Nurse Witch Komugi R Review
Clumsy high-school girl Komugi Yoshida wants to be famous, but her efforts as an idol don’t seem to be going so well. Unlike her friends and rival idols Cocona and Tsukasa, both of whom are very popular, Komugi can only seem to get small time gigs, such as selling products for her local pharmacy. However, her life is soon turned upside down when she trips over an injured creature named Usa-P, who offers her a once-in-a-lifetime chance to become a magical girl. With awesome powers and an adorable nurse outfit to boot, Komugi’s luck might be about to change for the better.
Within the rather infamous romcom anime My Little Sister Can’t Possibly Be This Cute, commonly referred to by its Japanese shorthand OreImo, there is a fictional magical girl show called Stardust Witch Meruru that the lead girl is a huge fan of. From the brief glimpses we see of it throughout OreImo, it’s a trope laden affair, clearly parodying magical girl cliches. Upon watching the first episode of Nurse Witch Komugi R, a new take on the 2001 SoulTaker spin-off Nurse Witch Komugi, Stardust Witch Meruru was the first thing that it reminded me of, an over-the-top parody of everything you’d expect; however, unlike its fictional counterpart, which totals a few minutes in length within OreImo, Komugi is 12 full episodes, and unfortunately, doesn’t quite do enough to sustain itself.
As you’d want and expect from any self-respecting magical girl parody, Nurse Witch Komugi R makes sure to tick off every trope in the book that you can possibly imagine. Cute and clumsy lead? Check. Magical talking animals? Check. Embarrassing outfits? Check. Big beam attacks? Huge check. It’s about as paint-by-numbers as you can possibly get, which is the point, but the series does little to actually mock these cliches, instead making it feel like it just has them instead. The most you really get is a narrator making fun of the transformation sequences and some over-the-top and quite comical attack names, but that’s about it. Of course, the show in general has a tongue-in-cheek tone, and this still makes it an enjoyable watch on the whole, despite the lack of any real specific jabs at the kind of anime it’s parodying. One element that does set this anime apart is in the setting, mixing the traditional high-school backdrop with an idol agency, and all the idol gigs that Komugi and her friends attend. Anyone hoping that they embrace the idol concept and combine it with magical girls will be sorely disappointed, with the anime focussing more on the acting and celebrity angle, with only a small smattering of songs throughout, but it is at least one thing you can point to as unique, and it sometimes leads to some amusing scenarios.
Character-wise, Nurse Witch Komugi R pulls from clearly established archetypes but, as with everything else, fails to do anything to poke fun at these well-worn personality traits, thus making the characters seem kind-of boring. Two of the leads, Komugi and Cocona, feel as if they’ve been done to death, with Komugi being a ditzy and emotional teen, similar to Usagi from Sailor Moon, and Cocona is a prim and proper student council president type, which is so overdone I could probably point to a hundred examples of this character in a variety of anime. They’re not bad, per se, they’re likeable enough to root for, but they just don’t stand out in the slightest. The only remotely interesting character is Tsukasa, an idol who capitalises on her boyish appearance and persona, yet obsesses over frilly and cute things in secret, not wanting to endanger her on-stage image. Deservedly, she gets a lot of screentime, which I was glad about, even if the romance subplot she’s involved in ends up being pretty poor, with both Tsukasa and her love interest, Komugi’s brother Yuuto, liking each other but not realising it until the final episode, leading to the romance feeling needlessly drawn out.
Legendary studio Tatsunoko Production, the studio behind the original SoulTaker and Nurse Witch Komugi series, as well as a ton of other notable credits such as Ping Pong The Animation, Psycho Pass 2, and Gatchaman Crowds, take the reins on Nurse Witch Komugi R, lending it the kind of bright and colourful visuals that are required of a magical girl anime. The monsters the girls fight have some interesting designs, all based on everyday objects due to the way they’re created, and it’s pretty neat to see mundane things such as stuffed animals or postboxes transform into monsters. The character designs from Takao Sano are also pretty good, not limited to the trio of girls but their adorable chibi companions too.
MVM’s release of Nurse Witch Komugi R is lacking an English dub, offering a Japanese audio track with English subtitles only. Fortunately enough, the Japanese track is very solid, with good performances all around, both from the three leads, Kei Tomoe, member of the actual idol group AOP, Erii Yamazaki and Makoto Koichi but also from supporting voice actors including Daisuke Namikawa (Fate/Zero, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, Hunter x Hunter), Hiroyuki Yoshino (The Tatami Galaxy, Space Dandy, Kill la Kill) and Ryouta Takeuchi (Kiniro Mosaic, High School DxD BorN, DRAMAtical Murder). The songs performed by the various idols throughout the series, which as far as I can tell are sung by the seiyuu themselves, are pretty forgettable sounding J-Pop numbers, and this sentiment extends to the OP and ED too, both visually and musically lacking any real memorable aspects.
In Summary
On a surface level, Nurse Witch Komugi R is pretty fun, and will certainly scratch a magical girl itch, but despite it supposedly being a parody, the lack of good jokes makes it feel like another dime-a-dozen entry into the genre.
