Story: 1
Seeming like something out of a fanfiction at the best of times, and the ramblings out of a middle schooler's first creative writing project at the worst of times.
Art: 7
The art is decent most of the time. All of Curry's art is still absolutely wonderful to behold. But an over-reliance on blatant 3D as well as several animation errors easily pull you out of the show.
Sound: 6
Nothing is particular out of place. And all of the original show's soundtrack is used well, if over-relied upon.
Characters: 1
One of Madoka Magica's greatest strength was keeping its main cast very small. Concise, well developed, and fleshed out. Magia Record does the opposite of this. Characters introduced in the first five episodes are brushed aside, and only get token appearances afterwards while new characters struggle to take their place. In the end, I struggled to even remember their names.
Enjoyment: 1
Shallow, and a waste of a great IP that could have been used to tell far more original stories. Every episode simply left me disappointed.
Overall: 1
It would merely be mediocre, if the ending to the season didn't threaten to tie this story in with the main series' in some large fashion. Keeping it self contained was clearly not good enough, but they couldn't be bothered to tie it into Madoka Magica in a meaningful way. And ending your show on sequel bait is just bad practice.
---
Madoka Magica's core strengths can be boiled down to three key points in my mind.
1.The show's story is told very tightly, and concisely. With twelve episodes, they waste none of your time. Almost every scene is dedicated either to setting up later plot points, developing character, or moving the story right along at a strong pace.
2.The number of named characters could be counted on two hands easily. Their arcs are well defined, their character fleshed out, and each one has a satisfying, if sometimes untimely conclusion.
3.The story itself, one of loyalty and dedication, transcends the Magical Girl genre and could easily be told just as it were in a Science Fiction, Fantasy, or a number of other genres. Making it easily relatable.
To this end, Magia Record fails not only to capture the core strengths of the original show, but goes so far as to fail spectacularly at every single one of these points. The story meanders and is unfocused, the initial drive for the main character is never resolved - partly due to the cliffhanger ending the season stops on. The number of characters the show introduces is an order of magnitude larger than the original's. Many of them not appearing more than once or twice before disappearing inexplicably. And the main crux of the story is based purely around them being magical girls, with no room for anything else. Magia Record tries to peddle some lofty ideas while failing to capture the pure simplicity that made Madoka Magica so strong.
At the end of the day, it's just a shameless little tie-in to a gacha game with very little soul. Hardly any of the staff from the original show is involved, so really I'm not surprised. And yet, still, my disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.
