Call me Lord Munto.
Just your standard gender-balanced Magical Girl anime.
Except the primary Magical Girl is powerless on her own, it's set in a world where magic is running out (which would kill everyone), the protagonist's goal is to destroy the seal keeping the ancient enemies away, and contrary to expectations, going off to a different world does not mean your mundane origin stops caring.
Munto was Kyoto Animation's first original project, and has spawned two OVAs. Those were expanded to a nine-episodes series; the OVAs are covered in the first five and a half episodes, but with some updates. A compilation film with some additional scenes was also released.
It may have most in common with Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha; both deliberately subvert expectations of the genre, (though not necessarily always the same ones) and have interesting, well-animated combat and deep character development.
This show provides examples of:
- Adaptation Expansion: The Anime to the original OVAs.
- Amazon Chaser: Takeshi is possibly a low version of this, if his interest in the much more athletic Ichiko is real.
- Ambiguously Brown: Gass seems to be vaguely Arabian.
- Ambiguously Gay: Ichiko. Takashi even says, "Whenever you talk about Yumemi, it's like you're a different person!" And Ichiko blushes and denies it.
- Art Evolution: The battle scenes are always intricate, but the characters seem to become more defined (in terms of design) as the series goes on. Just look at their eyes!
- Badass and Child Duo: Gass with Irita. He's rather protective of her as well.
- Badass Normal: Kazuya, being an ex-delinquent. Doesn't really have any screen time in that regard, but it's heavily implied he's something of a One-Man Army and The Dreaded to other punks.
- Badass Pacifist: Yumemi. She doesn't want to hurt anyone, but heaven help you if you try to hurt any of her friends.
- Badass Cape: Munto has a few. In the ending credits of the final episode, Yumemi is seen wrapped in his signature red one.
- Barrier Warrior: Jill, one of Commander Leica's top soldiers seems to specialize in this ability.
- Because Destiny Says So: Yumemi, Munto, and their plot. His parents arranged it.
- Big Damn Heroes: Munto's about to get bisected by an enemy, when the enemy slices in half— surprise! Leica to the rescue!
- The Automaton comes in just in time to catch Yumemi and friends when they realize they can't fly just yet.
- Book Ends: The Anime pretty much starts with Yumemi walking out the door of her house to go to school and ends pretty much the same. The difference is that in the former she uses an umbrella and in the latter she doesn't showing that she's utterly discarded her former I Just Want to Be Normal status and gained confidence in herself.
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Yumemi's powers are largely unlimited, except by her own lack of confidence.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Yumemi spends half her day looking up. She's actually quite sane and has no problem keeping her mind on reality; it's just that her reality doesn't quite match with everyone else's.
- The real Space Case of the series is Suzume.
- Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind: Munto and Gridori are facing off when Gass appears behind Gridori, grabs him by the neck and eliminates them both.
- Critical Existence Failure: Celestial beings running out of magic do this. Yumemi could also do this if her heart ever rejects the upper world, destroying the entire world.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Kazuya has a more mundane version, while Munto has the more fantastical version. Both need the help of a positive thinking girl (Suzume and Yumemi respectively) to help move past this.
- Damsel in Distress: Yumemi, which is unavoidable when she's the most fragile being around.
- Ichiko and Suzume gain this status later on as well. Again, justified.
- Declaration of Protection: Ichiko to Yumeni. Unfortunately, she's in the wrong genre for her to be able to truly help except as moral support.
- Disappears into Light: What almost happened to Munto after his battle with the Akuto automaton weapon in the first OVA/half.
- Munto's parents. We are returning to the Akuto, Munto. We will always be by your side.
- Driven to Suicide: Kazuya, pre-series. Suzume saved him.
- Dynamic Entry: At the beginning, whenever Munto appears to Yumemi he does so in a bigass flash of technicolored light and clouds of smoke. Most likely Justified as it takes a lot of energy to even briefly cross the time-space barrier.
- Eye Scream: What Lady Ryuely had to do for Munto to see the hidden "light" for the future aka Yumemi.
- First-Name Basis: Yumemi, Ichiko and Suzume are like this to each other, being childhood friends. Kazuya also uses this towards Suzume, as well as her friends.
- Yumemi to Munto to his ire; at first. To be fair, he does the same once he receives her name.
- Full-Contact Magic: What all Heavenly Being Magicians (and Gass) do.
- Functional Magic: Everything in the upper world runs on magic. Even if you think it doesn't, it does.
- Friendly Enemy: Gass and Leica in the first half. Despite being on opposite sides of a war, they are very respectful of each other.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Gntarl to Munto. Exact reasons behind this is unknown, but he's always seemed to have a problem with the young king of the Magical Kingdom.
- Healing Factor: The celestial beings are very hard to kill indeed, especially the more powerful ones. Contributing to Yumemi's Damsel in Distress status as a scarily fragile person.
- Heel–Face Turn: Kazuya did this pre-series under Suzume's influence changing from a hard delinquent to a soft spoken and sweet man.
- Heroic BSoD: Yumemi after getting broken. Munto snaps her out of it.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Yumemi is self conscious of her gift to see the floating island and wishes she was like everyone else. When Munto comes to ask for her help she at first refuses, just wanting to live a normal life.
- I Just Want to Be Special: On the other hand, Ichiko wants to see these "floating islands" of Yumemi.
- Immortality: The celestials apparently have The Ageless to Complete Immortality immortality depending on power, or at least live extremely long. They seem to be perfectly fine with this. They do mature at the normal rate, which would explain the dearth of children even if there weren't other considerations.
- They also don't need to eat— celestials only need to take in Akuto, like plants take in sunshine.
- Invisible to Normals: Literally. An entire planet, that just happens to share our orbit, very closely. The Invisible status is dropped completely by the end.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Munto. Rather abrasive and arrogant at first, but honestly has a good heart and is a much beloved king.
- Jerkass: Gntarl, on the other hand, is just a jerk.
- Made of Magic: Everything in the Heavenly Kingdoms. Even the people.
- Magitek: There's plenty of technology in evidence in the upper world, but it's all magic-based. The better examples are also regenerating, such as the characters.
- Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex: Munto and Yumemi; which contributes to his reluctance in the second half/OVA.
- Masquerade: Averted. Though science makes half-hearted attempts at explaining the events away, the celestials appear not to care, and it quickly becomes futile.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Yumemi yells "STOP IT!" to Munto's Automaton right when it's about to blast Gntarl... and it listens to her. So Gntarl takes that chance to hack at it again with his sword and grabs Ichiko and Suzume. NICE ONE.
- Noodle People: especially in the later episodes. Look at
◊ those◊ legs...◊ - "No More Holding Back" Speech: Yumemi gives one to Gntarl in the climax.
- Older Than They Look: Suzume looks like she's still grade school but is stated to be 13 when the series starts and is most likely fifteen when it ends.
- One-Man Army: Gass. There are several battles in which he takes on entire armies by himself.
- Munto as well. Considering what else has been shown, being a One-Man Army is part and parcel of being one of the Heavenly Kings.
- Person of Mass Destruction: The Heavenly Kings and Gass; Gass more than them.
- By human standards, all of the Heavenly People count as such.
- Pillar of Light: The tear in the planetary seal, episodes 6 and up
- Planet Eater: Essentially what the Visitors— the gods— were doing to gain more Akuto, though they were crossing space-time barriers instead of the universe.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking: Justified, as the celestials were originally created by their kings as playthings, and it may be impossible to create a celestial with more power than you have yourself. The only non-royals that are even stronger are the Outsiders; and nothing gives you more authority than being in charge of the space-time continuum.
- Razor Wind:
- One of Leica's attacks in her fight with Gass is a shower of hundreds and hundreds of blades.
- Tail, one of Munto's commanders, has a magic that he seems to form into gigantic "sharp winds".
- Really 700 Years Old: All the Heavenly Beings.
- Refusal of the Call: Yumemi is not very happy about Munto's intrusion into her perfectly average life, at least at first. This gets reversed in the second half; now Yumemi has to convince Munto to heed the call.
- Redemption Equals Life: Suzume saves and redeems Kazuya (pre-series), gaining a very loyal and kind boyfriend in the process.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni:
- Rescue Romance: Munto and Yumemi; interestingly, Yumemi saved him first. Same goes for Kazuya and Suzume. Again, the girl saved the guy.
- Screw Destiny: Strangely enough, Munto and Yumemi's Destiny as The Chosen Ones is to do this, changing the foretold future of destruction for both their worlds. Ryuely lampshades this early on and when Yumemi brings Ichiko and Suzume to the Heavenly Lands.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Us. The celestials are quite surprised at what has become of the descendants of their ground-dwelling counterparts.
- Sequel Hook: A minor one at the end of the Anime: there's a distortion in space left over from Gass's Heroic Sacrifice, the Masquerade is firmly broken with the Humans and Heavenly Beings opening talks, and Munto has run off to spend time with Yumemi while Ryuely makes vague remarks that sound like a prediction.
- Ship Tease: A little between Ichiko and Takashi, plenty with Yumemi and Munto.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: When Gridori has Munto under his grasp while gloating, Munto smirks. Gridori snaps, "What are you laughing at—" and Munto punches his face off!
- Spell My Name With An S: Gass, Gas, Gasu...it is also possibly suppose to be Geas (which is pronounced "Gas") as it would fit his status as the Outsider.
- Spoiler Opening: The opening to the Anime; after the first few seconds, it trails into things that are covered in the second half of the series.
- Taking You with Me: After Gass grabs Gridori's neck in Gridori vs. Munto's fight, he says, "I'm going to take him away, Munto." And then he wipes them both out of existence with his runes.
- The Power of Friendship: Yumemi wants to save her friends and breaks out of crystals with her own strength! Her voice also magically becomes more mature.
- Tranquil Fury: Whenever there's a battle scene with Gass. And later on Commander Leica calmly walking up to the robot firing a hail of bullets at her before chopping it neatly in half.
- Yumemi when she confronts Gntarl. She's rather calm sounding, but quite obviously pissed off as well.
- Villainous Breakdown: Gntarl spends a good chunk of the series going through this. It ends poorly for him.
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: A female teacher is seen using this for her cell phone in the first half/OVA.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Gntarl. He actually causes much more trouble than its worth in his quest to "save" the Heavenly Kingdoms.
