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You might notice this anime gets compared a lot to Madoka Magica, however, they aren't nearly the same thing. Madoka aims to be a deconstruction of the magical girl genre while magical girl isn't even the primary genre of Magical Girl Raising Project. It's a survival game anime, it just has magical girl characters, that's all. The magical girl concepts take the background really quick, in fact, you can probably show someone a random episode of this anime and they wouldn't even guess it's a magical girl anime, just eccentric girls dressed in weird clothes killing each other.

So that's the kind of show this is ... and you'd probably enjoy it for reasons you'd enjoy survival games. Seeing the cool fights and how characters go through the anxiety of the kill or be killed situation. How some of the characters want to find peaceful solutions, some wanting to go ahead with the killing game, how some betray the others and so on.

From the beginning, the characterization was done really well even if all the characters are magical girls, there is even one guy who turned into a magical girl if you're interested in that. There are a variety of them with different personalities, designs and issues they deal with, particularly in their backstories. Certain character's actions are even quite shocking but then make sense if you think about it.

The pacing for the first half of the anime was great in getting us to know the characters while building up to the major conflicts that will occur then having some interactions between to have us feel the characters. Unfortunately however, this fine pacing doesn't last. After approximately the halfway point, this series becomes really action focused, many character interactions and tension build up get rushed just to get to the kickass fights.

The fights themselves are all good though, well paced long enough to show the abilities of the magical girls and seeing how one overcomes the other. Sometimes you can really feel the characters struggles and it's fun to see how the different match ups play out with them all being unique in their own way. It's just the problem is that many fights feel like they just come out of nowhere.

Another problem with this series is how it can be predictable in most cases due to being formulaic(as I said, there are of course exceptions). Many characters get a tonne of death flags before well... their deaths. Usually in the form of some backstory reveal.

Other than that, the art is pretty and there's nothing wrong with the animation. Get used to watching night time settings though, because that's what most of this show takes place during. The opening and ending songs are nice and although the scenes themselves have a lot of quiet moments, when the fights come, there are usually some epic music to enhance them.

So that's it, this is a fairly good show although it could have been great. Perhaps it suffered the limitations of just being 1 cour, if it had been longer, they might have been able to take time with the tension build ups, have room for character interactions and explore their backstories without having them be blatant death flags.

It is surprisingly great for an anime filled with cute girls however, so you might like to give Magical Girl Raising Project a go even if you aren't usually into those kinds of shows. I'll be giving this anime a 6/10, though keep in mind that a 6 is in now way bad. It just still has some problems and I just like to reserve higher scores for the amazing stuff. Maybe if this anime had fixed some problems mentioned and it had been 2 cours, it may even reach a 7 or 8. Well if you decide to pick this anime up and watch, enjoy.