Magia Record: Main Cast
Every time I think this first batch of designs is good (and they are, mostly), I see some weird in-game art where you can tell the artist is drawing with one hand and my soul gem turns dark. But we'll ignore the cards and the in-game transformations, please, for my sake, and just look at the designs on their own. The anime does an impressive job of making a lot of them look good.
Iroha has the personality of a slice of unbuttered bread. She's endlessly forgiving, endlessly bland, and most of her dialogue consists of the name Ui. She is bargain bin Madoka Kaname. She has a bit more going on in the game, at least, and somehow despite how boring she is I do like her. This is what happens when you like pastel pink as much as I do...you get mind infected by any pink-haired character...anyway, Iroha's design is actually pretty nice. The cape is a cool choice, though what's going on underneath is less cool. I like the sort of angelic huntress look (paired with her arm arrow, I see the vision) but it just seems uncharacteristically skimpy for Iroha. Her turtleneck, safety shorts and full-body stocking suggests her shyness, but then the exposed skin kind of goes against this visual storytelling and I don't really get the point. Her hair is simple but cute. Her weapon is okay, though it doesn't do anything interesting on its own. Maybe that's why it suits her.
The sad thing about Iroha is her wasted potential. Her design is solid. She's a little lankier than Madoka, and a couple years older, so they don't look too similar. But I went into the game with a theory I now think is more interesting than the truth: I thought she was a manifestation of Ultimate Madoka, sent to check on this disrupted timeline, which I mainly assumed based on design. I still like that better. Later on in the game, when the Magius in their suspiciously Iroha-shaped cloaks were introduced, I developed a theory that Iroha was the founder of the Magius and had just had her memories of this erased. Her being her own antagonist just seemed like the perfect twist. But WHATEVER I guess.
Magia Record making its only adult characters the least sexualised of the bunch still kills me. But anyway, Yachiyo is an okay design. I prefer the tweaks they made in her anime redesign, and I'm disappointed she's the only girl who got a new look. She's a dark blue girl with a water theme, inevitable but effective, and she has a comical amount of spears. There are some uncomfortable cultural elements from what I've heard. The dress itself is fine, kind of cute with the stars, and I like the idea of a flowy dress with armour on top (though Sana kind of takes the gold here). Yachiyo is nineteen, which in Madoka years is an impressive age to reach, and she's the cool but big-sisterly friend Iroha (used to always being the big sister herself) needed. I am always going to ignore the game trying to ship them, of course. Yachiyo is a part-time model who made a wish to survive. I really like how they end up writing her, as genuinely a sweetheart but also a bit of an eccentric who loves grocery discounts and trucks. One thing I can't buy about her is that supposedly Yachiyo has had this exact same costume (including thigh slit) since she became a magical girl at...twelve. I just don't believe that. I'm sure the girls can make mild alterations to their costumes as they age. It's just so stupid and lazy of the game to only change her hair and the size of her eyes.
It was a smart call to diversify the colour palette of the Quintet in this game. Tsuruno, the friendly genki girl of the group who runs a mid Chinese restaurant, has an appealing orange scheme which goes nicely with her brown hair and decent outfit. Later she gets a creepypasta colour swap "Rumour Tsuruno" and it's pretty sick. I like Tsuruno. Well. I mainly like the big fire fans.
Sadly the bratty mercenary Felicia kind of gets the short end of the main girl stick, with a design that just feels slightly weird for a 13 year old. But I do really love her lavender colour palette and her big fun hat, and her character is fun. She wields a huge hammer and has a passionate hatred for witches, because she thinks one killed her parents. Her simple hairstyle works with the longer tails of her hat, and the soul gem on a chain idea is neat even if the execution is dumb here. Felicia deserves better.
Sana is probably my favourite of the main girls, which is kind of a bad sign since her whole thing is being the overly shy woobie moe girl with a laughably tryhard-tragic backstory. The part about her feeling invisible and excluded was enough without her parents forcing her to speak to them over email, I feel. Thankfully they repaired that in the anime, and also fixed the game's weird thing with the wording of her wish. I really like Sana. Her story about trapping herself with the AI rumour is genuinely emotional and squeezed a few tears out of me in the anime. Her costume is adorable with its princess-knight theme, suggesting she's saving herself...the armour plating her legs and turtleneck is cool, and I adore that tiara with the long, obscuring veil. I also like her minty colour scheme and her huge riot shield weapon. Sana is one of the best-designed Magireco girls easily, and I feel she could have been in the original show. Her quirk of being really into medieval torture devices is, on the surface, just a funny eccentricity like Felicia loving cows. But it's also a consequence of her being bullied, as a troubled mind will often turn to violent fantasies. I like that Magia Record depicted this without any shame. Check out her sick Doppel for more details :3
This is our first plainly bad design. Momoko is a big-sisterly, down-to-Earth girl and I can't remember anything in her character suggesting she would choose an outfit of this sort. I still conceptually like Momoko's aesthetic, as much as it doesn't suit her much. She seems to have a sort of RPG swordgirl look, but then they ruin it by stealing her pants and suddenly deciding she's a fairycore girl at pelvis-level. Her sword is also very plain, but the shape of it is cool. I think this is the design that most needed changing for the anime, because Momoko plays a fairly large role there.
Kaede is a unique idea for a character, because she's simultaneously timid and soft-spoken but also very opinionated and capable of defending herself, which means she can stand alongside Sana in the main cast without seeming like a carbon copy. Kaede is also soo close to being a perfect design with that cute Autumn witch aesthetic but the level of shown skin just doesn't work. You can literally see where they've cut holes in otherwise wonderful outfits just for cheap...fanservice? I don't even know. But it looks dumb. I'd personally move the hat so she's actually wearing it, button up her jacket/cape thing, and make the shorts poofier or even turn them into pants.
Rena is one of my favourite magical girls in this series, and though the anime messed her up a bit by making her way meaner, I love her so much in the game, where she's a tsundere type without being cruel or a bully. They also give her a reason to be standoffish: she's actually extremely socially anxious and painfully insecure, which manifests as the tsundere stuff. Rena hates herself to the point of only feeling comfortable when she uses her wish's magic to take on the appearance of other people, and I think a lot of us can sadly feel that. Her design is obviously a bit messy, but I believe that's intentional, as if she's patchworked out of other costumes. I even like the objectively ugly gradient. The thing is, all these odd elements and clashing patterns end up working well together, and they seem appropriate for her character. The dress with the sash has an idol-esque cut to it, which reflects Rena being a hardcore idol fan, and she probably looks the most like a "conventional" magical girl of this main group. Her spear has that plastic toy wand aesthetic, which is cute. Her hair is choppy and oddly styled, but again this works for Rena and I find it sweet. One of her motifs is mirrors, and when they incorporate that motif I enjoy it. On that note, her transformation in the anime is soo peak. Rena is everythinggg.