Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic

[Lord Dalek]

Ladies and Gentlemen... the greatest shonen of the past five years.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Looks like someone saw my suggestion!   

I just started watching the show today, and I can certainly agree. It's the most well-paced, well-animated, and downright fun modern shonen anime I've watched in a good long while. LEAGUES better than Toeiko and Fanservice Fail in every way imaginable. It's odd that I haven't being seeing that many anime fans talk about it, especially since 4 episodes in I already like it better than Attack on Titan, though I guess it doesn't have the epicness that made that series such a hit worldwide. Either way, I'm sold on this show, and since I've heard it gets even better, I'm looking forward to catching up on it. If Toonami doesn't air this at some point, or chooses Valvrave over it...I'm gonna be pretty damn disappointed, to say the least.

[Lord Dalek]

Once you hit the Balbadd arc with Cassim and Judar, the show hits the gas and doesn't get off the pedal for nine episodes. Its fricken intense.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Sounds good! What ep does that arc start?

[Lord Dalek]

Sounds good! What ep does that arc start?

Episode 7.

[Spark Of Spirit]

The show sure does sound interesting. I'll definitely have to try to catch it sometime.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I just finished season 2, and I thought it was a huge step up from the first season. I thought season 1 was alright, but I honestly didn't see what the big deal was. It was a decent shounen, but didn't really stand out much. I think that season 2 improved by really fleshing out the world and its mythology, and it also brought the plot to a grander scale. The arc with the kingdom of magic (I dont feel like looking up the correct spelling for the name right now) which took up the second half of the season was particularly great. I could see myself ranking that within the top 50 shounen story arcs that I've seen. I do think that its a shame that the series took so long to get this good, though.

[LumRanmaYasha]

I think Magi is a really good battle shonen series. Certainly, I think it's the most ambitious currently running one in terms of the mythology it's set up and themes it's tried to explore. I was really into the series when I first started it, and though that opinion has kind of moderated now, I think that the Magnostadt arc is on a whole other level from what came before it (and is one of my favorite manga arcs), and I really look forward to where Ohtaka takes the story after the Alma Thorran arc (finally) ends.

[Lord Dalek]

Solomon has so far been the one arc that I have simply not enjoyed. Its probably because I can't pay myself to give a crap about Solomon and Sheba and the political infighting between them.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yah, as I said on another thread, I'm not a fan of long flashback arcs (Remembrance notwithstanding).

[Lord Dalek]

So the Alma Toran arc finally ended in the manga and as since it'll probably serve as one of the centerpieces of Season 3 of the anime when it returns from hiatus (fuck Seven Deadly Sins I WANT MY MAGI!!!), I will share my thoughts. Since I'm not sure if most of you are as caught up as I am, spoilers follow...

Spoiler

The Alma Toran/Solomon arc is kinda hard to evaluate since I went through a lot of moods in the six months since it began. Flashbacks can be interesting and cool if done well and not overstay their welcome, and while this flashback is incredibly well done, it also commits the sin of being incredibly long in the tooth. This was not helped by the series going on a couple of hiatuses, and a lot of draggy political wrangling, especially in the middle.

So what made Alma Toran interesting then? Well for one, the general unfamiliarity of it. At the start, the only character we know from the past is Ugo but he's clearly not the same big blue djinn we all know and love and is instead a kinda nerdy guy unsure of himself wearing a pair of cheap plastic glasses. The other Djinn are here too but we've barely met them for the most part so it matters not. Really this story is about four characters: Solomon, whom references have been thrown about to on occasion (most frequently in Magnoshutadt) but we're really meeting for the first time here; his childhood friend, lover, and future wife Sheba; the aforementioned Ugo, and Arba, who turns out to be a character we are VERY familiar with... Yup its Gyokuen, just before she went insane and became a mass murderer.

The other thing is the payoff. The last ten chapters of Alma Toran stand with the best of the first Balbadd and Magnoshutadt arcs gave us. Magi is always at its best when its showing us the outcome of things may be victorious but also colored by great cost. Nowhere is it more obvious than here where Solomon's triumph over his father in order to create a world of equality is ultimately destroyed by the rise of Al-Tharman and Alba's obsession with the wheel of fate. The final chapters are heartbreaking as Alba brutally kills Sheba only to be sealed away herself by the dying Solomon, but not before Sheba leaves Ugo with one more gift, the life of the one inside her.... No surprises here, its Aladdin, revealed to be the son of Solomon and not just some sort of vessel for his wisdom.

So Alma Toran will either make or break Magi next year. It had some problems in manga form, but I'm really looking forward to seeing what A-1 will do with it.

[close]

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The arc brought up intriguing concepts and helped flesh out and enrich the mythology of the Magi Universe. My problem was that it failed to make me care about any of the characters, hence I was bored throughout most of it. Like I said earlier on another thread, I think that this back-story would have worked much better if it were revealed in bits snd pieces throughout the main story-line, rather than being forced on us in one go.

[LumRanmaYasha]

So the Alma Toran arc finally ended in the manga and as since it'll probably serve as one of the centerpieces of Season 3 of the anime when it returns from hiatus (fuck Seven Deadly Sins I WANT MY MAGI!!!), I will share my thoughts. Since I'm not sure if most of you are as caught up as I am, spoilers follow...

Spoiler

The Alma Toran/Solomon arc is kinda hard to evaluate since I went through a lot of moods in the six months since it began. Flashbacks can be interesting and cool if done well and not overstay their welcome, and while this flashback is incredibly well done, it also commits the sin of being incredibly long in the tooth. This was not helped by the series going on a couple of hiatuses, and a lot of draggy political wrangling, especially in the middle.

So what made Alma Toran interesting then? Well for one, the general unfamiliarity of it. At the start, the only character we know from the past is Ugo but he's clearly not the same big blue djinn we all know and love and is instead a kinda nerdy guy unsure of himself wearing a pair of cheap plastic glasses. The other Djinn are here too but we've barely met them for the most part so it matters not. Really this story is about four characters: Solomon, whom references have been thrown about to on occasion (most frequently in Magnoshutadt) but we're really meeting for the first time here; his childhood friend, lover, and future wife Sheba; the aforementioned Ugo, and Arba, who turns out to be a character we are VERY familiar with... Yup its Gyokuen, just before she went insane and became a mass murderer.

The other thing is the payoff. The last ten chapters of Alma Toran stand with the best of the first Balbadd and Magnoshutadt arcs gave us. Magi is always at its best when its showing us the outcome of things may be victorious but also colored by great cost. Nowhere is it more obvious than here where Solomon's triumph over his father in order to create a world of equality is ultimately destroyed by the rise of Al-Tharman and Alba's obsession with the wheel of fate. The final chapters are heartbreaking as Alba brutally kills Sheba only to be sealed away herself by the dying Solomon, but not before Sheba leaves Ugo with one more gift, the life of the one inside her.... No surprises here, its Aladdin, revealed to be the son of Solomon and not just some sort of vessel for his wisdom.

So Alma Toran will either make or break Magi next year. It had some problems in manga form, but I'm really looking forward to seeing what A-1 will do with it.

[close]

Huh. With how annoyed you were that the arc was going on so long, I thought you felt as negatively about it as E-K does.

As I said before in the Currently Running Manga Discussion thread, I enjoyed the arc well enough. It had some ups and downs, but overall was an interesting look at how the world of Magi came to be, as well as the backstories of Ugo and Solomon, as well as Sheba, whose character arc I ended up liking a fair bit more than I thought I would. I'll agree with E-K that many of the characters where not as fleshed out as they should have been to be more compelling/interesting. Arba, in particular, I wish had a bit more depth to her, and overall came off a rather shallow, one-dimensional character in how she quickly and unhesitatingly turned on Solomon. That said, it didn't hurt my enjoyment of the arc significantly, but I feel it could have been a lot better in many aspects as well. It'll be interesting to see how the anime handles the arc, and if it fixes any of it's weaknesses.

[Lord Dalek]

Yeah it was pretty damn draggy for the most part but once Solomon killed David and the series finally got to Alma Toran, I actually liked it a lot more. In fact I'd say these last five or six chapters have been some of the finest Ootaka has produced for Magi, up there with Cassim and Titus' deaths.

Doesn't quite make up for the middle though, so... I wouldn't say its the best arc ever.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Personally I never really cared about Cassim that much. As for the best part of the series, I'm still going with the Magnostadt arc.