Review of Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story

REPEAT WITH ME: adding a mystery atmosphere and sad backgrounds for the characters to a Mahou Shoujo DOESN'T make it a Madoka☆Magica story. Well, that's pretty much the description of this anime. Even if it's in the same universe and share lore with Madoka☆Magica, Magia Record feels like a generic Mahou Shoujo that completely fails in replicate the original's magic (no pun intended) We already know all the truth behind the mahou shoujos, so that element is understandably left apart in Magia Record. But it's original aditions are, although interesting, misused and unexplained so far. Do you remember the witches from the original Madoka☆Magica and how theyfelt special and unsettling? Here the witches (or they new variant) are episodic villains. They appear, have a nice animated scene inside their labyrinths and are dispatched without much effort or consequences.

Other of the original's strong points, the plot twists, here are very weak. Both about the mahou shoujo's true nature (because we already knew that) and about the new elements. And in both cases, the characters reactions are just...nonexistent.

To this point I already made clear that it's not a good "Madoka☆Magica" product. But let's analsyse the anime as their own.

Story: 4

Iroha is the MC and she has since ep.1 a clear goal. But you are warned, this storyline will not have any pay-off (nor significant advance) in this season. In turn, it's only an excuse to make Iroha go to new places and meet a lot -really a lot- of new mahou shoujos.
The first arc, the best of this anime, have a good balance between introducing new information/characters and advancing in a nice character-centric storyline.
But the big problem is that after that, the anime turns slowly into an episodic plot. We meet a new character every 1 or 2 episodes, and each of they have a subplot/backstory that draws all the attention during her presentation.
This leaves us with a slow paced and dull plot that lacks both cleverness and surprise.
For last I must say, without spoilers, that there's a force behind all this (that have the most interesting contribution to the franchise) but with a very weak presence.

Characters: 4

Trying to imitate the original serie's atmosphere, here we have absurdly depressed characters with sad backstories, but that's all the personality this girls have.
During the anime I can only think about one character that had any progression as such (and then dissapear for almost the rest of the story)
And if we talk about Iroha, our protagonist, the thing is no different. Starts as a determitated and good friend but weak mahou shoujo, and ends as a determitated, good friend and strong mahou shoujo. Directly from the shonen MC book (with a power up included)

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MINOR SPOILERS

No even the original cast characters that appears are much herselfs.
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Animation/Sound: 8

If you are here, I can asume you already experienced and enjoyed the shit outa the original series animation and soundtrack. Well, in Magia Record you'll find and continuation of that, although you will be not surprised anymore.

Enjoyment/Conclution: 5

If you fell in love with Madoka☆Magica for being a brilliant deconstruction of the genre (and anime in general), it's threedimensional characters and mysteries and plot twist... well, Magia Record doesn't have any of that.
I know that this is a videogame adapation, and much of it's problems comes from that. But it only means that they do wrong the "adaptation" part.