Gushing Over Magical Girls: How the hell is this series legal?!

How the hell did they get away with making Gushing Over Magical Girls?

When it comes to anime, I’m all about subversion. I love it when someone takes a genre or a trope and flips it on its head. Series like Mashle or Gate are great because they provide a relatively unique twist on something we’re all familiar with.

So when I read the description for Gushing Over Magical Girls, I was intrigued:

Hiragi Utena is a major fangirl of the magical girls protecting her city and leaps at the chance to join their ranks. But once she transforms, she learns she’s a villain who enjoys being a magical-girl-tormenting sadist instead!

I’m not really into the whole magical girl thing, but this sounded like it could be a fun parody of Sailor Moon or something like that, so I decided to give it a shot.

A friend once got me to watch Prison School. I thought that series was lewd and questionable, but then Gushing Over Magical Girls jumped up and said “Oh yeah? Hold my beer and watch this!”

I don’t know what I was really expecting when I put on Gushing Over Magical Girls, but it sure as hell wasn’t underage lesbian BDSM spiced with virtually every kind of fetish imaginable. BDSM? Check. Tickling? Check. Tentacles? Check. Age regression? Check. Pissing and diapers? Check. Dommy mommies? Check. Instead of a fun Sailor Moon parody, I got a yuri ecchi loaded with underage nudity.

Most people would watch this series and say “Jesus Christ!”, but it’s obvious that Jesus was nowhere to be found when this shit was being made. Halfway through the first episode, the MC is stripping girls down and spanking them with a riding crop while a giant plant monster restrains them.

Okay, maybe these were high school girls. I’m not into younger girls (my girlfriend is actually 9 years older than me), but the age of consent is 16 in most of the world, so while showing naked 16 year old girls is definitely questionable, we’re not quite at Epstein Island levels of deviancy.

Before I got any deeper into this mess, I decided to look into the series, specifically how old the main character was:

Oh, but it gets worse.

Halfway through the season, we’re introduced to a quiet young girl named Korisu. Korisu, who is 9 years old and wears an Alice in Wonderland costume, has the ability to trap people inside a dollhouse and control them in various ways. She traps three magical girls, then brainwashes them into having a lesbian three-way with each other, with one acting as a mother figure, the other literally saying “Mommy give milkies” and sucking on her tits, and I don’t even remember what the third one was doing because I was too busy physically cringing and re-evaluating the life choices I made that led to this moment.

At this point I stopped watching and did some research to make sure I wasn’t breaking any laws by having this shit on my computer. There weren’t any party supply vans parked outside my house yet, but I wasn’t about to fuck around and find out. So I took to Google to find out if showing underage anime girls naked and engaging in sexual behavior was legal.

As it turns out, depicting underage nudity is perfectly legal, so long as it’s animated and visibly distinguishable from the real thing. And, while it’s very sexual, it’s also not considered animated child porn because it doesn’t outright show penetration (it just implies the one girl is fingerblasting the other), or even vaginas for that matter. The show is even available for streaming on HiDive, and you can buy the manga on Amazon.

While there’s no denying that it’s in bad taste and just downright weird, Gushing Over Magical Girls skirts the line and maybe even sticks a toe over that line (then tears that skirt to shreds and tickles the toe), but it doesn’t actually cross it enough to be illegal. I felt a little better knowing that I wasn’t at risk of going to jail for watching this, but I also still felt like a total fucking degenerate for watching six episodes.

So naturally, I pressed on and finished the other six episodes.

The series is fan service fetish bait on the surface, but I suppose you could argue that ultimately it’s a story of teenage girls coming to terms with their developing sexuality. In and of itself, this doesn’t make it bad. Us guys tend to forget that we’re not the only ones who go through puberty and have awkward sexual urges brought on by changing hormones. When I was 14 I knew some girls who could probably have given the girls in this series a run for their money in terms of pervertedness. The 9 year old girl’s dommy mommy fetish is implied to come from her mother always being at work and rarely being around for her. I’ll begrudgingly admit that this series does have some layers to it once you scratch past the surface of fetish bait.

I’d be willing to give it a pass on those grounds, and I’d even go so far as to say that, based on the content, you could almost make a compelling argument that the series is made for young women.

Except, the mangaka is a guy.

The manga was written by Akihiro Ononaka, a guy in his mid 30’s. I’m sorry, but I just can’t find it in me to defend this. If the mangaka were female, I’d at least be able to say that the series is probably a coming-of-age story for young women who are struggling with their sexuality in a culture where things like homosexuality and BDSM are still kind of controversial (homosexuality is still kind of frowned upon in Japan, and most Asian cultures). But the fact that it’s a guy close to my age creating graphic sexual stories about underage girls sends up all kinds of red flags, and completely nullifies any deeper story that Gushing Over Magical Girls might have. This is just some dude’s excuse to be a creep. It’s not pedophilia, but it’s still hebophilia, which is just as disgusting.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no rookie. As someone who’s been on the internet since the turn of the millennium and was a /b/tard in 2005, I know the score when it comes to anime. Gushing Over Magical Girls is tame compared to ~~some~~ a lot of of the other stuff that’s out there. I’m not sitting here genuinely clutching my pearls over seeing animated naked 14 year olds having implied lesbian BDSM sex, nor am I going to suggest that it should be outlawed (even though I’m genuinely surprised that it’s not already). It’s not my thing, but it’s not the worst thing out there and it’s certainly not hurting anybody. Still, it’s fucking weird, and I’m amazed that such a manga actually got an anime adaptation in this day and age. We can get shows about naked middle school girls with BDSM fetishes, but we can’t get an anime adaptation of Sun-Ken Rock? Boichi is a pervert, but at least he has class and tells good stories.

On the positive side, the intro is definitely catchy and fun to listen to. So I guess there’s that.

I’m not even going to give Gushing Over Magical Girls a score. This series is definitely NOT for casuals, or most people for that matter. Unless you’re a hebophile or a 14 year old girl coming to terms with her sexuality, there’s just nothing in this series for you. I’m ashamed that I watched this shit, I feel unclean, I think I’m going to go take a shower and kill myself now.

Nah I’m just kidding, this series is so over-the-top it’s fucking hilarious. And the idea that somewhere dudes are unironically gooning to this shit makes it even funnier. 10/10, a true masterpiece.

Angry_Jerk

Adam “The Angry Jerk” Baker is the CEO of The AJnet Organization and Editor-in-Chief of AJnet Magazine. A grizzled internet veteran of over 20 years, he writes about politics, culture, and whatever else manages to annoy him that day.

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