English Dub Season Review: Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story

Overview (Spoilers Below):

A group of magical girls led by Yachiyo protect the world from witches. When a new girl named Iroha join them, strange things start happening. Iroha keeps seeing a weird figure in her dreams, and she’s searching for her lost little sister. Together, the girls learn to depend on each other in order to help fight off the witches that threaten their city of Kamihama.

Eventually, they discover a secret order called the Wings of Magius that exist in the periphery, destroying witches and magical girls alike. Iroha refuses to join them, but they can be very persuasive. And they have numbers on their side. Yachiyo sees only bad things ahead for her team, and so disbands them. But will they be able to survive without one another?

Our Take:

Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story is a spin-off series of the popular magical girl battle show Madoka Magica, but it’s not a series that really stands on its own. Heck, this show not only ties in to Madoka, but it has a tie-in mobile game as well. Basically, what I’m setting the stage to say is that this show doesn’t exactly exist because it was a fresh burst of creativity that absolutely had to be unleashed into the world.

The show revolves around a group of magical girls working to get rid of witches in Kamihama City. The main character is a newcomer to being a magical girl, Iroha Tamaki. She doesn’t really have much of a personality besides being the newbie and always searching for her lost little sister Ui. Then there’s a handful of other magical girls such as team leader Yachiyo, Felicia the firecracker, and all-around delight Tsuruno. Together, they make up a pretty dynamic cast that works well off each other. Even if none of them are exceptionally stand out characters when it comes to personality, they’re fun as a group, which is when I enjoyed them the most.

The first half of the season is taken up with things like fighting witches, looking for Ui, and settling conflicts between the magical girls. There’s a lot of one-off episodes, which are usually hit or miss depending on the plot and which characters are involved. The Wings of Magius come into play in the later half of the season as the main antagonists. They’re a really interesting group in the sense that they share the magical girls goal of getting rid of witches, but they use very different means to achieve it. Conflicts like this are always more interesting than simple black VS white battles, and so I did enjoy the introduction of Magius. However, there was never any real conclusion on them (or Iroha’s fate falling down the hole for that matter). In fact, the season ends with a weak sigh rather than a decisive victory or loss.

From an artistic standpoint, the series was a mixed bag for me. I’ve never watched the original show, so I’m not coming from a viewpoint that might be tinged by a certain nostalgia, and so the visual direction of the show usually fell pretty flat to my eyes. It just looks like every other generic magical girl show, without any distinguishing characteristics to set it apart design-wise. I think I even compared it to Hand Shakers at one point, which, yikes. The dub itself is a fine one, and the lead actresses give it their all to turn flat dialogue into emotional monologues, but it doesn’t always work.

So yes, Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story is an average story about magical girls fighting evil. If you’re a big fan of the original, it’s definitely worth a shot. And if you just really enjoy magical girl content, take a look. For the rest of us, though, there’s really not enough good stuff here to justify investing time in a show that never delivers proper answers to the questions it raises, even if another season is greenlit.