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thewhitefluffyhat · 2 years

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Thoughts on the Magia Record Finale

There’s a montage at the end of the last episode with a phrase that perfectly encapsulates my ultimate feelings on the Magia Record anime: “We dreamed of hope and failed.”

Because the anime had lots of ambitious ideas of how to fix the story from the game - too many ideas, in fact. And in the end, by trying to cram in too many ideas, too many priorities, it succeeded at none of them.

The Good: The Backstory

While the first episode of the season might have been titled “We Failed,” I ironically found it a triumph. This episode did an exceptional job not just adapting the material from the game, but elevating it. At the end of the day, the story of Iroha and Ui is not an especially unique tragedy, not in a franchise filled with many such tales of despair. And yet, each beat - the sisters’ mutual care for each other and for Touka and Nemu, the quiet yet inexorable devastation of Ui’s condition worsening, the fairytale-esque twist of Iroha’s wish saving Ui yet meaning Iroha no longer has time to spend with her - was conveyed with pitch perfect competence.

It helps that this is a very “broad strokes” adaptation, keeping only the general frame of events and reworking the dialog and visuals to construct a more consistent mood and tone. It also allowed the anime to sprinkle in some lovely little details, like a cute moment of Iroha doing Ui’s lipstick to show their bond, or illustrating Touka’s analytical genius by showing her tracking down the suspicious incidents and realizing that the first person listed was always a teenage girl.

I particularly liked the conversation between the hospital trio and Kyuubey. Over the years, I’ve seen more than a few rancid takes along the lines of “if character from X magical girl series had met Kyuubey, she would have been too smart to accept the contract!” Which… entirely misses the point.

The point of Madoka Magica was never that the characters were foolish or stupid to have been tricked. The point has always been that Kyuubey is a terrifying, masterful manipulator who excels at lying through omission. Thus, when Touka, Nemu, and Ui launch a rapid-fire barrage of questions that should reveal the fine print to Kyuubey’s contract… he still nimbly dodges every single question (using answers from the original TV series, even!) and the girls have to piece together the truth by reading between the lines.

It’s a great moment that sells both Kyuubey’s menace and the hospital trio as clever, ambitious, and sympathetic characters. When everything all goes south despite their efforts, it’s all the more painful because the audience is shown that they did everything right. They dreamed of hope, but the Madoka Magica universe is cruel and uncaring, and they failed through no fault of their own.

And that’s the stuff - interesting characters, an unjust tragedy, but also a sliver of hope, however faint, that the tragedy could still be averted - that could have been the hook to an incredibly promising story.

The backstory interlude in the final chapters of the game was some of my favorite content in the Main Story; thus, it was no surprise that the animated equivalent was also very very good. Good enough, I’d argue, that you could potentially watch this episode as a standalone, and would be better off simply imagining for yourself a conclusion to their story.

The Promising: Touka and Nemu’s Characterizations

I’ve briefly mentioned my issues with the game’s treatment of Touka and Nemu before, how the other Magius leaders were given little to do besides echoing Touka. And the anime’s second season already kicked off some much needed improvements in that area - namely, having Nemu retain her memories and therefore giving her a different perspective and motivation compared to Touka.

And the second anime episode, “All the Girls Disappearing,” does continue to build on those threads! I quite liked all the characterization details brought up in Touka and Nemu’s conversation with Iroha. Nemu deliberately hiding the truth from Touka because she needed Touka’s drive and confidence - however warped and broken - was a fascinating dynamic and could have done wonders to make the Magius leaders a compelling group to watch.

I also thought the change to Touka’s backstory, that she snapped from having the hopes of all the Feathers placed on her, was a vast improvement over the game’s characterization of her as simply a bratty child who became impatient.

And later still - the suggestion that Touka and Nemu were so determined to stay their course, to do something they know is a mistake, specifically because they wanted to save Iroha’s life? Like another twist on Homura’s devotion to saving Madoka at any cost? Also great!

…What a shame, then, that these half-baked ideas were only that - mere hints at deeper character arcs, a few lines frantically tossed out and then thrown by the wayside as the plot raced toward a rushed conclusion.

An anime where these ideas had been explored in full - an anime where Touka and Nemu had been characters we’d followed since the beginning, watching in horror as they fell further and further away from their idealistic hopes and ambitions - now that could have been a Magia Record worth watching.

The Story Falls Apart: Let’s Talk About Alina

As a resident Alina fangirl, of course I have to comment on her portrayal in the anime. And while my expectations for how her character would wrap up weren’t high… the anime certainly didn’t surpass them.

Going back a moment, I thought Alina’s integration into the backstory episode - with her eavesdropping on the hospital trio’s plans - was an improvement on the game, where she shows up completely out of nowhere. But “something is better than completely nothing” is not exactly high praise.

(The main thing I did enjoy was the chance to see Alina's disdain for Kyuubey in animated form, heh. Can never have enough characters stomping Kyuubey's face in!)

I’m also baffled that the anime didn’t go for the easy fix of having Alina be the one to corrupt Touka and Nemu’s ideals, especially given that the anime still keeps Alina turning on the rest of Magius as part of the finale. Like, “Alina was the source of evil in Magius” has never been an interpretation I’ve been fond of, but if you’re going to make Alina the ultimate villain of the magical girls anyway, there’s no reason not to do it?

Meanwhile Alina fusing with the Eve to become Neo Dorothy and turn everyone into witches… yeah, I got nothing. Even with Alina debating Kyuubey beforehand, it still felt just as bizarre and nonsensical as Holy Alina’s sudden appearance. Since when did Alina have anything to do with wanting vengeance on humanity? Since when did she have the ability to turn people into magical girls?

I mean, the possibility of all humans becoming magical girls/witches, and of that being a Madoka Magica villain’s goal are neat ideas. Maybe if that had been Magius’s goal from the start, making them an organization that craved vengeance because they had lost hope in salvation… maybe that could have been a good story.

But, just like the intriguing ideas suggested by the Touka and Nemu details, it was very much not the story we’d been watching up until this point. And so, throwing in this concept right at the end did nothing but muddle the anime’s thematic waters even further.

*shrug*

I guess that Alina being obsessed with wanting to go out in a blaze of glory is minimally consistent with her character… or it would have been, if any of Alina’s backstory from the game had been remotely implied in the anime. Once again: if the climax is going to hinge on fighting Alina, if major characters are going to sacrifice their lives to stop her… she needed to have been foreshadowed as a threat much, much earlier.

(And don’t even get me started on the short scene of Karin in the credits. So… Alina was planning to destroy the world, and yet she also took the time to send her kouhai a painting as a farewell gift? Like, that’s hilarious and maybe oddly touching? But it simultaneously requires knowledge of the game to understand while making even less sense when you have that knowledge. Oof!)

In the end, the anime’s finale didn’t give me what I most wanted for Alina’s character: a compelling reason to be part of the story in the first place. Even as an Alina fangirl, I would much have preferred a well-constructed story without her in it than the unsatisfying mess we got, where Alina’s presence just made the plot and themes more confusing.

The Problem: Too Many Characters

And Alina is far from the only character where I wish she hadn’t been included in the anime. I feel the same way almost everyone! What was the point of Team KMR, aside from illustrating the downsides of doppels (which barely mattered anyway!)? Why was Mitama’s subplot hinted at, when the anime had no time to do anything with her? Why did Felicia and Sana get entire focus arcs, when they were completely irrelevant to the conclusion? Why did the Holy Quintet get shoehorned in, only to get waved offstage for the finale?

But perhaps the most extreme example of this was: why did Kuroe exist?

Don’t get me wrong: I thought all of Kuroe’s moments were well-done. I thought her backstory was quite evocative for how minimal it was, I thought her connection with Iroha in Season 2 and her death at Iroha’s hands were moving. Her relief at becoming a witch simply because it meant she could finally be released from the pressures of living as a magical girl was wonderfully dark and chilling.

But… this anime was massively crunched for time, and she was yet another character that didn’t need to be there.

My best guess as to the point of Kuroe’s character is that she’s meant to be an expansion of that nameless Black Feather that Iroha confronts in Chapter 9 of the game. The one who challenges Iroha and asks what alternative she offers, and Iroha has no answer for her.

By expanding that character from some anonymous grunt into a full plotline, it becomes just that much more devastating when Iroha confronts her and realizes she has no answer to offer. I suspect Kuroe’s death is intended to be the moment Iroha finally accepts that if she stops Magius, that means she is condemning girls like Kuroe to their fate as witches.

…Or at least, that’s the most positive spin I can give Kuroe.

Unfortunately, there is another answer to all these questions, and it’s the cynical one: Magia Record is an adaptation of a gacha game, and therefore it exists not to tell a good story, but as a vehicle for character cameos to wring more money out of an addicted fanbase. Kuroe was simply one more character to drive hype in hopes that fans would pay to roll her in the gacha.

Perhaps there could have been a good story built out of bones of Magia Record, one where the core characters of Iroha, Ui, Touka, and Nemu (and probably Yachiyo and Mifuyu and maaaybe Tsuruno) actually got the time and focus they needed to develop. But that story could not exist under the priorities a gacha adaptation demanded.

But you know what might actually have worked? Ditching the Main Story entirely, and instead adapting a loose, episodic collection of the game’s Magical Girl Stories. After all, that’s where the game’s writing was always best, and that format would mean the priorities of “showcase all the fans’ favorite characters” and “try to fit everything into a single, coherent plot” would no longer have been forced to compete.

The Other Problem: In the end, what was the point?

My younger brother made a silly but rather striking comment about the anime: that it wanted to have its magical girls and eat them too.

The anime floundered because on the one hand, it was trying to tell a story about refusing to accept a solution premised on “save the many by sacrificing the few.” It wanted to be a story about magical girls and the power of friendship and sacrifices being unnecessary.

But on the other hand, it was trying to tell a story in which characters dramatically give their lives for the sake of salvation and this is portrayed as a beautiful, noble thing. It wanted to be a fitting successor to the dark “deconstruction” of the original Madoka Magica.

So which one is it? Well… the anime couldn’t decide.

And to be fair, this is not entirely the fault of the anime. It just meant that the anime failed to fix the biggest, most fundamental problem of the game's final chapters: deciding on a consistent theme. If anything, the anime’s fumbles just further underlined how painfully flawed the game’s plot was.

What do Magius and their plan ultimately represent? Magical girl supremacy? Another iteration of "sacrifice the few to save the many"? Magical girls getting revenge on Kyuubey and on an uncaring humanity?

And what does Iroha represent, besides “not Magius”?

That being said, while the ending of the game's story left me feeling annoyed and frustrated, the end of the anime made me feel... a kind of melancholic disappointment.

What I appreciated about the end of the anime, as messy as it was, is that it had consequences. It was refreshingly honest about where its plot arcs were going, rather than the characters speaking of friendship yet accomplishing nothing with it. The plot beats of Mifuyu, Momoko, and the hospital trio's heroic sacrifices had actual weight, weight that wasn’t undone with a cheap deus ex machina in the epilogue. Iroha spent the whole plot speaking in meaningless platitudes, and had no plan other than returning to Kyuubey's horrible status quo. And so, in the anime, that's what she enacts, no last-minute Lil Kyuubey or Madokami intervention to save her.

There’s a certain satisfaction in seeing all the problems I had with the game’s finale being explored to their relentlessly bleak and depressing logical conclusion in the anime - but it doesn’t necessarily make the result a fun story to watch.

Here’s another insight courtesy of my younger brother: just because the anime’s story was better than the game, doesn’t mean that it’s a good story.

Would I recommend the anime?

This is a difficult question. If you want to experience Magia Record’s main plot, then… yes, I suppose. The anime reached for the moon in a scattershot manner, throwing out tons of tantalizing ideas yet never following through on any of them. And, at least in my opinion, an ambitious, thought-provoking failure is still preferable to the game’s plodding mediocrity.

Because when the anime was good, it was really really good! Sana’s arc, several of the early episodes in Season 2, and the first episode of this finale are all wonderfully written, animated, and directed - possibly even on-par with the original Madoka Magica.

But when the anime was bad it was... whoof. Impossible to make sense of even if you had played the game, and with animation so dire it will make you wince and pray for the health of the poor SHAFT staff.

And so, I don’t think I would recommend the anime in general. I dragged my younger brother (who enjoyed the original Madoka Magica) into finishing the anime so I’d have someone unbiased by the game to discuss it with. In the end, I greatly regret doing that - this anime wasn’t just a let down, it was such a mess it sullied my own reputation with him.

It’s true that no sequel can erase a cherished original. I mean, Magia Record is far less of a shake up to the original PMMM and the fandom than Rebellion was. Yet what I’ve discovered with both Magia Record and the Higurashi debacle is that while you can’t destroy the prior work, you can certainly make a spin-off so bad it destroys trust in a creator’s future works.

After the Magia Record anime proved to be yet another disappointment, I have no desire to discuss Magia Record any more. Moreover, I no longer have any faith in the Rebellion sequel. I’ve been waiting for that sequel for almost ten years, and now I’m not sure I’ll bother watching it at all.

#pmmm #madoka magica #magia record #alina gray #kuroe #satomi touka #hiiragi nemu #tamaki ui #tamaki iroha #magia record anime #magia record analysis #magia record critical #my ramblings #read more

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