Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Magical Girl Raising Project
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
 Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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SW never dropped off everyone's list. The only person who seemed completely uninterested in her was Cranberry. Ruler went after her right away. Swim-Swim and Co. went after her a couple of times. CJ sent Meteroid44 after her and then had her hands full with Ripple and Top Speed. Everyone else were either friends of hers or otherwise respected her.
SW's problem wasn't that of passivity per se, but of her stubborn determination that Magical Girls *do not* harm others, and especially do not try to kill others. This was wrapped around her fundamental view of what it meant to be a magical girl, which is something she had always wanted to be and had (for a little while) got to be. So when others started doing that sort of thing, she rejected their right to call themselves magical girls. And then, later, she decided that if she was wrong about that, then *she* wasn't a magical girl. Finally, she accepted that, in order to do good, sometimes it was necessary to use violence to achieve a solution. I think it was Ripple's words that finally convinced her of that, though it took all of the other things she'd been through up to that point for them to cause her to change... plus F'av "helped" by showing her just how naïve she'd been -- she couldn't look away after that, and couldn't cling to her previous stance, either. I moderately agree with what zrnzle500 (I think it was) said earlier about SW surviving in part because she was the most magical girl-like out of the magical girls. I thought it was more karmic than anything, though maybe that's too strong a term for it. Perhaps a better way to put it that things seemed to go her way more than it did for anyone else in the series. We can argue about why that is, but it seems pretty clear to me that she got most of the good rolls in the series. |
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3767 |
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^Indeed it was I. I can't disagree that there is at least some karma involved but at least for being helped by the other good (more or less) magical girls, I think she earned their respect and their defense of her to the point of laying down their lives in two cases, even outside karmic influence, though outside people she certainly benefited from good saving rolls. I'm not sure you could say the same about Nana, who even Winterprison seemed to regard as a bit of a naif.. And even in the case of it mostly being karmic, if anything that indicates who the author thinks ought to win. Perhaps not the ideal way of conveying that but there is no doubt in my mind that it is what they wanted to convey.
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7jaws7
 Posts: 704 Location: New York State |
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"Getting hurt" is a big understatement 
I think it's kind of hard to call Ripple a killer. All she did was put down two enemies who had killed a lot more than she has. Also, permanent bodily injury is probably a bigger consequence than psychological trauma. Think about it - she's still strong, but Ripple will never be able to fight at 100% again. |
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2356 |
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From the perspective the viewer is shown, I disagree. Yes, she is horribly maimed, and the terrible implications of that could certainly have been explored - but they weren't. Her arm was chopped off, she killed Swim Swim, and then we fast-forwarded to an epilogue where she fights crime with her new buddy. There was no meditation over the severity or nature of the price she paid; it was downplayed by the direction's focus rather than made focal.
My point isn't to cast judgment on her actions. It's not important to me that I agree with whatever MGRP has to say about Ripple choosing to kill Swim Swim; it's just important to me that it say something of depth, and I don't think it really tried to say much of anything coherent at all. She murdered a child, and in doing so avenged her friend while carrying out a violent, dark vigilante justice. Emotionally and morally there are many ways that could read, but the show's treatment of it felt muted and hollow. Ripple stabs Swim Swim a few times; Snow White notices she's too late (again); and then we're rapidly off to trying to kill F'av. Even in the epilogue we don't spend any time wondering how murdering Swim Swim made Ripple feel. During the act I don't think Ripple noticed Swim Swim's age, what with all the blood obscuring her vision, but presumably Snow White would later point out Swim Swim's age to Ripple. And yet MGRP chooses not to acknowledge or talk about this; Swim Swim is simply dead, and because of it Ripple is... a child's murderer? An agent of justice? Tortured by her decision, numb to it, or any of a thousand other natural human reactions? We don't know because MGRP chooses to ignore it. The only price we see is physical - Ripple's missing arm, her taken eye. And we don't see any of the implications of that, so even it feels quite superficial. Last edited by NeverConvex on Sun Dec 18, 2016 1:15 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23904 |
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As has already been stipulated, SW was a threat when gathering Magical Candies was important. That is why Ruler targeted her. But quite early in the "game", gathering Magical Candies was no longer a factor. As soon as that happened - which was early on - yes, of course she fell off the bad girls lists. Swim Swim and Co never went after her specifically. She and Hardgore Alice were targets of opportunity, having been drawn by Calamity Mary's carnage. CM did not "send" Magicaloid 44 after SW. She said, "you want to be my minion, go kill somebody, then." I'm going on my memory here, but I don't believe she specifically mentioned who should be killed. And Magicaloid 44 didn't specifically target SW, either. She came across her and Hardgore Alice first and decided she'd kill them both to fulfil CM's request. And you can characterize SW's attitude as "a stubborn determination that Magical Girls 'do not' harm others" as anything you like, but the upshot is that "stubborn determination" translated into passivity. Okay, fine, don't kill Magical Girls, but does that then mean you are off the hook on trying SOMETHING??? It's not like killing necessarily is the only answer. Certainly, Sister Nana wasn't advocating killing. She just wanted to band together enough of the "good" girls together to see what they could do. If SW had been less lucky or been more active, it is highly doubtful she would survived no matter how close she hewed to the magical girl ideal. |
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beholder242
Posts: 33 |
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Having read most of the light novels, this season covered the first of the novels, and I tend to believe the length of the season was just right. I have read several people complaining about the lack of character development, but the backstories of the girls in the novels were not that much more developed than in the anime. Covering the same amount of light novel in 2 cours instead of one would likely have resulted in Lerche inventing a bunch of character backstory filler that I don't feel was really all that essential. You got to see a glimpse of the sorts of lives the girls had as normal human girls--the good (Snow White, Top Speed, La Pucelle), the bad (Ripple, Hardgore Alice, Tama), and the ugly (Ruler, Swim Swim, Calamity Mary)--and how that influenced them once they became magical girls. The second novel does have a mostly new cast spoiler[Snow White makes an appearance] but between there is a short story, that serves as a more drawn-out epilogue spoiler[including an evolution of Snow White's character away from her passivity, and more towards a righteous warrior in the way she originally envisioned magical girls being like, despite her magical ability being relatively weak from an offensive point of view ], but also sets up characters and events in the future novels, and if we're fortunate, future series of the anime. I thought I had read somewhere, so take this is as rumor, that Lerche had bought the rights to ALL of the novels, so another cours hopefully is in the works. |
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7jaws7
Posts: 704 Location: New York State |
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@NeverConvex: I don't think MGRP is ignoring anything - it just doesn't have time to touch up on what you were looking for. The most it has time for is Ripple's soul-searching after she kills Swim Swim. "Are you mad at me?" and "I admired you" sums up how she really felt. She was half-dead at that point, and was certain she had bit it.
Pretty sure she told Snow White directly "I was going to kill you anyway" before Hardgore Alice ambushed her. Though I can't say what her reasons were... |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2356 |
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I don't think this is a very meaningful excuse when it comes to fiction - not even production-timeline-driven fiction like anime. You can always drop a scene or character that doesn't contribute very well to the pathos of a show in order to fit content in that does. MGRP is filled with endless fight scenes, and with a fair bit of contrived in-universe nonsense (like the extended scene where it takes them a while to figure out how to kill F'av). There's plenty of room there to cut emotionally hollow material in favor of giving Ripple and Snow White more meaningful character develop, and for inserting some genuine demonstrations of the psychological consequences of their choices. When it comes to fiction (or story-telling in general, even), 'doesn't have time' is just a euphemism for 'didn't think that was as important as everything else we wanted to talk about.' That's a fine position to take if you believe everything currently in MGRP is as or more important than giving its characters meaningful development arcs & channeling to us some of their psychological fallout. But I don't think there's much in a show that can be more important than those two things, and I certainly don't think MGRP lacked for content to cut or streamline in order to make room for them.
I may be misremembering, but my impression was that Magicaloid44 wasn't a particularly combat-ready magical girl (certainly not in abilities, but even her personality seemed more greedy, conniving, and cowardly than brazen, aggressive, or murderous), and that she was hunting for the easiest candidate to kill in order to satisfy Calamity Mary's demand. Last edited by NeverConvex on Sun Dec 18, 2016 2:07 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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beholder242
Posts: 33 |
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I don't think "stubborn determination" is the right way to describe Snow White's attitude. More like a naive ideal of what magical girls should be. She was only stubborn in not giving up on that ideal until the very end, or when it was too late. I do agree with you that while Magical Candies were the only method of avoiding elimination, she was a primary target (since she was racking up Magical Candies being the ideal magical girl), once the rules changed to get more brutal, she dropped off everyone's radar because they didn't see her as a genuine threat. Also keep in mind that her magical ability isn't strong in combat, either offensively or defensively, compared to La Pucelle, Hardgore Alice, Winterprison, Ripple, Calamity Mary, or even Tama (as Cranberry discovered). I think that when La Pucelle swore early on to protect Snow White, it wasn't completely because they were childhood friends, but I think La Pucelle also assumed that Snow White's magical ability was not as strong. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23904 |
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@ 7jaws7: Yeah, my memory is not great on that, either. But if Magicaloid 44 was specifically targeting SW (which I'm not convinced she was) then almost certainly it was because she assumed she'd be easy pickings as opposed to because she was a threat.
@ beholder242 - yep, we see things the same way. Last edited by Blood- on Sun Dec 18, 2016 3:30 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2356 |
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Ostentatious aside:
Magicaroid44's ability was "To obtain a random futuristic tool from her backpack once per day". But the universe of possible 'future tools' is infinite, and the set of future from which they can be pulled is unbounded; even if the universe at any given point in time is finite (e.g. a fixed number of particles observed in particular configurations) at any point in time (which is itself non-obvious), there're still unboundedly, infinitely many futures to choose from - one for each point in time that's ahead of now. Which is curious, because mathematically speaking it's impossible to sample from an unbounded set while giving equal probability to every element of that set (as adding them up would yield infinity, not 1, so we wouldn't be dealing with a probability distribution). This means Magicaroid44's power logically must have privileged some particular futures and/or some particular devices from those futures. Maybe that's why all her devices sucked? Seems like her ability was probabilistically weighted towards picking up useless tools from useless futures... 
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Junko666
Posts: 35 |
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@NeverConvex: I understand you aren't satisfied with the way the anime portrayed how Ripple felt about killing Swim Swim. So as someone who has been reading the LNs, I can tell you that she wasn't aware that Swim Swim was just a little 7 year old girl until she had already killed her. In fact when she realises this, Ripple deeply regrets what she's done and it has pretty severe consequences on her future.
@Blood-: Magicaroid44 went after Snow White simply because she was considered the easiest target to kill. @beholder242:You forgot Swim Swim's ability which even Cranberry said was top class. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2356 |
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Yeah, I kind've figured as much. As I talked about a bit above, I assumed this was the point of her vision being obscured by blood from her slashed eye.
That's good. Would be nice if the anime tried to convey some of this. |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5887 Location: Virginia, United States |
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It is quite simple. Ripple didn't kill a child. Ripple killed a murdering monster in the body of a child. There is a big difference. An evil monster that Ripple saw kill her friend from a surprise attack from behind. We in the audience see the big picture and the individual flash backs, but the main characters don't. All they see is their friends dying by the hand of Swim Swim. By this time in the story who the hell cares about the age of the villains. Swim Swim had to die, and they were the only two Magical Girls left to do it. Other than some in the audience, no one is going to cry over Swim Swim. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2356 |
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I'm not asking that anyone cry over Swim Swim, Tars. I'm asking that they not pretend killing a child is business as usual for them, and that the show try to say something of substance in its finale, in which the killing of a murderous child is the central plot point.
I've already explained this repeatedly, but I don't care if the ultimate message is one of approval or disapproval for Swim Swim's death. You focusing on that is completely missing the point. The issue is not whether it was a good thing, but whether the show had anything of note to share with us emotively or intellectually about it at all. I contend that it did not convey much of anything, and that's the heart of my complaint. |
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