Review of Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story

“Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story” (quite the mouthful) is an anime adaptation by Shaft Studios of a mobile game series based in the Madoka Magica universe. Now I know the regurgitating feeling you must be feeling hearing the word “mobile” and “anime” in the same sentence, but with the word Madoka in the name, it’s a hard series to ignore. In addition, Gen Urobochi was not as involved this time and instead, fresh talent spearheaded the direction and story-telling of the series. Despite all that, I thought to at least give it a try. After all, the key-art looked beautiful and engagingenough to warrant it, with it giving us a beautiful image of stained glass superimposed upon broken glass. The main characters are all depicted, each facing in their own direction and sitting upon piles of mound, rubble and junk.

Simply put, the anime is a ride in terms of your expectations. At one moment, the visuals appear stunning and striking, fully matching the intensity of the story and action. At another moment, the anime appears to be basically animated by taking stop-animation of matchsticks moving around. Essentially, Magia record is an inconsistent anime, with spikes and drops in quality. Personally, I found that exciting since it always put me on the edge of my seat, anticipating just how Shaft will handle the next episode. You never could know with this anime. Overall, though, I would say animation was good and above average. Hopefully they make it more consistent in the blue-ray release. As for the art style, it is reminiscent of the original Madoka Magica, but modernized and spruced up a bit.

The story was rather interesting, but felt a bit rushed at times, making the emotional impact vary. I can understand that being set in the Madoka universe can be limiting as there are established rules in the world that you need to circumvent around. Regardless, I think they did a decent job at telling a creative story within the confines of those rules, but I feel it could have been better had they paced themselves more evenly over the length of the series.

I would recommend it especially to Madoka fans who enjoyed the world of Madoka and want to see it further elaborated and explored. That being said, I heavily recommend watching the original Madoka before watching this series though, to fully understand and appreciate the plot. But yes, fun ride and I really look forward to the final season!