Magi: The Kingdom of Magic 03-07

Hakuryuu and his tentacle vine fetish

Thanks so much to anaaga for letting me tag this with her~. I just caught up with the manga and chapter 200 just about crushed my dreams (until I read to the very end …ahaha). But seriously, this story is amazing

No problem Kara, since I know you’re a big fan of Magi teheh. I was pretty excited for the Pirates Arc, since Hakuryuu is just… Broken here. Let’s see how broken he is now

Magical Weapons

The four bumped into some problem during their journey to the port. The thing is, it’s not just some problem. It’s the beginning of a serious problem that will involve a big war later on (hint hint). Anyhow, the problem started with the distribution of Magic Tools from Magnostadt. The question is, why would Magnostadt distribute those Magic Tools? They are clearly dangerous weapons that should not be distributed like that. What if it falls into the wrong hands? Wait, it already did, and it’s giving the four of them many problems. Just what in the world is Magnostadt planning? Maybe they want people to be dependent of Magic? Maybe they want to create a worl where magic is the only thing that can be used? Whatever Magnostadt is planning, it is definitely not something goo for the four of them and other countries. I just hope that Aladdin can stop whatever Magnostadt is planning in time.

Things Change

The four of them are friends. They’re still friends until now. The question is, are they friends only, or are they more than that? Though they are friends, the audience can see that something is changing among the four of them. Heck, it’s not even the four of them; it’s the relationship among the characters. Hakuryuu developed romatic feelings for Morgiana, and he confessed to her. Whether it’s only mere admiration mistaken as love, we don’t know because Hakuryuu already confessed to Morgiana. Morgiana can only drop her jaw because this is her first romantic experience… Or is it? Morgiana has been blushing a lot whenever she’s with Alibaba, and she compared Alibaba to Hakuryuu after Hakuryuu confessed to her. There’s no such thing as romance for Alibaba though because he’s too busy thinking about his country and Cassim. However, his newly-formed friendship with Kougyoku might open the door of romance for Alibaba. So it can be seen that new feelings and bonds are formed. It doesn’t even have to be romance. Sinbad is trying to use Alibaba and Hakuryuu as his pets; Hakuryuu feels a speck of jealousy from the bright Alibaba; and so on. Friendship? It’s still there. Now that there are new kinds of feelings though, the beautiful friendship that was formed among the characters are slowly changing. Now let’s just see whether this friendship will crack or not.

Hakuryuu

Being Hakuryuu is suffering. His mother killed her husband and then married his brother, which is bad enough, but then she also went and murdered her two eldest sons during this. Why? All for power, apparently (since they weren’t children, I imagine she killed her sons so they wouldn’t get in her way). Of course, Gyokuen is part of Al-Thamin too, so that might explain a lot about her life’s goals. Hakuryuu has every right to dislike his mother, since she’s treated the entire family as stepping stones, and she’s only concerned with herself. However, if you couldn’t tell from the way Alibaba compared him to Cassim, Hakuryuu’s obsession is only going to drag him down. Plus Aladdin told him as much too, and if Aladdin says something in this series, you know he’s right. What Hakuryuu’s mother is doing is pretty bad (and she only gets worse from here), but Hakuryuu is definitely going about this the wrong way. As we’ve seen multiple times in this anime, revenge and murder does nothing but increase hatred, and that hatred spreads even further to affect other people. Of course, no one can blame Hakuryuu for his actions, and it can be hard to see what the “correct” path is, but in this storyline, there has to be some other option that doesn’t involve war. For the moment though, Hakuryuu seems like he’s just going to let darkness drag him and everyone around him down.

Kou Empire

Well, we’ve seen Kougyoku go on a rampage, we know about Gyokuen’s unhealthy power obsession, and also know about Hakuryuu’s revenge. Minus maybe Hakuei, the entire Kou Empire royal family looks rather blood thirsty and maybe a bit psychotic. Especially now that we’ve been introduced to Kouha (Kakihara was such a great seiyuu choice for him~). Obviously, Kouha rather enjoys cutting up his enemies, and has a bit of a childish side to him. I can’t remember if the anime mentioned it or not, but he’s also liked the sight of blood since childhood. AHAHAHA those Kou Empire people. Though that’s not to say that he’s entirely a bad person. Kouha has his loyal retainers who he definitely saved from a miserable life (and they now enjoy an er, interesting relationship), and you’ll see later that he has other followers who are without a doubt, loyal. Aside from the bandits, he didn’t even abuse anyone else who was there. …Or at least, he wasn’t overly hostile to Aladdin (aside from some hair braiding). I really look forward to seeing more of Kouha, though a lot of that won’t come for a rather long time, if this follows the manga. OTL

Why is the entire Kou Empire so amazing? Really, I can’t think of a single character from there that I dislike. …Though I don’t think there’s really any character from Magi I dislike. Er, anyways, the Magi anime continues onward, with some rather nice action scenes. I don’t really have much to say, since most of my excitement for this season is directed to the point when Aladdin actually gets to Magnostadt (and then other things that happen waaaay later). For now, it was nice to see someone other than the main trio getting a lot of focus. Hakuryuu certainly had a huge part in these last couple episodes and we learned a lot about him. But he’s left on his own now, the focus shifted back to Aladdin in episode 7 and will stay there for a while (not that this is a bad thing). Like I said, I’m really looking forward to the events coming up.

For those who haven’t read the manga, this arc might be a mind-blown arc for them. Like whoa, who would’ve expected that the one pulling the strings behind Kou Empire is the Queen, not the King? The biggest twist is definitely Hakuryuu though, since his character switched from a nice guy into a whole new person in a snap, and his change is actually reasonable. Just like Kara, this arc is entertaining, but my focus is also on the later half of Magnostadt’s arc. That’s where things get awesome. That doesn’t mean that this arc is not good though. In fact, I think it’s well done. The audience can see that this arc is the turning point of the characters’ personalities. With all these conflicts and gray area, the characters are starting to grow up in their own ways, some for the better (Alibaba), and some for the worse (Hakuryuu). Some might be stuck also, experiencing new things they haven’t exxperienced before (Morgiana). This arc is the beginning of a new Magi that is still entertaining but deeper, darker, and more twisted.

Preview: Daily Lives of Highschool Magical Boys

About Tag Team

We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.