Review of Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story
OG Show is perfectly described in the following sentence: "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain." This doesn't apply to MagiaRecord which is nothing like the OG. What does it mean? It means we get a generic magical girl show with very simple-minded characters and shallow,nonsensical plot. CHARACTERS 1/10 They're essentially all the same. They only have personality in meaningless moments. One is going to act stoic, the other energetic, another optimistic and last one aggressive. But when serious emotional moments strike they act in the same way, respond the same, talk about their feeligns the same etc. This isyour typical case of anime where overly optimistic speech will cure all the emotional wounds, trauma and PTSD that you suffered earlier and recover without any mental damage. Example?(minor spoilers)
One of the girls' mother remarried to a man with 2 sons and ever since then she felt like she didn't belong. Her family not only didn't love or appreciate her but also severely neglected her. Due to her shy nature she didn't make any friends either. Because of some magic-girl-related stuff she disappeared for over a month. While she's being saved she's forced to kill the friend she made and spent time with all this time(month). The only friend she ever had. After that she goes to see her family and she finds out that they didn't even notice she was gone for over a month. THAT'S LITTERALLY IMPOSSIBLE HOW DUMB ARE THESE WRITERS? How dumb do they think we are? No one, not even authorities noticed that a middle school girl was missing? They didn't even bother to check if she's not decomposing in her room? Anyway, she takes her stuff and stands for a while on a dark street and that's when you'd think she'd transform into a witch from the despair caused by all the trauma, right? Nope. She remembers Iroha, a compelte stranger she's known for less than a minute and few others who were nice to her so she shrugs these off al nothing and lives happily with the girls in the house without any adult supervision.
Lastly, Iroha is an annoying protagonist. Extremely generic, nothing remarkable and very one-layered. She's a female equivalent of male progonists in many shounen/harem animes. Yikes.
The OG cast, which makes brief appearances, could as well not exist. They don't have any bigger roles, it's like they're there only to make cameos. Kyouko's character didn't even make sense. She was originally an anti-hero. Here she's a carafree, somewhat lazy hero.
STORY 1/10
Nothing is answered or explained. The disappearance of Iroha's sister? No. What happened with her childhood friends? No. What's going on with the witch-like possession of magical girls? Oh you know, some magical girl created that. That's it. That's got to be one of the dumbest "explanations" one could give. How exactly she even gave that ability to magical girls without intercating with her isn't explained at all.
A lot of places the characters find themselves in and the magical girl organization make no sense either. Apparently there's plenty of medival, European-like ruins under the city that are used by the said MGO.
The witch plot twist as I mentioned earlier made no sense. It makes no sense how the whole "trick" exists and how it functions.
it was never explained why Kyubey loses his consciousness after entering the city or what the young Kyubey is.
ART&MUSIC 10/10
They're flawless. The visuals are beautiful but also the animation is smooth and beautiful. The music re-uses many of the old tracks from the OG with few new and it's great.
The whole story is simply dumb. In the OG we felt the hopelessness and weight of the situation the girls had to carry on their shoulders. Here, we don't feel anything. Becasue no matter what happens and what these girls go through all it takes is an encouragement from a stranger to make them feel better and carry on like nothing happened. Their actions and their mental states don't have any negative consequences which leaves us with very infantile, naive and, at the core, generic story.