English Dub Review: Magical Girl Raising Project “Welcome to a World of Dreams and Magic!”

Sugar, spice, and everything nice! Why? For more pleasure, of course!

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS BELOW)

Koyuki Himekawa is a Mahou Shoujo Otaku since birth, and she has always wanted to be a Magical Girl. Even now, as an eighth grader and knowing that she is chasing a childish dream, Koyuki climbs to her desires while playing an RPG app about magical girls, her only way of escapism to real life issues and the cruel reality of not being able to fulfill her dreams. Somehow this sounds familiar.

As of late, “magical girls sightings” have been popping up more and more, and it seemed that the game app, Magical Girl Raising Project, is related to the growing urban legend. Soon enough, Koyuki got her wishes granted and become the newly minted Snow White magical girl, with transformation sequence and related magical powers, including the unique skill of being able to read minds. On cloud nine, now she is ready to take the world as her oyster.Or at least that would have been the plan, if not for an unexpected battle royale event.

OUR TAKE

I have to admit that I had been waiting for this show for a while now. No, I have not read the manga or the light novel, yet. But as our dear Koyuki, so do I belong to the Mahou Shoujo Otaku Realm.

The gory scene at the beginning told us what we need to know regarding this new stab at the deconstruction of the dark magical girl sub-genre, a la Madoka if you may. It can be jarring though, the mix of cute design and edgy themes in this kind of shows, something that only Madoka seemed to pull off without a pinch. Still, it is a good try, even though is not exactly the best I have seemed. The animation and general design looked cute and pretty, and I suspect that it was so sparkly in order to convey a message of “nothing is wrong here”, but we know that they are not fooling anyone. I fully expect deaths left and right among so many characters if only because it would be too cumbersome to keep track of all the players in the game.

What really surprised me was Koyuki’s childhood friend and fellow otaku, Souta Kishibe, got pulled into the grinder via magical transgendering. Now, I do know that this is not new, to set a boy in magical girl paraphernalia, but for the life of me, I didn’t see it coming when I should have. I would be awesome if we get an episode of how this came to be and his thoughts regarding his circumstances. Body dysphoria is a thing that is rarely explored and that I find fascinating. Of the other magical girls we met during this first episode, TopSpeed was definitively my favorite. She seems like the sort of upbeat ever fun-seeking gal that I tended to hang out with during college. Also, FAV, the unholy child of Monokuma and Angry Birds, the mascot of the game app is really bothersome with his ‘pon’ verbal tick.

Finally, what I didn’t like at all was the fanservice. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the appreciation of the female sublime body, but these are underage school kids we are talking about. It’s not sexy, it is annoying. Stop it!