This show was terrible. One of the worst, and that despite having a redeeming factor in its direction, choreography, and visual design. For those who haven’t been following along, I’ll give a review after the commentary tracks and the cut.
So, a post-mortem on Magical Girl
Raising Project. In twelve episodes, they killed fourteen Magical
Girls in a colossal death game and never generated any interest or
investment. All their pathetic little manipulative tricks fell
utterly flat because they didn’t understand how, when, or where to
deploy them. Aspects came out too early or too late, or were too
transparent in their artificiality. When it comes to the writing,
it’s godawful in terms of its structure even if the scenes might have
been salvageable in isolation from one another.
In an odd move for me, I actually ended
up looking up some of the staff, because it was shocking just how
much of a disparity there was in the skill shown in the show’s
conception and scripting as opposed to the admirable efforts of its
blocking, lighting, and visuals, and discovered that the main writer
had credits for Elfen Lied and Familiar of Zero while the director
had mostly single-episode work, but for shows including
Robotics;Notes and Eureka Seven. Anime productions are huge
undertakings involving a lot of creators, so it’s usually not
possible to really pin down the source of any particular failure (if
there even is one), but this time at least I think I know who to
blame.
If there’s a single problem with the
show that needs to be discussed, its the cold uselessness of the
majority of the characters and scenarios. Cranberry, who started out
as sort of our main villain, only really steps onto stage once (to
kill La Pucelle) and then otherwise lurks until she dies like a
chump. Hardgore Alice, Snow White’s second faithful protector, says
nothing interesting, does nothing interesting, and expires without
having made an impact despite a very impressive buildup. Sister
Nana, who was set up as something of the voice of reason, talks with
people who already agreed with her and doesn’t ever bring any of them
together, gets attacked, and offs herself to the tune of no one else
even really noticing or caring.
And then there’s Snow White. A chain
gang consisting of Yukiteru Amano, Shinji Ikari, and Season One Yuji
Sakai – blindfolded, gagged, and with their hands tied behind their
backs – would accomplish more and complain less than Snow White.
This girl does nothing, literally nothing, that’s interesting or
engaging at any point. Fav even kind of makes fun of it by
commenting repeatedly on how she’s “won” the death game without
getting her hands dirty. It’s like they made Wako, from Star Driver,
the main character of an entire show after some sort of talent
vampire sucked out what little likability, personality, and interest
that she had to begin with. In the entire show there are basically
two things she even remotely contributes to: early on, mugging her
for Magical Candies allows Swim-Swim to assassinate Ruler, and in the
final episode a magic lucky rabbit’s foot she’s carrying enables
Ripple to cling to life and actually get something done.
In both cases where Snow White
contributes to the ongoing plot, she does so as a passive object.
She’s a source of Magical Candies for Swim-Swim to use, and she’s a
delivery mechanism for a trinket that wouldn’t even necessarily be
necessary to allow Ripple to pull through. In neither case does she
have any agency or will in the events, they just sort of happen
around her. This is especially pathetic in the last episode: the
resolve for the scene is to pick up Swim-Swim’s magic weapon (lying
on the ground) and use it to shatter Fav’s otherwise indestructible
terminal. Snow White throws the terminal around and hits it with
rocks and her fists in impotent rage until Ripple, believed dead,
revives thanks to the Rabbit’s Foot, picks up the weapon, and enters
the screen already carrying the necessary item and intending to take
it to Fav. Snow white cheers her on, but was completely unnecessary.
Aggressively unnecessary, even, since she could have trivially
picked up Swim-Swim’s weapon, something she should have an inkling is
a magic weapon, and done it herself when the first rock failed.
Ripple only had to come back to life and finish it because Snow White
is pathologically incapable of accomplishing anything for no reason.
And you could say, okay, if she doesn’t
accomplish anything that might be fine if the investment in the show
is in Snow White’s terror and the threats to her survival. But
Magical Girl Raising Project isn’t her show entirely. She’s
absolutely the focal lead, but it is more of an ensemble (a bitterly
overtaxed ensemble with too little time to know too many girls)
leaving Snow White out of focus all too often. I feel like you
could write her out entirely and despite her vast screen time very
little would change. Nemurin, who dies in the second episode
explicitly having done just about nothing, had more of an impact
because it’s Nemurin’s words that in part convince little Swim-Swim
to become the murderous nightmare she becomes.
As such, no investment is built in Snow
White. She’s too much out of focus and off camera, and we don’t care
whether she lives or dies any more than we care about any of the
other girls like Ripple.
Swim-Swim, on the other hand, while a
functional character and someone who gets stuff done, is hard to take
seriously as our mastermind villain because she’s a grade-school kid.
A grade-school kid with a warped, demented psyche and an eager
willingness to kill, but still a kid with a flat affect and limited
ability to really scheme long term. She’s a decent threat to the
life and limb of others, but isn’t a substitute for the role that
Cranberry should have been filling and that Fav kind of tried to
fill.
I’ve rarely been so disappointed, even
offended by a show. Appropriately enough considering the staff
credits, but Elfen Lied is really one of the only other times I’ve
despised a show this much. Magical Girl Raising Project is an
abject failure. I first heard about it existing because they did a
collab with the TCG Caster Chronicles, but I think I care more about
the Magical Girls Caster Chronicles invented who have one line of
flavor text to define their personalities than I do about Snow White
or most of the other girls in this show. Hell, I’m fairly certain I
could write a better Magical Girl story than Magical Girl Raising
Project and I’ve half a mind to do so just to prove that it’s not
that bloody hard.
The show gets a hard Fail. If you
watched it to synch with the commentaries, I’m sorry. I’m just
sorry.