Man, it’s been ages since I last read Muhyo and Roji’s BSI…
I can barely remember this series, so I tried to remember what happened in the early days of it and then borrowed volumes 1 and 2 from my library to experience the soon-to-be-adapted material all over again.
From memory (before rereading the volumes):
- Early days of Muhyo and Roji’s are more comical in nature to the later ones. (In fact, it gets very serious later on – traitors, Anime Hogwarts, a big organisation of Magic Law bigwigs…y’know, the works.)
- They introduce Nana, Kenji and (Yoichi) Himukai in the first volume.
- Himukai is a dime-a-dozen pervert, at least to Nana.
- Nana loves photography. Her hangup has to do with her dead father.
- Muhyo is a badass who never breaks a sweat while Roji’s an incompetent assistant.
- Roji’s real name is Jiro Kusano, but no one ever calls him that. Also, Roji’s marimo hair is almost as bad as Roronoa Zoro’s (from One Piece), if not worse.
- I think they use the hell dog (the one which has a design based on a wheel and has a spinning attack) and the hell train in the first volume.
- Kenji called Muhyo an “onion-head”, which is pretty apt for his design…
- I don’t think the twist regarding Biko (not saying what it is, because that’s a spoiler!) is done in this volume.
After rereading the volumes, what were your observations the second time around?
- It’s more comical, but also more episodic. That’s why most of the cases I remember weren’t in this volume.
- The first client isn’t Nana, but rather a one-off character called Rie Inoue.
- The fact Roji’s name is Jiro Kusano was mentioned in the PVs…it’s pretty common knowledge when it comes to the series, anyway.
- They mention Enchu (main antagonist) as early as chapter 3.
- The art becomes more natural between chapters 3 and 4. I didn’t remember that…
- Notably, the chair in chapter 4 seems like a Western invention, but it could also count as a tsukumogami…Hmm, what other show this season involves those, I wonder?
- Funnily enough, one of the gags in between chapters said a certain in-universe book series had 18 volumes and that’s how many Muhyo and Roji’s has now.
- Kenji appears in chapter 5 and his insults include “a being from Planet Onion” and “turnip head”, culminating in a joke involving “Onion-Boy and Sprout-Man”.
- The hell train appears in the predecessor one-shot at the end of volume 1. Its name is “the Night Train”.
- Muhyo can send someone to The Place in the Sky as well as doing more gruesome things with his punishments.
- Himukai first appears in chapter 10. He is a pervert just like I remember him though.
- The Night Train appears twice but the hell dog doesn’t appear.
- Muhyo does show some incompetency in Nana’s debut chapter (chapter 7, true to her name), but otherwise is the genius I remember him to be.
- Biko doesn’t appear in these two volumes, but the Magic Law School is introduced a lot earlier than I remember it. There’s setup for a standard tournament arc, but it disappears as soon as Enchu shows up.
Sidebar: I don’t think I had enough kanji knowledge to know why Soratsugu Madoka = Enchu in the past, but a certain kanji for “Madoka” can be read en while a kanji for sora (the one meaning “sky” or “outer space”) can be read chuu.
Reading these volumes again reminded me exactly why I was rooting for an anime years ago. Now I just need those hopes to be fufilled…
So, anyone else looking forward to this show? Conversely, did I convince anyone to take it on?
The Animanga Spellbook 