English Dub Series Review: Magical Girl Raising Project

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Overview 

Koyuki Himekawa has a secret: even though she’s in middle school, she still dreams of becoming a magical girl. But when Koyuki plays the app game Magical Girl Raising Project, the mascot FAV informs her that she’s going to become a real magical girl, sworn to protect the people of N-City! As her magical girl persona Snow White, Koyuki does good deeds and collects rewards in the form of magical candies. She reconnects with her childhood friend Souta—a male magical girl enthusiast who transforms into magical girl La Pucelle—and gets to know the others in the group chat.

One day FAV delivers a terrible announcement: there are currently 16 magical girls, but N-City only has room for eight! Whoever collects the least candies each week will have to drop out. But when the first girl to do so literally dies, the candy competition becomes a fierce battle for survival. In a world where magical girls steal and kill and betray one another, can the idealistic Snow White make it out alive? And will she be able to achieve her goal: to help people as a true magical girl?

Our Take (Spoilers Below!)

One thing that’s guaranteed to drawn me into an anime is a cast of weird and quirky characters with diverse personalities. I’m also quite fond of media that starts out light and fluffy and gradually becomes dark and uncomfortable. So judging by those two criteria alone, Magical Girl Raising Project hits it out of the park. From the haughty and demanding Ruler to the naïve and passionate Sister Nana, there’s bound to be a character for everyone here, and their interactions are always entertaining. The battles are creative and easy to follow, the deaths are heartbreaking, and the art is so darn cute.

It may be too easy to compare to this show to Puella Magi Madoka Magica, but the two plots are so similar that I feel it’s impossible to allude to MGRP without acknowledging the influences it draws from PMMM. Although PMMM is a popular, acclaimed, well-loved anime, I’ve recently seen some criticisms that it leans too heavily on “torture porn”—that an unpleasant amount of the show’s runtime is spent on gleefully showcasing the pain and suffering of middle-school girls. In Madoka’s case, I would argue that this unpleasantness is justified, as the show makes powerful points about the toll that magical destinies would take on real children, about the realities of living with depression and suicidality, about the experience of feeling responsible for saving the people around you.

On the other hand, if Magical Girl Raising Project is trying to make a similarly highbrow statement, I haven’t figured out what it is yet. The characters are fun, and the battles are entertaining, but at the end of the day, this is a show about watching a group of young girls slaughtering each other, and then it ends. There doesn’t seem to be any real deeper meaning here. These characters have deathly serious backstories—sexual assault, alcoholism, child abuse, and prison all make an appearance—but we’re not offered any hint as to what the writers are trying to say about them. MGRP doesn’t offer these issues the time and gravity they deserve—especially when it comes to Ripple’s revealing outfit design, a slap in the face to her history of child sexual abuse. In general, I’m really not sure what the takeaway of this show is supposed to be, other than that life is hard and people are shitty. And while Snow White’s dedication to her ideas in times of trouble is admirable, she’s so kind and pure-hearted that it’s difficult for the average, flawed viewer to relate to her.

When I first watched PMMM, the numerous plot twists (that I won’t spoil here) shocked me, and it was rewarding to have my expectations constantly subverted. Those type of delightful large-scale surprises is, for the most part, absent from MGRP. Sure, I didn’t see Swim Swim’s murderous streak coming, or the wonderful twist that Alice is actually the girl Snow White helped in episode one, but neither of these revelations has much effect on the story at large. I wanted to be shocked by the real purpose of the selection process, or by who was behind it, or by Snow White’s actions in the final battle. But these reveals, instead, are anticlimactic and unsatisfying. Even the horror elements are revealed to viewers right in the opening scene of episode one, where we see Cranberry brutally slaughtering her fellow magical girls from the last selection exam. One of the great things about Madoka is that an unspoiled, unsuspecting viewer could go into it thinking they were in for a cutesy magical girl show and then have their mind blown. That kind of shock just isn’t possible here.

It’s admirable, though, that MGRP tries to flesh out every single one of its 16 characters. Each magical girl’s backstory is unique, touching, and tragic, allowing viewers to really lament their deaths. While I’m a huge sucker for characters with tragic backstories, I wish these girls had been allowed more development in the present, instead of the narrative merely dwelling on their pasts. Many characters, like Ruler and Magicaloid, come across as cold and selfish because of their traumatic backgrounds, but they show glimmers of kindness—Ruler spends the extra time to make sure Tama understands her speeches, Magicaloid is friends with a homeless man. But instead of allowing us to see these characters grow and change, to see these sparks of goodness enlarge or get snuffed out by their time spent as a magical girl, promising characters die before they’re allowed any meaningful development. This is especially an issue when it comes to La Pucelle, whose possible transgender identity is glossed over and never clarified. The series feels like it’s setting up a romance between her and Snow White—and then again, between Snow White and Alice—and when none of these relationships come to pass, it just feels like a letdown.

Other magical girls—such as Calamity Mary, Swim Swim, and the Peaky Angels—seem to be pure evil, without much depth at all. I enjoy ensemble casts, but the writers possibly bit off more than they could chew in trying to cram 16 well-developed characters into a mere 12-episode series. The constant switching between points of view makes episodes feel disjointed, and after the first few episodes, Snow White disappears as the protagonist and becomes a minor character at best. When the central plot of the show shifts from “Snow White tries to survive” to “EVERYONE goes about their business,” it’s hard to understand what we should really be focusing on.

As for this show’s strengths, the dub quality is phenomenal. Every single voice actor delivers a believable performance, and the silly accents employed—Ruler’s posh British pronunciation, Mary’s lazy Southern drawl, Magicaloid’s autotuned phrases—really add to the likability of these characters. The animation quality consistently delivers, with cute character designs, adorable facial expressions, and well-rendered fight scenes. The opening and ending songs are catchy and dramatic, and I never felt the need to skip them. Plus, in a world where positive LGBT representation isn’t easy to find in media, Sister Nana and Weiss Winterprison’s relationship warms my heart. Neither of them survives the show, but it’s pretty clear that they haven’t been singled out and punished for being queer—they just die because this is a show about people dying. No one bats an eye at the fact that they’re gay, which is refreshing.

When it comes down to it, this isn’t the deepest show out there, and it isn’t likely to resonate with viewers long after the final credits song. But focusing merely on that minimizes how much I love this cast of fun, weird, messed-up magical girls. When I think about how much I loved Cardcaptor Sakura as a kid, I don’t think about the deeper messages of the plot, or even really the plot at all. I remember how adorable Sakura looked in her battle costumes, how much I loved watching Tomoyo gush over her, how much I laughed at the awkward and stoic Yue. I enjoyed MGRP for just the same reasons—like Koyuki, I too have a soft spot for magical girls.

Score
7.0/10