Make no mistake about it, Katsute Mahou Shoujo to Aku wa Tekitai shiteita. is a good series. But it’s quite hard to pin down. That seems to be very much a Fujiwara Cocoa trait. Inu X Boku SS was one of the most fiercely difficult shows to categorize that I can remember, which was one of the big reasons I ended up liking it a lot. This one reminds me significantly of Mr. Villain’s Day Off in both premise and tone, no question. But it’s still hard to say just what we have here.

I found myself thinking to myself this week that Katsute might just have the most beautiful transformation sequence in mahou shoujo. I’m by no means an aficionado of the genre, but I have watched an awful lot of it over the years and nothing else springs immediately to mind. This is Bones after all so the high quality is no shocker, but quite atypical for them stylistically. Of course Mimori herself is very beautiful, and not in a cookie-cutter anime way. She has to be if the story is going to work, since Mira is basically throwing over his entire life for her.

The lass has more jobs than she can count, though “some of them are one-time” (I don’t even want to think about that, given what we learned this week). She works at a conbini for one, which Mira finds dead sexy (but that’s no surprise given he finds everything about Mimori dead sexy). She shows Mira her business card – prepared by her Kyuubey-like handler – which reads like a call girl operation posing as massage. Obviously these familiars have a deservedly bad reputation in the magical girl genre, but maybe we’re dealing with an outright pimp here. This show seems willing to go pretty dark, so I wouldn’t rule it out.

I also haven’t ruled out that Mimori is intentionally playing Mira, perhaps at her familiar’s direction. Mira has flat-out commented on it in both of the first two eps and it certainly makes strategic sense. But at the moment that’s still not the most likely scenario I don’t think. He’s totally hooked either way – not a chance in hell of resisting. He’s in love with her and he feels protective towards her, a powerful double whammy. And that’s all before he sees her seemingly about to be tentacle assaulted by the slimes he sets loose on the city (again, pretty dark all things considered).

I’m not still not sure about the weird vocalization thing with Mira’s minions. And at this point I think we basically see Mimori as Mira sees her – an icon, an object – rather than a fully-formed character. But there’s time for that to change (not as much as if Katsute were a full-length show, of course). And I think Fujiwara works best when you sort of hand yourself over to her and let the writing carry you where it will, without too much analytical input on your part. And the lovely visual presentation Bones is bringing to the table makes that even easier to do.