r/anime • u/HereticalAegis https://myanimelist.net/profile/XthGen • 23d ago
Rewatch [Rewatch] Magical Girl Raising Project Final Series Discussion
Magical Girl Raising Project Series Discussion
Series Information
Streaming Options
Magical Girl Raising Project is available to stream subbed and dubbed on Crunchyroll or Amazon Prime.
Art of the Day
Magical Girls! (by series illustrator Marui-no!)
Questions of the Day
Congratulations on surviving to the end! Did you have a favorite girl?
Which girl deserved better? Which deserved worse?
If you could swap any one girl out of MGRP and sub in any one girl from another magical girl show, who would you swap?
Do you have a recommendation for an obscure/underwatched magical girl show you feel could use more love?
Spoilers
Please make sure to put all references to future events behind spoiler tags. Any untagged hints and spoilers will be removed. Magical Girls who spoil others will be revoked of their powers.
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u/uhhhhhhhokay_ https://myanimelist.net/profile/uhhhhhhhokay 23d ago
Rewatcher, subbed
So, that was fun, for the most part. I enjoyed revisiting this, anyways. Thank you to our host u/HereticalAegis for hosting, and to the other participants for participating.
I already said most of what I wanted to say about the series itself, but, how is it as an adaptation? That was a big topic of discussion which I didn’t really touch on. My two cents: some stuff’s better, some stuff’s worse. Adaptation is an inherently transformative process, and this was difficult material to adapt anyways, so there’s going to be some growing pains. The important part is that the point is still there. It still captures the spirit of the original, even if not always the letter.
However, as a source reader, let me make a plea to you, the first-timer, from the very bottom of my heart and soul: please stick around for Restart. Even if you didn’t like this, even if you hated it, even if you despised it, I swear that it’ll be worth it. It’s leaps and bounds ahead of everything you just saw, the difference is night on Pluto and day on Mercury. I don’t know how our host feels about this, but in my opinion, the real purpose of this rewatch was to get people to watch Restart when it airs. I’m completely serious.
Anyways, one more housekeeping item: I know that Madoka comparisons have already been made, and more inevitably will be made, and that’s a hornet’s nest I’d really rather avoid poking. I will, however, be sharing this fantastic compare-and-contrast essay on the subject, which I think you might find enlightening. (Fair warning: it does have novel spoilers, though only specifics for the fourth arc, and obviously also PMMM spoilers.)
That’s all from me!
Final verdict: 9/10 for the agenda, realistically, probably a 7/10.
1) Just limiting it to the anime... Top Speed, I guess? [Novels]Not limiting it to the anime, definitely Snow White.
2) They all deserved better, really. (Except you, Fav.)
3) I haven’t actually seen her anime, but I bet Punie-chan would be hilarious here. As for who to drop, I guess Magicaloid.
4) I swear, this is the final time I’ll mention Pleiades!
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u/oomoepoo https://anilist.co/user/oomoepoo 23d ago
They all deserved better, really. (Except you, Fav.)
I respect this answer and I don't even disagree. Just thought it's a bit of a boring answer but I almost said the same thing!
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u/dsawchuk 23d ago
Subbed Dubbed Last Timer
So I started out watching this subbed, then u/oomoepoo said the dub was pretty good so I tried it out for the rest. I wasn't particularly thrilled with it, but I can't say I was particularly thrilled with the show in general.
Calamity Mary's accent and performance was very fun, but many of the VAs delivered their lines fairly robotically. Top Speed and Ruler also did well. Ripple felt like she hit her stride as the show went on (but maybe that was just her receeding from her tsundere ways). The rest of them were more or less fine. Unfortunately I have a similar issue with this as I did the Madoka Dub, I just don't like the main character's acting.
I do still think u/HereticalAegis should try the dub for a complete viewing sometime though. I think you mentioned rewatching this relatively frequently so you might as well do something to change things up!
I don't have a whole lot to say about the plot. Death game stories aren't particularly interesting to me. They just seem like a lazy excuse to have a bunch of fight scenes in a show, and I am not that fond of fight scenes in general. To me, this death game reads similar to most death games: Some meaningless bullshit happened which made everyone fight each other and basically everyone died.
This adaptation was very poor IMO. I don't know if that means it is a faithful adaptation of weak source material or a flawed adaptation of strong source material. The latter seems more likely. There was a hell of a lot of stuff to do in just 12 episodes and it didn't feel like the studio was capable of trimming the fat to get it all in. 24 episodes would probably have helped a whole bunch.
I am really struggling to decide if this show was lackluster work by a skilled team or good work by an unskilled team. There are moments when everything comes together and it's pretty good but they are spread so sparsely throughout the show. Ripple's backstory was surprisingly well handled compared to everyone else's for example.
The way that any important information was repeatedly force fed to the viewer was pretty infuriating. Admittedly one of the reasons I tend to watch subbed anime over dubbed is that it is much easier to get distracted by other things when I don't have to read along. I am not even sure that I could have missed anything important had I been watching the sub over the dub for this one.
My final verdict on the show is that I pretty thoroughly disliked it. How much of that is it not being my genre vs it being poorly made is unclear to me. I can't see myself recommending this show to anyone.
- There's no exceptional stand out girl, but I did like Top Speed. Her genki girl energy mixed with actual intelligence was nice. I think I probably would have preferred Nemurin had we seen more of her, but alas she wasn't long for this world. Or was she? I mentioned it yesterday but I don't think she's actually dead.
- “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them?" I can't, but if I could I would say Tama deserved better. The reason for her dying didn't make any sense with anything else we had seen in the show up to that point. There was no reaason for Swim Swim to revert to her human form, and thus no reason for her to kill Tama.
- There are 2 ways to interpret this. Are we bringing someone else into this story or are we bringing someone from this story elsewhere? If we are bringing someone else in, I'm bringing Jakazure Nonon. With permanent flight and sound based attacks she is built to hard counter everything about Swim Swim. Bringing someone out of this world, I am going to send Nemurin to be a supportive senpai in Little Witch Academia to help with the bullying in the early parts of the show. Oops its all trigger again!
- I'm going to indulge a personal grudge and say The Demon-girl Next Door only because I recommended it to a friend and he flat out refused to watch it only because it isn't available on crunchyroll.
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u/oomoepoo https://anilist.co/user/oomoepoo 22d ago
Sorry to hear that you didn't like the dub (or the show much)! Can't say much about the dub, as I've only watched some episodes dubbed (I mostly prefer subs) but it genuinely didn't seem that bad to me, oh well.
As for the other stuff... Yeha, I agree that 12 episodes probably weren't enough for what they were trying to do. And looking at the studio and the anime's director, I'm leaning towards "skill issues". Though without knowing the source material, it's hard to say.
Nonon joining the cast feels almost unfair, and I like the idea of Nemurin supporting the LWA cast a lot.
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u/dsawchuk 22d ago
I didn't dislike the dub, I just wasn't excited about it. I don't know if I would have been excited by the sub either. I was pretty excited for calamity Mary though. she was super fun.
1
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u/FD4cry1 https://myanimelist.net/profile/Big_Yibba 23d ago edited 23d ago
First Timer
I think this was a pretty fun show!
For one, I will admit I do just innately tend to enjoy death game stories (Nor am I particularly turned away by edge), so that part was always going to work for me anyway! But I also liked most of the characters, even if some of them on a more surface-level because of design or personality (And I did like basically all of the designs too!), I thought the show managed to find some fun ways to play with their powers and personalities at times. And while certain parts were definitely too telegraphed, I largely enjoyed the course of the story and its twists.
I think Fav is a fun villain and Swim Swim a very fun villain! I feel like I didn't fully quite get that across in my write-ups throughout, but I really enjoyed her in her cold habitability. Top Speed and Ripple were a great pair, and I really liked the wider themeing of the show in how tackled the ideas of magical girls within that lens of fantasy wish-fulfillment, how that plays out through every character, and how that eventually flows into Koyuki, and especially those around her, even if she herself is hardly one of my favorite characters in the show. I don't know, it's always harder to speak to and verbalize my enjoyment in a case like this, but I really do just think its a very fun premise, and while it has its issues on execution and ambition as I'll just get to, I also think it almost always has a lot of charm and a strong personality to show!
MahouIku does absolutely find its problems in being messy and having an overambitious premise to fulfill. I don't really know how else to describe that other than that you can definitely just... feel that it's a pretty short volume 1 of a bigger series, y'know haha? A lot of it really feels like it needs more space and time to breathe in its execution. A decent chunk of the deaths or relationships feel somewhat underbaked to varying degrees. For those that aren't, the emotional repercussions tend to be underexplored. Just in general, the pacing is a bit all over the place, and really could use more time in a lot of places. And of course, one would be remiss not to mention the excessive and poorly timed flashbacks, which, outside of eventually starting to telegraph upcoming death, rather consistently feel like a pretty cheap way to give a character extra content or sympathy instead of an actually organic one.
To me at least, it's usually more frustrating than ever being bad, if that makes sense. Because I can almost always see the road to something I think will be stronger there as well, but it isn't really taken. As is, I think the show is in this place for me where it's usually enjoyable and compelling, but only rarely really impactful and emotional. The latter of which is really what I'd really want from it at its best, and lacking it ends up capping its potential quite a bit. Which isn't to say those moments aren't there at all; they're just a lot fewer and farther between than I wish they were. Actually good direction would have honestly helped a lot here? Outside of ideally mitigating some of the more awkward execution or the flashback problem, being able to more strongly express emotion in a way that is more audiovisual, and is able to more creatively convey story and character (And critically, in a way that isn't part of the source or that the source isn't capable of), is exactly what the show needs to at least somewhat fix up its holes.
(And I brought this up a few episodes back, but at some point I realized that this show, as an adaptation, is probably in this very awkward place. Because on one hand, as I said, the story is obviously an LN that doesn't quite have the length to fully flesh itself out. On the other hand, 12 episodes is a lot of anime time to adapt one volume! So it's stuck in this difficult in-between, and you really need good direction to be able to deal with that anyway, and that's not really here, alas)
Though on a more positive production note, I'll give one last mention to the fact that I love basically every single VA here. Also, the ED is great
So all in all, it's very much within that zone for me of definitely flawed but still overall very entertaining and with good potential! So I'll give it a very solid 7.5/10, and I think this season did very genuinely make me interested in seeing a story in this world, but written with more experience and especially more room to breathe and tap into its potential in terms of length, so I'd say it was a good success as a proof of concept.
On that note, I'll definitely watch Restart! Well, not when it airs; I don't watch seasonals anymore, alas, but I will check it out at some point after it's done. As for the novels, 18 volumes and counting is kind of scary haha, and my backlog would probably have a thing or two to say about, so that'd probably be more of a One Day™ kind of thing if I end up enjoying the Restart anime as well, though I'll probably at least try to read the first volume before Restart, to see how its execution compares to the anime and to have a refresher.
Finally, I'll give out a huge thanks to /u/HereticalAegis for hosting! I had a lot of fun! Also, the art, good QOTDs, and the novel comparisons were very much appreciated.
Congratulations on surviving to the end! Did you have a favorite girl?
My top 3 would probably be:
- Top Speed
- La Pucelle
- Hardgore Alice
I think I'm going for Top Speed as the favorite, on a combination of character and design, while Souta and Alice are about even behind her, and can fight it out depending on whose power I think is cooler that day of the week.
But of course, it wouldn't be in the spirit of the game if I didn't also rank all of them.
Which girl deserved better?
You can take a look at my top 3 again...
But also Tama!
Which deserved worse?
Minael maybe? She got off a little easier relative to sis. Though maybe both deserved worse haha.
If you could swap any one girl out of MGRP and sub in any one girl from another magical girl show, who would you swap?
Hmmm, take out Magicaloid, add in Koori Chikage. I'm sure Fav would be thrilled with both the literal and figurative addition of edge there.
Do you have a recommendation for an obscure/underwatched magical girl show you feel could use more love?
Not really sure how underwatched it is, but I'll bring up MahouAku again! Not really a traditional magical girl show, but it's a very charming, fun, and snappy romcom, with some excellent production from Bones, and it's all a rather touching tribute to an author who's unfortunately no longer with us.
Oh, and it has Hibana, which is absolutely a reason in and of itself to watch it.
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u/oomoepoo https://anilist.co/user/oomoepoo 23d ago
Officially no longer first-timer!
Well, that was a wild ride! Went in with zero expectations, was very intrigued by the first couple episodes, lost A LOT of hope during episodes 9 and 10, I almost didn't want to watch the final episodes! But I'm glad I did power through, because the finale restored a lot of goodwill in me. If a bad finale can ruin an otherwise good show, a good finale can maybe also enhance a flawed one. Bad stuff I think my biggest gripe is really Swim Swim. The character just doesn't work for me. There's an interesting, even horrifying, idea behind her. Shame that the show just doesn't really execute it well enough. She's neither played up as the psychotic monster, because for large parts of the show this role is reserved for Cranberry, nor as a somewhat tragic character, which she also kinda is, if you think about it, because that position is largely reserved for Ripple or Snow White. This leaves her as a sort of B-list horror slasher villain that is always as powerful as the plot demands and somehow makes her way up to the finale, where she then meets her (untimely) demise. There's definitely some pacing issues, just too many characters to effectively handle and give screentime to, which is understandable with a cast of 16 and only 12 episodes of time. Trying to have their cake and eat it too by intersecting flashbacks with the main story mostly leads to the infamous moments of "Oh, X gets a flashback, guess that's it for them". Ultimately, I also think the tone is often all over the place, at some point I just grew kinda indifferent to all the violence, to a point where stuff that should be emotional, just isn't. This might just be due to coming out in a post-Madoka world, so in order to differentiate themselves, they decided to mostly forego the psychological angle (except to kill off Nana) and just went all in on blood and gore. Probably not the best decision but it is what it is. Good stuff I really liked how diverse the cast was in- and out of their costume. Delinquent highschooler, Abusive Mom, Teen mom, Frustrated Office Worker, Schoolboy, Gay couple, Preschoolers or 4Channers. No matter your age, no matter your gender or your psychical wellbeing: You can be a magical girl and I think that's wonderful. Whether it's Ninja, Witch, Oujo-san, Cowgirl, Furry or Nun, we don't judge. There's really one for everyone's taste here, even if most of them don't make it far into the story! Related to that, when the show decides to go full battle shounen bullshit, it delivers in spades. Each girl has its own unique power with unique applications. Who would've thought that digging holes everywhere included the human body? Ripple and Snow White's journey was cool to watch, starting out on kind of opposite ends of the "idealistic vs edgy" spectrum and coming out on the other end, meeting in the middle. Ripple has mellowed out a bit and Snow White has learned that she has to be more proactive sometimes. Verdict
More good than bad for me and I ultimately had a good time. This makes the second Magical Girl anime I watched on reddit this year that ultimately left me a bit ambivalent but leaning positive. Will definitely look into season 2 :D
The ending just does a lot of heavy lifting for me. No, it's not some greater tragedy, not even some sort of higher power: Ultimately the biggest enemy is just someone who doesn't do his job properly. I think Fav might be worse than Kyubey in this regard. [Madoka]at least Kyubey hag some higher motivation and ultimately didn't even understand what was wrong. Fav seems to have a proper understanding of human morals but just decides to disregard everything and just "have fun" with it, which makes hin infinitely more punchable but also a fun subversion and always a Kafka-esque take on the genre.
[1.]Congratulations on surviving to the end! Did you have a favorite girl?
Top Speed. Best design for a non-traditional Magical Girl (as we already established, witches are cool). Best interactions with her partner. Has a magic power that's useful in everyday life and in battle. Never killed anyone (Although assisted in the Calamity Mary kill) and didn't cry about it. Also protected her mentee from getting under Mary's influence and even tried to talk sense into her from beyond the grave.
[2.]Which girl deserved better? Which deserved worse?
My first thought was "Nemurin deserved better" but, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't so bad? She died peacefully in her sleep and didn't have to witness all hell breaking loose. I still wished she would've been around longer cause she seemed very sweet. Also was definitely robbed by Fav with the whole "Dream Candies don't count in the real world!"-bullshit. Tama absolutely deserved better though. Poor girl only ever wanted to help people, gets roped into the whole culling game bullshit, saves Swim Swim's ass and as thanks gets murdered by her. She should've fled when Cranberry injured her with the stones. Worse though? I dunno. I want to say Swim Swim but if you change too much about her demise, the final battle completely falls apart thematically. Maybe actually give her some psychological trauma from all the battles and what she did. Make her suffer more. She got off to easily!
[3.]If you could swap any one girl out of MGRP and sub in any one girl from another magical girl show, who would you swap?
Throw Hibiki in there instead of Koyuki and the plot gets resolved with no fatalities because she just decides that this is bullshit, PUNCHES the people responsible into submission and manages to befriend everyone while doing so.
[4.]Do you have a recommendation for an obscure/underwatched magical girl show you feel could use more love?
WATCH SYMPHOGEAR * Princession Orchestra which is by the same writers as Symphogear is also music-themed and came out earlier this year. Original, meaning non-PreCure, non-deconstructive Magical Girls are a dying breed in this day and age, so it deserves more love! * Flip Flappers' story falls apart at around its halfway point but that first half is among the visually most inventive stuff you'll see in anime and definitely worth a watch. * Cutie Honey: The Live is technically Tokusatsu but it's based on Go Nagai's original work, so it counts. Written by the legendary toku and anime writer Toshiki Inoue, which, if you know his body of work, should give you an idea what awaits you. It's a trip but a worthwhile one.
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u/nit-picker 23d ago
She's neither played up as the psychotic monster, because for large parts of the show this role is reserved for Cranberry, nor as a somewhat tragic character, which she also kinda is, if you think about it, because that position is largely reserved for Ripple or Snow White. This leaves her as a sort of B-list horror slasher villain that is always as powerful as the plot demands and somehow makes her way up to the finale, where she then meets her (untimely) demise.
I feel this. I think I'm able to cut her a bit more slack than you are because I enjoyed her scenes, but I wish there were more to her besides just "psychopathic murderer" in the end. If the show actually established that Nemurin's power had mind controlled her to an extent, rather than just suggested like it did, that might have been enough, for me anyway. Or maybe there could have been a more interesting explanation in her background that we didn't see.
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u/Cyouni 23d ago
Hmm, I'd argue that there is. You can see her valiantly struggling to follow what Ruler said the whole way through the show, who told Swim Swim things under the impression that she was not talking to a Literal 7-year Old Child who had no sense of context or sense of what she should/should not do. You can see this come up in episode 3 where Ruler asks Swim Swim why she's always kneeling, and is surprised and confused by how literally she takes it.
So when she hears "people can't know your human form", she takes it very literally as "no one ever is allowed to, and you have to resolve that immediately" by fixing it the one way she's learned how. Or her immediately slamming buy on the most expensive item and giving it away because "that's what the leader should do".
That's really a key part of her character - she has absolutely no idea what she's doing, and is clinging to half-understood things Ruler said in an attempt to live up to her image of a princess, and has no idea why everything keeps going wrong as a result.
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u/oomoepoo https://anilist.co/user/oomoepoo 22d ago
Looking at it now, I might have been a bit harsh on her but I still think it wasn't particularly well executed. Even if, as the other person answering you pointed out, we did get some scenes with her struggling I guess.
Maybe she's a victim of cramming a lot of stuff into just 12 episodes.
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u/Emi_Ibarazakiii 23d ago
Questions of the Day
Congratulations on surviving to the end!
Thanks, I'm the best!
(Joking aside, I tend not to be that reliable for rewatches, so at least I stayed the full time with this one - and only skipped a day once, I think!)
Did you have a favorite girl?
Me, who yapped about my best girl all series long
I figured I'd do a tier list ranking for the final thread;
I thought long and hard about how to do it exactly, and I decided to rank them at their peak;
Otherwise it would be hard to rank them accurately given some of them fluctuated over the course of the series, and also, some... Kinda died. (I'm not judgmental, I love my best girls dead or alive, but some people seem to prefer them alive).
SO all this to say, I ranked them based on 'How much I loved them at any given point in the story', even if they may have fallen lower later on.
(This MO is a great deceptive tool too because now I don't have to answer 'You liked HER even if she did this or that?"
Which girl deserved better? Which deserved worse?
Puppygirl
I DON'T KNOW WHO WOULD BE CRUEL ENOUGH TO KILL THIS PURE ANGEL, BUT IF I KNEW I WOULD HATE THEM WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING.
And... Swim Swim. I will not elaborate!
Deserved worse? Hmmm I'm not sure I would have Ripple as the (co)winner!
If you could swap any one girl out of MGRP and sub in any one girl from another magical girl show, who would you swap?
I would swap out Magicaloid, and would bring in Magia Baiser; She would have a field day with these ones!
Do you have a recommendation for an obscure/underwatched magical girl show you feel could use more love?
Haven't watched enough magical girl shows for that!
Final thoughts about the series:
If you check out AQRADT you might have seen it already, but I'll repost anyway:
At times it felt like Magical Girl Raising Project is an experiment created for me personally, to find out whether it's possible to make my 'best girl' villain do something SO DESPICABLE that I won't even like her anymore;
Seems it's not possible!
I also added a Madoka Magica comparison just to play my contrarian; I did like MGRP more than Madoka.
It's not a 'complete victory', because there are things that are better in MM (writing in general, the season finale is perfect, etc..) but there are more things I prefer in MGRP, like the characters, and the type of story in general.
I didn't make a 'Tier List' for MM back then, but if I had, Kyouko would be my only one in Beloved Tier.
So yeah, this series was definitely more 'for me'!
Now, it did have some issues/nitpicks;
The 2 biggest nitpicks for me would be 1) The story jumped around a lot, sometimes to its detriment. I've said it for other series before, 'straightforward is usually the best'. And 2) I don't know if it's just a "me" issue, but sometimes they swapped to a girl in her normal appearance for the first time and I had absolutely no idea who she was until way into the scene, or even AFTER the scene... Which was a bit immersion-breaking, when you have to focus on figuring out "Who is that?" instead of absorbing the scene and all.
Oh, and a 3rd one, but this one isn't a nitpick as much as it's a sad consequence of the type of series: I feel like some characters died when I still wanted more about them/from them... But as the saying goes, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few magical girls!
But yeah, other than that, it was pretty great!
Haven't decided on a ranking yet (I don't think I rated anything I watched this year yet hah) but it should be 8 or 9!
Farewell to all the watchers/rewatchers, farewell to the Host, and farewell to Swim Swim my beloved, who has never done a single bad thing in her entire life...
This poor little angel got her wings too soon.
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u/Komarist https://myanimelist.net/profile/RRSTRRST 23d ago
Tier List
Got the top two correct. Having said that, brb, need to obtain a weapon from Mary after seeing Top Speed at #15.
Kyouko would be my only one in Beloved Tier
Swim Swim my beloved, who has never done a single bad thing in her entire life
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u/Emi_Ibarazakiii 23d ago
Was this ever in doubt?
Got the top two correct.
And the other 14 as well, I've never had a single wrong opinion in my entire life (especially when it comes to best girls)!
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u/alotmorealots 23d ago
has never done a single bad thing in her entire life...
The correct, and heartbreaking assessment!
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u/nit-picker 23d ago edited 23d ago
First-Timer's final thoughts
I enjoyed watching MGRP, but not really on its own terms. It's a show full of fumbles. It's clumsy in a mostly endearing way, to me. But that doesn't make me respect it much. Which is too bad. I prefer to "get into" a show and take it on its own terms, and I just couldn't do that here. But, MGRP was interesting and that counts for a lot.
MGRP was, to me, a sort of middle ground between a character-driven show and a spectacle-driven show (my own general preference is for the former, for the record). Some of the character development hit, and some of the spectacle hit, but overall I think it was mostly misses in both categories.
My big complaints before I get into what I liked:
- There was a lot of jumping around between characters within episodes. It felt like once everyone was introduced, the show had to meet an obligation to give everyone screentime every ep. And sometimes that screentime was a total nothingburger. Top Speed and Ripple's early scenes, especially, were so disconnected from the rest of the plot that, even though on their own they were fine scenes, they felt like non sequiturs within their episodes. I much preferred the later episodes to the early ones--by episode 9 or so, everyone is involved in the main plot, plus there are just fewer perspectives to jump between. It feels tighter at that point.
- We didn't get to see the characters fully take in all the tragedy. The show just moved on to the next one really quickly almost every time. I like drama and characterization and moving slower here could've helped.
- The backstory-to-death pipeline got really old really fast. The backstories shown after or during character deaths were much more effective for me: Hardgore Alice, Nemurin, Tama, Winterprison.
- The plotting was fairly predictable. This isn't necessarily always a bad thing; foreshadowing is a literary device and all that. But here, it really felt like it was going by the numbers a lot of the time, setting up events in a really utilitarian way. I blame the execution for this more so than the actual plot itself (I'd believe I might not have the same complaint about the source novel). My only real complaint with the plot is that since this is a sort of spectacle show, some more wild twists wouldn't have hurt.
- Many of the characters were pretty flat. They just didn't have the depth that I look for in a character-driven story. With some exceptions, of course (see below).
- It's a bit disappointing that we didn't learn more about Swim-Swim in the end. Skipping her backstory worked fine in the context of the final episode taken on its own, but her story was a real standout (plot-wise, anyway), and explaining her actions by psychopathy alone doesn't really follow through on all that buildup. The suggestion that Nemurin influenced her is interesting, but we can't know how significant that intervention was without any background on what she had been like before it. Also, why was she a swimmer?
Obviously the show is similar to Madoka in some ways. But so is Madoka and I like Madoka, so that can't be such a bad thing, can it?
I liked the characters who I did see enough inner depth in to be fully engaged with, especially Swim-Swim, La Pucelle, Ruler, and Magicaloid. Ripple and Snow White got there too, but only later on, maybe even only by episode 11 (which was my favorite episode). I also think Tama had a good amount of depth in retrospect.
And the high-level plot was pretty good. There were some cool uses of powers, some good spectacle. Fav and Cranberry were fine as villains. I just think a different sort of presentation would've worked better for me.
There's some solid exploration of themes here. Escapism, abuse of power, (over)idealism. The overall conclusion it seems to draw is one of hopeful disillusionment, which I can get on board with. And I think it reaches this conclusion pretty solidly. There's just a lot of diversion along the way that I don't like much.
So overall, I don't think MGRP was particularly good. I won't call it "enjoyable trash" because it's not trash; there's some good stuff in here. But overall, for me, there's a bit more that I dislike than like on the balance. Which is too bad, but hey, it was still worth watching. And I'll watch the new season (probably not as it airs, though, due to my schedule).
Magical girl outfit ranking:
- Cranberry
- Ruler
- Nemurin
- Snow White
- Magicaloid
- Swim-Swim; even though it's unclear why she is a swimmer, her outfit is cool
- The Spirit Halloween clearance rack that is everyone else
So, I've seen two post-Madoka "tragical girl" shows now (YuYuYu and MGRP). What should I watch next? WIXOSS, maybe?
QotD:
- Swim-Swim was the most interesting overall, I think.
- I enjoyed Magicaloid's scenes and really wouldn't have minded her being around longer.
- Does the MGRP girl get to be in the other show? Because I think Swim-Swim in a more traditional magical girl show like Sailor Moon might be kinda funny
- Nah, not really.
Thanks /u/HereticalAegis for hosting! It's been a good time.
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u/Vaadwaur 23d ago
What should I watch next? WIXOSS, maybe?
I cannot advise Wixoss, especially as I dropped the third cour of it. I would say the first two cours of Nanoha or Mai-HiME yo see where this came from/
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u/FriendlyFaceOff 14d ago
I am really late to the bandwagon (didn't even realize the sub was doing a rewatch, whoops!) and I wholeheartedly agree with a lot of your points.
Being a fan of character-driven shows, ngl I desperately wanted to see Magicaloid stick around longer than she did. (Firstly, I am a sucker for mecha/robot characters; and second, I found her backstory and moral compass to be intriguing compared to basically everyone else.)
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u/TheDanubianCommunard 23d ago
First-time in the Raising Project
I think this was a very unique and interesting take on the magical girl genre. It is quite unique in that regard since magical girls come in every shape and form: not just the archetypical desings, basically you can create your own magical of dreams - which is why we can see designs like knight, nun, witch, angel, etc. And also the participants are also have diverse backgrounds - highschooler/middle schooler, office worker, married woman with a children, lesbian couple, not just only females but also magical girl loving boys. The obligatory familiar being the most evil entity all of them. Or the concept how to make the ideal, strongest and best magical girl forged in cruel trials. Plus there are not so much dark magical franchises out there too much. Just like Gushing over Magical Girls or Kill la Kill, I consider this as a deconstruction of the genre.
You guys can say everything regarding bad witing, bad adaptation and shit, but to be honest, I don't even cared about much. In my honest opinion, for some reason, I did enjoyed it a lot, it had the real thriller feeling, a really good watch. But I can agree that adapting one single LN volume into a 12 episodes series was not quite a wise idea.
As for the series, I felt every character was realistic as persons, with their motives and plans, unique from each other, bad writing or not. Or the goals is to simply survive despite the comstant system updates. OP/ED, voice acting (along with its cast) was really good. Ending, not so much.
As for Restart, let's hope it will be the same, but even better. And I hoping that they pull a Grand Blue, regarding we had to wait years for a second season, then the third-fourth-etc. seasons are just immediately here. So what I mean, there is lots of unadapted content, which is perfect for multiple seasons. Maybe they can fix those past mistakes after all, I can be optimistic. I have a feeling that Restart will be quite underwatched despite of this rewatch.
So all in all, I was more of a positive rather than the mixed/negative side.
And also the QotDs that our dear host asked to us reminded me that I am not versed well enough in the world of magical girls.
Due to its similarity, it is the perfect reason and excuse to watch Magical Girl Site and Magical Destroyers very soon for comparison reasons, and potentially gave me a good inspiration for hosting a rewatch (nobody did them before, they are representing good material for it). Or probably some other magical girl stuff as well, who knows. I owe myself with YuYuYu you know.
An easy 7/10.
1: Congratulations on surviving to the end! Did you have a favorite girl?
La Pucelle, being the most righteous all of them. Sister Nana and Winterprison, the confirmed yuri couple, Calamity Mary being a gunslinger straight up coming from western movies, and Ruler as well who has the most impactful presence. Maybe the VA bias also contributed to it somewhat.
2: Which girl deserved better? Which deserved worse?
Everyone could have deserved better fate, Ruler included. Swim Swim with her lackeys, Cranberry and Calamity Mary deserve to suffer in hell.
3: If you could swap any one girl out of MGRP and sub in any one girl from another magical girl show, who would you swap?
I think the Madoka girls or from anyone from Magical Girl Site for the best comparison.
4: Do you have a recommendation for an obscure/underwatched magical girl show you feel could use more love?
Magilumiere, due to recency bias, with very unique ideas. Magical Destroyers and Flip Flappers for being an absolute trainwreck. Magical Girl Site, closest enough. Granbelm, also exists. Modern Magic Made Simple, Twin Angel, Sugar Sugar Rune or Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne for some somewhat older examples. I would say Machikado Mazoku, but I don't think it's that underrated. So yeah, there many to mention.
Oh wait, Granbelm is also a good rewatch material though. There are so much stuff which I would like to do on that front.
Anyways, thank you u/HereticalAegis for hosting this wonderful rewatch. It was a pleasure.
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u/Tarhalindur x2 23d ago
Okay, Fine, I Can Pop In for the Top Level Again for Final Discussion Magical Girl Sotsu Mode Project (First-Timer, Dropped, Subbed):
MGRP (in anime form, at least) is not for me. Independently of that, the show is not good.
I am reluctant to fully commit to a score here because I dropped for me/show fit reasons (rather than "this is bad and not going to get better, fuck this I'm outta here" reasons) and that's orthogonal to show quality. If you weren't paying attention to deep in the comments, though, on top of the three-and-a-bit episodes I watched before dropping I did pick up one later episode (9) when people were having issues just to see if I could figure out where the problem was, so on top of the first three-and-a-bit episodes I'm not completely running on Sotsu Mode for the second half:
- One little rule of thumb that I think I've been implicitly working on mentally for a while but have only just been starting to formalize: how bad an anime can be is determined by its script, but how good an anime can be is determined by its direction. And MGRP here has unusually poor direction. There are competent shots in it, but not much more than that - something is just missing, and it creates this vague overall miasma over the entire work that drags everything else down. Doubly so when the show tries to go action-heavy (some of this I suspect is Lerche not having the animators for that level of action, but a good director can mitigate that kind of issue and this one does not). Also I would not be surprised if it's the direction chain rather than the script/the challenges of adapting the source material that is responsible for the pacing issues I was seeing even early on. (Or, to quote my notes regarding a certain other show that also falls in the bad direction bucket: "Also you can tell this director is terrible at his job because the pacing is just… off (mostly too fast, I think). A good director could use buildup to make this compelling; our guy here instead has makes it the anime equivalent of the most boring history teacher you can think of.") I am reasonably confident that the direction prevents the show from being any better than a 6/10 overall.
- The flip side of that is that judging by what I saw the script here, while not good by any means, is just passively a bit bad rather than actively terrible. (I could possibly be talked into "average, held back by the combination of the weak direction and a difficult adaptation of LN source material".) Nemoto Toshizou/Naoki Hayashi screenwriting this is not, thankfully. Maybe it would be different if I had sat through the entire thing (no fucking way my investment wouldn't have been eaten to shreds if all of Vaad/No_Rex/Specs wound up there), but AFAICT that would have been through the slow death of a thousand cuts rather than concentrated terrible in spots (Symphosequels/SSY or throughout (the Nemoto/Hayashi special!). At worst, this is Mai-Otome v.2.0 (I'd say "with worse OST", but considering how badly Otome used a Kajiura OST...). More likely, this - perhaps unsurprisingly given exactly who Series Composition here is and what else he worked on long beforehand - goes about in the Elfen Lied bucket.
- In any event, the "did they actually get what made Madoka good or just think that it was an edgefest?" question for MGRP has a clear answer, and it's not the one the fanbase would tell you: AFAICT, MGRP in anime form goes firmly in the Site/Spec-Ops Asuka edgefest bucket (I hear Day Break Illusion goes here as well)... or at least it tries to. The problem is, I'm not sure the source material supported that (though given the resolution I would not be surprised if it does), and their choice of director certainly did not support that. So they aimed for edgefest and fell short. Alas!
My guess is that this is either a 4/10 or 4.5/10 overall - that's my usual score range for this sort of thing (I have Elfen Lied at firmly 4/10 (despite a better director!), and that's before we get to a certain other work that would be a 4/10 if not for gaining a point for its OST), depending on exact execution and how much of the time the OST can pick up the rest of the show's slack (it is occasionally capable of that, judging by episode 9 and the part of episode 8 I accidentally watched while trying to watch 9, but only via battle themes and not all the battle themes either). Downside is 3/10 (same as Mai-Otome), upside is somewhere in the 5s.
That said, there is one anime that comes to mind as a better comp for MGRP in anime form than anything else (that very aforementioned 4/10 that gains a point for its OST). Do you want another anime with very subpar direction, uncharacteristically poor vocal performances from solid to good seiyuu, a script that isn't particularly good in any way but also never stands out as being actively terrible, and that is widely considered a bad adaptation of its source material by its fanbase? Well, do I have the perfect show for you! It even IMO has a noticeably better OST! It's from 2003, and it's called Lunar Legend Tsukihime.
(I'd probably have to start rather than end on Halloween to make the timing work this late in the game, but I am still willing to run that Shingetsukan Tsukihime Helloween Hatewatch idea I've had for years now. (Complete with my commentary in Staldorf and Watler mode, including THE VOICE! Those of you who were in Flip Flappers may remember THE VOICE.) Tried firing it last year and had to withdraw because like two people were interested, everyone else was out because they didn't want their introduction to Nasu and/or Tsukihime to be the anime, but...)
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u/uhhhhhhhokay_ https://myanimelist.net/profile/uhhhhhhhokay 23d ago edited 23d ago
In any event, the "did they actually get what made Madoka good or just think that it was an edgefest?" question for MGRP has a clear answer, and it's not the one the fanbase would tell you: AFAICT, MGRP in anime form goes firmly in the Site/Spec-Ops Asuka edgefest bucket
No offense to you personally, but this is such a stupid strawman argument. Always has been. What "made Madoka good"? What arcane knowledge does it have that you and the thousands of other random people on the internet who have made this same argument apparently "got", but actual writers and industry professionals in Japan didn't? I really doubt any of these people actually watched Madoka and thought it was just an "edgefest". Did they not "get" Madoka, or (more likely) did they just not care about what a completely unrelated series did, because they were never beholden to it in the first place?
And none of those series you listed are "just an edgefest" anyways. As someone who's seen all of them and read their source material, and "got" them, they all clearly have something to say, even if it's not always with the most grace or tact. Spec Ops Asuka is an especially funny one to do the whole "it didn't get Madoka" bit for, because apparently Gen Urobuchi himself thinks otherwise! (That's his recommendation for the first volume of the manga.)
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u/Vaadwaur 23d ago
how bad an anime can be is determined by its script, but how good an anime can be is determined by its direction. And MGRP here has unusually poor direction.
Felt that, especially in the last two eps.
The flip side of that is that judging by what I saw the script here, while not good by any means, is just passively a bit bad rather than actively terrible.
I am keenly sensitive to script/world level cruelty so...
AFAICT, MGRP in anime form goes firmly in the Site/Spec-Ops Asuka edgefest bucket
I might watch those horrors to clean the taste of this out of my brain.
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u/No_Rex x2 23d ago
how bad an anime can be is determined by its script, but how good an anime can be is determined by its direction.
Interesting idea. I think I'd agree to it in relative terms, but not in absolute ones. Direction probably determines more of the upside and script more of the downside.
I would put it slightly differently, though: Good direction can make you forget some flaws in the script, while a good script does not need strong direction to keep you hooked.
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u/Specs64z https://myanimelist.net/profile/Specs64z 23d ago
AFAICT that would have been through the slow death of a thousand cuts rather than concentrated terrible in spots
I'd say that's accurate to my experience, I can't really point to a specific moment when this anime lost me so much as I can a hundred little things that dissolved my goodwill toward it.
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u/TheDanubianCommunard 23d ago
but I am still willing to run that Shingetsukan Tsukihime Helloween Hatewatch idea I've had for years now.
You can count on me.
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u/Komarist https://myanimelist.net/profile/RRSTRRST 23d ago
QotD 1: Only one girl swam into my heart.
QotD 2: Alice deserved better. Died because she admired the girl that let her into her own house. Meanwhile, had to deal with Tama making top-4 by checks notes being a coward incapable of following Best Girl's instructions.
QotD 3: Luviageltia Edelfelt for any character without blonde drills. For example, Tama.
QotD 4: Not particularly. Will reiterate my preference for shows that skirt the line of being mahou shoujo over obvious mahou shoujo.
Looking forward to seeing all of you in the Fall 2026 Best Girl contest.
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u/FireRifle64 https://myanimelist.net/profile/FireRifle64 23d ago
First Time Watcher
This was definitely a watch. It scratched an itch i didnt know i had lately: some good ole death games. I think my hangups would have to be despite getting an ep or half an ep for these characters, i needed more interaction from them. some characters had relatable or heart felt backstories while others i think they felt a bit lacking. i also would have liked more of their interactions as themselves. Just seeing how they navigate their lives while being magical girls. I know thats the mystery in all this is who they actually are but its just something i would have liked.
I enjoyed the music, especially the ed. I also really liked the character designs. I think for action it was ok. Wish it could have gone on longer or been more creative with their powers, though i guess a hand through the chest is all you need or a crush to the face.
This series started back in 2012. That time i was just in middle school playing on the ipad on these online apps. Nowadays, the world has changed and online has really expanded. It would be interesting to see this developed in our world currently, especially with how depressing everything has been lately.
7/10. Cant wait to see how things go in the sequel. So many questions, what will this magical kingdom do now? And they said for Snow White to stay in her own district. Im wondering if they had other selection exams across the world or maybe this was just the one spot. And im curious how many magical girls they have under their belt. And how depressing can things get. Cant wait.
1) Top Speed
2) Tama. Screw it, Imma say it was Snow White. She deserved worse. That lil pansy aint do nothingl. While most of everyone else was fighting for their lives or protect others, she was over here bawling. She let others do the killings for her while she sat around on her bum waiting to be saved. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I would say Cranberry but ultimately, Fav.
3) Utena (gushing) so that she could have a magical girl harem.
4) Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. I guess. A magical girl show with an adult cast without the whole depressing topics or themes or as much anyway. Thats all i can really do since i dont have much under my belt for mahou shoujo. I do intend to watch the sequel of raising project and watch the magical knights rayearth 2026 but ill probably look at the comments for other shows to see what else there may be.
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u/Vaadwaur 23d ago
If it is a death game you want, you can't go wrong with Mirai Nikki. Akame ga Kill has a similar vibe and you could return to one of the ancient ones in Higuashi.
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u/FireRifle64 https://myanimelist.net/profile/FireRifle64 23d ago
I dont know if id do Higurashi at least the anime. I did recently purchase the Higurashi books on steam so that i may get into them one day.
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u/Hartzilla2007 23d ago
First Timer
Honestly the most interesting thing is that Snow White seems more like a magical girl version of Sarah Conner from the Terminator movies in the whole deciding to become a badass after getting horribly traumatized by multiple near death experiences she couldn't really do much about.
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u/Shizzi https://anilist.co/user/Mivy 22d ago
Rewatched, Subbed After A Freaking Decade
i rewatched everything on my own time so i will just write a bit here instead Topspeed and Swim Swim still my fav has not changed since Nana one of the worst because spouting platitudes while doing nothing is just sickening worst one is Mary tho just an awful person from everything we have seen.
I'm still wondering tho about Swim Swim we never got to see any backstory so how the hell is such a young girl so ruthless and cold.
With S2 just around the corner you really wonder wth its gonna be about so really excited about that and the 2 survivors are the ones that resembles normal Mahou Shoujos the most i feel especially our Protag.
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u/No_Rex x2 23d ago
Final Discussion (first timer)
In my first post, I mentioned that I heard of MGRP as a Madoka knock-off and that these don’t have the best reputation. So, is MGRP a PMMM knock-off? Yes. Is it as good as PMMM or close? No. Turns out, the reputation was deserved. MGRP lacks the visual style of PMMM and the awesome soundtrack, but as important, it also lacks the cohesive writing of PMMM. It seems very obvious to me that somebody took PMMM as a starting point, added a deliberate battle royale (as opposed to the natural state of war over resources in PMMM), colored Kyuubee a bit differently, and added a healthy dose of suffering. After all, being meguca is suffering is even a meme, so the suffering has to be important, right?
Writing like that doesn’t work, of course. At least not good writing. At many points, it is noticeable how MGRP was written “from the end.” That is, with some goal in mind, the writer looked for ways to get there. Turns out, they often didn’t find a good connecting path. “They” here means both the original and adaption, btw. As we learned a fair share of this mess belongs to the adaptation. Maybe worst of all, MGRP often feels not designed to tell a story, but to sell stuff (like dolls of barely clad underage girls …). Never a good feeling.
Unlike /u/Vaadwaur, I would not rank this in the worst ever tier, though. The finale was somewhat competent and I liked a good bit of the character setup. My personal favorites being the trio of Ruler, SwimSwim, and Tama, who are a great example of megalomaniac leader, amoral student, and a follower who is not ever thinking for herself. If we had cut out like half of the less useful characters, you could do something interesting with these. Unfortunately, the useless half includes Fav and Cranberry, because the whole setup of why we are doing this is terrible.
Overall score: 5/10
Recommendations:
- Madoka – the obvious. If by any chance you have not seen the show that MGRP rips off, start there.
- Mai-Hime – if you want to see a far more competent take on the magical girl battle royale concept that predates MGRP by a fair bit. They actually have good character interactions and interesting conflicts here!
- Now and Then, Here and There – if you enjoyed all the suffering and want more, but not with magical girls.
Thanks for hosting HereticalAegis!
Which girl deserved better?
Pretty much all, with three exceptions: Cranberry, Mary, and Ruler. They each where handed power and abused it.
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u/Tarhalindur x2 23d ago
Maybe worst of all, MGRP often feels not designed to tell a story, but to sell stuff (like dolls of barely clad underage girls …). Never a good feeling.
That's a funny way of spelling body pillows...
(Also, thinking about the actual ages that go with those character designs I am also suddenly and grimly reminded of the Blue Archive rule of thumb that you can usually tell which BA girls are third years and which girls are first/second years because the latter have figures and the former do not...)
Pretty much all, with three exceptions: Cranberry, Mary, and Ruler.
Bullshit, the Yuk-Yuk Angels also go here for being the Yuk-Yuk Angels.
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u/TheDanubianCommunard 23d ago
Pretty much all, with three exceptions: Cranberry, Mary, and Ruler. They each where handed power and abused it.
Not even Swim Swim?
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u/No_Rex x2 23d ago
Not even Swim Swim?
She was like seven? I would not trust a seven year old with a trip to the supermarket, much less an OP murder power. She tried to follow Ruler's rules to some bloody conclusions, but the fault lies with the rules and those who gave her far more power than a seven year old should ever have.
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u/Vaadwaur 23d ago
It seems very obvious to me that somebody took PMMM as a starting point, added a deliberate battle royale (as opposed to the natural state of war over resources in PMMM), colored Kyuubee a bit differently, and added a healthy dose of suffering.
Having seen Gantz, its gross fingeprints are all over this, except that even Gantz gives a purporse to its monstrous Fav,
That is, with some goal in mind, the writer looked for ways to get there. Turns out, they often didn’t find a good connecting path.
Again, looking at what the studio makes, they really should have contracted this out but...alas.
I would not rank this in the worst ever tier, though.
I was more engaged than I was with Lostorage but not remotely more entertained.
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u/No_Rex x2 23d ago
Having seen Gantz, its gross fingeprints are all over this, except that even Gantz gives a purporse to its monstrous Fav,
Would be worthwhile tracing the torture/suffering porn in anime back one day. Would not surprise me to find some 1980s OVA at the start of it (that probably itself references some 1970 slasher movies).
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u/Vaadwaur 23d ago
Legend of the Overfiend springs to mind but I don't know my Japanese slashers that well as they struggled to be produced.
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u/Vaadwaur 23d ago
First timer with spoilers(The pain is almost over)
Sub(This is Homelander's favorite anime)
I've seen fire, and I've seen rain, I've seen anime that I will never touch again. But then I saw this pile of shit. I do not, remotely, care which stack of shows this leeched off because all of them are lessened for the existence of this one. This is the '26 Wolverine of mahou shoujo, and that expressly considers the sexuality involved.
If I am somehow not being clear, this is the worst show I will have watched this year. By a long margin. In fact, the previous record holder was Redo of a Healer. And at least that was comedic rather than sadistically masturbatic. This is Pupa with zero ambition, which is an improvement, but is in no way good.
Here is my totally normal rap.
QotD:1 No
2 Edelprison deserved better, Cranberry deserved the amount of worse you fucks can't conceive of
3 Through out Heaven and Earth, Mimori Tougou alone is the honored one. With a fucking sniper rifle.
4 Nyaruko-chan perhaps?
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u/Specs64z https://myanimelist.net/profile/Specs64z 23d ago
Last Timer, subbed
It has a decent hook, and from there an embarrassingly amateur production fails at every opportunity to deliver. I find I have nothing more to say. Borrowing a quote of mine from rewatches past:
For me, a 1/10 is an anime so broken, so utterly devoid that there’s not even anything to meaningfully criticize
It’s this. This is what a 1/10 looks like.
QotD:
1) Alice’s design was my favorite. I quite liked La Pucelle and Ruler's designs, as well.
2) Nemurin got scammed.
3) No magical girl deserves such a cruel fate.
4) Prisma Illya is better than what its Reputation™ might suggest.
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u/Vaadwaur 23d ago
Last Timer, subbed
It has a decent hook, and from there an embarrassingly amateur production fails at every opportunity to deliver. I find I have nothing more to say.
Well said.
It’s this. This is what a 1/10 looks like.
You are probably the only person more negative than I am and the difference is Pupa tried to destroy my hearing.
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u/Specs64z https://myanimelist.net/profile/Specs64z 23d ago
You are probably the only person more negative than I am
This anime is a perfect storm of everything that could conceivably make me specifically stop caring about a piece of art, unfortunately. I think every one of my posts from episode 3 onward got a last-minute revision in an effort to be less... cruel, for lack of a more specific word.
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u/HereticalAegis https://myanimelist.net/profile/XthGen 23d ago edited 23d ago
Rewatcher and Game Mascot
And so we've come to the end. To be honest, as mascot and host, this has been an exhausting experience. When I first thought to host a Magical Girl Raising Project rewatch, I only convinced myself to do it because I thought I'd have maybe four or five people sticking around to the end. As someone who's not only watched the show but read all the books and gotten just a little bit into the western fandom, I knew the anime's reputation and figured I'd start with a dozen or so and those would be quickly whittled down to an easily managed number.
So let me just say, as your very friendly, forthcoming, and downright trustworthy mascot...fuck all of you. Every single one. How dare you all, yes ALL of you tenacious game participants refuse to follow my perfectly laid script and die atop the hill of dropped shows as planned. It's like herding snarky, anime-brained cats with you. Here I am hoping for you to all be gone so my job can be easier, yet for some stupid reason a solid dozen of you monsters actually stuck around to the end. If you had just dropped off as planned, I could have done it. I could have been the one to finally complete the Anime Rewatcher Raising Project and raised the perfect rewatcher. [Meta]/s
And as host, thank you all for giving this a shot. This is my third time hosting a rewatch. I don't do this often, and I only put in the time and effort of running one for things I personally love. And yet, this one is different for me. As we reached the end of the series, something dawned on me.
If I may digress for just a moment, I'd like to talk theme. Magical Girl Raising Project has several themes and larger ideas on its mind. Power fantasies and what they mean in a world with people who don't behave like heroic paragons; the challenge of maintaining ideals in the face of tragedy and malice; the way life and circumstance informs who people are when they obtain power; etc. My favorite overarching theme from MGRP, as I detailed a bit yesterday, is that the things we love and aspire to grow with us, and our conception of those things change in stride. Koyuki views magical girls not just as heroes, but as an ideal, and she painfully learns throughout the show that her youthful ideals of magical girls don't translate to reality. Magical girls are people. They are flawed creatures that are capable of deception, abuse, violence, and despair. And yet, as she is able to slowly reconcile that reality with her innate views, she is finally able to grow alongside that understanding. And that growth, that reconciliation not only allows her to continue being a magical girl, it shows her she needs to use that power in realistic ways within her world if she wants to truly help people and make the world a better place. She can still love magical girls in spite of the horror, tragedy, and malice they are capable of.
And that, I realized, has broadly been my journey in hosting this rewatch. I may have styled myself the mascot as host, but I find myself more and more in the position of Snow White. As I stated before, I came in knowing the anime's reputation, but this rewatch has presented even more intense scrutiny than I considered prior. I'd be lying if I said it was easy to read so much criticism every single day, and there were points I kind of dreaded posting the next thread. A couple times, I lost sleep wondering how reception of an episode might be radically different from my own.
And yet, as I watched the final episode one last time, I felt it. That love for this show, for this series, is still there. It brings me joy. Even for all the criticism, for all the perspectives far removed from my own and valid criticisms laid out, I love Magical Girl Raising Project. I may love it more now than I ever have, and it brightens my spirit to know I'll get to watch more of it so soon.
So I want to say one more time: thank you all for joining me and offering your time and thoughts, both those who stayed and those who left early. I hope every single one of you found something here to make this worth your time, even if none of this worked for you. All I wanted was the opportunity to share something I love, and you all gave me that opportunity and then some. And if even one more person found something they could enjoy even half as much as me, then I believe this endeavor was well worth the time and effort I put into it.
And now, I am off to go touch some grass. This rewatch has kept me far busier than expected the past two weeks and I am dying to see the sun and eat nice food.
QotD:
Swim Swim did nothing wrongTop Speed deserved better, I need her and Ripple's genki-tsundere sitcom. The Peaky Angels deserved even worse than they got. I will never be free of this smugness.
Swapping Magia Baiser in for Tama. It would be very interesting and fun to see how she's handle magical girls who have perverted her sense of magical girl ideals to such wild extremes.
I am always wishing for more people to watch Assault Lily: Bouquet. Class S setting and uniforms, so gay they basically [Assault Lily]get married in the show, and just enough of that Shaft production jank to feel back at home. It's the magical girl show made of elements pulled directly from my id, and it's beautiful.