Review of Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story

This review of Magia Record contains spoilers to both Magia Record and some plot points of the original Madoka Magica!! For anyone who has not seen Magia Record, there will be a spoiler free TLDR at the end of this review. Let me preface this review with a disclaimer as well. I will be comparing and contrasting some aspects of Magia Record with the original Madoka Magica, which I know is a point of contention among some viewers (though I will not compare it to Rebellion, because I feel it’s unfair to compare a TV anime with an anime movie because of the scheduling constraints TVanime usually have). While this is NOT a comparative essay, I believe it's fair to compare the two to a certain extent, as they take place in the same universe and because you would have to have seen Madoka Magica to fully understand its spin-off. You can’t judge Magia Record on its own merits, simply because to understand its world, you would have had to have seen the original. To expect people to judge these two anime like they are separate entities is quite frivolous, in my opinion. Anyway, on with the review!

I think like most people who ended up watching Magia Record, I’m a big fan of the original anime and, if not more so, the Rebellion movie. While I didn’t necessarily expect much from a spin-off based off a mobile gatcha game, I can’t deny that I DID expect a lot more out of this anime than I maybe should have, primarily due to the fact that the franchise is such a huge and well-respected intellectual property within the anime community and due to the fact that animated installments of the franchise are far and few between. With how talented the staff over at Shaft is, I at least expected Magia Record to just be a dumb fun experience, if anything. But then I saw how little of the original staff had worked on this spin-off and I started to worry a little. My main concern was with how Gen Urobuchi and Akiyuki Shinbou (and to an extent, Yuki Kajiura) were barely involved with Magia Record and how the responsibilities of directing and series composition was instead given to the quite inexperienced Inu Curry, who originally only concerned themselves with things such as background art, character design, etc. From how this anime turned out, I suppose my concerns were justified, at least for me.

Firstly, I’d like to discuss some of the things I did like about Magia Record and some things I believe it deserves some genuine praise for. Starting off with the animation. While it had flaws, which I will elaborate on later in this review, the animation of Magia Record was usually very consistent, even more so than the blu-ray version of the original. There were no weird faces or off-model proportions as far as I noticed and, generally, the presentation of this anime was very stylish and sleek. I would especially like to praise the scenes that introduce the individual uwasa. Very reminiscent of the pop-up book art style of the witches, these scenes are interesting and great alternatives to characters simply exposition dumping to Iroha about what they’re going to fight next. The way the Endless Solitude uwasa was introduced in episode nine is a great example of this. Besides that, Magia Record occasionally had its subtleties. Things such as in episode ten, where Mami recalled “the girls I guided”, these girls being Madoka and Sayaka, Madoka’s face was obscured as a somewhat subtle reference to the fact that in the timeline of the original, Madoka doesn’t exist anymore. Or how Iroha owned a plush that seemed to be modeled to look like the witch called Candy, who appeared in episode four. Magia Record had quite a few scenes and references like these and occasionally alluded to the original and to the gatcha game it was based off. Though this clearly doesn’t affect the anime narratively very much, I still appreciate it rewarding attentive viewers for paying attention to the direction and presentation. Anyway, that is about it for the positives, now onto some of my grievances.

A common complaint targeted at Magia Record is that the cast feels bloated and I can’t help but agree. Because of its source material as a gatcha game, where the whole point is to have a large cast of characters to collect, it’s only natural this problem would arise. The first arc revolving around Rena and Kaede (and arguably Momoko, though she’s more involved by proxy rather than actually having something to do with the conflict) was especially emblematic of this. After the first episode introduced the main character, Iroha, a throw-away side character called Kuroe, and Yachiyo, whose introduction felt quite awkward and forced, three separate characters were introduced at the same time, these being Rena, Kaede and Momoko. Now, I have no problem with them quickly setting up and introducing side characters to use later on in the anime, similarly to Hitomi in the original Madoka Magica whose involvement in the story had actual impact later on Sayaka’s character arc, I find that these characters are issued in way too quickly and leave very little narrative impact. Instead of being given the time to develop and to care about these character, as a viewer, I didn’t find myself becoming invested in them or their conflicts. This is exacerbated by the extremely fast pacing in the first few episodes of the anime and even after the story slows down after the first arc, the pacing still remains an issue during the entirety of the runtime with how inconsistent it is. In the case of Rena and Kaede specifically, when I watched them fight about eight minutes later into the same episode they were introduced, I couldn’t help but feel like it was melodramatic and forced. But due to its cast size (I assume), Magia Record doesn’t have enough time for the viewer to become really invested and even if it could, its script isn’t nearly as charming or interesting enough to really carry its relatively tight episode to character ratio. None of the characters had an impact on me, even characters that were more developed such as Yachiyo or characters that the audience got to spend a lot of time with such as Iroha. Never mind that, to me, both of these characters ended up feeling like hollow shells of Homura (Yachiyo being Homura, of course) and Madoka. In the end, I found Sana to be the only remotely memorable character in this anime and that was due to the fact that she had clear motives, an interesting story and the anime took its time to introduce her to the audience by showing her back story and her relationship to her family and to Ai. Even then, all of these characters felt rather shallow and it didn't help that Magia Record didn’t seem to have a message or clear themes like the original Madoka or the Rebellion movie. Magia Record didn’t elaborate on the original themes, didn’t even seem to touch the same themes of hope, despair, selfishness, selflessness, martyrdom, etc and didn't have any themes that could have been specific to its story. Magia Record ended up adding very frivolous details to the canon of the universe, but generally felt like it had no other reason to exist other than to capitalize on the success of the original. Yes, I acknowledge this anime was based off a mobile game that was probably made purely to make money, however, this doesn’t mean that I’m just going to let Magia Record off the hook. From the little I have played of the game, the anime didn’t follow the exact same story and many things were tweaked, presumably to fix some of the more awkward and convoluted scenes that pad out the games story mode, so I feel like with someone experienced or simply very competent in series composition and/or script writing, I feel like these issues could have been avoided. Magia Record is clearly not restricted in trying to be a faithful adaptation.

Going back to Rena and Kaede’s “arc” in the first few episodes, another issue I have with Magia Record presents itself; its needless tendency to spell things out for the audience, instead of letting them figure things out for themselves. At the end of episode two, Kaede apologized to Rena and asked her to be friends again and, like the audience was told would happen, the uwasa of the Friendship Ending Staircase showed up. Its familiars then proceeded to basically spell out what Rena was thinking in the most cheesy, heavy-handed way possible, with the familiars talking in human voices instead of the creepy, modulated ones that were used to introduce the individual uwasa (which I feel cheapens their horrifying and incongruous nature by having them sounding so familiar and human). Never mind that this scene felt very melodramatic and awkward, I find it quite agitating that Magia Record even felt the need to tell the audience what Rena was very clearly thinking or at least what she was thinking when she wrote her and Kaede’s names on the staircase. The simple fact that an uwasa showed up after Kaede apologized should be enough for the audience to draw their own conclusions, mainly that either of the two had written both of their names on the stairs (though I actually would have loved it if Kaede was the one who did it, as a sort of twist). This is just one example of the anime telling the audience things they should already have picked up. Another particularly frustrating example is in the last episode, where Yachiyo called Iroha by her first name for the first time, which I actually thought was a really nice moment……… until Iroha literally said, “this is the first time you called me by my first name”. This honestly completely ruined the moment for me. Being told something which, as a somewhat attentive audience member, you should have picked up on is inane and feels like you’re being talked down to. It feels as if the script writer had no faith in their audience to simply pick up on this fact. Another example that is somewhat similar is in episode twelve, when the main cast get explained in a literal lecture how soul gems work and how witches are born, which the audience should already know and thus ends up doing very little but waste the already relatively short runtime of Magia Record. While it helped setting up Yachiyo’s back story in a more interesting way than simply having her tell Iroha (or any other character who didn’t know), again, it’s a waste spending so much time telling the audience things they should clearly know already.

Another big issue in Magia Record is something I mentioned before; the pacing. Like I already said, the pacing is extremely fast in the first three or so episode, but the witch fights in Magia Record are an especially bad example of this and suffer from this issue a lot. Despite the fact that the witches of Kamihama were said to be much stronger than the ones in Mitakihara, fights against witches took very little time and seemingly very little effort. Witches such as Rebecca, Candy and Gertrud were dealt with extremely quickly and end up adding very little to the overall plot or story, often even detracting from it. Zenobia was the only witch who was more difficult to deal with, but that was mainly because Iroha was a weak magical girl and Yachiyo made quick work of her when she stepped in. Candy was one of the most egregious examples of witches simply being there to pad out episodes. She added literally nothing to the episode, was completely unrelated to the plot, detracted from that episodes story and was dealt with in one hit by Tsuruno. The witches of Kamihama simply don’t live up to what the audience is told about them and that’s really sad, considering the witches were such a huge selling point of the original. Their unique art style and alien designs/cries made them such intimidating creatures. Though even some witches were dealt with rather quickly in the original, such as Roberta, there was a genuine possibility of character death in the original after episode three, which made the witches much more threatening. Never mind that there were much more difficult fights, such as with Elsa Maria and Oktavia, which then reaffirmed the genuine threats witches were. To make an example, in episode four of the original, when Madoka escaped from the people who were brainwashed by the witch Elly, she ended up being trapped in a room with the witch and was forced into her labyrinth. Her genuine screams of terror and desperate pleas for help (props to her voice actress) while being faced with a monster similar to the one who killed her friend and the person she looked up to the most right in front her eyes felt so chilling. Like I said, the death of Mami in episode three really established witches as a threat, but scenes like the one in episode four just reaffirmed that. Anyway, to summarize this point a little bit, I’m just disappointed the witches were so underutilized in Magia Record and I feel as if they should have just put their focus into the uwase, considering they’re the main intrigue (I really didn't find myself caring or being interesting in Ui as a plot hook) and new concept introduced in this anime.

And last but certainly not least; the animation. While consistently on model in non-action scenes, Magia Record had extremely few interesting fight scenes. Due to its limited and rushed schedule, the original Madoka Magica had its moments of very inconsistent animation, mainly during dialogue driven scenes, where some characters had weirdly drawn faces or proportions. However, it also had extremely beautifully animated scenes such as the cut of Mami mowing down Charlotte’s familiars with her shotguns in episode three or pretty much the entire fight against Elly in episode four. Clearly for me and for a lot of other fans of Madoka Magica, its spectacular fight scenes were part of the anime’s appeal, together with its unique witch art style. Magia Record on the other hand, has literally one fight scene that barely even comes close in quality, that being the cut from the last episode where Sayaka blocks a Tiro Finale from Mami (which I will admit, was a beautifully animated sequence and just really damn cool). Instead, its fights often looked stilted and quite unimpressive from an animation stand point. The animation quality didn’t improve during fight scenes to really make an impact on the viewer. If anything, the quality tended to drop during these kind of scenes and seemed to heavily rely on Inu Curry’s unique art style to carry it (and relying on there being a lot of things on the screen). So, besides having less intrigue narratively, I feel like visually Magia Record was also a step down and unfortunately musically as well. While I absolutely didn’t expect a relatively new composer such as Takumi Ozawa to create an original soundtrack even remotely as iconic as the original (or the Rebellion movie) composed by Yuki Kajiura, I’m still quite disappointed by the downgrade that this OST turned out to be. Very few tracks really spoke to me and quite a few tracks from the original soundtrack were reused, especially in the first few episodes, but otherwise it’s not even really worth discussing. The voice acting is similarly not worth discussing in my opinion. The voice actresses did a solid job, but nothing really outstanding. The only thing I will say on this matter is that I’m sad they wasted Kana Hanazawa’s voice acting skills on a throw-away character.

Now I understand that this is the first season, so questions like “how do Doppels work?”, “how do they interact with the stopping of entropy?” and “where is Kyubey in all of this?” are most likely going to be answered in the second season. I’m actually glad that there will be more episodes, because I hope this will counteract(?) the extremely fast pacing a lot of people, such as myself, had issues with, but I doubt it will make up for the whiplash from the first season. I think I will watch it when it comes out, mainly to review it and hope it becomes better, but frankly, my hopes aren’t very high.

To give a quick and spoiler free summary of my review:

TLDR; While some of the animation is quite consistent, the visual presentation can be intriguing from time to time and it rewards attentive viewers (which I always love to see in any visual medium), Magia Record has quite a lot of issues. The cast is bloated with characters and none of them particularly stand out or are very memorable in the end, even when NOT compared to the stellar main cast of the original. The inconsistent and often break-neck pacing exacerbates this issue a lot and the lack of impressive fight scenes (or impressive animation in general) makes Magia Record even a bad “turn off your brain” show. I would seriously advise not wasting your time on this anime, but if you’re still interested even after reading this, don’t let me stop you from doing so. Play the mobile game instead?