Magical
Teacher: My Teacher’s a Mage? Review
While
Score doesn’t make the best games in the sex romp genre, the fact that it’s a
part of Nexton (whose other branches include Baseson, the company that brought
us the Koihime Musou series) that usually means you’re getting a game that will
at least have good artwork and voice acting. Also since Score did deliver the
surprisingly good We Love Master!, I was sure Magical Teacher: My Teacher’s a
Mage? (released in Japan on January 13, 2006 with the subtitle Sensei wa
Majou?) would also be good so when it was put up for preorder, I immediately
preordered it. On its English release
date of April 13, 2012, I began to play and after finishing it…I’m glad it only
set me back twenty bucks.
Pros: Very good artwork, excellent cast of voice
actors, music is decent, story premise and most of the characters are
interesting.
Cons: Weak linear story, characters could have been
better explored, Yukari…oh dear God!!... Yukari…
WTF?!: Did Dynamo ever have a long lost sister?
Normally
I’d give my own summary but to be honest MG’s works best: “Due to some family
issues, our protagonist (Kazuya Sanada) finds himself going to live with his
aunt, Kasugai Haruka. However, on his way to his new home, he has a bizarre
run-in with a magical statue, where he's saved by none other than Haruka and
her friends, who show up as a magically transformed team. Once things settle
down, he learns that they've formed a group of mages to combat the magical
incidents cropping up in town. Our protagonist soon learns that he, too,
possesses magical powers, and decides to help combat the magical menace…” Of
course the catch is that Haruka and her team’s use of magic drains them of
energy and the job falls to Kazuya to replenish said energy through lots of
good old intercourse (what else?).
Now
after reading this, it probably doesn’t seem surprising that the story is weak,
but when I first started this game I was willing to shrug that part aside since
the premise for the story was interesting and the main cast came off as
interesting and likable. I realize that the whole “negative energy taking on a
magic nature and possesses people and/or things so as to cause trouble” idea
has been done before numerous times, especially in magical girl anime and
manga, but the game does some interesting things with it. From interesting
ideas like a statue coming to life by said energy born out of a disdain for the
changes brought on by modern society where it’s now regarded as little better
than a fire hydrant to some amusing jokes such as a frog out for revenge for
its kindred being dissected even though the local school hasn’t been doing that
for years (I guess frog’s legs never caught on in Japan as food). Sadly, that’s
as good as the game gets story-wise.
The
problem that Magical Teacher has is it has a very weak story, even by the sex
romp genre standards. While the story being pretty much linear (there’s only
one ending) is one of the contributing factors to it being weak, the main
problem is that whatever story we get is mainly just a setup for the next ero
scene. Now while I know that with the sex romp genre the ero content is the
major feature of the game, the story content is still important as it’s needed
so at least one can form an attachment to the characters. Sadly we’re only
given enough story concerning the characters to make them interesting and that
is it, which is a shame considering how each heroine has their own distinct
personality and it would have been nice to see that better fleshed out. This
also contributes to why the linearity of the story hurts it since the main
heroines actually interact well with Kazuya but there’s barely any attempt to
explore a relationship between them and Kazuya except with Natsuki and possibly
Chigusa since, again, this game only has one ending. Also while the ending
favors Natsuki I wouldn’t really count it as much of an ending for her as it
doesn’t provide that much closure.
Now
that all said, if those had been the only flaws I could forgive that, but there
is one single story related thing that kills any enjoyment this game could
have: Yukari. She’s kind of a heroine as she features prominently in the game,
but she has only one ero scene near the end. What makes her such a detriment to
this game? To put it simply: she’s an all-around awful character; quite
possibly the worst heroine I have ever come across in an eroge (if not visual
novels in general) and a serious contender for worst character I’ve come across
in an eroge (and ditto concerning visual novels). The main reason for this is
because Yukari has only one aspect to her character and that is to be a total
bitch to Kazuya (and occasionally some of the heroines) simply because she
doesn’t like him getting close to Natsuki. The fact that she features
prominently in the game and this is what she does in almost every scene she’s
in, and it gets worse when we get to the latter half of the game and she
becomes the main antagonist (no spoilers there, trust me), makes her annoying
to say the least. The few scenes that try to make her sympathetic don’t really
work either such as one scene to hint at her secretly being lonely since her
only friend is Natsuki where it’s obvious why considering how she’s acted
throughout the game.
It
really is a shame that the story suffers from all of this because everything
else is pretty good. The artwork for starters is good as the character designs
are unique for the heroines such as each of them has a unique look and outfit.
The music is also pretty good, though I’d say only a few of the themes are
memorable. The best part of it in the sound department is the voice acting the
voice actresses all turn in good performances (some who have done work in games
I’ve played before have changed their voices quite a bit from the roles I know
them for) and some had roles in some of MG’s best releases like Koihime Musou:
these include Honoka Imuraya (Ryofu/Ren in Koihime Musou) and Miya Serizono
(Chouhi/Rinrin in KM and both Sakuras of Edelweiss and We Love Master!). Sadly
I consider the role they gave Miya Serizono, one of my favorite eroge VAs
(she’s even enjoyable in Discipline, one of my most hated games), to be just my
luck as she’s the voice actress for Yukari…
As
for the ero scenes, they’re pretty good with the good artwork and voice acting.
I should give you a hint though: if you want the battles each heroine has in
her respective chapter to go well and you subsequently get the best ero scenes
with said heroine don’t pick the obvious seeming choice.
In Conclusion:
Magical
Teacher is a game that on the surface has a lot going for it with good artwork
and voice acting, but has a weak story further confounded by a very badly
written major character (and in case you’re wondering Serizono doesn’t turn in
a bad performance, it’s the character that sucks). I could recommend it if you
just want overall good ero scenes, but to be honest you can get better with
some of the same VAs from games like Koihime Musou, We Love Master!, and
Edelweiss and its fandisc.
Final Score: 4/10 Below Average
Author Recommendation: Avoid it
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