Magia Record 2nd Season Episode 8

Magia Record 2nd Season Episode 8

The Strongest Magical Girl

Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story 2nd Season Episode 8 was a fairly good episode, all things considered. It wasn’t as amazing as I hoped it would be. But, I understand that not every episode can be what the kids call a banger.

There is one issue I had with this episode, though — there were no subtitles for about a third to a half of it. And since I didn’t feel like wasting time finding a version of the episode with complete subtitles, my Japanese skills were really put to the test.

I’m pretty sure I got like 75% of the dialogue that wasn’t subtitled, which is honestly better than I expected. But, I just wanted to bring that up in case there’s something missing from this review. I don’t think that will be the case, though.

Tsuruno realizing she killed Meru from the anime series Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story 2nd Season
Tsuruno realizing she killed Meru

Anyway, during the main portion of the episode without subtitles, we learned that Tsuruno blames herself for the death of her friend Meru. And she does so in two different ways, even though neither is really her fault.

First, when Meru died, Tsuruno was the only member of their squad who wasn’t present. This led Tsuruno to feel as though Meru could have been saved if only she were there. In response, her friends kindly remind her that she’s weak and so her help wouldn’t have mattered.

This led Tsuruno to always strive to be “the strongest magical girl” so that none of her friends would ever die on her watch. However, this image of herself was shattered when she learned that she killed the Witch version of Meru.

That’s understandably going to be difficult to deal with mentally. But, there’s really nothing else she could have done in that situation.

Connect

Obviously, Yachiyo’s attempt to connect with Tsuruno from Episode 7 didn’t work out. It was explained that the reason for this is that Yachiyo didn’t truly understand how Tsuruno felt, specifically when it came to Tsuruno’s feelings regarding the death of Meru.

But, I originally thought the reason Yachiyo’s connection to Tsuruno failed was that Tsuruno was already dead. After all, Tsuruno’s body was in pretty rough shape at the end of the previous episode and she was moving around as if she was a puppet on strings.

I was fully expecting it to be revealed that Tsuruno had been dead ever since she turned into “green” Tsuruno. And as you might recall, I mentioned last week that I thought Tsuruno’s death would actually benefit the growth of the other characters.

Tsuruno after being saved by Yachiyo from the anime series Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story 2nd Season
Tsuruno after being saved by Yachiyo

However, now that we got a bit of backstory for Tsuruno, I don’t mind the path Magia Record went down. I think that may be mostly due to the fact that we at least got details on someone dying — Meru.

We’ve known that one of Tsuruno’s and Yachiyo’s friends died since sometime within the first season. But since we never had a face or a name to go with it, that random death didn’t have much of an impact. Now that we know who Meru is and how her death affected Tsuruno, I’m satisfied.

Additionally, I think what we saw happen with Tsuruno in this episode may be the path to saving the magical girls who turned into Doppels, like Kaede. If her friends can figure out what caused her to fall into despair, they may be able to connect with her and save her.

I’d definitely like that a lot more than some Deus ex machina saving everyone in the end.

Walpurgisnacht Heads to Mitakihara

One thing I’m a bit unsure about is why Walpurgisnacht changed course and began heading toward Mitakihara at the end of the episode. All our heroes did was rescue Tsuruno and Mami from the Wings of the Magius.

They didn’t stop the artificial Witch Eve. And as far as we know, there are still a lot of Witches and Wings of the Magius members running around in Kamihama. Wasn’t it stated that the combined magical energy of Eve, the Witches, and the magical girls that was leading Walpurgisnacht there?

As far as I can tell, nothing has changed that would cause Walpurgisnacht to abandon Kamihama in favor of Mitakihara. And, even if you want to argue that something caused Walpurgisnacht to head to Mitakihara in the original series, that something was Madoka — who’s currently in Kamihama.

Kyouko, Sayaka, Mami, Madoka, and Homura from the anime series Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story 2nd Season
Kyouko, Sayaka, Mami, Madoka, and Homura

I see three possible reasons for Walpurgisnacht heading to Mitakihara in this timeline. The first, and one I like the least, is simply that there’s no real explanation and it’s just an excuse to remove the Mitakihara girls from the current storyline. Removing them will let the new girls shine more, but I want a real explanation to go with it.

The second reason is the more meta option, which is that Walpurgisnacht is being drawn to the potential energy of Madoka in all the other timelines. As far as we know, she stayed in Mitakihara in most of those timelines, so her potential magical energy may be strongest there.

And the third reason is that there’s actually something else going on in Mitakihara and we’ve now effectively finished the Kamihama portion of Magia Record’s story. Perhaps we’ll see the Kamihama girls head to Mitakihara where some new development will occur.

I think my second theory is the best of the three, but we’ll have to wait until the third season to find out.

Conclusion

What do you think of the final episode of Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story 2nd Season? Like I said at the start, I think it was a good episode, even if it wasn’t the best episode of the season.

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My review of Episode 9 is available now.

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