Reviews for Rental Magica

Rental Magica is a bit of an odd anime. It's mainly a series of one shot episodes relating the exploits of Iba Itsuki, the 2nd president of Astral, and his various employees as they combat evil spirits, demons, rogue mages, magical pollution, etc. What makes the show a bit odd is the fact that it initially can't decide if it wants to be a combat anime, or a highschool romance, a purely supernatural thriller, or a comedy. It literally has a bit of all those genres. Because of this, many people may be put off watching the show after a few episodes. Bear with itthough, as it does get progressively better.

The story in itself, as explained already, is mainly a series of one shot episodes. There is, however, an underlying story which is hinted at throughout most of the series, and becomes clearer towards the end (which is why I said bear with it).

The art and animation in the show is generally quite good. The characters and backgrounds are generally very well done, and the majority of spirits/demons/etc, are very well depicted. The combat scenes are very well animated and should satisfy most people.

The sound is also well done. The opening theme is a catchy J-rock song which has become a favourite of mine (both in japanese and english). The sound effects and atmospheric music are generally good throughout the series.

The characters are reasonably well realised. The characters of Itsuki, Honami and Adelicia are generally quite good, and an effort has been made to focus on specific characters in several episodes scattered throughout the series. This helps to round out the characters afair amount, but otherwise there is no real effort to develop the characters more - but then again, this type of anime doesn't really need character development.

I'm a bit of a fan of episodic animes (Mushi-shi, Aria, Mokke, Ghost Hunt, to name a few), so watching Rental Magica was an enjoyable experience for me as I didn't expect any distinct plot to appear. I also liked the fact that this show highlights one thing that is commonly left out of other "magic" based shows - the rules.

I'll explain. Astral is an organisation made up of practitioners of various forms of magic (Celtic Witchcraft, Shinto, Onmyoudou, etc - they even have a ghost working for them). Astral isn't the only magical organisation though, as there are numerous others (Goetia - the descendents of Solomon, is the most notable). All of these organisations are governed by a mysterious organisation simply called "The Association", who enforce the rules regarding the use of magic. Certain acts are considered taboo, and the show covers some of these very well.

The other side of the "rules" coin are the rules governing a particular form of magic. The show very clearly highlights the differences in the various forms of magic used, and also covers some of the dangers of misuse or breaking one of the taboos. This is what really sets the show apart, as it is one of the few shows that covers the technical side of magic, and it covers it quite well. The creators of the show went to a lot of effort researching the various forms of magic in an effort to make the various rituals as accurate as they could, and for me at least, the effort paid off.

The only thing I didn't like about the show was the character of Itsuki Iba, as I found him to be a bit too shy/reticent/cowardly/etc. This is supposedly balanced by his alter ego (when he removes his eyepatch), but initially the difference didn't sit well with me as I kept wanting to punch him in the face (I should point out that he does improve later in the series though).

This isn't a straightforward combat anime. Nor is it a truly supernatural thriller. It most definitely is not a horror, although some of the uses of magic in the show can be called horrific. It's a complicated mixture of several genres which may, or may not, sit well with most people, depending on your preference.

If you like coherent, sensible storylines with good plot and character development then you may not enjoy this (doesn't hurt to give it a try though). If you're after thrills, action, chases, etc, then you may not enjoy this either.

If you're after an enjoyable anime that isn't too serious, and is sometimes a bit tongue-in-cheek with it's humour, then you may actually like this show.

I can think of worse ways to spend half an hour.

Since I'm almost done with the series (just waiting on Eclipse for the last episode), I thought I'd write my take on the whole thing. Story: What story? While we end up seeing background story for all of the characters, the feel of it all remains the same. The over-all driving plot point is a bit thin, and by the end, I found myself wishing there had been more. Art: The animation is great. There are a few jerky moments - most noticeable when Itsuki starts using martial arts - but the majority is clean. Sound: I love the opening theme to this. Otherwise, I hardly noticedthe music at all. It fades into the background as the action progresses. Could be better, could be worse.

Character: One-dimensional cardboard cut-outs, propped up and made to look cute. No, really. The only thing distinguishing them all is the system of magic they use - which stays true to the actual tradition it was based on. Otherwise, you could super-impose some of them over each other and not notice a difference.

Enjoyment: Despite the lack of certain factors, I still found myself enjoying it. It's light-hearted, and where it's not, it tries to be endearing. The whole thing is meant to be taken with a spoonful of sugar, and is best served with a warm cup of tea.

Overall: It's saved from a mere "Good" by its replay value. It's so off-the-cuff and relaxing that you could throw this in, sit back, and relax the day away to it. In fact, I did. Twice.

This show's story makes no sense and is boring. The art is typical and mundane. The sound is fine but the opening and ending are typical Anime junk. The characters don't stand out and are average. The show is one of the thousands of Harems with average video quality, stereotypical characters, lame plot twists, and cheesy production values. Overall, I had to drop this series because it was so unpleasant to watch. If you're really into Harry Potter, then I guess you could love this series though.

Although this was a great series, there is much to criticize about. For one, the chief character, Itsuki, does nominal developing, and is not once thought of as “Most Powerful” as you would anticipate from other series’. Instead, the series relies on the supporting characters for that feeling of triumph over the opponent. Also, the series talks much about the preceding generation of Astral mages, but not once decides to go into detail about it, which is not a good plot hole in my outlook. On top of that, it takes about half of the entire series to start getting the true experience ofthe story. Upon the many other things I can nitpick, my very last complaint would have to be the fact that… we didn’t learn there were any “normal” people on the entire planet until very late in the series.

This series is great, and should definitely be watched for the sake of the last episode – which is great for a finale.

.:Spoiler Warning:.

My favorite scene was the fake “Taking-off” of the eye-patch in the wedding episode. I was surprised there was nothing better than that.

Final Statement:

Definitely a series to watch if you have the patience to get over the "lack" in the beginning few episodes ~ much better than some of the other stuff out there.

If you did in fact find this review helpful, I do take value in my “Helpful” rating, so please take a moment of your time to tell me how you liked this review.

it's a cool magic anime.yeah and i loved it really.there is romance,magic,action,comedy The plot centers around the magician dispatch service and Mage's Society: Astral. The main protagonist of the story is Astral's second President: Itsuki Iba, who, while being young and inexperienced ironically isn't even a Mage. Central to the story are Astral's many adventures with magical spirits and creatures, competing with rival company Goetia, rogue members, taboos and the Dark Magician's Society: Ophion, all while trying to complete enough jobs to pay the bills and fill The Association's quota and evade abolition. Each story arc is written as an incident in which the Astralmembers and their associates are involved.

story: cool 10

art: cool 10

sound: so so 9

character: great

enjoyment: 10

overall: 10

OK, so what is Rental Magica. A company that rents you magicians if you need them. It tries to follow Ghost Hunt. Well how does it compare to it, don't do or else you'll just feel terrible. The main character Itsuki Iba inherits the Rental Magica after his father disappears. Now as any story would have, there is a girl with past connected to him and of course likes him, there is another girl who likes him. All different magic concepts and mythologies are randomly thrown in between. Nothing is properly explained. They just randomly throw in magic terms, rituals; try to compare different magic andwhat not. Which is more powerful? Celtic Magic (Druids and stuff, like in Asterix and Obelix) or Solomon Magic (Hebrew). Now throw in a random sample of Buddhism, Shinto, Chinese and every crap.

Now coming to the story, it’s actually a good story, but presented pathetically and nothing is explained. The art could have been a lot better considering when it was made. Sound is pathetic. When the hero (a quite crappy sissy hero) reveals his power a crappy music comes. Do you remember the old Sega game console sounds when people were mad about 2D games. A similar music plays "tu ru du ru" and then another lame music plays afterwards. Suddenly the hero who was more like "Don't come near me or my pants will get wet" becomes some God of War. Its quite remarkably stupid. They did a very good job at it. Honestly if presented nicely and a explained a bit more and reduced the number of magic concepts introduced (Its should be an anime to enjoy, not to throw any random magic concepts and you don't understand and then spend an hour searching and trying to understand what that 20 minute episode meant). Character line story is good though it could have done a lot better.

On a whole I give it 6.

Such a disappointment. But truth to be told, this is as much a disappointment as this anime had potential, a real potential. The story is enticing, with a carefully crafted scenario toward magic that gives something almost new to consider. Unfortunately, the anime in its whole is lacking in its execution : the characters are undevelopped (quite boring, in fact), the art is just average but the worst of it comes with the rhythm : This anime is absolutely unable to reach a peak, or reaching a climax for the most spectacular scenes and situations that its story provides, which crush every bit of excitementthat was born from it. And that makes each episodes fall flat, every time.

Such a disappointment, really. To be fair, if you have nothing more exciting to watch lately, maybe you should give Rental Magic a chance, but I still think this anime should have a modern remake, as long as it could grant this anime the heights that it honestly deserves.

This anime takes a lot of risks by relying so heavily on exposition. It has such a rich index of lore and backstory that it ends up having to explain so many aspects in such a short time that it doesn't really do a great job of explaining them all. For example, one of my biggest questions was "does the number of legions a Solomon demon rules an indicator of how strong it is?" Or even "what's the difference between Glam Sight and Glam Sight +" (you know what I mean in EP 23.) The design on the magics and especially the Solomon demonsis PHENOMENAL, it felt all very real and easy to lower your veil of disbelief. The depth of the creative lore of this story really managed to impress me and I cannot emphasize just how much this pays off Narrative-wise.

Tldr: Great worldbuilding, phenomenal art design,

lacking in animation quality and the characters themselves can be frustrating due to their one-sided nature and their lack of complexity.

I liked this anime, it had elements of magic in it (a lot of them actually) but you understood what everyone’s function was and what their tools were. Mainly a comedy, but with light romance, Rental Magica uses witches, priests, demons, sprits and ghosts in really dark situations. Itsuki is the main character and as such he’s everything you love in your hero. He’s not as skilled as the other characters but he’s cute, kind hearted, accepts others who are different, hardworking, and has no idea that he’s in the middle of a harem. Lol. I didn’t like how the first 7 episodes seemed out oforder I wondered if maybe where I was watching them if they were. Some of the episodes would have made much more sense if placed elsewhere in the series. After around episode 10 it seemed as if the story became more conjunct and seemed to flow a lot better. As far as the story goes I feel that it was much more unique than some of the other magic animes I have seen- it had a sufficient amount of action, comedy, and suspense.

I really liked how the characters were drawn and . I like how there is always a happy ending for each episode but I didn’t like how the actual ending of the series went. I would love to have a sequel and feel some resolution from the story overall.

Now this anime is a very interesting one. I have a lot to say about this anime and I'm having a hard time deciding where to begin. Well it seems only fitting to start at the one thing that makes this anime stand out for me above all animes in its category, the magic. Generally anime magic is much like, well anything else animes use, as powerful and versatile as the writers want it to be. However this anime has the best magic in any anime I've ever seen. The magic just seems so real, the way they use it the way they talk about it,even just how each magic seems to have its own set of rules and limitations. Now in you may be thinking that the magic in this can't compare to the magic in say Fairy Tail. However, while it certainly does have a significantly larger stock of both magic and magic users, I often found myself feeling like the creators of Fairy Tail to be using "magic" in place of the word "power." In Rental Magica, the magica is much more defined, from beginning to end, and there's never a moment where you think, "why didn't he do that earlier?" or "if she could do that all along why'd they have trouble with the cannon fodder from earlier?" But I digress.

Next is the main character. For me this is the sort of main character I love, he's intelligent (mostly) friendly, and wants to be helpful, as well as having the power to basically be the strongest member of the group (but as to not spoil anything I won't go into detail). The people around him all can more than fend for themselves but he often finds himself feeling like he's relying on them to save him.

This anime has a lot to offer and is something that i feel like everyone should give a chance. its a great anime that I can watch a dozen times, that's why its my fourth favorite anime.

Reason for watching: Thought it had a good premise for occult themed story lines, base on its synopsis. TL;DR: I thought wrong. The story is shallow and messy, with weak animation for its battle scenes, and the characters are as flat as a deflated balloon. Story The story is so incoherent. That's the only way I can describe it. I have come across animes with messy, borderline incoherent story-telling. But this is on another level, not only is the story-telling rocky, the concept on a whole is not even clear. The episodes were originally aired in a non-linear pattern, where the First episode is the Sixth in chronologicalorder. And whichever way you choose to watch it, whether is using the chronological episode numbers, or the broadcasted jumbled pattern, both ways don't make the show any better. Maybe the novel tells the story better, but the anime really did not tell any sort of story. The different magics weren't explained, the state/ rules of the world weren't properly established, the storylines were all vague. The romance genre in here is at best, surface value, the storylines on the romance element were just there as a convenient way for the characters to interact with each other to increase the dynamics between them, there is no real substance in their interactions. The "mystery" element is just a poor by-product of not having the characters' backstory smoothly relate to the current events, and not having establish the characters' power/magic/capabilities and throwing them straight into battles with suspense music. The events that happens in the anime just seemed to happen with no reasonable cause. This makes the story very shallow. There is potential in the story, but the anime really disappoint in not bringing out even the bare minimum.

Art

The character designs are interesting and very fitting to their personas. Basically the art quality and design is not bad in this anime, including the backgrounds, there is nothing much to dislike. But the animation of the battle scenes really lowered the overall art score for me. For a show that is basically based on battle scenarios to move the plot and grow the characters, the battle scenes really are too weak. The movements are not smooth, the crossfires are underwhelmingly portrayed (is like they are depending only on the sound effects to bring about the intensity of the fights), and the characters are seemingly just standing still when the scenes focus on them.

Sound

The sound score is highest as I am also acknowledging the VAs work. The sound effect is above average. While the opening and ending themes are average at best.

Character

The characters are like empty Kinder Bueno Surprise Egg chocolate. You will expect some sort of surprise, whether is good or bad, but turns out, is empty. The characters started out with very vague personas, and yet could still fail to develop into a reasonable, story contributing character. The growth of the characters are forced, and more dialogue based than actions. And even after such forced development, the story doesn't use them effectively, is like a mental note to the audience that the characters have changed, but the changed characters won't be acting any different from before their changed. The character development is so superficial, is insulting.

I honestly can say a lot more on how disappointing the characters are, but I shall stop, for reasons like, I am tired. I will at least have to say that, the characters really had way more potential than the story itself.

Rental Magica is a hard series to review and rate because, for the most part, it's a good series, but one beset by baffling creative decisions that may or may not affect your enjoyment of the series. It hits differently for different people, so it's hard to give it an unqualified recommendation in light of that, but it's not so deeply flawed that its various issues are going to be universally hated either. The series is at its strongest when it decides to just be a straightforward action story. The action is well-animated (if you can find a version with decent video quality in 2022), themonsters are well-designed and the battles have a good sense of natural progression, where they deal with larger and larger threats over time, using their experience from previous fights to overcome them. They also do a good job of handling the power of our main protagonist, Itsuki. In a lesser series, he would be ridiculously overpowered and his near-invincibility would suck all the drama out of the big action setpieces, but they do an effective job of placing limits on him to preserve that sense of tension without making it feel like that's what they're doing.

Unfortunately, Itsuki's power is pretty cringey (he takes off his chuuni eyepatch and can instantly see the exact way to defeat any enemy, and issues commands to his team in a very deep voice that contrasts hilariously with his usual Whiny Nerd speaking voice), but that's anime for you. The larger problem though is that it makes for not-very-compelling action once he gets involved. Seeing Honami throwing mistletoe darts and Nekoyashiki using his always-entertaining Cat Magic is fun, but it becomes substantially less fun when it's preceded by a guy doing a bad Lelouch impersonation and reciting the exact list of actions he wants them to take. Hearing a sequence of commands like "Honami, fire your mistletoe 44 degrees to the right and 12 degrees up" rattled off one after another feels like reading off of a spreadsheet or something, which is not the way you want your action scenes to climax.

When it's not building towards an action scene, things become even more hit-or-miss. The characters are mostly pretty good, and I like all of them for different reasons in isolation, but the romcom antics are frequently exasperating. The female leads, Honami and Adelicia, are the primary culprits here, their bickering over who Itsuki likes more is incredibly obnoxious every single time it comes up. It feels very undignified coming from two characters that mostly have their shit together in all other areas of life and doesn't really fit well with the fabric of the rest of the show. Itsuki himself is also too pathetic and cowardly at times. Those issues aside though, the characters are solid overall and the roster of Villains With Pretty Reasonable Motives is actually better than most shows of its type.

Finally, one last issue that bothered me was the lack of continuity. If you aren't already aware, the episodes of this series are intentionally out of order chronologically, and there is no apparent purpose to it other than a thinly-disguised attempt to capitalize on the success of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which aired the year before. Since most of the episodes are standalone rather than telling a single, serialized story throughout the season, you frequently don't even notice that it freely jumps up and down the timeline, and they make no effort to help the viewer orient themselves to "when" an episode is taking place. It's an aggravating way to watch, as character relationships feel like they've regressed or skipped steps from one episode to another, and sometimes characters simply aren't present because they haven't been introduced yet in the objective timeline. For example, Kuroha appears in episodes 1-3 as a regular member of Astral, while episode 4 resets everything to before she had joined and was just meeting Itsuki for the first time, which is about the most confusing way you could possibly present her introduction to the cast. Most of the time it isn't that big of a deal because the case-of-the-week structure often makes it irrelevant when a story is taking place in relation to others, but it's just weird and unnecessary.

Came after watching a reels on it. I gotta stop thinking that every mc with eye powers is like gojo. The amount of shit the main character is made of and comes out from his mouth is unbearable. FUKIN good for nothing and makes every job hard for other characters. Everything would have gone smooth if the mc didn't existed. The mage girl is alone enough lol. The anime storytelling is fuked up.Nothing is explained well. just don't watch it unless you want to see a bland mc with no powers but always says "he will save every girl 🤡". Lol there's nothing to talk about moreso added this

Due to his father's disappearance, Itsuki Iba has to take over the family business: a magician dispatch service. Their family employs countless magicians and other supernatural beings in order to send them out to help those who need magical assistance. As a leader, Itsuki now has to be tough, commanding, and reliable, but there's one problem, he's a coward. Also, in order to run a successful business, he must connect with his employees, which is more difficult than it seems due to his personality. But not only does he have to deal with his own employees, he also has to deal with those who threaten the family business.