Souls Rhapsody’s Weblog

Ever since the summer season’s Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora, I’ve been meaning to watch the first season.  I mean, to me, it doesn’t make sense to watch the second seaon without watching the first.  Of course, with that said, it means that I haven’t seen Natsu no Sora yet, but I was more than satisfied with the first one.

Quick Summary, then we get onto the good stuff.

The story is centered around Kikuchi Yume, a country girl who has travelled to Tokyo for a summer training session to become a certified mage.  The series just runs through her adventures (and misadventures) of her summer, and the trials she must face to become a certified mage.

In this world, people who are born with magical powers can apply to be certified mages.  All magical action must be authorized by a central committee, who accepts requests from normal everyday citizens.  Then, the request is processed and passed onto a certified mage, who is allowed to use ONE action to grant the request of the applicant/customer.

Yume follows her teacher, Oyamada Masami, as he tackles each case.  Along the way she meets several other trainees, such as Angela Brooks and Inoue Sakuya.  Through several adventures, she learns that magic can sometimes bring joy to the customers, but it can also bring sadness.  She comes to realize that magic is not almighty, and is often only a temporary solution to a problem.  For someone who has always believed that magic could only bring happiness, Yume begins to question the raison d’etre for her powers.  How will she overcome this emotional obstacle?  And… as a side story, Yume’s teacher is also faced with a similar problem from his past, where his powers had failed him.  How will the teacher-student pair overcome their trials?

Picture time:

Someday's Dreamers

Main Character: Kikuchi Yume

Yume's bipolar, antisocial, mentally unstable buddy Angela

A scene I thoroughly enjoyed XD pt1

Pt 2: Oyamada-sensei on the left, Kera on the right... inconsiderate guys...

Pt 3, male nipples ftw =_= Poor Yume

Pt 4 YES COVER THOSE NASTY THINGS!

Yume using her magic, she chose a dolphin as her familiar

Before I start critiquing, I must point out the fact that I am an absolute SUCKER for Slice of Life anime.  My favourite anime series of all time would probably be ARIA (though I can’t decide whether I liked the first or last season best… so let’s just take all three seasons into consideration).  For anyone who has seen ARIA, they would know that it may not be everyone’s cup of tea: a cup that’s full of slow, relaxing cheesiness topped with a bit of a moral lesson.

While Someday’s Dreamers (I apologizing for referring it to its English name… but Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto is a BIT too long to type) wasn’t exactly as good as ARIA, I would definitely recommend it for people who enjoy Slice of Life anime.  It had a nice pace, where they would generally finish each case in one or two episodes.  One could also see how Yume, the protagonist, grows and learns from each case.  I also liked how they used the cases in which Yume actually exercised her powers as a reflective piece, where she would first see only a very shallow aspect of the work she had done, only to come to realize that there was more to each situation than she had initially believed.  There were also some episodes where Yume would refuse to use her powers, believing that sometimes some things must be solved by oneself, or else everything would be meaningless.

In terms of seiyuu… I was shocked to find that Miyazaki Aoi voiced Yume.  I mean, I could tell that the person who was voicing Yume had a slightly different depiction of the character than most other seiyuu might’ve done (the way she spoke was a little stiffer, and the way she portrayed some emotions was a little strange), but I was still overjoyed that my favourite Hachi (from Nana) voiced such a nice character.  I loved Aoi’s portrayal of Hachi in the first Nana movie… she managed to make Hachi NOT UBERLY ANNOYING, which is an amazing feat.  She had something that the second Hachi couldn’t imitate.

Anyway, enough fapping about Aoi.  Masami-sensei was voiced by Suwabe Junichi, one of the male voices I actually RECOGNIZE (clearly, I’m a female seiyuu fan… I don’t recognize, at least, I don’t TRY to recognize, many of the male voices).  Watanabe Akeno voiced Angela (KYAAAA ANOTHER GREAT JOB), and Milinda voiced by Hiramatsu Akiko, who also voices Kobayakawa Miyuki from the You’re Under Arrest series.  A pretty awesome voice cast for a pretty awesome series.

If one is a fan of Slice of Life, this is a must watch.

P.S. The last ep was a bawl-fest… I used 4 tissues (full of tears and snot).