AniReco, also known as Magia Record anime, also known as Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story is a spin-off of Puella Magi Madoka Magica. It is a very special show to me that I feel is very unfairly hated on and misunderstood for a lot of different reasons, some valid, of course, it’s not perfect, like any cartoon, and others not as valid, in my opinion (it is not valid to disagree with my opinions).
Nevertheless I think this show is epic balls and sexy and mysterious in a way that a lot of people don’t understand and I can’t be completely sure even my friends understand, due to the extent of how obsessed with a single piece of media I can become.
Given that I always want to talk about the 3 whole shows I like and I don’t want to completely annoy my friends, and the fact that AniReco deserves more love, and the fact that I wanted to write something, especially for the Fungus Blog, I’ve decided to review it for funsies.
This review is intended for people who have either seen the show or who are actively watching it along with the review because I probably won’t be recaping/explaining every scene because you should watch it and sperging out is more important to me than having a fully structured scene-by-scene review. Also, I will tackle each individual episode at a time but still include some integrated context when I think it is interesting and fun. I am not very good at intros, so, without further ado:
Episode 1: Have You Heard? That Rumor About the Magical Girls
Man, this episode goes hard as fuck. The first episode is very important in my opinion because it is the tone-setter for the rest of the show. Of course, I love plenty of other series with weak openers but man do I love a good first episode.
Immediately, we see our protagonist, Tamaki Iroha, and the train motif that will be important for the rest of the story. I will go more in detail about it when all the necessary information is presented to the audience to fully explain the reference and relevance of it. Besides that, the scene looks awesome and is sick as hell, makes me squirm.
The directing in this show is strong, even when you can notice that COVID-19 timeline of production negatively impacted the quality of art in some shots (more prevalent in season 2). The tasteful exposition serves to remind the audience of the setting of this universe, but I also think it’s more effective than the way that it was first presented to the fans of the franchise, it also sets up another important story theme of rumor spreading. As much as it is a Persona 2 reference (though it may be a reference to something more highbrow like some kind of a book or folktale, but I am not sure since I am not very smart, so if you know, definitely tell me in DMs or email me, I would love to know), it’s interesting how reminiscent it is of Revolutionary Girl Utena.
Is everything I like a reference to Revolutionary Girl Utena? Yes. But also it is not completely unlikely due to this show sharing symbolism and inspirations with Revolutionary Girl Utena and considering how the gossip girls are stylized later in the show and their manner of speech, even furthermore combined with the fact that the creators of PMMM, despite what the evil western male PMMM fans would lead you to believe, are big Mahou Shoujo heads and have referenced the classics in illustrations.
Is a comparison image really necessary for the world famous Sailor Moon pose? No, not at all, but I like Sailor Moon posting whenever I can.
In fact, on the topic of Madoka and Sailor Moon, there is an interesting discussion to be had with how the Dream Arc relates to Labyrinths in the PMMM franchise, so please remind me to talk about it when the episode that relates to that comes on.
Back to the actual episode this is supposed to be a review of, the fight scenes are fun and bouncy and different abilities and varieties of weapons that the characters use and how abstract the enemies they face have always given PMMM an edge with the audience in the action department. I like this scene and it decidedly not interrupting the exposition dialogue is a good choice, though why it goes so hard doesn’t really need an explanation.
What’s really fun for me and I think is good to talk about is the music. While the very first track (‘Sis Puella Magica’) is probably the most iconic song from the original PMMM soundtrack composed by Yuki Kajiura, Takumi Ozawa composed all of the new songs for the anime adaptation of Magia Record, including the song that plays during the actual action scene. While I like Yuki Kajiura, I have to say a lot of her work can be very hit or a little miss (A lot of really high highs and sort of mediocre mids) and even though a lot of people needlessly try to spread rumours (epic Magia Record reference) about this OST being ghost co-written by Yuki Kajiura, it’s obviously a very different style of songwriting and the minor similarities found clearly stem from the fact that it’s the same franchise.
Takumi Ozawa does not fucking play around. I love this score so much that I decided I was going to definitely include some of the songs from the OST in my review. In my opinion, this particular theme is a musical highlight of episode 1 as well as what I would consider to be Iroha’s theme (especially since it plays once again during her final transformation). On top of being badass, this song and the whole OST feel a lot more heavy on flute compared to the PMMM OST. Flute, as a wind instrument, fits very well with Iroha's character motif of birds and by extension flight (you may notice hints of it in scenes afterwards and in the opening). It's a very nice sound and it adds what feels like a personal touch of the main character, which helps the soundtrack feel unique but not too different from the rest of the franchise. Also, this will not be the last time I talk about the samples and the instruments chosen for songs (If you know, you know).
Another kinda cool and interesting thing to note is that, despite Iroha being the protagonist, the songs that do relate to Iroha on the Magia Record Soundtrack refer to her in third-person (‘La Chica Dijo’ (es. The Girl Said) and ‘She Insisted’). Small thing, but I think it’s kinda cool when taken in with the fact that the titles of Homura’s songs from the Rebellion movie are in first-person (‘This is my despair’ and ‘I was waiting for this moment’). Idk, just kind of an interesting thought, I can’t wait for Iroha to show up in The Rise of Walpurgis, ‘cause she definitely will.
Learning more about our protagonist, in the best traditions of JRPGs, Tamaki Iroha is an amnesiac 15 year old with supernatural powers (with a funny girl boss mom, which is in the best traditions of PMMM). She is a little retarded, I really like her.
The fact that she’s more of a weird kid than Madoka, the protagonist of the original series, and does not fit in goes harder for me and is a very welcome magical girl trope. Moreover, who doesn’t like a good underdog?
It may be somewhat unfortunate that the anime mostly sidelines a lot of bullying she had to go through in her old school, however, I enjoy the subtlety of Iroha’s loneliness and weirdness. There are a lot of other subtle changes made to how Iroha is portrayed from the source material that I love, so it’s not that big of a deal that people only ostracize her behind her back as opposed to to her face.
Kuroe is an anime-only character, meaning she was introduced in this version of the story and only retroactively added to the source material mobile game. She is a very strange character and I can only guess that she is Yukihiro Miyamoto’s magical girl-sona (it is the only interpretation that makes sense and also it makes me giggle really hard), but I will definitely go more into it once we’ve seen more of her. For now, the only thing I have to say is I really like the way she adds to Iroha’s social isolation and sharp need for companionship. It’s somewhat common in shows for lonely characters to not have friends or be bullied but I think it’s neat that in the anime adaptation Iroha does have a friend, but the friendship is only one-sided, to the point that Kuroe does not seem to care to announce to her teammate that she will be leaving to play Persona 2 in a different city.
I have exactly two points about this new character that we are introduced to:
Point #1: As you may have guessed (either from all the promo art or from basic story structuring rules), she is the rival/lancer as well as the deuteragonist of the series. As you may have also noticed, especially if you have seen the original PMMM TV show or the recap movies, Iroha and Yachiyo are thematic and narrative parallels to Madoka and Homura respectively (more on the elephant in the room later in the show).
To be honest, I've never been the biggest fan of Homura's portrayal as the unambiguous "good guy" in the show pre-Rebellion timeline, so, while watching Magia Record originally, I was a bit weary of whether I would enjoy this character. Thankfully, Yachiyo ended up really working for me and probably being my actual favourite character in the whole franchise, which brings me to my second point.
Point #2: Yachiyo is very sexy (to set the record straight(lesbian), she is 19 years old).
Beautiful directing again in the last scene of the show, for all the true fans out there, the shot is filled with random references/easter eggs of wishes of characters, both main ones and ones that are featured in side stories from the game that didn’t make it into the anime adaptation.
I love this show, it’s such a good first episode, I’ve already said that. That’s all there is to say. One last thing, the opening is a bop (I didn’t like it until my friend forced me to watch the opening 6 times in a row for the purpose of guessing it in AMQ).
This review isn’t super spergy, but it was still a little spergy and I definitely look forward to getting into the episodes that tickle my brain more by the virtue of the story progressing from its exposition and having louder character beats that I can (s)cream over. I hope it was kind of an interesting read nonetheless.
See you next episode (you have to watch the show to read my review, which you have to read).
go back