The Winter 2021 Manga Guide

Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Wraith Arc

What's It About? 

All the witches in the universe, past and future, may have disappeared, but in their place, emotion-eating “wraiths” prey on humanity. The magical girls fight to protect Mitakihara City once more…

Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Wraith Arc is a spin-off of the Puella Magi Madoka Magica series. The manga is scripted by Magica Quartet and drawn by Hanokage. Yen Press has released its first volume both digitally and physically for $6.99 and $13.00 respectively

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

I probably shouldn't admit this, but I've never been that into Puella Magi Madoka Magica, possibly because I've always thought that magical girl stories were dark, even the outwardly peppy ones like anything in the Pretty Cure franchise. Darkness is a necessity, because what else are the magical girls going to risk their lives against? (Also, nothing will ever top the final episode of Nurse Angel Ririka SOS) But that doesn't mean that there's no value in a magical girl story that leans as hard into the darkness inherent in the genre as PMMM does, and Wraith Arc does seem like it has a clear point to make.

Falling in between the main (original) series and the Rebellion film, the Wraith Arc fills in the details after Madoka gives herself up to save all magical girls. That means that Mami, Sayaka, Kyouko, and Homura are all alive and well, at least for a little while, but also that witches are no longer the foes the magical girls are fighting; instead they're up against “wraiths,” oddly godlike beings (in appearance, at least) who release taint into the world and consume people's strong emotions. So they're still dangerous and still put magical girls at risk of dying, but magical girls no longer risk turning into witches. I'm not sure it was quite the trade-off Madoka was looking to make, but things do appear to be significantly better…unless you're Homura, the only person who remembers Madoka and mourns her.

This first volume is basically just interested in introducing the concept of the series and setting things up. In the grand PMMM tradition, someone dies pretty early on, people make terrible choices that lead to their inevitable doom (later if not now), and an angelic Madoka appears to make sure that all hope is never really lost – just, you know, most of it. Madoka seems to represent the hope of better things for the magical girls, and this is a bit heavy-handed symbolically without managing to actually spell it out in words, which embodies the contradiction I always found inherent in the way the original series was told. Hanokage's art is still just the right mix of cute and elaborate, though, and that does help to make the book very readable even if the plot isn't always on point.

I suppose I'm rather ambivalent about this volume in the end. It's good enough to merit reading, and if you're a major franchise fan, I think it'll make you pretty happy. But if PMMM wasn't ever your thing, I don't see this as being likely to change your mind, and if you've never experienced it before, this is emphatically not the place to jump in.

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MrAJCosplay

Rating:

Puella Magi Madoka Magica was one of the more iconic shows to come out in the past decade, but the film trilogy that followed shortly after remains one of the more divisive aspects of the franchise to this day. So a tie-in manga that seems to bridge the gap between that mainline series and the movies sounded like an interesting prospect. I will say right now that you might be disappointed if you were hoping this would answer questions regarding what exactly happened to Madoka, considering that she is more talked about than actively seen throughout this volume. However, I think that plays into the volume's favor more, as two-thirds of it primarily focuses on the other magical girls from the series and how they work together as a team. While the prospect of teamwork and understanding each other might be a bit rudimentary in terms of narrative, it's still understandable if you're already a fan of the franchise and have an understanding of where these characters are coming from. It should be stressed that this is not a good entry point for the franchise and you're better off at least watching the original series before picking up this volume.

But another possible reason for picking up this volume would be the stunning artwork. This is my first manga of the franchise and considering how involved and macabre the original animation is, it's nice to see how well it translates to manga form. The demonic creatures that the cast is fighting against do feel particularly creepy and the action choreography is far more fleshed out than I originally thought it would be. I don't think I'll be delving much more into this world after this volume but if you're already a fan, I definitely think you would get a good amount of value out of this.