SPOILERS FOR ZATCH BELL AND NARUTO
It honestly felt like the author was writing one manga, and then at some point midway through, had an idea for a completely different manga and just stuffed her ideas into the world she had already established (debatably even like four different series). (It's also possible she had some conflicting ideas with her editors so who knows). It ended up having a case of constant whiplash for me until the very end of the series.
While I'd like to blame the lackluster finale on the lack of a defined endpoint, there's plenty of examples of manga with no defined endpoint that had good endings (usually more-so seinen or SoL) and manga with clear endpoints with pretty bad endings, it basically all comes down to the writer's skill.
Though two series were in my head as I was reading these last two volumes: Zatch Bell and Naruto (moreso the latter). I consider Zatch Bell to have a good ending, even if the final boss kinda came out of nowhere and the story kinda skirted around the possibility of the inevitability of the protagonists having to decide which one of them would be the king. Naruto on the other hand, sure it wraps things up on a good note, but it really did kinda ruin what it had going with Obito and Madara by introducing Kagura out of nowhere. (I'd have written it to where Obito was stopped before the tree came to full fruition) It's almost like Magi did the same shit with David suddenly coming back out of nowhere to be the final boss.
Yu-Gi-Oh! also kind of had the whole jumping focus midway through the manga thing, but the difference to me was that Yu-Gi-Oh's shifts felt true to the original focus of the manga, games. Something Magi failed to achieve.
But outside of the finale and tonal whiplash, the focus on Djinn Equips led to a lot of power-up designs that left the characters looking nothing like themselves, and sometimes made fights really hard to follow as a result and everything just becoming a mess.
Though for the positives, the main cast was likeable and their interactions really kept the manga going, especially early on. The sudden timeskip, while jarring at first, set the story into an interesting direction, especially Alibaba's efforts to restore the Kou empire. Sinbad jumping to the role of an antagonist was handled better than I had been expecting it too based on the way one of my friends put it. Sinbad was the same bastard I came to grow a fondness for, just with a different motive.
Overall, I started this manga really impressed and surprised I hadn't considered reading it before, but by the end I was just hoping it would get better or at least all be worth it in the end, but I just never got that. Thing is I was enjoying the early parts enough to save the series for me in the end. Kinda reminds me of Bleach in a sense, except Magi's peak isn't nearly as good, and Magi also didn't have that natural "cool" edge to it that gave Bleach a special place in my heart even if it really dipped. (Also Bleach at least kept true to at least some of its initial focus in the end).
40/100
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