Mahou Shoujo Site

Have you ever seen a show so banal, so worthless, so unintelligent, so uselessly defiant, so lazy and so pathetic that you hate it with every fiber of your being the longer it goes on as lazy jump ship of popular trends? For me, the biggest example of that, is the latest edge cancer to pound the anime community known as: Mahou Shoujo Site. It is inevitable that within a community, when some concept does something to “break the mold” in a unique way and becomes a mega hit, there will be a ton of copycats spawning from it, to get a slice of that sweetsweet dough. In Western Animation, films like Shrek, as well as cartoons like Ren & Stimpy and South Park made such big impacts that they inspired a jillion ripoffs continuing to this day, all misunderstanding what made their originals work. In anime, we’ve seen this a lot recently when shows attempt to make money by blatantly taking the template from a successful series. It has come with the success of the high school battle harem genre, the survival game genre, Sword Art Online, and of today’s subject: Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Not the earliest example of moe gone dark (When They Cry beats it by about half a decade), but certainly a modern landmark. Madoka Magica, a show using the disguise of a typical Mahou Shoujo praised for its artistry, emotional depth and willingness to go to dark places in showing its characters confronting mistakes they wished to undo, was a mega success, and other creators’ response to that was “if we take a Magical Girl show, and add dark elements, it’ll be a hit”. Shows like Yuki Yuna, Selector Infector WIXOSS, Magical Girl Raising Project and today’s subject: Mahou Shoujo Site, are a result of that bandwagoning. Having seen Yuki Yuna about two years ago, it felt like it went too safe with its content, not being able to properly explore the darker elements the same way Madoka did and not greatly delivering on the lighthearted fun at its front. At the time, I thought maybe if one of these shows would be more willing to handle darker themes, it could have interesting things to say about life and expectations. I was WROOOOOOOOOOOOOONG. Mahou Shoujo Site might, flat out, be the most thoroughly reprehensible, apathy inducing, tryhard, edgy, unpitiable, lazily produced, tonally deaf, inhumane, DISGUSTING pile of shit that I have ever come across. It sucks ass! It sucks balls! It sucks ASS BALLS! And it all starts from one of the worst first episodes I have ever seen for ANY series, let alone anime, one that was so bad it encouraged me to see this to the end just to tear it to shreds. The entire episode was nothing but torture porn, shown with a shy cute girl, to instantly draw sympathy dealing with a list of edge tactics like it was some sort of fucking checklist. These range from her contemplating suicide, to being emotionally/physically tortured by school bullies, to being viciously beaten by her psychopathic brother, having a cute kitten she saved be thrown in front of a train/delivered to her, and being nearly raped by an upperclassman while said bullies just snicker and watch. Eventually through the power of plot convenience, she obtains a magic gun that accidentally kills several of said bullies, only for her to be backed into a corner by another character threatening her with a razor blade. That character then gets stopped by an edgy sociopath girl who could control time. Using so many edge tactics would be laughable if it wasn’t so thoroughly DISGUSTING to watch. All of this torture throughout the first episode is handled in an overtly methodical way, not representative of genuine human fault but a lazy writer using every edgy thing he discovered as a means of forcing audience sympathy. It doesn’t work, not even in the slightest. Gore, violence and cruelty all have their place in a meaningful narrative when they underlie an interesting story or human drama, but going on episode 1 alone, more care seemed to be placed on the tools of edgelords compared to the basic essentials of story, character, or presentation. And yet, despite this awful first episode, it never tried to go further in darkness, but remained brain dead, single minded and bizarrely bipolar with edge to the end. The show was too lazy to even go to the same extremes again. People like me who wanted to watch this to see how much more torturous it could get were met with a barely functional Madoka plagiarist trying to wring earnest interactions out of fetishes with no sense of tone, pacing, or comradery. Everything from Episode 2 onwards is introducing a powerful world ending conflict (the nature of which was blatantly stolen from you know what), while other characters are slowly but surely brought in to put on their edgiest Yandere smile before becoming party members in the inevitable quest. There are many, many, many problems with the writing of this show but for me, the biggest one is tonal cohesion. It can be seen as a problem in a large amount of anime from Fullmetal Alchemist to The Ancient Magus Bride that there are silly comedy moments in addition to the handling of darker themes. However, shows like those keep their overall presentation at a respectable middle ground where either comedy or drama could work when needed, because they care and understand about character building causes for conflict or human drama. The one thing I wasn’t expecting Magical Girl Site to pull was have so many moments where “comedy” arises, whether through one character taking on an appearance with gag boobs, a reference to “apple butts”, comedy credits stingers with the sister-molesting older brother, XD chibi expressions, a girl who frequently gets off to smacking her old butler on the ass, magical mind control panties, or a Beach Episode. Yes, you heard that right. A BEACH EPISODE. A show where everything I mentioned in the first episode occurs, where a character cuts herself in order to heal people with blood, and where another character says “God has never abandoned me before” crazy eyed while bleeding from the mouth and nose, has time for a beach episode. The sheer extent of the whiplash is what really takes me out of anything the show attempts. Whatever humor exists here would be horribly unfunny even in a comedy show, but putting it in a show where nearly every girl deals with cold blooded torture and bleeds from some part of their body when using their power makes any attempts at wacky humor feel like incomprehensible tonal homicide. And not intentionally to create false ease like say, Higurashi. The humor mainly exists to fulfill more of the author’s obvious fetishes. And it’s not just the humor that detracts from the show’s tone, it’s the forced togetherness of the End of the World conflict (pretentiously called The Tempest) that brings it down to the dark depths of anime hell. In a show where crazed maniac girls are commonplace holding death grudges against one another, none of the many relationships feel like they build to comraderies. They just happen because the plot type demands it. Most egregiously with one of the bullies from Episode 1 that remained alive. Said character gets an incredibly disproportionate reason for starting her less than human bullying streak, nearly kills the protagonist at a latter point, and then just because the protagonist doesn’t kill her back, they become buddy buddies to stop the end of the world. WHAT?! Sure, there’s a realization there but that’s barely a redemption arc and it is unforgivable to try and move our sympathies to a girl who gleefully tortured the shy and ineffectual protagonist in Episode 1 because of a ctrlCctrlV broad conflict. Several other character relationships go the exact same way, with characters at each other’s throats becoming close friends without any sort of proper pacing to get to that point. What could’ve been developed drama of troubled characters finding it within themselves to work together becomes sullied by a forced need to have the “band together against the apocalypse” involving way too many characters who get no time to let conflicts hold. For a show proudly putting its foot down to say “we’re willing to go to DARK depths of what people suffer in life” without time to care about anything, going Team Force Friendship is about the most cliché thing it could possibly do. It’s DiC Sailor Moon putting on the mask of Elfen Lied and Mirai Nikki just to appeal to the edgelord crowd, forgetting that it drove out all likability in only the first episode! Then there’s the power system and eponymous Magical Girl Site system itself, which like many elements of this show, are also f*cked beyond belief. First off, every weapon used by a girl in this show is called…….a Stick. Yup, a Stick, like a tree branch or something. It’s used here to describe anything from heart guns to necklaces to yo-yos to magic controlling panties. Unless you named the weapons Ding Dongs I don’t think there’s any way the author could’ve put less thought in. Serious scenes where characters call their weapons Sticks come off as more silly than fierce. I could just now imagine one girl picking up a tree branch and attempting to wear it underneath her skirt, insisting that it is called underwear, in a world where magic panties are considered Sticks. Finally, the whole Magical Girl Site concept. “Scary” face papercut people in some weird pocket dimension hack computers to give random girls magical girl powers for what seems like no reason, but eventually is revealed to relate to the completely forced apocalypse. The one who gather the most arbitrary negative energy gets to survive while everyone else dies. No specific idea is handled with the Magical Girl recruiting, since they didn’t even nick Madoka’s “wish for a price hope/despair” routine, just the enemy identity idea stolen in every series ever featuring fights against inhuman monsters, with no time to sink in because of awful pacing. Most of the origin stories for the girls don’t get an exclamation at all for the site being there, like the writer was too lazy to care about why they had their generic or fetish powers. The site itself doesn’t connect to the conflicts of any character even semi-well, with this antagonist force not getting any justification for their appearance, random ass powers or Halloween play paper cutout appearance. In that sense, the show’s script is emblematic of everything regarding this series. Illogically lazy. Not bothering to commit to any unique ideas, it instead nicks them from a source most people would recognize, but lacks any sort of tonal cohesion, proper pacing, variety, understanding of human drama, effort or passion. It doesn’t even conclude itself properly, giving fuck all to any sort of viewer payoff as well. It’s pure phoned in tripe, creating a torturous 1st episode only to wring further relationships from the foundation of a used toilet paper tower on a raft in the ocean, during a thunderstorm. Naturally this laziness extends to the animation as well, from the studio’s 2nd ever project. With no effort blasé character designs, bleh grey and black backgrounds (except during the beach episode), and absolutely nothing resembling flow in fight scenes, this is about the lowest effort one can put into a TV anime, sans excessive CGI armies or characters moving like a PowerPoint presentation. Even the few attempts at visual flourish are either “paint everything blue or red”, or sunset scenes. Action, as I mentioned before, has no flow in any capacity, even doing things like using action lines over colored backgrounds that I thought we grew out of in early Pokemon. Fundamental things are done terribly, like crows not bleeding when they are cut in half, or photoshopped meatballs being over characters’ heads in one occurrence. And there’s also the wonderful images of many Yandere faces, a psychotic grown man putting on little girl panties, and the ED having sperm fly everywhere. A show like Hand Shakers looks godawful in its own way but I could at least tell that the staff at Studio GoHands were TRYING to do something unique and inventive, despite it backfiring in every conceivable way. A show like this does about the minimum effort possible to be considered passable in some capacity, and absolutely suffers for poor art design because of it. So it’s a shame for however many Japanese animators spent long days and nights on it. The sound is also low effort, so low effort that I barely have anything to talk about. Suppose I could mention that the one girl who runs fast does so with an obvious stock sound effect, or the fact that this show’s entire reason for being adapted hinges on promoting the idol group I⭐️ris. You heard that right, even the STUDIO only made this to profit off a contract for a promoting idol group, one whose insert in the series wasn’t even memorable by Idol standards. Because anyone who gave a crap about artistic integrity or creativity stayed as far away from this as possible. Finally, the characters. What “characters”? This show has none! All it has is inhumane gleefully cruel excuses for the author to jot down his fetishes and edge checklists. These characters all have names and unique hair types, but without any distinguishing character features to them, the “character” element fades in the background. Already Episodes 2-12 are forced to work with Episode 1’s broken foundation, and when it does have to try and “develop” anyone from that episode, it has nothing to work with and leads to nothing properly worthwhile. The pacing’s jank so any chemistry between devices feels tenuous at best and completely unbelievable at worst. The lack of effort isn’t just present for what the show lacks but for what is present as well. Of the nine girls (eventually ten) that it puts in the “Hero Group” role, six of them have edgy Yandere moments at different points, which is not only lazy but barely distinguishable or built up. Higurashi didn’t make every single girl a Yandere, and for the ones they did, they built up the element, however well. It even uses the “my parents were killed by a psychotic man” backstory twice, one of which gets revenge so fast that we have no reason to care for the endeavor. And when those in the show are not being psycho Yanderes (including the evil for the sake it older brother), they’re either completely cliche or fulfilling a sick fetish for the author with no substance or identifiable goal. Whether it be the gag boobs girl, the apple butted idol who controls people with magic panties, a girl who cuts herself frequently to heal people through the mouth insisting she’s not emo, a girl whose only trait is “runs fast”, or a girl whose main trait is smacking about an innocent old butler. Every Magical Girl bleeds from a different part of their body as well, so anyone with a bleeding fetish can rejoice in knowing that bleeding from body parts will be a continual process that is never confronted as a problem because the show is that lazy! The ONLY attempt at anything resembling a character arc is protagonist Aya, who learns to get over her shyness, make friends with other characters, rebel against an immediate plan following a character death, and organize a beach visit for everyone! On paper it’s acceptable growth, but in practice, the terrible writing and relationships that aren’t given any time to rest, making many of her choices feel forced. This includes her forgiveness of the bully girl who viscerally tormented her prior and during the series start. It’s a cliché path hampered down by the creator’s laziness as well as awful plot rolling. No one else has anything CLOSE to that attempt, which I should stress was unsuccessful. Enjoyment and Conclusion One could easily say “why did you even talk about this show if you knew you were going to hate it from Episode 1”? Simply put, anime tends to inspire me in its ambition. Whether a show is a masterpiece or a dumpster fire, I’m usually enthused by its wide variety across genres, different strengths and screw-ups, passion projects and inventive concepts using animation. I admire the storytelling potential present in an anime series, whether it be from the classics period or the modern age. The reason I single out a show like this is because it is the antithesis of everything worthwhile in an anime, or any form of art period. Rather than putting effort to make their series high quality, the author did nothing more than rip off popular trends to steal away a direct audience, not having to keep tone so he can throw his sick fetishes into an angsty Yandere-full horribly contrived setup. It’s a show the studio put out, not to share an inventive idea with the world, but to promote an idol group with the bare minimum in every capacity. This isn’t misguided passion, or even the type of hilarious straight faced terrible idiocy one could find in Ousama Game. This is a product, assembly lined from checklists and trends that shouldn’t persist, forgoing the artistry its inspirations held high, and is impossible to enjoy because it was neither consistently in straightfaced “crawling in my skin” nor smart enough to be a parody of itself. Laziness begets laziness when it comes to this, spitting on the potential of anime storytelling for something less substantial than starring out a smoked window for 4 hours. This fetish fueled, plagiarized, lazily produced tripe isn’t even remarkably bad. It disgusts me in having nothing but contempt for the concept of effort. It’s boringly awful in every way, but complete failure all the same that I could never recommend to anyone.

What is an edgy anime? Edgy anime are the type of series that uses it and themes to make a serious tone however unlike mature shows where they create a permanent tone eddy shows would very often switch it’s dark tone around in favour of having a more lighthearted narrative and tone. A lot of the time these shows would often have a lot serious topics, and themes that ultimately goes nowhere thanks to they awful tone shifts and because of this a lot of theses edgy shows ending up very pretentious as a result. The real problem with theses edgy shows that like with ecchiand harems they have the high chance of seeing well which sadly attracts the lowest common denominator where the audience in that group would only a show because it’s dark themes and violence. Akame ga Kill is one of the worst examples of this because not only the show itself didn’t function correctly as thanks it’s non-existence worldbuilding, plot holes, cringe-worthy storytelling, embarrassing production values, horrid characters designs that don’t fit with the setting of the show and pathetic characters but the show had no had no idea of what a mature show should be. There are other edgy anime like Future Dairy, Elfen Lied, and that I want to talk about but I will save theses edge feasts for another time. Personally I really despite anime that are edge because not only do these shows would forget to tell a story but they also would go out of the way to shock the audience with the edge and tonal shifts. So what does this have to with Spring 18 Magical Girl Site you may ask? Well, I will tell you to know. Magical Girl Site is one of the most cringiest edgy anime I have ever seen because not only it’s generally a horrible but it cannot even use it’s edgy/dark content correctly. While Magical Girl Site isn’t the worst anime, I have seen it still an anime that I hate. Story. The story follows a middle school girl named Aya Asagirl who has problems with both her school and home life thanks to the aggravated bullying and physical abuse. While browsing online a website pops up on her computer featuring a creepy-looking person. The person appears to take pity on her and announces that she has granted Asagiri magical powers. She clicks yes and on the following day a pink toy looking gun shows up in her school locker and there Aya must learn to deal with her new magical power as well finding the meaning of the countdown clock on the website. Am just going to say it right now the story for Magical Girl Site is abysmal. Ride of the bat this anime makes an awful first impression where the audience are awkwardly thrown into heavy and sensitive themes such as child abuse, rape, depression and torture without any reason apart from poorly establish the protagonist for the story. Besides of all the dark edgy shit that goes on in the story this is just your typical magical girl where characters in the show will have mini characters arcs as well being a boring survival type of show where only one magical girl can survive. This is the least of my issues with the show. The real issue of this show that ended up killing the anime was its portrayal of heavy and sensitive themes. This is by far the most disusing anime I have seen because it too all of the sensitive and heavy themes such as rape, child abuse, depression, torture, and bullying and doesn’t treat them with respect as the show constantly went over the top and edgy about them. I liked shows where they address and tackle sensitive and heavy themes but this show clearly did not have a clue to present its sensitive themes and because of this me and majority of anime fans literally got sick while watching. After watching the first three episodes I was physically being ill thanks to this show physically abusing the poor little girl. What makes this worse is how Aya the protagonist doesn't do a damm thing about it because honestly, this show could have gone for a different direction if the writers simply allow Aya to move into the foster care home away from her school and school after episode 1 as soon she gets the pink toy gun and the plot could have moved along a bit differently but no we can’t have nice thing thanks to this show stupidity. The pacing of the show is pretty inconstant overall as either go way too fast or way too slow. While it’s not as bad as Record of the Garncrest War it’s still a big issue that kills the flow of the series as well as all the events that happen in the show. What really pissed me off about the show that the show had the balls to have a poorly directed beach episode aka episode 8. Not only that episode killed the tone of the series up to that point where it’s very dark, but the show at no point had a piece of dialogue that stated the girls are going to the beach to have some cool time. I understand the show was trying to throw the audience of its sudden tone shift, but this was the worst way to do as it feels so lazy and forced. Speaking of Episode 8 this was the same episode that features the worst man to man confrontation I have ever seen in anime as not only it was all over the top but the direction/writing was horrible. Episode 9 is even worse as the show decides to takes all of its physics and logic and ultimately throws out the window in favor of shock value. (Spoilers ahead) The way that Nijimi died in the show was horrible because not only it featured horrible directing but the way Nijimi was able to live for that along to even able to stab Kaname in the throat with an edge of a glass bottle after being cut by Ringa sword which Kaname our comically evil villain was using. It's was bad enough that she didn't get decapitated immediately from the way that was cut by Ringa sword but the way the show didn't even bother showing us the amount of blood that Nijimi while she was on the floor. What makes this episode baffling compared to any other episodes in the series is her death could have been easily avoided if Nijimi actually controlled her temper like in the earlier episodes in the series where despite having temper issues she still smart enough to not allow her temper to take over. Ridiculous... (End of spoilers) Overall the story for Magical Girl Site was beyond awful and sickening. 1/10 Characters. The characters in Magical Girl Site are all one-dimensional edgelords as they are all tropey as hell as well being very unlikeable fools. The main protagonist Aya is your shitty damsel in distress type character who everyone treats like trash for no reason other than to give her a sad backstory. Tsuyuno is the boring ass monitor with dark past Nijimi is a cute but tempered idol who would stop at nothing to kill the person who killed her best friend. Sarina is the loud mouth bitch who refuses to listen to people even if it important. Rina is a very intelligent girl who is very clumsy. Kosame is the stoic edgelord who has the edgiest power ever where she gets to heal someone by cutting her own skin. The other characters aren't much better at in fact some of them are even worst. Kaname is probably one of the most contrived villains I have ever seen in my life. Not only he such a disgraceful human being where he actively liked beats her own sister up Aya for stress relief but the way he literally became one of the main villains in the second half of the show was retarded!!! Overall like with the story itself the characters are utter shit. 1/10 Visuals. The visuals are okay, but it doesn’t matter when you have absolutely no substance to back up your visuals. The character designs for the main characters are pretty good overall and recognizable however the character designs for the side characters just were just awful and unappealing to look at The animation is okay for the most part, but there were times where the show had fair of still frames and choppy movement for some fights. 5/10 Sound. Thankfully the soundtrack for Magical Girl Site is the best part about this the series as it does a good job at capturing the dark nature of the series. The opening and endings theme on the other are just forgetful and the voice acting overall is alright for what it was. Overall the soundtrack is decent overall. 6/10 Final Thoughts. So that's is Magical Girl Site. A broken edgy mess of a show that doesn't even respect its audience. The story is horrendously written that is filled with horrible pacing and directing. The characters are all unsympathetic idiots who are edgy for the sake of being edgy. The only decent things about this show are the visuals and music other than that this show is a broken mess that barely functions. Easily the worst anime from spring 18 season by far and I strongly recommend you to avoid this edge feast as possible. Final Score 1.5/10

[Free of Major or Specific Spoilers] In my opinion, Mahou Shoujo Site is basically the King's Game of this season. It's an "edgy" anime with a low score. But this anime's been called edgy countless times and it's used as a reason to show why it's bad. I don't really agree with this. Ok, so, the story of Mahou Shoujo Site revolves around Aya and her miserable life and a website that can turn people into magical girls. It had the potential for some good psychological depth...but that potential was kinda wasted. I feel bad for a lot characters, especially Aya, but I wish more depth could'vegone into them. And in the last episode, there's a scene that's confusing. Aya was unable to perform a certain action before but then she suddenly can. Yes, I get that it sucks when an anime's potential is wasted. Yes, it sucks that some things are inconsistent. But a show can still be enjoyable despite that. Mahou Shoujo Site is interesting and keeps us watching to see how it'll end. Not everything was wrapped up...and it could've ended better...but it was still enjoyable to watch because of the tension-heavy scenes, fights, and the want to know more about the Tempest and everything else. As for the characters...I believe Tsuyuno was a relatively good one. I found myself liking her and she at least changed. She went from living for the sake of revenge to living for someone else. Aya and Tsuyuno basically lived for each other and I like how the anime showed this. Our main character went from a shy doormat to a person who speaks more freely and is determined to keep her friends safe. Rina and Sarina both changed as well as so there's that. I honestly thought Sarina would remain a bully with a dumb sense of logic but she didn't. I'm glad. Rina went from freaking psycho to just a little crazy (yet caring) in a way. Nijimin was likable to some extent but I think her backstory could've been timed better. The others weren't there for long so they didn't get much development which sucks because I actually liked Sayuki and Kiyoharu a bit. The art was nice, especially the parts when the magical girls used their powers. The animation itself wasn't too bad either. It was good enough to not distract me from watching it and instantly make me think "Oh wait, it just looked really weird right there". The sound was good too. Not a single moment felt weird because of any out of place music. Each one is timed well. It definitely added to the sadder parts of the show. The opening was good and really fits the magical girl genre in my opinion. The ending song didn't sound bad but I have to admit that the visuals were weird (and not because it was a live action). Story: 8 Art: 9 Sound: 10 Character: 8 Enjoyment: 10 Overall, Mahou Shoujo Site did some things wrong...but it also did some things good. Because of this, the show was enjoyable despite the flaws it had. Overall, I give it a 9.

Just about anyone could have made Mahou Shoujo Site. I say this with an open mind because it really comes down to a bunch of grimy ideas mixed together at once. Before I get to the who, what, how, where, and why, you really need to be aware of what’s ahead. As someone who have read the manga, I say with regret that Mahou Shoujo Site (Magical Girl Site) ended up being one of the worst shows of Spring 2018. It’s actually a bit demoralizing considering that there aren't many big magical girl hitters this year and it already set the bar very low. Forgetthe happy moments you’ll find in some magical girl series, there’s little to none in Mahou Shoujo Site. What you will find is a misfortunate girl named Aya Asagiri who has been bullied throughout her life. The thought of suicide often come across her mind and it doesn’t help that she has a dysfunctional family. Her life does change in the most peculiar way possible after acquiring a magical power from a mysterious website. Thus, Aya’s life as a magical girl begins. Alright, I’ll be honest here. Watching Mahou Shoujo Site at first felt like a guilty pleasure. I’m a sucker for dark, grimy series that tries to deconstruct the magical girl theme. At first glance, the show seems to explore the worst traits of humanity. The pilot episode features merciless bullying, family abuse, and even an animal killed off-screen. If we take a closer glance at Aya’s life, you can see that positivity is nonexistent. The first episode also establishes that Aya feels helpless because of her fragile personality and living conditions. It’s almost if the world is fighting against her and there’s always that thought of ending suffering by suicide. Indeed, this series deals with some sensitive issues that can be relatable in the real world so be aware of that. There’s no easier way to say it but bullies can cause emotional distress so distasteful that certain individuals just wants to end it all. However in Aya’s case, it’s just the beginning. After becoming a magical girl, she uses her powers to take revenge against Sarina Shizukume, the leader of a trio of bullies that has been tormenting her life. So what does this really mean for the show’s purpose? It basically means that humans have way too many flaws. Revenge is a common theme in dark magical girl shows so this isn’t something new. However, Mahou Shoujo Site’s execution of this formula fell flat because it feels unbelievable. A kind girl like Aya actually comitting a sin? That’s about as edgy as it can get. In fact, Mahou Shoujo Site loves to capitalize on every moment in attempt to make them unique. What ends up happening is the same formulatic execution over and over. Characters committing sin and trying to get even with someone is almost a norm in this anime. If that’s not your cup of tea, then this will be a very grueling experience. If you haven’t figured out the show is depressing to watch by this point, then maybe this could end up being a different experience for you. For me, this didn’t change especially after meeting the other characters. It seems that every magical girl in the show suffers from some sort of tragic past. The real question though is if we should feel sorry for them? Honestly, there’s two side of the coin to this. On one side, it’s easy to pity them because the magical girls chosen by the Magical Girl Site suffered so much in their lives. However, most of these magical girls show their personal flaws as they would do anything to escape their personal hell. This includes using their powers to torture, manipulate, or even kill. Characters such as Tsuyuno, Rina, and Nijimi have proven that they would do anything to achieve their goals. In essence, hardly any character in the series ends up being likable because of their flaws. The worst of all is Aya’s demented brother, Kaname. He abuses his own sister in any way possible for the pure joy of being in control. Throughout the series, Kaname shows a disturbing God-like complex that seems to be his own personal way of relieving stress in the family. It brings out the worst of this series whenever he appears on screen. Hiding behind his fake mask is a demon that is anything but acceptable in society. At some point of the show, I stopped taking him seriously because how fake the character is presented. He became more of a meme that exposes the worst of humanity. In fact, this anime presents men in disgraceful ways. Kaname’s father and the bully that nearly rapes Aya in the beginning of the series are two other examples. I’m not sure if that was the show’s intention in the first place but still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. With 12 episodes, are there any reasons to watch this anime? Well to be fair, the anime is actually faithful to the series’ central themes despite omitting certain plot points and characters. Also, the administrators of the Magical Girl Site may pique the curiosity of the viewers. It may cause viewers to wander what their true intentions and how it ties to the overall story. Aya also does mature more as a character as she becomes more confident through her friendship with others, in particular Yatsumura. There’s even some minor shoujo-ai elements although don’t expect anything too serious. Sadly, none of these really saves this abomination. I’ll give some credit to Production doA for making the bold attempt to animate this series. It isn’t easy with how grim and dark is. The magical girls are designed with noticeable characteristics especially with their exotic-looking eyes and feminine features. Furthermore, every magical stick the characters uses are distinctive despite how ridiculous some of them are. However as a series with magical elements, it fell short in making a favorable impression of battle choreography. The camera angles is all over the place on some fighting scenes. The only noticeable part is how characters react which is extremely predictable. To no one’s surprise, the anime also contains fan service such as with a beach episode. However, most of it is overshadowed by the cruelty of character behaviors. I honestly felt uncomfortable watching some of the early episodes. You’ll probably get used to it once you make it through half the series. The character voices tries to carry some episodes but usually feels forced and unrealistic. Kaname is a good example that becomes a recurring joke of a bad villain. The only character that seems believable is Aya because of her fragile voice. The theme songs contains fast tempo with dark eerie lyrics and dark metal tunes. It works for the series but doesn’t really make a favorable impression in the end. That ED theme song with the live action dancing is a thing of beauty though. I tried. I really tried to enjoy Mahou Shoujo Site but it just ended up being a trashy horror bomb. It tried way too hard to make itself looking cool by using ideas of graphic abuse and sexual assault. What ends up happening is a series with one dimensional characters and unnerving story. There are good magical girl shows out there but Mahou Shoujo Site is nowhere near that category. Stay away from this series and burn it with fire.

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