Who’s That Girl?
A Magical Girl Retires
By Park Seolyeon
22 May, 2024
Translation
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Park Seolyeon’s 2022 A Magical Girl Retires is a modern fantasy. The 2024 English translation is by Anton Hur.
Jobless, three million won1 in debt, her dream of becoming a clock repair person dead, now alone in the world, an unnamed twenty-nine-year-old Korean woman resolves to kill herself, ideally in a manner that will inconvenience as few people as possible. Before she can steel herself up to hurl herself from a bridge, Clairvoyant Magical Girl Ah Roa appears in a cab to forestall the twenty-nine-year-old.
The twenty-nine-year-old is not the hapless loser she believes she is. She is a Magical Girl. Rather than being a burden the world would be better off without, the twenty-nine-year-old may be its savior.