So that was Sleepless Domain.
Thinking back, I think this is my first Magical Girl series I have done for this blog. And it is so obviously magical girl in every sense since they even had it in the title! Transformations. Color dictating personalities/powers. Final moves and elemental powers. All very in the trope.
I love how they can combine powers to make other elements. Like Firestorms and plants. That was extremely clever to use. Not entirely sure about Aether, since all I really know is Aetherial plane for casting Blink spell (D&D) and shooting lasers, but it was an interesting choice to put with the other elements for a set of 5.
The idea that the magical girls are known, common, and used as nightly protectors of the town are interesting. They are celebrities. They pose, have agents and cameramen. It makes me wonder if they were “chosen” for the job, or just “hired” for it.
The girls are all find, a fun rag-tag gang that work together to solve problems. Slightly cut and paste, but that might be 1) Magical Girl genre uses color as a way of defining personality traits, like red = aggressive, blue = mature/thoughtful, so I might be reading a bit too much into that, and 2) the first chapter was just us seeing them in battle. Sure it gives us a basis of what is going on setting and plot wise, but not a lot of character introduction outside of battle, like their normal daily routines. Just missing a bit of that.
And “Complacent”…damn that was a good word. It shows that they are being mislead, or unable to prepare. They got so used to that routine of fighting at 10pm that they missed Everything important until it was too late.
For my Fibonacci Scale of 1 to 21: I am giving this a 5. The fight scene, while well directed, didn’t really pull me in as much as I would have hoped it would. The characters are fine, but sometimes it gets tiring to just know the default personality type instead of actually learning something about them. And I do like the Magical Girl Genre, and the subversion of Magical Girl Genre, but I have seen too much currently for it to engage me more.
Overall, it’s a good first chapter, just wasn’t in the mood really. Maybe in a while I can revisit this for a second chapter, but not right now.