WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story, Episode 1, "Have You Heard? That Rumor About the Magical Girls."

It's been almost ten years since Puella Magi Madoka Magica did for magical girls what Neon Genesis Evangelion did for mecha anime. And, much like Evangelion had its own "Rebuild," Madoka Magica has its own revival: Magia Record, a side-story taking place in the world of Madoka Magica.

For those who are less familiar with the original anime, this side-story might seem unremarkable. After all, it starts out appearing like a typical magical girl premise, with cute girls being granted sweet, pure wishes from a cute cat-like creature named Kyubey. They travel, fight surreal-looking monsters and then go home. It seems unremarkable, but Madoka fans will know that these genre trappings are being established to be smashed apart.

Before we get into the series premiere of Magia Record, let's go over what Madoka is all about and how the Magia Record anime fits into the franchise.

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WHAT IS MADOKA?

Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a series about Madoka Kaname, a young girl who, along with her friend Sayaka, is tossed into a world where witches terrorize all those around them. When they see the beautiful magical girl Mami Tomoe shoot down one witch in an epic battle, they are inspired to become magical girls themselves. But before they can achieve this, they need to ask for one wish that will come true, all courtesy of the strange cat-like entity known as Kyubey.

But things aren't exactly what they seem at first. When witches are defeated, they leave behind grief seeds, which magical girls use to refuel their own Soul Gems. When a magical girl drops her soul gem, they realize that their bodies are lifeless husks that can no longer feel pain -- or anything at all. To use a Harry Potter comparison, the Soul Gem is their Horcrux.

On top of that, the wishes rarely work out quite as the person intends -- often going awry and leaving the magical girls worse off than they started. This has terrible consequences for those around them because when the magical girls are miserable, their Soul Gems become corrupted. When that happens, Soul Gems become Grief Seeds, and those good magical girls become uncontrollable witches, driven by grief to destroy.

This turns out to all be part of a plot by Kyubey, who is less of a cute cat mascot and more a Lovecraftian horror monster who can replace his body; has lived for millennia, and is using the energy generated by the magical girl-witch conflict he created to stave off the heat death of the universe.

The series ends with Madoka wishing to eliminate all witches before they appear at any time in any dimension. This turns Madoka effectively into a god, compelling her to combat every witch in order to save girls from pain.

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WHAT IS MAGIA RECORD?

The new series, Magia Record, is based on a mobile spinoff game released in 2017. The series follows a new group of magical girls, theoretically taking place alongside the original anime or in another timeline created by Homura. Homura is a magical girl who wished to save Madoka and wound up trapped by Kyubey in a Groundhog Day-style until she could find a timeline where Madoka didn't die at the end of it. (Spoiler alert: she died at the end.)

In the series premiere of Magia Record, we meet Iroha Tamaki, a young magical girl who forgot her wish was to save a girl named Ui's illness. We don't know much about her yet, other than that she's a responsible girl who takes her witch-fighting seriously. She hears rumors about a cure for being a magical girl, located in Kamihama City. The rumor is spread thanks to dreams countless magical girls are having about the same thing. She later has this same dream at the end of the first episode.

However, Kamihama City is under the control of Yachiyo Nanami, a spear-wielding magical girl who seems dismissive of the whole dream thing. She tells them to tell off any girl who believes in the rumors, though it seems unlikely they can ward off the magical girls about to converge on this one city, as all magical girls feel either a sense of fatigue with the endless wars or disappointment with the way their wishes turned out.

Tamaki also finds an unusual miniature version of Kyubey along the way. It disappears when the witch is defeated, but, unlike normal Kyubey, this one appears to want to help the magical girls out. We don't know much more than that at the present, other than that the episode ends with Tamaki feeling the pull to return to Kamihama City.

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CONNECTIONS TO THE ORIGINAL

Magia Record

Aside from the existence of Kyubey, there are a few other ways that Magia Record connects to the original Madoka series. During the closing credits of this episode (which will be the anime's opening going forward), we see the original crew from the first series, hanging out. Other than that, upon first glance, the new anime seems to have very little in common with the original where cameos are concerned.

That is, until we see the dreams about Kamihama City. We're told that Kamihama City is a place where magical girls can come to be saved. While there are rumors swirling around the place, the core reason people believe this is a place for salvation is due to a dream. The dream features multiple magical girls descending down an obscure path with tons of shadowy figures. All the figures in the dreams we see are desaturated, save for two figures: the dreamer and a pink-haired girl, guiding the way.

This figure could be Madoka. She has pink hair after all, and, as we saw in the prior series, she made a wish to eradicate all witches from reality. It is possible that this could be an alternate timeline that Madoka is finally traversing. Or, perhaps, this is the same reality that featured Madoka in the original anime, and she is summoning all of these magical girls to one location to cure them all in mass. Hopefully, the next episode will offer more clues.

Based on the mobile game of the same name, Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story streams on Funimation at 11:30 a.m. on Sundays.

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