Previously on Magi:

After peace is successfully brokered between the Kou Empire & the Kouga clan, Aladdin starts a new journey in order to find and reunite with his friend Alibaba. Spoilers Ahead.

6 months after being set free from slavery, Morgiana finds herself a part of a traveling caravan of merchants on their way to Balbaddin; seeing it as a way to return to her homeland. She makes friends with Leila & Saasa, two girls who are part of the caravan with her. Things seems to be right on schedule, until the caravan’s path is cut off by bandits. When she goes to confront the bandits, Morgiana is poisoned by a slave trader named Jatima and is once again held captive. Once again in chains, she must confront her demons from her past and accept who she is.

As evident by the summary this episode focuses solely on Morgiana. This is a good thing as I found that her character was an interesting one that needed to be explored. She is more sociable than her initial appearance, but is still socially awkward to a point due to being a slave so long. As stated in earlier episodes, Morgiana is a very capable fighter as she takes out about 20 bandits before a sneak attack poisons her, this is where her development comes in. While captured she meets a young girl named Nadja who was separated from her parents, this causes Morgiana to have multiple nightmares and flashbacks as she was once in the young girl’s position (which leads to some pretty haunting visuals).

Young Morgiana

We get a look into the world’s slave trade, but not enough where it is a teaching point; as it is mostly set up for the plot of the episode. We learn more about Morgiana’s people, the Fanalis Tribe and how they are a race of  fierce warriors who conquered the “Dark Continent”, which is shown in the battles Morgiana has in the episode. Jatima himself is a one note villain, but he serves his purpose well enough. Aladdin also shows up at the end of the episode, but how he met up with Morgiana again seems a bit lazy and contrived.

“Fanalis, The Warrior Tribe” is a pretty good episode that expands on Morgiana in a natural way, showing her confronting her past and moving towards her future with a new perspective. The animation as usual was pretty good and the lighting and angles used in Morgiana’s nightmares fit the mood they are trying to convey; and show how hard her life really was. The adventure continues next week as Morgiana & Aladdin search for Alibaba.

4.5/5