Arriving this past June from Sentai Filmworks to blu-ray is a series all about song, dance, fashion, magic and… yes, love. Waccha! Waccha!! WACCHA!!! PRIMAGI!!

Matsuri Hibino is your typical middle school girl and is absolutely enamored by the glamorous, high energy PriMagi, a song and dance competition fueled by garish, glitzy fashion and honest-to-goodness magic. Matsuri dreams of performing in the PriMagi but knows that she lacks that special magical spark that is needed to truly succeed. Enter Myamu, a magical catgirl who pops into Matsuri’s life from the magical realm requesting to team up with her to compete in the PriMagi for real. Suddenly Matsuri is thrust into an electrifying, dazzling world that may fulfill all her wildest dreams. Along the way she meets a colorful cast of performers all unique in their own ways with their own special magical and fashionable flourishes. Will Matsuri’s dedication to love and friendship help her triumph over forces that may be working against the PriMagi? Dive into this massive 51-episode series and find out!

For those unaware, Waccha PriMagi is the latest in the ever increasing Pretty Rhythm game empire that also includes the original Pretty Rhythm series, PriPara, Kiratto Pri☆Chan, King of Prism and others that have spawned video games for a variety of systems, anime, manga and even actual fashion clothing lines. It’s staggering to think about but really, since Waccha PriMagi is a stand-alone spinoff, you really don’t need to know anything about any of the previous media before going into it. It is indeed based on the rhythm arcade of the same name and even uses an enhanced version of the arcade game dancing animations during the competition sequences. If you aren’t Japanese, you probably haven’t played the arcade game but that’s not really a deal breaker to getting into this series either. Aside from a few random unexplained terms during the dance sequences, it doesn’t really matter. Let me state right off that I am not the target audience for this show. It is definitely more aimed at tween girls and possibly younger with its bright pop songs and emphasis on gaudy dresses and cutesy characters, but I’ll try to be as fair as possible. Frankly I found the series extremely repetitive. If you find yourself not really grooving to the songs, well, too bad. Because you’ll see the same numbers performed by each of the characters multiple times. It definitely gets old given that the same animation is reused every time they’re done. Like a lot of anime, most of the characters are fairly one-dimensional tropes of one sort or another. In addition to the aforementioned audience surrogate of Matsuri and Myamu the cat girl, we have a quiet, emotionless girl, a short bubbly girl obsessed with cute things, an intimidating tomboy character, etc. Other than the basic music and magic competition, there also isn’t really much of an overarching plot until around episode 40 or so, and it wraps it up with minimal conflict and, you guessed it, a heaping dose of love and friendship. Also don’t think that because I’m not the target audience that I can’t appreciate a well-made magical girl series. There are definitely very good ones out there like Cardcaptor Sakura and Madoka Magica. I just didn’t find Waccha PriMagi! very compelling.

Regardless of what you think of the show itself, Sentai has at least given us a solid A/V package. The image is nice and clear with the bright colors really popping. I’m a little disappointed that we only get a Japanese 2.0 stereo track here since I think this is a series that fans may enjoy having a full DTS 5.1 track to blast those oh-so-catchy tunes (or not so catchy depending on your music preference), but the stereo track is actually quite good nonetheless. For extras, we get the usual clean OP and ED animations as well as some original Japanese Promos. One additional extra is an 8-minute promotional video “Pretty Series 10th Anniversary Program and New Project Presentation” that essentially acts as the announcement of the Waccha PriMagi anime series with brief comments from the producer and director. It’s pure fluff but still nice to see included. Unfortunately what isn’t included are two bonus Waccha PriMagi episodes that take place fairly early in the series but are one-off stories. Not having these aren’t terribly detrimental to the overall package but it does make the “Complete Collection” claim a bit dubious. But really, it’s impressive that a series like this is even getting a US release given the potentially limited audience here for it.

Overall, while I can’t say I loved this series and probably would not recommend it to other 40 year old guys out there, if you have a younger anime fan in your family/friend circle that digs singing and magical girls, this might be one they’d find entertaining and fun.