English Dub Review: Magical Girl Raising Project “Get the Super-Rare Items!”

They don’t call her “Hardgore” Alice for nothing!

Overview (and oh boy will there be spoilers!) 

We open on Magicaloid’s backstory. A middle schooler who rarely visited her home or school, she preferred to work odd jobs and hang out with a local homeless man. While spending the night at a friend’s place, she was playing around on Magical Girl Raising Project when FAV selected her to become a reluctant magical girl.

In the present, Cranberry and La Pucelle duke it out. Although La Pucelle doesn’t like the idea of a fight to the death, she is willing to kill Cranberry in order to protect Snow White. Unfortunately, Cranberry gets the upper hand—she chokes La Pucelle unconscious and throws her in front of a car. Ouch.

After La Pucelle’s death, FAV introduces a series of items that magical girls can buy in order to protect themselves, but to do so they’ll have to give up years of their lifespan. Snow White considers buying a weapon, but her hesitation means that all items are already sold out.

Cranberry and FAV discuss his violent objective. Swim Swim sells away 25 years of her life, but trades items with Tama to obtain a new weapon, which she christens “Ruler.” Calamity Mary dares Magicaloid to kill someone to prove her loyalty. Top Speed assuages Ripple’s fears of being murdered, but offers no hints to her own mysterious home life.

Mourning La Pucelle and terrified for her own life, Snow White is approached by Hardgore Alice. Out of nowhere, Magicaloid appears and murders Alice. But before she can kill Snow White as well, Alice rises from the grave and slays Magicaloid right back.

Overview

Wow, my favorite characters really aren’t doing so well. As soon as she opened her mouth and a snooty faux-English accent came out, I was enamored with Ruler. And at the start of this episode, I was finally beginning to accept that Ruler is gone, and Magicaloid’s backstory was really endearing me to her. I had just decided that Magicaloid was my new favorite (living) character when… that happened. Bad luck for me—but it speaks well to this show’s ability to get me invested in its characters.

I really do like Magicaloid’s backstory. The fact that she supports herself alone by working odd jobs at such a young age (the eye catch describes her as a “freelancer fresh out of middle school,” which I love) explains her obsession with money. And I love the way she always sees things differently than everyone else does. Instead of going to school, Magicaloid would rather spend time with a homeless man, because she sees his value even if society can’t. Instead of expressing delight at gaining magical abilities, Magicaloid sees her powers as a pain in the ass. Her parents don’t care that she lives this way, which heavily implies that her home life isn’t a good one—so even though Magicaloid has no morals to speak of, seeing this little snippet of her life makes me care for her. Damn, she’s so young. Let me protect her!

As for the fight between Cranberry and La Pucelle… I watched the bloody opening of episode one, I really did. But even so, I wasn’t ready for the volume of violence in this episode. It’s simultaneously difficult to watch and kind of confusing: when La Pucelle smashes head-first into a wall, her face is covered with blood, but it’s unclear where the blood is coming from. I’m certainly not suggesting that this show include detailed gore, but when a character’s wounds are so vague, it’s difficult to know what the stakes of the fight are. I didn’t know if La Pucelle was already dead or mortally wounded or just a bit scratched up.

Weirdly, even though Ruler and Magicaloid were my two favorite characters, of the deaths so far, I was most upset by La Pucelle’s. I was sure this show was heading towards a romance between her and Snow White, and the lost potential in their relationship is really sad. But honestly, this might be a good chance for Snow White’s character to develop, because up until now, she’s been kind of a one-note character (kind and syrupy sweet). I do identify with Snow White’s pacifism, but she’s also one of the least interesting characters in the cast. Nice doesn’t have to mean boring. What makes her tick?

The saddest thing about La Pucelle dying at this point in the series is that we’ll never get clarification on her relationship with her gender. Although Souta Kishibe seems to identify as a guy with girly interests, he’s perfectly comfortable being called female in his magical girl form. Other than a brief embarrassment at her new body, La Pucelle fully embraces being a girl—she even asks Snow White not to call her Souta. So what’s going on here? My interpretation from the evidence given is that La Pucelle is a transgender girl, and FAV gave her the physical appearance she’d always wanted. But my interpretation is just that—an interpretation. I’d love some confirmation about how La Pucelle feels about the situation because at the moment, her story feels unfinished—and like a gimmicky excuse to give Snow White a magical girl love interest without making it really gay.

Of course, I’m also curious to know what FAV’s true objective is, but I assume that’ll be revealed as the story goes on. Notably, he refers to the magical girls’ lives as “this show,” which implies that their fights and struggles are being recorded for the entertainment of outsiders. Talk about a Danganronpa rip-off. And then FAV talks about a “contract” he and Cranberry supposedly made, bringing us right back to Madoka territory. This show is successful at a lot of things—creating engaging characters and entertaining storylines, the animation, the voice acting (seriously, this is some of the best dub work I’ve ever seen). But being original? Not this show’s strong point.

I also do have to fault MGRP for giving away its own plot twist in the eye catch (seriously, why is everyone doing that these days?) by revealing that Hardgore Alice possesses the ability to heal her own wounds. As soon as Magicaloid attacked her, I was expecting Alice to return, which made the ending scene a lot less creepy. Instead of seeing Alice as some kind of shocking, horrific zombie, I was just kind of like, oh yeah, she can do that. Shrug.

Overall, this episode certainly wasn’t uplifting, but I’m buckling my seatbelt, because I know things are just going to get darker from here. And you know what? I’m excited.