Recap

Aladdin and his crew are captured and taken before Mogamett. He does not punish them but instead gathers them alongside the other students to explain Magnostatdt’s reason for existing.

Zigg’s Thoughts

It’s another episode of two halves, a frustratingly common pattern in Magi in recent times. Another bad habit rears its head too, the of the long, talky information dump. Combined, these sins do a good job of sucking a lot of life out of the story. Which is a shame, because there’s some really interesting, profound plot development going on here, and great plot and character building. The presentation just makes it a touch less special.

Let’s concentrate on the good stuff first. Mogamett’s backstory may be built on the foundations of cliche, but it’s highly effective at making him appear more sympathetic. It also does a great job at making the conflict multi-layered. For Mogamett this is undoubtedly partially a personal vendetta, but the dialogue does a great job of building up why it’s also more than that. To Mogamett, his grudge has gone beyond a personal issue and instead become a crusade, a battle on behalf of all of his kindred spirits, to bring justice to them. In other words he thinks he’s the hero, which is exactly what all the best villains think.

Thing is, he’s not completely wrong – clearly the inhabitants of the kingdom he lived in were utter assholes – and that gives us a nice juicy moral dilemma to sink our teeth into. It’s easy to see how the students and even Aladdin would be swayed by such a powerful narrative and question their established beliefs. The moral conflict might have been more effective if we’d seen evidence of tension between magicians and non-magicians anywhere else in the story so far (basically all the magicians we’ve seen are main characters and therefore treated like kings) but it’s still a pretty good narrative spin. It’s also cool to see how magic has evolved and the status of magicians has changed, although the timeframe is a little unbelievable.

Unfortunately, the method of delivery leaves much to be desired. There’s simply no way to make a flashback voiceover that interesting, and so it proves here. For once I’d like to see a show go to the effort and tell backstory like this entirely in flashback, without the need for the omniscient narrator explaining everything. It’d be so much more involving and of the moment, It’d also be much harder to execute, and so we’re again stuck with someone basically reading the manga to us. Still, the ideas and story presented here were strong enough for the episode to overcome that hurdle, and definitely set us on an interesting path for the future. While I find it hard to believe Aladdin would turn his back on his friends and side with Magnostadt, even the prospect adds an interesting frission as we go forward.

Random Observations

• Ok, they play the ‘dead daughter’ card, but at least she actually gets to grow up here.
• The ending segment features hilarious soundtrack dissonance as the jaunty upbeat theme plays over an implied massacre. Why not just go silent?
• The animation really, really takes a hit in this episode. The same short of Aladdin frowning into the camera is used at least three times.