The dispiriting search for meaningful (or even merely paid) work is a depressing experience common to almost every twenty-something college graduate. Today's job market chews up and spits out hopeful applicants who slave over CVs and endless recruitment applications, spending every waking hour grinding in the hope a potential employer recognises their value. Competition is fierce, good positions attract hundreds of applicants, and it's hard to get work without “experience” and impossible to get “experience” without work… Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. brings magical girls into this modern world of employment.

Kana Sukuragi is a plucky, intelligent, tenacious young woman blessed with a prodigious memory. She exhaustively researches the companies she applies to, demonstrating initiative in interviews, yet remains jobless. When the faceless megacorporate world fails you, where else to turn but the domain of the start-up? The titular Magilumiere Inc. is a tiny company with only five employees, including permanently eye-bagged, cross-dressing, magical girl-obsessed president Shigemoto. Here's a man who's sacrificed his life for his career — he looks like he's never slept in years.

Under Shigemoto serves perpetually cheery salesman/administrator Midorikawa, socially reclusive tech-junkie Nikoyama (who, for all intents and purposes, looks like an even more nerdily-obsessed hero-otaku version of Izuku Midoriya from My Hero Academia), and solo magical girl Koshigaya. Koshigaya is confident, brash, and a little careless. While Kana studiously memorises entire textbooks on the technicalities and theory of broomstick riding, Koshigaya's teaching style is more intuitive — her not-so-helpful instructions are “basically you get on, and it's like — VROOM! And then you go KA-POW!” Suffice to say, Kana's first experience riding a broom terrifies her, as she feels underprepared and out of her depth. Any young new-start employee should be able to empathize, even if their job doesn't necessarily involve gravity-baiting death spirals between city skyscrapers.

Kana's soon thrown into the thick of the action as a broomstick-riding, digital magic-hurling, Kaii monster-capturing magical girl. Her eidetic memory, cool analytical skills, and dedication to completing her tasks win glowing praise from her colleagues, which quickly bolsters her confidence, eventually enabling her to develop impressive leadership skills. She's the missing piece in Shigemoto's ambitious new “Alice” technology, a quick-thinking co-ordinator who empowers everyone else on the team to rise to the top of their game.

In Magilumiere's world, attacks from Kaii aren't a new phenomenon – they've been occurring regularly for hundreds of years, their form and power evolving. One major plot concerns Shigemoto's attempts to prevent the magical girl industry from deregulating the limits of magical power. What was previously a government-run industry has now been privatized, leading to the proliferation of hundreds of competing magical girl agencies and a perpetual arms race to keep up with Kaii's evolution. For larger corporations in collusion with the corrupt regulators, it's also a chance to force a monopoly. Small, disruptive startup companies like Magilumiere stand in the way of megacorporate ambitions, their innovative attempts to capture Kaii without expending vast quantities of destructive magic, countering the intentions of big business and regulators alike. Evidence that iterative increases in magical offense are the main trigger for dangerous Kaii evolution is suppressed in the name of making money.

Although it's a bright and breezy magical girl manga with an adorable cast and plenty of fun, flashy battles, at its heart, Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. is a pointed criticism of dehumanizing mega-corporate culture where, in the name of profit, details are ignored, personalities squashed, and bureaucratic short-sightedness results in otherwise-avoidable catastrophe. In comparison, the easy, loose atmosphere of start-up Magilumiere Inc. is compared by Kana to that of an after-school club. Employees are encouraged to work to their strengths, personal projects are supported, great consideration is made to the hiring of recruits, and vacation time is prioritized. It's almost as if treating one's employees as human beings is a good thing!

That's not to suggest the magical girl industry is an easy one. Kana and her slowly growing band of colleagues (we reach four active magical girls after the first few volumes) face dangerous situations daily, with the stakes escalating as the plot progresses. 2024's first anime season adapted up to around chapter 34, partway through volume five, and compared to later volumes, the story is fairly simple. The intensity soon ratchets up to almost unprecedented levels around the eighth and ninth volumes, which I expect will likely form the climax of the upcoming second season. There are some incredible, full-on battle scenes coming up that I can't wait to watch in animated form.

With volume ten, the plot takes a hard left turn, following an Empire Strikes Back-style twist, almost becoming a totally different series. Our characters are forced to contend with a desperately altered status quo, battling disappointment, regret, and confusion more than monsters. This is a particularly strong plot that sees Kana develop even more as a compelling protagonist and is filled with twists and revelations that help recontextualize the story. At the time of writing, the most recently published English-language volume is the twelfth, which functions as a pleasant, humorous breather before the next major arc.

Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc.'s world-building is strong, with a well-conceived notion of how magical girls might thrive as a capitalist industry. It's obviously absurd, and it knows it, but it builds on decades of previous magical girl manga and anime, operating more as an affectionate homage than a parody. Although there are dark elements, particularly concerning the corrupt regulators and inhuman corporations, there's no off-putting misery porn here. Nor is there any fan-service, as artist Yū Aoki treats every character with respect. The costumes are mostly functional, though still inspirational. We can empathize with Kana and her drive to embody the core quality of the archetypal magical girl, and she uses her ideals to inspire and motivate others. She's contrasted with girls from other agencies, whose roles differ greatly – from one who's more of a fashion model and salesperson, to another whose life is tightly controlled by her employer, her every action costed and appraised through the lens of profit.

Aoki's art is simple and clean, with instantly attractive and cute character designs, especially for Kana, who sometimes reminds me a little of Anna Yamada from The Dangers in My Heart, in the way Aoki occasionally draws her like a rounded bobble-head on a thin stick! Later volumes with their spectacular action sequences are very well-constructed, and despite the chaos of battle, they're easy and thrilling to follow.

This is one of the most unabashedly fun manga I've read in ages, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for something bright and optimistic that recognizes that life as a cog in the corporate machine is miserable, offering both hope and entertaining escapism.