ninj-anonymous

[ninj-anonymous]

Magi: Reflections and Conclusions

It’s incredible how I’m on my very last post for this semester-long project, but I feel like I still have so much more that I could expand on for my Magi storyworld.

Choosing Magi’s storyworld for my blog felt like an ambitious undertaking at the start of the semester since Magi is so full of complicated relationships and interactions, and even now after writing nine (absurdly long) blog posts about Magi’s different aspects, I think that I still only provided brief glimpses or short intros at best into each of these aspects since the series is just so extensive and has so much depth. Regardless, I’ve definitely learned a great amount about storyworld dissection and through that, the work it takes to construct a complex storyworld as well, which makes me appreciate Magi all the more.

I initially picked Magi for my storyworld for two reasons. The first was a practical one – I wasn’t keeping up with or interested in any other anime/manga/book/TV series that I felt like had an expansive enough of a world for me to cover, so I gravitated towards Magi by default, which was an obvious choice for its epic fantasy atmosphere and extensive story, setting, and characters. In addition to that, I really enjoyed how Magi distinguished itself from many other shounen manga/anime series by bringing in themes that aren’t usually explored so deeply in that particular genre, such as political/moral ideologies. With many shounen series or manga/anime series in general, there’s a huge emphasis on the characters, and I personally feel that their interactions/relationships, development, and individual characteristics often make or break a series.

Magi is also different in that respect – while each character is certainly unique, they also seem like parts of a whole, all of them tied together in a tangled web of interactions, both hostile and friendly. This makes sense since Magi especially emphasizes the concept of fate with a prominent motif being that everybody is connected to one another by fate because they’re all filled by rukh, the physical manifestations of fate, and will eventually return to the great flow of rukh once they die. Additionally, the setting isn’t limited to a single city or even a single region; literally all of Magi’s world is incorporated into the story, giving it a very global, expansive feeling. This idea of characters and their development not necessarily serving as the main focal point of the story but rather plot devices used to drive an even bigger, more important overarching plot forward is well represented by the 3rd person omniscient point of view, which I described in a previous post.

With all of this in mind, I originally wanted to focus on Magi’s politics and how the author portrayed various ideologies as well as how they tie in with our world, but I ended up devoting just two of my posts to this specific topic, following prompts from the syllabus for the other six posts, and addressing something else entirely different for the last one. While I think following the prompts so closely from post to post prevented me from delving as extensively into my specific focus as much as I initially planned to do, I realized that writing about Magi’s politics in a way that sufficiently portrayed its depth and complexity required me to go into way more detail than people are likely looking for in this project. Ultimately, I appreciate that the prompts made me explore aspects of the series that contribute significantly to the storyworld such as fandom and adaptations I would’ve ignored otherwise if I focused more on my original goal.

I don’t think much of my blog posts intersect with class discussions about storyworlds except for the topics about point of view, adaptations, and fanfiction and community in particular. However, what we discussed in class definitely had significant influence on the content I typed up for these specific topics.

Although I wanted my posts to be accessible to those unfamiliar with the series, I think I wrote them in such a way that may have caused an unintentional shift in my target audience, i.e. with too much detail. I originally wanted to target those who know little about the series and possibly even the medium in general (manga/anime), aka most people from class, but I hit a point in most of my posts where I deliberated between keeping the content surface-level to make it easier to digest and providing more details until I was personally satisfied with the level of depth. I probably could’ve put more effort into summarizing a lot of the overwhelming detail into succinct statements, but I chose to prioritize using the blog posts as mostly an expression of my personal appreciation for the series rather than as an introduction to someone with no or little background knowledge of the series. I felt like it’d be doing Magi a great disservice to ignore the nuanced portrayals of characters and events by potentially oversimplifying their descriptions with subpar summaries in my posts, even if it might’ve made my posts a bit harder to digest in the end.

This was something I definitely found to be rather frustrating while I was writing my posts: Magi, like many manga/anime storyworlds, is enormous in all of its aspects. It has dozens of characters and settings and a complex, long-winded plot than spans hundreds of chapters, making it difficult to pick and choose what was most important. I admittedly chose the series anticipating that it would overwhelm me, but it still exceeded my predictions, particularly when I wrote about all of Magi’s convoluted politics and ideologies. However, if I were to do it all over again, I think I would have ended up choosing the same topics to cover and also would likely incorporate much of the same material and analysis as well, but I’d like to think that I would also be better at including certain significant details over less important information.

Overall, I think my project was a general success, regardless of its many flaws. Although I had difficulties dealing effectively with the massive size of the storyworld, I still learned plenty in the process of dissecting Magi’s world. I had never bothered to reread the series before because 1) it’s still ongoing, and 2) it’s over 300 chapters and just too long to justify reading over again, so this project was a good way for me to look back at the details that I might’ve missed when reading it my first time and deepen my appreciation for the series while revisiting plot points and characters to refresh my memory. The project also made me consider how to best portray diverse aspects of Magi through a limited number of posts while also emphasizing a particular focus and catering all of this towards an audience that’s unfamiliar with the series (although I think my success in this respect might be a bit questionable at times).

This was also my first time analyzing and dissecting a series that could be arguably considered pop culture (or at least within the realm of anime/manga as pop culture), which made for a drastic departure from high school days of analyzing centuries-old classics that I appreciated but didn’t necessarily enjoy. I’ve always found it both admirable and surprising how fans on Tumblr and other blogging sites could get so much serious analysis from TV shows, anime, movies, and other popular media that wouldn’t be considered “classics” in the conventional sense, but now I’ve become one of those people. Watching both my blog and my classmates’ blogs progress throughout this semester has really endowed me with a  renewed sense of respect for popular media, which I feel like doesn’t get enough mainstream appreciation as being something worth taking too seriously.

Although I didn’t really anticipate following so many of the prompts and focusing less on what I set out to do, I think that it was ultimately beneficial, like I’ve stated above. I also think that I ended up saying all that I wanted to say in the end about my focal topic, although it might’ve been condensed into two excessively long posts. I’m definitely satisfied with the diversity of topics I’ve covered as well as the content for each individual topic, even if the organization and sectioning of the topics wasn’t what I was expecting myself to do in the beginning.

It’s been a long journey, and I’ve learned a lot from doing this project over the course of the semester. I also hope that I’ve been able to spread at least a fraction of my appreciation for Magi to any readers of my blog posts, especially those completely unfamiliar to the series or manga/anime in general. I’ve enjoyed analyzing and dissecting a favorite series of mine to pieces while typing up these massively long blog posts, time consuming as it was, and I’d like to do something similar in the future for a different series (but without a grade looming over my head, in all honesty, and a loooot more free time). Final thank you to those who have stuck around with me for this extensive ride and thank you to Dr. Eileen Chow for the opportunity to undertake such a fun project!

[ninj-anonymous]

Magi: Controversies

With all the research (aka Googling) I’ve done for the past many blog posts, I’ve stumbled across multiple reviews of Magi from people that have either had opinions similar to mine or ones that picked at aspects of the show I had never even considered to be a problem. With this last blog post, I’m going to address some of the more “controversial” sides of the series that have led to people either dropping it or leaving poor reviews.

Two of the issues I saw that stood out to me were that 1) Magi is inspired by Arabian Nights and much of it takes place in its own version of the Middle East, but most of the characters are light-skinned, especially the main characters, and 2) Magi portrays harems and prostitution in a light-hearted way for comedic effect. While I can see how these could both be viewed as problematic, these critiques need to be viewed in context of the series itself before determining that the entire series isn’t worth reading/watching.

The issue of minority representation in entertainment media is a rather prominent one in the West, and many Americans criticize Hollywood for being “too White” and not accurately representing the diverse racial and ethnic population of the country. This is a particularly heated issue with white-washing – when White actors portray characters of other ethnic backgrounds in shows or movies. The most recent example I can think of off the top of my head is Scarlett Johansson playing Major Motoko Kusanagi in the upcoming Ghost in the Shell movie, a Hollywood adaptation of the hit manga series. Another is Matt Damon portraying supposedly the “hero of China” in the upcoming movie, The Great Wall. However, there’s also backlash when minority actors play roles for characters that are perceived and previously portrayed as White: for example, rumors of Zendaya playing Mary Jane Watson in an upcoming Spiderman movie have been met with mixed responses, and same for when Noma Dumezweni, a Black actress, was cast for Hermoine’s role in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Some argue that these characters are all fictional, so their portrayal in media is flexible – an argument that has some logic to it, but I don’t necessarily agree with it, depending on the case. However, I think this can be used as a valid defense for Magi’s lack of representation. For one, although Magi’s world has many parallels to our own, it’s still ultimately set in an entirely fictional universe. The mangaka draws inspiration from many real life and historical settings, but ultimately, Magi contains none of these real nations or countries in its story. Additionally, it’s a fantasy series, and fantasy manga/anime aren’t exactly known for having physically accurate portrayals of real people – many times, characters have impossible hair colors/eye colors/hair styles/etc., all to emphasize that this takes place in the realm of fantasy and the creator has an artistic license to portray the characters however he or she wishes. For example, the people of Heliohapt, which is inspired by ancient Egypt, have dark skin, white hair, and green eyes. Half of Kou’s royalty (based off of imperial China) has red or pink hair and similar eyes. Parthevians (ancient Persia) have purple hair, olive skin, and amber eyes.

(I think it’s a bit absurd to look at these characters and think, oh, their skin color isn’t accurate. Well, they also have pink/purple/rainbow hair which definitely isn’t realistic either)

Do I think it’d be better to have darker skinned characters as main characters for the series? I think it’d certainly add to the diversity of the cast, but I don’t think it’s a necessity for a series like Magi, which doesn’t incorporate real world settings or real world people, even though it’s inspired by Arabian literature and many people/locations from reality. That doesn’t excuse the series from avoiding generalizations or stereotypes of various ethnic groups, but I don’t think Magi has to be held accountable for being totally historically or culturally accurate either. If people wanted skin color to be more “accurate”, I think that the mangaka’s use of vibrant hair and eye colors would have to be more true to nature as well so that all characters are a truly accurate representation of their supposed real life counterparts, and that just goes against what a good majority of anime/manga fantasy series do regularly.

On the other hand, I do find the inclusion of harems, prostitution, and brothels in the series to be a potential problem, especially since they’re glorified and naturalized and this series is ultimately targeted towards teenagers. I thought nothing of it initially, since these concepts are used mostly for comedic effect and occasional fanservice, and they’re nothing out of the ordinary in Japanese anime/manga, which often go out of their way to include such “comedic perviness”, for lack of a better term. Also, Magi does a rather good job of establishing complex female characters that play important roles in the story and undergo character development in my opinion, so I’ve always overlooked how the series flipflops between its portrayal of some women as strong but flawed characters and objectification of others (or occasionally the same characters) as sexual objects for humor.

(this is probably the tamest GIF I could find for this subject matter)

However, because of the overall depth Magi’s story has to offer, I personally think that it’s worth looking past this sort of humor that’s usually low hanging fruit for creators to reach for to elicit some laughter from their audience. It’s not a large part of the story by any means, and it’s certainly not exclusive to Magi as a series. As I’ve said before, this sort of humor is used frequently in manga/anime, particularly in the shounen genre. Is it disturbing sometimes? Yes. Does it distract the reader too much from the story and everything else that the series has to offer? That’s more subjective, and in regards to Magi specifically, I think it’s definitely worth overlooking the occasional bit of unsavory humor to take in all of the other brilliant, complex ideas that the series emphasizes.

I’d also say that these two issues can be at least partially ascribed to Magi being a manga/anime series written and drawn by a Japanese creator. Japan is a largely homogeneous country and lacks the ethnic diversity that countries like the United States does, and the country also has many issues with female equality in the workplace and society in general (e.g. see this article: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/10/29/national/japan-remains-near-bottom-of-gender-gap-ranking/) . Additionally, there’s a prominent mentality to conform to the status quo, so all of these factors should be taken into consideration before automatically labelling manga/anime as not “politically correct”. Of course, it seems that creators are becoming more aware and sensitive towards these topics, but at the same time, things that we as Westerners view as problematic and controversial are still dominant and commonplace in manga/anime, and cultural difference likely plays a significant role in this.

Have a gif:

[ninj-anonymous]

Magi: Politics, Ideologies, and Morality (Pt. 2)

In my last post, I discussed Magi’s use of slavery as a political tool and metaphor for destiny as well as the Kou Empire’s an aggressive imperialism and coercive assimilation policies. In this post, I’ll elaborate on two more powerful political forces in Magi that are ambiguously portrayed as neither good nor evil: the character Sinbad and the nation of Magnostadt.

(Will update with screenshots/manga pages later after I find appropriate ones)

As I mentioned before, the Kou Empire is a powerful militaristic nation bent on conquering all of Magi’s world for the sake of widespread peace and prosperity at the cost of erasing cultural and ideological differences. Although Kou is initially introduced as an antagonistic force, in recent chapters, they’ve transformed abruptly from the oppressor to the oppressed, and power has also shifted from the former emperor Kouen to Princess Kougyoku, arguably the one who wanted the position the least out of Kou’s royalty. As a fighter but not a leader, Kougyoku struggles to keep her declining country from collapsing in a sudden era of flourishing capitalism in Magi’s world.

So what’s going on? How did Kou suddenly fall into decline after it was portrayed as a world superpower for so long in the series? For one, Kou had a severely damaging civil war incited by Prince Hakuryuu, who tore the Empire apart in his quest for revenge. Additionally, Sinbad – an all-powerful character I mentioned a few posts back – chose to intervene in this war with the international alliance he heads, strategically allying with Hakuryuu to help destroy the Empire and bring it under his influence. This had long been a goal of his, but now he had a catalyst to help him achieve it.

Sinbad was initially portrayed in the series as a sort of superhuman being – while most metal vessel holders were lucky to get their hands on just one, he held seven under his control, and he rose from a childhood of poverty and trauma to become the most successful man in the world: he founded his own country, essentially a utopia; he assembled the Seven Seas Alliance, an international alliance with the combined influence of an empire; and he had admirers far and wide across the world, including Alibaba and Hakuryuu. He even wrote an autobiography of himself, which was actually published as a spin-off manga in real life that’s also relatively popular. Basically, he’s got it all – political and physical power, good looks, loyal and devoted followers, etc.

He starts off in the series as a savior and mentor to the main characters as well as comic relief, but as the series goes on, more and more of his ulterior motives are revealed. Although he seems easy-going and generous, everything he does has a purpose: he is constantly expanding his network of powerful connections to prepare for future events in which he might be able to exploit such connections. He also doesn’t hesitate to use his power to accomplish what he wants, even if it’s morally questionable or outright betrayal. For example, in addition to changing the tide of Kou’s civil war by bringing in his alliance, he also used his djinn powers to control Kougyoku’s actions – this way, he could eavesdrop in on enemy conversations, gather enemy intelligence more easily, and at one critical point, he forces Kougyoku to turn her sword on her brother to end the civil war. Sinbad knew that Kougyoku was a particularly easy target for him to manipulate because she felt romantic affection towards him, and as an imperial princess, she had significant political power.

Point is, Sinbad is manipulative and cunning. After ending the war, he established a new world order, forcing all countries to take part in an international alliance. Under this alliance, he prohibited slavery, united the world under a single currency he created, and eliminated migration and trade barriers between all countries. The world enters a new era of rapid globalization and industrialization, and Magi’s world transforms from fantasy-like to something more resembling our own with advanced technology and urban cities with skyscrapers. As great as this all sounds, however, it deeply harms Kou’s ability to reestablish themselves as a superpower, essentially kicking them while they’ve already fallen and are trying to recover from the war.

As a reminder, Kou’s economic policies resemble communism – resources are divided equally in a population with little social stratification, and people work menial jobs with lots of physical labor for the good of society as a whole. Additionally, Kou’s former economic success was dependent on both their high rates of military recruitment and their use of slave labor. Sinbad’s new global, capitalist policies literally takes all of these away from Kou – slaves are prohibited, trade becomes the new standard for political power rather than military prowess, and resources must be earned individually, not distributed evenly among the populace. Additionally, Sinbad provides no help for them to get back on their feet and even uses his connections to refuse business from Kou globally in an attempt to sabotage them once he sees that they’re on the verge of successful recovery.

The irony of this situation is that the Kou Empire was once viewed as an antagonist for its imperialist policies and Sinbad was firmly associated with the protagonists. The former threat was Kou conquering the world and imposing its ideologies on everybody. Now that Kou is struggling under Sinbad’s policies, Sinbad becomes the oppressor and Kou becomes the oppressed. Sinbad is essentially doing the same thing as the Kou Empire did – imposing political and economic ideologies on the world via a coercive international alliance – but with a different set of beliefs. As he gains power, he begins to consider himself closer and closer to an actual god, and believes that the world should structure itself according to his beliefs. In this way, the mangaka distances herself from favoring a particular economic system over the other by portraying them both as potential oppressors. Above all else, I believe her purpose in doing this is to decry political and economic oppression in general without favoritism towards one system over another. Sinbad also serves as a prime example of the saying, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Now that that looooong description is over, I’d like to change gears to the last topic for Magi’s politics I’d like to touch upon: Magnostadt.

As I mentioned several posts ago, Magnostadt is a magician’s country, a magician’s sanctuary of sorts in which magicians occupy the upper strata of society while non-magicians called “Goi” occupy lower positions and do menial jobs in service of the magicians. However, it was not always this way. In the past, Magnostadt used to be called the Musta’sim Kingdom, and magicians were harshly discriminated against and persecuted. After being exploited to fight against a neighboring empire in a war and being mass murdered, magicians staged a brutal coup d’état, overthrowing the royal family and reestablishing a country by and for magicians.

Magnostadt’s drawn many noticeable comparisons to Israel, some of which might be controversial. For instance, magicians suffered from persecution and great losses before Magnostadt was established. However, Magnostadt was established by taking over a formerly existing country, Musta’sim (arguably Palestine in real life). Once Magnostadt was established, magicians were elevated to higher social levels while former Musta’sim citizens became discriminated against. Additionally, magicians and Goi are geographically segregated, and the “usefulness” of Goi are determined by magicians’ rank of worth with no social mobility within the Goi.

The country is run entirely on magic, but all magic in Magi needs a source, and that source is (usually) finite. To fix this problem, Magnostadt uses the lowest ranking Goi – those considered to be “scum” that live in the slums and can’t pay taxes or don’t contribute anything of worth to society – as a source of near infinite magical power, literally drawing from their life source to supply energy to the country and keep it running.

On one hand, Magnostadt is portrayed as a beautiful country with advanced technology, resembling a utopia. However, beneath its gilded veneer, it’s essentially a country built on institutional racism: people can’t become magicians – they’re either born with magic-manipulating abilities or they aren’t. Those who aren’t are restricted to certain lifestyles while those who are are in a position to elevate themselves further up the social scale based on their magical abilities in a sort of pseudo-meritocracy.

The man behind all of this is a particularly interesting character: Matal Mogamett is the leader and founder of Magnostadt. He’s your typical wise and benevolent elder, and he’s willing to go to any lengths to protect magicians, establishing Magnostadt as a sanctuary for magicians all over the world. However, he’s also highly discriminatory against Goi and literally views them as livestock, an expendable resource that live only to serve magicians. What’s most frightening is that he fully believes in the goodness of Magnostadt’s discriminatory system without a single doubt. Aladdin is shocked when he sees that such a “kind-hearted’ man is capable of such immense cruelty.

But of course, Mogamett also has a tragic backstory: once an earnest magician serving Musta’sim, he lost his daughter in a war and began thinking that Musta’sim was exploiting magicians like expendable resources without a care for their well-being. This forever tainted his optimism and open-mindedness, and from then on, he vowed to uplift magicians, who he believed to be the “superior” race.

Mogamett is another fine example in the Magi world of an antagonist who is not purely evil but morally gray; on one hand, he’s extremely racist and upholds the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Goi for the purpose of serving magicians as superior beings, but on the other, he’s been subject to great tragedies in his lifetime, and he also treats magicians with great generosity and sincere love. He’s a perfect hypocrite, treating two different populations as polar opposites based solely on attributes given to them at birth.

This has been another looooong post, I’m so sorry – to be honest, I’m using these posts as stress relief after a week of exam hell, so I hope you’ll forgive me for these absurd post lengths (whoever you are reading this).

Concluding post will come soon, hopefully by the end of this week!

Have some (a lot of) magical gifs:

[ninj-anonymous]

Magi: Politics, Ideologies, and Morality (Pt. 1)

After falling off the face of the earth for some time, I’ve returned with two posts (second to be posted within a day) and a grand final post coming soon ™ sometime during this following week.

I’ve had requests from both people that reviewed my blog posts to discuss more of Magi’s politics and its connections to our own world, and worry not, I’ve had that planned all along to be the bulk of posts 7 and 8!

I’ve probably mentioned Magi’s politics somewhere in every single blog post up until now, which really highlights both the importance it plays in the series as well as my obvious enthusiasm for it, regardless of how accurate some of it plays out to be. When I say accurate, I mean more so the political processes and events portrayed (e.g. diplomacy and trade) rather than accurate alignment of countries and ideologies. The nations portrayed in Magi are all based off of real countries/locations or a combination of them in the real world, but since they’re ultimately still fictional places with fictional people, it’s reasonable that the mangaka took certain liberties in portraying their ideological differences.

Before I begin, I’ll say that when I mention Magi’s “politics”, I’m using “politics” as a sort of catch-all term for related topics such as economics, diplomacy, societal structuring, etc. I’ll also be tying in politics with ideologies and morality since they’re all very related.

The first such topic that Magi introduces is slavery, which plays a prominent role throughout the series in many different countries and contexts. One of the main characters, Morgiana, starts the series as a slave, but becomes liberated with Aladdin’s and Alibaba’s help by the end of the first story arc. What’s most notable about her liberation is that as a Fanalis, Morgiana is naturally endowed with superhuman strength and speed even when shackled by chains, and she can easily use this as a weapon against her own master, but years of physical abuse and psychological torment by her master has severely diminished her mental fortitude and self-worth, making her believe that there is no alternative for her outside of slavery. With the help of a fellow slave, Aladdin, and Alibaba, she is able to overcome this mental barrier and liberate herself from slavery.

It’s especially emphasized that her slave status was primarily the fault of psychological shackles rather than physical restraints when she is enslaved again later but is able to free herself from supposedly “Fanalis-proof” shackles with brute strength and willpower and simultaneously liberates an entire caravan of captured slaves while she frees herself.

Slavery is particularly significant since it also parallels the theme of free will vs. fate. Many of Magi’s antagonists are initially viewed as evil for no reason, but we find out over time that most antagonistic sentiment in Magi stems from a desire to rebel against fate, particularly after characters experience some sort of trauma such as losing loved ones violently or oppression by corrupt governments. They view their destiny as a form of oppression, like slaves’ shackles. This is where Magi becomes morally ambiguous: it’s easy to denounce slavery as something awful because it’s forced labor, but when fate determines that something horrible will occur in your life or that you’ll be forever stuck in the role of the oppressed or such, doesn’t it become easier to view fate as a system comparable to slavery? This might seem absurd in reality, but in Magi where “fate” is a more concrete concept that can be manipulated, it’s reasonable that characters would take certain losses to mean that they’re not favored by fate and thus, they must take an alternate pathway to find justice and resolution.

Slavery is introduced also as a more political maneuver when it’s revealed that Balbadd, Alibaba’s home country, is about to become part of the Kou Empire via an arranged marriage after relying on the Kou Empire to bail them out of economic difficulties caused by a local terrorist, Robin Hood-esque group who steal from the rich and give to the poor. This political move would consequently make all of Balbadd’s citizens into slaves of the Empire but keep Balbadd from falling into total economic ruin. To prevent this, Alibaba utilizes his title as the Third Prince of Balbadd to legitimize and take charge of the terrorist group, dethrone his brother, the king, and dissolve Balbadd’s monarchy, transforming it into a republic instead. He also bans all slavery in the country and dissolves the treaty with Kou as well, but not without consequences – to prevent outright war with Kou, Balbadd falls under Kou jurisdiction but supposedly retains its autonomy as a republic.

This brings me to the next big topic I’ll cover: the Kou Empire and its ideologies. As one of the most powerful nations in the Magi world economically and militaristically, the Kou Empire’s mission is to expand all across the world and impose their way of life upon all the countries and tribes that they conquer to ensure peace and prosperity around the world. The emperor, Kouen, believes that war stems from ideological differences, and if all people assimilate to a way of life so that there are no differences, there would no longer be any war. Ironically, the Kou Empire tends to use aggression and war or at least intimidating diplomatic and economic measures to achieve these ends. For example, the Balbadd Empire fell into the trap of relying on Kou’s currency to bail them out of their debt, and as they became more dependent on Kou, the Empire could exploit this dependence to make aggressive demands.

Clearly, the Kou Empire is aggressively imperialistic, and not only do they want to conquer, they also want total cultural and ideological assimilation of those they conquer. This is shown best by Balbadd’s assimilation into Kou after Kou acquired jurisdiction over the country. What used to be a coastal nation resembling Baghdad in real life transformed completely into a mirror image of the Kou Empire, which is based off of ancient imperial China. In just a short span of time, the architecture, clothing, and many other cultural aspects became those of the Kou Empire with total erasure of Balbadd’s former culture. Additionally, the economy changed dramatically from a trade-based, capitalist system to one resembling Communism – amenities such as food, clothes, living spaces, etc. were divided equally among the citizens by the Empire, and jobs were assigned by royalty with very little room for social mobility.

It’s easy to characterize the Kou Empire immediately as an antagonistic country, particularly with the way the mangaka chooses to portray the consequences of Kou’s policies. For example, when Alibaba visits newly assimilated Balbadd, he meets with old friends, who tell him that life is better for everyone after Kou took over since there’s no shortage of food, no more poverty, etc. However, in secret, one of the friends confides in Alibaba and tells him about his fears of Balbadd’s culture disappearing completely, but he is also too frightened to start a revolution against the Kou Empire.

It may seem like the mangaka is strictly against imperialism and coercive assimilation, but even if she is, she makes everything more ambiguous by having many supporting characters that are Kou royalty who are good friends and allies of the main characters and/or are relatable. For example, Hakuei, the First Princess, makes an effort to acquire territory through civil diplomacy rather than violence and does not pressure them to assimilate. She is empathetic and respectful, but she also wholly believes in the goodness of the Kou Empire’s mission to expand and can also seem optimistically naïve. Kougyoku, another princess, is initially shown as an ice-cold figure, but behind that front, she’s lonely and unsure of her role in Kou as both royalty and an illegitimate child. She desires just to fight as a warrior with little involvement in Kou’s politics, and she also establishes a deep friendship with Alibaba as fellow “low-born” royalty and remains friendly even when they’re on opposite sides of a battlefield. And then there’s Hakuryuu, who can be seen as the total opposite of his sister Hakuei: he despises Kou and its mission, denouncing it as too idealistic since there will always be ideological differences between people, and he incites a civil war within Kou against Kouen in an attempt to overthrow the imperial government and eliminate Al Thamen’s corruptive influence on the nation. However, he’s willing to go as far as to kill former friends and allies or use mental manipulation on those who hinder his goal, and here the whole series undergoes another shift: Kouen and the rest of the Kou Empire, once seen as enemies, ally with the protagonists as Hakuryuu, formerly a strong ally, is portrayed as a depraved madman.

To be honest, even though this is already excessively long, it’s only a small taste of Magi’s complicated web of politics and ideologies. In this series, alliances are constantly shifting, protagonists become antagonists and vice versa, and many characters are not solely good or evil but morally ambiguous, and almost all have goals that are relatable at some level such as protecting a country, desiring widespread peace, acquiring vengeful justice, etc. I spoke about slavery and the Kou Empire in this post, and in my next, I’ll discuss the character Sinbad and the country of Magnostadt. I did plan to have a whole post dedicated to potential controversies in Magi such as female representation and the lack of characters with dark skin in an Arabian Nights-themed series, but I may have to cut that from my list of blog posts since the next one will likely take just as much space as this one, and I don’t want to go over the top.

Thanks for sticking around for so long :’)

Have some (questionable quality) gifs of Kougyoku’s (my fav character’s) various expressions (credit to The Nugu for the middle gif)

[ninj-anonymous]

Magi: Audience, Community, and Fanwork

(Long post ahead because I was dumb and shoved two prompts into one post - may separate them based on length of future content)

At first glance, it’s easy to dismiss Magi as another shounen series aimed at teenagers and young adults with its cast of outlandish characters and its emphasis on the friendship, hard work, and victory, arguably the three most important core elements to any shounen series. When I first began watching the anime, I thought I had just picked up another series full of charming and courageous but slightly naïve characters who would encounter typical conflicts and developments faced by shounen protagonists on their quest to explore the world.

In my opinion, it takes over a hundred chapters of the manga (which lines up with an entire season of the anime) for Magi to really start paving its own distinctive path away from a typical shounen series, but it’s well worth the wait. The more I delved into the series, the more I realized that Magi really isn’t a series for children. It’s like a wolf in sheep’s clothing: underneath a fluffy exterior of fantastical characters and settings so far removed from our own world lies a story driven by excessive violence, nightmarish figures, and ideological conflicts with blatant ties to current and historical events (will discuss this in detail next post!).

It’s an unexpectedly mature series, even though it’s still serialized in a shounen magazine geared towards younger audiences. For all of its mature themes though, the series still makes an effort to incorporate a good amount of cheesy and admittedly childish comedy, which at times seems to act like a leash that ties the series back to its shounen roots even as the material gets progressively darker. Additionally, the anime censors some of the more gory scenes, and the games also seem to focus more on the tamer aspects of the series.

With all of this in mind, it’s difficult to pinpoint Magi’s readership/viewership and intended audience, but judging by the diversity of its content and adaptations, it’s likely popular not just among male teenagers and young adults but also older readers of both genders as well. Because of this, Magi has a well-established fandom, which I’ve described below in (excessive) detail.

Although Magi is a rather popular manga/anime series both in the West and in Japan, it doesn’t seem to have as much fanfiction as other popular series do, at least not in English. Looking solely at Fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own, Magi has several thousand pieces of fanfiction associated with it, but that number is easily dwarfed by other popular series with tens or even hundreds of thousands of fics.

However, for Magi’s relative lack of fanfiction (in English), searching for Magi on Deviantart and Pixiv (Japanese equivalent of Deviantart) yields hundreds of thousands of fanart. Unfortunately, a large portion of these fanarts actually belong to a completely different series called Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which also contains “Magi” in its name, so it’s difficult to filter out its results. Regardless, even if only about half of the fanart belongs to Magi, it’s clear that Magi has a devout fanbase among the global artistic community. Additionally, both the #magi tag on Tumblr and the Magi subreddit on Reddit seem to be rather active with multiple posts about recent manga chapters.

In addition to fanart, Magi has an abundant amount of doujinshi, which are usually amateur works that can either be original pieces or based off of a pre-existing series. They’re very similar to fanfiction in concept, but they more resemble manga with their blending of dialogue and artwork. For class a few weeks ago, I focused on reading Magi fanfiction, although I did look into Magi’s doujinshi as well to compare and contrast some of their content.

As big of a Magi fan as I am, I’m not an active member of the fandom, so it was interesting seeing how other fans interpreted various characters’ relationships and personalities and incorporated them into their own works. This applies for most fandoms in general, but Magi’s fanfiction and doujinshi both consists largely of pieces focusing on specific relationships or “ships”. I even found a masterlist of both translated and untranslated doujinshi on Tumblr, and very few of them are general (non-ship): http://labyrinthofmagic.tumblr.com/doujinshi 

↑ Example of a doujinshi cover for a work centered around the ship Sinbad/Jafar that also doubles as some pretty great fanart 

I read a few ship-centered works, and though well-written, I feel like they tend to be reductionist – although they do add some depth to the characters by imagining them in new contexts with new interactions, they don’t necessarily expand on any other part of the storyworld. In these cases, fanfiction seems like a fast, easy source of personal gratification for both the author and reader, which isn’t necessarily bad but is probably the cause for plenty of disdain towards the legitimacy of fanfiction.

I did find a few rare fanfiction pieces and even fewer doujinshi (all of them in Japanese and not yet translated by fans, which really shows the unpopularity of general works compared to those with ships) that were general works without focus on any pairings, and I enjoyed how they took more aspects of Magi’s complex storyworld into consideration. Two fics stood out in particular:

“Economics” is a canon-divergent piece that explores a “what if” scenario in a parallel timeline, describing how Alibaba uses diplomacy and economic manipulation to significantly disrupt politics.

“A Past Written in Blood” is a character study about the history of a side character, Ja’far, who’s an assassin-turned-loyal follower of Sinbad, the man he was sent to assassinate. Although Ja’far’s character transformation is already portrayed in canon, this fic describes an alternate interpretation of details for the same development.

Although I’ve lost the links to both of them, they’re on Archive of Our Own if anyone wants to read them.

Gif of the week (classic Magi comedy):

[ninj-anonymous]

Notebook Breakdown and Goals

I’m rather late when it comes to posting this, so I’m actually providing analysis of my notebook’s contents for both the day in class when we noted our notebook's contents and today, a little over a week after I first wrote out a list of goals in my notebook for October. 

Based on my first analysis, I clearly had a preference for personal topics or relevant class topics/notes as notebook entries. However, since then, I've made a greater effort to diversify my entries and have incorporated new categories as well, which are relevant to the goals I set for myself: - Mark dates for entries - Expand entry topics beyond personal entries - Write an entry (at least one page) everyday ideally (I think most people have this same or a similar goal), but otherwise make up for pages on a later date if I miss one         - Even more idealistically, fill up the notebook - Incorporate more brainstorming and rough ideas/outlines (for any topics) - Be less linear - Keep a daily dream diary for fun - Incorporate more observation, particularly of mundane events/objects, and make an effort to make the ordinary seem extraordinary - Make note of significant/humorous/moving etc. quotes and moments from my experiences - Attempt creative writing based on random prompts

This list is by no means static; I might add to it throughout the semester if I need to.

I would chart what days of the week I wrote certain entries, but I didn’t consistently keep up with the dates of my entries (hence my first goal). 

So far, my experience handwriting has been both liberating and hindering. For one, handwriting compared to typing feels more organic, so I feel like I’m more able to freely express what immediately comes to mind. I also purposefully write in pen so that I’m not tempted to constantly erase, backtrack, and overthink what I just wrote, which also applies for drawings and doodles. Physically handwriting also allows me to format and structure my entries however I wish. On the other hand, I’m so used to the convenience of typing that it’s frustrating to have to spend extra time writing down an idea on paper when typing could’ve easily did the job in half the time. I would honestly write many more pages per entry if I wasn’t so limited by time constraints, which is unfortunate but just part of reality. Also, because I’m so used to the linear format of typing on a computer, the freedom to structure my entries however I wish isn’t something I take advantage of nearly as much as I probably should because of my technology-conformist mindset. However, with handwriting comes a sense of physical permanence that technology just can’t provide, and I think overall this journal has been a crucial tool in encouraging me to both more acutely observe my surroundings, reflect on my experiences, and more actively engage in whatever topics I chose to write about.

[ninj-anonymous]

Magi: Adaptations and Authorship

Magi itself is not an entirely original creation, since it’s loosely inspired by The Arabian Nights, or One Thousand and One Nights, to be more accurate. When I say “loosely inspired”, I mean that the mangaka (term for author of a manga for anyone unfamiliar with it), Outaka Shinobu, took the Arabian fantasy theme and the names of various characters and ran with them (far, far away) to produce her own unique story.

Since Magi is rather popular in Japan, the original manga has been adapted into and inspired various other works, both in print and other forms of media. This includes:

- A spin-off series, The Adventures of Sinbad, based off of Sinbad’s origin story; this series is also part of Magi’s specific timeline and storyworld in that The Adventures of Sinbad is an autobiography written by the character himself at a later time point in reflection of his early life

- Three anime seasons, two of which are for Magi and one based on the aforementioned spin-off series

       - A website promoting the anime (which is common for many anime series) that includes extra comics

       - Two albums of soundtrack music (and many character-specific songs that are stand-alone)

- Two official guidebooks based off of the manga with character guides and trivia

- Two official fan books based off of the anime and an unofficial fan book as well that’s still technically endorsed by the mangaka (and thus, canon)

- Two DS games, a discontinued mobile game, and a (trading?) card game

Along with Magi, I actively keep up with The Adventures of Sinbad, and although both have anime adaptations, I’ll admit that I’ve only watched the first season of Magi and none of the other two seasons. I can’t say that I’m a hardcore purist, but I didn’t enjoy the anime as much as I enjoyed the manga because I thought that it deviated too far from the original source, so I didn’t watch any more of it past the first season. I admit that adaptations are called that for a reason, rather than something like “replications” or “reproductions”, because they’re not supposed to completely copy the source material – that would be boring (in my opinion) and also unrealistic, since anime episodes have time restrictions and seasons have episode restrictions also so material has to be adapted accordingly to fit these limitations.

However, the anime did inspire me to read the manga, and although I personally didn’t enjoy the anime as much, I do appreciate that it offers a different medium through which fans can enjoy the series. Anime is more immersive, and it gives life to the characters, providing them with literal voices, movement, and color, all elements which must be imagined when reading manga. Music and sound direction can also make or break a series sometimes, and despite my ambivalence towards the anime, I did enjoy the soundtrack (sample below for reference).

I have no knowledge of the games other than through watching trailers on YouTube, but they seem like a condensed version of the series with particular focus on the more shounen genre characteristics of the series (flashy battles, the power of teamwork, dramatic encounters with antagonists, etc.) that appeal to children with less emphasis on the more adult-oriented aspects such as political themes and explicit violence (more on target audience in my next post). It allows for personal interactions with the characters on simultaneously deeper and more superficial levels. On one hand, you’re controlling the characters’ actions and role-playing as them as you experience the story, but on the other, the games seem to offer a reductionist approach to the series by eliminating aspects of Magi that originally made it stand out from other shounen series (IMHO). But since I’ve never played the games, these might just all be erroneous assumptions.

As for authorship, the mangaka plays virtually no role as a character in the series – there’s no breaking of the fourth wall or any other sort of ironic play that indicates that the characters are aware of their fictional identities under perpetual subjugation to the mangaka. Thus, she’s an invisible presence other than that she directs the reader’s attention to certain significant events happening at a time point (because omniscient POV), like a camerawoman of sorts. She also has multiple blogs/social media accounts online where she posts extra drawings and short comics, some of which fans can send her messages through or comment on these extra pieces, but I’ll talk more about the fandom and community in my next post.

Thanks for making it this far in another absurdly long blog post :D

Gifs of the week (credit to taitetsu for the first one):

Two to celebrate fall break this weekend!

[ninj-anonymous]

Magi: View and Timeline

(We talked about fanfiction in class for this week, but I’ll be postponing my post on Magi fanfiction because its topic fits in more logically later on.)

Although Magi does have a set of main protagonists, the largely omniscient point of view (POV) the story is told in enables us to experience the thoughts and actions of side characters as well, giving them greater significance and a sense of roundedness that many side characters in other series don’t always have the privilege of getting. However, I feel that the graphic aspect of manga and anime as storytelling mediums enables smoother transitions between character POVs, whereas POV shifts in literature are usually confined to distinct chapters or simply not utilized at all. Although admittedly I’ve watched far fewer movies than the average person in my lifetime and have barely watched any TV series at all, I believe that POV changes are also more frequently used in these mediums as well for the same reason.

To use an example from class, in the original Sherlock Holmes publications by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the stories were limited to Watson’s perspective. In the BBC series, however, we’re able to get glimpses of other perspectives in the beginning, such as the victims of the crime as well as Lestrade’s. In literature, this shift of POV would be very jarring if inserted without warning or transition, but they’re also too short to justify dedicating an entire section or chapter to.

Thus, in the Magi series, we as readers always know more about what’s happening at any given point than the characters individually do because we are given an omniscient perspective, which sets up many opportunities for dramatic irony. These frequent POV shifts also help to make Magi’s world seem more expansive on top of allowing for additional character development, so the series almost always seems very busy with something going on at all times.

Here’s a good example of two vastly different events occurring at around the same time in chapters 241 and 245:

In the first two pages, the characters are determined to make peace with Hakuryuu, one of the main characters who had gone astray and was inciting a rebellion within his country after assassinating the empress. They also want to prevent a war between metal vessel users, who are so powerful that they could cause massive destruction if they were to fight. Meanwhile, these two bottom pages show the thoughts of Hakuryuu’s ally, Judar, as well as his own thoughts and motives of revenge, establishing them as sympathetic villains of sorts rather than just evil characters with no goal other than death and chaos.

In these pages, you’re able to see a conflict of personal and political motives, creating suspense for how this conflict might be ultimately resolved.

For all of the many events that the series juggles at a single time, the timeline of events and story progresses mostly linearly through a series of arcs with a few flashbacks now and then. A significant exception to this is the twelfth story arc in the series, which focuses on the history of Alma Torran, a precursor world to Magi’s own world. This arc spanned three volumes (although not their entirety), and while it was serializing, I remember several complaints about having such an extensive flashback inserted into the series, although it provided key insight into character identities, motives, and the world as a whole.

Part of the reason why I enjoy Magi so much is that this omniscient POV allows for both breadth and depth. It allows us to piece together distinct settings and locations to visualize an aesthetically and culturally diverse world with many parallels to our own while simultaneously developing a choice few to emphasize their importance to the actual plot. Similarly, with characters, we get to see a variety of personalities and ideologies and observe how they change over time as well. This is why I had such a difficult time writing concise posts for my last two posts about the setting and characters: Magi’s world is just so expansive, it’s hard choosing what to focus on when summarizing.

Bonus gif (credit to Tobi Gifs):

(What I wish I was doing this week instead of midterms...)

[ninj-anonymous]

Thought this was very relevant to our discussion in class today about the presidential election, particularly in regards to the way Hillary Clinton is scrutinized by the public. It’s a short, satirical piece that effectively juxtaposes absurdity and reality to explore the narrative of a female politician in modern society. 

“Be tough & determined but also feminine & dainty but also motherly & strong but also well-spoken & witty but also CONFIDENT.” 

- M.J.

[ninj-anonymous]

Magi: The Characters

Since my last post was excessively long (and just a note to anyone actually reading my posts – hello, Dr. Chow – I’ll try to shorten that post sometime in the near future), I’ll try to keep this one as short as possible, although there’s so much to say and so little room to say it all.

Magi contains dozens of characters, and a fairly large amount of them play some sort of significant role, so it’s difficult to pick and choose who to put in this post. 

However, that being said, there’s still four obvious main characters (and a very, very, significant side character):

SPOILERS

Aladdin

Aladdin is a 10-year old boy (in the start) who appears with magical abilities and tools and no knowledge of his own identity or the world around him. Over the course of Magi, he discovers that he’s a Magi, a powerful magician with the ability to summon dungeons and lead people to these dungeons to test their ability. If they are successful in capturing the dungeon, they become a King Vessel, and the Magi selects a King Vessel to support and help lead them to become a “king”, not necessarily royalty, but a powerful influencer of the world. Other than Aladdin, there are only three other Magi in the world.

Most importantly, his purpose in Magi’s world is to prevent the world from falling to chaos as Alma Torren, the previous world before Magi’s current world, did. He is the son of King Solomon, the king of Alma Torren and creator of Magi’s world, and has also inherited some of his father’s (insane) powers, which include bending space and time and manipulating the flow of destiny.

Alibaba Saluja

Alibaba is the (former) third prince of the Balbadd Kingdom. In the start, he’s introduced as a poor cart driver who initially explores a dungeon with Aladdin out of greed and materialistic desires, but in the face of danger, he’s quickly shown to be reliable, clever, and loyal to his companions. He’s a skilled swordfighter, and after conquering a dungeon, he gained the fire powers of the djinn Amon, which he manifests through his sword. Additionally, he’s Aladdin’s chosen King Vessel.

Recently in the series, he was killed and resurrected in the half of the Dark Continent with ties to Alma Torren, and he spent over 100 years there, which translated to 2 years of lost time in Magi’s world. During that time, he gains an immense amount of wisdom, and the ability to slow time. He’s currently serving as the Kou Empire’s prime minister as a way to assist the Empress, a good friend of his.

Morgiana

Morgiana starts off in Magi as a slave, but is freed by Aladdin and Alibaba and becomes their companion. She is a Fanalis, a member of a Dark Continent tribe hunted down as slaves for their inhuman physical strength. She is part of Alibaba’s household, meaning that she is able to borrow power from his djinn Amon because of her strong relationship with him. Although she is a constant presence in the series, she does not have much of a storyline for herself as Alibaba or Aladdin do occasionally, although she does go on a personal quest to see the Dark Continent, her homeland, which she remembers little of.

In the series, she serves mostly as support, both emotionally and physically, to the other main characters. She has incredibly strong brute strength and speed, as well as enhanced senses.

Hakuyruu Ren

Hakuryuu is one of the many princes of the Kou Empire, and easily one of the most conflicted characters of the story, if not the most. Most of his family was killed in a fire when he was young, and learning that it was planned by his mother, he vows to kill her and destroy the influence of Al Thamen, an evil organization that his mother leads, in the Empire. With the other three main characters, he captures the dungeon Zagan and gains the power to manipulate plants from its djinn. In addition to that, he also captures Belial, allowing him to manipulate others’ minds and most importantly, sever their soul from their body.

Throughout the series, he schemes to overthrow the Kou Empire and eventually allies with Kou’s own magi, to rebel against the current emperor and take charge of the empire himself. He incites a great civil war in the country, alienates all of his former allies, and kills his mother (but not really, because she’s immortal… but I won’t go into that), along with Alibaba, who tries to stop his plans. He exiles all of Kou’s current royalty and becomes the emperor, only to go into hiding years later when Sinbad’s new international relations policies take over the world.

Pic of all four main characters together (back when they were happy-ish and no one was killed yet):

Sinbad

Not really a major character, but a very significant one nonetheless, and I keep mentioning him, so might as well describe who he is. Sinbad is known as a “world class singularity” because fate seems to love him, and he’s achieved many incredible feats within his lifetime. He’s captured seven dungeons, become a Magi’s King Vessel, started his own country (Sindria), started the Seven Seas Alliance (military organization of smaller countries with enough influence and power to rival the empires), started the International Alliance (set up new policies that for forbid military service and slavery and opened up country borders), and become the CEO of Sindria Trading Company while facilitating the creation of new technologies (airships, mobile devices) and expansion of capitalism.

Essentially, he’s seen as all-powerful, and although he seems to be a powerful ally in the start, recently in the series, he’s becoming more overbearing on the rest of the world, wanting them to conform to his policies and ideals and sabotaging attempts at national independence.

Also, he’s important enough to have his own spin-off series: The Adventures of Sinbad.

Did I say this would be a short post??? I’m sorry… I guess I lied. But it is shorter than the last post, admittedly. I’d like to do a character chart with relationships sometime and add it to this post, but there’s just so many, it would take a good amount of time to do so.

This is the last post where I’ll be doing just descriptions of the world (hopefully), and in my remaining posts, I’ll start digging deeper into this storyworld with more analysis-based content.

Bonus gif (what amazing camaraderie these main characters have):

[ninj-anonymous]

Magi: The World

As I mentioned in my previous post, Magi takes place in a world filled with fantasy elements such as dungeons, djinns, magic, and so on. Like most other shounen series, there are plenty of flashy battle sequences and colorful characters (both in personality and physical appearance). However, for all of its fantastical, otherworldly aspects, Magi’s world also manages to ground itself in reality, as its universe is loosely based off of historically real locations in a sort of alternate universe where magic exists and great empires and kingdoms from various eras are placed into one single time period. Additionally, many names are also taken from historical figures or entities.

The following are a list of Magi’s locations with a description of each (and a short blurb about the role the more significant areas play in Magi).

SPOILERS AND EXCESSIVE DETAILS ABOUND

(Note: I’m using the wonderful Magi Wikia as a reference for the information in this post since there’s an incredible amount of information about Magi’s world and I can’t remember it all.)

Warning: Looots of pictures ahead; apologies for any slow load times.

Dungeons are enigmatic towers controlled by djinns (they’re like genies, but not) full of traps and other dangers. Entire armies have failed as completing dungeons, but if a lucky individual or group can capture a dungeon, they’re granted great power and riches. Dungeons are actually fragments of the former world, Alma Torran, and the djinns that inhabit them are formerly powerful residents of the old world. Many are or were located in countries that I’ll talk about later in this post, and those who capture these dungeons are called metal vessel owners. Metal vessel owners are often in positions of power, if not royalty, and they make up many of Magi’s important characters.

Related, Alma Torran is a completely separate world that exists long before Magi’s time, and Magi’s current world is created as a place of refuge for survivors when Alma Torran is ripped apart by a great war.

The very first significant country we see in Magi is the Balbadd Kingdom, which later becomes the Balbadd Republic. It’s a small, coastal country with hundreds of islands and historically rose to become an economic and maritime powerhouse by serving as a trading hub for neighboring empires. However, at the start of Magi, the country is in a period of economic decline and under heavy influence by the Kou Empire, another important entity I’ll describe later. Based on its economy and architecture, the fictional Balbadd City, capital of Balbadd, most resembles Baghdad, Iraq in real life.

Balbadd is the home of Alibaba, one of the protagonists (or actually the deuteragonist, according TV Tropes). Spoiler alert – he’s actually the third prince of the country, although illegitimate. Seeing his country in strife, he dethrones the king, his brother, and establishes the Balbadd Republic. However, in the process, the country falls under the Kou Empire’s administration, and over time, its culture disappears under the Empire’s immense pressure to assimilate to their own culture (see pic below).

The Kou Empire, mentioned earlier, is one of the most important locations/political entities in Magi, both plot-wise and as a military superpower in the Magi universe. It’s a large military nation located in the Far East, and one of the most powerful in existence at the time, with a reputation for aggressive conquest of neighboring territories. It has deep ties to Al-Thamen, an antagonistic organization bent on generating chaos as a form of protest against fate and destiny, who serves as Imperial Priests in the country. With its location in the Far East and its culture, it’s most similar to Imperial China.

Throughout the course of Magi, the Kou Empire and its royal family, which also plays an important role in the story, suffer from plenty of political turmoil in the form of civil wars rising from internal rebellions. Currently in the story, Kou is nearing bankruptcy after an economic takeover of the world by Sinbad, a highly significant character who I’ll discuss in another post, and the International Alliance he leads, which abolished slavery and military service globally.

The Kouga Clan, formerly the Great Kouga Empire, is a nomadic clan located in the Northern Tenzan Plateau, thought to represent Mongolia. Thus, the Kouga Empire refers to the Mongol Empire, and even its founder, Chagan Khan, alludes to Genghis Khan in real history. The Kouga Clan is pursued by the Kou Empire in an attempt to assimilate them to their territory, and after much resistance, they eventually give in, becoming part of Kou.

The Sindria Kingdom is a large tropical island located in the Southern Sea founded just fourteen years before Magi’s starting point. It’s portrayed as a utopia of sorts where the king, Sinbad, is beloved and the people are perpetually happy. The country is inspired by India, although it more physically resembles the Greek island of Nisyros.

The Reim Empire is the largest nation in the world and also the most powerful in regards to their military, technology, and economy. It’s known as the supreme ruler of the Western Continent, and the “Empire” portion of its name is misleading – it’s actually more of a republic. The Reim Empire bears a strong resemblance to the ancient Roman Empire with many shared cultural elements as well such as gladiator battles in a colosseum, bathhouses, and amphitheaters.

The Parthevia Empire is a powerful country in the southwest and the birthplace of the aforementioned Sinbad. It’s similar to Ancient Persia, and its name is taken from the real Parthian Empire that used to exist in ancient Iran and Iraq. Parthevia has a history of conflicts with the Reim Empire, paralleling how Persia also experienced frequent conflicts with Rome.

Parthevia becomes the location of the Sindria Trading Company (headed by Sinbad as the CEO – I know I keep mentioning him and not saying who he is, but I’ll do that in another post) in Magi’s final story arc, leading it to become the most modernized nation in the world filled with brilliant skyscrapers and technology such as portable communication devices.

Magnostadt is known as the “Magician’s Country”, and its capital, Academy City is filled with magical buildings, tools, and a magicians’ academy, the namesake of the city. The country was formerly known as the Musta’sim Kingdom, which persecuted magicians to the point that they rebelled and massacred the Royal Family, transforming the former Kingdom into Magnostadt, a city where the reverse is now true: non-magicians are seen as non-citizens, inferior, and are used for menial labor and even slavery while magicians govern the country from places of authority.

Although controversial, Magnostadt is thought by fans to parallel the country of Israel in reality, although not because of its culture so much as its current state of affairs with Palestinians and related political issues. In Magi’s story, Magnostadt fights a war against Reim that also involves the Kou Empire and other political powers. Magnostadt is left in ruins, and after it’s restored, it serves as a neutral research institute that receives funds from other countries to develop magical tools. Additionally, its system of citizenship once used to discriminate against non-magicians is abolished.

The Dark Continent is a vast, largely unexplored continent that lies in the southern hemisphere of the world. Its location and animal/plant life resemble the African continent’s, and it’s divided into two sides: one that inhabited by small tribes of people and some provinces of other countries, such as the province of Cathargo (based off of Carthage in real life), and another with ties to Alma Torran. It’s the homeland of one of the other main characters I’ve mentioned before: Morgiana.

The last significant location shown in Magi is the Kina Kingdom, a flying island located farther east than the Kou Empire. It’s based off of ancient Japan, and story-wise, the country is considered an enigma, participating in limited interactions with other countries, although it has recently served as a force of opposition against Sinbad’s attempts to unite the world in a massive economic alliance.

There are plenty more locations seen in The Adventures of Sinbad, a Magi spin-off solely about that one character I kept mentioning earlier but never actually described, but this post is already excessively long, so I’ll cut it off here. However, I may or may not do a separate, brief (I promise!) post about them, since it’s interesting just to look at their distinctive features and how they connect to our own world.

Sorry for the suuuper long post; thanks for sticking with me if you actually happened to read all of this (Hello, Dr. Chow! ... You’re probably the only one here)!

Bonus gif (srs stuff this time whoa):

[ninj-anonymous]

Magi: The Origin

I believe that both my own introduction to Magi and the series’ exposition are both rather mundane. I only started watching the anime adaption of Magi out of boredom in high school, so I knew nothing about it beforehand except for its premise, and I dove right in fully expecting a typical shounen manga. Although I won’t be delving too much into Magi’s intricacies in this post, I will say that Magi both met and thoroughly exceeded my expectations.

For those unfamiliar with manga and anime, shounen or shōnen refers to a genre that primarily targets the pre-teen and teenage male demographic, although they also tend to be popular with many females of all ages as well, and most mainstream manga or anime that people have heard of such as Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, etc. all fall under this genre. These series are usually characterized by several tropes such as optimistic and ambitious but rather ordinary heroes (in the beginning, anyway), heavy emphasis on flashy combat and battles, and use of magic, superpowers, or the like. This is what initially drew me and likely most of Magi’s fan base into the series to begin with – the promise of familiarity, of conformation to a genre beloved by millions of fans worldwide. I, as well as most others, expected to see well-worn tropes or even stereotypes under the guise of new faces and new names.

In many ways, Magi does an excellent job of epitomizing the classic shounen series, particularly with its beginning. Magi is a series inspired by the famous One Thousand and One Nights, or as it’s more commonly known, The Arabian Nights. Put as simply as possible, the story follows a mysterious young boy named Aladdin as he meets new allies and enemies during his journey to explore the fantasy world of Magi, with a particular emphasis on dungeon capturing, a feat that grants riches and power to those who survive them. The first story arc in particular consists of Aladdin’s adventure with Alibaba, a poor merchant boy, through a daunting dungeon in Alibaba’s hometown and their reluctantly antagonistic interactions with Morgiana, a slave girl forced to venture through the dungeon at her master’s command (they’re also the three characters you see in the first picture).

The above is an ambiguous description that doesn’t even begin to capture the richness of Magi’s story and plot, but it’s hard for me to describe it otherwise in a way that remains mostly relevant to the series as a whole without solely focusing on the details in the exposition which become largely irrelevant later, as many online summaries for Magi do. Regardless, at its start, Magi seems like pretty standard shounen fare. 

However, one of it’s primary differences from other shounen series lies in its portrayal of its world, which I’ll be exploring in greater detail in my next post. Many shounen series establish a fictional universe that seems displaced from reality, although they may take place in real locations or even faux-real locations (like “Oxbridge University” instead of Oxford or Cambridge or obscure kingdoms bordering real countries). Regardless if the setting is a mundane high school in Japan or a glamorous castle in medieval Europe, there’s always a fantastical quality to the world that makes you think, wow, this could never happen in our ordinary lives.

Magi subverts this near universal quality of shounen series by setting the story in a world filled to the brim with magic and supernatural elements, only to bring in very realistic and relevant themes that aren’t explored quite as profoundly in other series, such as the consequences of war, international relations and diplomacy, industrialization and trade, and political ideologies alongside classic shounen staples such as free will vs. fate and good vs. evil. I’ll be describing Magi’s settings and locations, which are highly important for its story, in more depth in my next post.

Over the course of the semester, I plan to further explore Magi’s complex storyworld, particularly its intersection with our own real world.

Bonus gif (because while Magi deals with some pretty serious stuff, it still ultimately serves as entertainment in the end):