Magical Canan

Genre: Adventure/Fantasy
Format: 12 Episodes
Allegiance: AIC
Director: Abe Masashi
Vintage: 2005
Intelligence Agency Report by: Lady Sage
Chihaya is an ordinary schoolgirl. She goes to school, spends time with her friends, and works in her mother’s restaurant after school. That is, until one day she rescues a cute creature at her school. This creature, it turns out, hails from the land of Evergreen, and has come to Earth to gather the magical Seeds that transform humans into monsters. He recruits Chihaya for this duty – now she must become the magical girl Carmine and fight Seeded humans, all while hiding Natsuki and maintaining the appearance of a normal life.

Field Agent Report by: Lady Sage
Plot
Characters
Impact
Visual
Audio
4.00
3.25
4.25
7.00
6.00
Overall 4.75
(not an average)

Sometimes I swear there is a book out there that lists all the conventions of the mahou shoujo genre. Now, wise creators would use it as a guide what to avoid, lest they risk being cliché. However, the creators of Magical Canan looked at it and said, “What a lot of good ideas for us to use in our series!”

What we have here is nothing but a collection of every element that has become standard for magical girl series. There is the wise advisor who is also the cute (and marketable) mascot, a contentious rival, and a nudie transformation sequence that includes (I kid you not) bigger breasts and a perkier butt. There were a few attempts at plot twists, but even those are so overdone it’s possible to predict them from the very outset.

The animation is bright and clean-looking, if not the top TV animation available. However, the art and music are as stock as everything else. Chihaya and her best friend even look like Sakura and Tomoyo ofCardcaptor Sakura, and unlike in Puni Puni Poemi, this was not intended as a parody. The seiyuu often sound as though they’re struggling to put any believability into the insipid lines they’re spouting.

Magical Canan would make a great drinking game: see a cliché, take a drink. Just don’t play along with all 12 episodes at once, or you may risk alcohol poisoning.