It tried to be Madoka, but it isn't Madoka. We have another some kind of dark magical girl story but in the end I felt like all the darkness, sacrifices and suffering was basically for nothing. There's no thematic reason (other than power of friendship beats everything) and there's limited satisfaction for the characters as well since it's basically what they joke about in Shirobako, our fight carries on. Nothing is accomplished, nothing is different. I suspect the prequel and sequel will bring more to the table but this is a review for season 1.

We'll just start with Yuuki Yuuna the MC, she starts off as this cheery optimistic girl who wants to help others, and guess what she ends up being? cheery optimistic girl who wants to help others. Her best friend Tougou is a disabled girl on wheelchairs, we do find some interesting backstory about her, and she's fantastic fan service material with some really weird kinky stuff, but again she ends up being about the same as she started. Tougou's magical girl form is a BALLISTICS specialist

Inobuzaki Fuu and Inubouzaki Itsuki the other two leads are sisters, there's again some interesting twist and backstory to their characters but they still just circle around back to exactly who they were at the beginning.

Fuu the sister is basically the original magical girl here who invites the others into this dark tragic adventure where the other characters suffer some terrible stuff but she kind of doesn't care. In the end we still don't see her confront or discuss this gigantic issue. It's like if you invite your friends to do some community service but actually you brought them to Vietnam for jungle warfare, one of your friends get shot in the face, the other gets their leg blown off by land mines. But you don't feel like you need to talk to them and explain this situation? And they don't ever feel like they blame you for any of it? I mean that's great friendship but kind of boring and unrealistic is it?

There are also big issues with the setup, the five main girls are in a club at school, they're fighting as magical girls to protect civilians, typical stuff. But there are basically no named civilian characters that show up for more than 1 scene. Everyone else at school, in the town they live in, are nameless NPCs who don't matter, which brings up the question of why would anyone personally sacrifice themselves to save people that don't matter. I mean think about this, if I tell you that there is about to be a traffic accident later today and one random person in your town will die from it, but you can prevent it by amputating your legs and spend the rest of your life in wheelchair. Would you do it? I'm sorry but I don't feel like doing it, I don't owe that random person anything. And we're talking about real-life people here, in the show you're watching the girls do this for random fictional people that never show up, so how about you know... just let them die?

Unnamed, voiceless NPCs watching a stage play by the main 5 girls.

There is just this huge disconnect from the core 5 characters, their club and the rest of the world, which doesn't feel like it exists and therefore you don't really care about. All you care about are the 5 main girls but the girls only want to save the world so it's very hard to empathize with them. Usually in these situations the main characters will have some friend who's a civilian but they just didn't bother here for some reason, even though there are plenty of episodes that's just 100% pure slice of life and feel like wasted episodes.

Power levels are somewhat messed up, they say Yuuna is the strongest magical girl but not really, Tougou clearly beats her in hand to hand even though Tougou is not a melee specialist and Yunna is. Characters basically are as strong as the story need them to be at that moment, there's no satisfaction from analyzing power levels here. Just turn off your brain and go with the emotions as the voice actors scream their heart out.

I also found the ending to be very underwhelming, it's basically a shounen manga, you just need to punch harder to win, manifest more power of friendship, with enough power level you can defeat anything, overcome any challenge, even ignore previously established rules of sacrifices. This kind of stuff is now days looked down upon even for shounen, we want powers that have down sides right? There are no down sides to power here, if it ever seemed like there were, it's because you didn't try hard enough bro, you just need to git gud.

This show does look really good, excellent line art, almost free of distortions start to finish. Background blends well with animated characters. The 3D elements that show up are also blended well with the 2D, they don't stick out like a sore thumb like in lesser shows.

2 bonus points for Tougou, she's the best, now I gotta watch the prequel for more...

Unfortunate implications

Spoiler, click to view

I don't like to accuse a show of having unfortunate political implications lightly but having thought about this a lot and watching the prequel and sequel, I kind of can't unsee it. This is an allegory for homeland defense near the end of WWII, where the military government was prepared to sacrifice every civilian life to protect themselves, but in the name of the emperor. And the worst part, the show clearly frames this desperate defense as justified and the only solution.

Toward the end Tougou was prepared to betray the sacred tree (emperor) and let the so-called enemies invade and destroy it, but the other girls stop her, Tougou just comes around and all the girls sacrifice almost everything to defend the tree. In the end the tree reward their sacrifices with complete restoration of their bodies, including parts sacrificed in previous battles.

This is so incredibly messed up, firstly you're saying it's better for these civilian school girls to all die than to have the government be toppled.
Then you're saying the tree didn't actually need any of these sacrifices, since it can just give them back as reward. Basically it's a test, the tree had the ability to grant these girls the power to win the fights all along, but it won't until the girls prove their faith by willingly sacrificing their bodies?

BTW for those who don't believe me when I said Tougou exists for kinky fan service, the first thing she does to test whether it is possible for a magical girl to die, is seppuku, and they even animate this entire thing. C'mon be honest if you really suspect god is not letting you die, would you really start with something as ineffective and slow as seppuku? Was there really a need to animate this as well? They know full well what they're doing, wink wink.