In Misa no Mahou Monogatari (“The Magical Tale of Misa”), you take on the role of Philim, a fairy tasked with training an elementary schooler named Misa to become a magical girl. This works like many other raising simulation games like Tokimeki Memorial, which operates on a calendar as you pick various tasks and increases Misa’s stats. The game begins with Misa in elementary school, but once she graduates to middle school, her stats determine which of five different scenarios you’ll play.
The Heroine arc turns Misa into a warrior a la Sailor Moon, as you have to defend the city from a squad of seven demonic invaders. This scenario features turn-based battles where you pick from a selection of special attacks to fight your enemy. The Idol arc has Misa aspiring to become an idol, vaguely like Creamy Mami. The Romance scenario lets you pick from three different boys to date. The Club story challenges Misa to beat her rival in assortment of sports. And the Overseas Suspense story sends Misa to Spain to rescue a foreign princess. Each of these also has a few endings depending on your final stats.
For an extra authentic feel, the developers drafted Akemi Takeda, the character designer for magical girl shows Creamy Mami and Fancy Lala (and other popular 1980s anime like Kimagure Orange Road) to provide the art. They also hired several well-known voice actors, with Misa being played by Tomo Sakurai (Mylene from Macross 7, Meimi from Saint Tail).
Unfortunately, for all of its lofty ideas and production values, this is a shockingly boring game. The elementary school prologue is uneventful and takes up an entire year of in-game time, where there’s nothing much to do but concentrate on the same one or two stats that will get you on your intended route. The individual scenarios seem interesting at first, especially since there are unique tasks and stats, plus part-time jobs so you can earn money – these include being a fast food worker, becoming a flamenco dancer, and (rather inappropriately for a teenage girl) working at a nightclub. But compared to comedy and melodrama that happens in magical girl anime, they’re pretty mundane. The game doesn’t deviate from the standard raising sim template so it’s mostly just more stat grinding interspersed with occasional story events. The Heroine arc, easily the most unique, is completely broken too, as it’s impossible to raise the Sense of Justice high enough to get a good ending. Japanese sources indicate that this affects the initial release, but it’s unclear if a fixed version was ever issued.
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