Recap: The Masked Man returns and curses Alibaba and Sinbad, forcing them to team up with Hakuryu and attempt to conquer a new dungeon.

Dragonzigg’s Thoughts: I mentioned last week that I was a little concerned that Magi wouldn’t have enough time to wrap up another plot arc before the end of the season, and it seems the showrunners shared my concerns, since this episode cranks. It’s almost too fast in fact, but it’s pleasing to see the show isn’t content to sit on its laurels as we approach the back end of the run and instead has decided to press on with some pretty major plot development.

The headlining event in this episode has of course to be the ‘return’ of the Masked Man and his subsequent poisoning of both Sinbad and Alibaba, although technically Alibaba was poisoned all along. I must admit at the time I didn’t think to connect the snake that emerged from the Masked Man’s skull and the snake that bit Alibaba, though I did think it was a little odd at the time that the latter event was so prominently featured. In any case, this adds another layer of intrigue to everything surrounding the character. At this point he’s obviously something beyond human, and his ability to command the rukh means the obvious assumption is that he’s a Magi. The way he’s acted towards and spoken of Judal and Aladdin though seems to indicate otherwise.  He speaks of ‘our father’ when addressing Sinbad and Alibaba but it’s seems pretty clear its not meant to be an indication of a familial relationship, but instead a referral to a more powerful leader, perhaps the head of Al-Thamen?  Regardless, with his partners-in-crime making their first appearance (one utterly spoiled by their presence alongside him in the credits) it seems the mysterious syndicate will continue to play a prominent role.

The other big development in this episode has to be the emergence of Hakuryu as some sort of god-mode perfect shonen protagonist.  He’s friendly, he’s brave, helps little girls in need, and is a damn fine cook. He’s so overwhelmingly positively portrayed in this episode, and the show goes so far out of  its ways to do so, that it stinks of a setup of some sort, especially considering the few glimpses we’ve seen of Hakuryu before now have indicated a cold, somewhat distant figure.  The reason behind his sudden impetus to destroy the Kou Empire is still not revealed, but what is intriguing is that he’s still currently without a Millenium Item Metal Vessel, refusing to accompany Judal to a dungeon. Since both Hakuei and Kougyoku already have one, we can only assume this is some sort of rite of passage for members of the royal family. Why Hakuryu won’t go through with it remains unknown for now, but it does indicate he’s not as tight with Judal as we might have thought.

Plot-wise, it’s super duper convenient that there’s a dungeon nearby that has the exact power to cure Sinbad and Alibaba’s affliction.  While it doesn’t break the story per se, it does stretch my suspension of disbelief to its absolute limit and I’d prefer the show not try to push its luck with such a contrived coincidence again any time soon. The implication that Sinbad could have escaped the curse but willingly submitted in order to motivate Alibaba also smacks of slightly dumb writing – Sinbad has an entire kingdom to be responsible for and it’s unlikely he’d gamble his very life just to give Alibaba an additional prod he likely doesn’t need, seeing as his life is on the line too.  Otherwise, the only extra thing I’ll mention is that the animation is alarmingly basic and inconsistent in this episode, with characters visibly shifting in style and look between shots and motion generally lacking (Alibaba’s training fight with Sharrkan is especially notable). It’s very clear that multiple different animation teams were involved here and I do hope this was just a one off to save budget for some upcoming scenes. Aside from that, I’m excited by a seeming return to Magi‘s pulpy, dungeon crawling earlier episodes. After some extended political to and fro, sometimes you just want to see your heroes mess some monsters up.

Random Observations

• Pisti gets to be the one of Sinbad’s generals who gets focus in this episode. Her taming of the sea serpent is rather adorable, her subsequent breast-induced angst rather less so. Also, there is literally no reason for her shirt to be cut like that except for gratuitous sideboob shots.
• Random island girl’s voice is so flat and her crisis so cliched that I couldn’t help be reminded of the infamous ‘Please save our village full of hot young girls!’ sequence from Gurren Lagann.
• Aladdin and Alibaba get their kit off for some fanservice in this episode. No matter how many times I see it, the fact that anime characters are drawn without nipples still looks super weird.
• Pisti also gets to be in the end credits this episode. With Ugo now out of the series, I like the habit they’ve adopted of putting the next episode preview directly into the credits.
• In the final shot of the end credits,we see a large number of figures on the ‘Kou’ side who we obviously haven’t met yet and presumably are the other princes and princesses. What’s intriguing though is that there are still two unidentified characters in the middle – the booted man opposite Judal and the barely seen long haired woman behind Aladdin, both of whom are shadowed. It’s previously been established there are four known Magi – could these be the other two?