“Kabushikigaisha Magi-Lumière” is a highly innovative work that depicts “magical girls,” an existence that everyone has admired at least once, as a job in modern society. In this world, exterminating “Kaii,” natural disasters that suddenly occur, is an important task for magical girls, and while they are heroes, they also work as members of society belonging to companies. The story centers not only on glamorous transformation scenes and powerful battles, but also on business-specific elements such as corporate philosophy, organizational management, teamwork, and business process improvement, allowing readers to enjoy a completely different charm from previous magical girl works. The world view that seamlessly fuses fantasy and real society is completed to a very high standard, and I felt it was rare to find a work that so entertainingly fully rendered the idea of “what if a magical girl were an office worker.”

The main character, Sakuragi Kana, is a university student who has experienced rejection multiple times in job searching and suffers from a lack of self-confidence. However, triggered by a chance encounter, she joins the startup company “Kabushikigaisha Magi-Lumière” as a magical girl, and her life changes dramatically. Kana herself does not possess overwhelming combat ability from the start, but with her talent of an excellent memory that can accurately recall information she has once seen or heard as her weapon, she grows while accumulating experience in the field. Continuing to make efforts despite repeated failures, understanding her role, and overcoming difficulties in cooperation with her colleagues are very easy to sympathize with, allowing readers to read while overlapping their own anxieties and confusion as a first-year working adult. The point that her growth as a human being is carefully depicted, not just flashy battles, is a major attraction of this work.

Many unique employees who support the main character appear in Magilumiere. The experienced senior magical girl and employees who each have their own specialized fields are all unique characters with quirks, but their sense of responsibility and professionalism toward their work are extremely high, and each confronts Kaii with the company philosophy in their hearts. The figure of producing results while understanding each other's strengths and supporting one another, rather than a simple hierarchical relationship, is truly modern team business itself. Many developments depict overcoming difficulties by combining each other's knowledge and technology rather than solving problems with the power of a single person, naturally making readers think about themes such as what work is and what an organization is. Despite using magical girls as a subject matter, I felt a high level of perfection that can be fully enjoyed even as a corporate drama.

As the story progresses, Kabushikigaisha Magi-Lumière embarks on a new challenge to spread its proprietary “Alice System” to the industry. The innovative mechanism of flexibly operating the necessary magic according to the type of Kaii and the situation on site is just like an IT company developing new services and expanding them into the market, further strengthening the business flavor unique to this work. On the other hand, behind the scenes, the existence of forces that prioritize deregulation of magical power and profits above all else is also depicted, and social themes that do not end in simple poetic justice also give depth to the story. Because the story unfolds from multiple perspectives such as competition between companies, technological innovation, and the balance between profit and justice, it is structured so that the more you read, the more you can feel the depth of the world of the work.

“Kabushikigaisha Magi-Lumière” is a charming manga that depicts not only the exhilarating feeling of a magical girl work, but also the difficulty and reward of working as a member of society, and the importance of finding one's place. The sight of the protagonist gaining confidence through effort gives courage, and the development of combining forces with colleagues to challenge difficulties has the passion unique to classic works. It is a work that can be recommended not only to people who like fantasy works, but also to those who want to enjoy stories themed on work or growth stories. It is a work that gave new value to the magical girl genre, and the story that positively depicts “working” itself should remain in the hearts of many readers. I felt that this work, in which glamorous battles and realistic job depictions are exquisitely fused, has the charm that makes you unable to stop caring about the continuation once you start reading, and is an extremely satisfying work to read.