Last girl standing
(This review contains
spoilers!)
Magical Girl Raising Project has
evolved quite a bit over the course of the last 12 weeks. While the series’
dark undertones were clear from the first moments, the first episode suffered
under an overdose of cutesiness that made it kind of hard to get through. But
as the episodes went by, things got darker and darker as the starting cast of
16 was cut down bit by bit, until we finally arrived at the final 3 we see
here.
And ultimately, this final episode
feels like a reflection of the rest of the series: really good and ultimately satisfying,
but it does make several significant missteps on its way.
The star of this finale is,
unsurprisingly, Snow White, as she faces her final trial of protecting Ripple
from Swim Swim. My hopes from last week were answered, as Fav finally revealed
all of what’s been going on behind the scenes. The secrets of the Magical Girl
Raising Project are pretty easy to guess: Fav is a representative from
something called the “World of Magic” that goes through a different selection
and testing period for groups of magical girls, ultimately searching for a new
master. Cranberry, being the last master, was the one who decided that the next
test would be a deathmatch, and Fav was happy to follow along, having grown
bored of previous tests that only resulted in erasing the memories of failed test
subjects. It’s a good explanation for everything, much better than just having
Fav be this sinister entity that wanted to see the girls kill each other for
the heck of it. It’s not quite on the level of genius as why Madoka Magica’s
Kyubey created magical girls, but for this series it works.
After that, Snow White is on her way
to interfere with the final battle between Ripple and Swim Swim, a battle that unfortunately
doesn’t last nearly as long as it deserves to. As the series has built up Swim
Swim to be the ultimate villain all this time, she kind of goes out like a
chump in the end. The battle is relatively short, with Ripple mostly testing
Swim Swim’s weaknesses before finally destroying her with a grenade that
unleashes a blast of light and sound. Honestly, for such a great villain, I was
disappointed she went down so easily. She was able to cut off one of Ripple’s
arms, but that’s basically peanuts compared to her takedowns of characters like
Tama and Top Speed.
But after that, things started to get
real. Ripple went down shortly after due to the blood loss after losing her
arm, leaving Snow White the victor. Being the goody two shoes that she is, she
refused to help Fav with any further Raising Projects, instead attempting to
destroy the Master Terminal, the source of his power. It’s far too strong for
her, but as it turns out, the lucky rabbit’s foot she had was able to bring
back Ripple, who delivers the final blow, destroying Fav once and for all. This
is both awesome and kind of disappointing. It’s so great and satisfying to see
Fav get what he deserves, but why have Ripple be the one to finish him off and
not Snow White? She’s the main character! It kind of ties back to the problem I
had back in the first half of the show, in that Snow White was an extremely
boring character who seemed to have success served to her on a silver platter,
and having her not be the one to end all this, instead getting someone else to
do it for her, is disappointing.
The show ends with Snow White and
Ripple remaining magical girls, now taking their crusade of bringing peace and
love to everybody across the world. It’s kind of weird to have a sort-of happy
ending where these two characters are working together after 11 episodes straight of bloodshed and murder, but I kind of like that. After all the crap they
went through, losing multiple friends and acquaintances along the way, they’re
still smiling towards the future.
So, as for my final thoughts on the
show overall, I think that while Magical Girl Raising Project has some
extremely significant flaws, the story, animation and characters make it worth
sitting through some of the mistakes. It’s rare that I watch an anime with an ensemble
cast as large as this one and end the show remembering everybody’s name, but
the unique design of the characters made them all very memorable. And while the
main character starts off as a bit of a patsy, she ends the show as a much
better character thanks to all the struggles she goes through along the way.
The biggest negative is how the show neuters the impact of the majority of the
character deaths by purposely foreshadowing them by having a flashback or home
life segment sometimes before the death itself as an attempt to elicit an
emotional response from the audience. While the final 2 deaths somewhat
astoundingly solve this problem, it’s kind of late in the game to introduce a
solution for the biggest problem in the show in the penultimate episode.
At the end of the day, if you want a
dark and gritty magical girl anime, Madoka Magica is still the better choice,
but if you’ve already seen that and want something similar, Magical Girl
Raising Project is an entertaining watch. It’s a good anime that will leave you on the
edge of your seat, especially when the show manages to surprise you. Just don’t
expect that to happen too often.
You know, that image I’ve been using
is looking kind of blank, isn’t it? Hang on a second…
…Ah, much better.
FINAL SCORE (Episode 12)
8/10
Great
FINAL SCORE (Overall)
8/10
Great
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