Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story

Episode 13

Thank God Magia Record has already announced that a second season is being produced, because I would honestly be bummed if this was the note the whole series decided to end on. Not because it's bad or anything; “A Faint Hope” does quite a lot right, in spite of how much it has to juggle in such a short runtime. The biggest issue is that this season finale resolves basically none of the narrative threads that Magia Record set up, choosing instead to revel in fanservice and cliffhangers galore. It's a devious hook, and I'd be bitter if it all merely amounted to a commercial for the mobile game, but the story will continue, which makes it easier for me to deal with lot of this finale's choices.

Leave it to Iroha to stubbornly insist that we stick with the “missing sister” mystery that absolutely nobody but Iroha gives much of a damn about. After Touka finished her incredibly thorough explanation of all the awful secrets hiding behind Kyubey's dead eyes and the smiles of so many dead Magical Girls, all Iroha can say is that she only cared about finding Ui in the first place, and that she doesn't know how to deal with all of this extra nonsense. It's equal parts charming and irritating, if only because it reminds us of just how much time we've spent circling the Ui drain, despite the show having almost nothing to show for it. I wouldn't harp on the Ui thread so much if it hadn't Iroha's sole defining character motivation for so long, but if Magia Record wants to spend thirteen weeks beating a dead horse, then I have no choice but to follow suit.

There's a new wrinkle to her character now, though, as her relationship with Yachiyo has finally risen from the murky depths of subtextual affection (and possibly romance). Iroha and Yachiyo spend practically the entire episode blushing, holding hands, reaching out to each other with passionate longing, and so forth; while I've been burned too many times by the anime industry to expect things to become more concrete than this, it's refreshing for Iroha to have desires that go beyond routinely hunting for the answer to a mystery that is only tangentially related to the maelstrom of secrets and interpersonal drama she has found herself in. We learn in fragmented flashbacks that Yachiyo's wish as a magical girl was simply “to survive”, but the curling of the Kyubey's Paw has meant that everyone Yachiyo gets close to inevitably dies or turns against her. Yachiyo nearly surrenders to her solitude when she is swallowed by a roaming Witch, but Iroha refuses to abandon her. It's cute, even if it is also another mere echo of a beat that Madoka Magica already covered.

Speaking of Madoka Magica, Mami's back, and she's all sorts of scrambled on account of the Wings of Magius' “persuasion”. This leads to a fight that is top-tier spectacle from the animators at Shaft, with some of the cuts looking positively cinematic in their scope and fluidity. Then, just when things are looking especially dire, who else shows up to put a stop to Mami's rampage than Sayaka. If things weren't already ridiculous enough, a corrupted Iroha decides that the only way to end the fight once and for all is to use her Doppel again, this time of her own free will, and Yachiyo joins her.

It's a solid fight, and a spectacle to behold; there's just one problem: It would be so much better if Mami and Sayaka weren't there. Don't get me wrong, it's good to see one of my all time favorite Madoka characters again (and also Mami, I guess), but they have absolutely no reason to be in this plot at all so far, save to serve as reminders that Magia Record is indeed a Madoka Magica Side Story, just like it says on the tin. My apathy towards Mami aside, she has at least been a quasi-present element of the world up to now; Sayaka just shows up out of nowhere, and her presence here could only possibly matter as fanservice. She has no stake in Iroha or Yachiyo's fates, and she shouldn't be relevant to them, either. This whole deliciously drawn extravaganza could have been devoted to a two-on-one duel between Iroha, Yachiyo, and, I don't know, Touka maybe, or Mifuyu — it would have made a cool but hollow climax so much more meaningful.

Then again, it's very clear by the end of the episode that the show's plot has only just begun to turn its gears. Touka's speech to a literal army of Magical Girls, is a sure sign that our heroines won't have an easy time doing battle with them. Not only is there an absurd number of spookily behooded, anonymous soldiers to contend with, but Iroha and Yachiyo will be up against some familiar faces too, which is never an easy task in the world of Madoka Magica. Tsuruno has been turned, as has Felicia, and Kaede looks to be ensuring that Rena is along for the ride, willingly or otherwise. Given the amount of tragedy and conflict that is sure to come, it could very well be that the original Madoka Magical girls will be fully folded into the story in a manner that doesn't feel so intrusive and tacky.

The question, then, becomes: “Should they?” From the very beginning, Magia Record's biggest crutch was it's inability to divorce itself from the series that spawned it, and if the show is going to justify a full twenty-six episode run, it is going to need to do a lot more than simply play Madoka Magica's Greatest Hits. The ludicrous amount of power wielded by the presence of the Wings of Magius, not to mention the very existence of Doppels, might very well break the lore of the franchise in irreconcilable ways — I'm perfectly okay with that. Trample all over every sacred cow if needs must, eschew every rule and assumption a fan might make about the series, and otherwise do whatever is necessary to make the best anime possible. The fact of the matter is, Magia Record will never live up to the high watermark set by Madoka Magica; most anime won't, if we're being honest. What the series needs to learn next season is how to stand apart, so that it can forge its own path as a story worth following to the end.

Rating:

Odds and Ends

• Artistry Alley: I already gushed about the spectacle of the Mami fight, so I'll just close out this season by reiterating how glad I am to see another series in the style of Madoka Magica. Overexposure is never a good thing, and I'll likely be eating my words by the time the show is finished, but I have yet to reach my oversaturation point with either Shaft's visuals or Gekidan Inu Curry's textured and madly whimsical aesthetics. I'm like a kid in a candy store with this stuff.

• The cliffhanger on top of the cliffhanger is that Iroha is pulled into a chasm and lost to Yachiyo when the episode ends (and the show even pulls that trick where we can't hear Iroha's last words to Yachiyo, just to pour fuel on the shipping fire). I don't believe for a second that this is permanent, since Iroha is our main character, and we can already see glimpses of her in the preview for Season 2. Tiny Kyubey jumped in after her, and I honestly wouldn't mind if it died. That very existence of that thing makes me mad; it's worse than Baby Yoda.

• Mami mentions “what she did” to Sayaka, which could just be a reference to roping them into the life of the Magical Girl, or is maybe a vague allusion to other events in the franchise. We also get our first official namedrop of Madoka Kaname, and I will admit that I'm surprised we've gotten this far only to have her mentioned the one time.

Another disappointment I have, though a petty one: After getting to see the badass new transformation sequences in the early episodes, we never got any after that. Consider this review as the start of a petition to get more cool transformations in Season 2.

Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story is currently streaming on FUNimation.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.