a.k.a. Magipoka or Renkin San-kyuu Magical? Pokaan
Magical Pokaan, a 12-Episode Anime from 2006, is to fantasy what Galaxy Angel is to science fiction. The setup is that four princesses from the Netherworld are sent to Earth to figure out the way humans live. From there, it's all about the comedy. There's Liru, the werewolf, who turns into a cute puppy at the sight of anything that resembles the full moon... except for, oddly, the full moon; Pachira, a vampiress who really wants a larger bust size; magically incompetent Yuuma; and Aiko, a gynoid whose technical data makes your old 2.4GHz Pentium Dual Core look like something from a Sufficiently Advanced Alien. There's also their nanny/chaperone, the invisible Keimie, who is mostly either absent or silent for the most part.
Now if only their recurring nemesis Dr. K-ko learned that these girls aren't harmless at all...
If you enjoyed Galaxy Angel, Magical Pokaan is a short, sweet, fun ride.
This show contains examples of:
- 12-Episode Anime: Though with three OVA episodes exclusive to the DVDs.
- A-Cup Angst: Pachira, who consistently bemoans how small her breasts are and wishes they were bigger.
- Bait-and-Switch Credits: The opening makes it look like a horror involving cults and sacrifice. This couldn't be farther from the truth.
- Bait-and-Switch Lesbians: That same opening also suggests that the girls are hot for each other.
- Barred from the Afterlife: Yuuma is sent to Hell, but once she figures out that she's not going to die, she starts enjoying the punishments. This promptly gets her kicked out.
- Beach Episode: Episode 5 involves a trip to the beach. The first half has it ruined by a sudden typhoon, forcing them to improvise at the nearby sauna (much to the proprieter's chagrin). They're finally able to make it while the weather is nice in the second half, and spend the episode trying to help a mermaid get together with a cute guy (or trying to get with that guy themselves).
- Become a Real Boy: Aiko's biggest dream is to become a human. She gets her chance in episode 8 when the girls travels to the Andromeda galaxy, where mechanical-to-flesh conversion technology is rumored to exist. Due to the nature of the magic they used to get there, she had to leave before the process could be completed, though.
- Beeping Computers: Played with (and arguably averted) in Aiko: she emits noises an android made of outdated computer parts might do. When waking up or deep in thought, she produces the sound of a hard disk spinning and seeking, and in one episode where she is malfunctioning, her speech skips and loops in exactly the same way audio playback stutters on a malfunctioning or underpowered computer.
- Best Known for the Fanservice: In-universe, Yuuma's magic show is only known because the Chunky Updraft from her spells causes people to catch glimpses of her panties.
- Censor Steam: When the girls are bathing during the Beach Episode, the steam obscures all private parts.
- Credit Card Plot: The second half of episode 2 involves the girls discovering the wonders of TV shopping, only to learn too late that shopping through infomercials still requires them to pay.
- Cursed with Awesome: Yuuma's allergies start acting up, and it turns out this is the only time she can actually cast a spell correctly.
- Cute Monster Girl: Liru and Pachira. Liru is a werewolf who looks like a cute girl with wolf ears (aside from her human ears) and a tail who has a hunger for meat (especially beef), while Pachira has pointed ears, fangs, and a desire for blood (which she substitutes with tomato juice) that's played for laughs.
- Cute Witch: Yuuma, a girl who describes herself as a "sorceress" and who tries to solve many of her problems with her (not very advanced) magic powers.
- Elegant Gothic Lolita: Pachira dresses in the Punk Lolita style of fashion.
- Electronic Speech Impediment: Happens to Aiko in one episode due to mildew building up in her components.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Werewolves, vampires, witches, mermaids, and demons and angels are all real and shown, among other types of fantasy beings.Pachira: You can't accept the existence of an android even though you're Snow People?
- Foreign Queasine: The four princesses have to down a case of strawberry/nattonote juice that Aiko bought, and which everyone finds disgusting. They make a game out of it: speak only in English, and whoever lapses into Japanese has to drink a can. It ends on the reveal they're not even halfway through the first case out of six.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: Yuuma is Sanguine: cheerful, childish, and somewhat scatterbrained, as well as seemingly the youngest of the group. Pachira is Choleric: commanding and strong-willed... though she is also somewhat arrogant and impatient with other people. Liru is Phlegmatic: easy-going, the most down-to-earth (along with Aiko) of the group, and tends to go with the flow rather than cause drama. Aiko is Melancholic: polite to a fault, quiet and reserved in demeanor, and takes the imitative to make sure everyone is cared for, and holds a Tragic Dream that she rarely mentions to the rest of the group.
- Friendly Neighborhood Vampires: Pachira, who doesn't actually eat anyone as she can survive just fine on tomato juice.
- Gratuitous English: An entire episode where the first person to speak Japanese is punished with the above-mentioned Foreign Queasine.
- Hot Springs Episode: The second half of episode 10, where the girls find a hot spring out in the middle of a snowy mountain. The other guests already there end up being particularly interesting, mostly in that they're tanuki. And they steal the girls' clothes. And the entire spring was an illusion.
- The Igor: Hongo, Dr. K-ko's very short but loyal assistant in her attempts to show the existence and dangers of monsters to the world.
- Informed Attribute: The fact that the girls are princesses rarely comes up; Keimie also claims to have a NICE BODY.
- Last of His Kind: Played in the most painfully hilarious way with Liru, who at first thinks that she's the last werewolf in Japan until she finds that There Is Another... and then the expected Adam and Eve Plot goes completely off the rails.
- Little Bit Beastly: Liru (a werewolf who looks human except for her extra wolf ears and tail) and Pachira (a vampire who looks human except for her wings and fangs).
- Lucky Charms Title: Parodied. The full title is Renkin 3-kyuu Magical?Pokaan; the question mark serves as a filler in some operating systems for obscure Unicode characters.
- Monster Mash: A vampire, a werewolf, a magical girl and a gynoid walk into a treehouse...
- Our Vampires Are Different: Pachira. She drinks blood (and can get addicted to it) but doesn't really need to (she does substitute it with tomato juice); isn't undead (she was born and grew naturally); can't convert humans; and while she's sensitive to sunlight, it doesn't kill her (supposedly turns her to ashes which she can regenerate from, but that may have just been a figure of speech). In fact, she's more of a youkai (vampire) batgirl than a traditional vampire, though she does have no reflection.
- Reused Character Design: The blue haired woman in the Hotspring episode bears a striking resemblance to Kei from Hand Maid May. Same face, glasses, and hair color with the only difference that the blue haired woman's breasts are much larger. Considering that same character designer for Hand Maid May work on this series, it's definitely more than a coincidence.
- Robot Girl: Aiko, a robot who looks almost completely like a human girl except for her clearly robotic arms (or when she's offline and her eyes turn to black circles). She is also a Robot Maid.
- Shout-Out: Quite a few.
- Dr. K-ko is named in the style of Project A-Ko, and one episode features an extended reference to Galaxy Express 999.
- The geek with the telescope who keeps looking up Pachira's skirt in episode 1 is wearing a Red Dwarf tee shirt!
- In the OVA involving the girls as doctors, the invisible Keimie wears bandages in the same manner as The Invisible Man.
- Show Within a Show: The opening turns out to be from a show the girls used to watch when they were young.
- Skinship Grope: Each of the girls finds a partner to do this with in the Hot Springs Episode. Unfortunately, said partners aren't exactly what they seem.
- Something Else Also Rises: Related to the above trope, when the girls find out the true identity of their partners, the audience is shown various images of bananas, elephants raising their trunks, and a rocket being fired.
- Three Shorts: Every episode is split into two segments except for the OVAs, the second of which has four segments and the other two which have a single running story.
- Transferable Memory: Aiko's hardware lacks to space to hold all her memories, so most of her childhood is downloaded onto VHS tapes that she doesn't have the necessary player to watch.
- Vampire Lolita Archetype: Pachira is a cute, young vampire girl with strawberry blonde Girlish Pigtails and an Elegant Gothic Lolita attire.
