Kill or be killed
(This review contains
spoilers!)
This episode focused almost entirely
on the duo of Sister Nana and Winterprison, as well as several other characters
we haven’t seen much of yet. Magical Girl Raising Project is doing an excellent
job of establishing their ensemble cast, as we’re finally seeing more of
characters that lacked screen time during Ruler’s early arc.
Sister Nana is planning to band
together with a large group of other magical girls to find a way to end the competition
and resume business as usual. Nearly all of the candidate’s reactions range
from unwilling to downright threatening to the prospect, leading to our first
real fight to the death between two of the characters, although both ended up
surviving.
Sister Nana and Winterprison’s dynamic
is one that was established just by seeing them outside of their magical girl
costumes for a few minutes, and I really liked that. The show didn’t explicitly
tell us what their relationship was – rather, it allowed us to fill in the
blanks ourselves and decide whether they were platonic or not.
In fact, all of the characters were
pretty stellar this week. I’m very intrigued by the robotic Magicaloid. As far
as I can remember, the show hasn’t told us whether she’s a full-on robot or
just a robot-themed magical girl yet, so I’m excited to see where she goes. Her
magical power was undeniably hilarious as well.
Lots of more development was given to
Cranberry, the musician magical girl who hung out in the background of a few
scenes in the chatroom. As hinted at in the intro, she seems to be working with
Fav for whatever reason, and seems to be out for magical girl blood. She went
up against Winterprison, ending the fight in a draw, and the episode ends
hinting that La Pucelle is her next target.
The fight scene between the two was
fast and exciting, but felt a little too short. Ultimately, this episode seems
more concerned with setting up characters to die instead of moving the plot
more than an inch along. Granted, the exposition is enjoyable and doesn’t feel
like wasted time. I’m glad that we’re getting development for characters we
haven’t seen much of yet. It does feel a little disappointing that, when
something actually does happen, it’s over in under five minutes.
The other thing this episode did was
put a target on the heads of more characters. The opening of the episode marked
Sister Nana to die similarly to how obviously Ruler’s death was telegraphed
last week, and while thankfully we didn’t see a repeat of that, her
relationship with Winterprison makes both of them prime targets. Similarly, if
La Pucelle makes it out of this series alive, I’ll eat my hat.
Although this week was a bit too heavy
on the exposition, I did enjoy myself. It’s necessary to have these world-building
episodes in a much bigger series, lest everything ends up feeling rushed.
Characters like Magicaloid and Cranberry are very intriguing, and the
representation of Sister Nana’s relationship with Winterprison was excellently
written and animated. Five weeks on, Magical Girl Raising Project continues to
impress, and with things growing progressively darker in this world, it’s hard
not to look forward to what’s coming next.
FINAL SCORE
8/10
Great
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