All of my reviews contain spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning. 880https://i.ur.com/vfhRgz7.png It feels fair to say that Magia Record is a bit of a weird thing. Nearly ten years out from Puella Magi Madoka Magica the series has spawned a surprisingly large franchise. In this day and age that means a gacha game. Thus it comes to pass that we have MagiReco an anime adaptation of said game. Its easy to be cynical about this sort of thing. Must be a soulless cashgrab right? Well nothings ever really that simple. Any franchise that lives long enough has to reckon with itself eventually in some way or another. Madoka was already doing this as early as Rebellion but as much as the franchise itself that was Gen Urobuchi and Shinbou codifying and modifying what theyd done with the series proper. Productionwise the Magica Quartet is no more. Shinbou is gone and Urobuchi is working on some thing on about robotshttps://anilist.co/anime/111964/OBSOLETE/. This is not the first time Madoka Magica has been revisited or expanded upon. There have been manga there have been books there was of all things a roguelike for the PlayStation Portable. Nearly a decade later Magia Record is a different animal. Even if the base parts that make something Madoka are all still here theyre arranged differently. New characters form the bulk of the shows cast many of whom have similarities to the original Puella Magi. When old ones are reintroduced its in an altered context. No one is quite who they appear to be and the show itself by turns makes open nostalgia plays and is willfully cryptic. 880https://i.ur.com/T1Mk34y.jpg To be very clear this is not Rebellion. MagiReco is neither an obvious continuation of the franchise nor a radical departure from it. The patch of middle ground it seeks to farm is thus a tricky one. MagiReco seems to operate from a curious core thesis which is that Madokas metatext has been so heavily mined by other stories that theres little point in digging into it. Instead MagiReco almost aggressively foregrounds this iteration of the Madoka universe as pure text before it does anything else only approaching deeper themes through this odd backdoor route. It is a show with a keen interest in the mechanics and the aesthetics of Madoka as an idea. Before it is any other thing it is a vehicle for telling Madoka stories and sees that as a valid goal on its own. 880https://i.ur.com/w7Why4U.png The shows structure which emphasizes smaller character arcs within a fairly large cast somewhat ironically builds it similarly to the traditional magical warrior series to which Madoka is often wrongly cast as an antithesis. Add to this a bit of trademark SHAFTy oddness helmed by Gekidan Inu Curry who both reprise their roles in the animation and now lead the series as directors and you have a recipe for good solid fun. Which in some ways is exactly what the show is. You may notice that I have danced around the issue of the series actual quality. To tell the truth I think MagiRecos odd priorities mean that even moreso than is the norm for this kind of thing you will take away what you put in. Do you have an interest in Madoka more as a cool magical girl series however dark it may be or as a Faustian tragedy? MagiReco is not solely for the former crowd but it is that mentality that the series is clearly written from first and foremost. In part MagiReco seems to see iterating upon Madoka as an idea as an end unto itself in the same way that postFutari wa Precure seasons have done to that franchise. This isnt to say that its shallow. MagiRecos habit of picking at the clockwork of the PMMM universe or at least this version of it means that it occasionally interrogates its own predecessor sometimes to truly interesting effect and sometimes not. The way that MagiReco interacts with PMMM is curious often bordering on audienceantagonistic. Mami returns but as a villain. Kyouko shows up only to dip for the finale where shes nowhere to be seen. Sayaka makes an appearance in the final episode where while she does get to participate in one of the shows highlights as far as fight scenes go she does not actually do much. Of Madoka herself and the everdivisive Homura the former only shows up very briefly in a flashback. The latter not at all. 880https://i.ur.com/kCvwUwF.png Of the shows original cast its two leads Iroha and Yachiyo are clearly riffs designwise on Madoka and Homura respectively but they only broadly resemble those characters in writing. Irohas quest to find her disappeared sister is much more focused than Madokas broad loveeveryone attitude which is not to say its better or worse but its distinct. Yachiyo on the other hand is like Homura in her general lone wolfishness and status as a veteran magical girl but the similarities dont go much farther. Her own tragic past is of a very different kind. She loses friends and teammates to what she believes to be the results of her own wishsimply to surviveand in the shows brightest spots which it has a surprising amount of she actually comes across as rather motherly. If all of this seems a bit circuitous it may be well because MagiRecos biggest weakness is its lack of much of a unified core. That aforementioned structure means that the series lives and dies by individual arcs. Some are absolutely great Rena Minamis plumbs some truly moving depths of selfloathing and you really feel for the character. Much later in the series Sana Futabas absolutely wild arc about living inside a computer and how this relates to her now bygone home life is also superb. On the other hand some others are simply competent and its here where the show loses points. 880https://i.ur.com/nzrWMnc.png 880https://i.ur.com/jooZMha.png How much worth youre going to find in even the best arcs though does ultimately come down to whether you think any of this is worthwhile in the first place. This in turn is going to tie into how you feel about the original series and possibly Rebellion. For a show that is otherwise rather humble theres a lot of high emotion tied up in discussion of Magia Record. It is a series that is postMadoka in a very different way than the numerous imitatorsgood and badthat have tried to bite a piece of the PMMM pie since the early 2010s. This will doubtless be further exacerbated by the onitsway second season which promises to build up a stronger overarching narrative and to return Walpurgisnight and possibly Madoka herself to the shows universe. Longtime fans are as likely to love MagiReco as hate it. Personally as a somewhat recent Madoka convert I found every episode compelling and am thrilled to see what comes next. But even as I type that it feels like trying to force clarity onto a series that continues to thrive best without it. The Less You Know The Better and all that. MagiReco feels uncommonly like a series that will meet you halfway but no farther. Puella Magi Madoka Magica aired nine years ago. MagiReco intentionally or not seems to beg the question are you the same person you were in 2011? Is anyone? 880https://i.ur.com/iwIitg3.png