Magical Sempai Episode 3

Welcome, one and all, to my continuing weekly episode review for the ecchi comedy series Magical Sempai, aka Tejina Senpai. After a really fun episode last week, this one was a little bit of a disappointment for me. It only really did one thing that I hated, and it got that out of the way in the first skit, but the rest wasn’t as consistent as I’d like. Let’s talk about what happened.

Sempai’s Discomfort

 

This was quite poor. We’re on the road to the Magic Club becoming an officially sanctioned club, thanks to Assistant’s homeroom teacher taking the application. Finding out that said teacher is Sempai’s big sister was also fine. The problem was that it all lapsed into a theme that I wasn’t fond of. You see, the homeroom teacher appears to be obsessed with Sempai’s boobs. She not only gropes them but draws them on a card during a magic trick demonstration. I’d have been more forgiving of the double-entendre line ‘you were always playing with all sorts of rods and balls in your room’ were it the only inappropriate for siblings part in the scene. As it is though, it wasn’t just Sempai suffering with discomfort here, as this brand of lewd really isn’t for me.

Pop Quiz Sempai

 

This was an improvement over the last scene. The basic idea was that Sempai sprang a pop quiz on Assistant with the intent to criticize everything she could in order to maintain her superiority. Assistant figured that out very quickly, but still took it all very seriously. When they traded places, he noticed that Sempai’s skirt was unzipped and he could see her flower print panties. Rather than just tell her, he tried to be subtle, and that all led to the cards Sempai was using for her trick going flying. She realizes what he meant later on while sat on the toilet. I must admit, this did make me laugh, if for no other reason than the shenanigans resulted in Sempai botching a trick that she’d actually managed to get right.

Conquering Sempai

 

Sempai has stage fright. That was kinda alluded to in the first scene when she said she’s nervous around the teachers. Of course, the power of the internet has a solution (or a hundred) though. As you would expect, they’re far from successful, thanks in a big way to Sempai’s ability to take things to extremes. Drinking water? She’ll take the whole bottle. Autogenic training? She’ll fall asleep. In the end, she decides to go with distracting herself and suggests that Assistant tickle her sides while she performs. Because that’s logical right? Now, Assistant is embarrassed by this because he’s a young lad and she’s an *ahem* ample sized, upperclassman. When he stalls, Sempai says he’s useless and he unleashes a tickle frenzy. I’ve got to say, I’m impressed. How she hid so many things under cape is beyond me.

Kimono Sempai

 

Okay, this one was really funny. Sempai is in a kimono because she wants to perform some traditional Japanese sleight of hand called Wazuma. The three tricks are: 1) using a paper fan to make paper butterflies dance in the air, 2) setting fire to paper udon, turning it into real udon that can be sued in soup, and 3) making water spout out of unexpected places. This was a wonderful bout of escalating errors. After believing herself to be a god-tier teacher – assistant performed the paper butterfly trick far better than her – Sempai sets to work on setting fire to the paper udon. She burns her hand, sets fire to the paper butterflies, and the ensuing flames set off the fire alarm and cause water to rain down on her. This was all good-natured fun. I wasn’t aware of the term Wazuma either so that was a nice learning experience.

Sempai Off Campus

 

The fire resulted in them being kicked out of the classroom, so Sempai decides to do some magic outside school. When Assistant points out that she doesn’t have her tools with her, she comes up with a cunning plan: catch a local pigeon. The direct approach results in Sempai being attacked by all three birds that are present. That’s okay though because, having been the best climber in her class since elementary school, she can just steal the eggs from their nest. Or, you know, get attacked in a tree. The daftness of this was a lot of fun. When the birds pooped on her head at the end though? We all know what that was meant to look like.

 

Overall, this wasn’t as strong as last week for me. Bar the stuff with Sempai’s big sister, it wasn’t particularly bad, just not as outright funny. That’s fine though. Having seen that the show can be a lot of fun, I’m sticking with it for now. If nothing else, it’s an anime that’s perfectly capable of making me laugh, even if not consistently.

So, those were my thoughts. But what about yourselves? Did you enjoy these episodes? Do you agree or disagree with any of my observations? Let me know in the comments below.

 

Previous Episodes

Magical Sempai Episode 1

Magical Sempai Episode 2