Magia Record 2nd Season Episode 5

Kyouko Sakura Returns

As some longtime readers may know, Madoka Magica is one of my all-time favorite anime. And of all the Madoka Magica characters, Kyouko Sakura is my absolute favorite. In fact, my very first anime figure was a Kyouko Sakura Nendoroid — now I have 15 in total.

So, it should come as no surprise that Kyouko making a return in this episode is exactly what I wanted to see. Sure, there may not have been a crazily animated fight this time around, but perhaps this is setting up for one more to take place before the season ends.

I think a fight between Embryo Eve and Kyouko, Sana, and Felicia would be pretty good. Those three magical girls all have very different fighting styles, so it would be cool to see them all working together much like Iroha, Kuroe, and Rena did.

This season only has eight episodes. Since Episodes 1 and 4 had impressive fight animation, I’m holding out hope for Episode 8 to have some too. But, I also know how much time and effort goes into animation like that, so I’m not holding my breath for it.

Anyway, Kyouko’s return to the series was very on-brand for her. When Sana and Felicia run into her (or, more accurately, when she runs into them), she’s fleeing from some Wings of the Magius members after stealing a sack of grief seeds.

My assumption is that she stole the grief seeds for herself, Madoka, Sayaka, and Homura because they don’t use Doppels. But, just the fact that Kyouko is the one pulling this heist is perfect when you consider that’s exactly the kind of stuff she had to do when living on the streets.

Embryo Eve

Embryo Eve is the name of the artificial Witch created by Wings of the Magius. How exactly an artificial Witch is made is unknown. The name implies that it was never a magical girl, but I’m not entirely sure that’s the case. Perhaps only the Witch transformation is what’s artificial.

Before I get to explaining what I mean by that, we need to first look at how Embryo Eve is being grown. She’s being fed the Witches that Wings of the Magius has been farming. And since Embryo Eve is specified to be artificial, that means we can probably assume these other Witches are natural.

Natural Witches means that they were once magical girls who fell into despair and transformed. This is important to keep in mind because it means that although Wings of the Magius claims to want to save all magical girls, they also don’t recognize Witches as magical girls.

Generally speaking, when magical girls learn that Witches are former magical girls themselves, they lose a bit of their will to defeat them. This is partially because they realize that could be them one day, and partially because they hope there’s a way to turn them back.

But, if the Wings of the Magius has no issue with sacrificing hundreds or thousands of Witches to Embryo Eve, it brings their whole stance on magical girls into question. And, here’s where we get to the part about how Embryo Eve was created in the first place.

If they have no problem sacrificing magical girls once they become Witches, who’s to say they wouldn’t go a step further and sacrifice magical girls. Ui is still nowhere to be found. Is she the magical girl who was used as the foundation for Embryo Eve?

Touka and Nemu don’t seem that concerned by her absence. Is that because they already know where she is? And is the reason they kept their plan a secret because they knew other magical girls wouldn’t agree with it?

Wings of the Magius’ Plan

At this stage in the series, I still don’t have any idea what the plan devised by Wings of the Magius actually is. There are so many steps involved, but they don’t seem to be leading anywhere that makes sense. How does any of this save magical girls?

Starting from the beginning, Nemu created the Rumors as a way for Wings of the Magius to lure in unsuspecting victims, who then have their emotions fed to Witches. Previously I assumed they fed the people to the Witches, but that was disproven in this episode.

Then, these Witches are fed to Embryo Eve so that she can grow up to be big and strong, or something like that. But, it doesn’t end there, because it appears that the whole point of creating Embryo Eve was just to attract Walpurgisnacht, the strongest Witch.

Once Walpurgisnacht arrives, I don’t know what they’re going to do that’s going to save all magical girls. Simply defeating Walpurgisnacht shouldn’t have any effect on the fate of magical girls. So are they going to capture it and use it another way?

Also, Doppels are somehow involved in all of this too. They want to spread the Doppel system around the world as part of their plan. So perhaps Walpurgisnacht is going to help them achieve that part of their plan? I guess it has a huge amount of magic that could be tapped into.

But, this still doesn’t really solve the issue. Even if the Doppel system is expanded around the world, magical girls can still “fall.” We saw this first-hand with Kaede. She used her Doppel too much and got stuck that way. Won’t magical girls be using Doppels even more without Witches and grief seeds around?

Conclusion

What do you think of Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story 2nd Season Episode 5? Who do you want to see involved in the next big fight? Is Embryo Eve actually Ui? And how do you think Walpurgisnacht fits into everything going on? Let me know in the comments.

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My review of Episode 6 is available now.