Magia Record – 25 (Fin) – A Record No One Knows

Step One of the Magia Record finale: dig poor Tamaki Iroha out of the yawning chasm of despair into which she was cast by losing both Ui and Kuroe. First, Iroha shoots a Kyuubey or three in the face, not wanting to hear his platitudes about extending the universe. Harder to silence is her own doppel, who says she couldn’t save Ui or Kuroe because she didn’t ever truly know or understand them.

Iroha is no doubt in a bad way, but thanks to the timely arrival of Yachiyo and the rest of Mikazuki Villa, she’s able to share her pain and failures with them, just as they shared joy and happiness in brighter days. They connect with both hope and despair, sharing everything about each other. This maximum understanding means Iroha is able to conjure a giant crossbow airship that conveys the quintet to Embryo Eye.

Mikazuki and a huge army of magical girls manages to restrain Embryo Eye, while Iroha is able to fly through any and all obstacles to end up with her two remaining little sisters in her arms. Nemu and Touka insist she fall back, stay safe and let them keep her alive for a long, long time. But Iroha assures them more time won’t make her happy if it means they must sully their hands, or disappear. She wants to share as much time as they have left together.

While she’s finally able to get Nemu and Touka to stand down, the victory lasts only a few moments when we’re reminded that the wild card Alina Gray is still on the board, and crazier than ever. Of all the hundreds of magical girls deployed in this battle, it only takes one to muck everything up, and that’s Alina, who above all must be entertained and engrossed by art and excitement, even if it means sacrificing herself to merge her doppel with both Embryo and Walpurgisnacht.

Alina’s destructive actions threaten everyone, magical girl or not, and Iroha can’t hold Nemu and Touka back from doing what they can to stop her. In this case, that is summoning their own doppels, going into overdrive, then catching up with the Alina-Embryo Eye and destroying it before it can merge with Walpurgisnacht—sacrificing themselves in the process.

The resulting explosion turns everything white, and Yachiyo wakes up on a train in space, wondering if she’s dead. She’s soon joined by former villa sisters Mel and Kanae, and then by Momoko and Mifuyu. They tell Yachiyo they’re not ghosts, but fragments of their magic that live on within her. Thus is Yachiyo’s magical ability finally confirmed not as the power to survive by sacrificing friends, but the power to carry on their hopes.

After meeting with Ui and saying goodbye one last time (though Ui also says a part of her will remain with Iroha, specifically every time she experiences happiness), Iroha ends up in one last discussion with her doppel. But since she no longer fears her doppel, and has come to understand her, Iroha is able to remain in control, and even draw upon her doppel’s power, combined with Ui’s collective power, to connect each and every magical girl on the battlefield with glowing pink threads.

They’re not threads that collect despair, but seek understanding and sisterhood. One big happy magical girl family, all of whom know each other, and all of whom have a part of themselves in their others. She and Yachiyo connect and conjure a mammoth half-spear, half-crossbow bolt. Declaring that no matter how sad or regretful she gets, she’s going to keep living, Iroha fires the bolt, finishing the Alina-Eye off and dispursing Walpurgisnacht.

The clous part, the blue sky and gleaming sun bathes Iroha and Yachiyo in its warm light. The rest of Mikazuki Villa joins them, and they revel in their hard-fought victory. After the credits we see new occupants arriving at Mikazuki Villa in some undetermined but not necessarily distant future, with framed pictures of former tenants, including Yachiyo and her original group, as well as Iroha and her little sisters.

But they’re just photos of girls. As the girls in those photos narrate that nobody knows nor will know the struggles they faced, the sacrifices they made, the tears they shed and the blood they spilled. They won’t know they failed, were deceived, were stolen from, or that they fought each other, made up with each other, comforted each other.

The damage caused to the city is explained by a combination of earthquakes, typhoons, and terrorist attacks. What actually happened will never be recorded, and to the rest of humanity, magical girls and their record never existed.

It’s a expectedly sobering and haunting way to close the curtain on this bizarre world. But it doesn’t matter to Iroha if she was remembered, only that she got to be a magical girl, save people, and live and share in the lives of those she loved.

Magia Record – 24 – No Choice at All

As Alina Gray revels in the chaos Touka and Nemu have resumed (and paints a picture of it) and Yachiyo chases after Embryo Eye, Kyuubey calmly waxes philosophic about how he’s actually doing magical girls a favor, since their sacrifice is a small price to pay for, ya know, extending the life of the universe.

He also goes on about how “what is right” depends entirely on when you live in human history. In some times “justice” hast meant protecting the weak; in some times it has meant eliminating them to make humanity stronger.

Those lofty areas of rumination are of no interest to Iroha, who is now safely within Little Kyuubey, which means she finally gets to reunite with Ui. Her goal is to get out of there with Ui, but Ui tells her it’s too late for that. However bad a big sister Iroha believes herself to be, Ui believes she’s been a worse little sister.

She’s not herself anymore, and hasn’t been since she became a magical girl with Touka and Nemu. Unlike those two, Ui is content to admit they failed and gracefully back away (and say what you want about Kyuubey’s designs, the plan ws and is short-sighted at best).

Ui tells Iroha they must part, because while her story is over, Iroha still has a lot of people left to save, starting with Kuroe. Iroha breaks Iroha out of Little Kyuubey just when Kuroe’s doppel is overwhelming her. But while Iroha wants to save Kuroe, Kuroe doesn’t want to be saved, because she doesn’t believe she’s worth saving.

We finally learn why (or at least part of why) Kuroe feels that way. Whether she became a magical girl because Iroha did or for some other reason is not clear. However, once she became one, she was weak, and barely able to scrape by. But just as there’s always a bigger fish in the sea, there’s always a weaker magical girl.

When Kuroe meets one who is stuck in a witch’s labyrinth, she rescues her and the stray cat she meant to save. We never see this magical girl’s eyes or learn her name (nor does Kuroe). But when the girl asked for a spare grief seed, Kuroe lied and said she didn’t have one, when in reality she did have one to keep her above water.

Kuroe believes the choice she made back then was no choice at all. She went so far as to save that girl, only to abandon her to a longer, slower death. She has no idea what happened to her, but it’s likely to have been nothing good, considering her Soul Gem was already in bad shape.

So now, having had to say goodbye to her dear little sister, Iroha now finds herself trying to convince her friend that she can and should be saved. Kuroe is far from keen on the idea, especially as her darker side replaces that mystery girl with Iroha in her mind, thus upping her guilt and despair.

While she’s under the heavy emotional influence of her downer doppel, Kuroe decides she’ll make it so that she doesn’t have to save anyone and doesn’t need to be saved. Her doppel breaks through Alina’s barrier and she transforms into a full-on witch, Iroha watching helplessly as Kuroe’s blackened vestigial human body is torn to pieces.

As the witch soars out of earth’s atmosphere, likely up to no good at all, Iroha’s defeated face turns to one of grim duty and determination. If she couldn’t save Kuroe, she’ll at least put her out of her misery, and spare a great number of lives she’d claim as a witch. Three episodes into this four-part finale, I earnestly hope we’ve reached the lowest depths, and that Iroha and her remaining friends can soon begin to ascend from the shadows.

Magia Record – 23 – Sticking to the Plan

Outside, Yachiyo, Mifuyu, and the other girls are confronted by the Amane twins and Magius acolytes, and it looks like a magical girl-on-magical girl battle is about to take place. But to the twins’ credit, they seem to stand down at least to hear Mifuyu out; such is their respect and love for her. Mifuyu tells them the time has come to stop hurting each other and others, because the Wings of Magius’ plan failed.

Inside, Nemu stops the time suspension, the hourglass shatters, and suddenly Touka remembers everything: life with Nemu, Ui, and Iroha in the hospital, and all of the things she’s done since then to end up where she is. It’s a tearful reunion, but Touka also finds herself crushed by guilt. Kugimiya Rie does some excellent work here.

After hugging Iroha, Touka wants to know why Nemu didn’t tell her the truth when she knew it all along, and the answer is simple: Nemu didn’t want Touka to abandon the plan. The collective fear and misery of countless magical girls who came to Kamihama City drove Touka mad, but Nemu’s knowledge of not only losing Ui but knowing no one knew but her must’ve have driven her mad, too.

That’s because even with the benefit of hindsight, and the fact their efforts thus far almost killed their big sis Iroha, Touka and Nemu decide to press on. They don’t believe the Doppel System to have failed, but simply isn’t finished yet. They decide to keep the promise they made to Ui, even if she wouldn’t want them to, and “get back to making their mistake.”

As they ride off aboard the awakened Embryo Eye bound for Mitakihara, which they plan to fuse with Embryo, I had to hand it to these two for doubling down on their bad bet. It’s not surprising at all that two girls with the hubris to believe they could take on Kyuubey’s powers and control them would believe that they alone can save everyone.

But the immediate effect of Embryo Eye’s awakening is that nearly every magical girl in Kamihara City is overwhelmed by their Doppels. I suppose they’re all simply necessary sacrifices for the greater god to Nemu and Touka. But Mifuyu is determined to protect every last one of them with what power she has. She tells Yachiyo to leave everyone in her care while she heads off to try to stop Embryo and get Iroha back.

Mifuyu puts up barriers around all of the Doppel-ified girls to pr otect them from themselves and each other, but when they all start banging against those barriers, it takes a toll on Mifuyu. Enter Momoko, who offers physical, emotional, and magical support. Their mission is nothing less than reaching out and touching the soul of every affected girl and ripping away the darkness causing the Doppels to form.

To do this, Mifuyu and Momoko enter some kind of “soul realm” where the overwhelmed girls are represented as being confined to their own individual four-poster beds. Sana, Felicia, and Tusurno are all freed, but every time Mifuyu and Momoko free someone, their soul avatars crack and threaten to shatter.

Mitama, ashamed by how she’s played both sides for so long, is eager to help, but Mifuyu warns her not to. She and Momoko have made their choice, and there’s no going back. But the girls who remain when they’re gone will still need a Coordinator, so Mitama must live on.

The last magical girl Momoko helps save is Kaede, who finally reunites with Sena. But once all of the magical girls who had been Doppel-ified by Embryo Eye awaken back in the normal earthly realm, they find Momoko and Mifuyu lying beside each other, hand in hand, their soul gems shattered.

Thanks to Nemu, Iroha is trapped in some kind of protective dimension, while Yachiyo is headed off on her own to face overwhelming odds as Embryo Eye and Walpurgisnacht will soon clash and cause unfathomable destruction.

Two girls driven mad by their master plan, another who may be the only one strong enough to stand against them. And then there’s the wild car, Kuroe, slinking along with quite a lot of black goop in tow, followed by a translucent Kyuubey. On to round three.

Magia Record – 22 (Final Season E01) – Collect, Transform, Manifest, Despair

Magia Record’s final season begins where it all began: with the Hospital Girls Satomi Touka, Hiiragi Nemu, and Tamaki Ui. Ui’s big sister Iroha would always visit the three, and they all led a happy, if sheltered and delicate life. They even created uwasa together, but as places that would soothe hearts, not corrupt them.

Then Ui took a turn for the worse, and Kyuubey was ready to pounce on Iroha’s desperation. When Ui was near death, Iroha made a hasty deal that would save her little sister. In exchange, she became a magical girl. At the time, it didn’t matter. If it meant saving Ui, Iroha would do anything.

The three girls took notice of Iroha’s changed behavior and far less frequent visits. Being innately curious, they decided to follow her when she suddenly rushed out on them, and were horrified by what they saw: Iroha battling and ultimately defeating a witch, but clearly suffering a great deal in the process.

Having ensnared Iroha in his little web, Kyuubey decides to try to recruit the three girls, saying he can give them the power to save Iroha. But instead of hastily taking the deal, Touka, Nemu, and Ui science the shit of of this, doing in-depth research and determining the precise wishes that will maximize their ability to do the most good for the most people.

Kyuubey is right that he never lies, but is quite content to mislead, omit, or create misunderstandings his victims will regret far too late. He may have never encountered a trio of such inquisitive would-be victims as these three, peppering him with so many questions they get a far clearer picture of what’s really going on than any of the emotionally compromised girls he turned Magical over the years.

The conclusion the girls come to at the end of their research is to essentially steal Kyuubey’s powers of collection, transformation, and manifestation. They become magical girls, but rather than being on their own and having to make gradual or uneasy alliances, they’re a cohesive unit right from the beginning, setting up an automated corruption purification system on a grand scale.

This ingenious system goes swimmingly for all of five minutes until Ui’s collection power collects too much corruption too fast for the others’ abilities to keep up with. She is transformed into a witch—the first artificial witch—which attracts the attention of another magical girl: Alina Grey, who accepts the role of muscle for the nascent Wings of Magius.

As for poor Ui, Nemu manages to salvage her damaged soul and places it into the only suitable vessel: the deadified Kyuubey, thus bringing about Lil’ Kyuubey. Now we know why the little fella liked Iroha so much; it’s Ui in there!

As for why Touka is so indifferent to Ui’s loss, it’s not because she let power get to her head, but because by placing her soul into Kyuubey, Ui’s existence was erased from the world. Erased from pictures, name tags, and memories. But Nemu remembers.

Thus concludes a thoroughly heartbreaking demonstration of how Kyuubey’s manipulation corrupts even most intelligent and resourceful girls who only want to do as much good as they can, and to help the big sister they loved so dearly. It’s a dark and tragic story, but again, it’s only the beginning. Maybe the ending will be brighter.