Mahou Josei Chimaka

Title: Mahou Josei Chimaka: Magical Woman Chimaka
Writer and Artist: KaiJu (Jennifer Xu and Kate Rhodes)
Publication Year: 2014
Publisher: Chromatic Press
Pages: 120

Chimaka Shi was once a magical girl. She had a cute magical mascot, a handsome magical boyfriend, and a great magical destiny… but then things didn’t quite work out. As a teenager, Chi managed to save the day (sort of?), but her final battle against her cosmic nemesis left a huge crater in the middle of the city. Her boyfriend dumped her, and since she’d spent so much time fighting she had trouble getting into college. Now, fifteen years later, she’s a regular office worker – until she gets a call from a mysterious government agent who tells her that the threat to humanity has returned. Chi hasn’t transformed into a magical girl since her life-defining battle, and she’s not surprised when she realizes that she’s lost her magical abilities during the interim.

But not to fear! After Chi somehow manages to convince her close colleague Pippa that she used to be a magical girl (spoiler: alcohol is involved), Pippa determines that all Chi needs in order to transform into Shimmer Shimmer Sky Patcher once again is to regain her sense of being magical. As a hole gradually opens in the sky over the city and an ecological crisis ensues, Pippa arranges a series of magical moments that will hopefully trigger Chi’s reawakening.

To make a short story even shorter, Chi finally manages to awaken as her true self, and it is epic. And then she and Pippa kiss, which is equally epic.

Mahou Josei Chimaka: Magical Woman Chimaka is a fantasy female/female romance with lots of flowers and sparkles and cute women in their early thirties being adorable. This short graphic novel is an enjoyable and uplifting read, and both the writing and the art flow smoothly. The characters are believable, and their faces and outfits are equally expressive. The story unravels against the backdrop of a number of unique and eye-catching settings, and all of the set pieces are perfectly designed to give the reader a thrilling sense of the doki-dokis.

In the Fall 2018 semester I’m teaching an “Introduction to Anime and Manga Studies” seminar, and I’ve decided to use Mahou Josei Chimaka as one of the assigned texts for the course. English-speaking readers are lucky to have a variety of yuri manga translations currently in print, but what I love about Mahou Josei Chimaka is that it showcases the brilliance of the OEL (original English language) manga that have been inspired by Japanese stories of female/female romance. KaiJu have mastered the visual style characteristic of both shōjo and yuri manga, with delicate clean lines, open paneling, and lots of screentone. Meanwhile, the writing steers away from many of the tired yuri tropes common to stories about schoolgirls, and it’s refreshing to read a story about grown-ass women with adult freedoms and responsibilities who are still maidens at heart.

Mahou Josei Chimaka is not shy about flaunting its artistic influences from both shōjo and yuri manga and American young adult romance novels, but it also manages to mask its cultural odor, which I can only assume must have been a deliberate decision on the part of the creative team. There are very few cultural markers in the story, which is not set in any specific location. It could take place in North America, or South America, or Europe, or even in Asia. Moreover, the manga-inspired artistic style makes it difficult to assign racial characteristics to any of the characters. Although I think most readers will assume that Chi is ambiguously South Asian and Pippa is ambiguously white, the key word is “ambiguous.” KaiJu doesn’t address any social issues relating to queer sexuality, which is never discussed either by the primary characters or by any of the background characters. Mahou Josei Chimaka therefore doesn’t position itself within any contemporary conversations about queer sexuality, which gives it a sense of timelessness and geographic ambiguity. None of this is necessarily bad or “problematic;” rather, it’s precisely this ambiguity that makes the graphic novel interesting as an artifact of Western interpretations of Japanese manga.

The main reason I’d want a class to read Mahou Josei Chimaka, however, is that it is super duper cute and a whole lot of fun. The art is beautiful, the writing is compelling, and the tight editing keeps the story moving forward at a steady pace while still allowing the reader time to enjoy the sweetness of the romance.

You can order a Kindle edition of the graphic novel from Amazon, and print copies are available directly from the online store of Sparkler Monthly, a digital magazine associated with Chromatic Press, an indie publisher specializing in a dazzling diversity of romance. KaiJu’s latest work can be found on their Tumblr site or on Twitter, where they go by @KAIxJU.