Magical Girl Raising Project

Episode 7

After the bloody events of last week, it's no surprise that the characters in Magical Girl Raising Project need an episode to recover. Snow White continues to grieve for La Pucelle, even as she struggles to deal with an overwhelming fear of Hardgore Alice. Calamity Mary attempts to avenge Magicaloid 44 by trying really hard to kill Hardgore Alice, but those regenerative powers make her a persistent opponent. Snow White turns to Sister Nana for help, but joining forces also means having to work with the girl she's most afraid of. Sister Nana and Weiss Winterprison continue to look for new allies, but meeting with Swim Swim may be a greater risk than they realize.

All the narrative housekeeping makes this something of a transition episode, with more plotting and planning than actual forward progress. The one exception is Calamity Mary's fight with Hardgore Alice, which deserves some kind of award for the season's most thorough attempt at killing a character off. Mary lays into Alice with bullets, explosives, acid, and fire before finally dumping her into a barrel full of concrete and sinking her in the harbor. Whether by design or by accident, the scene slowly moves from horror to dark comedy as Mary works her way through her arsenal. Either way, it at least succeeds in driving home the notion that Hardgore Alice is going to be exceptionally difficult to kill.

That's a good sign from where I'm standing, because Alice is proving to be an interesting addition to the story. She has all the trappings of a terrifying antagonist, but despite scaring the living daylights out of Snow White, she has yet to do anything but help her. This could develop into a compelling dilemma for Snow White if she ends up relying on Hardgore Alice for protection now that La Pucelle is out of the picture. Are her hands really clean, or is she just surviving by letting other people do all the dirty work? It could very well become a darker and more dysfunctional version of the relationship between Sister Nana and Weiss Winterprison. Where Nana and Winterprison have a healthy dynamic of mutual support going on, there's something ominous about the way Alice seems to be watching out for Snow White. If nothing else, this episode gives us another chance to compare the moral codes of the remaining magical girls.

Inevitably, the slow pace compared to last week causes the show's flaws to stand out a little more. As much as I enjoy the friendly chemistry between Top Speed and Ripple, the constant reminders of Top Speed's mysterious six-month survival deadline are getting annoying. At some point, the script either needs to stop dangling this carrot in front of the audience or just come right out and tell us what's going on. Cranberry's absence also proves to be an issue, since the story loses much of its dramatic urgency when its strongest antagonist isn't around. I'm curious to see what Swim Swim and company have up their sleeves, but much of this infighting is starting to seem like a sideshow compared to whatever's going on between Cranberry and Fav.

Given that the priority here is cleaning up after last week's bombshells and setting up the next round of conflicts, this episode is a reasonably strong effort. It makes the drop in pacing about as palatable as it can be, and the continued glimpses into the girls' backstories are proving useful by providing some insight into their motivations. Slow and methodical plot development is nothing new to Magical Girl Raising Project, and at least now we know that all this drawn-out setup can lead to an effective payoff.

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.