Genre: Magical Girl, drama, horror, psychological
Rating: R-17
Studio: Production doA
Episodes: 12
Available on: Amazon Prime
Overview:
Asagiri Aya is a middle school student who is trouble by many things. Not only does she have to deal with cruel bullying by her classmates but she endures abuse by her own brother at home. She spends her days wishing for death to escape her horrific reality. One day she encounters a website which pops up on her computer. The creepy character on the website grants her the ability to become a magical girl. Aya then starts meeting other magical girls who have been granted powers through the same website. Many of the girls team up to not only fight each other but also a danger far bigger than themselves.
Review:
If you have read the title of this review (which I assume you have if you’re reading this already) then you may expect this review to be negative. Honestly, it’s not going to be very negative really. When Magical Girl Site first aired earlier in the year I remember the whole controversy the first episode conjured up. Almost everyone in my Twitter feed was talking about how brutal the introduction to this series was and this obviously sent my curiosity through the roof and I have wanted to watch it ever since.
The first episode wasn’t as bad as I was anticipating. The episode gets us aquatinted with Aya, the protagonist of the series. A quiet, frail girl who is tormented both at home and school by her fellow classmates and her own brother. This, horrific abuse caused her to want death more than life and is a sad and dark way to start a series off. From what I heard off of other people I was expecting the most grisly of episodes but the show certainly didn’t live up to the picture I had painted in my head. Was it awful? Truly awful, yes. Would I wish that upon my mortal enemy? Of course not. No sane person would condone such atrocities. Having said that it didn’t really shake me up. The bullying and insane amount of abuse worked with Aya’s story and added another layer to the darkness to the anime. Bullying and abuse to such extremes isn’t just something of fiction, people do genuinely get put through hell and I think this anime just didn’t censor itself like other forms of media might.
The series delivered what I expected it to. I wasn’t expecting a genre defining masterpiece, all I wanted was a dark magical girl anime and it delivered in the buckets. Magical girl anime is either aimed at children and is extremely mild or is aimed towards teens and adults and is often much darker. I enjoy this contrast but often find the genre follows the same patterns which can often be too predictable.
Although the series wasn’t original in story I found the characters, even the villainous ones, to be well done. There was such a wide range of magical girls with their own special traits and I loved that each girls magical sticks often fit their personalities perfectly. Ava’s stick allowed her to teleport which, to me signified her escaping from the abuse in her life. Nijimin’s stick allowed her to control and influence people which made sense considering she was an idol who greatly influenced her fans. Although the site administrators weren’t original in terms of “oh the person who made me a magical girl is actually evil, oh no..” I adored the character designs of them. Their creepy faces/masks and the fact that they were all black and white just made them really stand out and their voices were fantastic.
The brother horrified me the most in the series. I loathed him and wanted him to get his comeuppance so badly which shows that he is a well put together character. I honestly felt a great deal of satisfaction with what happened to him towards the end. He deserved it.
The biggest downside to Magical Girl Site was that I felt like I was waiting for a climax which never arrived. The Tempest which is a massive storm which will basically end the world to ultimately make things “better” was a impending doom on the horizon of the series. Said impending doom never came during the finale and instead was pushed back to suggest the possibility of a second season. Maybe because they put such emphasis on it that I expected it to come sooner rather than later. I hope it continues with another series at some point and I genuinely want to see what happens next.
Whilst Magical Girl Site is nothing special in terms of concept it’s a really great show to watch if you want something darker and “edgy” to check out.
Rating: 7/10
Until next time thanks for reading and I hope you’re having a great day!
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I never got to finish this one given I ended the subscription to Amazon while it was airing, but I was curious about where they were going with it. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and I hope eventually this one gets released elsewhere or gets a disc release so I can catch it then.
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Thanks for reading as always! 🙂 I hope it gets a disc release or something too as it was a great watch!
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