Was your week an absolute disaster? Does the world gang up against you? Was your last day at work like giving birth to a full grown cactus? If your answer to any or all of these questions was yes, then I have some bloody good news for you: this episode was awesome.

Japanese Original Episode Title: 激レアアイテムをゲットしよう!

Plot

Do you like blood? Of course you do. Well this episode is all about that. From the first to the last moment of it an essence of gore has been added to the action, and finally, the endless procrastination of goriness is over! The leftover Magical Girls have now decided to put candy-gathering on the side and seriously take up cutting each other’s throats instead. If you feel like you didn’t sign up for that, maybe you should start watching that film about the little elf instead, I hear it’s great. FIGHT-O FIGHT-O!

Episode Highlights

Cranberry is going through her One Punch Man phase and goes around challenging people trying to be the ultimate-super-bitch-that-kills-everyone-while-seeking-the-ultimate-opponent character. La Pucelle is currently on the top of her list, and guess what – SPOILER ALERT – she effortlessly dies. And here I am, I’ve watching this show light-heartedly only to find myself well upset about her death, and the death of young love. DAMN YOU LIFE STRUGGLES. *avoids personal references*

Before her untimely death we get a real quick flashback into La Pucelle’s life, where as a boy in a girl’s body she feels confused about being a Magical Girl for the first time, and also gets to touch Sister Nana’s… hands. Score. Her battle with Cranberry is quite exciting: a splattery kick in the face drops her off a building, followed by her head being smashed against the wall. Last time we see her, Cranberry is trying to strangle her. On a later discussion with pon –I’m sorry, FAV, the annoying tampon thing, whatever- he comments that her body, in the form of a young boy, was found mangled up on a highway. Very dramatic funeral scene occurs. However, I’m pretty sure La Pucelle lives.

We get to learn a bit about Magicaloid 44’s background, a rather typical sign that she’s about to die. (And yes, she dies later on during the episode, but more on that later). Looks like the lady is a tramp, as in a high school girl that has run away from home and occasionally shares a cardboard box with a homeless guy under the bridge. She -also occasionally, I guess- feeds that homeless guy who apparently is interested in marrying her. Very bohemian, although the subtitles thought ‘calculating realist’ is a better way to put it. Turns out she became a Magical Girl accidentally. In Magicaloid 44’s words, yabaina.

During an unpleasant conversation between Cranberry and FAV, we find out that the game is a way to get her to fight exciting battles, and that there is some sort of arrangement between the two of them. Apparently they use the app as a way to approach young people and get them involved into the battling process, in order for some heroes to be selected, god knows why.

In order to fuel things a little bit FAV informs Snow White that her friend was sacrificed to save her. Magical items are on sale, costing only a few years of the girls’ lives. Snow White tries to buy one but everyone else moves faster and the items are sold out. I’m not going to analyse who got what – but I’m really starting to like Swim Swim and the way she leads her team. She makes everyone buy something, and sacrifices a few years extra to get an invisibility cloak and gift it to Tama. Because the leader has to take care of their disciples. For herself, she keeps a weapon that apparently, ‘matches her magic’. She names her weapon ‘Ruler’. Creepy.

In the meantime, Ripple and Top Speed are doing some unimportant chore to gather Magical Candy, just to inform the audience for one more time that Top Speed needs to live for another six months. She’s definitely pregnant. And, hence her name, apparently she’s the fastest Magical Girl out there when it comes to flying.

Finishing up, Calamity Mary challenges Magicaloid 44 to kill someone. She shows up right when the new character, Hard Gore Alice, is dangerously approaching Snow White in a dark corner. Casually cutting Alice’s head off, she then attempts to murder Snow White, but instead, gets murdered by Alice’s headless body. Episode ends. What the hell.

Themes & Trivia

Death Note: Shinigami eyes? Selling years of your life for fantastic rewards? Anyone? Any references? No?

One Punch Man…: The slightly standardized character, villain or hero, that always looks for a stronger opponent, and who is being ridiculed in this awesome show that apparently is getting a season two soon.

…or is it Akira Kurosawa: If you have watched his masterpiece, Seven Samurai (七人の侍 Shichinin no Samurai), you may remember Kyuzo, the master swordsman played by Seiji Miyaguchi, always looking for someone to challenge his skill, even if it meant a battle to the death.

Kiki’s Delivery Service: Well, there are a lot of witches like Top Speed flying around on broomsticks, but in anime culture there’s one who’s got a special place in our hearts.

Comments

The episode was good. Very good. Intense battles, backstabbing, death of romance, other deaths, zombies, boobs, flashbacks. What else can we ask for? Oh I don’t know, maybe the death of that annoying cowgirl that spends more money on alcohol than I do on tuition fees. And, maybe, FAV to be used up and stuffed into a toilet bin.

Remember when this whole show started, I mentioned that I was hoping it would live up to a Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni standard. Well it’s not there yet, but it’s definitely headed in the right direction.

Don’t forget to check the rest of our episodic reviews here on Manga.Tokyo. 

NEXT TIME: Let’s raise intimacy! (親密度を上げよう!)

Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku (Magical Girl Raising Project)

Started broadcast in October 2016 !

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