MagiReco season 1 heavily followed the game’s storyline, at times to the detriment of the anime. It’s rare that games perfectly translate to anime adaptations, so it presented some issues with pacing at times. For this season, SHAFT decided to do their own thing and deviate, while keeping the overall direction of the story pretty similar. I think it worked very well and felt faithful to MagiReco the game, yet also fresh. I loved that they were able to incorporate the cast of the original TV anime with game’s girls and their chemistry on screen was really nice.
SHAFT upped the production values for the show substantially since season 1. I don’t know if it was due to staff, budget, time or some combination of all, but this season looked amazing. The fight scenes are some of the best I’ve ever seen from SHAFT. The transformations which are key to any Mahou Shojo series were great too. In general, this season felt way more SHAFT-y. Those traditional high quality sequences and direction that we’ve come to know and love from the Monogatari series make a return and they really added to the overall ambiance of the show. Speaking of ambiance, the season does feel considerably darker than the first. As more clues are revealed about the wings of magius and their goals, the story begins to feel a lot more like OG Madoka.
I think the decision to go with 8 episodes in this cour and split the story into one more season coming in Fall, was brilliant. A reduced episode count means more time to work on episodes and allows you to have good pacing. I really hope this continues into the next season.
MagiReco Season 2 builds on a series that I already loved a lot and sures up a lot of the problems I had with it. If you thought MagiReco season 1 was interesting, but didn’t like the pacing or direction, I encourage you to give at least an episode of this a try. I think you’ll find it to be quite different, for the better.
MagiReco Season 2 gets 10 grief seeds out of 10.
