2013-02-02

Magical Teacher: My Teacher's a Mage? Review


Title: Magical Teacher Sensei wa Majo?
Original title: まじかるティーチャー 先生は魔女?
Alias: Magical Teacher: My Teacher's a Mage?
Release date: 2006-01-13
English release date: 2012-04-13
Developer: Score
Publisher: MangaGamer

A miko, a nurse, a princess, a nun and a witch come into a bar... I'm scratching my noggin trying to think of a punchline for the joke, but I cannot think of one. Maybe the joke's on MG for releasing the game or on me for trying to play. The life's strange and too short to play sucky games, but you have me to take this burden off your shoulders.

Strangely I liked this game the most of all the other "Score" games I have ever played. I couldn't get past the first hour of "Cosplay Alien", basically skipped through "Succubu Soon" (made by Score sister company Shukoa!) and slept through "We Love Master!". "Magical Teacher" at least didn't make me rage... OK, I'm lying, it did, but everything's in order.

Our protagonist Kazuya starts the game in a most cliché eroge predicament that was old by the time Monica Lewinsky was washing her dress. His parents decided to skip it and left poor Kazuya alone. I conjecture that they are vacationing in Hell, because it's warm there and, you know, "Winter is Coming". For the meantime he decides to stay with his aunt Haruka and her loli daughter. On to the yellow brick road he goes, but before he reaches his aunt's house (the emeralds are a lie), he is attacked by a living statue. Of course, such things do not happen every day, so it's no wonder that Kazuya is a bit disturbed. Before statue manages to crush him to death, a miko, a nurse, a princess, a nun and a witch appear and save his worthless hide. Our poor hero suddenly recognizes the witch as his aunt, whom he sought and is brought to her house (no gingerbread roof though). Would you believe that apparently Kazuya has latent magical powers, as he was able to see through the Clark Kenting of the motley crew? Apparently they are a group of mages banded for a single purpose of fighting evil. Also, Haruka and co used a lot of mana by fighting the statue. As a male mage our hero is able to restore that loss...
This would be a great enemy in an RPG.
Ooooooh. My genre savvy senses are tingling. I gather I know what happens next. A hot mahou shoujo (though that should be mahou milf in this case) will bring him into her room and do wicked and delicious things to his body, until he fills her mana bar with his beautiful little selves. This is such a great premise. A young and virginal boy seduced by an older and experienced woman - a rare sight in visual novels indeed. I'm eagerly awaiting for the scene, but then everything goes horribly wrong and my bright dreams are cruelly shattered. The game grabs me, dumps me into a reality and loudly proclaims: "You expected to beat your bishop, boy? Here, play with a vicar instead!".

If you wonder what soured the game for me so early, it was a completely unrealistic, stupid and frankly disgusting concept introduced during the first sex scene. KAZUYA DOESN'T KNOW WHAT SEX IS, HE HAS NEVER MASTURBATED AND STILL THINKS THAT BABIES ARE BROUGHT BY STORKS. That should have been a hot scene of milf seducing a cute shota, but came across as her taking advantage of a mentally handicapped person. It's no wonder that from that moment on I could never see the game in a positive light. I don't even know what kind of demographic that scene in particular was aimed at, but it rubbed me the wrong way. If that was just plain creepy, his subsequent rise to a sex god that engages in all sorts of sexual activities, like he had practiced them for a long time, is simply a masturbation fantasy of fat hikikimori (why do I want to write kikimore here?) otaku.

The basic premise of the VN is an attractive one. Lots of mature and experienced adult heroines to seduce and play with you. The first of them is obviously your aunt Haruka (yay, semi-incest). She is a playful character that takes a genuine liking to you. At the same time she is a kind of ditz and a cloud cuckoo lander to a T. It's a wonder how she can be a principal at the school you go to. Strangely, despite topping a cover and being a person closest to you, she has much less screen time than the other four milfs and appears to be more of a side character than true heroine.
Those are not melons. Those are cantaloupes.
Kana is my favourite of them. She is a resident mad scientist, whose pharmacochemical inventions frighten even her colleagues. While as a teacher she teaches science, Kana turns into a nurse when she is moonlighting as a mahou milf. She is also the only heroine explicitly said to be happily married at the moment (except for Haruka, whose significant other is not in Japan now). Oh, man, the only thing hotter than a magical teacher is a married magical teacher! After all, what her hubby doesn't know, cannot hurt him. Kana is a fan of very kinky sex, usually spiced with her drugs of dubious safety. Her scenes are the most outrageous and subsequently the most fun in the game. For example, she turns herself into a futanari, clones you in order to have a gangbang with multiple copies of you or turns you into a woman and has hot lesbian sex. Yes, she is crazy awesome. If only she was the main heroine of the game.

The best of the two worlds.
Alicia is a foreign English language teacher, who must have some relationship to Michael Bay, as she likes huge explosions and lots of spec. effects. For some incomprehensible reason she is moonlighting as a nun, but definitely isn't one in real life, if you get my drift :-D. Alicia is the most easy-going person, who doesn't really worry about the consequences of her actions. She is also too kinky to torture as all the villainous attempts to rape her ended with a perplexed villain shaking a head. Alicia is my second favourite of the Milky Force (Haruka's name for her squad; mentioned only once). Nonetheless, her attempts to pepper her speech with Engrish words come across as laughable (and not in a good way).
Sex in public.
Mariko is a bona fide shotacon, who admittedly loves young boys. She even manages to creep out Yukari, which is not an easy task. Mariko is a great violinist (and a music teacher) and derives her magic through music. She is also responsible for cleaning magical incident places by scrubbing everyone's memories. Mariko has a certain vein of a dom and definitely doesn't prefer to end up on the receiving end of a domination. She is quite likable, but didn't quite reach the level of Kana or Alicia for me.
A femdom scene is always a nice addition.
Chigusa is the last of the magical teachers who leads PE classes. For some reason she dresses as a miko as her combat uniform. Unexpectedly,despite being an adult she is still a virgin and may even finish the game with her maidenhood technically intact... Not because she is a prude, but because she develops a strong liking for anal sex, which she prefers to any other kind of intercourse. At the same time, Chigusa is the most serious of the milfs and has a strong sense of responsibility.
Watering the vegetation.
It would be great, if those were the only heroines in the game. Alas... Let me introduce you to Natsuki - Haruka's daughter. You meet her just a few moments before the shit hits the fan on the very first day and you tumble into a bed with her just minutes after you do Haruka, with her encouragement no less. Natsuki is also a mage, but her powers haven't yet properly manifested and instead create a bad luck field where everyone experiences small accidents. It's quickly discovered, that you can diminish that unwanted ability of hers by, yes, you guessed it, having sex with her.

It would be all good and dandy in a dumb sort of way, but Natsuki is the most unlikable member of the cast. First of all she looks like a reject from a casting audition for the role of Hinata in "Wind: a breath of heart". Secondly, she tries to act all cute, but comes across as a retard. Her constant stuttering was not cute at all, but rather gave an impression that I was conversing with a female individual whose Intellect Coefficient could be measured with a medical thermometer. Every time Natsuki appeared on screen I did my best Darth Vader impersonation. She was just painful to behold and her sex scenes were boring and trite. Of course it just had to be that the game paid the most attention to her and hooked Kazuya and Miss Retard together in the end. Yes, bitches, there is only one ending, though many paths to reach it. Choices only uncover different scenes, but do not change the overall plot.
Find ten differences. Oh, and the translator is obviously trolling us.
The last important character is Natsuki's friend Yukari - your friendly neighbourhood Crazy Psycho Lesbian Yandere Bitch and a Dragon-in-Chief for this game's Big Bad. Another review of this game called her the worst VN heroine of all time, but I reserve that position for Natsuki. Sure, Yukari was annoying as fuck and as cute as syphilis, but in the end she wasn't what I hated the most, despite breaking the game lore. Previously it was said, that Clark Kenting prevents normal people from recognizing the mages, but doesn't work on other mages. So, why in seven fucks nobody can recognize Yukari in her Clark Kent garb, even though she looks basically the same? And Yukari herself apparently doesn't have that problem...

Graphically the game is decently looking, but I take offence at the design of some characters, namely Haruka and Mariko (specifically their ridiculous haircuts). Oh, and let's not forget, that "Score" plagiarized Hinata's sprite to stand in for Natsuki. Fortunately, there are no such horrific scenes of graphical incompetence as seen in "We Love Master!" (anus located on a ball sack... seriously?)... Oh, wait... There was that one sex scene where Natsuki's face looks like the artist was drawing a Salarian and switched to a human at the last instance. -,-'
Not-a-Mordin.
In a sex department, it's a mixed bag. The CG art is nice and many of the more outrageous scenes are really interesting to read, but the tamer ones are boring, Hinata's Natsuki's scenes should be skipped outright unless you have a sleep disorder and, as I have already mentioned, the very first scene with Haruka has some really unfortunate implications. Of course, I didn't expect some of the more exotic concepts to appear in this game, that I thought will be the very epitome of vanilla (Just FYI, 90% of vanilla circulating in the world market is made from petroleum. I'm not buying anything vanilla flavoured ever again). There are futanari, egg laying, genderbending, gigantism, enema administration, bondage and etc. Sadly, there are more of vanilla petroleum scenes overall.

The plot itself is so stupid, that it's not funny. Of course the game is a nukige, but it's not an excuse. By the middle of the game, I started doing a loud commentary on scenes of the ongoing stupidity. Luckily no one heard me. The premise is reminiscent of the early JAST games with the parents suddenly leaving the main protagonist for no clear reason and him going to live with another member of the family. I swear, that was the plot hook of every game from their subsidiaries released before 2011. The weak beginning is not helped by the fact that you can basically play the remaining game scenes in any order you want with no change to the overall "plot".
Choose a scene.
In no way "Magical Teacher" is a good game. It does some things well, but it does almost everything else badly. If only it were a game about mahou milfs saving the world, it would have been a silly, but moderately enjoyable fare. The inclusion of two younger characters, that do nothing memorable and only annoy us, and an introduction of one appallingly disgusting sex scene ruin everything. Add in a weak plot, some boring sex and top it all with only one ending and you get a game that still magically manages to be better than anything "Score" ever did before. Go figure... Life is strange...

Fun fact: no group ever bothered to crack the game (even pirates hate the game). Instead the version floating on the Net is paired with a crack from "Harem Party". While the game is playable that way, it creates text problems. The runover letters can be fixed by making sure that you have Vera fonts installed, but incorrect line breaks are a direct problem of the wrong crack and are unfixable.

Links of Interest

Visual Novel Database
Official Japanese site
Buy the download version of the game at MangaGamer
Vera fonts can be downloaded here or here

Final Verdict: 49%

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous16/2/13 04:14

    I've been lurking a long time and I must thank you for all the work you do, you suffer through these nukiges so we don't have to. Plus you're the only one on the net that even reviews these, thanks again

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  2. Thanks for the sacrifice. I'm going to run from it faster than Bolt ever will for a bucket of KFC.

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  3. Great bblog I enjoyed reading

    ReplyDelete