Gushing over Magical Girls – 11 – Asserting Dominance

Having surprised Sister Gigant by revealing her three stars (along with most of the rest of her body), Leoparde proceeds to beat and bomb the shit out of her huge opponent in a rude profanity-laden assault.

The slime hearts are a nice touch

Even when Leoparde starts to cough up blood from overuse of her power, she’s revitalized by her boundless horniness and the promise of a hotel liason with her beloved Magia Baiser. She also uses her brain, creating cracks in the pavement beneath their battle that eventually swallow up Gigant and make her cry real tears of utter defeat.

Korisu has Lord’s slime monsters pent up in her dollhouse, but when she falls asleep, shes transforms out of her Enormita guise Matama and Nemo protect her, they’re soon surrounded. That’s when Tres Magia makes a stylish entrance, and because everyone is in street clothes they don’t recognize them as enemies. Sayo takes on the slime monsters herself and vaporizes them en masse with her nifty new powers.

Meanwhile at Macht Base, Utena is struggling in her battle with Lord Enorme, but due to lack of motivation and boredom with her schtick. Noting that Lord talks about world domination like a kid, she starts to visualize her as a little brat, and suddenly all her accumulated wounds are healed and she reveals a new, even gaudier form, with what looks like eight star tattoos on her face to Lord’s mere four.

By the time Matama and Nemo arrive with a still-tuckered-out Korisu and a heavily bandaged Kiwi, Utena has things well in hand. She turns Lord’s own slime monsters against her, uses them as restraints, then tears off Lord’s clothes starts giving her a spanking. It’s no longer a battle, it’s punishment for Lord’s misdeeds. Lord begs her former allies to help her, but they want no part of what this particularly unhinged version of Baiser is dishing out, thanks!

After sufficient humiliation has been doled out, Utena finally gets a tearful, blubbering apology from Lord Enorme, who seems to have been relieved of three of her four stars. Turns out Venalita let her borrow the other three all along unlike everyone else, who gets their power from within. But her use to Vena has come to an end, so he has Gigant, who was working for him all along, finish Lord off, which presumably means death.

All’s well that ends well. Kiwi is eager to get her hotel date with Utena started as soon as possible, despite being in no condition for any kind of physical exertion. She even looks Matama and Nemo’s way as if inviting them to get a room themselves; they respond by blushing in unison. Korisu clearly looks like she could nap for days.

As for Utena, Venalita makes her the new Supreme Commander of Enormita, and her response is very Utena-y. Apparently Lord Enorme going rogue was all part of Vena’s plan to make the other girls more powerful, and it appears to have succeeded. The question for the final two episodes of this bonkers show is where Utena and her friends go from here.

Gushing over Magical Girls – 08 – The Fault in Our Stars

Sayo owns up, at least partially, to her recent shortcomings as a member of Tres Magia. Without going into the sordid details, she tells Haruka and Kaoruko that she fought Baiser alone and was “totally dominated.” She never wants to feel that defeated again, so she asks them to help her train harder and become stronger.

Meanwhile, Utena, Kiwi, and Korisu are ordered to transform and report to Nacht Base at once, where they’re hastily introduced to the founding members of Enormita: Lord Enorme, Leberblume, Sister Gigant, and Loco Musica. They were just on a “Magical Girl Hunt”, and imagery suggests they are actually murdering girls—not what Utena signed up for … I-I mean, not what Utena was forced to sign up for!

Enorme believes they’re ready to conquer the world, which is at odds with Vena’s commitment to building up their numbers. Enorme decides to turn her back on Vena and Enormita and go it alone with her lieutenants. She then asks Sister Gigant to crush the newbies. She’s able to grow to super-huge size, breaking out of Korisu’s dollhouse.

Before Gigant can crush them between her boobs, Utena tells Kiwi to detonate all the explosives she’s got, then shields Kiwi from the blast at great personal bodily harm. The three and Vena escape the base, and Kiwi is beside herself with worry. But Utena simply starts laughing maniacally, declaring she doesn’t like this “Lord Squad” one bit, and she’ll see to it they’re all put down.

After excusing Kiwi and Korisu at the hospital where she’s healing up, Utena correctly deduces that Vena knew the Lord Squad would betray them. Utena also makes nice and sparkling clear that she won’t be allowing any further hunting of magical girls, which she believes to be treasures. It’s a passionate, fiery rant, beautifully delivered by Izumi Fuuka.

Loco Musica, not content to let the rookies off scot-free, asks Lord Enorme if she can go squash them like the weakling bugs they are. Enorme agrees, but warned Loco she won’t tolerate failure. When she calls the rookies out, Kiwi takes the bait, forcing Korisu to join the battle with her (and bail her out).

Both of them must then endure Loco’s absolutely dreadful singing voice (great work by the seiyu, who can probably sing for real), but with the power of teamwork, they’re able to use flash grenades to stun Loco and slip away. Kiwi and Korisu have a nice moment while hiding in the tree, as Kiwi apologizes for jumping into battle and breaking one of Korisu’s dolls.

Things do not go so nicely for Loco Musica. While she’s a deeply deluded and arrogant young woman who may well have murdered dozens of magical girls, I still don’t think she deserves the harsh punishment doled out by Lady Enorme.

Loco is made to strip, Enorme shoved the end of her crop into her mouth, and then she’s viciously whipped in a scene that frankly feels way too dark and serious for a silly ecchi anime. Maybe that’s on purpose: the kid gloves are coming off.

But the scene does establish one thing: Enorme rules with fear and pain. I wouldn’t be surprised if when she tightens her iron grip, her acolytes may just slip through her fingers, leaving her to contend with a seriously pissed Magia Baiser and her team all by her lonesome.