Looking at the artwork, you’d think the obvious: The man in the top hat and the suit would be the magician, and the woman in the revealing outfit would be the assistant. However, the voice clips suggest otherwise. The things I’ve noticed are as such:
The woman always names the Illusions.
Except for Levitating Woman, the woman is never seen in the assistant’s role. The man is never seen in any of the tricks either.
The woman is doing the escaping in Safe Escape and Straitjacket. (It is not clear who is escaping in Trunk Escape.)
The man is the one who tumbles into the basement, presumably on an errand.
The man is always the one impressed. (“Amazing skill!”)
The woman always provides instructions as to how to do the Illusions.
The woman performs the Hocus Pocus.
The woman performs the trick as seen in the match sequence.
I think there are more that I can’t think of at the moment, but after giving it some thought, the stuff above suggests that when you, the player, are not around, the woman is actually the magician and the man assists her.
I agree with you, SunsetShimmer! I have wondered and thought about the same thing, and have come to the conclusion that the female character is the magician, not merely the assistant. I hadn’t thought of the idea that the male character might be the assistant (I had thought of him as “another magician”) but that’s an interesting and defensible theory.
I will add to your list that the woman is doing the trick in “Hat Magic” (the third success, when she pulls out the telephone, makes that apparent).
I’d like to add another thing–I said that it’s not clear who is trying to escape in Safe Escape. Well, if it’s filled with water, then it has to be the woman, as you can’t scream “The air pressure is building!” when you’re trapped in a box filled with water.
With your observation, the woman performs at least four of the Illusions while we don’t see the man performing any of them.
I don’t know how intentional this was though–I initially thought the idea of the woman as the magician and the man as the assistant as a joke, but the more I continued to play and pay attention, the more correct it seems.
Wow, that was as corny as I had hoped. Interesting to see that the man is not depicted at all in this video. I guess he IS still in-training.
Personally, I believe that historically, magic has really only been a means to explain phenomena that could not be explained with science of its time (hence why magic is frequently associated with lightning or fire). On the flip side, if magic is depicted the way it does in fiction and can be understood enough for there to be a master-apprentice system (that is, if magic has consistent and documented rules), magic would simply become another branch of science, and magicians and wizards would be a type of scientist. Isaac Asimov did say that sufficiently advanced science and technology are indistinguishable from magic, and the webcomic Girl Genius suggested the inverse is true too (that sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science and technology).
I know the video is trying to play up the mystique of it all though. Who was it aimed at? Potential operators? Investors? Marketers?
Love this thread! I came to the same conclusions about this and mentioned it in my T’n’AC/DC article.
Related: Circus Voltaire. The Ringmaster is the woman on the backbox. If you look closely, she’s holding a green mask and popping out of a spring. Took someone pointing it out to me to notice.
