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Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story
Episode 15

by James Beckett,

How would you rate episode 15 of
Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story (TV 2) ?
Community score: 4.3

Hot damn, Magia Record. I figured you'd have to put in some work to get the audience up to speed this week, but I had no idea you go this hard. The second season premiere was a bit of a cheat, since it got to fall back on all of the built up goodwill that comes with getting to see the original Madoka Magica crew again; while I thought there was some cool stuff going on with the Magius story that formed the basis of Magoa Record's first season, I don't think I'm saying anything controversial when I point out that the adventures of Iroha, Yachiyo, and all of the other new Magical Girls didn't quite live up to the insanely high standards of their forebears. The mystery of the Uwasa/Rumors and the Wings of Magius conspiracy ended up being too drawn out and convoluted for their own good, too, so not only does “You're Nothing Like Me” have to recap and reintroduce a whole lot of information, but it also needs to move the story forward in a compelling way on top of it all.

The fact that it took a year-and-a-half for Magia Record to follow up on its many unresolved plot threads only makes this episode's job harder. The show's plate would be full enough simply having to put us back into Yachiyo's emotionally fraught state of mind, which has only become more frayed in the aftermath of Iroha's disappearance. The pair's vaguely sapphic emotional bond was one of the highlights of the first season, but it got lost in the rest of the noise that came with the show desperately trying to explain all of the new twists and additions that it was making to the PMMM canon. One of the original series' key strengths was that its characters' relationships and emotional conflicts always took precedence over whatever world-building or lore-spinning might be happening via the Magical Girls vs. Witches story. Magia Record, however, seemed to miss that particular memo.

At first, “You're Nothing Like Me” seemed like it was stuck repeating the same mistakes, because on top of following Yachiyo's hunt for Magius and the truth behind Iroha's disappearance, the episode spends nearly half of its runtime giving the audience a crash course on nearly everything we might have forgotten since last year's season finale: The difference between the Uwasa/Rumors and the Witches; the Wings of Magius and their goal to “free” the Magical Girls from their dark fate; the whole deal with Doppels, aka Doppel Witches, and how they essentially function as Witchified Magical Girl hybrids, which allow the MGs to technically avoid losing themselves to their Witch forms completely, though not without running afoul of an entirely new set of risks and side-effects.

We even get reintroduced to Mitama the Coordinator, which reminds us of the many mobile-game elements that were awkwardly shoehorned into Magia Record's story without ever being fully utilized. Also, don't forget about the still-unexplained Baby Kyubey, who shows up after the anime-original character Kuroe gets roped into doing a secret Rumor hunting mission for Nemu, the girl behind the shades from last week that I misidentified as Ui. Nemu is actually the girl that Ui became best friends with, whom we met very briefly last season, and in “You're Nothing Like Me” we learn that she's actually responsible for creating all of Kamihama City's Rumors, and that the latest one, “The Rumor of the Eternal Sakyua”, holds the key for Yachiyo to find Iroha again. Except, first, Yachiyo will have to confront Mifuyu, her former teammate turned Magius agent, and that relationship has its own messy mountain of backstory from Season 1—

It's just…a lot, all of these characters and proper nouns and events from the first season's already overstuffed plot; it got to the point where I kept having to pause and re-read my own reviews just to try and sort out what information was being recapped, what was being introduced for the first time, and what we were meant to have simply inferred from context clues and whatnot. If this was all that “You're Nothing Like Me” had to offer, it would be a far messier episode, overall. The writing and editing is just clear enough to make it all comprehensible, but only barely, and it is very easy to imagine the version of the episode that merely served its purpose as a single-serving refresher on months' worth of exposition before moving on to the next plot beat.

Except, if you remember how I began this review, that is decidedly not the direction that “You're Nothing Like Me” takes. Somehow, in spite of Magia Record's own worst habits and instincts, this episode transforms into the single most satisfying and badass barnburner that the show has ever produced. In the span of just this twenty-minute story, I came to care more about both Yachiyo's personal journey and the larger Magius story than I probably ever did in Season 1. Like I said, the show goes hard, and it's an absolute blast.

This largely comes down to the gorgeous production values and rock-solid direction that we get in this story, which I understand is largely unique to the anime, rather than being adapted from the game. Even before Yachiyo and Mifuyu get into their brawl, the show demonstrates a level of confidence and style to its visuals that I don't remember it achieving last year. Yachiyo's descent into despair is something we need to feel, and thanks to the cinematic flourishes that even the more basic exposition scenes get, we do.

Then we get the fight itself, which may well rank above my favorite action scenes from any part of the Madoka Magica franchise. Similar to last week, there were moments where the pace of the editing didn't allow me to linger on some of the shots as long as I would have liked, but the character animation is just so fluid, and the design of Yachiyo's Doppel form is very cool. More importantly, the visceral impact of the fight allowed me to get invested in Yachiyo and Mifuyu's personal strife, and as I've said time and again, a general lack of emotional investment is probably the biggest thing that held Magia Record back, before.

Now, it's too early for me to declare that Magia Record is suddenly a worthy successor to the original series. I've seen some fans speculate that these second and third seasons are going to run with very limited episode counts, which would certainly allow the show to keep up this level of visual polish, but even if that is the case, Magia Record will need to do more than dazzle us with a handful of flashy fights to suddenly earn the respect of the entire fanbase. Still, Season 2 is off to an incredible start, and we're at least making a lot of progress toward righting some of Season 1's wrongs. I initially was looking forward to Magia Record's return as something of a guilty pleasure, but now I'm starting to think that the show has the potential to be something truly great.

Rating:

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.


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