In this Letter, we present an efficient complex-envelope alternating-direction-implicit finite-difference time-domain (CE-ADI-FDTD) method for the transient analysis of magnetic photonic crystals with lossy ferrites. The proposed CE-ADI-FDTD method is generally formulated for a saturated ferrite with anisotropic permittivity tensor and ferrite loss. Auxiliary differential equations for modeling saturated ferrite and Maxwell's curl equations are first cast into a first-order differential system in a CE form. Then, by using an efficient ADI splitting formulas, the proposed CE-ADI-FDTD method is attained in a very concise form with few and simple right-hand side terms. The performance of the proposed method is validated and compared with the explicit FDTD method.