Magia Record: Mahou Shoujo Madoka☆Magica Gaiden Final Season - Asaki Yume no Akatsuki

Do you enjoy:

- Shallow characters?
- Convoluted plots?
- Inconsistent animation?
- Deus ex machinas?

No? Then steer clear of Magia Record.

I’ll admit I had very, very low expectations for this final season. I moved forward, however, willing to be proven wrong. Unfortunately, I was not.
...
Basically everything I wrote in my review for the disastrous 2nd season holds true for this finale; the direction is jarring, the pacing is way too fast, etc. All of these issues persist in the remaining 4 episodes.

I will say, though, that I wasn’t expecting to laugh so much. There are a few moments, especially in the last 2 episodes, that are genuinely hilarious for all the wrong reasons. Some really absurd scenes are played completely seriously; shoutout to the giant magical rocketship, and that part where Iroha tackles two children through the air at mach speeds.

As long as Magia Record isn’t made canon in the 4th Madoka movie, we can all just pretend this was a bad dream. Love that.

guys this is only the anime ending i promise the game story is really good

like MAL wants me to write a longer review but there's nothing else to say. other than the first episode, which was for the most part a faithful adaptation/expansion of the game story, and some brilliant standout moments in animation that easily make the art a 9, this new "bad ending" isn't bad for being the worst possible outcome for this scenario; it is bad for being Fucking Bad. and there isn't much else to say about it.

i love magia record, i like it almost more than i like the original ... madoka although i acknowledge of course it's not actually better. the characters, the interesting take on the world of madoka, and the overall more hopeful story make it worth it for me. but this was bad. i desperately wish this anime adaptation was just the game's story, especially since magireco is so hit-or-miss among the madoka fandom. i want people who think it's just a soulless gacha game to see what i see in magia record. but this doesn't show that.

honestly if you want my opinion i'd say watch up to like the end of season 1, then read from the game story starting from chapter 7 to the end of arc 1 for the real end of the story they're telling here. after that if you're really interested season 2 is a fun watch with some interesting twists & a great adaptation of tsuruno's arc, but i can't honestly say you should even bother with this final season. it is worth skipping altogether.

SPOILERS FOR THE ORIGINAL MADOKA MAGICA SERIES
When I watched the first season of Magia Record, I knew it wasn't going to be 100% faithful to the game. I knew it was going to cram as much story as it could into 13 episodes. Despite this, I enjoyed it! The ending of the first season was surprising yet interesting and emotionally impactful.

Season 2 built on this momentum. Even though the first three episodes were different from the game's story, they were amazing! And with where the season left off, I was excited for what Season 3 could do.

Yeah... in hindsight, I should have known trying to ... wrap a series up in four episodes was a bad idea. I guess I just hoped they could pull it off. I will give credit to the animation and soundtrack, but those are pretty much the only thing I enjoyed. The pacing was similar to the first season, particularly with the anime-original events. A lot happened in succession, so it was hard to process. The events themselves, which I normally appreciate, were also just... no. I will break down the worst offenses while doing my best not to spoil anything:

1. Kuroe. She was a MINOR role in the first season, with suddenly a LOT more relevance in the second. Not my favorite part of the second season, but I decided to give her a pass. Yeah... I could no longer give her a pass here. She was already affecting the plot for no reason; this time, she is directly involved with Iroha's character motivation and growth. And she had a whole episode dedicated to this- which, because it's 4 episodes, is a quarter of the season! WHY?? We have Yachiyo for that! We have Ui! There was also an anime-only event that later affected Iroha on the same level... they literally had her go through the same development twice in a row with 2 different characters just because they couldn't drop this character!!

2. Character death that was not in the game. Again, I stand by some of the anime-only choices. I was actually fine with 3 of the deaths in the anime, as they made quite an emotional impact. One of them was ridiculous though; the character stopped being relevant to the main group in the anime. Where's the impact? The character WAS relevant to two side characters, but do we see these side characters grieve her at all? Also, this was supposed to be a spinoff lighter in tone. I guess nothing says "light spinoff" like 5 or 6 character deaths!

3. Final moments. First off, the anime literally rolls the credits as soon as the main five girls gather after saving the day. They basically said "Oh no, we're not giving any sort of closure, bye!" Luckily there was an after-credits scene, but it was also a pretty bad way to end a series. "Hey so we saved a town, but our lives still suck and we will continue to suffer." Yep, this is what Madoka sacrificed herself for.

4. The HUGE middle finger to Iroha's character motivation and goals. I will argue that Madoka is a better protagonist than Iroha; that being said, I STILL respect Iroha enough to allow her to achieve her goals, even if she has to make big sacrifices to do so. There was NO reason Iroha couldn't go through the emotional developments she went through and still have completed her goal. That's what happened in Madoka Magica; even though Madoka sacrificed her entire existence, she completed her goal of saving others. What the writers did made me genuinely angry.

5. They shafted (no pun intended) the original cast. Yes, I know it's a spinoff. Yes, I know the main cast would have a minor role in the story. Except... they didn't? Mami, Kyoko, and Sayaka appeared in the first season and were part of the main plot. So were Madoka and Homura, along with the previous three, in the second season. There was an ENTIRE EPISODE dedicated to Homura, Mdaoka, and Sayaka learning the truth about Magical Girls. Now all of a sudden they don't exist? They're shown for only ONE SCENE? AND THEN WE GET TWO SECONDS OF CLOSURE (NO, MORE LIKE WRAPUP) IN THE AFTER-CREDITS??

TLDR: Bad pacing, filler character, writers gave a middle finger to the main character and the audience on several occasions throughout.

And... I guess I will wrap this review up as badly as the series was wrapped up. Thank you for reading. Bye!

How can four episodes make me so pissed off? Istg, thank god it was only four episodes so that I was able to binge watch them and be annoyed that I wasted my time to this "ending" thingy or whatever. I could give a lower score, however the music/some of the pretty art mainly keep the score a bit higher.

I was disappointed. I still am disappointed at this hot mess. I'm glad that its over so that I can go back with the OG timeline and believe that its the only plot line that exists. Do not turn mobile games into anime, if you ... cannot create a decent storyline.

Skip the whole magia record, watch something else.