AKA: Mahou Shoujo Pretty Sammy, Magical Girl Pretty Sammy

Genre: Parody magical girl comedy

Length: Television series, 26 episodes, 23 minutes each

Distributor: VHS and R1 DVD from Pioneer / Geneon out of print.

Content Rating: 10+ (fantasy violence, veiled innuendo)

Related Series: Magical Girl Pretty Sammy, Tenchi Muyo

Also Recommended: El Hazard the Magnificent World, Tenchi Muyo

Notes: Spinoff of Tenchi Muyo. The reason for the name change to Magical Project S was for marketing purposes. Because of horrendous VHS sales of the OAV series, no one would touch anything named Magical Girl Pretty Sammy. Seems to have worked just fine. This review was written prior to Tim's, but his is labeled as the 1st opinion because it is the first complete review we have.

Rating:

Magical Project S

Synopsis

Perky junior-high schooler, Sasami Kawai, is chosen as the champion of good, Magical Girl Pretty Sammy, in a contest between Tsunami and her rival, Ramia. Along the way, many strange enemies appear and are defeated, and Pretty Sammy fights on, despite the fact that she has the single worst magical girl outfit in existence.

Review

Well, we asked for it. First, there was Sailor Moon. Then there was Wedding Peach. It was bound to happen. However, we didn't know the creators of Tenchi would take the Sasami as Usagi gag quite this far.

If you take this series seriously, you will absolutely hate it. The enemies are even dumber looking than the youma in Sailor Stars, the humans have very low intelligence quotients, and the magical girl chants (like "Pretty Mutation Magical Recall!") have to be heard to be believed. This is a terrible, terrible series...

But that is exactly what was intended. This is everything you've ever learned about magical girl shows, skewed into the ultimate self-parodying television series. Sasami (and Misao, for that matter), take none of this seriously, and neither can the viewer. When the Monster-of-the-Week is a CD-slinging box with appendages, and your only attack is a gigantic collateral-damage-inducing pink heart (not to mention the seizure-inducing "Pretty Space") this is a show that is truly diabolical in its shredding of the genre by taking the art of excess to an even higher level than what was deemed possible. (Watch for hilarious cameos from El Hazard and other series, too!)

In short, I want to see more! As much as I truly love the magical girl genre (having introduced Card Captor Sakura and Magical Stage Fancy Lala to the Assistant Reviewing Editor), it needed to be made fun of after the string of Sailor Moon clones and spinoffs (that's all I see Sailor Stars as) that came out.

Painfully funny, yet necessary. Go rent Magical Project S, and you'll laugh, and laugh a LOT.

Hopefully, it won't sink in quality later on, like Sailor Moon and many other once-excellent series did. For now, this too-crazy series gets a hearty thumbs up. — Carlos/Giancarla Ross

Recommended Audience: Silly cartoon violence. Much like Animaniacs, has a LOT of jokey innuendoes that younger audiences won't catch ... but will bring a shocked gasp from adults. Is actually good for kids and up, though only teenagers and above would understand the parody.