Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku Episode 5: New Character!

Now I feel bad about my accusations of Sister Nana last week. Her being a nun fits her so well because she is just so pure and cute!

And also very gullible. Also now that we have a canon lesbian couple, we should all be prepared for both of them to die. Because let’s be real here, the lesbian couple always dies unfortunately. It’s a sad fate. And aren’t they the cutest couple? Her prince is here with her, but can she really protect her from those trying to keep the game the way it is?

And that’s not to say that there aren’t HUGE death flags for La Pucelle/Sou-chan either because if there are any couples in this type of show, either one or both person are going to die. And I’m rooting for all four of them! Snow White, La Pucelle, Sister Nana, Winterprison, your love will save you!

Also, this is a dumb side note. I had wanted to look up what “la pucelle” meant when I first heard the name in the first episode but of course I never did. Currently in my Shakespeare class we’re reading the history plays and we’ve reached the first part of King Henry VI. Looking at the character list of the play, I found that Joan of Arc would be in it. Except, in the character list, Joan of Arc is listed as Joan La Pucelle. Once I started reading the play, I found te translation note that “la pucelle” means “the maid” or “the virgin”. Well, the fact that Sou-chan, a male knight disguising himself as a female (magical girl), took the name of Joan of Arc, a female knight who disguised herself as a man, is very clever! I’m sure the French call Joan of Arc by la pucelle, but that’s not a name most people in the United States know. So…yeah! I’m sorry if this was obvious and dumb, but I really didn’t know. I was screaming in my head in class when I saw the name in the book, haha;;;

So! Fav is a little demon that seems to be having fun with all of this. Sister Nana and Winterprison are meeting with the other girls to band together and fight this awful system, and Nana even went so far as to contact the Admins of their little magical girl network and to tell them of what was happening, but she was completely ignored. She turns to Magicaloid to help her out, but as we saw earlier in the episode, Sister Nana is completely gullible and gets easily taken advantage of by Magicaloid and gives her money for favors. This time she entrusted Magicaloid to negotiate with the Admins, but of course we know that’s not going to happen. And since Sister Nana is interfering with the game, she needs to be stopped. Cranberry takes on this job, but she’s mostly in it because she just wants a good fight, and she gets that from Winterprison, and she found her next opponent in La Pucelle.

It just makes me wonder. What exactly is the definition of a magical girl to Fav, or the admins, whoever decides which girls are qualified to become one? What are the traits they look for? What mental state, what morals, what dreams? Because each of these girls/women are so different. We have the sweet and pure magical girls that we all expect from Snow White and Sister Nana. But then we have cunning, mischievous, and borderline evil girls like Cranberry, Calamity Mary, and Magicaloid. What traits did Snow White have to become a magical girl, a girl who helps those in need, that matched with the traits of Calamity Mary, a woman who gains money from the types of “good deeds” she goes after. I see no pattern and it makes me wonder what the hell those in charge are thinking.

We clearly have two sides to this whole debacle. Those that are against the system, and those that are having fun with it. We see that Fav is annoyed at Nana for getting in the way of the game, disgusted that he would refer to this awful system as a simple game. Now I’m just so worried for Nana. Her power is that she can boost the power of someone else, specifically someone she loves, which is Winterprison. Seeing as how she’s a nun, with her very kind and pacifist ideology, this type of environment will not do her any good. And she won’t fight. She never will. Winterprison looks like the one that will handle all the combat, but that just leaves Nana wide open for an easy kill. And the fact that she’s willing to open her heart to anyone is another bothersome thing, as Nana is too trusting, and like with Magicaloid, she’ll be taken advantage of.

The title of this episode is New Character! but we didn’t get to see Alice until the very end, and only for maybe a minute or two. I don’t know what her fascination with the white magical girl is, but we’ll see soon enough.