Review of Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story
If you were expecting this to be a sequel to Puella Magi Madoka Magica, I will tell you ahead of time, it's not. It is as the title suggest, a side story. This review will contain some spoilers that are addressed in the original anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica. If you're starting out the series as a whole, then I suggest watching the original series followed by the 3rd movie Rebellion before watching this series. I say watch the 3rd movie but not the first two as the first two movies are basically the same as the plot as the original series. With that outof the way, let's get down to business.
I watched this anime to finish off the series for the time being. I was captivated by the original series for its grim tone, eye catching art style, and cohesive plot. I can say this anime has 1/3 of that covered. There are many missed opprotunities as well as a few shining moments. Try to look at this anime through the perspective of using the rules of the original story and making a seperate entity entirely.
The pros of this anime include the art style, fight scenes, and the magical girl flavor of the week. The art and soundtrack still holds up strong in this itteration. The fight scenes between the witches and other magical girls are still as entertaining as ever. Lastly whereas the original magical girl cast had 5 girls (6 in Rebellion), this one has too many for me to keep track of. With that said the gear fits all the girl's personality and wish. Also they did a great job making each girl's design and personality different considering how many of them there are.
The cons are pretty numberous with my main gripes being the plot and the girls themselves. We all know the life of the magical girl. Girl shows potential to be a magical girl. Kyubey introduces themself and offers girl a wish in exchange for becoming a magical girl. Girl fights witches and sometimes other magical girls. Girl either "dies" from having her soul gem shattered or falls into despair and becomes a witch. Unfortunately these facts escape most of the main cast. This makes the tone in my opinion less dark than the original.
The girls themselves feel very hollow and fleshed out in magical girl appearance alone. This could be due to each girl only having a episode or two to develop with most of them getting none at all. Also because all of their wishes and interactions between each other seem selfish, half baked, and cold, it makes it hard for me to care about any of them or even remember their name. Prime examples are "Fan Girl Lottery", "Aggro Purple Hammer", and "The Disfunctional Power Rangers Trio". Even the main girl Iroha, who's led up to be the pseudo Madoka, suffers from the same spell of indifference.
The plot jumps all over the place and expects the viewer to keep up. Though it provides some cool angles like a new type of witch and power ups, it doesn't bring much to the stories besides plot convenience. Also on a personal note, I can't tell if this universe is a prequel, a sequel, or a Tomura alternate timeline. The plot doesn't bother explaining it probably because it doesn't have enough time to do so. I personally feel that with 24 episodes instead of 13, they probably could have fleshed out the story as a whole.
In conclusion, if you're a fan of the art and soundtrack, you'll probably enjoy this. If you don't want to think much and just want a quick story and fight scenes, then you'll probably enjoy this. However if you're here for the dark tone, cohesive narrative, or well written characters, then this may not be for you. This is what I would consider to be a anime that you can shut your brain off to watch. This doesn't make it good or bad per se but again this is only my opinion. I know one thing for sure. Much like Kyubey, this anime is not up front with us like the original.
As always thank you for taking the time to read my review and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day/evening.