Magi starts with Alibaba a poor worker trying to make money, so he can have enough to try to make it through a labyrinth. Unfortunately Alibaba meets up with a boy eating the goods he is loading for, for the caravan. Alibaba has to pay off the goods with his services. The boy Aladdin sticks with him after that and gets him involved in trying to free a slave. Aladdin has a Djinn vessel which causes Alibaba try to recruit him to help him in the labyrinth. While Alibaba is with a caravan delivering wine, they are attacked and some of the slaves are being eaten. Alibaba goes to save them against his boss’s wishes. This leads Aladdin to believe that they would make a good team in the labyrinth.
If you are looking for a show that is accurate to the source material of 1001 Nights, then Magi is not for you. The story is totally made up with just the names of the characters being the same. The personalities of the characters are not even accurate. The story does seem to be the set up to a nice adventure story where they explore dungeons for treasure.
This first episode is pretty preachy about the value of human life. The whole thing with the Alibaba having to decide that the lives of the slaves were more important than his job was really heavy handed.
While the setting for the Magi is Arabian all the characters looks like the usual white anime characters from most every other anime. I do not have a problem with this though because anime does not usually make distinctions between different races, so it would actually be more racist in a way to make a distinction just for middle eastern people. For instance in many shows there are Asian and Caucasians, but there are no big differences between them. Also this show has not exactly been authentic in any way, so why start by making the people look middle eastern. The show is clearly the Japanese idea of what the area and people are like.
Overall this show looks like it will be a nice Shonen adventure story.
Status: Watching
