is a Japanese romantic school comedy light novel series written by Toshihiko Tsukiji, illustrated by and serialized in Gekkan Dragon Magazine. The light novel was adapted into a manga illustrated by Miki Miyashita and later developed into a 24 episode anime series produced by J.C.Staff and broadcast by WOWOW in Japan.

The series is about the story of Kazuki Shikimori, a second year student of the prestigious magic school, Aoi Academy. Unlike ordinary people who can use magic fewer than a hundred times and several of his classmates, who can use magic several thousand times, Kazuki can only use his magic eight times before he turns to ash. His life changes when it is revealed that Kazuki is descended from a line of world-famous magicians and he has the potential to father the most powerful magician in the world. Suddenly three girls, Yuna Miyama, Kuriko Kazetsubaki and Rin Kamishiro, enter Kazuki's life in order to obtain his valuable genes.

A.D. Vision (ADV) acquired the English language distribution rights of the anime series in March 2004 and released it under its ADV Films division. Later the same year, ADV acquired the English language rights to the manga, which is released under the ADV Manga division.

Plot

Maburaho is set in a world where every character has the ability to use magic, however everyone's magic is not equal. Each person in the story has a different degree of magic and a set number of times that they can use their magic. The average person is able to use magic fewer than a hundred times, however some people are able to use magic several thousand times. Because of this, a person's social standing is determined by the number of times that he or she can perform magic. If someone uses up all of their magic, their body turns to ash and is scattered into the winds.

The series first introduces us to Kazuki Shikimori, a second year student from an elite magic school, Aoi Academy. However, unlike his classmates, Kazuki can only use his magic eight times before he turns to dust. As a result, he is at the bottom of the school's social pecking order. However things change one day when Yuna Miyama shows up in his dorm room and declares that she is his wife. Moments later, Kuriko Kazetsubaki and Rin Kamishiro appear at Kazuki's dorm, the former in order to obtain his genes and the latter to kill him to escape her obligation to marry him. Kazuki learns that he is a descendant of most of the world's greatest magicians from both the eastern and western worlds. Even though he has a feeble spell count, his offspring has the potential of becoming a powerful magician.

Despite his weak spell count, each spell he performs is treated as an epic event. Kazuki's magic is referred to as the most powerful magic in the world able to achieve miracles. Due to Kazuki's kindness, his spell count begins to drop as he uses his magic on behalf of each girl. First by making it snow in the middle of summer to cheer up Yuna. Second by pulling Yuna out of a vortex that also merges the boy's and girl's dorms together. Kazuki uses his magic again to destroy two Behemoths in order to save Kuriko, who was unable to defeat them. And then, Kazuki reverses time to save Rin's homemade box lunch. He also uses it to save his childhood friend Chihaya Yamase after a monster summoned by Kazuki's classmates appeared at the school festival. Not long after, Yuna accidentally releases an incurable retrovirus on herself which also creates a doppelganger of her with the opposite of all her qualities (ex. the real Yuna loves Kazuki, the clone wants to kill him). Kazuki uses his sixth spell to obliterate the clone. Finally, Kazuki uses his last two charges in order to save Yuna's life from the virus.

Each event leaves an impression on the girls and they attempt to keep Kazuki from using any more of his magic and eventually search for ways to increase his spell count. However, their attempts fail when halfway through the series Kazuki uses the last of his magic to save Yuna from the magical retrovirus. However, while Kazuki turned to ash and the ashes scattered, his ghost remains.

At this point in the story, Shino Akai appears in order to capture Kazuki and add him to her ghost collection. The girls try to protect Kazuki from Shino and eventually learn that Kazuki's ashes had been scattered into each of their own hearts. But before Kazuki's ashes were completely returned to him, Shino informs Rin and later the rest of the girls that this is not the first time someone's ashes have been scattered and later restored. However, when Kazuki's ashes are returned to him and his body restored, he will lose all of his memories. Knowing this, the girls still return Kazuki's ashes to him. At the very end of the anime series, it is shown that instead of losing his memories as a side effect of restoring his body, Kazuki has now split into ten different bodies.

In the novel, the side effect of Kazuki's restoration was gaining a special magical body that can cause disaster to the whole world if he lets out his magic powers. Another side effect of Kazuki's restoration is the overflowing of his magical powers every now and then causing minor mishaps and sometimes great chaos.

Characters

right|thumb|250px|From left to right: Rin Kamishiro, Kazuki Shikimori, Yuna Miyama, and Kuriko Kazetsubaki

Primary characters

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: The male protagonist, Kazuki, is a second year student from an elite magic school, Aoi Academy, with serious social problems, and because he has a low spell count of only eight spells, most of the other students, especially the girls, would not notice him. At the beginning of his second year it is revealed that he is descended from not only the most powerful of eastern mages, but the most powerful of western mages. Having both powerful bloodlines fused into one body means that despite his low spell count, he is capable of wielding nearly omnipotent power. He is therefore the most powerful character in the series. He is shown to have feelings for Yuna as her kiss was the one to bring him back to his human form.

: Overall, Kazuki is a good person and helps others by using his magic, even when that means that he runs the risk of turning into ash. His selflessness and kindness eventually wins over the hearts of Rin and Kuriko. He is at times indecisive and not very courageous, but he prevalently shows his honest nature and his sense of doing the right thing.

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: Yuna, the typical harem anime "housewife", transfers to Aoi Academy to become Kazuki's wife and even first introduced herself as "Yuna Shikimori" to the rest of Kazuki's class. Yuna is the only one who actually cares for Kazuki from the very beginning instead of just being interested in his genes. As the series progress, Yuna becomes extremely possessive of Kazuki and becomes very jealous when other girls show any kind of interests in him. Even later on the hair sticking out of her head acts as a locator to be able to find Kazuki.

: Using flashbacks, it is explained that Yuna and Kazuki first met each other when they were still children. Yuna was crying because she was about to move away, but after hearing Kazuki introduce himself as the greatest magician in the world, she begged him to use his magic so that she and her parents would not have to move. Instead, she settles on having him make it snow on a warm summer's day with a promise to become Kazuki's bride if he can do it.

: Tsukiji states in an interview in Newtype USA that Yuna was the first character that "popped" into his head, so he created the two other characters to be different from her.

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Novel characters

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: Kentaro first appears in The Volume of Revival – Part 2 (South East). He is Yuna's father and an archeologist. However, the artifacts he uncovered end up being sold in the black market. Kentaro met his wife, Yukari, in Turkey where they fell in love at first sight and got married. But according to Kentaro, it seemed more like he had been forced in marriage.

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: First appearing in The Volume of Revival – Part 6 (North West), Yukari is Yuna's mother who works as a broker in Italy. The first impression Yukari gave out to Kazuki was that she is a beautiful traditional Japanese woman, but actually she was the one who had taught Yuna that it is bad to lose, which had led to Yuna's easily jealous character. Yukari had once chased Kentaro all over the world before finally cornering him at the summit of Kilimanjaro and forced him into agreement to marry her.

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: Debuting in the side story, The Volume of Maids, Liera is the captain from the Maid Organization, MMM (More and More Maids) fifth armored company (commonly known as "Housekeeper"). Liera is very calm and cool and a marvel at housework. From nursing to piloting of a fighter aircraft, she can do anything; but when things come to Kazuki, she loses her composure. Kazuki has been appointed to be her next master and because of that Liera had been trying her best. Because of her love for Kazuki, Liera tends to easily forget about the existence of Yuna.

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: Kamiyo is Chihaya's younger sister who makes her first appears in a side story in The Volume of Revival – Part 3 (South). Even though Kamiyo's magic and grades are above average, she was not accepted to Aoi Academy. Her ex-classmates state that she is cute enough to easily get herself a boyfriend. Kamiyo adores and idolizes her elder sister Chihaya. So when Kamiyo sees Chihaya in very depressed mood, Kamiyo decides to find out and fix the problem (Kazuki) for her older sister.

Development

Maburaho was Toshihiko Tsukiji's first attempt at writing a romantic school comedy. Tsukiji inspired to write Maburaho after losing a previous novel competition hosted by Gekkan Dragon Magazine, the Dragon Cup. Tsukiji won the competition and Maburaho received high acclaim from Gekkan Dragon readers. In an interview in Newtype USA, Tsukiji states, "I kept two key words in mind, two things that are common to every teenage boy—school and girls." Tsukiji wanted to create three characters that were different from each other in every way.

thumb|right|175px|Yuna Miyama introduces herself to the class as Yuna Shikimori.

Tsukiji originally conceived of ending the series after six installments with the death of Kazuki after using all of his magic, however the publisher asked him to extend the series. Instead of manipulating Kazuki's magic count, Tsukiji decided to continue the story with Kazuki as a ghost. "I figured it'd probably be most interesting if I made him a ghost," states Tsukiji.

When discussing the anime adaptation, Tsukiji states, "I was actually very inspired by a scene from Episode 1, the one where Yuna introduces herself." Tsukiji was amazed with how skillfully anime director Shinichiro Kimura and the voice actors were able to express each of the girls' personalities.

Media

Novels

The novel series Maburaho is written by Toshihiko Tsukiji and illustrated by Eiji Komatsu. The novel is serialized in Gekkan Dragon Magazine and 30 volumes of Maburaho have been published as of February 2011.

The anime series had adapted the storyline until "The Volume of Being a Spirit – Part 3".

Anime

In 2003, an anime series was produced by J.C.Staff and was broadcast on the Japanese network, WOWOW. Consisting of 24 episodes, the series first aired on October 14, 2003, with the episode "They Came..." and concluded on April 6, 2004, with the episode "It Was Over...".

On March 8, 2004, ADV Films announced that it had acquired the license to the animated series. "Maburaho feels like more of an unfinished prototype for the harem genre than an actual anime series", states Anime News Network critic, Carlo Santos. "The plot is there, but it lacks any defining elements besides the general theme of magic; the characters are there, but they don't have any particular traits apart from being, well, the one loser guy and the cookie-cutter hot girls chasing after him." Santos goes on to state. Chris Beveridge, critic for AnimeOnDVD, comments, "Maburaho has some cute quirks to it, very nice character designs and it's a show that actually took a risk midway through the series by changing the nature of the lead character." However Beveridge goes on to say, "While it has these good points, it didn't capitalize on them and instead worked hard towards keeping with a mediocre series of events and scripts. ... It's a by the book piece with some flashes of creativity."

Jason Thompson gave the manga series a half-of-one-star review in his Manga: The Complete Guide, saying "The characters and situations are stock, the girls are identical except for their hair, and the fanservice is tame."

References

  • Official ADV Films Maburaho Website - via the Wayback Machine
  • Official Madman Entertainment Maburaho Website