Magical Circle Guruguru Movie

U-Turn90★ 9

Mahoujin Guruguru Gekijouban ("The Movie") is a roughly 30 minute short movie, an all original story taking place after the events of the first anime. Hero Nike and magician Kukukuri, together with their living briefcase and travel guide spirit Gipple are still traveling around the world as they hear of the Happiness Pickle. It is said eating it will grant you one wish. The pickle is guarded by an old Dragon, living on a mountain covered in clouds. They are later joined by religious icon Juju and Old Man Kitakita, two mainstays of the show and manga. A ragtag group of bad guys, modeled after American moviemonsters, also wants to get their hands on the pickle. The story is very simple and feels like an episode right out of the second half of first anime, which was mostly anime original content, right down to a surprise ending, but with with a higher budget for visuals and super fluid quality animation. All voice actors returned for this version (this was the last time Nike was voiced by Fujiko Takimoto) and all of them did a fantastic job as always. Music and sound effects are fitting but a lot of it is reused content from the first anime. On the bright side, an all new & catchy theme song was made for this movie. Having seen every anime episode and having read around half of the manga, for me this was the best Mahoujin Guruguru experience and I was satisfied from beginning to the end. Well worth hunting down if the first anime's interpretation of Mahoujin Guruguru fits your taste. The only downside of this movie version are that it requires prior knowledge of the anime/manga to get fully involved, as well as the short runtime and some recycled jokes from the previous stories. Give this a try if you get the chance, its worth it.