Thread by @inkfycreates

Magical Girl Site got brought up as an example of a good darker magical girl anime from my last thread. Honestly, I respectively disagree, mostly because I found the manga to be somewhat better and the anime adaptation really sensationalized.

Granted, this is less from a writing standpoint and more from a directional one, but I'm not a fan of how certain infamous scenes are directed. In the manga, they are horrifying, but the anime just seems to really ham it up or just go completely overboard with the tone.

As a result, it's hard to take much of anything seriously. The manga was a least subtle enough in while it had these issues, it still kept the darker tone consistent. It feels that with the anime there must've been some sort of communication issue because certain scenes drag ON.

The best way I can describe MGS is like having a cute adorable puppy that's just gone through hell. You want to comfort it and even sympathize with it, but instead of getting it proper help, it just gets kicked over and over again.

You feel bad because of its pain and how it keeps getting dogpiled, but at the same time, you probably just want to put it out of it's misery. At that point you just want to see it avoid pain in general because you know it's going to die anyways. That's how I feel about the MCs.

While despair is a universal concept, HOW it's represented matters just as much. There is a point in which your audience will get overwhelmed/frustrated because it's just TOO MUCH. If there's no end goal and it's just characters suffering, what's the point?

This isn't me forgoing tragedies entirely. That's not the issue. It's that even a tragedy needs moments of levity. Using Romeo/Juliet as an example, there are some funny moments in the play that act a a balance for what will happen later. It's not just constantly kicking a puppy.

While I did like a few of the side characters and other MCs (Tsuyuno's best), it's not enough to save the show from just not having strong character writing with very few exceptions. I can feel bad for a character but that's different from having a REASON to feel bad for them.

I'll use FMA as an example. The Elric brothers went through hell of having an absentee father (for a good reason), their mother dying, and loosing their body/ body parts. But the key difference is that these are given plenty of time to explore with moments of levity.

While 64 episodes is nothing compared to 12 (let's be fair here), I think a 24 episode anime for Magical Girl Site could've helped alleviate that issues. Because now, you HAVE time for Aya to develop her relationships with the other characters more as well as her abusive family.

Again, the anime really suffers with this as it's not a story you can really tell in 12 episodes. All of these characters and plot points regarding the magic system needed WAYYY more time than what was given. I think this was a clear advantage that the manga had in general.

With dedicated chapters to specific characters and their backstories, the manga helps ease you into those painful moments. This helps to flesh the world out much more and the magic system in general. It's not good, but at least something was there.

However, again the anime really suffers from these issues. I can see that while I didn't personally enjoy my time with Magical Girl Site with the anime, I'm with manga fans in that they really got screwed out of a good adaptation. Even for all it's faults, it deserved that much.