I Read Park Seolyeon’s ‘A Magical Girl Retires’.
I found this book to be a quick, breezy short story about what it means to find your “power” and having it activate in times when you need it most. This is typically not the type of book that would make its way into my hands, but it was a recommendation from a close friend and he said the book was important to him, so of course, I had to see what this was all about!
One element of this book that’s highlighted so often is the sense of dismay and disarray that the main character is in. From personal debt to the lack of any personal connections in her city, there’s a matter of loneliness and desperation at the core of her existence. She has dreams that she sees through a bubble. She keeps herself from reaching into the boldest parts of her dreams by holding up a halberd of “If Only”’s. Everything remains beyond arm’s length. Something as miniscule as financial debt has pushed her to the point of no longer wanting to live. Descriptions of her apartment and the way she spends her time are filled with a rotating sphere of Nothing. Her life is meaningless because she chooses not to seek out meaning. As someone on the verge of turning 30, she has a lifelong dream of working with clocks and watches and tinkering with the inner workings of those complex machines. But instead of following it as a hobby or as a career (one she’s having a hard time finding), she wallows in her own self doubt. The little victories she does find give her small joys, but again, those “If Only”’s keep pushing her deeper into the water.
A turn in the story comes when someone grants her a great deal of trust and hope, explaining that she is believed to be one of the most important Magical Girls in the world. The belief of her having ‘powers’ and ‘control’ outside of her means begins to stir aspirations within her, but she quickly begins to find herself falling behind the veil of uncertainty and nervousness, even to the point of feeling embarrassed about needing to perform semantic elements of a transformation to complete her full potential. This, again, holds her back.
Throughout the book, one of the main things that kept me from becoming fully engulfed in it is that this character who is at the heart of our story feels nothing about herself and ultimately feels very little about the things around her. There is no passion there, there is no commitment, no ability to discern what’s happening around her. She chooses often not to draw her own conclusions. It’s 160 pages of the main character asking questions of people around her who know more about the world around her, and even as they explain things, even as they request things from her, she is a perfect doormat for not only those otherworldly women who operate around her, but also her manager and coworkers at the place she works at briefly. I think it’s strange that they spend almost more time at work in a convenience store than they do solving the WORLD’s problems overall. Pacing was certainly an issue.
I think at the core of this story, the main thing to be taken from this is that in order to actualize the person we want to be, there needs to be some sense of commitment and application of yourself, even when that comes with levels of uncertainty and fear. You often just have to take a leap into the unknown, do things that feel uncomfortable, that feel awkward to find prosperity. You have to do things to change things. A lot of this book is this woman being given opportunities which she turns down because she is so turned in on herself that it becomes difficult to root for her simply because there is hardly anything there to root for.
I don’t recommend this book outright, though I think if the Magical Girl trope is something you may be drawn to, it could possibly play within the genre very well. For me, I am a total stranger when it comes to this type of story so going into the narrative style blankly, I felt a longing for something more impactful to occur to or for our protagonist. This is a simple, breezy read and I made it through in about an hour and twenty minutes so it will not take up too much of your time, so if you want to give it a shot, it won’t set you back too much time!
