This episode begins with Nagisa hanging out at Honoka’s house where she finds out that tomorrow is Honoka’s birthday, and that Honoka’s parents will be returning to Japan to visit her on her birthday. Nagisa tries to decide what she should buy Honoka for her birthday. The next day Honoka and her grandmother pick her parents up at the airport where they bring her a giant load of gifts.

      Meanwhile at Nagisa’s house, Nagisa tries to scrape together enough money to buy Honoka a gift, but she has no luck with this. While Honoka is walking around town with her parents her dad receives a phone call, and Honoka tells them it’s OK if they make a business stop while in town, So as her parents meet with a client Honoka waits in the front lobby. As Honoka steps into a bathroom to feed Mipple, three armed thieves start to hold up the jewelry store that Honoka is inside.

      Soon the criminals have the shop locked up and everyone tied up when Honoka stumbles upon the robbers. At first Honoka thinks it’s a joke but they really are robbers, and she tries to lecture them on how it’s wrong to steal. Just as she’s almost got them convinced to stop the robbery Gekidrago bursts through the jewelry shop’s doors. Back at Nagisa’s house, Nagisa has borrowed a craft kit from one of her friends and she is hand making a silver charm for Honoka.

     Honoka tells Mipple not to worry because she’ll handle this, Gekidrago demands the prism stones and Honoka tells him that they are right here in the jewelry store if he can find them. As Gekidrago begins to search through the store Honoka decides to try and contact Nagisa. Just then Nagisa is almost finished with her gift for Honoka, a silver charm of Mipple and Mepple, and Mepple makes fun of her gift so she tries again. Then police begin to arrive at the jewelry store, and Honoka tries to phone Nagisa but the line’s been cut, the wood be robbers are about to give up hope but Honoka tells them not to give up. Just as Nagisa is putting the final touches on her gift she sees a television feed and it looks like someone is waving Mipple outside the jewelry store’s window, and Nagisa rushes to the scene.

     Just as Nagisa arrives on the scene the police stop her from entering the building, and Gekidrago has finished searching and is about to attack Honoka but the robbers decide to try to protect her. Nagisa overhears from the police a way into the building that’s too small for an adult, so she go to try the way in. The robbers get knocked unconscious very quickly by Gekidrago and he is about to attack Honoka when Nagisa appears from the ventilation system, and then the two girls transform to battle Gekidrago.

     As soon as they transform they begin to battle Gekidrago, and when they attack him with their Marble Screw attack he begins to repel the attack but the jewels in the store react with the “power of light”  giving it additional power, blasting Gekidrago through the roof of the store. As the cops are wondering what happened, Nagisa gives Honoka her gift, and the cops begin to batter the door open with a dozer.

     When the police enter the building Honoka is about to try and cover for them but the robbers decide to take responsibility for their actions and turn themselves into the police. A while later, Honoka is reunited with her parents, and they apologize to her for never being home and when they do see her they just put her in danger, but Honoka tells them she loves them and it’s the feelings that matter, and that because she has a loving family and friends this was her best birthday. Well, that’s all for this episode.

 

Now for the review, or what I’m calling “the qualities and powers of a magic girl“.

      While anime fans, me included might sometimes fawn over the “hot” otaku show of the day, in reality most of the hot shows of the day can’t hold a candle to the ratings power and longevity that the magic girl genre generates in Japan.

     If one looks at the weekly television charts from Japan, one can see that the old favorites dominate the anime weekly ratings, but after you get past the 6-8 anime series that have been running forever you’ll notice that a magic girl show is almost always in the top ten. While fans scream for a second season of Lucky Star  or The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya  shows like these have never achieved more than cult status, while those shows sell a lot of DVDs and other merchandise very seldom do they ever get a second season. But magic girl shows like the meta series Futari wa Pretty Cure  get constantly renewed over and over again for 50-52 episode long seasons, do you ever wonder why?

      The reason is that a good anime from the magic girl genre has qualities and powers that endear large portions of the viewing public to them. As I have said in the past about these types of shows is that their are all about heart, soul, and above all love.

      Honoka’s actions in this episode demonstrates those three qualities of a magic girl in droves, first of all a good magic girls needs heart, the kind of heart that finds goodness even in inside the wounded personalities of jewelry thieves.

      Secondly, Honoka demonstrates the quality of soul, a belief in the inner goodness of people and if you don’t give and you try you best things in the end will turn out alright. A magic girl believes in the better angels of our nature, and that we can control the darkness that lies inside our hearts.

      Lastly, a magic girl always believes in the power of love, to the magic girl love is always stronger than hate and evil. In this genre nothing is ever created from hatred and evil, while love and goodness creates and and binds people to one another, it is the glue that holds everything together while the world falls apart, and in the end evil will always consume and destroy itself while the power of love still burns brightly.

      What the magic girl represents is an idealized version of girlhood/womanhood, once I heard Hayao Miyazaki say in an interview that since women can bring forth life most of his female anime heroes should be the embodiment of love and caring. So to me the magic girl is the perfect version of your sister, mother, girlfriend, or lover with no flaws or very few flaws, she contains all the heart, soul, and love one can ever need.

     This is the reason that these shows are tremendously popular, almost every boy/man would like a wife, daughter, or lover that has these qualities, and In Japan even girls/women would like to be like these magic girls. In a book about anime that I own it has many Japanese females stating that even though these female characters are unrealistic and too perfect they would still like to be like them. So, in the end, the magic girl genre is loved by a large part of society not because of what it is, but because of what it represents, heart, soul, and love.