this – though Morgiana is brusque and cold at first, she realises what she’s done wrong and instead offers the child the sort of comfort she never had in the same situation.  She overcomes her own self doubt and fear (with the help of a wonderful reappearance from Golgas who delivers a kickass speech) to free herself and change what she might have thought was an inevitable fate. And then she beats the crap out of a bunch of saber-tooth tigers. Fucking awesome.

And then there were two.

Throughout its run to date, Magi has emphasised the importance of standing together as one, and that’s a theme which reappears in this episode in multiple different ways. Though Morgiana’s friends don’t have the time to be well defined, their determination and affection clearly speaks of their close friendship with her, and far from doing the easy thing of casting the caravan leader as a miserly old curmudgeon getting in their way, the show spins it 180 and instead makes him fully complicit in their awesome rescue scheme. Aladdin’s reappearance is another nice nod to the idea of bonds connecting people, and it’s to the show’s enormous credit that they don’t use him as a deus ex machina, instead letting Morgiana fight her own fight and only revealing his presence once the battle is essentially over. It’s a clever and subtle way to bring the two back together and Aladdin’s role in Leila’s backstory adds another touch to his mystique as a force which connects people’s fates together, linking him further to the concept of the Rukh. It’s the best kind of moral message – one which isn’t slapped in your face, but is there if you look for it, worked cleverly into the narrative in multiple places and adding depth to the characters and the world.

In case you hadn’t already worked it out, I thought this episode was an absolute masterpiece, and the best we’ve seen yet from Magi. The show has shown exceptional quality in the way it’s balanced the magical and realistic aspects of its premise and of the darker (seriously, he’s going to feed that girl to hyenas!) and lighter elements that make it up, while never forgetting to keep the focus on characters we’re rapidly growing to love. They were already high, but after this my expectations are through the roof, and as we meet the legendary Sinbad next week I’m counting on some swashbuckling adventure to be had.