Rent A Magician - A recommendation

Rental Magica - Fall 2007 series.

Its funny really how some people find nothing to do on holidays. I for one find that I actually don't have enough time to do all the stuff I wanted to do during my holidays, and here I have annoying parents nagging me to get a job quickly. Hell no! I'm bumming for at least another week or two before I'll even think about applying for a job. Once stuck with one there will be no more holidays.

Never mind the annoying stuff, today I thought I'll do what I said I would do a few posts back. Recommend anime. More than anything else, (yes strangely even more than Gundam 00 and Shana II) Rental Magica has been the surprised package of the season for me.


In my own words, what is Rental Magica all about? Set in modern day Japan, magic seems to still be a secret society thing, but have also started offering their services to normal people in dealing with supernatural occurrences. These services are offered by companies employing mages, and everything is strictly scrutinized by a magic association.

Other than that, the magic association may post something along the lines of a contracted mission to deal with what is called "spell wave contamination" in the story. Basically its to get rid of high concentration of residual magic, which could spell all sorts of problem were it left alone.

That's the setting, but I realized I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk about its creation and stuff first. Originally a series of light novels (which are a lot more popular than heavy novels in recent years it seems) written by Sando Makoto. He's already written 11 books for this light novel series. I don't know about its popularity, but I for one would love to read the books if I could. I'm so going to start taking up Japanese classes once I can afford to.

Set in modern Japan, Iba Itsuki is the president of Astral, a Magician rental company. He takes over from his father, Iba Tsukasa, who disappeared mysteriously (though after a few episodes I have an inkling of what actually happened). Here's the problem, a magician has to face danger in the line of this particular business, but Itsuki is a coward, or perhaps coward is too harsh. Let's just say he's a little of a wuss. The other big problem is, the president of a Magician's company has no magic of his own. Oh the irony!!!

Now here's the cliche part. Like any other main lead, Itsuki has something that makes him stand out. He has the Glam Sight, a sort of mystic eyes. If you watched Tsukihime you'll know about them. Mystic eyes come in various forms, and they mostly require their owner to at least have some latent magic potential or a magic circuit in them. Some are permanently on, but some need to be switched on with a magic circuit. Anyway, Glam Sight is said to be able to perceive the nature of everything unusually impossible through any other means. But it puts a huge strain on the user and prolonged use is detrimental even to its user. Very much similar to Tohno Shiki's Mystic Eyes of Death Perception.

Oh yes, small trivia here. Itsuki is voiced by the same person who voiced Lelouch in Code Geass. Quite the difference huh? But you'll recognize it when he goes into "superpower" mode as I like to call it, for lack of a better word.


Glam Sight is permanently on however, most probably due to the unnatural manner that Itsuki obtained it so he has to wear an eye-patch over it to hide his eyes from other normal people. During an incident when he was a kid, a demon/spirit/whatever possessed and fused with Itsuki's eye, granting him Glam Sight.



His company is considered small, with only 4 employees. There's Honami Takase Ambler, actually his childhood friend who for some reason he has forgotten, most likely because of that incident. She's highly protective of him actually though she doesn't show it (typical tsundere). She's a Celtic magic user and rides a broom that somehow seems to be rocket powered. I'm not very familiar with Celtic myths and stuff, but when I hear Celtic I think druids, so Celtic magic probably has a lot to do with nature and healing. Honami is voiced by Ueda Kana, one of my favourite female seiyuus!


Nekoyashiki Ren, the only senior member of Astral, is an onmyodo. He's a cat lover that specializes in paper charms and shikigami spirits. The four cats that are always around him are his shikigami spirits named Seiryu, Byakko, Suzaku and Genbu respectively.



There's also the loli shinto miko (priestess), Katsuragi Mikan. She's an expert in shinto magic, specializing in purification rituals and erecting barriers. She's the youngest member of the company at 9 years old, is cute and clingy (towards Itsuki), and is voiced by Kugimiya Rie! Finally a role for her where she isn't a tsundere I suppose, there's still the loli part though.


Lastly, Kuroha Manami, who is also a ghost. But the funny thing is it seems normal people can also see her, though maybe its just a few people. She can use poltergeist, which is kinda like telekinesis, quite fitting if you consider that she's a ghost. XD Also it seems that she has amnesia, and can't remember anything about her former life other than her name.

Well I think there really isn't much else I can say about it. Watch it, and judge for yourself.

P.S: I found out today that you can't post this (<3) in a blog post due to the shitty blogger parser recognizing the syntax for who knows what f**king reason. Dealing with this kind of crap really pisses me off. Wonder if I should change to another blog host.