Review of Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story

English is not my native lenguage, my aplogies beforehand. Spoilers from the game at the end. I'm a big fan of Madoka Magica and a Magia record´s player. The game's story is a good one, not at Madoka magica's level but pretty solid, I expected a good anime, it had troubles since the beggining when it was confirmed that it only would had 13 episodes because they couldn't be able to animate the entire story. While the studio was going to be Shaft, my biggest fear was the the absence of Yuki kajiura but the soundtrack turned out to be very good and keep the Madoka magica's feeling.In the other hand the characters and stages were equaly pretty good, my biggest problem were the rythm, both at animation and story, I mean, the animation was beatiful but the moves of the characters sometimes feel too silly and the story boring, however, close to the end of serie its course was righted.
Chapter 12 was pretty good and interesting though it's almost pure speech against other chapters full with fight that feels forced, because that what you do in the game, fights witches out of nowhere.
At some point the serie stopped exciting me and started boring me but the last chapter, i think it's absolutly at Madoka Magica's level, they changed the story a bit from the game so even players are heading to second season.
Almost the entire serie it had a qualify a bit above 7, so with a finale so epic i thought the qualify would upgrade a little but in fact it was lower and it's the reason of this review.
I believe some people are disappointed because they see this as a continuation of the serie or the movie, they don't know where Magia record is situated in Madoka magica's universe, and i don't blame them, the serie itself don't explain it, so i'll leave you some information from the game that i hope make you enjoy more this serie because i think it coludn't ended better and from me, i'm pretty hypped even it was a slow start.

Spoilers from the game... or not, this is not from the main story but from the individual stories of the magical girls in the game.

Before everything else, this is not a sequel nor a prequel of either the serie or the movies, this is another timeline.
In this timeline the story beggins pretty similar to the story we all know, until certain event produced a butterfly effect, this is the only timeline where Iroha become a magical girl, also the only timeline where Ui, Touka and Nemu didn't died due to their sickness.
As you saw, this turned into Touka being a Magius and creating a tool to prevent Magical girls from turning into witches and that
impacted in the life's of every magical girl, Kyoko, Mami and Sayaka aren't here because fan service, they are here because this event changed their lives as we know.

Now, in what point of the story we know it started to divergated into Magia record's story?

We can have an approach due to Homura's knowledge in the game.
She already know magical girl´s turn to witches if their soulgems get taunted but she still haven't been asked by Madoka to prevent her contract with Kyubey so she's still Moemura.

So, summaring, at the begging of the serie.

Madoka - Magical girl, clueless of Magical girl's fate.
Homura - Magical gilr, aware of Magical girl's fate.
Mami - Magical girl, senpai of the holy quintet, clueless of Magical girl's fate.
Sayaka - Magical girl, clueless of Magical girl's fate. She likes Kyosuke but hitomi hasn´t made her move so she´s ok.
Kyoko - Magical girl, clueless of Magical girl's fate. Since Mami is her senpai, she interact a bit with the other girls but she preffer being by his own.

To finish, since Madoka is a proper person in this timeline, Madokami can't do nothing but watch this timeline.

I hope this help's you understand/enjoy more this show.

Thanks for reading.