Episode 10 of Magia Record was amazing. I really like most of the changes they did. Only thing I was annoyed at was that they pretty much removed Iroha bonding with Sana over their loneliness. That was the main reason Iroha risked her life to safe her and why Sana so eagerly joined them, because first time in her life she felt needed and important to someone. It made them spending half of the episode 8 so blatantly building Iroha's loneliness pretty pointless. It was already subtly conveyed over the show. Some parallels were nice and done well, but some parts, like the bullying, felt totally unnecessary. Overall good set up, but without any pay off.
I love the way they handled Mami joining Magius. It was explained in the game and I found it perfectly reasonable, even if the resolution to her plot line was handled poorly, but I much more prefer anime's taken on it. It portrays Mami as much stronger character even if still conflicted. Her being unstable mess, made sense considering her character and original reaction to truth, but it pretty much removed all agency she had as a character, replacing her with completely different character, even if she consented to it. And speaking of which, that was my main issue with how Magius handled explaining their plan to main cast, which admittedly knowing future events and their general approach to "allies" makes more sense in the hindsight. Still I felt like main cast had legitimate reasons to join Magius and it would make for much stronger, engaging and interesting story. But no, let's just brainwash them. Again, make sense in context of what kind of people Magius are, but still feels incredibly cheap.
In fact I can perfectly see it working that way. Sana's and Felicia's brainwashing was undone almost immediately and had no impact whatsoever. While I felt like revelation of truth would impact them a lot and might give them reason to join them, I'd be perfectly fine with them never joining at all. On the other hand I feel like set up for Tsuruno to joining Magius from her own will is already there. She is close with Mifuyu. She carries a lot of burden and guilt and I can totally see her giving in into temptation of promise of salvation in exchange for finding inner peace. And then we would have emotional fight between Tsuruno and Yachiyo where she connects with her and convince her to come back. And that's exactly what they seems to be setting up with Mami, which would give arrival of original trio a lot more impact. It should be them actually trying to reason Mami back, instead of that bs with Yachiyo just beating sense into her, when it was clearly established to not work like that with Tsuruno and needing a genuine connection and understanding, that Yachiyo clearly didn't have. Don't get me wrong. That duel sounds awesome and I'd be lying if I said that I don't want to see it animated, but priorities. That reminds me. What was up with Yachiyo getting some sudden boost of power in that fight. I don't remember if it was explained at all. If it wasn't, they better remove it. Anyway, since they also showed willingness to big changes with Mami not being fused with Rumor, they can just as easily not do it with Tsuruno as well. Not from top of my head, but I'm sure there are ways to work around it.
That's honestly my biggest issue with Magius in general. Instead of being a complex villains with a point, making it more of a gray area whatever what they do is good or bad and giving room for some moral dilemmas, they just went for black and white, they're pure evil and need to be stopped. And sure, their methods still could be wrong, but there could be more nuance with it. For starters, I hate that they don't actually ever explain their goals, because that should be best way to convince everyone to join them. First sign something fishy is going on. And yes, they do explain it eventually, but after clashing several times with main cast and they invited them for a lecture already with full intention of brainwashing them. They didn't even give them a chance to make a choice for themselves. That's why what they did with Mami is step in good direction and gives me hope, they'll change other scenes as well in similar fashion. Having to win them back, by reasoning why what Magius is doing is wrong, simply feels like much better idea.
Anyway, people stop thinking it's Madoka lite and will never be as good. It doesn't try to be a repeat of OG series. It's a different show, trying to do different things and is doing pretty darn good job at it.
last edited at Mar 7, 2020 3:37PM
imagine hurting Pareo of all people
