#27.10.18

Here it is folks! My favourite girls from Magical Girl Raising Project Unmarked (that’s the name of the first arc, right? I’ve only seen the anime) ranked worst to best. A few things to keep in mind:

Lots of these girls are quite similar in quality, so the placements are fairly rough and I could probably swap a bunch of them around without it really meaning anything. I did use a favourite character sorter to make the ordering a bit easier on myself though.

I wrote this a bit differently from my usual posts – mostly I just wrote the section on a character after they die in the dub, which was airing when I wrote most of these. For that reason, the writing quality might be sporadic as heck – sorry about that.

The positions on this list don’t necessarily reflect what I think of that character’s writing – by which I mean there are some characters I believe are better written than others that didn’t make it as high on the list as said worse written characters. Don’t take my positions on this list as me telling you which characters are the best. I’m merely sharing my favourites.

Like all of them read really weirdly because I want to give a synopsis of their character and share my thoughts on them, but I also gotta talk about their designs and there really wasn’t any natural way to implement the design section into the general review and it all seems janky.

This isn’t something to keep in mind I just want to tag @thesweetmacaron since they’re the main reason I watched the dub and decided to write this post and I’m pretty sure they’ve been looking forward to it.

I always joke about when it comes to the whole “my opinion” thing, but in all seriousness, this is my opinion. If you disagree with my list, make your own fucking list, dickhead.

With all that being said, letsago!

15. The Peaky Angels

I hate these two. They’re getting the same spot because they’re the exact fucking same character. I hate twins in anime.

Minael and Yunael are two insufferable little crybaby shits who at first exist to get talked down to by Ruler and then later exist to get used by Swim Swim and killed. Any possible aspect of their personality that could appeal to me is immediately counteracted by several annoying traits and much as I’d love to tell you about the differences between the two characters they are, once again, the exact fucking same character. There is literally not one single difference in their personality other than us getting to see Minael mope because Yunael dies first.

It’s not all doom and gloom though, because at bare minimum, their powers of turning into any living object and turning into any non-living object each are used creatively quite often, and the one benefit to their being twins is that it means the shapeshifting can be split between living and non-living things between the two of them, which is certainly one of the more unique takes on shapeshifting I’ve seen.

Frankly, they honestly have the worst designs in the cast. Twins are already an excuse to get lazy with your character designs, and god do these two suffer from that. Literally the only differences are the shape of the back of their hair and the side of the body their wing and little anklet are on. But, let’s ignore that twin designs are lazy for a second and ask one important question. What the hell does their design tell me about them? As we’ll find out further down this list, almost every single design tells us something about that character, be it a personality trait or even their ability. Yeah, that’s really not the case here. The best I’ve got is that them being small shows that they’re childish, but that’s really reaching. The halos looking like chat bubbles is the only thing I can actually call a “nice touch” on their designs, but it’s really incomparable to basically every other design on this list soooo.

If I haven’t made myself clear enough, let me repeat – I hate these two. I actively loathed any moment they were on screen and I was extremely pleased when they died. A bit sadistic perhaps, but I couldn’t care less. And don’t worry, the list is significantly less negative from here on out, so you don’t need to worry about anything like this again.

14. Sister Nana

I really don’t have much to say about Nana. Her personality can be summed up as “just a really nice person”. She wants everyone to work together and is tied with Snow White for most bummed out about how shitty their situation is. The only other important detail about her is that she’s Winterprison’s girlfriend, and the two love each other so fucking much that when Winterprison dies, Nana actually kills herself. We first see her mourning over a photo of Winterprison’s IRL form with some half-finished vodka(?) and a bunch of pills all over the floor, but later she goes the normie route and hangs herself.

Obviously though, she’s got a cool design. She’s a cute and kinda sexy nun with all your typical nun-like features combine with garter belt stockings, a pretty emphasised bust, and loads and loads of frills everywhere. I’m glad they went with that shade of brown for her hair colour. The black and white colour scheme of her clothes might’ve made a brighter colour look garish and obnoxious given how long her hair is, so the brown is nice. She’s also got a variety of Crucifixes in different locations to reinforce the nun idea – namely on her weird thigh bag/pocket things, over her breasts, and even in her eyes. It’s a bit of a weird design but it does tell us that she’s definitely a pure sort of person, which is a good thing for a design to do.

All in all, Nana’s okay. She’s not got the most interesting personality and though I did praise her design, I can’t actually say I care much for it, though that’s just me not caring for the nun aesthetic in general – it’s not a criticism. She’s likeable enough though and her relationship with Winterprison is legitimately cute – Nana’s constantly bragging about how great her girlfriend is and her power is literally to make Winterprison stronger. It’s cute. Sister Nana gets a she’s not bad/10.

13. Weiss Winterprison

Winterprison, there isn’t actually a lot to say about her. At a glance she seems aloof and distant, always following behind Sister Nana and usually remaining quiet. It’s only when she’s alone with Nana that she really shows any variation in personality. For you see, Winterprison is Nana’s girlfriend, and the two are very affectionate whenever they can be. Winterprison even constantly wears this cool scarf Nana got her for her birthday, which she even retains in her magical girl form – a nice touch.

Speaking of, Winterprison as a magical girl is seemingly one of the strongest fighters in the bunch, thanks to her magical ability to conjure up not that tall but pretty tall walls out of the ground. Couple that with the fact that she’s a pretty skilled physical fighter anyway, and it’s no wonder she came out of a fight with Cranberry pretty much unhurt. Winterprison only loses (dies) because she’s outnumbered by some confusing opponents, but even in her last moments she manages to kill one of the Peaky Angels with relative ease, thank fucking God.

Winterprison actually has one of the simpler designs of the cast. Alongside the aforementioned scarf, she wears a very big, very black jacket that keeps most of her body hidden, and over that jacket are some weird blue belt things that I don’t understand for shit. She does have a nice golden badge with a Crucifix on it, obviously Nana’s logo here, indicating that they’re in a relationship with each other, which is cool. Otherwise though, I honestly think Winterprison has one of the weakest designs in the whole cast, it just gives off a feeling that not as much thought was put into it as some of the other outfits. She’s cold and brooding, and that’s about it. She’s pretty enough though, and while I’ve neglected to mention human form designs this entire time, Winterprison’s got a really cool androgynous look I really love.

All in all, Winterprison isn’t really that good. Lacklustre design coupled with stock personality results in a character that’s hard to really care about. The most important thing about Winterprison is the fact that she’s Nana’s girlfriend. We’ve got an actual canon lesbian couple in this show and it’s no biggie. I actually learned that the killing of Winterprison and Nana resulted in minor controversy and people calling the show “homophobic” and I think that’s complete bullshit especially since they kill pretty much every character indiscriminantly but we’re getting off topic. TL;DR Winterprison’s meh.

12. Nemurin

Nemurin is a 24 y/o NEET still living with her admittedly very supportive mother who spends most of her time in the real world lazing about, but as a magical girl, she can enter the dreams of others and likes to help them. When in the chatroom, she’s just friendly and up to chat. Nothing really all that special or even really good, but nothing too bad about it either. Of note is that when her time as a magical girl is almost over, she says she’ll go get a job interview the next day. It’s nice to see her have some drive to do something with her life now that she can’t be a magical girl, and it’s a nice final touch of characterisation before her demise.

Nemurin exists to serve a pretty specific purpose in the narrative – and that’s to be killed off. Her questionable approach to being a magical girl all but ensures she’ll be the first to be erased, and being the first to die despite being such a generally positive and friendly person reinforces how cruel this elimination game is. In that sense, Nemurin serves her purpose as well as she could, though it would’ve been nice if she had a little more character so that her death meant a little bit more than shock value and plot establishment. Another issue is that the shock value itself isn’t really all that shocking since episode 1’s opening scene is pretty dark so we already kinda know the true nature of this series, but that isn’t really related to Nemurin so I won’t fault her for that.

The only other thing of note that Nemurin does is meet Swim Swim in a dream and inspire her to be a princess. This is fairly in-your-face foreshadowing that Ruler will be taken down by someone, though I didn’t catch it on my first watch so maybe I’m just trying to sound smart. I appreciate this, though. It’s fine foreshadowing and by virtue of having Nemurin speaking to Swim Swim, we’re having more character interaction and seeing plot details from a variety of character viewpoints. Nemurin’s last moments are spent unintentionally inspiring the most terrifying villain in the show, and it’s a bit of narrative agency for Nemurin I appreciate.

As is common on this list, Nemurin’s got a good design. The pyjamas and pillow are an obvious giveaway that she’s lazy and associated with sleeping, while the clouds are more like thought bubbles, often associated with dreaming. In Nemurin’s case, she seems to be somewhat ditzy and unfocused, so the clouds could also be a very literal way of telling us her head is in the clouds. It’s a really simple design but it tells us a fair bit about her, and in that sense, I like it a lot.

Although Nemurin doesn’t do much, she does well at what she does do. She had room to be a more interesting and unique character but unfortunately we don’t get to see that. However, with nothing about her being particularly bad, I think I can conclude that Nemurin’s just fine. A fun fact I learned doing my research for this is that Nemurin won 4th place in an official fan favourite character poll. I don’t see how she got that high, but whatever.

11. Magicaloid 44

In her human form, Magicaloid 44 is a little girl who leads an interesting life – she’s barely ever at home or school, and lives a life of hedonism. That being purely for her own pleasure. She always stays over at friends’ houses and is friends with some homeless man that she gives food to in exchange for cardboard, and ultimately most everything she does can be linked back to money in some way.

She becomes a magical girl when playing MGRP on her friend’s phone, and is a robot since said friend has a boyfriend who’s into robot girls. Fun that they’d acknowledge a fetish like that. It’s pretty good comedy.

Her magical power is a little bag she carries that she can take one useless gag item from the future and use it for a day, which isn’t all that interesting or practical, though they do some comedic things with it and at one point one of the objects proves helpful with murder and stuff, plus she compensates for her odd magic by being able to fly and be a cool robot anyway, so whatever. Plus one of the items from her bag helps Weiss Winterprison become a magical girl (much to Magicaloid 44’s dismay), since this entire time Magicaloid 44’s been earning money by giving Winterprison and Sister Nana useless junk from her bag so Winterprison could become a magical girl. Once again, lots of interaction between a variety of characters, which is always a plus.

The last thing to talk about regarding Magicaloid 44 and the plot is her alliances – she’s teamed up with Calamity Mary since she sees Mary as one of the strongest magical girls and so wants to be on her side for the sake of ease. In a bid to earn Mary’s trust, Magicaloid 44 hunts down Snow White, who she views as the weakest magical girl, to kill her, though Hardgore Alice gets in the way and is killed instead. Magicaloid 44 remarks that she thought she’d feel something after killing someone, but that she didn’t feel anything at all, and then she is promptly killed by Hardgore Alice, unaware that Alice was immortal.

And that’s it. Long story short – Magicaloid 44 helped Winterprison become a magical girl, teamed up with Mary, set up Hardgore Alice as immortal (except the midcards already told us that oops) and died. Her character is that she likes money and takes the easy way out. She’s pretty uninteresting in a cast of already lacklustre characters, and I can’t say I really cared for or even liked her.

If there’s one plus though, it’s her design. She’s a cute little robot girl! All her little robot parts look like a cute robot school uniform! She’s got a collar and a skirt and a bag and robot hair and stuff! She’s really really cute and also looks like a robot! I love her design, it’s one of my favourites. Her sub voice is cute too, and though not quite as cute or robotic sounding, she’s got a nice dub voice as well.

All in all, Magicaloid 44 is perfectly meh.

10. Cranberry

Cranberry is one of the show’s major antagonists, and she’s a pretty interesting one. At one point before the events of the anime, magical girls had to go through a series of tests often resulting in death to, uh, do whatever the land of magic wanted, idk, and Cranberry was one of the only survivors of one of these tests. She spoke to Fav and the two agreed that the tests were boring, and then collaborated to make the Magical Girl Raising Project app and have the tests happen through there with the big old killing game and also give Cranberry an excuse to fight more assholes. There’s even a moment where she and Fav talk about Nemurin’s death in the chatroom and Cranberry’s surprised by the fact that she died for real. At first I thought this as a plothole but then it struck me – Cranberry and Fav deliberately acted it out in hopes that someone would read the chat archive shit and learn that they’re dying. In short, Cranberry’s demonstrably cunning and intelligent.

Not only is she cunning and intelligent, but she’s strong as hell too, having physical capabilities far surpassing all of the others without even needing to use her magic. Said magic is sound manipulation and greatly enhanced hearing to the point of echolocation it seems, I think. She manages to kill La Pucelle with little difficulty, takes on Winterprison and, though she doesn’t manage to kill Winterprison, she leaves the conflict basically unscathed, she killed Minael in one shot, quite violently I might add, and she even managed to nearly kill Swim Swim. The only reason she didn’t is because Tama slashed her back in a surprise attack, and though she seemed fairly unperturbed by this attack, seconds later her upper body just inexplicably exploded? It’s really weird and doesn’t make sense and is one of the stupidest moments in the series. But it’s not Cranberry’s fault though so whatever.

Cranberry’s design is probably the prettiest one in the series, with some nice greens going well with nice frills, a cute ribbon that’s actually a bell because of the whole sound thing, all that nature vibes she gives off and her gorgeous short blond hair. The purple and red roses coupled with the vines everywhere and all the thorns that would entail hint at her nature as a villain quite well, and while they make her already pretty design prettier, they also add just that right amount of eeriness necessary for a villain. It’s a good design, one of my favourites in fact.

All in all, Cranberry’s pretty good. Her backstory could use way more elaboration, and her motive needs some work too since she’s kinda just evil and wants to fight strong opponents for the hell of it. Plus, despite being like, the secondary antagonist, she kinda lacks presence and doesn’t accomplish much and dies an anticlimactic and confusing death, from fucking Tama nonetheless. Still, she’s got a great design, a great voice in both sub and dub, and tbh that’s about it but it’s enough for me to put her here on this list.

9. Calamity Mary

Calamity Mary is one of the most unique magical girls of the bunch. As a magical girl she’s a cunning and selfish cowgirl who only works in her own interest, even her alliances are ultimately means to an end for herself. She refuses to be disrespected and goes out to get revenge on anybody who wrongs her in any way.

In real life though, Mary is an alcoholic wife and mother, whose husband isn’t making enough money to satisfy her and she takes out her frustrations via actual child abuse. That’s pretty fucked up. Mary is definitely a villain and the show doesn’t want us to root for her at any point. We’re supposed to despise her as a character and we actually do!

However, ignoring that she’s a terrible person, she’s actually kinda likeable? She’s got a cowboy motif going on with her design, dialect, and her power – that being any weapon she uses is much stronger than it would otherwise be. One of the coolest things the show does comes with regards to the purchasable items – Mary buys a small bag that can hold as much weight as she can carry, regardless of the actual size of the stored items. Considering being a magical girl increases one’s own physical strength, this is a wonderful excuse to give Mary such a large arsenal of weapons, and it’s this attention to detail that’s one of the show’s charming points.

Mary’s got a great design too. There’s the aforementioned cowgirl motif that works perfectly for her, but I’d also like to comment on the sexualisation of her outfit a bit. Her outfit is one of the most sexualised of the cast, and I think it works perfectly for her. Given that she’s a bit of a terrible person imo, everyone looks down on her (as they should) so it’s likely she went for such a sexy outfit with her character as a sort of power fantasy for herself, beyond the power fantasy that is being a magical girl anyway. I don’t know what the weird fur beneath her bra is. Like, is it part of the bra? Is it some sort of vest-coat thing she’s wearing and has the bra on top? I have no idea…

Overall, Calamity Mary’s actually one of the best girls in the show. With how many of the villains are at least somewhat redeemable, Mary’s a total fucking bastard, and they do a pretty good job of making you hate her. Combine that with the endearing cowgirl gimmick and a great dub voice and all that, and it’s surprising to me that Calamity Mary isn’t more popular in what I’ve seen of the fandom.

8. Swim Swim

Ah, Swim Swim. The real main antagonist of the show. Other than Fav I guess but who gives a shit about Fav?

Swim Swim’s certainly an interesting character. She’s one of the characters we learn the least about, I believe. We know she’s a child and since she’s seen doing homework towards the end we also know that she goes to school, and it’s likely she has a family, too based on that fact. Not only that, but she’s always dreamed of being a liege to a princess, at least before her little conversation with Nemurin where that dream changed to becoming the princess herself.

And, that’s actually about all we know about Swim Swim as a person. From there, she’s part of Ruler’s group who she admires to a fault. But, in line with her dream of becoming a princess, she and the rest of Ruler’s group overthrow Ruler, and Swim Swim becomes the leader. She still does everything to live up to Ruler’s teachings though, all of them. In fact, she even kills Tama because Ruler said to never let her real identity be discovered, and when she does this, she cries. Swim Swim’s definitely got a few screws loose, she’s way too willing to kill people in spite of being like, 8, but that doesn’t mean she’s so inhuman as to cry when her friends die – let alone when she’s “forced” to kill them by her own self-imposed rule of following Ruler’s rules. She’s still pretty clearly a better ruler than, uh, Ruler though. She never talks down to the other members of the group and generally tries to keep them safe as much as possible and treat them like equals. In fact, when all of the items are added to the game, she makes Tama buy the spear for 5 years of lifespan and then buys the invisibility cloak herself for 25 years of lifespan, and then swaps with Tama. She puts the safety of her group ahead of her own safety. Also she names the spear Ruler.

Her design is really cute! The way nothing on it really matches sells you on the outfit being made by a child, and the colours are good too. The whole design makes Swim Swim seem oddly more menacing, which is always a plus since she’s the main antagonist. Plus, once again we’ve got a classic case of the design relating to the ability – because Swim Swim’s primary attire is literally a swimsuit and her power is that she can basically swim through anything and also have her body be water! Another solid design. Great job, MGRP.

Swim Swim’s good. She feels like a more effective villain than Cranberry or Fav or Mary due to her continuous presence in the narrative and actually managing to accomplish things, but she’s also not necessarily as “evil” as any of them, and even before it’s explicitly revealed that she’s a child, you still get the impression. She’s cute, likeable, and despite having room for improvement anyway, she’s one of the better written characters in the show, and has actual stakes in the plot. I give Swim Swim an I like her a lot/10.

7. Ruler

Ruler was originally a girl who excelled in school and presumably ended up with great qualifications, though she ended up in an office job where she seems to serve as an assistant of sorts, making tea and generally being looked down upon by her co-workers. However, she has high aspirations and wants to push the business she works for to success. She proposes a scheme to her boss to increase efficiency, though when it’s rejected she gets pissed at him and is then fired. Pissed off at the world for not listening to or admiring her genius and also being idiots themselves, Ruler picks up MGRP and gets to become a magical girl. Her power? She can make people do anything she wants just by pointing her staff at them. Sounds pretty overpowered, though it only has a 5 metre range and she has to maintain her pose when she’s commanding people. Good weakness. Balances her abilities a bit.

An encounter with Calamity Mary that didn’t go well encouraged Ruler to take advantage of her new power and amass a group of underlings, namely Tama, Swim Swim, and the Peaky Angels. While she constantly talks down to them since she thinks they’re incompetent, she does try to teach them how to be good underlings, and constantly acts strong herself since “the morality of an organisation is higher if the leader is strong”. Unfortunately, her treatment of her underlings works against her, and she is betrayed (and thus killed) by them. Her teachings live on strong in Swim Swim however, who then goes on to be the main antagonist while still trying to live up to Ruler’s teachings.

Once again, Ruler serves a pretty specific purpose in the narrative – namely to set up Swim Swim as the antagonist and for there to be a reason for Tama, Swim Swim and the Peaky Angels to be working together. And in that aspect she succeeds – it’s all logical stuff that works in the narrative. However, it does leave Ruler herself rather, well, lacking. And with how little characterisation she really has beyond “kind of a dick, but really smart”, her death doesn’t carry much weight. Though they don’t even attempt to frame her death as particularly sad, which is fair enough since she’s so outwardly antagonistic compared to some others. The show doesn’t want us to like her, so it doesn’t make her death a big deal. That’s cool. I just wish there was more to her.

Ruler’s design, like many others on this list, is a solid one. Her name is literally “Ruler” and she acts like royalty, so she’s designed to look like royalty too. She has all sorts of poofy frilly things, a cravat, a cape, elbow gloves, a crown, a brooch, jewellery, her cool staff, etc. She also has that weird fluffy black thing around her waist that looks like a neck pillow. I’ve got no idea what that is. I also don’t know what the massive things above her ears are. Those are weird. Whatever. The point is that Ruler is designed to look like a ruler, and she does. I think she’d look a bit better if the cape wasn’t so dark compared to the rest of the outfit, or even if they changed the outfit to have less white, though they didn’t go the generic “Red and Gold” colour scheme these sorts of characters always have, so props for that.

All in all, I do really like Ruler. Design’s good and cute and she impacts the narrative, and despite she herself not being the most complex character, she’s still cute and lovable and stuff. Plus her dub voice is the most hilariously adorable posh English twat stereotype and I can respect that.

6. Hardgore Alice

While unquestionably a friendly, Hardgore Alice – the 16th Magical Girl, and the next Magical Girl after Snow White – is introduced as something of a villain for some reason. As in, she never speaks and it’s always dark when she’s on screen and the first major thing she does is kill someone right in front of Snow White and her theme song is spooky. They try to make her seem creepy or evil but since she’s so quickly revealed to be a good guy, the whole bit seems like a waste. But that’s getting off topic. Let’s get back to Alice.

Alice’s backstory is that her dad killed her mum, and she got bullied in school for a bit, went to live with her aunt and uncle, and even though she visited her dad in prison, her dad pretty quickly told her not to visit. In spite of her aunt actually being very nice to Alice on screen, Alice sees herself as a burden to everyone and she wants to die, even being shown having written a will at one point.

One day, however, Alice is locked outside her house and lost the keys somewhere, and she struggles to find them since it’s so dark. Snow White pops up though and finds the keys, saving Alice. This prompts Alice to download the MGRP app in hopes of becoming a real magical girl to meet Snow White again. She does, and remember how I said she wanted to die earlier? Yeah, her magical girl power is, poetically enough, the total inability to die or be killed. We see Alice get killed several times in several ways by several different people, but every time, she comes back totally okay. She also has a cute little rabbit plush that Minael swaps herself out with at one point, but we’ll get back to that in a bit.

Anyway, as a magical girl, Alice mostly just wants to hang out with and help Snow White, seemingly out of a feeling of debt towards her but she also seems to genuinely enjoy Snow White’s presence so it’s not exclusively an obligation thing. From her reveal as a good guy to the point of her death, Alice mostly just helps Snow White out as often as possible, and after Snow White has a bit of a breakdown with the magical girl count being reduced to 4, Alice tries to cheer her up and tell her that as long as the city has Snow White – they’ll still have a real magical girl – they’ll still have hope. Unfortunately, for literally no reason, she is unable to form these words, and Snow White runs off before Alice can say anything.

Like, the next day, Alice is killed for real. Remember the aforementioned Minael plush? Yeah, Alice obviously mistook Minael for her plush, and Minael used the opportunity to learn Alice’s IRL face so Swim Swim could fuck her shit up. Because fun fact! You can’t transform in front of people or you’ll die immediately, and since the IRL Alice was surrounded by people, she couldn’t fight back against Swim Swim. Wish they’d introduced that rule earlier so not to feel so convoluted but that’s a criticism of the show and not Alice so let’s move on.

Alice’s design is, as described by herself, a dark version of Alice in Wonderland (or did Nana say that? I don’t rememnber) and, yeah, I can see it. I mean I’ve never read or seen any real adaptations of Alice in Wonderland so I can’t be too sure if there’s a deeper connection than just the aesthetic but yeah, she looks Alice-y, but with black everywhere and tired eyes. She says that her design is supposed to be a deliberate contrast with Snow White, the black and white looking so pretty together and stuff. Honestly I think the general fashion difference between the two makes that statement false but Alice is like 12 so I’ll give her a break. It’s a cute design, I enjoy the simplicity, and it at least conveys that she’s pretty edgy.

Alice is pretty good overall, I think. She’s more likable than a lot of the other characters and she’s also one of the more interesting personalities of the bunch, though as is the case with everyone, she had room for improvement. Still, I did like her. Real quick though what’s with the Lucky Rabbit’s Foot thing?

5. Ripple

Before I get into Ripple, I’d like to say something. In my original review of Magical Girl Raising Project, I briefly touch upon Ripple, and say “I don’t really know why she ended up being the oh so important girl that survives to the end”, and this is a statement I’d actually like to retract. Because other than her prominence in promotional material, the OP and ED, etc, the show doesn’t really give us a reason to assume Ripple will survive, and what I didn’t realise until watching the dub for this post is that that’s a good thing. This is a survival game show. We’re not supposed to know who lives and who dies. The seemingly random Ripple surviving to the end is actually a lot better than if, say, Hardgore Alice or La Pucelle survived, because that would have been more predictable. So, props to you, Magical Girl Raising Project.

And with that out of the way, let’s go down on Ripple.

Ripple is, for all intents and purposes, the secondary protagonist of the show. And while the show follows all of the characters and we get to see events from multiple perspectives, it’s Ripple’s perspective who we’re exposed to the second most. And she also generally interacts with a different set of characters than the actual lead – Snow White. So already, we get a pretty good amount of Ripple. But, just who is Ripple?

Ripple’s backstory is a fairly simple one – her mother keeps divorcing and remarrying so everyone calls her and Ripple sluts, to which Ripple responds with good old physical violence, like any person probably shouldn’t. Ripple’s pretty sick of all these new dads, but dad number 5 pushes her over the line by being an actual pedophile, watching Ripple get changed and then nonconsensually groping her ass! And so, Ripple responds with good old physical violence, like any person really should in that situation. Fuck that guy. Alas, Ripple’s response didn’t sit well with her mother, and Ripple, sick of her mother’s shit, moves out. When she becomes a magical girl, she’s mentored by Top Speed, who she becomes really close to throughout their wacky adventures.

After a cool speech about not being the ideal magical girl but still being a magical girl nonetheless and thus having a duty to save those in need, Ripple and Top Speed are forced to do battle with Calamity Mary, who Ripple fucks up. After that though, Swim Swim pops up, kills Top Speed and by extension her unborn child, and leaves. This pisses Ripple off, and while she’s then fairly inactive until the “game” is over, she concludes that she needs to get revenge for Top Speed by killing Swim Swim, and wears Top Speed’s “Bug Off” cape and also uses Calamity Mary’s infini-bag and some of her gear to do it. Rather anticlimactically I might add, but that’s neither here nor there.

In an interesting development, before going to hunt down Swim Swim, Ripple asks Snow White for information about Swim Swim, and when Snow White’s all “magical girls aren’t like this”, Ripple responds “This isn’t about magical girls anymore.” Given her speech before fighting Mary being so pro-mahou shoujo, the way she’s acting now thanks to Top Speed’s death is certainly pretty depressing, and a good development for the character. After killing Swim Swim, she vows that from this point onwards she’ll be a true magical girl. She’s put all of this behind her. It’s good development, even more potent given that she’s just told Snow White how much she admires her, and a fun fact about Ripple is that as I’m writing this section I’m growing to like her more and more.

Design! Ripple’s a ninja with the power of perfect throwing accuracy, and her design reflects this to, uh, an extent. You can definitely see the ninja influence with the colours and the fishnet arm things and the boots and the scarf, but there are also typical magical girl design elements, like the ribbons and the puffy balls around her skirt, and the skirt itself. In fact, there’s even a combination of ninja and magical girl elements in the form of the massive shuriken hairpiece thing. The one thing I don’t quite understand about Ripple’s design though is why is it so sexualised? With La Pucelle it feels a comedy thing to emphasise that he has the body of a girl, and with Calamity Mary it’s a power fantasy thing, but what about with Ripple? What’s even more baffling is that Ripple actually comments on the silliness of the outfit, even though she’s responsible for designing it with the app. Did she just want to play as a hot ninja girl in game, and when she became a magical girl for real she regretted her design choice? Who knows? I don’t. Still, I do think it’s a good design. Colours go really well together too.

I’ve definitely warmed up to Ripple through watching it dubbed. Well, not specifically because it’s dubbed obviously - I’m usually a sub man - I meant more warmed up thanks to the rewatch. Though she says “tch” in the dub significantly less than in the sub which is a massive improvement. Ripple’s definitely one of the best written characters in the show, and as I already said at the start of this section, her being one of the girls to survive is definitely a good thing. I wasn’t that fond of Ripple when I first watched this show, but that rewatch has really made me appreciate just how good Ripple actually is.

4. La Pucelle

La Pucelle is a bit like Snow White in a couple of ways. A massive fan of magical girls that herself wants to be an ideal magical girl and live up to all the justice and ideals and hope and power of friendship that magical girls are all about. What’s particularly interesting about La Pucelle though is that in her human form, she’s actually a boy! Not many magical girl shows I’ve seen even really attempt to cover the possibility of magical boys, so for this show to spell out that they can exist in this world as early as its first episode is pretty awesome!

Moving on, La Pucelle is IRL friends with Snow White, and though they grew apart from going to different schools, La Pucelle immediately recognised Snow White when she became a magical girl, and so decided to mentor her before revealing herself to Snow White as the IRL friend. Being the more experienced magical girl with the way more handy combat ability of a massive fucking sword that can change to seemingly any size she wants, La Pucelle vows to be Snow White’s knight, and that she’ll always protect her.

From there until her own death, we see La Pucelle constantly either working with or working to protect Snow White, truly living up to her role as a knight and also being pretty strong in combat, taking on most of Ruler’s gang by herself without too much issue, and standing up to Cranberry pretty well too. When Cranberry is about to kill her, La Pucelle even makes a mini-speech about how she wants to be an ideal magical girl and so can’t get behind Cranberry’s ideology of fighting strong opponents for the sake of fighting strong opponents or whatever.

La Pucelle’s design is where I’m honestly a bit weirded out. She has some (definitely not practical) armour here and there to remind us that she’s a knight, though it doesn’t cover her thighs or tits. On the topic of her tits, they’re some of the biggest in the cast, as if to accentuate that, yes, La Pucelle really is a magical girl. The main reason I’m weirded out by her design though is the reptilian motif. She’s got long black horns and apparently most of the armour that could’ve been covering her thighs or tits was converted into a long golden tail that serves no purpose other than to further the reptile motif. The best thing I can think of is it’s vaguely dragon-like, so perhaps she’s some sort of dragon knight? But that seems like a weirdly vague detail and it’s one I can’t really think of any reason why they’d do that. I do like her design though, the colours in particular go well together. And in spite of my joking about her thighs and tits, the sexualisation doesn’t bother me – it makes sense for characters created in a mobile game to be sexualised to a degree.

All in all though, I actually quite like La Pucelle. Her character definitely could have had more done with it (though I could say that for everyone), but they do pretty good with her in what little time she’s even alive. Her death is tied with that of Hardgore Alice as the death that bummed me out the most, I think. Top Speed as well, I guess.

3. Tama

Tama, oh boy, where to begin with her?

Tama’s backstory is that she was never very smart, studious, or physically capable, and her own mother, father and little brother were highkey disappointed in her. However, she was very kind and her granny loved that. When granny died, Tama was bummed out since she now had nobody to talk to. When she became a magical girl and joined Ruler’s gang though, she was happy to finally have some friends again.

And that’s it. Her entire character is that she’s not very smart, studious or physically capable, she’s cowardly and not great at following instructions, and she’s always worrying about the rest of Ruler’s gang, because she’s still kind. She’s so kind in fact that despite seeming to genuinely like Ruler and consider her a friend, she was willing to help in the “overthrow Ruler” plan and then follow Swim Swim and the others with the same amount of care as she had for Ruler. Weird.

Tama’s ability is that she can dig, but like, magically. To reflect this, as well as to just enhance her already off-the-charts cuteness, Tama’s design is very dog-like. She’s got massive fucking dog paws and leg warmers, a tail, what basically amounts to a dog style hood, and just general fluff earlier, some of it’s even spotty! Her little cape is kept together with a cute bone accessory and her collar has a leash, which plays into her seemingly endless obedience for her superiors. It’s neat. Plus, said collar is spikey, which while a bit threatening for Tama of all people at first glance, it makes sense since she’s on Ruler and later Swim Swim’s team – both antagonists.

Starting this position with “where to begin with her?” implies that I don’t like Tama, but honestly, the opposite is true. I really, really like Tama. She’s just really, really, really cute. And I respect that. She’s adorable and she’s endearing and she made the scenes with the obnoxious fucking Peaky Angels substantially more bearable. I adore her.

2. Top Speed

Let’s just cut right to the chase – I love Top Speed. She’s genki and kind and is the mentor for Ripple, who by virtue of being so different personality wise, creates a fun dynamic between the characters. Especially since, despite her genkiness, Top Speed’s actually pretty cautious, having to keep Ripple out of trouble and stuff.

IRL, Top Speed’s a 19 year old wife to a nice pleasant working husband, who she’s happily in love with and stuff. Also, she’s pregnant and’ll give birth in 6 months. This is actually the most annoying part about Top Speed – she constantly reinforces that she has to live for another 6 months without explaining why, so when it’s eventually revealed why you kinda wonder if she was fine letting the baby be raised without a mother. Of course, this is Magical Girl Raising Project, so she’s killed before she can give birth, rendering the baby fucked as well. One of the more tragic deaths in the anime for sure.

Top Speed has one of the most simple designs of the cast, but unlike with Winterprison I think it really works here. Top Speed’s got a broom that goes really hecking fast for her magic, so she’s got a really cute witch aesthetic to match. The black and orange definitely tell us she’s Halloween-inspired, and while I didn’t know quite what it was on my first watch or rewatch, I learned from that one @stylermimi post I reblogged that she has her old gang’s motto embroidered on her cape, which suits a wild child like Top Speed. Coupled with the bunch of cute accessories she just has around about her, and Top Speed’s always a joy to look at.

How many of these last sections start with “Overall” or “All in all” good God. Anyway, as I already stated, I love Top Speed. She’s got a simple design and a simple personality but the former works really well and the latter is a personality type I’m super endeared to anyway so it all works out. Also her voice in both dub and sub is absolutely adorable. I might like her more because her sub voice is Yumi Uchiyama who voices Yoko in Kinmosa but you know. Top Speed gets a pretty great/10!

1. Snow White

And in first place, we have the lead character herself – Snow White.

Snow White’s a bit of an interesting character. Growing up, she was a massive fan of magical girls, though had to hide it as she started high school or wherever she’s at to avoid being made fun of. She still loves magical girls though, and is ecstatic when given the chance to be one thanks to the Magical Girl Raising Project app. As a magical girl, she strives to do good, help people, and avoid letting anyone get in harm’s way, and her magical power reflects this - she can hear the thoughts of people in trouble. Aside from being a super useful ability to gather candies at the start of the series when that was the goal, it’s also used to basically let her read minds in 2 or 3 situations, which makes her seem useful in the viewer’s eyes.

This whole thing about feeling useful is important because Snow White takes a lot of issues with the MGRP app and all its happenings. As a “true magical girl”, she doesn’t’ want anyone to fight, including other magical girls, but all she can do about it is cry, since she doesn’t actually have any combat capabilities that they others don’t also have. Her feeling of worthlessness is evident enough in how she reacts to the different things that happen to her, such as when, after having her candies stolen, she just gives up hope and tells La Pucelle to not even bother with stealing them back. Or when, after getting mad about the magical girl limit being reduced to 4, she cries about there being no real magical girls left in the city, apparently forgetting that she herself is an example of a real magical girl, according to her own definition. Or what about when the game is over, and she questions why she survived when she didn’t even do anything other than run away? It’s interesting seeing someone so passionate about what magical girls should be being faced with a system she has no ability to change, and it hurts to see her doubt herself so much given that magical girls are all about hope.

I have no idea how to naturally implement this in here, but I wanna talk about the relationship between La Pucelle and Snow White for a bit. See, they grew up best friends loving magical girls together, and drifted apart because of high school or whatever. When they reunite though, there’s like, one single throwaway line that suggests Snow White has romantic feelings for La Pucelle, but it never goes anywhere and is literally never relevant again. That bugged me. I still stand by my statement in my review that this show isn’t great, and it would seem that even my favourite character isn’t immune to questionable writing. On the plus side though, one detail that stood out to me is that when the items are introduced to the game, Snow White, after some deliberation, goes for the sword before any other item. She doesn’t get it because someone beat her to it, but it’s cool to think that, with La Pucelle being dead by that point, she wanted to be able to protect herself by becoming like La Pucelle, who she thinks is an example of an ideal magical girl.

Snow White’s design is perhaps the cutest on the list, only really rivalled by Tama. Snow White’s design’s really good though, and is very much just typical magical girl stuff, compared to every other design kinda doing its own thing and maybe incorporating some ribbons or frills to look magical girl-y. Like all the best magical girl outfits (not true), Snow White’s resembles a school uniform, specifically a sailor one. But it’s also obviously covered in frills and bows and flowers and all sorts of nice oddities. The very light blues and pinks go exceedingly well with the whites and make her look like a very good magical girl, but I’m also super duper fond of the little armband she has on. It’s a lot like those armbands you see student council presidents wear in other anime, and I think it’s really fitting for Snow White to have something like that since, like the student council and their school, Snow White wants to make the world a better place. As already mentioned, she’s also just really cute, with her nice short hair and stuff. Studio Lerche gave this show some pretty solid visuals.

There’s one thing about Snow White that has me genuinely curious, because it’s a question the anime hasn’t answered (yet?) and I’ve not read the light novels – where does Snow White’s character go? I’m already aware that the events of the anime have left her somewhat jaded, but I want to know more about that, which is my main incentive to eventually read the novels. I mean, even at the end of the series after the timeskip, she’s a noticeably different person, not just because she’s practising combat and going outside of the city. She seems to value helping normal people with trivial problems much less, treating it as though it won’t make a difference. Even Ripple, though willing to follow Snow White anyway, seems to have noticed a change in Snow White, and I really hope we get a season 2 that explores that since I don’t want to read

I can’t completely explain just what exactly makes Snow White my favourite of the cast (maybe it’s Nao Touyama being her seiyuu?) but I hope I did a decent job explaining myself a bit here. I just really liked Snow White, man. She’s good.