Video Game / Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story

Due to returning characters from the original anime and many of its spinoffs, unmarked spoilers for other works in the franchise are present. You have been warned.

"Guided by strange power, magical girls gather in this town.
There is a place where a magical girl can stay as she is.
They're fighting with a new power from witches."

Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story — also referred to as simply Magia Record — is a Free-to-Play game in the Puella Magi Madoka Magica series that was released on iOS and Android platforms on August 22nd, 2017. An NA-based English version was released on June 25th, 2019, running for a little more than a year before shutting down on October 30th, 2020. The game features many new characters as well as some returning ones.

The game is set in Kamihama City, a city to which witches and magical girls are being drawn to in large numbers. The story revolves around Iroha Tamaki, a magical girl who teams up with Kamihama's local magical girls in search for her lost sister. Kamihama is an unusual place, with large numbers of powerful witches, a magical girl who strengthens others for a price, and rumors becoming reality. The original Madoka Magica cast finds themselves drawn into the city as well.

The game is a hybrid of Visual Novel and turn-based RPG where the player controls a team of up to 5 magical girls on a 3x3 grid, fighting off waves of familiars, witches, and other magical girls (also featured on a 3x3 grid). In between battles, the player gets more of the story. While the game used to be only in Japanese, much effort has been made to translate the plot into English before the official translation.

The final chapter of the first story arc, "Last Magia", was released on March 22nd, 2019. Service for the Japanese version, as well as new events and plotlines, continued after this point. After a series of interludes, the second arc of the main story, "The Gathering of One Hundred Calamities", was released on October 28th, 2019. As Iroha deals with the fallout of the first arc's climax, Kamihama City is invaded by various magical girl factions from outside while new monstrous creatures called "Emotions" appear to add the chaos.

A manga was announced on July 24th, 2018; and a 2019 TV anime adaptation was announced on September 1st, 2018, with it premiering on January 4th, 2020. In celebration of the 10th Anniversary of the Puella Magi Madoka Magica franchise, the game will feature a new original story, Puella Magi Madoka Magica scene0. The second season of the anime, The Eve of Awakening, premiered on August 1, 2021. The final season, Dawn of Shallow Dreams, premiered on April 3, 2022.

Compare Fate/Grand Order and Granblue Fantasy.

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Magia Record provides examples of:

Tropes specific to gameplay

#-D

• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The major currency barricade in the game is the Magia Chips;
  • Extra Destiny Gems can be traded in for Magia Chips, which you can use to buy different Gems; however, the exchange rate is abysmal. One 2-star Gem earns you one Chip, and a 3-star Gem earns you three Chips; buying a 2-star Gem costs 30 chips, and 150 for a 3-star Gem. 4-star characters aren't quite this nasty—their Gems can be traded for Destiny Crystals, and it does cost five of these to buy anything, but you can use them to get 4-star characters you don't have yet. However, most people with extra 4-star Gems have spent enough on the game that they probably already have most or all of the characters.
  • The other way to get Magia Chips beside exchanging the redudant magical girls' copy and the event's shop is by buying them with Mirror Coins. The amount of Coins needed to buy the Chips is the highest in the shop (beside the Fate Weave tickets) at 40 Coins. For your information, you get 3 Coins for a win and 1 for a lose in Mirror, outside celebration campaigns that double its rate. This means you need to win about 14 Mirror matches to buy a single Magia Chip, and Mirror disables auto-run so the amount of time to farm the Coins is pretty impractical.
  • After Christmas 2021, if you missed out the instances where you can get the welfare magical girls, you can buy them from Magia Chip shop. However, while their exchange rate is pretty much the same as other girls' Destiny Gems, the amount of chips you need to max them swells significantly because of a single detail; each welfare girl has unique ascention materials that you also have to buy. Depending on the girl, you need extra 200-400 chips on top of the usual 1000+ chips cost. Now, calculate the above points to gain that amount of Chips...
• Always Accurate Attack: By default, attacks will always hit. Magia and Doppel, as well as attacks triggered by Chase or Counter status will hit regardless of any buffs or debuffs. The same applies to attacks that are received due to Guardian status.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Justified. Only the asymmetrical magical girl sprites that appear mirrored are those from Mirror Witch's barrier, as the in-universe explanation of their existence is that they came from the magical girls' reflection that makes up the Mirror Witch's home defense. Those with asymmetrical designs that appear in story battle (e.g Yachiyo's dress slit, the Amane sisters' thigh-highs) are properly depicted.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Some of the prizes for completing challenges and the first parts of Magical Girl Stories are school uniforms or other outfits for specific characters. These are for use in the main menu or camera mode, and the non-standard outfits come with their own single-node stories.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • If a PvE battle is interrupted for whatever reasons, upon returning to the game, it will ask you if you want to continue where you left off.
  • Once a star in battle is earned, it's kept forever, meaning one can simply create separate teams for each of the objectives.
  • The shops related to events stay up for a few days after their event ends, which gives time to use the currency up while still being able to focus on grinding.
  • The last fight against the Commoner's Horse Rumor forces you to fight it only with Iroha. The Rumor suddenly stops spamming its stacking poison bubble status ailment in that fight.
  • You're not penalized if you lose a Magical Girl or use a Continue against extremely hard opponents such as the Magius, Eve, Walpurgisnacht, etc.
  • You have the ability to lock Memoria, eliminating the risk of accidentally feeding them to other Memoria to enhance them (which definitely comes in handy when you're trying to Max Limit Break Memoria of the same kind).
• Anti-Grinding: Zig-Zagged. The amount of regular EXP girls receive per battle is pitiful and the player is better off using Strengthening Gems... which can be grinded as random drops from daily battles. Then there's the Episode Levels, which the player must grind. Luckily, these gems can be earned via normal gacha or bought in the shop using support points, and there's also an item called Clear Album that adds 2500 points to strengthening episode levels that can be earned after clearing daily missions.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You're limited to having up to five girls per battle. Additionally, you are required to use one Support character from another player and only four of your own fighters, except in Mirrors battles, Dungeon-style events battles and 100Evils Challenges (which don't allow supports) and occasional story missions where you can only use one specific character.
• Area of Effect: Blast attacks (row or column) as well as some of the Magia are this (various), hitting more than one target.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • When playing a level with Auto activated and if a magical girl has the "Awake but the Dream Continues" memoria equipped, she will activate its Guardian skill right away even as other teammates are at full health. This wastes the skill, which is only intended to shield critical-health teammates during the same turn.
  • The AI is not very intelligent in general, rarely strategizing beyond using disc combos and trying to hit multiple enemies with Blast; it otherwise tends to choose targets at random and uses skills and Magia as soon as they become available, regardless of whether this is useful or efficient.
• Art Shift:
  • Because of the character designs depending on the illustrator, their 2DLive school uniform dialogue sprites can be wildly dissonant with each other despite looking similar from neck down. Kanoko, for example, has highly detailed irises compared to other girls while Momoko and Hazuki have similar physical appearances, but look different anyway.
  • The anime's cross-promotion units (which includes the 4th Anniversary unit Madoka-Iroha) has a significantly different sprite works compared to the regular game's units, most apparent detail being their stick-like limbs. Compared regular Holy Mami with her anime version.
• Attack Pattern Alpha: You can set your Magical Girl team in set formations to boost their stats based on position:
  • Brave Echelon is an X-shaped formation that slightly boosts the attack and defense of the center Magical Girl.
  • Bright Phalanx is a right-tack formation that slightly boosts the defense of the front and the attack of the rear.
  • Mighty Cross is a cross formation that slightly boosts the attack and defense of the front and the defense of the attack of the rear.
  • Attribute Deltas are left-tack formations that greatly boost the attack of the front, top and bottom, as long as they're occupied by a Magical Girl of a specific element.
  • Union Assault is a right-tack formation that greatly boosts the attack of a Dark-element girl on the top and a Flame-element girl on the bottom, greatly boosts the defense of a Forest-element girl in the front and a Light-element girl in the rear, and boosts the attack and defense of an Aqua-element girl in the center.
  • Tricolor Raid is an X-shaped formation that greatly boosts the attack of a Flame-element girl on the top-left and a Forest-element girl on the bottom-left, while boosting the attack and greatly boosting the defense of an Aqua-element girl in the center.
  • Dark and Light Tercios are NA-exclusive formations with open slots on the top-left corner and 2x2 block on the bottom-right. The top-left slot greatly boosts the attack and boosts the defense of a Light or Dark-element girl depending on the formation, while the center and bottom-right slots massively boost the attack of a Flame, Aqua or Forest-element girl depending on the formation.
• Attack Failure Chance: Some Memoriae and Spirit Enhancements may give characters a chance to Evade attacks, with the source with the highest percentage of Evade taking priority after it was nerfed to keep them from stacking on each other. There are also three status ailments (Fog, Blind, and Bewitch) that can cause affected characters to have anywhere between a 25%, 35%, and 50% chance to miss an attack, and unlike Evade, are able to stack with each other. Naturally there are some methods to bypass Evade and the mentioned status ailments, such as the Anti-Evade status effect, or by simply using a Magia or Doppel disc instead of regular discs.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Due to the fact that in PvP, skills start at half of their cooldown rather than ready to use like in PvE, any skills with high cooldown are this due to rarely reaching zero on cooldown. Also the Doppels used to be this before they were buffed due to being an advanced Limit Break that requires 200 MP to use which means one could potentially use Magia twice instead of a Doppel. However Doppels deal more damage at once which is more useful in certain situations.
  • On the topic of Doppels, they can be this on girls that don't specialize in MP gain, especially those with three Blast discs. As cool as they are, the demanding unlock requirements Doppels have can feel wasted when the player has to go out so of their way to actually use one.
  • Since December 2020, Doppels can be used when the MP gauge reaches 150.
• Badass Adorable: The game has an all-female cast which during battles is portrayed in deformed chibi style.
• Balance Buff:
  • Certain Connects and Magias were buffed after the girl's initial release; for example HP regeneration was added to Konomi's Connect while Sasara's Magia now applies defensive bonus to entire party rather than just herself.
  • The introduction for Spirit Enhancement significantly make the girl who have their grids unlocked more powerful. Not only they have extra stat boost, they also gain active and passive skills not tied to the Memoria. The active skill has no initial Mirror battle cooldown, unlike the skill Memoria, and can be used in the first turn for maximum damage or defense optimization. Filling up the grid, however...
  • After long being viewed as low-tier, at the end of September 2020 several charge-focused characters received buffs to their Spirit Enhancement, and a few charge-focused memoria also had their effects buffed.
• The Battle Didn't Count: Since gameplay and narrative aren't always connected, expect bosses to come off fine in the post-level cutscene even though the player's team defeated it.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Magical Girls who are naked in any part of their Transformation Sequence have this. The Chinese server instead opts to cover offending areas with visual effects.
• Beach Episode: There were two separate Summer events in 2018. The first stars the Madoka Magica cast, while the second stars the Magia Record main characters.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: See here.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: Some event names were translated quite poorly. For example, "Beginning and Eternal [The Lost Record]"^ExplanationThe event is an adaptation of the Puella Magi Madoka Magica anime. "Beginning" and "Eternal" were the subtitles of the two recap movies. was translated as "Endless Beginnings."
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Investing in 2* and 3* is usually more viable than investing in 4* magical girls because of one feature—equipping multiple Memorias. The awaken system allows any 2* or 3* magical girl to promote to a 4* magical girl (and possibly 5* if uncapped), making them at least as strong as their 4* counterparts promoted to a 5* since the boost from Memoria will make up for their weaker base stats. 4* characters usually don't have Destiny Gems available in the shop, so you can only max out their slots by doing numerous Fate Weaves and getting the same character 3 more times, which could easily cost you thousands of gems.
  • An even easier way to get fully decked-out fighters is to just use freebie characters from events. Many include one 2* and allow you to easily buy everything you need to get her 4 Memoria slots, awaken her to 4*, and power her Magia up all the way. Most active players will have powered-up versions of these characters, so they aren't particularly cool, but this doesn't make them any less useful.
• Boss-Only Level: All the stages in the Last Magia are single wave battles against the Final Boss Walpurgisnacht.
• Boss Rush: The main story has a couple examples:
  • Arc 1 has Chapter 8 - Episode 44 ^note Yachiyo: Part 11. Wave 1 is a simple match against some Black Feathers, but the following waves are back-to-back boss fights against the Amane Sisters, Holy Mami, and the Flower Speaker Rumor.
  • Arc 2 has Chapter 11, Episode 2, Battle 5, which pits you against every single Kimochi at once. They will likely drop like flies in Normal mode, but in Hard mode, their durability is significantly increased, with the expectation that the player is bringing a fully-developed team.
  • Outside of that, later Events have the "One Hundred Calamities" quests. Just about every enemy enountered here can be considered a difficult boss in their own right, with absurd amounts of health and at least one gimmick attached to them. Many waves include more than one of these enemies, so you best bring your A-game (and that will likely include a Game-Breaker or two) to even stand a chance.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Players can buy gems with real-life money to have better chances at getting characters. This isn't necessary for playing through the story missions, but collecting all the 4-star characters is very difficult without buying gems, especially with the limited-time events. If a player has Darc or Liz with all 4 Memoria slots unlocked, it's a safe bet that they have pumped a lot of money into the game. (This takes about 666 draws, on average, during the short period they were available. Buying enough gems for all those draws would cost about $1,650! Or you could collect those 16 thousand gems from gameplay... if you're willing to spend a year or so on that.)
• Cap:
  • Depending on the girl's current star rarity, her level caps at 40, 50, 60, 80 or 100, while Magia and Episode Level cap at 5.
  • Similarly, Memoria have level cap depend on their rarity and upgrade level; starting at 10, 15, 20 and 30, depending on the rarity.
  • There's no known cap for the player's Rank, but after a certain point the experience needed for next Rank starts approaching tens of thousands and eventually more than a million. while a single battle in best conditions still gives only few hundred EXP per run. AP also used to have a hard cap at 300.
  • It is impossible to deal more than 9,999,999 damage, and the lower cap is around 250.
  • Material storage caps at 999, though that requires serious grind.
• Can't Drop the Hero: Averted. You're not required to use Iroha in any of the battles at all, except for the few battles that specifically require you to use her and the first few battles, when you don't have anyone else.
• Character Class System: Each girl has one of the six classes that describes how they work in battle. These are Attack, Defense, Magia, Balance, Support, Ultimate, and Heal. There are also special exclusive types such as Ultimate or Exceed.
• Character Select Forcing:
  • A low-key example. Some of the star missions require you to use a certain character, or exclusively use a certain element in the battle. You don't have to do it, but you miss out on rewards if you do.
  • For the Lyrical Nanoha "Magia Clash" event, instead of unlocking and equipping a specific Memoria like in "Another Daze", "The Maiden of Hope" or "Cross Connection", defeating chapter bosses fills a Mana meter, then high damage against the final bosses is only available by attacking with Nanoha, Fate, or Hayate on your team.
  • The same goes for "Rebel of a Dawnless Land"; defeating bosses fills a meter of History Fragments, then Darc, Liz, Melissa, and Elisa are the only ones who can deal high damage to the final boss, as stated in-game.
• Charged Attack: Obviously, the Charge disks. They make the next Accele or Blast attacks stronger by increasing damage (and MP gain in the case of the former).
• Class Change Level Reset: Awakening magical girls works somewhat similar to promoting units in Fire Emblem, resetting units all the way to back to Lv. 1 (with appropriate stats), as well as removing the buffs from using materials (while keeping everything else). In exchange, Connect and Magia are made stronger, the level cap is raised and the stat growth is improved. As the game went on, girls initially capped at 4-stars (or lower) were given further awakenings.
• Color-Coded Elements: Downplayed, as it only applies to Aqua and Forest, being the only two elements with a recurring color theme among their magical girls (blue for Aqua and green for Forest).
• Combat Medic: All characters are capable of dealing damage, so this applies to all characters who can heal their teammates.
• Combination Attack: After attacking 3 times on their own, any magical girl can "Connect" with another—by tapping-and-dragging the disc onto the target—providing some temporary buffs specific to the first character, and having the second perform the attack itself. Some characters get an extra buff if they receive a Connect from someone they have a close relationship with.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • AI-controlled girls, be they on your or the opposing side, are able to use discs that they don't normally have. For example, Yachiyo has no Vertical Blast; if you want her to do a vertical Blast, you have to Connect another girl's Vertical Blast to her. AI-controlled Yachiyos can do Vertical Blast on their own.
  • Holy Mami's fight in Christmas 2017 is against 6 magical girls (Holy Mami + Iroha's team). The maximum number of magical girls the players can field is 5. But this is nothing compared to one challenge battle in Breakpoint, where you take on nine Madoka-Senpais simultaneously.
  • Interestingly, this is inverted for most mooks (excluding bosses and Mirrors opponents) in one respect—their attacks-per-turn is limited by their numbers, so if only 1 or 2 are left, their team only gets 1 or 2 attacks, instead of the usual 3. You always get 3 attack discs even if you only have 1 magical girl still standing. This is mainly so that there's a benefit to clearing out most of the enemies quickly.
  • Many AI opponents that appear to be just normal magical girls, with no evil aura or anything, have powerful skills or passive bonuses you don't have access to. Auto-regenerating MP, sometimes as much as 100 percent per turn, is the most common. Some also start the battle with their Doppel fully charged, though usually there's a plot justification for this.
• Critical Hit: They exist, but basic critical hit rate is 0% meaning the chance has to come from a Memoria or a buff.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Unlike other similar games, such as Fire Emblem Heroes, none of the characters are 5-star by default (some can be upgraded into 5-stars, however). Cue a rerolling player not knowing any better abandoning a 4-star character.
• Disc-One Nuke: 4-star characters are powerful enough to carry you through most of the early battles. The English version had a free 4-star "Glasses Homura" in the shop upon launch, and it's possible to get any other 4-star from a lucky draw. The anime-adaptation event added the ability to choose another free 4-star after the first five battles.
• Double Unlock: Unlocking a character's Doppel requires you to complete their fourth personal story. To do that, you have to do three things: Upgrade the character to five stars, upgrade their Magia to level 5, and complete their first three personal stories. Unlocking the three personal stories requires you to increase a character's Episode level. Episode level also caps their Magia level, so you have to have to bring that to level 5 also. Finally, bringing a character to five stars requires them to be able to reach five stars in the first place. Nearly all base four stars can reach that rank, and the game periodically adds a five star rank to other characters. Of course, even after this five star rank is unlocked the character must be leveled up, given upgrade items, and Awakened until they reach that rank.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: Most of the main story missions require you to do at least one Connect for the bonus reward. If your team is too strong and/or has too many members, this can be surprisingly difficult, because you may end up wiping out the enemy before you even get a chance to Connect. If this happens, you'll have to either intentionally deal less damage (by avoiding combos or attack-boosting skills) to stall for extra rounds, or use a smaller team to increase the chance of getting 3 discs from the same character.
• Dramatic Irony: There's nothing stopping players from invoking this in PvP by doing things like defeating Oriko with Madoka or Madoka with Homura. Downplayed in that the PvP opponents are mere copies of magical girls created by the Mirror Witch.
• Duel Boss: A battle in Chapter 3 requires you to fight a boss with Iroha alone, but it turns out to be a Hopeless Boss Fight that becomes a Zero-Effort Boss. However, in Chapter 6, there's another battle where Iroha must fight a boss alone, and this one has to be beaten legitimately.

E-Q

• Early-Installment Weirdness: Two early events, "My Diary With You" and "Reaching a Happier Height", allowed you to purchase a Destiny Gem for the 4* characters Ren and Kokoro respectively in their event shops if you had already obtained them from the Fate Weave. Later events made it impossible to get 4-star gems by any means other than Fate Weave or trading in Destiny Crystals (which are obtained by getting five or more copies of a 4* girl), and the reruns of the aforementioned events didn't have purchasable 4* Destiny Gems. The sole exception is Glasses Homura, a 4* unit given for free to all players whose Destiny Gems can be bought for a large amount of Magia Chips.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: The game features five elemental types by which magical girls are categorized: a Flame-Aqua-Forest triangle, working similarly to the triangle found in Pokémon and a Light-Dark pair, which are strong against each other. Later, a Void/Null element was added, which is neutral in every relation.
• Equipment Upgrade: By enhancing Memoria to each other, you increase their experience. By feeding dupes by Ascension (up to 4 times), you also increase level cap (by 5 each) and eventually make their effects stronger.
• Excuse Plot: The "Mirror Layers" mini-story is just there to explain PvP battles (as an unusual witch labyrinth where you fight copies of yourself). Though, the Mirror Witch herself is the background of Kamihama magical girls' political atmosphere and some of the mirror-clones do have a minor role late in chaper 9 of the main story.
• Experience Booster:
  • Selecting a girl as a leader and/or using them in their story boosts the amount of Bond EXP they get. Additionally, one of the Memorias boosts Bond EXP even further when equipped.
  • Occasionally, there are events that double the amount of Rank EXP you get and make Strengthening multipliers more likely, as well as Mitama's Special Training events that allow particular girls to gain both kinds of EXP very quickly.
• Friending Network: Each group of magical girls naturally cluster together, with 1 or 2 having friends in other magical girl groups.
• Flavor Text: Each girl has a bunch of voiced flavor text, mostly for the purpose of fleshing out characters outside of actual story.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: The girls that have relationships with others usually have special boons with each other:
  • Certain Connects have special effects if used on specific character(s):
    • Tsukasa's Connect gives extra MP to Tsukuyo, which is advantageous for charging up Tsukuyo's Doppel. In-story, the twins' synergy revolves around Tsukuyo's Doppel because it doesn't have the twins' glaring weapon weakness and it grants the twins protection against outside attacks. Similarly, Tsukuyo's Connect grants Tsukasa an extra attack boost.
    • Iroha's and Yachiyo's Connects have secondary effects when used on each other upon being uncapped to 4* and 5* respectively, reflecting the two of them deciding to fully open up to each other. Iroha's Connect restores some of Yachiyo's MP, while Yachiyo's Connect restores some of of Iroha's HP.
    • Kuro's Connect has a hidden modifier that will buff Homura's attack, reflecting the Valentines story.
    • Homura herself gains a secondary effect upon reaching 5* which grants a Magia damage boost to any other member of the Mitakihara Quintet, as this Homura hasn't given up on saving everyone yet. On the flip-side, Madoka's Connect restores slightly more MP for 5* Homura.
    • Once Sana is uncapped to 5*, her Connect will grant Iroha an additional defense boost, showcasing her dedication to being Iroha's shield.
  • Yuma's personal Memoria 'Encounter with a Hero' has a Blast Draw effect, ensuring Kyouko's Blast Chain. Indeed, Yuma's world revolves around Kyouko and how Yuma has to be useful to her.
  • Ren's second personal Memoria 'The First and Last Page' will have 100% chance of Guardian if the attack is aimed at Rika, even to her detriment. Not only does Ren clearly adore Rika, she also has very little self-worth and has been outright suicidal.
  • When a member of the Magius is about to unleash their Doppel in the story, they will start the battle with 150 MP.
  • Yachiyo's Spirit Enhancement gives her a unique passive ability which increases her attack and defense whenever an ally is knocked out, reflecting her personal magic of carrying on the hope of her fallen allies.
  • Ryouko's personal Memoria, 'If You Persist Through Yourself', grants her a damage cut and boosts her charged damage despite only having one Charge disc. However, Sakuya, whom Ryouko befriends in the "Always Waving My Hand At You" event, has three Charge discs, thus showcasing their bond.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Every sub-episode includes a battle, but many of these, narrative-wise, do not exist. When the story does justify a battle, it will often play out over several ingame battles, creating an odd procedure of beating the same boss multiple times before the plot declares it defeated. All of this mainly serves to keep giving you items and exp as you play through the Visual Novel sections.
  • Story narratives often appear to limit the combat-ready magical girls—Tart's event, for example, explicitly has only Iroha and Yachiyo transported to Medieval France—but you can take any girls you have to the battle anyway. A particularly odd case is Kanae and Mel, who are deceased at the time the story is set. They can still be used in any story mission (barring the ones restricted to specific characters).
  • In Puella Magi Oriko Magica Oriko is an extremely powerful magical girl provided she does not drain all her magic at once and was able to fight Mami, Kyouko, Homura, and Yuma all to a standstill. In game she has the dubious distinction of being the only main character of a series who is a 3* and not a 4* and is a rather weak one at that.
• Guest-Star Party Member: One of your party slots in PvE is dedicated to these, from a pool of other players or plot-relevant NPCs. You get Support Points, a form of in-game currency, for using these characters or having your characters used.
• Guide Dang It!: One of Holy Mami's costumes drops from a specific challenge quest (chapter 6, episode 6, battle 5) if you get all the star-bonuses. This one does include a battle with Holy Mami, but so do several other quests. Virtually all other main story quests, including the non-challenge version of this quest, only give you magia stones, and there's no way to see this unique reward before you get it.
• Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: Accomplish type events tend to becomes this in the last battles, as boss nodes keep the damage you dealt to them but regular nodes have to be done in one run.
• Hard Mode Perks: Many events have a series of plot-irrelevant challenge battles with a harder difficulty than the story battles but better rewards.
• Healer Signs On Early: Iroha, the game's main protagonist and thus the first character you will use is capable of healing teammates—her Connect heals the target and her Magia has the unusual power to revive a defeated ally.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The player can name the little Kyubey that is found during the game's first Main Chapter. This becomes your player name; the game doesn't tell you this at the time (though you can change it once per day), causing many players to end up with names like "Satan" or "Evil." Their Canon Name appears to be "Lil' Kyubey," according to merchandise.
• Hold the Line: Some of the battles pit the player against an enemy with huge HP pool on a tight move-limit, where the goal is to survive the battle rather than defeat the enemy. It's possible to defeat these enemies within the time limit, but required resources are likely going to be outside of an average player's realm.
• Impossible Item Drop: Averted with the non-elemental materials (other than rainbow orb), as they are clearly part of a Witch/familiar they drop from.
• Level Grinding: As the battle mechanics are that of a turn-based RPG, it's to be expected, though making characters stronger also involves grinding items.
• Limit Break: Each of the girls can use a Magia, a special type of attack with added effects and various targeting for the cost of 100MP, which is gained, among other things, from taking hits, dealing damage (mostly from Accele disks), certain Connects and Magia, as well as from equipped Memoria. A girl that has reached 5-star rarity, among other various requirements, is capable of using a Doppel, which usually is simply a stronger version costing 150MP (formerly 200MP) - though there are exceptions, such as extra effects or outright changing targeting type.
• Limited Loadout: Each girl starts with a single Memoria slot and can have up to 4, as well as being limited to two Active and two Passive Memoria and no duplicates.
• Limited Wardrobe: Character are rarely seen outside of their school uniforms and magical girl outfits. While several characters have alternate outfits, not all of them do, and many characters will default to their school uniforms in most situations where they'd be otherwise inappropriate. Winter school uniforms during summer beach events being one particular example.
• Mana Burn: Opponents in Chapter 9 and beyond have an "MP Damage" skill that removes a portion of a character's stored MP.
• Marathon Level: "The Howa-Howa Girl Tries Her Best"/"Wait, You Got It Wrong!" is the first event to have magical girls' HP and MP carry over across event levels.
• Market-Based Title: Some of the event names were shortened or changed for the localization. For example:
  • Shortened titles: "See You Tomorrow" was originally "Bye Bye, See You Tomorrow" with a subtitle, "Wait, You Got It Wrong!" was "The Howa-Howa Girl Tries Her Best ~Wait, this is a misunderstanding!~", and "Hereafter" was "And From Here On ~The Rumor of the Rumor of the Rumor~"^note うわさのウワサの噂; the word for rumor is written in three different ways here, but only two exist on the English server while "Voices from Beyond" was "A Voice From Beyond That Strokes the Ears".
  • Different titles: "The Chiming Bell That Transcends Time" was renamed to "The Maiden of Hope", and "Spurred to Separation" became "Breakpoint". "The Ribbon at the Beach" became "Beachside Bonds".
• Money Spider: Zig-zagged; most enemies can drop parts of themselves as items, but they can also drop "curse chips" (i.e. gold coins) and other arbitrary things. In addition, all item drops appear as Inexplicable Treasure Chests, to conceal them until you complete the level.
• Me's a Crowd:
  • You technically can't use (or have) more than one of the same character, but you can have duplicate team members using the support slot. Some characters have variants of themselves, which count as separate characters; since there are 4 versions of Madoka, you can fill every slot with Madokas if you want to.
  • Some battles have duplicates of the same (shadowy) magical girl. One Challenge fight in the Breakpoint event has nine copies of "Madoka-senpai."
• Meta Multiplayer: Mirrors uses a variant of Recorded/Ghost Matches where players save a team of magical girls for others to select and battle.
• Mythology Gag: There are only three Magias in the game that have detrimental effects, two of which count as this:
  • Mami's Magia, Tiro Finale, inflicts Defense Down buff on herself for one turn, likely as a reference to Episode 3 of the show where Mami let her guard down against Charlotte.
  • Tart's Magia, La Lumière, inflicts guaranteed Curse status on her (unless she's straight up immune to the status), likely referencing to Tart's insane magic usage in the manga.
• No Casualties Run: Most of the time, a battle has nobody dying as one of its star missions.
• Non-Combat EXP: Each girl has Bond EXP on top of regular EXP, which is related to Episode Level.
• Play Every Day: Besides daily quests and free goodies, daily battles rotate every day (assuming you count the weekend as one).
• Power Equals Rarity: Higher-star memoria and magical girls are less likely to be obtained than lower-star memoria, and are generally better the more stars they have. 2-star and 1-star memoria are so useless that the game has a button to auto-select them as discards for powering-up better ones. Upgrading the Level Cap of a girl is described somewhat bizarrely as "increasing her rarity."
• Promotional Powerless Piece of Garbage: Applies to some, but not all, event-related Memoria. "The Story That Starts Here" is the main promo card for the game as a whole, and one of the least useful, providing only a 10% head-start to charging one character's Magia^note 10% of the cap. A Magia Level 5 character gets a 20% head-start.—a rare but also very niche effect (one Accele combo gives a flat 20 boost to the whole team!). Generally averted for event variants of characters, like kimono-Mitama and swimsuit-Kyouko; these are usually slightly better than the normal version, with the caveat that filling out their Memoria slots is much harder, since they're not available from the normal Fate Weave.

R-Z

• Random Drop: The materials used to upgrade magical girls are this, though they can also be bought from shops to decrease grinding involved.
• Rank Inflation: The possible Mirrors rankings are D, C, B, A, and S. Each also comes with 1, 2, or 3 stars as a sub-ranking, measured in a separate bonus round, making "3-star S" the highest achievable grade.
• Rare Candy: Memoria Circuits are two kinds of Memoria (a 2-star and 4-star one) specifically existing to be used to level up other Memorias. They come maxed out and give experience in thousands. They are vital for leveling Memorias to higher levels, once their experience curve spikes and using regular Memoria stops being feasible.
• Rare Random Drop: Some of the materials are this due to the fact they're only on maps with low drop rates but Rainbow Orbs are by far the worst offender, dropping only from a rare enemy.
• Recurring Boss: Gameplay-wise, many of the witches appear in more than one battle, while some of the plot fights are spread throughout more than one battle, effectively making them this. Some of the bosses like Yachiyo or Amane twins are recurring narrative-wise.
• Rule of Three: Each side is allowed three attacks (by default), there are three types of basic attacks, using a Connect requires three charges, each battle has 3 extra objectives...
• Scissors Cuts Rock: If the power gap between user and enemy is large enough, type advantage won't mean too much.
• Shout-Out: This post on April Fools' Day 2018 from the official twitter is a reference to the character previews from Super Smash Bros..
• Skill Scores and Perks: Spirit Enhancement allows to strengthen the unit beyond the usual, by increasing the stats or disk power, as well as providing passive skills or a third active (which comes with no starting cooldown in Mirrors), somewhat similarly to the Sphere Grid system.
• Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: Some of the Magia and Doppels are very flashy, but due to Gameplay and Story Segregation as well as Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, it's possible for more mundane ones (as much as mundane the latter are) to deal more damage.
• Sliding Scale of Turn Realism: Turn by Turn, with each side having three attacks to use per turn (by default).
• Status Effects: The game has its fair share of effects, both debuffs and buffs, which can be stacked in amount and types and cause various things, such as redirecting attacks, healing the user, enduring a fatal attack, giving an ability to Counter-Attack, or making cooldown run out faster. There are some buffs that can be grouped together:
  • Damage Over Time: Poison, Burn and Curse do this. Burn also makes elemental advantages stronger on the target while Curse prevents any healing on top of that.
  • Charm, Stun and Bind make characters unable to move, with Stun and Bind being upgraded versions like Burn and Curse, respectively.
  • Fog, Darkness and Dazzle decrease accuracy, with Darkness and Dazzle being the upgraded versions as with the two previous debuff trios.
  • Power Nullifier/Anti-Magic: Magia Seal prevents those afflicted from using Magia and Doppel while Skill Seal does the same for Skills.
  • There are buffs and debuffs that change Attack, Defense, extra damage damage from Magia, resistance to debuffs or MP gain, as well as buffs that make a given disk type stronger.
  • Some of the skills grant temporary immunity to receiving a given status or ignoring enemy defensive buffs.
  • There are skills with incredibly high cooldown that replace disks with specific ones and will pull disks that a magical girl doesn't have access to if needed.
• Stealth Pun: During weekdays, the Labyrinth of Awakening has materials from only one specific attribute in a way that makes for this. For example: on Wednesdays, which can be literally read as "water day" in Japanese, only Aqua materials drop. This is less direct with Dark and Light, which correspond to the moon and gold, respectively.
• Story Branching: Events have route splits depending on the player's choices. In the Azalea event, the in-universe explanation is that the storylines are Konoha's visions. There is no similar explanation for the "See You Tomorrow" Residential Complex event. This is also used for Chapter 8 for the purpose of portraying concurrent events that are Iroha and Sana searching for the Sakura rumor and the Magius attack on Kamihama.
• Super-Deformed: All characters appear as chibis on the battlefield. Most can be set to appear as normal or chibified in their attack disc image.
• Temporary Online Content: Happens to anything that was featured as part of an event or limited offer. Magical girls and some Memoria cards featured in events may have a higher draw chance only during such events, while other Memoriae are only available in limited-time shops or gacha.
• Timed Mission: As a turn-limit. The battles in single raid-type events (like the Kazumi and Cross Connection events); though unlike most examples, running out of turns merely ends the battle early rather than causing a loss. Somewhat of an example are the star missions in battles, with one of them usually involving clearing the battle within a specific amount of turns.
• Title Scream: The game's title is spoken by one or several characters at once on the title screen.
• Uniqueness Decay: With the addition of Livia Medeiros (on the JP server in October 2019), Mitama is no longer the only Void-type.
• Unreadably Fast Text: When a Connect or Memoria effect activates for a character or attack, its title and description, often with long text, appear for a very short time in a corner of the screen before disappearing.
• Wake-Up Call Boss:
  • The third type of rumor you face in story in Chapter 3-6 is likely to be troublesome, as it inflicts a poison stack on your entire team every so often.
  • The fight against Mami in Chapter 3 might trip you up. You think piling her with Fire-attribute girls would solve the problem? Too bad, Mami has a passive Memoria-like effect that will boost her MP every time she gets attacked with her elemental weakness. That causes Mami to use Tiro Finale very often.
• Walking Swimsuit Scene: Alternate bikini-clad versions of several characters—Iroha, Homura, Kyouko, and Tsukuyo+Tsukasa (as one combined unit)—were added for summer events. As for main-menu costumes, swimsuit Iroha^noteDifferent from the unlockable swimsuit Iroha was a reward for early adopters upon the NA version's launch. More costumes were released for the original series' Holy Quintet followed by most of the Magia Record cast.

Tropes specific to the story

#-E

• 20% More Awesome: After Tsuruno turns human again after an Uwasa-fication, she announces she's at only 20% of her usual good mood, but as determined as ever.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer:
  • The sewer underneath Sankyoin Educational Academy is large enough to have a cult outpost in it and resist numerous earthquake without collapsing the entire underground network.
  • Futatsugi City's sewer system has a catacomb for dozens of magical girls who died in the city's civil war.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • The existence of the NA exclusive magical girl Ashley Taylor results in a version of this. On the NA server, Ikumi Makino, a magical girl who doesn't debut until the "Whereabouts of the Feather" event and appears in Chapter 9 of the main story as a Black Feather, first appears as a staff member at a Maid Cafe Ashley goes to in her first side story episode.
  • Due to the way NA adopts JP's schedule (sometimes doing events out of order, or having things that weren't initially around), this can happen to certain enemies/NPCs; that being said, some battle enemies were edited out because of their spoiler nature at the time.
• Adaptation Expansion: Tart Magica collaboration events go deeper into the antagonists' motivation than the original manga by giving them their own sidestory and inner monologues. While this doesn't stop them from being evil, this explains some of the more out-of-nowhere plot progression like Minou suddenly killing Corbeau because she "doesn't love Isabeau enough", and Corbeau's reason of why she does so.
• Adaptational Heroism: Of all people, Homura gets hit with this big time. In the original series, she tries to warn the rest of the Holy Quintet about the origin of Witches, setting up a long chain of events that ultimately led to her usurping Madoka's position at the end of Rebellion as a consequence. Here, she chose not to tell them about it and as a result, she remains the same old Bespectacled Cutie from the early timelines even after Walpurgisnacht is destroyed.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Sayaka, while still Hot-Blooded, is a lot less reckless and more emotionally rational than her canon counterpart. She also doesn't act hostile towards Homura and Kyoko in this adaptation, though this is justified by the former deliberately not telling her the Awful Truth.
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • Because Homura kept the Awful Truth about Witches a secret and Walpurgisnacht was lured into Kamihama instead of going straight to Mitakihara, she and Madoka didn't grow stronger than in the third timeline (through Reset Buttons) and instead had to participate in the Magical Girls' successful attempt to bring that Witch down.
  • Walpurgisnacht too. Unlike in the original series, where she's presented as an Invincible Villain that only Madoka can slay, this Walpurgisnacht can be slain by the combined efforts of every Magical Girl available (from Kamihama or otherwise), albeit with some empowerment from Madoka. Though this is downplayed at the same time because Walpurgisnacht is still as powerful as ever, it's just that she's fighting an army of Magical Girls rather than at most five (and it's implied Homura never managed to get the whole Mitakihara gang to that showdown anyways).
• All Myths Are True: Subverted. While several of Kamihama's rumors have some basis in fact, the ones that spawn monsters are spread by a bizarre creature that has a Perception Filter To Normals.
• All There in the Manual:
  • According to the staff's interview in the 2018 Magia Day stream, the reason why Akira has such a compromising Soul Gem position (she's a martial artist with Soul Gem at the back of her hand) is because her artist, Ochau, didn't know about the truth of the Soul Gem, which at this point is a Late-Arrival Spoiler.
  • The official artbooks, the Magia Archive, detail a lot of trivia that often unsaid in the story about each magical girl like age, height, birthplace (which sometimes different from their school's ward), and personal magic.
• Alternate Universe: The April Fools' Day FM Kamihama event indicates that the parody webcomic Magia Report happens in a separate dimension from normal Magia Record. A Rumor threatens a Crossover between the two, with disastrous results if it's successful.
• Ambiguous Situation: It's never made entirely clear within the "Voices from Beyond" story event whether there's really an afterlife for Magical Girls whose Soul Gem shattered or if Yachiyo is only imagining the entire thing to cheer herself up.
• Amnesiac Hero: Iroha is an interesting play of amnesia in that she's not a blank slate like many cases of this trope; it's just her memories about her sister that disappeared along with said sister (she remembers her parents and the reason why she’s transferring to Kamihama, for one). But since she has a lot of those, her memory is like a cloth with so many holes it barely holds together.
• Anachronic Order: As more magical girls and storylines are released, it becomes clear that many of the side stories and events are not chronologically coinciding with the current main story at their release date, and the audience is expected to put together the timeline themselves. For example, in the "Azalea" story arc, Yachiyo and Momoko are still on good terms while in the present, it's common knowledge that they're not friendly with each other because of a certain incident a year ago. There're no other indications that the "Azalea" story arc is a past event.
• …And That Little Girl Was Me: Touka tells a story about the truth of the magical girls' fate to the heroes sans Yachiyo. A year ago, A along with her friends B and C were a magical girl team. One day, C suddenly died in a Witch battle even though she wasn't harmed physically. Noticing that C's Soul Gem was shattered, A and B realized that Soul Gems are literally their souls. Despite that, A and B continued fighting, hoping that they at least could survive if they were careful. A and B made a new team with D, E, and F. In a fight against a strong Witch, the team was on the verge of being wiped out. F protected A from a fatal blow. The Witch fled, thus leaving no Grief Seed, while the strain of healing her own body caused F's Soul Gem to expend more magic than its limit. F turned into a Witch in front of her friends. Mifuyu then elaborates that A was Yachiyo, B was herself, D was Tsuruno, and E was Momoko. C and F were girls named Kanae and Mel respectively.
• Another Side, Another Story:
  • As you progress through the main story, you will unlock the aptly named Another Story which shows how exactly the original quintet got involved in the main story.
  • The Another Story for Part 2 instead focuses on Kamihama Magical Girls who didn't join the Kamihama Magia Union, namely Nanaka's and Konoha's teams.
  • The rerun of the "My Diary With You" event has extra story nodes which show the events of the story from Rika's perspective.
• April Fools' Day: In Japan, the 2018's April Fool's event had a special cutscene. The game already has a mode where players could take real-world pictures with their cell phone camera and add one of the magical girls they have to it; however, certain characters were replaced with their designs from the official parody webcomic Magia Report. The official twitter account also changed its banner and profile pic to use these designs. A Magia Report event then started on April 2nd, adding a Magia Report version of Madoka and a character illustrated by Magia Report's artist.
• Arc Words:
  • For the Rumors: "Have you heard? Has anyone told you?"
  • As with the Witches, the Doppels are also have two main lines of description, but reversed - instead of Witch of X; her nature is Y, it's Doppel of Y; her form is X, putting more emphasis on the Doppel owner's personality.
  • Everytimes the Wings of Magius is mentioned, expect some variations of "salvation" being said in context of their scheme.
• Badass Normal:
  • While magical girls and witches are beyond their league, the French Army soldiers in Tart Magica collab events are capable of fending for themselves against the familiars when left alone by the powerhouses.
  • In "Green Jasper Diviners", Shizuka's mother ends up fighting familiars with a sword as Shizuka, Chiharu, and Sunao deal with their ancestral Wandering Witch that spawns the familiars. She survives.
• Beach Episode:
  • 2018's first summer event, "Beachside Bond", involves the Holy Quintet staying at a hotel, and added Swimsuit ver. Homura to the game. The variant's personal story focused on Mitama's fishing contest.
  • 2018's second summer event, "Mikazuki Villa's Summer Vacation", shows Mikazuki Villa team's late summer shenanigans. It turns out to be team's setup to give Iroha her birthday presents.
  • 2019's first summer event, "Ephemeral Summer Night", is about the Wings of Magius' going to Touka's private beach. The Amane Twins' attempt to entertain Touka ends up almost turning them into Virgin Sacrifice by a local cult.
  • 2019's second summer event, "Summer Treasure", is about how Kyouko and several others got stranded in an inhabited island and try to make the most of their situation by searching for the island's treasure.
  • 2020's first summer event, "Mixed Summer", has Rena and Kaede making a truce and teaming up with Hikaru, Ao, and Yozuru so they can win a video-making contest.
  • 2020's second summer event, "Unknown Story", the Holy Quintet plus Nagisa are having dreams that foretell their summer vacation plans and they decide to replicate the dreams to cheer Nagisa's new friend.
• Bittersweet Ending: The end of Arc 2. The civil war ends with minimal causalities, Alina making a Heel–Face Turn and Mikoto and Chizuru deciding to believe in Iroha, joining with her. However, Iroha, just like Madoka before her, ascends to a higher plane of existence to restore all of Uwasa-turned girls and to complete the Doppel system that would ensure that magical girls the world over will never be able to become witches ever again, taking Ui, Touka, and Nemu with her, causing everyone but the Magical Girls to lose all memory of them. Despite that, all the girls no longer have to worry about becoming Witches and are moving forward in their lives.)
• Bland-Name Product: Felicia is a big fan of "Decagon Ball."
• Bowdlerise:
  • In Tart Magica, Melissa is a strong drinker, downing several pints of beers without being visibly winded, and while Tart Can't Hold Her Liquor, she still can drink a glass. In "The Chiming Bell that Transcends Time"/"The Maiden of Hope" event, Melissa doesn't drink at all and Tart gets drunk from smelling the wine.
  • When Mitama tries to persuade Momoko to join Yachiyo's crusade against the Magius, she threatens Momoko by revealing her animal-print panties. The English translation changes this into animal-print socks.
• Bring My Brown Pants: Discussed and used for comic relief during a tense moment in Chapter 9. When Momoko, Rena, and Kaede encounter the Saintly Witch, an unusually powerful monster that Alina Gray has been feeding and strengthening to defend the Magius' headquarters at Fendt Hope, Kaede begins visibly shaking, prompting Rena to remind her not to do this. It's not completely clear whether or not she's joking, but Kaede isn't amused either way.
• Cassandra Truth: Before she's proven right, Yachiyo's obsession of the Rumor are infamous among the magical girl community as a sign of her being an overzealous Cloudcuckoolander Conspiracy Theorist.
• Cast Herd: Most of the magical girls are generally depicted as part of a group. They can be teammates, a group of friends, or a loose circle of acquaintances. Often, these groups have someone who's not really part of their group but interacts with them anyway.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • There's a kind of nameless swallow-like Witch familiars, often babbling something, that always seem to follow Iroha around since she's walking into Kamihama. They even often mixes with other Witches and Uwasa's familiars to follow her. It's later revealed that the swallows, Oscar, are her sister's Witch familiars, and they're searching for Iroha by trying to pass Ui's garbled words to her.
  • In Chapter 3, the fake Mifuyu "proves" her identity to Yachiyo by referring to a coffee mug that only they would know about. The significance of this mug is explained in Chapter 6.
  • The Mirror Witch's abnormally large barrier and strength ends up having significant roles on magical girls' society in Kamihama, both important and not so important.
  • The Sigil Spam on Mitama's workshop and the Memoria Circuit is revealed to be the mark of the Coordinator magical girls' union, who has a role in the Main Story's Arc 2.
  • In Nemu's sidestory, she says that she wishes to create an Uwasa that can spread the words about the magical girls' existence. This turns into a subplot in Arc 2.
  • When Eve is defeated and Ui has been rescued, everyone witness several light beams come out of the Witch's body and scatter to different corners of Kamihama. Those lights end up being identified as Kimochi, Arc 2's collection of macguffins.
• Christmas Episode:
  • The 2017 Christmas event, "Christmas at Mikazuki Villa", showed the main characters getting ready for Christmas while also introducing Holy Mami. There was also a special cutscene shown on Christmas Day itself.
  • 2018's event, "Alina is Comin' to Town", introduced Holy Alina and her escapades around town as Christmas Death Caribou.
  • 2019's event, "The Page I Write on this Holy Night" introduced a holiday-themed Duo Unit of Rika and Ren as they go around Kamihama restoring the city's Christmas spirit.
  • 2020's event, "Angels on the Road", introduced a delivery-themed Duo Unit of Tsuruno and Felicia as they ride on a moped powered by smiles across a land where it's Christmas Every Day, searching for the "End of the World."
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: The Oriko trio appears only within the trio's personal stories (all of which were available from the game's launch), and is mentioned nowhere else.
• City of Adventure: Kamihama City. For currently unknown reasons, it's experiencing a massive uptick in the number of witches, even as other cities see less witches. This drives magical girls to come to the city. Then there's the Rumors, the Doppels, and the hooded girls who guard the Rumors with Doppels...
• Clingy MacGuffin: The new monsters in Arc 2, Emotions, turn into an unremovable silver bracelet on the arm of the magical girl that slays them, unless the magical girl willingly transfer it to another girl who the original owner has an Undying Loyalty to. They also talk.
• Competence Zone:
  • Averted. Some of the magical girls have been in the business long enough to be currently 18 or older, technically making them magical women (though this is possibly due to Japan's age of majority being 20 rather than 18).
  • Played straight with Mifuyu. She feels that her power is diminishing when she gets older, barely keeping up her transformation now. Part of her resentment toward Yachiyo is because Yachiyo can still keep her strength despite her being the same age as Mifuyu, never seemingly decayed by age and instead keeps getting stronger.
• Compressed Adaptation: The life-stage adaptation of Magia Record omits a lot of this like Adapted Out Momoko's team (Tsuruno is the one who saved Iroha from Zenobia and the Friendship Ending Staircase is an unfought off-screen Rumor) and Alina (at expense of making Mifuyu more antagonistic), or cutting off the entire subplot about Mami gets influenced by the Wings of Magius (she's simply got captured and quickly rescued).
• Crapsaccharine World: Kamihama City is a city where witches are abundant to be preyed on, a lot of magical girls to make friends with, a magical girl that can make your magic even stronger, and you can escape the fate of turning into a witch if your Soul Gem tainted to its limit. Sounds like a heaven for a magical girl, especially when witches start to get scarce in other cities? Too bad that you have to deal with witches and familiars more powerful than the usual, pseudo-witches and their own familiars that also just as strong and leave no Grief Seed if killed, a social conflict that divides the city's wards and propagates school bullying, a cold war between magical girl groups and stray Ax-Crazy lone wolves prowling in between them, and a magical girl death cult that capitalizes all of the above for their own end.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: A large part of the Magia Clash! event is Fate one-shotting the other magical girl teams in the tournament. The only team that puts up a real fight against them is Momoko's team, and in the end their final battle gets interrupted and is later called a tie.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Some of the friendly magical girls are Dark element. Not to mention the Doppels, where a magical girl summons her own witch.
• Defense Mechanism Superpower: In Kamihama, a magical girl can summon their own witch, which is called a "Doppel". They can only be summoned when a magical girl's Soul Gem is fully tainted, meaning they're out of magic. Use of Doppels cleans the Soul Gem afterwards. Touka and Nemu set up this system precisely to fight against the Witch system, out of their love for Iroha, but lost their way after they were forced to seal away Ui and lost their memories of her.
• Diabolus ex Machina: At the end of Ash Grey Revolution, just when it seems as though the protagonists' plans to reconcile the Yukuni villagers with the Magical Girls is about to succeed, the bus carrying the villagers suddenly falls off a cliff and explodes, killing everyone in it. It's such a diabolus ex machina that the Folklore of 0 and Tasuke Satomi conclude that its the will of the universe itself that foiled their plans in order to uphold The Masquerade.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The actresses for Iroha, Yachiyo, and Tsuruno are part of the group TrySail and perform the theme songs for the mobile game and the anime adaptation.
  • The ending theme songs for the "Green Jasper Diviners", "Crimson Resolve" and "Dependence Blue" events are sung by the events' main protagonists.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • The Azalea trio's relationship is very reminiscent of a dysfunctional family; Konoha is a Control Freak and neurotic father, Hazuki is a well-intentioned but reluctantly cheating mother, and Ayame is their child who falls into delinquency and even makes friends with a subordinate of the person her mother is cheating with.
  • While it's already vaguely seen from Kazumi Magica, the relationships between hostile magical girl teams are pretty much like Gangbangers, complete with hired guns (Felicia) and a black market (Mitama), even with Kamihama's unique situation makes them better at working at a common cause. The Promised Blood is especially a Yakuza parallel; they drink each other's blood to swear loyalty and the head honchos call the other leaders 'Sister'.
  • Mitama's job to make girls stronger involves fiddling with their soul gems, which has been proven in the main series to be able to make the girl feel pain, and considering the truth about soul gems, she might as well be touching the girls themselves. It also doesn't help that she jokingly asked Iroha to undress. To generate Innocent Innuendo, the game keeps the enhancement process off-screen. However, the anime directly shows Mitama powering-up Mayu, and makes it even less subtle, with the latter dramatically throwing her head back and gasping as Mitama touches her soul gem.
  • The way Mifuyu intrudes Yachiyo's house and taunts Iroha with her familiarity with Yachiyo's personal life in Chapter 6 is closer to a bitter ex-girlfriend passive-aggressively intimidating the new girlfriend than a We Can Rule Together propaganda of the Wings of Magius. Alternatively, Mifuyu's actions^note While Yachiyo calls Iroha "Tamaki-san," Mifuyu instead uses the more familiar "Iroha-san." In Episode 11, when Yachiyo asks Mifuyu what she talked with Iroha about, Mifuyu evasively tells Mifuyu to ask Iroha herself. after Yachiyo's return comes off as Mifuyu trying to make Yachiyo jealous by getting close to her "girlfriend".
  • Touka explains that Tsuruno's brainwashing is actually a enhanced stimulation of her A10 cells in her ventral tegmental area to produce dophamine every time she's doing the Magius' bidding. That's right, Touka has just describe, in great detail, that she makes Tsuruno sexually aroused by associating her enslavement with pleasure in a similar way Yukizome turned into Ultimate Despair.
• Downer Ending:
  • The end of Homura's Valentine story, the Black Feather Homura befriended turns into a Witch and Homura has to Mercy Kill her. This incident further demoralizes Homura's attempt to be a better role model like Madoka did for her. Her only comfort is that she has Madoka there beside her.
  • At the end of "Dependence Blue", Jun has turned into a Witch, Mitsune has been completely broken and is using her magic to delude herself about Jun's death, and the festival that San and Miyuri were trying to save got canceled anyway, making the entire mission All for Nothing. The only bright spot is that the Neo-Magius have finally established themselves as a team, but even this is mixed at best when you consider that the Neo-Magius are major antagonists in the main story.
• Driving Question:
  • Arc 1's is "Where is Ui, and why does nobody remember her?" It turns out that she was turned into the half-Witch Embryo Eve, which isolated her existence and made it so it seems like she never existed to the outside world. She gets better.
  • Arc 2 brings up the question of why magical girls are still a secret to the wider world when they've been around for millennia, their wishes have shaped history, and many influential/famous/powerful women throughout history were magical girls. It's eventually hypothesized that the universe itself is conspiring the keep magical girls a secret, as it is dependent on the energy the magical girl system produces to prolong its lifespan. Revealing the Awful Truth of the magical girl system would cause fewer girls to make contracts, diminishing the amount of energy the universe gets to sustain itself; therefore the universe enforces The Masquerade and makes bad things happen when magical girls expose themselves.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Several girls are debuted in other girls' sidestories (Kokoro in Masara's, Ria in Homura's) before they're made playable in events where they are main protagonists of.
  • In the NA server only, Black Feathers. They appear in one of the challenge nodes in Ren Isuzu's event, but aren't mentioned in any form plot-wise until Chapter 4, which wasn't released at the time. Due to NA server not following JP server's schedule perfectly, this is likely just an oversight.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After several months of being separated from everyone and the crisis of the Symbol Witch, The Puella Historia arc ends with Iroha and Ui being allowed to remain separate and to return home, much to their and their friends’ joy.
• Enemy Mine: At the conclusion of the "Crimson Resolve" event, the gangs of Futatsugi City decide to settle their differences and unite, forming the Promised Blood faction. Their goal is to invade Kamihama and take the city, with its abundance of Witches and the secret of Doppels, for themselves.
• Expanded Universe: Evoked by the side stories. While most of the new magical girls are irrelevant to the main plot, the side stories reveal a large web of relationships between the magical girls of Kamihama. Then all these side characters start appearing in Chapter 8...
• Extremely Short Timespan: Chapter 8-10 takes place over one very very long day which have team Mikazuki and their allies running around the whole town rescuing magical girls from Brainwashed and Crazy Feathers, invades their base, and have a final fight against the Magius, Eve/Shitori Egumo, and Walpurgisnacht.
• Everyone Is Related:
  • Because of the way their social structures work, practically everyone knows everyone else. For example Sayuki, the idol singer that Rena is a fan of, is a classmate of Mayu who works part-time in an art gallery where Alina is putting up her works.
  • More literally, Chiharu, Shizuka and Sunao are all distant cousins, being members of the Tokime clan along with the other villagers.

F-M

• Faceless Goons: The Black/White Feathers, minions of the Magius, have hoods covering their faces (except their mouths) at all times, and don't have any other distinguishing features.
  • In the Arc 2, the major factions have their own color-coded themed mooks; blue cultist for Neo-Magius, green ninjas for the Tokime clan, and red delinquents for Promised Blood.
• Faceless Masses: The non-magical people are depicted as solid color silhouettes; blue for male, pink for female. This even works on people we know the appearance of from other spin-off works like Gilles de Rais and La Hire, though the player can still identify them from their haircuts.
• False Flag Operation:
  • The Hidden Villain does this in the Azalea event. They caused Momoko to faint, spread rumors blaming the Azalea trio for it, and then made it look like Rena caused Ayame to faint herself. All to drive Konoha into a Freak Out. And the only reason seems to be It Amused Me.
  • The cold war between the Eastern and Western Kamihama, that is started by claimed unprovoked attacks from each other, turned out to be the Mirror Witch's defense mechanism against intruders. It's spewing magical girls' clone that attack indiscriminately and it had caused misunderstanding between East and West magical girls, who thought they were attacked by the other side. Yachiyo, Mifuyu, and Kanagi realized this and attempted to negotiate peace, Yachiyo and Kanagi agreed on a uneasy cold war to maintain the status quo while dealing with the Mirror Witch discreetly so no one can break 'no hostility on Chuou Ward' agreement. Now that Kamihama has a lot of Witches, the treaty has no use anymore because now everyone doesn't have to worry about run out of Grief Seeds.
  • In Another Story Chapter 7, Mitakihara suddenly flooded by Witches. The Wing of Magius release these Witches they cultivated to stop Madoka, Homura, and Sayaka from regrouping with Kamihama magical girls when the Magius purging magical girls not aligned with them, not only to rob Iroha's group extra muscles but also because Mami wishes to leave them out of the ensuing bloodbath.
• The Famine: Futatsugi City, introduced in the "Crimson Resolve" event, has very few Witches since most of them have been lured to Kamihama. The resulting drought of Grief Seeds led to a bloody gang war before the survivors united with the purpose of invading and conquering Kamihama.
• Final Boss:
  • Walpurgisnacht, as she did in the original series, serves as the final boss of Arc 1.
  • The Mirror Witch is the final boss of Arc 2.
• Foregone Conclusion: It goes hand-in-hand with Anachronic Order; you can tell that some things are just going to happen from the side-stories. Shizuku's side, for example, shows that Iroha and Yachiyo are in First-Name Basis. In the main story, it isn't until Chapter 6, where they have a heart-to-heart Declaration of Protection, that they go First-Name Basis. This also means that the Wings of Magius' plan to shatter the main characters' team by brainwashing Tsuruno, Fecilia, and Sana ultimately fails because they are fine and united in the side-story but the Wings of Magius is still active because Yachiyo finds that Shizuku is working freelance for a 'shady group'.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The Memoria She'll Definitely Be Happy is telling a memory of Iroha that Ui is suddenly asking her for a sketchbook. Not only does it give a general image of the three Magius' dynamic after Ui's disappearance, in Chapter 8, we finally see the context of that memory; Ui is the one who drew the Rumors, and Iroha knew this.
  • The Memoria As A Fashion Model foreshadows the reason why Yachiyo made her contract. But why she would feel miserable and sad, yet happy if she quits? Chapter 6 explains that.
  • The unused mugs in Yachiyo's cupboard is always treated like they're belong to someone even before Mifuyu's bold intrusion in the Mikazuki House.
  • Tsukuyo and Tsukasa's sidestory is giving the first sight of the widespread class segregation in Kamihama City which, along with the context of Mirror Witch' story, gives political context of the city's magical girls' general inaction against the Wings of Magius.
  • The rundown ferris wheel in Daito ward that becomes the backdrop for the Chelation Land rumor is later revealed as a stalled project, implied because of the corruption in the mayor's office, at expense of the Eastern Kamihama's livelihood - something that a lot of the Feathers take offense of. This, combined with the election fraud scandal in Asuka's sidestory and the mayor's incompetence at the reconstruction after the battle against Walpurgisnacht, later causes the mayor's impeachment and the appearance of mayor candidate from Daito.
  • In Karin's sidestory, Karin stole Grief Seed from strong magical girls to give it to weaker magical girl, and Yachiyo rebuked her pretty harshly for it. "Breakpoint" event's ladder dialogues reveal that Karin's antics happened when Kamihama's magical girl turfs were in a state of simmering civil war because of a lack of Grief Seed in the city. If Yachiyo didn't stop Karin, she might attack someone she shouldn't and caused a lot of casualties.
  • The formation of the main characters' mug in Chapter 7 gives a symbolism of which girl can save Tsuruno from her brainwashing; Iroha and Sana want to toast with Tsuruno but they're too far, Yachiyo's near but she and Tsuruno will bump elbow, while Felicia is both close and open to Tsuruno for them to have a toast.
  • In Manaka's side story, it is said that before she applied for Mizuna Girls', she applied St. Liliana. Because we can basically see the girls' ward from their school except for some cases, we can assume that St. Liliana is in the relatively unknown northernmost Hokuyo Ward because for the longest time, there's no St. Liliana student making appearance. Later, Touka makes her entrance wearing a uniform that no one wear, which means she's likely from St. Liliana/Hokuyo Ward. It is later shown that her uniform is indeed St. Liliana's and the Magius' headquarter turns out to be in Hokuyo.
  • Magius's works involve stealing Witches from other cities. In the anime, it is shown that one of the Wings of Magius' oath is "We affirm ourselves at expense of our neighbors", in line with this. It ends up biting Kamihama in the bum in the story's second arc.
  • Nemu's magical girl outfit has a ball-and-chain attached to one of her legs. She ends up losing the use of her legs while fighting Alina and is permanently confined to a wheelchair.
• Friendly Enemy: The members of Promised Blood are rather prone to this. Both Ranka and Sakuya end up bonding with girls who are supposed to be their enemies: Ranka becomes friends with Rena due to their shared love of arcades, while Sakuya becomes friends with Ryouko of the Tokime Clan. Both girls eventually decide to break up their budding friendships for the sake of Promised Blood's mission, but not without lots of regret.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: There's a lot of magical girls that end up really dangerous compared to their career's beginning.
  • Hanna Sarasa, the Arc Villain of Azalea's Myth Arc, was just an ordinary bullied kid in school. Then she used her wish to erase her tormentors from the face of the Earth and after losing her Morality Pet, proceeds to be one of the vilest antagonists in game.
  • Two of the three Magius are sickly, if very smart, kids confined in hospital who aren't supposed to be magical girls. They go on to make a cult with purpose of fighting against a highly advanced alien race.
  • In a way, Iroha is this; she was just a New Transfer Student and Naïve Newcomer in Kamihama City. By the end of the first arc, she's the supreme leader of Kamihama's magical girl union and have the explicit blessing of the Law of Cycle.
  • The identity of the multiple-layered, alternate universe-connecting Endless Mirror Witch is Sena Mikoto, Hanna's aforementioned Morality Pet, who in all indications was just an ordinary cowardly magical girl.
• Genre Shift:
  • Magia Record goes from a pretty standard Madoka Magica's brand of magical girl show, into a Fantastic Noir thriller when it's revealed that a cult is responsible for everything, into a somewhat straight-forward fantasy epic by the last stretch of the first arc.
  • In the second arc, it begins as a mini nation-building story that goes into a Yakuza flick, of which the participants just happen to be magical girls, which later on becomes Conspiracy Thriller story that loosely involves the government and a semi-omniscient magical girl cabal.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: A side story visits the after-life of Kanae and Mel, Yachiyo's former teammates. They have some typical ghost powers, like weak telekinesis; less typically, they have "ghost licenses," also used as currency for their event. They both get their licenses suspended for indirectly communicating with Yachiyo. Then it's later revealed that Mel, having turned to a Witch and her soul ceased to exist because of it, is just a apparition Kanae made from catching whatever last memory Mel had prior her transformation.
• God's Hands Are Tied: Ultimate Madoka has become aware of this timeline; and is concerned at how it is being influenced by an unknown force. She's going to wait and see how it goes before blessing it or breaking the timeline.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: In Chapter 6, after Touka of the three Magius successfully sways Tsuruno, Felicia, and Sana with brainwashing, Mami is sent to finish off Iroha and Yachiyo. Sayaka ends up rescuing the two, witnessing firsthand just what kind of danger the Wings of Magius pose and reporting it to her friends. The chapter ends with Momoko finally reconciling with Yachiyo. She promises to bring her own team to help Iroha and Yachiyo rescue their friends, Madoka agrees to join in with the remaining Holy Quintet (even if Kyouko insists on doing it solo), and Mitama decides to be Neutral No Longer.
  • In Chapter 7, Kanagi, the head honcho of eastern side of Kamihama decides to forgo her rivalry with Yachiyo and joins this alliance.
  • In Chapter 8, The Wing of Magius decide to jump the slipper slope and purge all the non-Magius magical girls. The girls who were attacked by the Magius then get evacuated to Mitama's workshop and are given a crash course on the true nature of magical girl contract and the extend of what the Magius will do to achieve their goal. The result is the first city-wide alliance that would become the Kamihama Magia Union.
• Gratuitous Japanese: The abnormal witch-like creatures are still called "Uwasa" in the NA translation. This is literally just the Japanese word for "rumor." They're called that because they essentially spread through rumors and attack people who don't heed the warnings in the rumor, but none of this really comes through in the translated version since they do translate the word when it's used to refer to the rumors associated with the "uwasa." This was probably intended to make the distinction more clear, but if you don't know what "uwasa" means it's unclear where the term came from.
• Guardian Entity: Many magical girls summon their Doppels as a seperate entity, though they're usually attached to the magical girl somehow. Kyouko's Doppel is currently the purest example of this trope, as Ophelia is not attached to anything of Kyouko's.
• Guilt-Tripping: Mifuyu does this to Yachiyo in Chapter 6 of the game, albeit not to convince her to do something for her, but rather to dissuade her from interfering from the Wings of Magius's plans. Namely she guilt trips Yachiyo by pointing out that Yachiyo's made new friends even though Yachiyo blames herself for the deaths of her and Mifuyu's past friends and that Yachiyo allowing herself to grow close to others again is going to lead to their demises just like what happened before. It works like a charm, and Yachiyo reverts back to her sullen demeanor from Chapter 1 of the game and allows Iroha and the others to go to a Magius meeting even though it is clearly a trap.
• Halloween Episode:
  • For Halloween in 2017 the game introduced the Halloween-themed Karin (who is not a limited character, funnily enough). It also ran a special event, "Magical Halloween Theater", where characters put on a play for some young children; Kyoko and Felicia got special Halloween costumes.
  • Halloween 2018 and 2019 only have small events for side characters' Halloween costumes.
  • Halloween 2020 brings back a bigger story event with Kanagi and Momoko. Kanagi got herself thralled by a microscopic-sized Witch that uses her as a vehicle to spread the thrall on other magical girls. Momoko, whose timing is still bad, ends up late on the rendezvous point and notices that her friends are brainwashed. It's all up to Momoko to smack some sense on Kanagi and the others.
• Hate Plague: In "Rondo of Oblivion", the Magia Union is stricken by this because the personal magics of Mikura^note Reviving the history from ancient artifacts, Temari^note Making people follow any script she writes, and Seira^note Making actors become the characters they portray resonate with each other, recreating the stage for Kamihama's social conflict from back when the rival wards were warring states. It influences the 'actors', the volunteering Union magical girls for the trio's stage production, into fulfilling their roles in the story as murderous rivals. It causes Yachiyo and Kanagi to almost kill each other out of blind fury from a perceived slight, something they would normally not do.
• Heavenly Concentric Circles: Mami Tomoe has the Doppel of Worship, which is described as materializing when one has "accepted salvation in a moment of despair". In other words, the Doppel believes itself a divine savior. When merged with Mami Tomoe, it turns her Magical Girl outfit into a Shout-Out to common imagery of the Christian Virgin Mary. On her back, she has concentric, golden discs with the outer ring being made of protruding rays.
• Heroes Unlimited: Outside the ones who only appeared briefly or were implied to exist in the past, the original series only had five magical girls; with some more in related spin-offs. The game introduced twenty-two entirely new magical girls on its first day, with more being added as the game progresses. However, most of them are irrelevant to the main plot... until the very end.
• Hidden Elf Village: Tokime Village, introduced in "The Green Jasper Diviner", is an isolated rural village where the existence of Magical Girls is well known to everyone and where Kyubey is worshiped as a god. It can't be seen from satellite camera and no signal reaches any cellphone once you step inside. The reason why the village is so isolated is due to a Witch that the village elder controls hides the village inside her Labyrinth, and after the elder dies and the Witch is defeated, the epilogue of the event shows that Tokime is slowly beginning to modernize.
• Hotter and Sexier: Downplayed, however Magia Record incorporates a lot more Fanservice with the magical girls than the fairly tame original show did.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Magia Record continues the trend of the franchise's spinoffs shifting the conflict from Eldritch Abominations and Starfish Aliens to Magical Girls. However, what makes this different from the other spinoffs is that there are several non-Magical Girl villains whose actions and personalities are even closer towards Hate Sink territory than every other Magical Girl villain:
  • Sana's mother and stepfamily, who mistreat her for no reason other than being a disgrace to the family
  • Nagisa's mom, who pressured her daughter to use her Magical Girl which to kill a lot of people for no reason.
  • Sanemon Banshu, a samurai warlord who betrayed the Mizuna clan, killed Tsuyu's father, and created the Disaster Dominoes behind Arc 2's Big Bad.
  • Lady Mikoshiba, a corrupt village elder complicit in a centuries-old ritual that would either cause Magical Girls to witch out or drown to their deaths.
• Improbable Weapon User: Some of the girls' weapons tend to fall into this, such as a frying pan, large garden scissors or a pair of fans.
• Idol Singer: Besides Sayuki who works as a local idol promoting Mizuna Ward, an entire plotline of Magia Report centered on Iroha and Madoka trying to form an idol group. They eventually put together a group consisting of Rena, Kako, Rika, Mami and Iroha named Kamiha ☆ Magica.
• Indian Burial Ground: In Mizuna Ward, there's a legend about two lovers separated by social status and one half of the pair was killed because of it. His killing ground turns out to be the place where Mizuna Girl's School stands now. The social caste bullying continues on in the school and many of the victims like Sana, Mitama, and Hanna made their contracts under the duress and despair from the abuse, bringing misfortunes to their tormentors and left with varying degrees of darkness in their personalities.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • Deliberate (but subtle) example - when you're about to draw the gacha, there are several pictures rushing pass the gacha screen, and from them, you can see one of the girls' attribute and the highest rarity of the draw; solo Ui means 4*, while Mikazuki team means 5*. If you pull a 4-star magical girl card, the swirling lines in the background become multi-colored.
  • In the game's news announcement, the members of the invading factions of magical girl in Arc 2 have their faction's heraldry embroidered in their card's background, even before their story is playable to reveal their contribution to the plot.
• Ironic Echo:
  • When Mifuyu is asked by Yachiyo whether she's serious about being in the Wing of Magius, she declares that she'll do anything to ensure that she'll be saved from the curse of magical girls. Turns out she can't; the moment she has to dirty her own hands herself when the Magius attempt to use Tsuruno, who only came under Magius control because of her, to slaughter more people by fusing with Chelation Ferris Wheel Rumor, she pretty much asks Yachiyo to be stopped.
  • In the beginning of Rika's sidestory, when a guy makes fun of Hinano's height and mannerisms for being weird, Rika asks him if it's really so funny if somebody isn't ordinary. Later, when Rika tells Hinano about her sexuality and asks Hinano if she thinks she's gross, Hinano uses almost the exact lines that Rika used when defending her earlier.
  • Every time Iroha pleads Touka to stop her villany, she will taunt Iroha by saying "Nope!" in sing-song as her answer. After Touka has her memories about Iroha and Ui returned to her and sees just what kind of calamity she has brought to the city she loves, Touka pleads Alina - the only one who still wishes for the apocalypse, to stop this madness. Alina mirrors her "Nope!" and Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.
• It's a Wonderful Plot: The "Stardust Mirage" event showcases an Alternate Universe where none of the characters became Magical Girls, though unlike many examples of the trope there's a mixture of happy and tragic outcomes.
  • Yachiyo and her grandmother run Mikazuki Villa as a girl's shelter where Iroha, Ui and Sana all currently live, with Karin visiting often. Kanae is still alive and has moved out to pursue a music career, while Mifuyu is a stranger. It eventually becomes a counseling office where the girls of Kamihama, Futatsugi and Takarazaki gather to seek advice and guidance.
  • Juri is eventually expelled from school and helps her father full-time with their boxing gym, where she gradually learns to overcome her anger issues, and a few other people like Yuna and Tasuke wind of training there to help relieve their stress in a healthy way.
  • Several girls who were only alive due to wishes die in a world where they don't contract— Leila falls off the roof of the apartment complex; Hinano died in a chemical explosion at the age of 13; Sudachi is sacrificed by her class to a school shooter; Ren successfully commits suicide (which is witnessed by Iroha and Ui); and Himena also takes her own life, but not before exposing the people who drove her boyfriend to suicide.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • The game doesn't bother with avoiding spoilers for old characters. As early as the tutorial, which is the game's first minutes, you are presented to Homura's original self, a Walking Spoiler that in the anime was not revealed until the last quarter of the show.
  • Melissa is not a magical girl at the start of the Darc Magica story, but the fact that she becomes one is given away by her being the main advertised reward for playing the event.
  • Uwasa Tsuruno is a Walking Spoiler for a certain character's Face–Heel Turn, and just like all other characters, you may run into her in Mirrors battles or in other players' Support teams long before you get to the relevant part of the story. She was released as a promoted Fate Weave not long after those story chapters came out, so if you weren't caught up yet and opened the game during that week, you probably got spoiled.
  • Even if you're a new player, you can immediately play the prologue of Arc 2. This basically spoils the first quarter of Arc 1 where Iroha goes around and befriends a bunch of magical girls, and the last chapter of that arc because it shows that the Final Boss created a whole bunch of new problems.
• Left Hanging:
  • The "See You Tomorrow" Residential Complex event leaves behind more questions than answers. The magical girl Nanaka talks about at the end of Part 1 is never revealed - though it's hinted that she has some connection to the missing girl from the apartment complex. Of course, that is also unexplained. But see Sequel Hook.
  • Because of the NA version's shutdown before Arc 2 could be ported, the stinger of "A New Beginning", where Ryouko, Ranka and Kagome— none of whom are given names— see Touka unleashing her Doppel out of frustration becomes both this and Last Episode, New Character.
• Level Ate: Riko Chiaki finds herself in a world of giant bento box food in the event "It's Okay to be Clumsy". Structures resembling a hamburger and shrimp tempura among other foods lay among a checkerboard egg omelet path.
• Lighter and Softer:
  • The series' aversion of teaming up is inverted due to a mysterious abundance of witches and the fact they're noticeably stronger; magical girls are better off teaming up.
  • Most of the events' plots often put the Myth Arc regarding the Wings of Magius on the backseat, even when members of the organization appear in them.
  • There's considerably less death and witchification in this series (partly due to the Gotta Catch 'Em All mechanic). Two Posthumous Characters met these fates, but the main cast remains in good shape several chapters in. Even when characters do start dying in Arc 2, it’s nowhere to the degree of the other parts of the series.
  • In terms of events, the "Summer with Mikazuki Villa" wouldn't be out of place in a Slice of Life comedy. It's incredibly lighthearted compared to other branch events such as "And So, the Azaleas Bloom" and "See You Tomorrow", and even compared to other seasonal events like the shockingly dark "Beachside Bonds." Its "bad endings" include things like Yachiyo losing an eating competition and Sana discovering a new species of crab and becoming a famous marine biologist.
• Light Is Not Good: There're Light attribute girls who are in the gray spectrum or downright evil, such as Oriko, Minou or Yuna.
• Limited Wardrobe: Characters are nearly always seen in one outfit, typically a school uniform, in most situations without a specific alternate costume. Meaning you will see several characters in long-sleeved school uniforms on the beach in summer, for example, and few if any wearing casual clothing outside of specific holidays even on days without school or at a home.
• Lost in Translation: There are several from the English language translation of the game:
  • The English version of the game, as well as the dub of the anime, has the tendency to forgo the Last-Name Basis. This gets complicated because Yachiyo is always on a Last-Name Basis with her new team (Iroha and Sana), and when Yachiyo finally opens up to Iroha and goes to First-Name Basis, the emotional catharsis of the gesture is lost. This also makes the somewhat-obvious Anachronic Order from Shizuku's sidestory become harder to make a connection to.
  • Tart's name was changed to Darc despite the manga being officially released in English as Puella Magi Tart Magica. However, both Darc and Tart are alternate spellings of Joan of Arc's surname.
  • The Nanoha collaboration event, "Magia Clash", is a post-Chapter 10 event with all the spoilery allusions. The NA server dropped the event when Chapter 7 isn't half done yet. The server attempts to address this issue by replacing some of the yet-unreleased girls with other girls. This caused strange moments like the fight against the Mizuna ladies (Ria, Manaka, Mayu, Sayuki) becoming a Ragtag Band of Misfits because Mayu is replaced by Seika and Sayuki is replaced by Madoka, while making Seika fight twice in the elimination tournament because her real bracket is with the Daito Apartment trio. The biggest Hilarity Ensues change is when Iroha and the Mikazuki Villa team fight against Momoko's team; Ui Tamaki is in the spectator stand with Natsuki and the localization team changed her into Iroha, so Iroha is in two different places, cheering for herself.
  • The English subtitles tend to dance around when the girls outright say their ages in the voicelines, like Mitama stating she's "still young" instead of 17 years old. This is strangely averted with Kako, as one of the chapters of her sidestory references her being 13, and this was kept in the localization.
  • In Homura's Valentine event story, a young girl who implied to be the memory of a younger version of the Black Feather Homura befriends in the event, says that she wants to be just like the hero in her favorite story. In the Japanese version, she was reciting lines from Kaze no Matasaburo while the English version had her recite lines from Oliver Twist. This erases the scene's references, including the reason why the Black Feather's Witch is named Matasaburo (which remains in the English version), about Kenji Miyazawa's story that adds to the game's numerous Shout-Out to the author.
  • The English server doesn't implement the companion log-in story of "A New Beginning", "Kamihama in a Circle". This causes "A New Beginning" to miss just about the majority of its story foundations like how Iroha and Yachiyo have wings now, what Touka is planning and why it goes badly, what Kamihama Magia Union is, and why there still are Feathers that attempt to kidnap Nemu when it's vaguely said that magical girls in Kamihama are united now.
• Magnetic Plot Device: Something in Kamihama is bringing magical girls there. In Oriko's side story, she sees Mami and Kyoko arriving in Kamihama via a spatial anomaly, something the two are unaware of. (This is referenced in Another Story, when Mami enters Kamihama without realizing it). Also, Homura sees a girl telling her to come to Kamihama...while in her own time stop.
• Mercy Kill: During Mifuyu's flashback in Chapter 6, when her group saw Mel turn into a Witch, Yachiyo, Mifuyu and Momoko promised each other that if one of them starts to turn into a Witch, then another one of them will kill her before it happens. Momoko later makes this same promise to Rena and Kaede.
• Milestone Celebration: invoked The 1-year anniversary has a number of additions and special events. Perhaps the most notable event is the anniversary gacha for Ultimate Madoka.
• Mob War: The conclusion of the second arc's first chapter; Kyubey announces to every belligerents for the auto-purification barrier via holographic projection that the Incubators deliberately informed them of the barrier so they would fight each other and use Doppel more for the Incubators' energy quota. Hearing this, Iroha tries to convince everyone to cooperate so they can work together expanding the barrier for everyone. Tokime Clan agrees to ally themselves with the Magia Union, Promised Blood refuses because they can't forgive Kamihama for treading on their suffering, Neo-Magius refuses because the Union doesn't agree with their magical girls-supremacy agenda, Puella Care sells their service to everyone to maintain their neutrality, while Folklore of 0 decides to watch for now.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • Valentine 2018 event has several scenarios written by InuCurry. They tend to clash with the other scenarios - the hilarious and heartwarming sidestory about another of Hinano's failed love confessions is right next to Homura's latest string of Break the Cutie.
  • The 2018 summer event changes from more lighthearted tone to horror-esque once Homura gets haunted by a mysterious force and Madoka gets possessed. It turns out to be an actual ghost of a dead person, who thought they killed her lover.
  • The first two of Madoka-Iroha duo unit's sidestory chapters are about how Iroha goes to visit Mitakihara, gets introduced to Madoka's family, and hangs out with the Holy Quintet. The last chapter has them accidentally seeing a glimpse of non-Magia Record timeline; Madoka never exists because she got Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence and Iroha died in a traffic accident, leaving her family broken-hearted.
• Muggle with a Degree in Magic:
  • Touka's uncle studied Magical Girls, their culture and their involvement in human history, and wrote a book about it titled Magical Girls: Their Hope and Despair before disappearing one day. Judging by Touka's words on how her father would react if he saw her reading her uncle's book, it seems to have made him a pariah. Part 2 introduces Kagome, a regular human who can observe Magical Girls and who was the assistant of Touka's uncle.
  • Not all members of the Tokime clan have potential, but everyone knows what magical girls are and what kind of duty that have after making their wish. Some of them even fled their village and prevented their daughters from making contract with a creature they couldn't see because they know what entails with the system.
• Myth Arc:
  • The overarching plot of Arc 1 is Iroha trying to find her sister. She comes to believe the mysteries of Kamihama are somehow involved in her sister's disappearance.
  • Arc 2's plot goes into several factions outside Kamihama's magical girl union competing over the coveted anti-Witch transformation barrier.
  • Tart Magica collaboration events is about the villains' attempt to eliminate Tart and her party beside the plot of the original manga because they foresaw their defeat in the manga's plot and (history's canon), and they unintentionally dragged our protagonists in the present because their action causes Delayed Ripple Effect.
  • "Azalea" myth arc is concerning a trio of orphan magical girls who lived in the eponymous Azalea House trying to fit in within Kamihama's magical girl community, but someone is pitting them against other magical girl gangs For the Evulz.
• Mythology Gag: The game has begun referencing its parody comic, Magia Report. Some event challenge battles are inspired by scenes from the comic.

N-Z

• Named by the Adaptation: Being a game adaptation of a series consisting mostly of anime and manga, it ends up naming certain things that used to have no canon name. For example, Kirika's witch was thought for a long time named Margot based on the signs in her labyrinth, but this game named Kirika's Doppel Latria.
• Narrator All Along: At the beginning of the "See You Tomorrow" Residential Complex event, someone narrates about how they enjoy the apartment complex, ending by saying that it's their home and an important place to them. Near the end of the event the characters discover a video of a girl who went missing some time ago. The video shows the girl making a speech, and the speech is the event's introductory narration. Also, at the end of Part 1, Nanaka says her impression of the magical girl she met at the apartment complex was that the complex was their home and an important place to them. This would imply it was the same missing girl, in a variation of Something Only They Would Say.
• New Year Has Come: The 2018 New Year Event introduces a special holiday-themed version of Madoka, as well as plots where the characters say their New Year's wishes...and participate in contests!
• Once More, with Clarity:
  • Tsukuyo and Tsukasa's sidestories are telling the same event, but from the point of view of the respective twin. Only in Tsukasa's story Tsukuyo introduces herself with her mother's surname, which gives context of why in Tsukuyo's story it is said that they have different names despite being twins and why they make a big deal of taking their birth names. It is also revealed that the one who saved and brought Tsukasa to the hospital is a magical girl named Kanagi and the voice that guides Tsukasa to consciousness is Mifuyu's when she talks to Tsukuyo.
  • The story of magical girl system Touka tells in her lecture is of Yachiyo's groups, but with the name replaced with alphabetic codename. Later, Mifuyu uses her power to make a visual projection of the event, showing who's who in that story.
  • In the first half of "Green Jasper Diviners", the bad ends are usually coming from Chiharu's attempts to snoop around the village, and she suddenly gets attacked and dies unceremoniously without knowing what's going on. In the second half of the event, where we finally get Sunao's POV, it is revealed that Sunao is the one who would kill her in the bad ends, but get conveniently interrupted by Shizuka in the good end's branch pathing.
• One-Winged Angel: Certain Doppels manifest less as Guardian Entities and more as parts of the magical girl's body. Yachiyo's Doppel is a good example, as some of her body parts are replaced by those of her witch. It is explained that older girls are less likely to "separate" from their Witch form when summoning a Doppel.
• Only the Worthy May Pass: Yachiyo only allows Iroha to remain in Kamihama after she proves that she's strong enough to survive by taking out a Kamihaman Witch alone. Yachiyo enacts a similar test on Ui in the "Fledgling's First Flight" event, though more as a rite-of-passage instead of a requirement to stay in the city.
• Out of Focus: The Holy Quintet of Mitakihara, despite playing major roles in Arc 1, don't appear in Arc 2's main story. In Madoka & Iroha's duo unit MSS, Iroha explains that she didn't want to get them involved in the Kimochi War since they weren't directly responsible for anything unlike Kamihama's Magical Girls.
• Please Kill Me if It Satisfies You: After the events of Chapter 10, Touka and Nemu are so remorseful for what they've done that when it comes time for everyone to decide what happens to the defeated Wings of Magius, they try to rig the trial in a way that would guarantee that they be executed. It ultimately fails because Sakurako can't bring herself to kill two of her "creators". In Arc 2, they still has this opinion, and using their own Soul Gems as a guarantee for a truce with Promised Blood, the girls who has s lot of reasons to kill them then and there.
• Pun-Based Title: The NA version of Kanagi's maid cafe event is called "Let's See What You're Maid Of."
• Race Against the Clock: In Chapter 4, Iroha, Felicia, and Kyoko are cursed by a Rumor that will bring them misery in twenty-four hours. The time they have left is revealed by paper periodically falling from the air. The paper even gives the exact minutes during the last hour. The girls are able to beat the Rumor just as time runs out.
• Recursive Canon: Seen throughout the official side-comic "Magia Report." It starts with Madoka and Iroha watching the former's blu-ray copy of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, then moves on to them and other characters discussing/parodying Magia Record's game mechanics and story. The versions of Madoka, Iroha, and Felicia from this comic eventually got ported into the game itself.
• Retcon:
  • In Sana's sidestory, the student who bullied her was a boy until someone in the staff remembered that Mizuna Girls' School is a girls-only school and fixed the scene in an update.
  • In Chapter 3 main story, a screen's text that is showing Ui's Broken Record is changed with the addition of the voice-acting; it instead shows a Morse code-like lines and dots while the Broken Record is voice-acted, streamlining the depiction of the Rumors and Rumormongers' alien language from previous chapters.
  • In the rerun of "Another Daze", Kazumi Magica's original author Masaki Hiramatsu rewrote the scripts for the event and the sidestories of the girls that debuted in the event. While storylines are basically the same, the scripts add a lot more of the characters' more nuanced personality traits. And that includes them vaguely alluding to Pleiades Saints being not so united.
  • The Chapter 6 Witch that Kanae defeats at the cost of her life was changed from Rebecca to Oshiti after the "Deliver to the Beyond, A Piece of Hope" event.
• School Bullying Is Harmless: Averted.
  • A lot of magical girls' backstory are motivated by school bullying. The Kamihama University-Affiliated is especially bad at this; Ren tried to commit suicide twice, Rena is very high-strung, Mito is a social outcast - all because their classmates are quite cruel.
  • The situation in other cities aren't too bright either. Himena has to resort to take online classes due to the bullying she receives, Ao becomes a loner and desperately wants friends, and Yuna even contracted to have a chance for her to make her school become a better place.
• Self-Parody: The main purpose of the Magia Report comic, though it was originally designed as a promo/infomercial.
• Sequel Hook:
  • None of Nanaka's group's sidestories gives the conclusion of their fight against the witch that brainwashed people to do evil in Kamihama City. Nanaka's in particular reveals nothing about her revenge plan against Kyubey. The subplot instead continues on to their appearance in events.
  • The Azalea event's Epilogue shows that someone was responsible for the whole thing.
  • The end of the "See You Tomorrow" Residential Complex event shows the trio meeting the Azalea trio, implying their stories will entwine in the future. Also see Left Hanging.
  • At the end of "Green Jasper Diviner" event, Chiharu, Shizuka, and Sunao decide to gather their fellow Tokime magical girls and, more or less, invade Kamihama on Kyubey's nudging. As "Crimson Resolve" event story reveals, this is turns out to be the beginning of Main Story Arc 2's setup, as various magical girl factions from outside Kamihama, enticed by the story about the Doppel, come in bulks in what described as "the gathering of one hundred calamities".
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The premise of "The Chiming Bell that Transcends Time" event is that Iroha and Yachiyo are somehow transported into medieval France where it's slowly being engulfed by The Night That Never Ends and an infestation of blatant witch attacks instigated by someone off-railing history, and they find out that in the present, what happened in France has devoured the entirety of the world.
• Shout-Out:
  • A lot of major characters' Doppels make allusions to Kenji Miyazawa's stories; Iroha's, Mifuyu's and Yachiyo's doppel names refer to Night on the Galactic Railroad, Shitori Egumo refers to the poem of the same name, Touka and Nemu's doppel names refer to two different works by him as well, Kuro's witch name is Matasaburo, and Kanagi's doppel refers to The Cat Office.
  • During the Hinano part of Valentines event, while trying to talk to her crush, she instead spurts out "ata" a few times, on which Akira comments it's like "a legendary martial art."
  • Felicia's favorite shounen manga and collectible card game is called Decagon Balls.
  • The Rumormongers, the generic Uwasa familiars that spread the rumor to the populace, are the Magia Record answer for the Shadow Play Girls, being vaguely female humanoid creatures gossiping among themselves, including starting their conversation with a Catchphrase.
  • The end phrase of Anonymous Ai Rumor is "stand alone". While this is can be referring on the titular lonely AI, it can also be a reference to the titular Stand Alone Complex; a situation where multiple people with no connection do certain actions as if they were coordinated. This can both means the memetic phenomenon spread by viral rumor in the internet - just like how the Anonymous AI Rumor appeared in in the internet forum, and the fact in the chapter where the Anonymous AI appears, Iroha's team ends up joining forces with Madoka and Homura midway because of their common enemy.
  • The transformation video for Swimsuit Rena and Kaede dual unit has several similar shots with Czechoslovak surreal movie Daisies. Observe.
  • In similar note, Little Kyubey's video also has similar shots with Lyrical Toy Box, an AU OVA from Triangle Heart 3: Sweet Songs Forever which puts the main character's little sister as the magical girl main protagonist. Said little sister? Nanoha Takamachi, and the OVA kicked off the legendary More Popular Spin Off magical girl series.
  • The Yuzuki twins are blatant homages to Toei Animation's Sunday Morning Kids Time. Hotori wears bright red-and-white jumpsuit like the Red Rangers, but her bulky belt, scarf, and her fighting style consisting Diving Kick point more to the Riders. Rion on the other hand is a nod to Pretty Cure, especially the original duo; her color scheme is based on Cure Black, while her staff's color and her dress look like Cure White.
  • Kanae's appearance in "Girl in the Hood" story event, where the main character is a dagashi snack lover, is likely because Kanae has a striking physical resemblance with Saya Endou from Dagashi Kashi.
• Sink or Swim Mentor: In Chapter 1, Yachiyo makes Iroha fight a witch to prove herself capable of handling the threat level of Kamihama's witches. Yachiyo has since lowered her danger threshold; in "A Fledgling's First Flight", Ui also undergoes a rite of passage Witch hunt, but she's allowed to take Momoko as a chaperone since the beginning and when the Witch turns out to be incredibly strong, everyone else including Yachiyo doesn't think twice to jump in and help them.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: To an even greater extent than canon.
  • In "Nagisa's Wish" the title character, an elementary school student, is living alone while her mother is hospitalized.
  • Sudachi, also an elementary-schooler, travels around with and homeschooled by a woman she had just met one day with no mention of her parents or psychology guidance, despite being a school-shooting survivor.
  • It is said that Alina's art got increasingly morbid after her beloved grandparents and dog died when she was 8 years old. Instead of noticing that their daughter perhaps was grieving but didn't know how to handle that feeling, her parents capitalized her new muse and paraded her genius. No wonder she turns a little crazy.
  • Whenever a Magical Girl dies, she's just simply gone missing to normal human and no one tries to find her whatsoever. However, the later chapters in Arc 2 imply that this happens because someone is enforcing Masquerade; the people and even the government definitely notice that a lot of girl went missing, but there's no attempt to locate them.
• Status Quo Is God: The event stories of spin-offs' character are taken from before their story takes place. Oriko is just in her early stage of serial-killing plan, there's no mention of Pleiades Saints or Yuuri's rampage from Kazumi's group, and in Tart's event Melissa isn't even a magical girl yet.
• Stealth Pun: When Felicia, who has a hotblooded personality and an affinity for cows, first joins Mikazuki Villa, Tsuruno gives her a job working part-time at her family's Chinese restaurant, Banbanzai. They put a bull in a China shop.
• Storming the Castle: In Chapter 9, the heroes are attacking the hotel complex where the Wings of Magius are making their home base. It's a well-defended place full of Black and White Feathers, with its interior Bigger on the Inside because the Magius are using the Queen Bear Rumor's barrier to both defend and confine their super-witch Eve with the intention of letting Eve collapsing the entire place with her sheer size when the Rumor's barrier disappears.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham:
  • Brought up during "See You Tomorrow" event. At the end of Part 1 Nanaka and her team discuss the disappearances occurring at the complex. However a magical girl at the complex asked Nanaka not to get involved. Nanaka decides to comply, not wanting to get involved in a conflict over territory. The catch is that this magical girl isn't one of the main characters of the event; the apartment trio meet other magical girls for the first time in the Epilogue.
  • Ultimate Madoka herself is staying her hand because she doesn't know who is writing this timeline, and decides to just watching how things will develop, because her direct interference this timeline. In "A New Beginning", Touka attempts to pull some of Ultimate Madoka's power to fuel the Doppel barrier, and a hole in reality manifests on the sky of Kamihama.
  • In the most basic sense, though, this is averted in the first act. The initial chapters use all-new characters, but the Mitakihara girls all eventually appear and become involved in the story. In the second half however, Madoka and her friends do not get directly involved in the fight with Promised Blood despite knowing about it.
• Tiger Versus Dragon: The feuding magical girl gangs from Futatsugi City are called Ryugasaki and Torayamachi. While it looks like the usual "Tiger = hotblooded, Dragon = passive" stereotype is inverted as Ryugasaki boss Juri is delinquent and Torayachou boss Yuna is dour, "Crimson Resolve" event shows that Juri is, at the end of the day, subservient to Yuna while Yuna, going insane from turf war violence caused by Magius-induced Witch drought in their city, leads the newly christened Promised Blood gang into war and goes into rampage in Kamihama.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: Tart Magica events' time travel is a little complicated because there's an Anachronic Order from one protagonist's point of view. In the first event, Iroha and Yachiyo "technically" time travel (actually got their dream-selves transported into a space outside linear time progress) with magic candles and save Tart from the villains' scheme. Then the second event shows that Tart and her party knows Iroha and Yachiyo, which means it's chronologically a sequel. However, the end of that event shows that Ui, whose time travel is more straightforwardly physical, is the one who took the candles back into the present and made Iroha and Yachiyo's "time travel" possible in the first place. This basically means Ui's time travel shenanigan is both the first and the last event happening in the incident.
• Token Minority: In a large city like Kamihama, it's not unusual to have a couple of Magical Girls coming from other nations. Some notable examples are Felicia, Meiyui, Ashley and Livia.
• Town with a Dark Secret: The Tokime Village in "The Green Jasper Diviner", to the point where many of the Bad Ends involve Chiharu being murdered for digging too deep. As it turns out, the village elder has been selling Magical Girl wishes to politicians across Japan for cash, and once the Magical Girls "mature", they're told the truth of the Witch system to hasten their Soul Gem's corruption and thrown into the river to either drown or become witches, in which case they become food for "Yurayura-sama", who turns out to be the Witch of the Tokime Clan's magical girl ancestor.
• Trailers Always Spoil:
  • Homura with glasses, a spoiler from the original series, was advertised as the game's pre-registration bonus.
  • The Arc 2's new 4* characters will get special screens in their intro trailers that show the six factions of the main story's conflict and introduce their aligned faction if they're a part of the main story. Because of this, you can immediately see that Mikura (along with her friends and event story by proxy) isn't a part of the main story just from her trailer, while Shigure is.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: While most of the characters in this game either act reasonably appropriately for their age (all things considered) or are old enough that their behavior isn't really troubling even if it's deeply disturbing, Nemu and Touka, the younger two members of the Magius, play this trope uncomfortably straight. Both do some pretty heinous things in their effort to attain "liberation" for magical girls, with Touka in particular both recognizing the moral issues with what she's doing and sometimes apparently even reveling in them. Her cheerful, cutesy smile during dialogue where she discusses sending a brainwashed Tsuruno to kill her friends is particularly troubling.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: Several storylines end up having two main plot threads.
  • The main story plot: Iroha and her attempt to find out why her sister Ui suddenly disappeared from everyone's memory by trying to find anyone who has connections with Ui like Ui's friends. Said friends turned out to be villains whose evil plot may or may not have caused Ui's disappearance.
  • The members of Nanaka's group have a shared side stories' plotline of a witch causing people to do malice on the community while they went to do their own personal businesses.
  • "And So the Azaleas Bloom" story event: the main trio's attempt to settle down in Kamihama City and the local magical girls' investigation of the multiple fainting incidents in the city. They come to a conflict because of that.
  • "See You Tomorrow" story event: Seika's efforts to protect her friends from finding out about the magical girl world and the mystery of a family who suddenly vanished in the Daito Apartment Complex.
  • "Cross Connection": Suzune comes to a conflict with Kamihama's magical girls while Chisato and Arisa go their merry way to search for Chisato's father's old storybook. Both plots are independent with each other, but they serve as the prologue to Suzune Magica.
  • Chapter 8 of the main story is later gets split into two sub-plots; Iroha and Sana go to search for Eternal Sakura Rumor to confirm the truth of Iroha's memory, while the other protagonists have to fight off the brainwashed Feathers' rampage on Kamihama and save the other magical girls. The story then shows the split's progression in a manner similar to "Azalea" event, but with linear plot.
  • Arc 2 is especially guilty about this because there are six factions that fight over the Auto Purification System and each chapter jumps a lot between the faction's POV. It's to the point that Arc 2's Another Story is also used to resolve a lot of hanging plot threads in the Main Story.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Arc 2 of the Main Story reveals a MASSIVE one in Chizuru’s father, Sanemon Banshu, as he betrayed Tsuyu and her father by siding with a another country and attacking them, resulting in Tsuyu’s father’s death and Tsuyu herself to be shot by a sniper. This leads to Tsuyu wrongfully concluding that Chizuru had betrayed her and angrily declaring that her hatred against the East will remain for eternity, witching out while Chizuru can only watch on in horror. This leads to two things. One, Tsuyu’s witch was eventually absorbed by the Witch Of Symbols which then spread hatred for the East, resulting in the massive divide the majority of the girls deal with in the present day. The second is that Chizuru ended up falling into despair herself due to not being able to save Tsuyu, her grief and regret lingering on even after she was killed in battle, eventually attaching onto the Mirror Witch, turning it into a massive threat that threatened to destroy the world in Arc 2 until Infinite Iroha pacified them both. Essentially, a massive chunk of the story (and the grief the girls faced) was caused by one greedy man.
• Valentine's Day Episodes: The 2018 Valentine's Day Event had special event stories for certain characters, and a cutscene that played on the holiday itself.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 6: One of Ui's friends is a leader of the Wings of Magius, Iroha's group learns the truth about witches (except Yachiyo who knew already), some of Yachiyo's past is revealed, Tsuruno, Felicia and Sana are brainwashed into joining Wings of Magius, Mami turns out to have joined Wings of Magius herself (as Holy Mami, who is not just a Christmas event costume), and Sayaka finally shows up.
  • Shizuku's sidestory implies, which later confirmed by the "Whereabouts of the Feathers" event story, that Shizuku, with her spatial connecting personal magic, is the one who funnels Witches from other cities for the Magius.
  • Mitama's sidestory reveals that she wished that she'll bring Kamihama's destruction, and someone had taught her on how to be an Adjuster.
  • Homura's story in Valentine 2018 is a lot darker than the others. While Madoka's story is slightly unsettling because of its general atmosphere and foreshadowing, Homura's gives a Black Feather of the Wings of Magius A Day in the Limelight. It ends with Homura having to kill the girl when she becomes a witch.
  • In August 2018, a website was created. This website said something would be announced shortly before the anniversary. Most players thought it was either "normal" Homura being added, or a Walpurgisnacht event. But few players were expecting Ultimate Madoka. A similar thing occurred with the reveal of the 3rd Anniversary unit, who caught many by surprise.
  • "Green Jesper Diviners" event might be unsettling on general, but the implication of its connection with Arc 2's main story isn't visible until the end where Kyubey outright tells the Tokime girls that Kamihama has auto-purification barrier, with the implicit intention to make them clash with Kamihama magical girls. This event, along with "Crimson Resolve", become the introduction for a multi-territories war for the Doppel barrier.
  • Arc 2, Chapter 4: Ao tries to break Ryo's camera, but ends up accidentally killing her instead. Unlike the previous "deaths" in the series, Ryo's soul gem is shattered, a funeral is held, and her school newspaper is discontinued, hammering in the fact that Ryo is gone for good. This incident ends up being Ao's, who otherwise was the most pacifistic and kind of the Promised Blood's leaders, Start of Darkness.
  • The second chapter of Jun's sidestory ends up showing some context about Tasuke Satomi, Touka's uncle and Nayuta's father who wrote about the existence of magical girls. More precisely, that he had been going around the world digging informations about magical girls' cultures, like the Tokime clan's Kyubey worshiping ritual.
  • "Ash Grey Revolution" insinuates that the one who enforced the secret existence of the magical girl is the universe itself.
• Wham Line:
  • From Nanaka's sidestory, where she reveals a secret she's kept to herself.
  ''Kyubey...you are also a target that I'm supposed to exact revenge on!
  • During April Fools "FM Kamihama", it's revealed that Magia Report supposedly co-exists alongside the actual world in another dimension.
  Magirepo Yachiyo: The [FM Kamihama] Rumor's radio waves are becoming tinged with magic and overcoming dimensions... And now it's interfering with the main Magireco Kamihama!
  • Walpurgisnacht being name dropped at the end of Chapter 7.
  • Magius' masterpiece Witch, "Eve", stutters "Big Sister" when she has Iroha in her grip.
• Wham Shot:
  • In Chapter 5, Karin's brusque but kind senpai Alina saunters into the story, revealing herself as one of the three Magius - and a very dangerous one at that.
  • Touka and Nemu suddenly appearing in Alina's personal story.
  • In "Green Jasper Diviners", when Chiharu jumps in the river to save Shizuka after Elder Mikoshiba pushed her after all most turning into a Witch, Chiharu and Shizuka find the riverbed is littered by the skeletons of their magical girl kinsmen. When they pull themselves out of the river, Sunao is waiting for them with the intention of killing them under Mikoshiba's order.
  • In "Great Banquet that Transcended Time", Nemu's warning about the Graveyard Banquet Uwasa doesn't really sink in yet until Madoka finds Mikazuki Team, Tokime clan, and Promised Blood lie dying in the Uwasa's hands.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Arc 2 ends with a series of books showing what each Puella Magi ^note  Except for the Holy Quintet, the spin-off girls, crossover girls and Kuroe did afterwards now that they have no more reason to hunt witches.
• A Wizard Did It: In "Ash Grey Revolution", Folklore of Zero, the magical girls in Yukuni City who had been trying to reveal the existence of magical girls concluded that their attempt was never possible - because the universe won't let them. The universe, which had been depending on magical girls' energy quota, makes it so that any action that would decrease the population number of magical girls, such as informing the public about the danger of Incubators' contract, would fail. Folklore of Zero made that conclusion after their attempt to reveal their existence ended up going badly in such nonsensical way for the sole purpose of keeping up the status quo.
• Worldbuilding: Kamihama City gets very huge in Chapter 7 when the game introduces the "world" map of Kamihama, including the city's wards, its railway paths, notable places, and the city limits to the other cities. Add the already established relations between the wards in the narrative and connection networks between girls...
• Wretched Hive:
  • Futatsugi City, Promised Blood's home city, is presented as a lawless (for Magical Girls) place where gangs of Magical Girls frequently fight and kill each other for territory, much like Mami's description of how most Magical Girls behave. Their city is also empty of Incubators, not because of a barrier keeping them out like in Kamihama but because when a Magical Girl witnessed another Magical Girl turning into a Witch, it spiraled into a wholesale massacre of Incubators until they abandoned the city. Then the Witch Drought hit, which escalated into a full-blown Mob War where the gangs were fighting for survival over what Witches and Grief Seeds were left. Ironically, that last one might have been a blessing in disguise, as it caused the survivors to finally put aside their differences and join together.
  • Yukuni City, Folklore of Zero's home city has its younger generation actively hunting down and tormenting magical girls, to the point that there's only four of them left.
• Writing Around Trademarks: Decagon Ball, a homage to Dragon Ball, is mentioned occasionally. Felicia and Rui are among the series' fans.

Tropes specific to the anime

Anime A-F

• Adaptation Distillation:
  • In Chapter 3 of the game, Iroha meeting Tsuruno, the Stamp Rally, and the visit to the Seance Shrine happen on three separate days. In the anime Season 1 Episode 4, these events all take place in one day.
  • The events of the prologue, Another Story Chapter 6 and 7 are compressed into the anime's Season 2 Episode 1, mostly streamlining Sayaka's epiphany about her determination to fight alongside her friends.
  • The stages for Chapter 7 and Chapter 8, the Chelation Land and Hotel Fendt Hope, end up getting compressed together into one long dungeon crawl.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • Rena's disguise as Ren Isuzu in episode 2, based on the game's Main Story Chapter 2, happens earlier than when Ren Isuzu herself would appear in the game's Chapter 8.
  • An inverted case; the Scribble Witch Albertine appears in the Episode 5 before she appears in the game during the Valentine's Day 2020 event.
  • Yachiyo calls Kanagi about the Wings of Magius in what would be an equivalent of the game's Chapter 5 instead of Chapter 7.
  • In a Blu-Ray only appearance, Uwasa Tsuruno gets a quick appearance at the end of Episode 13, significantly earlier than her arc happens in the game.
  • Shigure, a crucial character in Arc 2, appeared as a black feather being interrogated by Yachiyo in The Stinger of season 2 episode 1.
• Adaptational Late Appearance: Madoka and Homura are both absent in the anime's first cour despite being shown in the anime's opening, with their roles in Sana's arc (where they first appeared in the game) and in later arcs being cut out and changed, though Madoka is at least mentioned and shown in flashbacks (albeit with her face hidden from view). They're not gone completely, however, as they finally make their appearance in the first episode of season 2.
• Adaptation Expansion: Overall, the anime heavily expands upon various story points from the game, with the first few episodes even spending a good amount of time in Iroha's hometown Takarazaki.
  • In episode 2, the rumor of the Friendship Ending Staircase adds in a part about writing the names of two people onto a real staircase.
  • In the game, the Connect is just a gameplay mechanic. In the anime, it is described as a magic latent to the magical girl's general powerset, but often buried for reasons. A Coordinator session brings this power out so those who have been adjusted can easily use it.
  • Our heroes fight both Tsukuyo and Tsukasa's Doppels instead of just Tsukuyo's.
  • The Doppels' drawbacks seen only in their profiles are shown in the anime. Giovanna in particular has two forms depending on how much Iroha is losing control of herself.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • Yachiyo doesn't beat up Iroha when she enters Kamihama, and doesn't force her to fight Zenobia alone (provided that Momoko doesn't interrupt). She even gives Iroha and Kuroe Grief Seeds.
  • The scenes that show Momoko's hostility toward Yachiyo don't exist, even though there are signs of obvious tension between them. This includes the instances where Momoko forgoes Kaede and Rena's safety to refuse Yachiyo's help until Yachiyo calls her out.
  • Because the reason why Rena and Kaede have a quarrel is no longer about sweets, this makes Rena less vindictive and petty.
  • Mami doesn't attack Iroha, Yachiyo, and Tsuruno when they're injured after fighting Commoner's Horse; she gets talked down by Yachiyo and Tsuruno even if she still has doubts on the entire thing. She also enters the scene by subduing the berserk Giovanna, saving Tsuruno.
  • Nemu ends up significantly more benevolent in the anime because she remembers Iroha, so she doesn't lose her moral compass in comparison to Touka as the result. She ends up giving Touka a stinkeye every time Touka goes particularly vile, and undermining her by appointing Kuroe to search for Iroha and the Eternal Sakura Uwasa.
• Adaptational Villainy: Whereas in the game Mami seemed to have been brainwashed into joining the Wings of Magius and made into an Uwasa right away after discovering the Awful Truth about magical girls, in the anime she seemingly operates on her own free will as part of the Wings of Magius for a little before being made into Holy Mami.
• Bait-and-Switch Credits: Despite appearing in the Season 1's opening theme song, Madoka is barely in it and Homura has absolutely no appearance or allusion what so ever, despite having a role in Sana's story arc in the game. Madoka only ends up being briefly mentioned by Mami in Episode 13.
• Becoming the Mask: From Episode 5, it's implied that Yachiyo's Kamihama Rumor File and her tendency to research rumors were actually Mifuyu's hobbies that she halfheartedly complied to, but grew obsessed about after Mifuyu disappeared searching for one. This is confirmed in Episode 7.
• Beneath the Mask: Season 2 Episode 7 has a lot of discussions about the public face vs. inner feeling, which can be traced to Iroha's recollection about her Doppel.
  • When Momoko calls out Mitama's neutrality as just an excuse to be apathetic toward everyone, Mitama reveals the context of her power; when she touches the magical girls' Soul Gem, she synchronizes with their hearts and witnesses their inner darkness. She maintains her own sanity by dissociating herself from their personal drama, because otherwise she'll get carried away by their feelings and become too depressed to help more girls. That Momoko sees Mitama as a callous and cold person isn't because she doesn't care - but because she actually cares too much. Hearing that, Momoko retracts her accusation, but doesn't relent on her claim that Mitama is nevertheless too apathetic. Instead, she declares that Mitama should open up her heart more, and let her friends carry the burden together.
  • Mitama advises the heroes to use the Connect on Tsuruno and Mami so the attack will strike the Uwasa parasiting them instead, because the Connect is ultimately a proof of synchronized hearts. As long as the users have clear image of each other, then magical girls can use Connect. Unfortunately, both Tsuruno and Mami have idealized images they're really good at maintaining, which Yachiyo and Sayaka mistakenly Connect to. It backfires horribly.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • In episode 5, an apparently-witchified Iroha appears to have Tsuruno dead to rights. Cue Mami's theme music and Tiro Finale!
  • In episode 10, the rescuer does this again to cause Alina to fall back, but now Mami's with the Magius, making this a Villainous Rescue.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor:
  • One of the lucky events that leads to catastrophic bad luck in the episode 6 montage is the game's Fate Weave gacha roll.
  • The discussion about giving the small Kyubey a name in episode 11, before it gets interrupted by the plot, is a dig on that practice in the game; the small Kyubey's name is what the player's handle name is, and the name rarely comes up in the story anyway.
• Bittersweet Ending: A VERY sharp contrast to the game: Embryo Eve and Alina are defeated and all the Doppelized girls, including Kaede, are restored. However...
  • Ui’s body was too far gone to be saved since she mutated into Embryo Eve, and Lil’Kyubey (who contains her soul) ends up dying in a kamikaze attack alongside Touka and Nemu, meaning Iroha has lost her beloved sister for good.
  • Since Ui, Touka and Nemu are dead, the Doppel system is gone as well, forcing the girls to go back to hunting for Grief Seeds. However, it’s not entirely a bad thing, as there is no more risk of any Puella Magi becoming addicted to using their Doppels and then contracting Doppel Syndrome due to overusing them as a result.
  • Due to the girls now being vulnerable to having their Soul Gems become fully corrupted and becoming witches permanently, it is likely that they will eventually be taken away by Ultimate Madoka at some point, never to be seen by their friends and loved ones again. However, Ultimate Madoka would ensure that the girls will not become witches, giving them peaceful deaths instead.
  • Momoko and Mifuyu sacrifice themselves to restore the Doppelized girls, overloading themselves with the corruption from the other girls to the point where their Soul Gems shatter.
  • Kuroe ends up rejecting Iroha’s help when she finds her, and her Doppel takes her outside of Alina’s barrier, causing the girl to witch out and Iroha has to put her down.
  • And since Walpurgisnacht is never fought in the anime, with the Holy Quintet returning to Mitakihara, Madoka (and possibly Mami, Sayaka, and Kyouko) died fighting the Witch offscreen, forcing Homura to travel back in time.
• Book Ends: Episode 5 begins and ends with Yachiyo making a monologue about searching for Mifuyu to remind herself of the reality of Mifuyu's disappearance.
• Bullying a Dragon: Mami seems under the impression that she has any clout in the Wings of Magius by threatening Alina, one of the Magius and the most dangerous of them. The next time our heroes see her again, Mami is already brainwashed by the Uwasa of Kamihama Saint.
• Call-Back: In Episode 12, Kyubey repeats his line about magical girls being named that way because they eventually become Witches, that he says in Episode 8 of the original series.
• Continuity Cameo:
  • Episode 2: Ren Isuzu first appears as one of Rena's disguises.
  • Episode 3: Mayu Kozue visits Mitama, while Sayuki Fumino appears in Rena's mindscape.
  • Episode 4: Manaka Kurumi and Ria Ami show up while Iroha's group goes around Mizuna Ward.
  • Episode 6: Akira Shinobu, Nanaka Tokiwa, Kako Natsume, and Meiyui Chun are seen in the pre-title battle and later exiting Mitama's place.
  • Episode 7: Ikumi Makino and Yukika Nanase are subtly seen among the hooded Black Feathers.
  • Episode 8: Although they aren't shown in person, the letters read by the FM Kamihama host are from Rika Ayano and Kanoko Yayoi respectively.
  • Episode 13: Shizuku Hozumi is a hooded Black Feather standing next to a tea-drinking Touka.
  • Season 2 Episode 4: Riko Chiaki, Natsuki Utsuho, and Konomi Haruna are three of the girls who were contained after succumbing to Doppel Syndrome.
  • Season 2 Episode 5: Ryo Midori is the senior White Feather that gave Sana info dump about the Magius' plan. Shigure Miyabi and Hagumu Azumi are later seen in the episode as Black Feathers.
  • Season 2 Episode 6: Beside the aforementioned Nanaka's team, Kanagi is seen leading the Azalea girls (Konoha, Hazuki, Ayame), the Apartment trio (Seika, Leila, Mito), and Himika Mao to fend off the Witch army the Wings of Magius summon to Kamihama.
  • In the finale of the anime, Ultimate Madoka appears alongside Iroha, closing the storybook of 'Magia Record'.
• Chekhov's Gun: While riding the bus in Episode 2, Iroha hears a news report about the marriage power spot, which becomes two episodes later.
• Chickification: Iroha is significantly weaker in the anime than in the game. While in the game she starts off weak and becomes stronger and more self-assured over time, she can barely defeat any foes by herself in the anime and either relies completely on her Doppel or on Yachiyo to get her out of trouble. This is remedied in season 2 after Yachiyo and Kuroe save her from Giovanna and Kaede contracted Doppel Symdrome, forcing Iroha to stop relying on Giovanna and truly start get stronger.
• Close on Title:
  • Played straight with an Episode Title Card just before the end credits. For episodes 9 and 13, the title card appears after the credits.
  • Averted in the "Dawn of a Shallow Dream" series finale; the title card appears near the start of that episode.
• Creepy Children Singing: Everytime the Uwasa Rhyme is sung, it's usually by the 'child' characters in a somewhat monotonous way. The first episode, the rhyme is sung by the small Kyubey, and is a foreshadowing of the game's ten main story chapters. When the rhyme is sung in Season 2 Episode 3 by Touka and Nemu, it's in the middle of Iroha's Lotus-Eater Machine and Iroha proceeds to suggest a new rumor to play in - the Chelation Land.
• Darkest Hour: Episode 13 ends with Kaede, Sana, Felicia, and Tsuruno joining the Wings of Magius, Momoko and Rena being forbidden from leaving the Magius lecture, Iroha being captured by Holy Mami, and Yachiyo believing she caused another friend's death.
  • The preultimate episode also ends with this, with Touka, Nemu and Eve still on their way to catch up to Walpurgisnacht, Ui telling Iroha that she is too far gone to be saved, and Kuroe succumbing to despair, and becoming Ichizo, the episode ending with Iroha tearfully stabbing her in the head.
• Demoted to Extra: The Holy Quintet gets less screentime here than in the game.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: At the beginning of Episode 8, the opening theme plays on the radio station on Iroha's phone just before the episode transitions to the opening credits.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The season 1 opening theme and season 2 ending theme are sung by Momo Asakura (Iroha), Sora Amamiya (Yachiyo) and Shiina Natsukawa (Tsuruno) as the members of TrySail.
• Death by Adaptation: In the final season of the anime, Momoko, Mifuyu, Alina, Touka, Nemu and Ui all die while they survive in the game.
• Don't Celebrate Just Yet: In the finale, just as Iroha has saved Kamihama by convincing Touka and Nemu to make a Heel–Face Turn, Alina stop by with an Evil Plan to wipe out humanity by condemning them to the fate of Magical Girls.
• Drunk with Power: The Doppel is very addictive. It allows the users to escape the Witchification without dying, giving the user a Guardian Entity that has various useful abilities, and a chance to vent on their negative emotions in battle. But the more the magical girls depend on the Doppel, they start to fuse with the Doppel and lose control of themselves. The only remaining choice they have is getting captured inside a jar so they can't destroy anything and hoping they'll get better somehow somewhere in the future. Rena even says that it's no different than becoming a Witch.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Kanae Yukino is in Episode 5's pre-title flashback staring at a magazine. Mel Anna appears in Episode 10's post-credits flashback, seen from behind. These are shown before their fates become relevant in Episode 12.
• Empathic Environment:
  • The displays in the fast food joint where Momoko's team discuss on what to do with Iroha literally spell out the four girls' thoughts on the situation, such as:
    Iroha: *seeing Rena and Kaede fight* I don't know what to do.
    Rena: *accidentally insulted Kaede's wish* Forgot what I just said now. / It was just a slip of the tongue.
  • As Felicia bursts into tears at the end of Episode 7, the sprinklers turn on.
  • In Episode 11, the photo frames of Kanae and Mel on Yachiyo's wall are empty when Mifuyu antagonizes Yachiyo pretty much by using their deaths, as if they don't want to see that incident happen.
  • As Iroha sinks into Giovanna's ideal fantasy world in Season 2 Episode 3, Giovanna literally 'stitches' the world together everytime a new detail get added into it.
• Enchanted Forest: Although it only appears briefly in a flashback, the anime has a Canon Foreigner Witch named Raspberry whose labyrinth looks like a gradient-tinted forest of mostly dead trees and living undergrowth growing out of sand dunes. Being a labyrinth, the forest is only home to the many-armed Witch herself and the murderous, jumping, person-sized bees that are her familiars.
• Enhanced on DVD: The sixth episode of the second season had notable Off-Model scenes; some scenes had repeated shots, moments of characters speaking without any dialogue, and still images over battles. Each of them were reworked for the blu-ray.
• Everyone Has Standards: While Kyouko still laughs when the Amane twins release a Witch on the heroes and controlling the familiars, she grits her teeth in surprise when the twins pull out their Doppels.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Despite a Doppel acting as a Guardian Entity and allowing a Magical Girl to escape becoming a Witch, it's still a manifestation of their despair and the negative effects, only hinted at in the game, are shown more clearly here. Using the power of Doppel is addictive, it can easily take over and go berserk if the user can't control their emotions, and using them too much risks Doppel Syndrome, in which the Doppel permanently fuses with its user's body in a state little different from becoming a Witch.
• Evolving Credits:
  • Near the end of the opening titles, Iroha lowers her white umbrella and turns to greet Yachiyo. From episode 5, Tsuruno is added to this shot. From Episode 8, they are joined by Felicia and all of them now stand in front of Mikazuki Villa. From episode 11, Sana joins in.
  • One scene in the opening shows Yachiyo, with a black umbrella, looking down upon Iroha and helping her up off the ground. As of Episode 8's opening she smiles at Iroha in the close-up shot.
  • In Season 2 opening credit since Episode 4, Yachiyo gets added in the Connect scene and in the train ride, both Yachiyo and Kuroe sit next to Iroha.
• Fairytale Motifs: The anime makes the allusions for Night on the Galactic Railroad even more apparent.
  • The cat that Iroha rescues from Box Wood is drawn to have the same facial features as the cats in the anime movie adaptation.
  • Iroha's lecture about the Milky Way has the same beat as Giovanni's; the teacher is explaining about the Milky Way, the protagonist is distracted in class, the teacher asks the protagonist about what the Milky Way is made of, and the protagonist can't answer it.
  • The bus where Iroha is surrounded by Rebecca's Witch-kissed victims has a NGC7000 plate, which is the New General Catalogue number for the North America Nebula in Cygnus constellation. The bike which luggage box Rebecca uses to nest herself has a Caldwell 99 plate, which is the Caldwell Catalogue number for Coalsack Nebula. Galactic Railroad's Afterlife Express travels from Cygnus to Coalsack.
  • Touka and Ui are playing with a toy train, just like Giovanna and Campanella.
  • In Season 1 Episode 3, when Yachiyo jumps deeper into Iroha's Lotus-Eater Machine, she runs pass a meadow of Chinese silver grass, a train chugging forward into the sky, and a giant herbivore skeleton; several settings that Giovanna and Campanella go through in the story.
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: In episode 6, multiple hooded Black Feathers of the Magius speak this way to sinister effect.
• Foreshadowing:
  • A meta example; The clock in Iroha's house has its numbers color-coded according to the magical girl that becomes the anime episode's focus.
  • When Iroha enters Kamihama, there are a lot of swallows around her, watching. swallows is the Animal Motifs of Iroha's sister Ui.
  • Everything about Mitama:
    • When asked what they do to the spent Soul Gem when no Kyubey is seen in the city, Yachiyo claims that they have a way for that. Mitama is known to accept payment in Grief Seeds, not just the unused ones.
    • Several robotic monitors that appear in Satomi Medical Center are seen thrashed in an alleyway near Mitama's workshop.
    • In a short card describing the Connect as a perk for Mitama's Adjustments, the symbol of the Wings of the Magius is seen at the bottom. The Magius symbol is also seen in Mitama's schedule.
  • The entirety of Touka's speech about creating a perpetual motion machine in Episode 3.
  • When Felicia witnessed her parents' death, everything she saw except for herself and Kyubey was glitching out. The "Witch" that she sees is her own Witch from, Beatrice.
  • The "Alina Gray" signature is scrawled on the portable Witch Labyrinth that Tsukuyo releases on the protagonists in episode 7 before Alina herself appears two episodes later.
  • When Nemu rebukes Touka's tendency to use numbers on everything, the lines she shows Touka came from The Happy Prince.
  • In Season 2, Episode 3, a ferris wheel is seen in the background and during Iroha's dream, she suggests that everyone should go to a theme park. Not only these are foreshadowing for the next Uwasa they will fight, this is also shows the connection Iroha has with Touka and Nemu - namely, that Iroha is a 'Magius', the masterminds of Kamihama's Uwasa.
• Four Lines, All Waiting: The compressed time frame needed to adapt the game's plot and the ensemble cast's character subplots causes this situation in the anime.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • Near the end of Episode 1, you can see pretty much everyone's wishes on the billboards.
  • Alina and the five original Madoka Magica main characters appear in the Opening theme song. In the Ending song, you can read the 14 year old Yachiyo's letter to Mifuyu, talking about her crush, and Mifuyu's cake for Yachiyo's 18th birthday.
  • In Episode 3, it is shown that Mitama marks her schedule with the same elemental symbols as the daily Labyrinth of Awakening quests (with Void in a single row marking the weekends; the paper's seen sideways). We can see from the schedule that Iroha is brought to her place in Episode 2 on Monday, The Wings of Magius booked her on Wednesday, this episode takes place on Thursday, and Nanaka's team booked her on Friday.
  • In Episode 7, the Witch that appears in Felicia's flashback, said to have killed her parents, is Beatrice - Felicia's own Witch.
  • In Episode 8, when Yachiyo is browsing the Kamihama Rumor File and finds the Magius' talisman, a named rumor written in the file is the Kamihama Bowl, one of the winners of Alina's Brilliant Gallery, a real-life Uwasa-making contest in 2018.
  • In Episode 11, after Iroha looks at the message about buying coasters with the other girls, the screen shows Iroha's group chats. There's a group for the purpose of tracking Felicia's bugged GPS back from Episode 7, with 3 people in it. Its name is "Looking after Felicia-chan Association".
  • In Season 2 Episode 1's stringer, during the close up of Shigure got pushed into the wall by Yachiyo, we can see a somewhat faded missing person poster of Tsuruno after she got brainwashed by the Magius in the Memory Museum. Apparently, she has been missing for 1 month.
  • In S2 Episode 6, when Iroha's phone battery died and Yachiyo loses contact with her, it is shown from Yachiyo's phone screen that Iroha used her last remaining time to send Yachiyo everything she heard from Touka's broadcast about the Magius' major plan.
• Funny Background Event:
  • While Iroha and Kyubey discuss wishes in Iroha's mindscape, the circus mascots are nonchalantly kidnapping children and putting them in sacks.
  • In Episode 4, as our heroes brainstorm about what rumor to investigate next, Mitama is seen stealing Momoko's cheesecake, slathering it with ketchup, sprinkles and a sour plum, and eating the entire thing.
  • When Yachiyo and Iroha are going grocery shopping, several humanoid familiars are seen pushing shopping trolleys for their Witch.
  • In Episode 8, the calculation on the whiteboard that Touka uses to determine the chance of her, Nemu, and Ui meeting and becoming friends is the Drake equation. Basically, Touka likens their friendship to humanity meeting extraterrestrial sentient lifeforms.
  • In Season 2 Episode 2, during Yachiyo and Mifuyu's pre-battle spat, Kuroe is seen in the background, making a somewhat incredulous expression at the quarrel, before using the opportunity of those two getting distracted to slowly inches away off-screen trying to run away.
  • In Season 2 Episode 7, there are several scenes where Homura got carried around by Sayaka like a sack of potatoes.

Anime G-W

• George Lucas Altered Version: The Blu-Ray version of the final episode of season 1 of the anime has a chilling Call-Forward to Uwasa Tsuruno that wasn't as clearly shown in the original airing; previously, only the eyes were different. Many of the fight scenes were also cleaned up and redrawn, including the Holy Mami vs Iroha, Yachiyo, and Sayaka fight.
• Genius Loci:
  • The Friendship Ending Staircase is so large and constantly growing, that practically the entire Rumor barrier is the staircase.
  • The Chelation Land, and by extension Uwasa Tsuruno, is able to No-Sell Homura's otherwise-overpowered timestop because the entire theme park is an Uwasa; Homura walking on the Uwasa's ground counts as touching it, thus the Uwasa isn't affected by her magic, and neither is anyone touching it (including Holy Mami).
• Glamour Failure:
  • The illusions of people's loved ones that Commoner's Horse Rumor casts on the wax statues bearing their forms only appear flawless to those who wrote their names; when Iroha sees Mifuyu's fake, she sees a glitched image vaguely in Mifuyu's shape, while Yachiyo continues to act like there nothing wrong even after being warned that "Mifuyu" is a fake.
  • If the rumor victim doesn't know about the rumor, it would appear as ordinary scenery, people, and locations. Iroha and Felicia walk into the Owl Water stand and act like it's just an ordinary drink stand, but start seeing a Witch-like environment and react accordingly after being informed about the rumor.
  • In Season 2 Episode 3, Yachiyo gets the first hint that both her and Kuroe got trapped inside Giovanna's illusion when Iroha's face glitches into the Doppels' characteristic white mask for a second.
• Good-Times Montage:
  • Practically half of Episode 9 is spent showing Sana and Ai having fun with each other.
  • Season 2 Episode 3 shows that Kuroe develops a somewhat hero worship for Iroha after she enjoys a life as a part of Mikazuki Villa's found family.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Alluded in the final episode. The deceased Magical Girls speak out on how nobody will be aware of the struggles, loss, and hardships they had and will continue to endure. Something that Ultimate Madoka makes sure their tales are written in the Magia Record.
  Mel: Nobody knows that we wished.
  Kanae: Nobody knows that we struggled.
  Mifuyu: Nobody knows that we cried.
  Momoko: Nobody knows how angry we were.
  Kuroe: Nobody knows that we failed to reach our destination.
  Alina: Nobody knows about the art that Alina created.
  Touka: Nobody knows that we were deceived and stolen from, or that we fought.
  Nemu: Nobody knows that we dreamed of hope and failed.
  Ui: Nobody knows that we gave up everything to save another.
  Iroha: No one knows... But I'll never forget! This is our record, a record that no one knows.
• Hat Damage: Alina gets her hat shot off in Episode 10.
• Hypocrite: Despite their supposed mission to save magical girls from becoming Witches, the Wings of the Magius have no compunction over endangering them, let alone in situations similar to what they're trying to prevent.
  • In Season 2 Episode 2, Yachiyo understandably blames the Wings of the Magius for Iroha's demise (she got better) and takes out her anger on Mifuyu.
  • In Season 2 Episode 4, it is revealed that magical girls who overuse their Doppel contract Doppel Syndrome, which causes them to fuse with their Doppels and turn into Witch-like creatures; Rena even says that "it's the same as being a Witch". In Season 2 Episode 10, Touka and Nemu proceed with awakening Embryo Eve even after Iroha warns them that magical girls could contract Doppel Syndrome or witch out should that happen; the results aren't pretty.
  • At least Touka managed to called out Alina for trying to create Witches (for her series finale plan to wipe out humanity) even though their mission was to stop the Witch cycle.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Similar to the original series, each episode title is a spoken line in the same episode.
• Innocently Insensitive:
  • In Episode 7, Iroha, Yachiyo, and Tsuruno decide to take Felicia with them so they can train her to restrain her explosive anger. This upsets Felicia, because the way they say it makes it seems that she's not allowed to be sad that her parents were killed by a Witch. They apologize for making Felicia upset, and nevertheless still extend their offer to live in Mikazuki Villa.
  • In Season 2 Episode 2, Mifuyu tries to explain her reason to support Magius' goal by making comparison between her and Iroha; both Mifuyu and Iroha are weak magical girls who won't survive the Witch system. Thus, Magius' Doppel barrier will save them and other fellow magical girls from their inevitable fate. This only serves to infuriate Yachiyo even more; not only is Mifuyu insinuating that Iroha is a weakling, she also basically accuses Iroha as being selfish enough to sacrifice innocents for her own safety. Yachiyo almost kills Mifuyu for it.
  • Later in Episode 7, it is shown that Yachiyo, being Mifuyu's foil, is this on the other extreme. Because she's naturally strong, she doesn't really understand the plight of the weak. This makes her blind to both Felicia's outburst on how she doesn't want Yachiyo to carry all burden herself, or that her prized pupil Tsuruno is actually only pretending to be strong. It's especially fatal for the later.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: When Iroha succumbs to her Doppel in Season 2 Episode 3, it turns her nightmares into an ideal world similar to Homulilly's barrier in Rebellion where everyone is together (including Ui, Touka and Nemu as well as Kuroe), being a Magical Girl is easy and Magical Girls don't have to compete for resources. Yachiyo and Kuroe have to navigate the dream to bring Iroha back.
• More Dakka: During the final episode of season 1, Holy Mami unleashes a gigantic swarm of dakka for a barrage even more massive than the one in Rebellion. Even Yachiyo's Storm of Blades attacks can't keep up.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Iroha's father holds up a passport with the same appearance as Magia Passport, monthly premium currency pass of the game, but in Japanese passport's color.
  • Iroha's three classmates in Episode 1 have similar general appearances as several of Madoka's classmates that pester Homura in her first day; a dark-skinned blue hair girl, a dark purple-haired girl, and a greenish-brunette.
  • The Stinger in episode 3 has Mami and Kyubey just outside Kamihama on a tall metal structure, discussing how he wants her to investigate the city because he can't enter without fainting. This is conspicuously similar to the end of episode 4 of the original series, where Kyouko and Kyubey are just outside Mitakihara on a tall metal structure; both scenes are Mami and Kyouko's first appearances in their respective shows. This also foreshadows that Mami, like Kyouko, attacks one of the local magical girls almost as soon as she arrives.
  • The background song of the 10-point sale is the musical number of the same scene in the live-stage adaptation.
  • In the fight against Candy, Tsuruno boasts that she's not going to lose, only for the cutesy plush-like Witch attempting to bite her head off. Unlike Mami, she's not frozen in place and dodges out of the way. In case you miss the reference, the grocery store's mascots are later seen with their heads missing.
  • FM Kamihama in Episode 8 came from the Magia Report April Fool's event; it is an Uwasa that broadcasts a radio channel from an alternate world. Given that the song that plays in the channel is the anime's own opening song, said alternate world is ours.
  • In Episode 9, when Ai shifts Alina's coordinates to eject Alina out of her barrier, the pop-up appears as one of the game's dialog boxes used for download and error messages.
  • Once again, Sayaka uses a fire extinguisher as a distraction, and throws her sword into it like in Rebellion.
  • In Season 2 Episode 1, a lot of visual cues are taken from the original series' Episode 10, especially in the initial fight scene against Patricia.
  • During Season 2 Episode 6, when Mifuyu attempts to take Tsuruno away from the Magius' claws, Tsuruno turns into Uwasa Tsuruno with her glitchy transformation video over-imposed during the scene.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • In Episode 11, Iroha interrogates Tsukuyo about Nemu's whereabouts, but what makes Tsukuyo give in is Iroha asking her about Tsukasa, and then telling her about Ui and how she'd do anything for her little sister. Tsukuyo can sympathize with Iroha's feelings, and agrees to ask Mifuyu to arrange a meeting.
  • In Season 2 Episode 2, Mifuyu tries to appeal to Yachiyo by making comparison between herself and Iroha to justify the Magius' goal. It ends badly, mostly because Mifuyu unwittingly dismisses Iroha as a weakling who only cares for herself.
• Out of Focus: The new character Kuroe has a starring role in the first episode, but afterward she vanishes for the rest of the season as the main story from the game gets going. She only reappears at the very end of the season's finale. The second season gets better at this, though.
• Plague of Good Fortune: The anime's version of the Lucky Owl Water grants 24 lucky events to the drinker before bad things happen to them.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Because of the different medium and script writers, as admitted by Inucurry, some of the plot details are different from the game:
  • We don't find out that Iroha was distant with her classmates and her room has a visible split from Ui being Ret-Gone until later. Those scenes are instead moved to the first episode as an Establishing Character Moment for Iroha.
  • Iroha doesn't meet Mitama the first time she's in her office; Momoko claims that she's out at the moment. This causes Iroha to not immediately get lectured about Mitama's sessions.
  • The reason for Rena and Kaede's quarrel is different. Instead of fighting over sweets, it begins because Rena refuses to help Iroha, which escalates into them insulting each other's wishes. This gives a show of each girl's personalities, their reasons for contracting, their relationships in the team, and integrating the conclusion of that conflict into the larger plot of Iroha's attempt to search for her sister.
  • Instead of turning into Momoko and trying to point Iroha away from her and Kaede recognizing her because "Momoko" has a different standing stance, Rena turns into Ren Isuzu, who Iroha doesn't know, and Kaede recognizes her by her mascot keychain.
  • When it comes to the case of the Friendship Ending Staircase, instead of Rena and Kaede getting brainwashed, it's changed to the Rumor trying to break Rena before she's saved by Kaede, with both of them fighting together in order to kill it and mend their friendship.
  • Iroha and Yachiyo aren't going to the beginning of the stamp rally separately, only to meet halfway; Tsuruno calls Yachiyo to investigate with them in a subtle attempt to reconnect with her and the three spend the entire episode together. The Seance Shrine turns out to be Mizuna Shrine, where the stamp rally leads them, instead of the random shrine on top of a building that Iroha spots from a train.
  • The Lucky Owl Water's limit is changed from a time limit of 24 hours to 24 lucky occurrences before bad things happen to the drinker. Written numbers are still shown throughout.
  • The location of the lucky water rumor is in Kosho Ward in Eastern Kamihama instead of Sankyo Ward in Western Kamihama like in the game. This makes way for an extra exposition about the ward rivalry in the city before it's relevant in the story. In Episode 8, Yachiyo is seen calling Kanagi several chapters earlier because of this encounter.
  • Iroha and Yachiyo's Uwasa hunt into Chapter 7 is done by Yachiyo solo in Season 2 Episode 2, as the consequence of Iroha got pulled by Holy Mami into a bottomless chasm in their fight during Season 1's finale. Of the three Uwasa she slain, only the Peeping Castle Town and the Firemen's Mound existed in Chapter 7, while Rumor of Substitute Street is the Uwasa from Kazumi Magica collab event, "Another Daze".
  • Because Momoko's beef against Yachiyo doesn't exist, their reconciliation about how Momoko misunderstands the reason of Yachiyo's icy mask got redirected and adapted into Momoko's relationship with Mitama. As the result, Mitama becomes a lot more like early chapters' Yachiyo in term of personality.
• Product Placement:
  • In Episode 2, the arcade game seen when Iroha is searching for Rena is obviously maimai. Professional players often wear gloves when playing so their fingers won't slip and damage the score chain.
  • In Episode 4, there are several recognizable sweet brands (but with slightly changed names) on the table like Dars and Meiji chocolates.
• Recursive Canon: The game's Fate Weave gacha draw and Magia Stone counter are seen in episode 6. Felicia and Iroha appear to have drawn an unspecified light-type 4-star character as part of their Uwasa-induced lucky streak.
• Rewatch Bonus: The numbers counting down throughout episode 6. For example, during Felicia and Iroha's montage of luck, the number 22 on the vertical lottery-drawing banner changes to 21 within the same shot, and the 21s on the falling tokens change to 20s.
• "Save the World" Climax: In the finale, Alina Gray reveals her intentions to transform all of humanity into witches by bestowing them magic after she fuses with Embryo Eve to make them share the fate of all Magical Girls.
• Serious Business: Yachiyo dramatically asks Iroha and Tsuruno to help her with something important, which turns out to be a special sale on pasta with a strict per-customer limit. Iroha says this wasn't quite what she expected, but Yachiyo insists it's a big deal and she's just too young to understand.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: By the end Ui, Touka, Nemu, and Kuroe are all dead, meaning Iroha didn't manage to save any of her old friends. Madoka also died offscreen, as shown by Homura leaving for another timeline(which leaves little hope for Sayaka, Kyouko, and Mami. The worst part, which really leaves in ending in Shoot the Shaggy Dog territory is that with all the Magius dead, the Dopple system is destroyed, and magical girls will have to go back to their old life of fighting over Grief Seeds to extend their short lifespans.
• Shout-Out:
  • In Episode 2, two of the names written on the staircase are 高里希乃子 and 中山竹乎; 希乃子 can be read "Kinoko" while 竹乎 can be read "Takenoko". This is likely a reference to a common Japanese "feud" between fans of "mushroom" (kinoko) versus "bamboo shoot" (takenoko) variants of Meiji chocolate cookies, generally considered to be comically Serious Business over the Internet (think of it as akin to the pineapples-on-pizza debate).
  • The Owl Water Stand might be based on the freak show circus that appears in Pastoral: To Die in the Country. The circus appears in a town one day and exposing the main character to decadence (but instead of sexual debaucheries, it's gambling). One of the circus performers is a naked man wearing kendo gears.
  • The visual of Sana describing her family issue, with boats and curtained theater stage, is from The Moomins, specifically from Moominsummer Madness. The reference is played for irony; The Moomins also has an invisible girl who turned invisible because she was abused by her family, and she is taken in by a family of hippo-like creatures who heal her trauma. In Sana's case, her mother (a hippo) is instead abandoning her for a family of crocodiles and rhinos.
  • When Sana comes back to her family's house for the last time, the Futaba are shown as mannequins sharing uproarious laughter while ignoring her. This is a reference to The Fuccons, a show which entire cast is played with mannequins about an Eagleland Type 2 family disguising as Type 1 and each episode ends with the cast sharing a round of laughter, even if the laughter is inappropriate with the episode's plot.
• The Stinger: Many of the episodes across its three seasons have post-credits scenes.
• Storm of Blades: Yachiyo often summons dozens upon dozens of her halberds when fighting. It proves ineffective against the Uwasa of the Commoner's Horse due to its Healing Factor and Holy Mami due to the sheer firepower she can bring to bear.
• Spotting the Thread: It's implied that Iroha getting a glimpse of Tsukuyo in her uniform helps her realize which school she goes to, enabling her to track her down and interrogate her.
• Taking You with Me:
  • In episode 13, as the Memory Museum collapses upon her, Holy Mami yanks Iroha down the same bottomless chasm she fell in.
  • In the finale, Alina wastes no strength in using her last moments as a Magical Girl to sell the others out to Kyubey by shattering the Doppel barrier once she becomes a Witch to turn all humanity into Witches.
• Title Drop: In the final episode of the series, Iroha, alongside Ultimate Madoka, close a book titled 'Magia Record' to ensure their tales will never be forgotten.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: No one in the show seems to wear the same casual clothes twice. When Yachiyo returns to wearing her game's default casual clothes in Episode 11, it's a visual sign that she's regressing to her previous Ineffectual Loner self.
• "Wanted!" Poster: After Felicia messes up their teamwork in episode 6, not only does Nanaka spread rumors about Felicia's untrustworthiness, she also puts this up in Mitama's place. She's just that angry.
• Wham Line:
  • At the end of Episode 10, Iroha asks Sana for information about Ui or the other girls in the same hospital room. One of the names she mentions gets a reaction.
  Sana: Nemu? No way. Could you mean Nemu Hiiragi? She's a Magius.
  • At the end of the first season finale, after the Magius hold a rally explaining their goals to their members, Alina steps outside and excitedly says to herself that she hopes "it" comes soon. The "it" in question? Walpurgisnacht.
• Wham Shot:
  • Midway through Episode 10, Mami arrives at the battle on the rooftop, and the main characters see that she's wearing the Magius' insignia.
  • The end of Episode 13 finally shows what happened to Tsuruno, Felicia, and Sana after they were separated from Yachiyo and Iroha. They ended up becoming Black Feathers and joining the Wings of the Magius.
  • While the audience taking note of Magius' multiple identical Witches would already expect Magius' Witch farm, even the game's veterans will get a gut punch when they see the Doppel Syndrome Isolation Ward in Season 2 Episode 4, especially when there are several familiar faces among them.
  • In Episode 7, when our heroes try their plan to save Tsuruno and Mami from the Uwasa that are fused with them, the next thing we see after it is Tsuruno's bloodied and broken body. Then Tsuruno stands up, still broken, insisting that she's the strongest.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: A combination of this and Post-Credits Scene plays, showing what the girls are up to after Neo Dorothy’s defeat.
  • The other magical girls in Kamihama are working with Yachiyo and the others to form the Kamihama Magia Union.
  • Kaede and Rena are now under Mitama’s care after Momoko’s death, and it’s presumed they are in training to become Coordinators.
  • Walpurgisnacht ends up returning to Mitakihara, where she ends up fighting the Holy Quintet offscreen. Unfortunately, Homura is shown travelling back in time, showing that at least Madoka died in the battle.
  • Karin is shown looking at an advertisement for Alina’s art while holding a piece she bought.
  • The surviving members of the Wings Of Magius are shown to have made a memorial of their deceased team mates.
  • All proof that Ui has existed has finally come back, even though she’s dead.
  • Iroha is still working as a Magicial Girl, with Kyubey praising her for her hard work. The last shot of the anime also shows her handing over the book containing everything that has happened to Ultimate Madoka.
• White Mask of Doom: If a Magical Girl loses control of their Doppel, a blank, smiling white mask covers her face.