249th G-View: Houkago No Pleiades

Magical girls traveling through outer space in makeshift motored broomsticks gathering engine fragments that originally started as a commercial ONA promoting cars. This is Houkago no Pleiades.

Alternate title: Wish Upon the Pleiades.

Genres: Drama, Magic, Sci-fi

Themes: Magical Girl, Magical Boy, Aliens, School, Space

Number of episodes: 12

G-Rating: 6/10

Plot Summary: One day, a girl named Subaru comes across a group of magical girls, among which is her childhood friend Aoi, and becomes one herself. Their duty is to search for fragments of a spaceship belonging to an alien known as a Pleiadian. However, a mysterious boy is seeking the fragments for his own use.

For the longest time the show has a very by the books setup: Subaru and the gang do whatever it is they are doing that day, the Pleiadian Chief informs them of a located engine fragment, they try to retrieve it, horned redhead shows up to steal the fragment, dogfight ensues, reflection. Rinse and repeat. Aside from character subplots and occasionalhints to the big reveal the only difference in the show’s narrative until the last quarter was the win ratio between sides. The last quarter is when the big reveal happens as is usually the case in shows with a progressive main plot. Basically if the formulaic narrative does not sound bothersome to some readers know that it will eventually lead to an admittedly interesting climax.

As this awesome poster illustrates one of the show’s biggest highlights is its interstellar travel. It practically gives viewers a tour of the solar system and it is gorgeous. Every time the girls visited a new planet or flew through the stars was pure eye candy. The girls themselves range from adorable to potential future raging otaku boner inducing babes. The Pleiadian chiefcis okay but not cute enough, mainly because my favorite character Nanako was the one who had to translate. Yeah not a fan of translator Nanako. I prefer regular Nanako. The dogfights are okay but nothing spectacular. I enjoyed the show’s OP quite a bit and the ED’s cute. The OST blends in with the background but is far from memorable.

The characters for the most part are passable. Itsuki, Aoi and Nanako are the three that stand out the most despite my dislike of translator Nanako. As for Aoi and Subaru…eh. Not much to their characters really. Until the big climax there isn’t much to either girl. They fill their roles and stick to it. As for the horned redhead…he did his thing. It’s cool.

Overall Houkago no Pleiades is visually gorgeous but other than the interesting climax, decent cast and dogfights it’s an average magical girl show. Worth watching once but compared to other 2015 anime it’s nothing special despite its visual appeal.