Boueibu started as a gender-flipped Sailor Moon, the “Battle Lacklusters”. Now that it’s come and gone, what does it mean for this next magical boy anime from some of the same creators?

As a magical boy show, it’s no secret I’m watching Fairy Ranmaru closely. It’s only doubly so when you realise the same studio as Boueibu’s 2nd season and OVA is behind it, as well as some of the staff from that anime carrying over. The question is…what should you look out for? Well…

There’s going to be some things that stay the same…

Obviously, where there are magical boys, you have a convergence of hot guys, transformations and mascot critters. One of the mascot creatures, Bakkun, is even voiced by Kazutomi Yamamoto, who voiced Yumoto in Boueibu. This can be traced back to a similar thread you can see in Boueibu and Fairy Ranmaru‘s immediate successor RobiHachi, where Happy Kiss’s Ata (Hikaru Midorikawa) is also the voice of a monster of the day Makuwa Uriya. Likewise, Takuya Eguchi, who was originally Enkaku Sousa in LOVE!, shows up as Karurusu and Akihiko Beppu (Keisuke Koumoto) is Hachi in…well, the title where Hachi costars, of course. Of course, the monsters of the day, as well as Ata and Akihiko, are considered villains of their respective works, which raises the question of if Bakkun will hold a Kyuubey-like position in this.

…and some things that change.

Shinji Takamatsu is oddly absent from this anime, even though the setup looks roughly the same as the one for Boueibu – the guy directing is Masakazu Hishida, whose experience pulls mostly from idol anime, most recently Ensemble Stars. This is even more off if Anime News Network is correct in saying “Taiga Umatani”, the creator of RobiHachi and Fairy Ranmaru, is Takamatsu.

However, there is the rather disparate gap between the “human” and “fairy” forms, attributable to the fact there are two character designers, one for each set of forms. The latter is new, but the former is Shoko Nagasawa, who’s an animator from Boueibu. Normally, one character designer is enough (and is probably encouraged, in order to streamline the look of the anime), so there must be a reason why this is the case.

Finally, the anime has been rather explicit that these fairies are going undercover in the human world to “gather desire”. This is a rather odd concept for ostensible “good guys”, made even odder by the fact there are 10 Precepts, including some things that make sense for a thing like this, such as, “Envy – you absolutely must not show signs of jealousy towards people”, but there’s also the more suspect ”Violence – you absolutely must not hurt people” and “Pleasure – you absolutely must not partake in alcohol, smoking or drugs”. Rumour has it (in the keyword section of the site and according to Takara, at least) that if you break these rules, you die.

Sidebar: The term in question at the start of this previous paragraph is 愛著 (aijaku), which means “attachment” (in a psychological sense), “love” or “desire” (a Buddhist term).

Note in Takara’s defence: Despite him running a place called “Bar F”, it is noted in Takara’s character profile the only thing he can make is curry.

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A lot of stuff is hard to say at the moment, due to the lack of information, but hopefully as time goes by, we’ll learn more about the answers to this stuff.

So, are you looking forward to seeing more of these boys? (The keyword page says there’s no bath in Bar F and those transformations show a dangerous amount of skin…or at the very minimum, zettai ryouiki...so you will be seeing a lot of them.)