Review of Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story

So people know where I'm coming from, this was my first exposure to this universe. I've since watched both Madoka Magica's first show, its movie, and even played a little of the game before it recently shut down. This wasn't great, because the show sure as hell expected me to have seen at least one of those and be aware of things like soul gems, witches, and the truth behind magical girls. I was able to watch episodes in a rudimentary way, following characters on screen through their actions, but, knowing little of what was really going on, its small moments entirely lost on me. Inthis way, my review will be very different than many of the other ones on here because I didn't come into this having experienced the original show in all of its greatness and thus becoming horribly disappointed with this secondary offering. Instead, I just watched a sort of crummy show that didn't really stand alone.

Magia Record largely follows Iroha, the most blankest of blank slates, and Yachiyo, a veteran bitch, as they explore a city where rumors have begun to manifest into hostile monsters, fighting these surreal physical forms as magical girls. This is a pretty great idea. The rumors people spread and how those took form were fascinating. However, the show is character-focused, not story or action-focused, with the combat regulated into monster-of-the-every-other-week in favor of the rest of the time being attempts at the emotional heartstrings. And the two main leads just aren’t compelling enough characters to carry this at all. Iroha's main storyline is searching for a sister she can't remember - and we, as the audience, never met and don't know either - and seems hell bent on never expressing anything remotely close to an emotion, while Yachiyo just remains unlikeable and nasty for the entire show.

Things don't really improve as they add three more girls to the cast; none of the new girls really have much to add to the narrative, barely talk to eachother, and didn't compel me to care about their stories all that much. I briefly became interested when the last girl, the shy Sana, gave an account of parental neglect so over-the-top that I wondered it if she was either intentionally lying or otherwise deeply mislead, but after getting into an argument about it with people that played the game everyone came to the conclusion that I was just wrong. I also liked an energetic girl named Momoko that was briefly in a few episodes, but she dropped out of the story early on, regulated to a minor character at best.

The show's setting, art, sound, and general mythos is strong. It's a distressing place that I enjoyed learning about, and the rumors themselves made interesting puzzle-like investigations for the heroes to look into. It's just such a shame that I cared very little about the actual characters looking into them.

At some point my confusion over the show reached a boiling point about 2/3 of the way through and I had to watch the first show to get the answers that Magia Record wasn't going to give me, and I loved that. Which only makes this look worse, really. While I do want to try to review Magia Record as it stands alone, when compared with Madoka Magica it was lacking on all major fronts – characters and their interactions, depth of story, and overall escalation and hype.

The story, as it was, ended on a massive cliffhanger with our heroes in danger and the villains’ plot coming to fruition. I hear it's getting a season two sooner or later. I have a friend that's into this, so I'll watch it with him, but I'm not exactly chomping at the bit with anticipation. Well, can’t be a whole lot worse, I suppose.