English Dub Review: Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story “You Definitely Shouldn’t Respond”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Iroha starts to receive mysterious text messages from unknown numbers once she moves into Mikazuki Villa and begins to attend Kamihama City University Affiliated School. She runs into weird things like Kaede not answering texts and Rena hanging out alone on the roof and knowing about new rumors.

One day she runs into Felicia working at Banbanzai and then later on, she’s called to the police station to pick up the anger-prone magical girl. Tsuruno also works at Banbanzai and tells Iroha more about the Radio Wave Girl rumor. Iroha connects the dots and investigates the radio tower once she thinks it has something to do with her weird texts she’s been getting. There she finds a member of the Wings of Magius and together with her friends, she barely escapes.

Our Take:

You Definitely Shouldn’t Respond is kind of a strange episode. There’s no obvious villain or conflict until near the end when Iroha investigates the radio tower and finds the Wings of Magius member. For most of the episode, it’s Iroha going through her normal school days and running into lots of weird little signs and issues. Felicia continues to be a lot of trouble, even though she’s now found a legitimate place of work. And it seems like Yachiyo may be keeping secrets from Iroha.

I have to say that despite the seeming lack of focus early on in the episode, I enjoyed the vibe of it. It’s nice when things aren’t always so obviously good or bad and Iroha going about her usual days at a new school makes for some interesting situations, like running into Rena on the roof and being the new girl who everyone thinks is odd. She still hasn’t found her little sister yet, but she’s always looking for clues. And currently, her best lead is to get to the bottom of the Wings of Magius organization.

The zealous group of girls is connected in some way to the Radio Wave Girl, although it’s not exactly clear yet how. Iroha’s texts have said things about being trapped and begging for help, so it’s possible that the organization has kidnapped a magical girl for some reason and is keeping her contained in the tower. Some of the other rumors going around are those of the Invisible Girl and Endless Solitude. I’m not too sure about how either of those are going to connect to the Radio Wave Girl storyline.

We get a little bit of quality Felicia content this week (not enough of Tsuruno though!), including this gem of a line: “They pissed me off, so I punched them.” Felicia still has issues with her emotions. She isn’t the main focus of this episode, so there’s not much progress made on that front, but I am glad to see she and Tsuruno are working as a team at Banbanzai. If anyone can reign Felicia in, it’s the strongest magical girl of them all!