Magical Witch Punie-Chan DVD Review

I’d never heard of this eight 12-minute-episode OVA series (originally named Dai Mahou Touge) prior seeing it on October’s release schedule from Media Blasters so I lacked any assumptions going into it. I put it in my rental queue and it came a few months later.

The setup: Punie is sent down to Earth to live among normal humans and prove that she is the rightful successor to her mother’s throne. She’s a nice girl with an equally adorable dog-like mascot character, Paya, but beneath that sugar coating is the determination to win at any cost using her submission moves and magical powers. The first hint of this comes from her wand summoning phrase “Lyrical Tokarev, kill them all!” and her attitude becomes obvious during her takedown callouts, e.g. “Princess Achilles Hold”, “Princess Camel Clutch”. The dichotomy between her cute appearance and GAR faces (see: the backstory of Paya joining Punie) augments the “straight (wo)man” humor of train-fanatic Koku Tetsuko, Paya’s memories of past fellow soldiers, and brought-to-life vegetables that are loyal to Punie.

Talking about cuteness and violence, I couldn’t help comparing this with Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan, another Media Blasters title that just so happened to come out the month before. (I firmly believe the renaming of this title was done to resemble Dokuro‘s.) Both are the same length and share a director in Tsutomu Mizushima, a sound director in Yoshikazu Iwanami, and six seiyuu including Saeko Chiba and Mamiko Noto. The main difference between them for me is that Punie-chan had a variety of situations and barely repeated its jokes, unlike Dokuro with nervous moments of exposure leading to clubbings and too much focus on gushing blood. Punie has also moments of spurting blood but they aren’t exploited with as much volume. (By the way, Media Blasters rates Punie 13+ and Dokuro 16+.)

Something that viewers should catch onto during their time spent watching this is that most of the female characters are strong and intimidating while the men are weak. Anego, leader of a gang of high school deliquents; Queen Esmeralda and her footstool of a husband, Kimihiko; the dozens of male students who swoon with hearts for eyes when Punie initially sets foot; and sadistic substitute teacher Gesoumi are examples of this paradigm. Even Punie’s younger twin sisters want to kill her! Later in the volume, Anego goes on a date with Yamada, a sheltered medic student, and her softer side begins to show until Punie’s interventions go too far and he runs off scared after Anego demonstrates her drifting skills in an Initial D homage.

To my surprise, missing from the DVD were four two-minute omake episodes wherein Punie takes Tetsuko on a tour of the Magical Kingdom (where she sees destitute conditions within the country), hunts mushrooms by taking horns from unicorns, and other activities. They should have been included as there was space remaining on the disc for them. Alas, this is a bare sub-only release with trailers for Moribito, Kite Liberator, Tweeny Witches, and Dokuro-chan.

Though I enjoyed Punie-chan and its comedy, it is definitely a rental and something you’ll likely watch only once.

Second Opinions:
Chris Beveridge, Mania.com (Grade: C)
“exactly the right length…but it lacks the special spark it needs to elevate it to something more”

Carl Kimlinger, ANN (Grade: B)
“an unapologetically mean comedy without even aspirations of warmth…if you laugh hard enough just about anything is forgivable”