Magical Girl Raising Project

Episode 4

I'm not sure if the gloves are completely off just yet, but Magical Girl Raising Project is certainly starting to get serious about its survival game premise. Ruler and her followers make their big play this week, luring La Pucelle away from Snow White before kicking off their Magical Candy heist. Swim Swim transfers Candies away from Snow White's phone while Ruler's magic keeps her paralyzed, and it looks like our idealistic heroine is headed for the bottom of the weekly ranking. That's not the case though, as Swim Swim pulls off a secret plan to distribute the Candies amongst all of the girls and leave Ruler dead last in the standings. With their leader out of the picture, Ruler's other minions decide to rally behind Swim Swim as the new boss of the group.

From a purely narrative standpoint, this episode marks the first time this series has been able to deviate from its genre playbook in a meaningful way. The obvious choice would have been to set Ruler up as a recurring villain, with La Pucelle or perhaps Swim Swim taking the moral high road by giving up their own Candies to save Snow White. Instead, the show makes the surprising choice to have Swim Swim stab Ruler in the back right away, throwing what had previously been a formulaic plot arc into chaos. It's a gutsy decision that could make for a messy storyline in the short term, but it also serves as an indication that not everything in this series is going to play out the way the audience expects. If you're hoping for Magical Girl Raising Project to bring something fresh to the table or if you just enjoy a good plot twist, this episode is an encouraging effort.

This episode also sees the show take its first crack at a proper action scene, and the results are largely positive. While there are some shortcuts here and there, the production values generally hold up during La Pucelle's brief fight against Tama and the twins. La Pucelle's sword certainly makes for an interesting weapon, with the ability to alter its size opening some unique possibilities in how the fight plays out. The girls' powers in general seem to echo their costumes in terms of matching each character's personality, with Ruler's desire to control the people around her being the most obvious example. I'm not expecting this series to be the action show of the season in terms of visual spectacle, but its integration of character traits and fighting styles has promise.

One area where Magical Girl Raising Project still falls short is in emotional impact. I've used words like “surprising” and “interesting” a lot in this review, but there's a reason I haven't yet talked about any of these developments being genuinely compelling. The series still hasn't delivered the kind of dramatic gut punch that it needs in order to leave a lasting impression. This episode has some minor success with Snow White pleading with La Pucelle not to seek retribution for the theft, but the intended effect of Ruler's death feels oddly unclear. She's mostly painted as an irredeemable foe, but the flashbacks to her past and some of Swim Swim's parting remarks blur that image. The end result occupies an awkward middle ground between vilifying Ruler and humanizing her, and neither objective is accomplished as well as it could have been.

Part of the issue is that the cast is still packed full of potentially expendable characters, and the plan to eliminate at least half of them means that each girl will have a limited amount of screen time before she gets killed off. The good news is that the deaths may start to have more meaning as the story goes along, with each eliminated character leaving more room for the survivors to connect with the audience. Magical Girl Raising Project runs the risk of losing its audience before those connections can really take hold, so the unpredictable plot will need to fill that gap for the next few weeks.

Rating: B

Magical Girl Raising Project is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Paul Jensen is a freelance writer and editor. You can follow more of his anime-related ramblings on Twitter.