Magic Time Wizards
is a comedy animation series by Team Four Star, starring Kirran Somerlade as Quantum Felnar, Grant Smith as Gus Epoch, and Stephan Krosecz as...everybody else. The series is notable for all of its events and dialogue being entirely improvised, with suitable visuals added afterwards.
Quantum and Gus are members of the Tempus Maleficarum, Time Police that work to ensure that history remains intact...even the unfortunate parts.
Tropes:
- Anachronism Stew: Played for comedy in the first episode, with a location named "Whatever the Equivalent of a Bar in Our Time Is", and Quantum trying to disguise himself as the pale-skinned Christ depicted in Renaissance art before the actual, more historically accurate Jesus shows up...and speaks like one of The Beatles.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Gus Epoch has the power to create these, as well as sentient animals. Unfortunately, they tend to have annoying personalities, and he lacks the power to create non-animate objects.
- Black Comedy: The tone of the series is made clear when the first mission Quantum and Gus are sent on is to ensure the successful arrest and execution of Jesus.
- Blessed with Suck: Every agent of the Tempus Maleficarum has a unique psychic power with a major drawback. Gus can create any object, but they're Animate Inanimate Objects with annoying personalities. Quantum is a Master of Illusion, but his body goes into a near-mindless, auto-pilot state as long as the illusion's active.
- Brain Food: Unlike the rare cyan squid offshoot that function as Translator Microbes to the Time Wizards, the original magenta versions introduced in Episode 2 just outright eat their host's brain.
- Cute and Psycho: Runt, the owner of the zoo in Episode 2, is a Cute Slime Mook alien with a soft voice that enjoys taking care of animals and worries about the safety of his/her coworkers...because they equate "love" with "possessing as many lifeforms as possible". Runt can also completely consume and devour the corpse of a former friend in a matter of seconds in order to always keep a piece of them with him, as seen in the ending.
- Fantastic Nature Reserve: The focus of Episode 2 is a travelling interstellar space zoo, which houses various rare and endangered species.
- Logical Weakness: If Quantum doesn't know what something looks like, he cannot create an illusion of it. In episode 1, his illusion of Jesus is seamless but noted to look like what he thinks Jesus looks like. Judas, who knows what the real Jesus looks like, asks who the hell he is.
- Master of Illusion: Quantum has the power to turn things completely invisible, change his appearance into another person's, and create other convincing illusions...but doing so puts his body into a stationary, "auto-pilot" mode.
- Monster Organ Trafficking: The reason the Time Office of the Tempus Maleficarum has access to time travel in the first place is because they've captured Kronos, the God of Time. More specifically, in the first episode, Quantum and Gus enter a cage and are then lowered by a chain into one of Kronos's multiple mouths in order to travel back in time, with Quantum stating that if Kronos doesn't comply to their demands then the people in charge "have a way" of making him do what he needs to.
- My God, What Have I Done?: In the first episode, Judas is having second thoughts over betraying his friend Jesus, and ends up hating himself when forced to go through with it.
- Non-Human Head: Time Boss, Quantum and Gus' boss, is a human with an analog clock (with a mustache) for a face.
- Offscreen Inertia: Referenced in a Breaking the Fourth Wall moment during Episode 2's introduction, when Time Boss mentions that Quantum and Gus had gone on multiple missions since Episode 1, but they were so successful and without incident that they were too boring to show on-camera.
- Rogue Agent: Episode 1 has a Rogue Time Wizard, who's part of a cult that thinks they can rewrite history to fit their desires by causing Temporal Paradoxes, interfere with Quantum and Gus's first mission.
- Something We Forgot: At the end of the first episode, Time Boss is proud that Quantum and Gus pulled off their mission without leaving behind anything that could change the course of history...and then it cuts to art of Jesus' crucifixion with the sentient helmet and blue whale Gus materialized in the background.
- Time Police: The main protagonists are part of an organization that's meant to keep the timeline stable.
- Translator Microbes: The Tempus Maleficarum have cyan squids that force themselves up a nasal cavity into a person's brain, and bonds with their new host to grant them the ability to understand all languages.
- Vagueness Is Coming: In Episode 2, Quantum and Gus are assured that they can do whatever they want during their mission, as the travelling zoo they're being sent to was never seen again after the date they arrive. For the rest of the episode, Gus is doubting whether it's ethical to leave all of the zoo's crew to their fate, as well as curious as to what actually happens to the ship. It turns out the crew just changes the zoo's name and muddle some records to escape the law after they have to kill a traitor trying to steal their exotic animals.
- Wonder Child: Quantum is stated to have been a "Time Baby", an infant with above-the-norm psychic powers found in a rift between time and space.
- You Already Changed the Past: Episode 2 focuses on retrieving a squid that will be used to breed the Tempus Maleficarum's translation squids, like the one used on Gus in Episode 1. When Gus points out the Temporal Paradox, Time Boss tells them it's a special case due to how the organization functions outside of time.
