Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 4 - Chapter 5

Magical Daisy, Episode Twenty-Two

This story is set quite a while before Magical Girl Raising Project: Restart.

Daisy: Augh…

Palette: What’s wrong, Daisy? You’re sighing.

Daisy: Of course I am. I’m sad ’cause I have to spend my weekend digging a hole.

Palette: Your mom asked you to dig a hole for some garbage, right?

Daisy: Why can’t I just make one with my beam? It’d be faster.

Palette: You can’t use your magic for something like that. Just use a shovel like normal.

Daisy: You just wanna make things harder for me, Palette.

Minako: Listen, listen! Big news! Sae found a treasure map in her closet!

Daisy: Huh? Really?!

Minako: Really, really! We’re all gonna go look for the treasure. You should come with us, Daisy.

Daisy: For sure! I’m coming right now!

Palette: Hold on, Daisy! You’re not done digging that hole!

Miracle Logical Cynical Magical Daisy!

She’s a fighting princess from the flower country

Ripping through the wind with her Daisy Punch! (whoosh)

Smashing rocks with her Daisy Kick! (whack)

And her ultimate move is…Daisy…Beam! (ba-boom!)

Come on! Everyone’s waiting! Let’s go, right now!

Halfway through the opening theme, she turned off the TV. With the touch of a button, the vividly colored animation on-screen went black.

For Kiku Yakumo, watching the Magical Daisy TV broadcast was almost ceremonial, and she never missed it. This was partly because she took a serious and formal approach to watching the show with gratitude and pride in her heart; however, because a third-year student in middle school openly watching a Sunday morning anime every week without missing an episode would be seen as childish, she was discreet about this secret ceremony.

But that day, there was a reason she had to skip the viewing for once.

“Are you ready?” asked Palette, the small, weaselly, mouse-like animal that was her mascot character, poking out of her pouch bag.

“I’m ready.” Kiku nodded.

It had been one year since Kiku Yakumo had turned from just another kid in middle school into the heroine Magical Daisy. She’d accomplished a lot as Daisy, and not just safe little good deeds like detransforming to take a lost child’s hand and bring them back to their parents. She had done dangerous things, too, like grabbing a truck and waking the driver when he was asleep at the wheel as his vehicle rolled backward.

And along with these activities, she’d also lived a normal life as a middle school student. Kiku had plenty of friends, and others would come seeking her advice. Resolving those issues for them was also a part of her role as a magical girl. Some pubescent worries had no solutions, but just being a listening ear did wonders.

Every day was hectic for Kiku, filled with work that was busy, fun, and worthwhile.

Magical Daisy’s determination to overcome her difficulties, maintain her training, become stronger, become kinder, and be an even better magical girl had caught the attention of an auditor who had come secretly to observe her. This was reported to the higher-ups, and…now an anime had been made about her. It reproduced Magical Daisy’s exploits fairly faithfully, aside from some dramatized aspects, like the premise that she was an exchange student from the World of Flowers.

Palette, the mascot character who was always with Daisy, told her that the number of magical girls who got anime based on them were just one bit of a handful who were filtered and melted down and refined and polished by the hand of an artisan into ultrarare legends. Daisy got lost halfway through that spiel, but she could tell from Palette’s proud expression that it was very unusual and a high honor. Listening to Palette explain, she felt she was truly fortunate to be commended with an anime based off her life when she hadn’t even been a magical girl for very long. Each and every day, as she used her powers to make people’s lives better, she never forgot to be grateful.

“Are you nervous, Daisy?”

“Yeah, well, a bit.” She was more confident than others her age, and she was aware of her own gutsiness—even when she wasn’t transformed.

All her efforts as a magical girl had changed not only Magical Daisy, but Kiku Yakumo on the inside. Experience had turned to confidence, and confidence to a firm, strong core of strength.

And now, Kiku was nervous enough to write out the kanji character for “person” on her palm with her other finger, the standard little trick to calm down. A different magical-girl challenge than the sort she’d experienced so far awaited her. She changed into her school uniform and called, “See you later!” as she went out the front door. As for why she was in her uniform—she didn’t know what to wear when meeting someone important, so the safest thing was her school uniform. Pushing her arms through the sleeves of her traditional sailor outfit—an old-fashioned design that was unpopular with students—she’d had a staring contest with the mirror while she arranged her scarf.

Yes, she would be meeting someone important that day. She’d been told they were coming from the Magical Kingdom to make sure she was doing proper work as a magical girl. This was supposed to be different from an audit; it was more like she was meeting a producer or director.

Due to the nature of the work and the fact that they couldn’t allow themselves to be seen by ordinary people, magical girls generally worked at night. That day, however, she’d be on the job first thing in the morning…but still, she couldn’t transform now. So as Kiku Yakumo, wearing her uniform, she headed out to the spot where she’d be meeting this important someone.

It was a five-minute walk to the station, where she got on the train moving away from the city center, riding it to a commercial area two stops away. The important person would be waiting at the hotel by this station. Kiku had written the name of the hotel, the room number, and the name the person was using in the human world on a piece of paper.

Unable to keep calm on the train, she pulled the memo out of her pocket repeatedly to check what it said. Just meeting a VIP in the magical-girl world was enough to make her uneasy on its own, and it was especially anxiety-inducing when she didn’t know what this person was like.

Palette had never met this person, either. “I’ve always been on the front lines as a mascot, so I don’t know anyone that important.”

“That just means you get worked like a dog because you’re at the bottom of the ladder, doesn’t it?”

“Most people’d be uncomfortable saying that, but it’s merely second nature for you, huh, Daisy?”

By the time Kiku arrived at the front desk of the hotel, the pounding of her heart was so loud, even she could hear it. To her, this humble business hotel by the station seemed like a distinguished lodging with a history of serving royalty and titled nobility. Kiku told the name and room number to the front desk so she could be let in, then went up to the room and gulped. She knocked twice.

“Come in.” A woman’s voice—no, a girl’s. So, a magical girl?

“Pardon me.” Kiku’s hand on the doorknob was damp with sweat. She’d stiffened automatically, so she did her best to relax her voice and face before she opened the door.

Her eyes scanned the room. It was small. On the right-hand side were the bathroom and toilet, and directly ahead was the bed. The sheets and blanket were in disarray, and a motley collection of small articles was scattered on top. As a whole, it was a mess.

The figure sitting on the chair in front of the TV turned to Kiku, extending her right arm. “Come on, sit down.”

Where?

There was only one chair in the room, and it was occupied. A mess covered the bed, and there was nowhere for Kiku to step, either. Of course, neither was there anyplace for her to sit.

She looked back at the other girl. She might have been in her midteens. A VIP with that apparent age had to be a magical girl. Her attire was startlingly bizarre, the sort only a magical girl would wear. Her hair was green, styled as poofy curls mixed with dreadlocks. She wore a baseball hat to hold it all down and big sunglasses, too. But even with her eyes concealed, Daisy could tell her features were beautiful. That meant she had to be a magical girl.

The long legs beneath her leopard-print miniskirt were crossed, her arms folded, and her lips tightly pursed. Together with her tone, her body language seemed to indicate she was in a bad mood. Kiku panicked. Displeasing a VIP was really not good.

There was no time for hesitation. The only place Kiku could sit was the floor. So she knelt there and looked up at the girl in front of her.

The girl nodded and muttered, “Good.” She was awfully arrogant for someone of her apparent age, so she had to be important after all. “You don’t have to be so formal. I just came here today to make sure the Magical Daisy anime was being done properly.”

“Oh. All right.”

You’d think the phrase “You don’t have to be so formal” on its own would sound kind enough, but the girl still seemed grumpy.

Palette nosed its way out of Daisy’s pouch bag. “Nice to meet you. My name is Palette, and I’ve been serving as Daisy’s mascot character.”

“So, while I waited, I checked over all the broadcasts so far.” She tossed a stack of papers onto the desk. Kiku’s eyes flicked across the pages. It looked like a script for Magical Daisy. “Last week’s broadcast. What was that?”

“There was a drug deal going on in a warehouse in the city,” said Kiku.

“And why were you exposing a drug deal? That’s not what a magical girl should be doing, is it? Tell the police about it. That’s what our tax dollars are for.”

“Um…”

“And you fired your beam, too, didn’t you? You’re not supposed to use your killer move on humans.”

“Um…” Kiku faltered, so Palette took over.

“We did beat them up the normal way. But just putting that fight as is into the anime would be bland, artistically speaking, so they dramatized it some and added in a Beam. Ultimately, it was just for drama.” Palette had recorded Magical Daisy’s activities on video, then handed that over to an ally at the TV station. From there, it was passed along to the production company that made the anime. Palette was the one making decisions about which parts of the video to keep and which to discard, it explained, and the production company also relied on its opinion on how best to dramatize the story.

The VIP’s lips curled in an angry pout. “Lies.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t give me that. It’s lies. You’re putting stuff you didn’t actually do into the anime. That’s a betrayal of the children who believe Magical Daisy is real.”

“Um, well, but—”

“You have nooo understanding at all of what magical girls are! Magical girls need to have kindness, charm, consideration, friendship, earnestness, and all sorts of things! Who wants a fight with a drug cartel?! Nobody wants to see that first thing on a Sunday morning!” The VIP smacked her stack of papers on the little desk, making Palette duck its head back into the pouch while Kiku cringed. She wished she could just crawl into a hole and disappear.

The VIP blew out a sigh and continued, “And besides, there was something funny about the story of how you came to find out about this drug deal. You heard some local rumors from a classmate? Isn’t the coincidence a little too convenient?”

Palette, who had ducked away, timidly pushed its head out again. “About that. The station helped us out. When Daisy’s classmate was walking through the shopping district on her way home, they made sure to talk about those rumors loud enough for her to hear.”

“It was faked!” The girl smacked the table again, and Palette once again hid. “I was shocked. When I reviewed all of the episodes so far, they were all like this. Do you have no code of ethics or anything? You think you can get away with this? This? You could easily have your qualifications stripped, you know? Do you get it? An anime is faaar more important than you think. It’s one of the few opportunities we have to show people what magical girls are. We can’t allow these opportunities to be squandered.”

“I’m sorry…”

“It’s not me you need to apologize to, is it? You need to apologize to all the people who’ve gotten the wrong impression about us. Isn’t that right?”

“I’m sorry…to all the viewers…” Still on her knees, Kiku stared hard at the VIP’s toes. She hadn’t been told that they’d be having a discussion like this. Kiku could have sworn Palette had told her this meeting was ultimately just a social nicety, so she had walked in with that in mind. And now Palette was hiding inside her pouch bag and wouldn’t come out. How long is this going to go on? she wondered as she hung her head.

“I understand you feel remorse. So you have to do something concrete about it.”

“Yes, ma’am…”

“We’re going out now. Transform.”

“Huh…? But it’s the middle of the day.”

“So?”

“I thought magical girls were supposed to avoid being seen.”

The VIP smacked the stack of papers three times. “Why do you think I’m dressed like this? I’m hiding my appearance with this crazy getup so people can’t tell I’m a magical girl. It’s just like a masked wrestler wearing the mask wherever he goes. When a magical girl goes out, she’s always a magical girl. So change into this.” The girl handed Kiku a paper bag. Inside were a dress shirt, a baseball cap, and a pair of overalls. “Put those on. We’re going to head out now to do some magical work. I’ll do the recording. Things have gotten all messed up because you leave this stuff to your mascot.”

“But—”

“Don’t but me! Just do it! Now!”

Kiku put on the dress shirt and overalls and pulled the hat low over her eyes. Once she had wrapped a white towel around her face, nobody would think she was Magical Daisy. They’d probably take her for some weirdo or a robber. Seventy percent of the people she passed by gave her startled looks, doing double and triple takes, which seemed to support the hypothesis. Another 20 percent would get flustered and look away, only to find the shocking sight of someone with poofy green hair walking beside her, while the final 10 percent looked for a TV camera.

At the end of their outing down the street, which had felt like pure humiliation to Kiku, they reached a deserted house.

Even though this house was in the middle of town, it was clearly empty and dilapidated. It wasn’t just old. It must have been someone’s home once, but there was no sign of anyone there now. It was tilting, sooty, and overrun with weeds, and a part of the corrugated roof had come off. The VIP held a camcorder in her right hand as she stepped over a chain with a NO TRESPASSING sign hanging from it and unlocked the front door. The air inside was stale and dusty.

“Now we’re going to clean this up. Make sure to give it your all.”

Ten minutes later…

“Bring those over here, Daisy, and put them all together in this cardboard box.”

“Oh…okay. Hey, Palette, when is this going to be over?”

“I don’t know…”

“Come on! If you have time to babble, you have time to work!”

Thirty minutes later…

“Um, this tatami is rotting…”

“Then put it over with the other trash.”

“The floor underneath the tatami is rotting, too…”

“Pull out the baseboards. We’ll repair it.”

One hour later…

“Yes, yes, that’s how you hammer the nails. Finally, you get it, Daisy.”

“Th-thank you very much.”

Two hours later…

“We’re out of nails, so run down to the hardware store to buy some. I’ll give you the money.”

“Okay. I’ll get some garbage bags while I’m at it, too.”

Five hours later…

“Daisy Beam!”

“Good, good. Now all the garbage is gone.”

“The rice and pork miso soup is done!”

“I’m impressed you can cook when you’re so tiny, Palette.”

“Ha-ha-ha! It’s just a matter of experience.”

Working all the way through till morning, the three of them restored the dilapidated building…well, not quite, but they made the place livable. The old lady who owned it was extremely grateful, squeezing Daisy’s hand and saying, “Thank you! Thank you!” which made her feel rather glad, too.

Karin Sonoda, a twenty-one-year-old newbie manga artist, tilted her head. She watched Magical Daisy every single week, and this episode was just weird. Magical Daisy hadn’t used her magic at all. She’d just done a normal cleanup and repair of an old, run-down house.

The episode the week before, for example, had started off with Daisy digging a hole and then going on a treasure hunt. It was common in anime in general, not just in Magical Daisy, for an adventure to start with casual, mundane events. When the episode had begun, Karin had been expecting things to go in that direction, but the show had ended with nothing more than repairs and cleaning up. The old woman who owned the run-down old house had thanked Daisy, they’d all smiled together, and Palette had ended the show with, “If you repair old things, you can still use them”—like some educational program you’d be forced to watch in ethics class. Fade to black. No punch line.

What’s more, Daisy hadn’t been wearing her usual costume but a normal, long-sleeved shirt and denim overalls, her face covered with a cloth and a baseball cap on her head. She’d looked like a chainsaw-wielding murderer from some rural American town. That’s no magical girl, Karin thought.

Despite being an early-morning show, Magical Daisy had an avant-garde appeal—there were no evil overlords or sinister secret organizations; rather, she had serious conflicts with real-world criminal organizations. That was the reason Karin enjoyed watching the show, and that was also the reason for its popularity with the general public. That week’s episode had completely missed the whole appeal of Magical Daisy.

What had caused this to happen?

When Karin went onto the general magical-girl website to check the Magical Daisy reaction thread on the message boards there, she found that the fan rage had reached an unprecedented level. Unlike other anime running that season, the Magical Daisy thread tended to be gentle and calm, a comfortable place to spend your time, but this combined with the influx of trolling surging in from somewhere or other to create a gruesome spectacle that would make you shield your eyes.

Karin lumbered across the room, pulled a bag of potato chips from the cupboard, and opened it. Her diet had only lasted until the previous evening, and she’d already lost all desire to commit. Relieving the stress of this blunder with Magical Daisy was the priority here.

Karin’s assistants would show up in the afternoon. Her deadline was close. A manga artist who had yet to secure her position had to work harder than a successful one or else she would lose her footing. But first, she had to release this building stress.

With a storm of crunching chips, she hit the keyboard. There was a mountain of things Karin had to say about that week’s episode—as a magical-girl enthusiast, and as a fan of Magical Daisy. The comments welled out of her in an endless stream.

Even as she let her objections be known, as the long-standing user named Genopsyko, she was obligated to protect the peace of this message board. She was charged with many duties. She had to get to work defending Magical Daisy.

“Yeah…maybe I’ll start a petition.”

She looked through the window up at the sky, where a white vapor trail was running across the great wall of blue. It was the sort of magnificent color that would make a beautiful painting as is. If she hadn’t been so frustrated as she looked up at the azure canvas, it surely would have been a pleasant view—even if it was from inside a messy hotel room.

I’m not wrong at all, she thought, and the feeling was building inside her.

She took off her baseball cap and tossed in onto the bed. Taking off the poofy wig, she put on her glasses and white coat, hung her Rubik’s Cube from her neck, and pulled on her shorts.

She had been fired.

She loved magical-girl anime, and that was exactly why she was so passionate about it. They hadn’t understood her passion. She had worked so hard to assist in the production of that episode because she wanted people to know about the right kind of magical girl, but reviews had trashed it, and the Magical Kingdom had ordered her to return immediately. But the real Magical Daisy had only just begun. She was supposed to work the anime avenue to reveal what magical girls should really be doing. But the masses hadn’t accepted the anime designed under her guidance, protests and complaints had flooded in, and the TV station had panicked and returned to the old crime-focused Magical Daisy.

The masses were ignorant. This was populism. Pandering and gratification.

The girl tried to open the hotel window, but it wouldn’t budge. It was made not to open, for safety’s sake—a fixed window.

“I hate magical-girl anime!” The girl—Keek—yelled at the window that wouldn’t open, and the glass shuddered.