Saki Uno is a hard sell. She’s a rookie teen idol, performing with her childhood friend Sakuyo and barely making a dent in sales. Their singing’s bad, their dancing’s worse, and nobody comes to their concerts. Her crush on Mohiro, Sakuyo’s elder brother and one half of the bestselling unit STAR RICE, motivates her to get to the top to meet him eye-to-eye. But when Mohiro gets taken away by strange creatures, Saki decides to take action by making a (somewhat unwilling) pact with a shady man who claims he can give her the power to become a magical girl. Calling upon her love for Mohiro, Saki gains the strength that she needs to save him — only to find that becoming a magical girl isn’t exactly what she thought it’d be.
The manga ran from 2012-2014 in Comic Be, with an anime announced in its last year. While development on the show stayed silent for some time, it resurfaced in 2018 for an April release. Crunchyroll has the licence for the adaptation and even did a special 2-episode preview a week before launch, streaming the first episodes on March 26, 2018.
Several weeks after its adaptation began airing, the manga returned to the pages of Comic Be in the form of a sequel.
This series contains examples of:
- Affectionate Parody:
- For as much as it plays straight, the hyperviolent weapons, comedically bloody battles, long magical girl names, and buff, crossdressing boys firmly throw it into this territory.
- Also serves as one to the Super Gender-Bender subgenre, with Saki going through the exact same growing pains as a genderbent guy in the same situation.
- Alliterative Family: Both Saki and her mother Sayori have names starting with "Sa".
- And the Adventure Continues: With the demon threat taken care of, Saki and Sakuyo retire their macho shoujo idol image and go back to what they were; a struggling idol group trying to hit the big time. However, that doesn't mean they're done being Magical Girls...
- Artistic License – Biology: When Sakuyo considers how different Saki's transformed body is to her brother's, she starts wondering how her body parts got morphed. She promptly decides all the fat in her huge breasts went to her new penis, despite the penis having very little fat in its construction and being similar instead to vaginal composition. This even contradicts an earlier observation she made when she realized that Saki's chest (which was of a similar size in her original form) was larger than Mohiro's.
- Attractive Bent-Gender: Saki's male alter-ego elicits this reaction in Mohiro and Sakuyo.
- Bisexual Love Triangle: Saki has a crush on her male childhood friend Mohiro and Saki's female childhood friend Sakuyo has a crush on her, but Saki doesn't reciprocate. Mohiro seems to like Saki as well, but only when she's a man.
- Bookends: The series starts and ends the same way; Saki and Sakuyo perform a concert at the street even though they have no audience. Then, they transform and defend Mohiro from bad guys.
- Canon Foreigner: You see Ruka and Michuru? Those two idols that can also turn macho in the anime? They weren't there in the manga originally.
- Dancing Bear: Despite no inherent quality increase concerning their dancing and singing, Saki and Sakuyo's Magical Girl forms packaged as a macho idol gimmick gave them more success than anything they've ever done before.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: The Demon King is Saki's manager, Konami.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: In the beginning, Saki dreams of being a magical girl defeating a monster sapping away the color from the anime; in the penultimate episode, the demons create portals sapping away the animation quality of the anime.
- Fake-Out Opening: The beginning of the manga has Saki as a fully female magical girl fighting monsters with magic, getting pointers from her cute mascot, and finally nabbing the guy of her dreams... then the guy of her dreams starts beeping, and she wakes up crying.
- Fanservice: Parodied. All of the plausible but servicey poses you'd get in a standard version of the Super Gender-Bender plot are played completely straight with the macho magical girls. And Saki isn't happy about it.
- Generation Xerox: As it turns out, Saki's mother ended up attracting her husband the same way Saki does Mohiro— by him falling in love with her magical girl form.
- Happy Fun Ball: All of the weapons Kokoro gives Saki are these. Hairpins that explode with the force of grenades when thrown, a cute magical girl-style pistol with actual bullets (and no end to them, to boot)... It's telling that the least dangerous of his weapons is a staff with no powers attached to it, forcing its users to wield it as a bludgeon. And the little red jewel on it? It's a vial that contains its victims' blood.
- Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Saki is a terrible idol, all things considered. Not even her character growth saves her from being off key by the end of the series.
- It Gets Easier: Upon her first encounter with the squirrel creatures, she freaks out at the thought of killing. Come the halfway point and she's mowing down mooks with a dead, but reluctant expression.
- Magical Girl Genre Deconstruction: A Deconstructive Parody of the genre. By dialing the usual angst and suffering of the genre up to ridiculous levels, it becomes funny again.
- Magic Idol Singer: Takes the classical interpretation, much to Saki's chagrin. Their producer decided to turn their Magical Girl forms into an idol unit.
- Market-Based Title: Averted. Crunchyroll almost licensed the series under the title Magical Girl Boy, but changed it to the Japanese romanization instead after complaints.
- Men Are Tough: The primary justification for turning the magical contractors into macho men. According to Kokoro, magical girls will be able to protect the world better if they were in peak physical shape and strong to boot. Considering that, which of the sexes is generally stronger, and therefore, which will be more resilient in battle if given a body in peak condition?
- Mentor Mascot: Parodied with Kokoro, who looks and talks no different than your average gangster (his cute verbal tic is even "dammit"). His portable form goes even further since it's a round, gerbil-like creature with his face.
- Partial Transformation: Magical Girl Ore 2 starts with Saki unable to transform completely, resulting in half-baked forms where only parts of her body beef up.
- Postmodernism: Episode 5 has a huge segment devoted to the production committee of the series arguing over how to make the anime.
- Real Men Wear Pink: Averted for obvious reasons, but the transformed forms certainly give this impression due to combining muscly men with frilly pink uniforms.
- Sibling Triangle: Both of the siblings Sakuyo and Mohiro love Saki, but while one knows her in and out of her magical form, the other only knows Ore until the end.
- Shout-Out:
- Saki's name is the same as one of the Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star leads, Saki Hyuuga aka Cure [Bloom/Bright].
- The song that Saki and Sayuko sing as "Magical Twin" is clearly a knock off on the classical Cutey Honey theme song.
- When the animation team talks about the sixth episode's production in episode 5. One "drow", in reference to animation studio and series episode subcontractor drop, shows up on the episode animator team sheets.
- Said animation team also have outfits that look vaguely similar to Kamen Rider 1 sans helmet.
- Episode 6 has nods to Ranma ½, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Tomorrow's Joe.
- During Episode 5, one of the executives says "If you have six siblings wearing those colors, they'll call it a ripoff!" The purple shading and blue outline the characters have while they say it call to mind that show as well.
- A collector's edition Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel illustration exists in the universe.note
- The entirety of Episode 5 can be considered one, thanks to the whole plot reference to Shin Godzilla. Bonus points for also throwing in a jab at Pokémon GO.
- Sibling Triangle: Both Sakuyo and Mohiro are in love with Saki, though Mohiro's got a thing for her magical form more than her.
- Smoking Hot Sex: In the ED, Sakuyo (as a magical girl) is seen smoking while Saki (normal) is lying in bed covered up. It's an Imagine Spot of Saki, thinking Sakuyo might want to do this.
- Stylistic Suck: In the last episodes, the bad guys start zapping lasers that degrade the quality of the drawings in the anime. Saki and Sakuyo regain their structure when they enter the demon world.
- Super Gender-Bender: You'd be forgiven if you initially thought the page image was supposed to be viewed down —> up. In the world of Magical Girl Ore, a magical girl is apparently an effeminately muscular boy dressed in a cute uniform who violently beats up his enemies with his "magical" tools at his disposal. They also work in a different way than most Super Gender-Bender types: rather than turning female to gain the powers, the girls have to turn male.
- Especially seen with how the forms are supposed to be attractive to the transformer's love interests. Saki has a crush on Mohiro, so Sakuyo's transformation is a hunkier version of her brother. But Mohiro's crush isn't on Saki, or even a cuter version; evidently he likes men.
- Toast of Tardiness: Played around with and parody, as per usual. While late to her concert, Saki runs off with a full plate of pancakes covered in whipped cream, fruit, and syrup! On a later episode, Saki's mom tops herself by serving her grilled meat with a portable grill still on. It's eventually revealed that Saki's mom intensely hates the idea of this trope being played straight.
