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「マジカルキャンディーを集めよう!」 (Majikaru Kyandii o Atsumeyou!)
“Collect Magical Candies!”
The lighthearted fun and games continue for our magical girls as the rules of the competition are finally revealed. Unfortunately for them, it only goes downhill from here.
Just a Little Competition
Sixteen girls down to eight? How were we doing that again? Wonder no more, because we now know how that process will go. As expected previously the Magical Candies determine success, with every magical girl judged on number collected. At the end of each week the girl with the fewest candies is eliminated, with the whole thing then repeating anew until eight girls are left. It’s surprisingly straightforward, although the metrics for candy acquisition still remain ambiguous. Koyuki earned over 400 for rescuing the elderly couple for example, while other girls seem to earn around 20-40 at most. It looks as though attempting a good deed (ex. committing to a rescue) gives you a few participation candies, while actually completing the deed (ex. succeeding in a rescue) pays the true prize. Very likely deeds are classed differently too and pay varying amounts, explaining how some magical girls can get away performing dubious acts (i.e. Calamity Mary). Then there’s the small thing about that Magical Candy cap, indicating the possibility of ties. What happens if two girls on the cusp of dropping out are at the cap? Certainly not rainbows and butterflies.
Of course all of the above has nothing on the dark side of this game, generously hinted at by Fav who is now doing everything possible to resurrect the Kyuubey hate. His recruitment of magical girls when the ecosystem is supposedly unsustainable is pretty suspect, but actually bringing another on after the culling starts screams premeditation (honest mistake my ass you sadistic little f*cker). Furthermore Fav is already alluding that magical girls are capable of killing each other, as though he wants them to explore the option. It’s not like it will take too long anyway, given this episode’s events it’s just a matter of time now.
Establishing the Teams
One intriguing bit quietly brought up this episode was the setup for our different magical girl groups. The wannabe queen Ruler’s little gang is the obvious example, her aspirations in the open and personality distinctively authoritarian. Nevertheless I can already foresee some troubles with our puppy dog punching bag Tama who seems to be klutz of the group, never mind the single winged twins Yuna and Mina. Also expect the quiet Swim Swim to potentially be a problem in the near future. On the other side we’ve got tsundere ninja Kano and the bouncy, hyperactive witch Tsubame who together appear to be aiming for a neutral good disposition, while Sou-chan La Puecelle and Koyuki function as possible allies. And then we get to Calamity Mary, who besides showing magical girls can be mature women too, certainly wants to embrace the cowgirl persona lock, stock, and barrel. Personally I except Mary’s antagonism is a distraction away from the true baddie of the show (always expect the unknown), but she certainly is the most chaotically badass of the bunch. It’s pretty obvious these different groups will come to blows soon enough, the only question is how. Well, that was until the end of this episode.
Next Time: It’s Getting Serious
If there was ever any doubt what happens to eliminated magical girls now we know: they die, full stop. There’s no messing around here, you want to be a magical girl you must accept the consequences of failure. Although Nemu’s death/coma (it’s not entirely clear yet) was hidden by Fav (who only revealed the chat room “deletion”), expect that little event to quickly disseminate to our remaining magical girls very soon because there’s no better way to get this party started. Stay tuned for next week boys and girls, because the fun starts now.
Random Tidbits
Of course Nemu was a NEET, because only NEETs sleep all the time. I’m a busy student, I sleep all the time, where I do I fit on this scale?
I expect that bit about Nemu’s Magical Candy earnings not counting (because they were earned in dreams) to come up again. Nemu cannot be the only one here who carried on by avoiding the real world.
Fav has the ridiculous pon, and now Kano gets the “tch” tick. Because you couldn’t love tsunderes enough already. Also the real Kano definitely looks like Homura.
Ruler will probably be one of the first to die, if her showing up in a girl’s dream is any indication
I love how Calamity Mary’s cowgirl outfit complements her harsh, individualistic personality. Also dig the two bras, because that totally negates the sluttiness of the outfit.
Preview
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Fav…personality of Kyubey…yet looks like Monokuma with those color patterns…
Monokyuma? Uupupupu!
Actually pinned Nemu as my favourite.
Too late.
I like sou-chan aka the Trap Mahou shoujo… Sadly, i can see his death flags later on the series… Probably, he will be the final mahou shoujo to die.
Man… Judging from the events that happen on this episode, the next set of events that will happen is they will indeed learn that they will die should they become the lowest in the rankings, triggering mass hysteria and panic in the group, probably resulting to mass murder of other mahou shoujo, leaving their close friends alive, so that the number left would satisfy Fav’s plan of trimming down the mahou shoujo population to 8.
And, lesson learned… Being a magical girl is not always nice. Mahou Shoujo Madoka then this. And RIP Nemu I know its fiction but that was so fck up… She died happily on her dreams, doing her final job as mahou shoujo.
I wonder about that, it would be safe to assume that most of what that little monster said is a lie or some manipulation, there is no garantee the surviving girls will be safe once the other 8 are gone.
oh! good point… good point… but if that happens, IMHO, then this anime is now way more darker than Mahou Shoujo Madoka.
Exactly! I totally expect a second round in order to trim the number back to four, after this one.
https://randomc.net/image/Mahou%20Shoujo%20Ikusei%20Keikaku/Mahou%20Shoujo%20Ikusei%20Keikaku%20-%2002%20-%20Large%2016.jpg
Yup…This girl IS kinda look like this one…but at least she is not a loser, she is just too goofy!
Show Spoiler ▼
she got Show Spoiler ▼
in short… right?
Well…Fair Enough!
But I’am waiting for something Big…You Know….(Maniacal XD)
Nooooooo!!!!!! Not the Show Spoiler ▼
I feel like Nemu could have avoided dying if she didn’t take Fav’s offer.
“Hey you wanna become a magical girl one more time? You got 15 minutes left.”
“Nah bro I’m good, I’m gonna stop being a neet and get a job tomorrow.”
That picked my interest as well, it felt like Kyuubey, sorry, Fav was encoraging Nemu to transform before midnight, maybe the girl can be saved if they don´t transform after they are deleted but that might be wishful thinking on my part.
P.S.: Yuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru might count as a magical girl sries with some seriously nasty trap hidden underneath.
I’d say Yuki Yuuna was the first Post Madoka Show to go into the region Madoka explores, and do it very well. It remains to be seen whether Mahou Ikusei can pull off the same thing. If it can, and Mahou Ikusei does well, this probably means that Madoka Magica has effectively founded a sub-genre of Mahou Shoujo shows that we are going to see more of in the future.
Basically, Magical Girl systems with very, very serious down-sides and hidden cost to them, and with high-stake conflict on the level of life and death.
So far, I think Mahou Ikusei is doing a good job, if the way Nemurin was covered is any indication.
No the founder of high stakes very dark down side magical girl show started magical girl overall that being Sailor Moon manga and recent anime, everyone does die leader kills herself a magical girl destroys the universe then after reincarnation leader ties to kill herself by trusting sword though her heart. To prevent first time deaths several members go off to kill young innocent girl who will become the ender of the universe. Human enemies are killed dead. The genre was nerfed after.
Deals with a devil were new for the magical girl taking them although they were in Sailor Moon for the enemy.
Interesting Red-san, I forgot all about it since I read the Sailor Moon manga so long ago but most people in the West have only seen the 90s anime which was heavily changed compared to the original source. Madoka then kind of resurrected the dark aspects of the mahou Shoujo genre and concentrated on it.
Going by anime release dates the first was Genei wo Kakeru Taiyou but it was a mess so I can easly see why no one would remember that.
Hmm interesting, but we don’t know for sure if she died while being a magical girl or not since we get a fade-out while she’s still talking. Either it happened later, or it was the show trying to tell us she’s dead while in magical girl state without her knowing it. I expect they die even if they’re not in magical girl form, but this is an interesting point, though in the coming episode we probably won’t have another peaceful retirement like Nemu.
I feel that Fav definitely pushed for her to transform one last time. He had no reason to even tell her that she had until midnight. Nemu just trusted him enough for him to only need to give her a slight nudge. Poor Nemu.. 🙁
My first thought was that he killed her to keep the whole magical girl business a secret, but he clearly recruited more than enough girls on purpose. What would he gain from killing them off one by one? Create an army of emotionless Magical Girls?
If there is an ulterior motive I think the ecosystem bit is the likely culprit. Need more Magical Candies to keep things humming? Kill off a few girls and release them back into system. Under this assumption the additional girls were hired in order to give a better chance of killing off the plump ones rich in candies. If the competition itself results in too many of the remaining candies taken out of circulation, just increase the number of girls culled (as haseo mentioned in an earlier comment). This might be a little too close to Madoka’s basic premise though 😛
Yep and depends on if this a Fav thing local only or is this happening everywhere the company has distributed the game. If it the company it is hundreds if not thousands of magical girls being harvested. Sort of a magical solent green?
If I may guess, when they ask Fav why Nemurin died, he’d say “it’s to restore the energy of the district so it could sustain the remaining magical girls.” Either that or it will be Entropy and QB hate all over again. And I’m curious about the version update, will it be the update that allows magical girls to steal other girl’s magic candy?
LN readers say the powers of each magical girl correspond to their personalities. For example, Nemu’s dreamwalker powers correspond to her lazy, sleepy nature.
A lot of Nemu’s interactions here were taken from a later LN volume that delved deeper into the magical girls from Book 1 – the girls weren’t given much characterisation initially.
With the stakes of the game now life and death, something tells me that Kyouki’s entire character set-up in Episode 1 was built so that it could be sadistically broken over the course of this show.
“What happens if two girls on the cusp of dropping out are at the cap? Certainly not rainbows and butterflies.”
Then they would all be at the cap…. Thats how a cap works…..
I think he meant what would happen if the two lowest scoring girls were in a tie.
Interesting thought, surely Fav wouldn’t
kill them bothkick them both off?Yeah I definitely had a lapse of logic there 😛
As JayDrink says it’s the question of what happens in the instance of a tie. Killing both makes no sense, but how does the sadistic rabbit reconcile that issue?
Having everyone at the cap is the really interesting scenario though because how the hell do you determine the loser then? Rules no longer work unless you change them, so it basically comes down to subjective opinion.
This Magical Girl system was set up by a game put out by a large business. I wonder if the evil is the business or is Fav a entity who has just put it’s scam on top of the game with the business not knowing. Of course the lack of magic is a scam the battles and killing being the objective it seams.
I HATE!!! the idea the mental condition is treated as unimportant, Japan overall is still in the mental illness is a moral fault not a physical problem stage more than US and many western countries although Japan is making progress. Helping peoples mental states in dreams is just as important in many ways as what the other girls are doing. I hope the dream work not counting is being used as statement of how corrupt the system Fav is running is. If not the writer and producers have offended me and slandered the importance of mental health.
Sailor Moon had open mouth french kissing girls, actual yuri and straight sex. I doubt though this is allowed in the sex is evil murder is fine world of modern anime censorship. Right now you can not have underage having sex but they can kill other people and be killed fine. The kill people don’t have sex western idea has spread world wide as this is not a traditional US view.
I think that they also in Japan feel that comforting a dreamer should have earned at least some points and that the rules were set aritrarily to trick nemu. But otherwise I agree with your post.
Lack of edit function. I intended to say not a traditional Japanese view, the Japanese did not have censorship until western pressure in late 1800’s made them.
A real irony of culture. Conservatives in Japan support censorship because it what they grew up with even though it was a Colonial idea forced on them and has no logical basis in the culture while they know it not a traditional Japanese thing.
We need some Cuban/Mexican cha-cha-cha music to go along with Ripple’s “tch.” But seriously, I don’t mind characters having a verbal tick, but that’s way too many “tchs” to give her in half an episode. What I found kind of surprising is how much they peacefully displayed Nemu’s death/coma/incapacitation. Like this show started with images of blood and everything, and Nemu is just laid cold on a bed. You don’t see the whole body and shocking imagery may not really be this show’s aim, but I’m just intrigued by that choice they made.
Also, that’s almost an amusing attempt on Fav’s part to say “I miscalculated.” Maybe there is some complex math going on, but to accidentally have double what you need is a pretty big error to say you made. But eh, show handles some thing in weird ways, other things in interesting ways, but I’m still intrigued to go down this road.
I find it unbelievable that our boy turned into a girl has not checked out “her” equipment in girl form, maybe for quite a bit over many occasions ;)? Maybe pictures?
I swear Kyubey is asking for a whoopin killing off the girls voted out of the club. Aw hell nah!!
@Pancakes about Fav ending its lines with a -pon, go watch one episode of Pripara or even one of Mahoutsukai Precure please.
Fairies/managers/little weird creatures have been doing that shit for eons, in Pripara you have -kuma/-usa/dechu and other shit loads of other animal related ones while in Mahoutsukai Precure you have a speaking teddy bear who ends her lines with a -mofu.
Just to mark that it’s something that you should expect in a Mahou Shoujo related anime.
Oh no worries I’m well acquainted with what these magical creatures do. Fav’s verbal tic is just one of the more annoying ones I’ve run into of late.
I’m pretty sure the girl in that last dream was one of the magical girls from Ruler’s group. Probably the one in the cow suit(?) who got 0 points that day.
first death in 2nd episode
faster than Madoka!
At least, Madoka still get to grant one wish … But, these girls, they just stay as magical girl or pay their life…what for…?