There was a little series that came out way back in 2011 – you may have heard of it, Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica.  It made a bit of a splash – generated its own religion, in fact.  Everything about the whole Madoka Magica experience was larger than life, including the ending.  Not content to bow out in traditional style, the finale was delayed for almost two months as a result of classic Shaft production delays (producers tried to blame it on the Tohoku earthquake, but creator and writer Urobuchi Gen blew their cover).  Given how crazy the anticipation for the finale was (like everything else about the series and its fandom) to say that quite a frenzy resulted would be no understatement.

As it happens I rather liked the original Madoka Magica – enough to name it my #10 series of 2011 in fact (the only Shaft series ever to crack the list), though even at the time I noted that was partly in tribute to the sheer size of the impact crater it made.  Hype aside it was a good show – ruthless, brutal, and full of Christian metaphor.  If that all sounds like Gen Urobuchi there’s a good reason for that, and I think it was Gen’s presence that allowed Madoka Magica to survive Shinbou and Shaft.  Self-indulgent?  Sure – but Gen can’t take a dump without being self-indulgent, it’s in his DNA.  It was interesting and engaging and even fun.

Gen isn’t involved in this sequel – which is in fact based on a mobile game spin-off.  That’s one of the reasons my expectations were pretty muted, as non-Gen sequels to Gen originals have a truly grisly track record (though on the plus side, Shinbou isn’t directly involved either).  There’s also the fact that my tolerance for Shaft and their usual ¥100 shop bag of tricks has declined considerably over the past nine years.  The hype train for this franchise may not have derailed but it’s certainly slowed over that time, though that’s not always a bad thing.

That brings us around to Magia Record, which I have to confess wasn’t bad at all.  The look of the series is very authentic to what I remember, so much so in fact that it looks quite dated (though that could just be Shaft’s usual cost-cutting) in a pleasingly nostalgic way.  Seeing that evil bastard Kyuubey again certainly took me back, and the same animation style is employed in the witch-fighting scenes.  There’s definitely a signature look to Madoka Magica above and beyond simply looking like every other Shaft series, and that’s definitely a saving grace.

As for story, who knows?  It’s too early to say, and indeed too early to know whether anything can or should be meaningfully added to this mythology when Gen seemed to say everything he wanted to say the first time around.  We have a couple new mahou shoujo this time, the main girl seemingly Tamaki Iroha (Asakura Momo).  The hook with Tamaki is that neither she not her Kyuubey can remember what her wish was – though it’s pretty much revealed to have involved a sister named Yui who’s seriously ill.  Tamaki befriends another magical girl named Kuroe (Hanzawa Kana) who’s heard that mahou shoujo can go to Kamihama City and be freed from their contract (Kuroe is my pick in the early beheading pool).

I’m assuming that Madoka is going to show up at some point or another, presumably in a supporting role, but apart from that I’m just taking things as they come.  Again, I’m a little skeptical that there’s anything meaningful remaining to be wrung out of this mythology after Gen thoroughly twisted it dry, but as long as it’s entertaining I suppose that’s no deal-breaker.  And mahou shoujo is nothing if not all about franchises.  As much as anything I’m interested to see whether this franchise still has its almost mystical hold over audiences – nine years is a long time, and a lot of today’s anime fans were grade schoolers (or younger) when the original landed.