Review of Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story
What made Madoka Magica soar was its clever playing with the pre-established tropes of the magical girl genre and how it created characters with depth and complexity that could not exist outside of the story's darker take on the tropes. Magia Record...does not do that. There's nothing wrong with the story, per say, but it's really more like these characters just so happen to be magical girls. It does not focus in on the inherent trauma that is becoming a child who fights monsters and having your emotions exploited for personal gain like its parent series does. And why set a story in the Madoka universeif you're not going to do that? It's moreso just a magical girl story played completely straight that happens to be dark. These girls fight witches, but they don't feel like they're under the constant pressure of the knowledge they're living on borrowed time. Granted, this is because the characters don't know the truth about what being a magical girl is until the end of the show, but 1) no one was making the writers keep them in the dark and 2) more offensively, that means is it's a huge missed opportunity to utilize that dramatic irony to disturb the audience.
The characters of Puelli Magi Madoka Magica could never exist in another story. The characters of Magia Record could exist in any slightly darker magical girl story. Hell, they could exist in any dark fantasy story, really. It's definitely the Madoka universe, with it's witches, soul gems, wishes, and incubators, but it really doesn't need to be. It took the bones of Madoka but none of what actually matters: the flesh.
Furthermore, this show features a cast of original gaiden characters, but the main cast of PMMM make cameo appearances. These cameos feel awkward, shoehorned in, and unnecessary, clearly only included to draw more viewers in. It would be much stronger of a show if it didn't include these classic characters, clearly relying on them as a crutch when it should be naturally folding the gaiden characters into this world. This is especially bad because the cast of Magia Record was already bloated, so the characters really needed much tighter focus (and probably to kill some darlings).
I'm not going to say not to watch it because it's a functional story set within the PMMM world. It's easy to watch and be entertained by. But for something spawned of such an incredible source material, it's unfortunately mediocre.
The story is fine. The characters are fine. It is easy to watch and makes sense. But for a Madoka Magica series, it has so little of the Madoka spirit.