Magical Girl Raising Project (2016– ) User Reviews

An imaginative story but NOT FOR CHILDREN

[michaelmilesstimson · 8/10 · 13 September 2020]

Don't let the overly cutsie animation style fool you to thinking that this is a good story for children, in some respects I found certain scenes more disturbing than Attack on Titan or Tokyo Ghoul, on par with the scene in Full Metal Panic: Invisible Victory of the execution of Nami from Namsac. The MA15+ rating is definitely warranted.

With that warning out of the way, my review: The story moves along beginning innocently enough but gets dark very quickly, a little disjointed in spots as each magical girl has two identities and I found it a little difficult to tie which backstory flashback went with each magical girl. Apart from being a little disjointed the magical girl part of the story wasn't hard to follow and showed a good deal of imagination and originality with some good twists and subplots. There was no way I could pick how the story would end up until it did, which is one of the reasons I love anime so much.

Has its flaws but is still a dark, fun watch

[CrazyEeveeLady · 8/10 · 19 September 2023]

I just wanna say that if Magical Girl Raising Project (The mobile game plot hook in the anime) was a real game I would absolutely play it.

In terms of the dark magical girl sub genre this one is fairly standard in terms of its grimdark and gore. It's right in the middle between Puella Magi and Magical Girl Site in my opinion.

It's basically a hybrid anime between your dark magical girl fare and the Hunger Games/Battle Royale, so try to not get attached to the other girls besides the obvious protags. They aren't going to make it sadly. Despite being only a one season anime, they did a pretty good job of some of the characterization so you'll feel terrible when some of them die. Others tend to have their backstories crammed in on the episodes they're slated to die in, so it wont hit as hard. Snow White, the main protag, and some of her allies (*cough* Sister Nana *cough*) can also be a bit aggravating to watch sometimes with how whiny and spoiled they act, but the other characters make up for them.

This series could have been better and I know its got flaws that keep it from being spectacular, but its honestly my favorite guilty pleasure anime.

Magical Girl Raising Project

[Tweekums · 8/10 · 29 December 2016]

Koyuki Himekawa is an ordinary middle school girl who happens to like magical girl games; then one day Fav, the game's mascot tells her that she has been chosen to become a real magical girl. Once she becomes a magical girl she is known as Snow White and helps the people of her city along with fifteen other magical girls. Soon afterwards Fav makes an announcement; the number of magical girls is going to be cut from sixteen to eight; the one who earns the least 'magical candies' for helping people will cease being a magical girl. After the first girl is dropped the others learn a shocking truth; when you stop being a magical girl you die! Competition to gain candies becomes fairly desperate and when Fav tells them that it is possible to take candies off other magical girls they start to turn on each other; some form alliances and even kill other magical girls to lower the numbers.

This series has character designs that suggest it will be light and fluffy but in a post 'Madoka Magica' anime world few people will be surprised when things turn dark… although just how dark and murderous it turns may be surprising. There are a good variety of characters and enough time is spent introducing them to make us care about them when things turn bad. There are quite a few surprises; some characters that one would expect to survive are quickly eliminated. Likewise some characters one would expect to be on the 'good' side aren't. The story is well told, there is plenty of gripping action and there are plenty of surprises. The animation is pretty good and I liked the cute but distinctive character designs. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to people who enjoyed shows like 'Madoka Magica' even if this isn't at that level of greatness.

These comments are based on watching the series in Japanese with English subtitles.

Great Show

[samaboyolo · 9/10 · 27 December 2016]

As a fan of anime i think this one is one of the best ones of this year. To be honest at first I thought it was just going to be a copy of Puella Magi Madoka Magica fav being exactly like Kyubey Ripple being a copy of Homura so on. But this show is much darker. The amount of blood was over used, and the ending when Swim Swim died was to predictable. I also think that Ripple should've died with Swim Swim leaving Snow White alone making this show darker but Ripple survived in the end. I also would've liked to see Top Speed's husband reaction when he found her corpse laying there. The whole idea of Top Speed being pregnant was great but her death wasn't much of a shock as it would've been if she would've said some last words to Ripple. The deaths were to forced and happened to quickly leaving the drama out. I think it could've been longer making it sadder and darker because putting 14 deaths in a 12 episode anime isn't as sad and dark like putting 4 deaths in a 12 episode anime (Madoka). Overall I think it's a mixture of Madoka SnK and SAO in one. A survival game of Magical Girls with lots of blood and death.

Could've been better

[rileyjoplin-58856 · 3/10 · 20 October 2019]

Truly I was really excited to watch this show. The character design was so cute and I loved it at first. They started killing off everyone and making it unwatchable. The whole show was really predictable after everyone started dying. What made me most upset about this show is that they killed off a pregnant woman it was unsettling and could trigger lots of people. I'm not sure how so many people enjoy this show. It was also very annoying that ripple would go "psh" every second of the show. The only positive thing I can say about this show is the character design was very good.