Category Archives: Magi

Magi Episode 16

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The Sixteenth Night: Solomon’s Wisdom

Look, I don’t actually like this premise. Everything was resolved last week, and there was no need for Kassim to turn up and do all of this. In fact, I question if anyone in a sane mode of a mind would ever do this. If he wants to make the monarchy pay… then attack them! Don’t pick on innocents and bystanders.

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Magi Episode 15

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The Fifteenth Night: Kassim’s Answer

Last week was the political side of things, the side where the pendulum of fate swung backwards and forwards and caused problems with the Rukh, and at the end of things, Kassim showed his face amongst the battle of black and gold Rukh. One question was in my mind here – what’s going on?

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Magi Episode 13

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Prince of the Rebellion

The best people do amazing things when backed into a corner, and that’s what’s happened to Alibaba now. Complete with a new flashy OP that’s actually really fitting to the series, the episode appears to be progressing in some rather interesting ways…like showing how that Kou Empire princess is being forced into a political marriage in Balbadd, of all places…probably part of the way to force themselves in.

As Alibaba approaches the palace, the moment he gets into the plaza, his “brother” makes the banker set a little pet of the Kou Empire on him, a deformed Elephant monster, and to be quite blunt, he gets his ass kicked again and again until he finally manages to manifest Amon’s blade…and from here, it’s just a mtter of wiping up the monsters that the Kou Empire is supplying before Alibaba runs out of magoi, and it’s not until Mor appears to knock some sense into Alibaba and cover his back that he realises what his true purpose here is. It’s not to deal with a bunch of deformed monkeys, it’s to go sort out his kingdom. It was pretty entertaining to see Mor get “serious”, and it was also pretty fascinating to see Alibaba play dirty after he’d run out of magoi.

With all three of the elite guards taken care of, it’s time for things to turn to diplomacy…and the first move is for Alibaba to sway the army and go up against the king. With the help of the deputy king and the military commander, the episode draws itself to a close just before Alibaba and Abhmand get to have their friendly talk.

It’s pretty clear that this episode of Magi has a new budget or something similar to work with, as it doesn’t hesitate to delvier some of the best action scenes to date and continue to push all of their characters even further forward, backed up by some pretty interesting new OP’s and ED’s. Right now, this series is really good, but I have a big problem…and that’s that Aladdin hasn’t done anything for a long time now. Whilst I know that this show will be a long one (if it’s only 2-cour, it’ll clearly get a second season), I just don’t like having people doing nothing.

Magi Episode 12

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The Twelfth Night: Determination and Separation

Last week showed the plans to turn Balbadd into a slave farm so that they could sell all of their citizens on for cash (wow, that feels like a long time ago), my interest now lies on just how this will handle it. Will it go down an action packed route as you struggle to free the city, or will it show diplomacy and politics in action as you argue everyone free?

At any rate, with Aladdin out cold and no indication that he’ll be waking up anytime soon, all that’s left is Alibaba to feel worthless underneath Sinbad’s charisma and ability to lead, and it’s degraded to the point where even Sinbad expects nothing from Alibaba. The situation degrades even further with the conclusion that Judal’s the driving force behind the rapid expansion of the Kou Empire. That’s nothing that we couldn’t have guessed by now, but having clearance that Judal is the “bad guy” is probably for the best, bringing everyone up to speed.

Magi doesn’t disappoint me when it comes to the matter of angst and worrying, and even though Alibaba does have a huge flaw in his character that he lacks confidence and is kinda sorta a little bit angsty over this, it’s handled in a really stylish manner and feels like it’s been polished to a shine…and that’s because it has, with the characters all working with each other to deliver everything. You’ve got the re-appearance of Kassim in this episode, and him and his plans of conquest to topple the king and free the country, and the shifty arms dealer that’s supporting him and his ambitions.

This episode was about Alibaba developing as a character without Aladdin pulling him along, but not only that, it’s about all hands moving to battle for the future of Balbadd…and it’s getting even more epic than before.

Magi Episode 11

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The Eleventh Night: A New Visitor

To follow on from last week, we have the situation where Ugo went berserk during the fight against Judal, who Ugo promtly finishes off with a killing blow. With everyone emerging from shelter from Ugo’s attacks, even more people show up, and one of these is from the OP, leading you to believe she’s either a dungeon clearer of the Kou Empire or yet another Magi. After they’ve saved Judal from the brink of death, the Kuo Princess decides to have a one on one battle against the still rampaging Ugo, and slices through him in a single hit, returning him to the flute. Then, as if it was the winners permit, they attack the innocent citizens, with Alibaba, Mor and Sinbad’s guardians struggling to keep them at bay, as Aladdin goes against the Princess…and, well, if Sinbad hadn’t pulled rank, it would have turned pretty foul pretty quickly. Then again, she’s just tsundere for Sinbad…however, that doesn’t mean things are okay yet. Alibaba’s still got an uphil climb as he’s now got armfulls of injured citizens to deal with, and Aladdin’s flute is missing Ugo’s star. To add onto things, Mor has her own hatred to deal with, as she’s got to deal with her self loathing over the inability to do anything.

Alibaba in a self of self hatred, Mor cursing her inability to do anything and Aladdin having drained almost all of his life force, Sinbad appears to be the only person who’s coping, as he’s also the only person who can keep a calm head when the Deputy King turns up to support Alibaba with words of praise and a cryptic warning of how the Kou Empire and their paper money have been pulling the strings and slowly enforcing the strangehold on the country, as the king eventually started trading away the human rights for the paper money, creating a slave factory where only the nobles lived happily…basically, the world Alibaba’s seeing around him.

The start of the episode was pretty much what you’d have expected or could have guessed, but I don’t think anyone could have predicted that they’d change tact so quickly, instantly jumping into the next part of the arc and giving Alibaba’s revolt a new purpose.

Magi Episode 10

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The Tenth Night: His Name is Judal

Very shortly after the “dark magi” appeared in last weeks finale, this week shows Ugo having an odd reaction to him, with the flute lighting up when he walked past. However, when he gets into the palace, Sinbad recognises the dark magi calling himself Judal, and how the Kou Empire is intervening even further, slowly strengthening it’s stranglehold on the country of Balbadd thanks to the manipulation of the bankers. With Alibaba utterly ignored and Sinbad in disgust over the appearance of Judal and the Kou Empire’s interference, as Aladdin pointed out, all that’s changed is that Alibaba has become some form of a figurehead, as Sinbad decides to spur the revolution along even further. It’s bad practice for a king of another country to get involved in this, but it’s all part of the “restoring balance to the world” theme that’s starting to show itself.

Judal appears in front of Sinbad after his little speech and starts spouting stuff about starting war and all that lot, but it’s all half-assed as he’s far more interested in Aladdin, a fellow magi…they don’t exactly “hit” it off. As Judal attacks Aladdin and then goes as far as to attack Alibaba, Aladdin’s “king candidate”, the feeling that Aladdin has to stop Judal starts to emerge. Using the staff he got from Grandma as a weapon, Aladdin summons the Rukh to defend him and the people. After facing the thunder magic of Judal face on, they finally seem to be on equal terms, with Ugo making an appearance to defend Aladdin. That is, until Judal starts using ice magic to attack the city and Aladdin with icicle spears. However, as Judal notices, Ugo is the only think enabling the pair of them to fight on equal terms, and when Ugo gets incapacitated with the icicle spears, Mor and Alibaba have to intervene to defend the helpless Aladdin, worried sick about the injured Ugo. Going berserk and ignoring Aladdin’s orders, Ugo delivers shocking blows to Judal, quite possibly slaughtering him in the process.As Judal lies quite possibly dead on the floor and Ugo heavily injured and refusing to listen to Aladdin, taking his magoi from somewhere else, the episode ends on a cliffhanger.

Magi delivers it’s first battling episode, and it’s as amazing as I could have hoped it would be. With one hell of a cliffhanger, it’s almost unfair to wait until next week…sigh.

Magi Episode 9

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The Ninth Night: A Prince’s Duty

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To continue on from last weeks flashback, we see what happened to Alibaba when he returns to Balbadd after his adventures with Aladdin, and how he ends up joining Kassim’s Fog Troupe. Even though Kassim betrayed him, almost killed him and tried to take everything from him, he still felt that they were family to each other, and all the while…Aladdin is sat listening, remembering what happened to the grandmother on the plains. After a heartfelt confession on Alibaba’s part where he spills his heart and begs Aladdin and Mor to leave Balbadd and never go back, but the two never have time to reconcil, as the Fog Troupe breaks in to ambush Sinbad before he can do anything against them.

Before very long, we end up with a confrontation of epic proportions as Sinbad and his group goes up against the Fog Troupe…and it’s a one sided slaughter on Sinbad’s side, however…he stops before taking Alibaba out, offering a leader verses leader battle to resolve things. However…even with Amon’s power, Sinbad defeats Alibaba with ease like it’s nothing.

…and then Sinbad asks to join the Fog Troupe after defeating the bunch of them and agrees to help them defeat the government. I feel slightly sorry for Jafar, getting caught up in all this and having to deal with Sinbad’s eccentric changes of heart. As the King of Sindria, he views this as his way to stop the chaos spreading around the world by cleaning up Balbadd’s internal revolt. How to do this? Well…the best way is for him to stake his claim as a prince of Balbadd and talk to the current leader of the country. However…Abhamd, the current king refuses to listen to a word that Alibaba has to say, and a new Magi appears, surrounded by pitch black butterflies.

It’s yet another soulful, entertaining, engaging, enjoyable and amazing instalment of Magi; and nothing more needs to be said about the show at this point.

Magi Episode 8

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The Eighth Night: A Broken Promise

Enter Alibaba, the son of a prostitute and king of Balbadd. After being exposed as the Miracle Man of last week, him and Aladdin appear to have a falling out over what they’re doing, and as such, Alibaba tells Aladdin that the promise is off and he’s got nothing to do anymore. In most shows, this would be an excuse to angst, but both of them get handled really well…probably thanks to the intervention of Mor. Giving people the time to sit around and angst is a bad decision, and after figuring out that Aladdin is upset over this, she literally stalks Alibaba and fetches him from his slum and brings him straight to Aladdin, drained of strength and trying to convince himself of a different path to take now that Alibaba is out the picture.

As such, Alibaba explains his actions to Aladdin, cutting the angst, and we get the backstory of him and as such, of Kassim, his purple braided friend. It’s a pretty interesting story, of how he lived in the slums with his mother, a prostitute, and how he enjoyed life even though he was really badly off. After his mother died, the king appeared in front of him said that he was his son. Alibaba leads a life of royalty and riches until he meets Kassim again one day, and bad turns to worse as this leads to Kassim stealing everything from the palace, leaving Alibaba unconscious in the burning palace around him.

This post is a bit of an info dump, but that’s what this episode really was. Alibaba clearly had some sort of strange past, and this episode was clearly designed to show just how odd and dark it was, and how it shaped who he is. Whilst it did end the flashback at a pretty crucial point, I feel like his character’s grown an awful lot in just this episode, and even Aladdin’s character has improved a fair amount. I just hope he sticks around long enough to actually have the development pay off, as i’m slightly wary that he won’t end up journeying with Aladdin.