She was looking over her shoulder, as though 
glancing back at a friend who'd just said something funny.
The photographer had managed to catch her in the 
middle of a laugh, eyes crinkled and mouth open just 
enough to show her slight overbite. She was wearing a 
modest school uniform with a bag that had several cute 
objects tied to it dangling from her shoulder. All in all,
she was a fairly ordinary looking girl, if slightly 
prettier than was common.

Good start for a magic girl story, although I'm not sure
she should be slightly prettier.  I'd recommend taking
that omniscient statement out, and replacing it as
follows:
  Instead of a still photo, have it be a short video
clip, on which she's captured worrying about her own
appearance, that she's not pretty enough to attract
the school's big soccer player.  Then her friend
reassures her she is.

Why do this?  Maho shoujo, as a genre, should use the
standard techniques to get women readers to identify
with this girl.  One of these is that the protagonist
worries about her attractiveness, but the reader gradually
reads between the lines to find that the protagonist
is either 1) more attractive than she thinks she is,
or 2) it doesn't matter to the male lead anyway.

And in classic maho shoujo, the male lead should be
the junior high school's best soccer player (unless,
of course, all the action is in another dimension).

	One of the two men looking at the picture broke 
the silence by saying, "It's hard to believe that she's
going to destroy the world."

I like the twist.  Good material for agonizing guilt trips.
Suggest she be told that every time she uses any powers,
she risks bringing the end of the world closer.  Then subject
her to problems requiring that she use her powers.  Heh,
that'll do it.

	The other man, rather than replying, brought up
another file on his computer and started reading. "Name, Jun 
Kizuhara. Age, seventeen. Lives in Meguro Ward, wherever that 
is. Blood type... who cares? I may well have the spy shot for 
including that.... Interests: Cute boys, shojo anime and
manga, cute animals, and Street Fighter. Dislikes: School,
motorcycles, and mean people."

Seventeen?  Maho shoujo heroines should be thirteen or fourteen!
More seriously, her likes are perhaps a bit off for a girl
that old.  Do you really want a junior or senior in high
school?  If you're sure you know why, go for it!

	"She will bring freedom and light to all the 
world." 

	The one standing up spat, "What a fucking flowery
way of saying that she'll end billions of lives!"

I'll cut this short.  I like the dialog between the two
brothers for what it is, especially the way they identify
each other's quote sources (and the quotes themselves).
It may go on a bit long; I'm not sure you're not repeating
yourself a bit much there.

The main thing, to me, is that you've written this whole
intro without giving us any real characterization for Jun
herself.  Maho shoujo really stands or falls based on the
protagonist's characterization, and we have no indication
of what it is.  The heroine isn't always the same:
Hitomi isn't Usagi, who isn't Himeko, who isn't
Hikaru, who isn't Miaka:  they may all be cute, but they
have different personalities.  Who is Jun?  You need to
show us, so that we care about her, so that we keep
reading.

	The elder brother waggled his finger. "If she were
an ordinary girl, then of course you could kill her. But
with even the seed of what she is slumbering inside her,
you couldn't even harm her."

Heh.  I like it.


I encourage you to continue this; it has real potential.
And I think you could get a readership for this if you
do Jun's characterization well.
	     .---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
             | Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
             | Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
             |     Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject     |
             `---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'