#mami bc she’s the one who’s criticized for caring more about her feelings than the realities of fighting.

[bitemarx]

her and duck newton.. chosen ones who stare down fate like a barrel to the head and chose to walk away. literally so interesting 2 me

anyway. hero oak #1 mami tomoe defender.

[magireco]

ive never played/watched magireco but do you think the large cast is a part of iroha just being seen as “madoka 2” ?? ive never touched the thing because from what i know its much darker than the original anime, but i do know there’s like 20 thousand megucas in the game and each of them has their own story, so there’s plenty of characters that could be seen as more interesting. theres also the fact that a lot of people dont like gacha games (and magireco, other than being one, is sexualized quite a bit so that probably makes people steer away from it as well, but that’s another topic) and magireco NA no longer exists anyways so it’s harder to actually understand the new content, plus as far as i’m aware season 2 of the magireco anime has not been confirmed to be planned? correct me if i’m wrong on that though

hi!! i have a lot to cover with this ask, so i’m going to answer your questions as neatly as i can in a fun little numbered list. read under the cut!

1. what do you mean by large cast? if you’re talking about how there’s more characters in the game/anime than in the original series, then i don’t think that really has anything to do with iroha. it might just be to garner fans’ collective interest since the original anime hit it off so hard. also, it’s just really hard to please huge collectives of people, especially really critical anime fans... *shiver.*

2. i think iroha bearing a similar resemblance to madoka was used to draw old fans back in, as well as living up to the tradition of all “main character” magical girls having pink hair. iroha and yachiyo were probably meant to resemble madoka and homura at least design-wise, and also seeing iroha, madoka, and homura together in one image is visually appealing; the colors and the familiar faces next to a new face are nice to look at.

3. magia record is not nearly as dark as the original series! in the anime, there are no main-cast deaths. this does not inherently prove that a show isn’t dark, but literally, the only onscreen death is of yachiyo’s friend from her original team, and that was in a flashback... rather than slowly losing characters as the story goes on, it starts off with iroha alone, then she meets other magical girls and they form a team, etc. i go on about this on my blog bc, once again, in my opinion, magia record has much more hopeful undertones and actually gives the girls a chance to, well... live. it’s an alternate timeline(that madokami can’t interfere with, there’s lore to that) wherein glasses homura is the homura featured(she actually gets a lot of character growth in the game), the main quintet is all together, the mikazuki villa crew really are just the found family trope combined in a little package. 

4. there are a few reasons for there being a lot of characters in the game, one of them being that they literally adapted every spinoff into the game. oriko magica, tart magica, suzune magica, kazumi magica... all those characters are there. then they added a bunch of side characters, which, i dunno? there are some side characters i really like and others i just kind of don’t really care about. but they really grow on you! .... most of them. 

5. yeah, blegh. the game certainly has its flaws(the whole series does, but that’s another ask for another day). the anime is much, much less fanservicey though! i have my gripes about the designs and i certainly have my gripes about the way the characters are drawn sometimes (looking at you, swimsuit mami artist), but with me being an experienced gacha player (unfortunately) that was just something i decided to put up with in exchange for a fun story. i can see why people might get the misconception that the anime is just as sexualized, though. i don’t like the main characters’ designs that much, honestly... they all show too much skin, so i agree. weird.

6. season 2 was confirmed! 

7. NA was discontinued right after the first arc of the series. disappointing (oh, i could go on), but we got to see a lot of iroha’s character development in the story.

8. what i was really trying to get across with that post was really just to gripe about in-fandom stuff. there are plenty of other characters that could be seen as more interesting than iroha, especially considering the mikazuki villa girls are all so varied, but that’s kind of how it is with every series, honestly. there’s always going to be one character that seems less interesting compared to other ones. i just kind of realized that iroha gets the short end of the stick compared to the other girls. not only because of her resemblance to madoka, but because of her perceived blandness and the lack of people who care to analyze why she might act that way. her pink motif and gentle, kind demeanor translates as “madoka copy” in people’s heads, and, y’know, it translated like that in mine the first time i saw her, too. but, when you actually think about her arc aside from her resemblance to madoka in several different ways, you get a really interesting and special character; just as special as the others! there was a similar issue with madoka, honestly, with people brushing her off because she wasn’t as “emotionally deep” as the rest of the quintet, even though that’s not true at all. i think it’s unfair that people will brush off a character just because they’re nice; that they’ll reduce characters like iroha and madoka to their cuteness and kindness only and not analyze the rest of the details that they have intentionally(or sometimes unintentionally, y’know how anime writing can be) been written with! 

...but then again, i’m biased in my own way, admittedly. i relate to iroha (i really just made that post because i was thinking about how i’ve never seen someone touch on how her memory gaps affect her), and i just wasn’t seeing any coverage on it, so i thought, someone has to do this! i also just... don’t see people who coin themselves as “iroha fans” very often? she’s one of the characters who is there, but usually not deemed interesting enough for someone to be a superfan of. i’m probably hypocritical, considering homura akemi is my favorite character and she’s pretty popular in the fandom, but what i said is more of an observation than an accusation anyway. i had similar feelings with madoka, but i haven’t gone on a proper ramble about that yet. 

...these characters also aren’t real people, so i’d say i probably shouldn’t go on such long rambles about them, but i really do feel like they reflect a lot of real life experiences sometimes. like, me connecting to iroha’s struggles is something that connects her character to an actual experience. however, like i said in my original post, i am very much an overanalyzer, and i tend to take concepts and just run with them, especially when something stands out to me. this is also just a magical girl show, so i’m really not taking anything that personally. 

also, to clear anything up, the original post wasn’t meant to come across as me being angry, per se, at people who think iroha is boring, it just kind of ticks me off that she’s brushed off so quickly in the larger fandom because of her demeanor. this doesn’t really apply to people who aren’t into the series at all yet, because i’d literally also think “okay so we have madoka, and madoka with a hood” if i were in your shoes! also, people are allowed to dislike characters for no reason. i’m just silly and go on long defensive rants over the sad magical girls, and would probably be sad if people didn’t like iroha because of the reasons i mentioned. 

all in all, i do reccomend magia record very much if you can get past the sexualization of the gacha cards and the, um... poorly designed outfits. because the NA server has been shut down, there are channels on youtube that graciously upload videos of the in-game stories as well as side stories! in the game, there are sometimes entire side stories for characters’ outfits. because it’s a gacha game, there are events and such, and the event stories i’ve seen and/or read (most of the ones i’ve read have to do with homura though) are a lot of fun. i reccommend checking out muffinrecord’s channel if you’d like to read any of the stories (hopefully you’re the type of person who can sit and watch live2d models move around with boxes of text on the bottom for 25 minutes like me). they have everything sorted into playlists in that section of their youtube. of course, i also reccomend watching the anime, if you’re interested! the animation is polished and nice, even if the story is a little hard to follow at times. but if not, that’s okay too. 

thank you for the ask, and i hope i could clear some things up for you!