Light Novel: Magical Girl Raising Project

Magical Girl Raising Project Vol 1
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

Sugar and spice--but not playing nice!

The hit smartphone game Magical Girl Raising Project is not only free, but one in tens of thousands of players will win real-life powers. In N City, sixteen of these lucky girls help the city's citizens--until upper management announces that each week, the least productive magical girl will lose her gifts. But this is no ordinary contest, and as the rules become increasingly sadistic, the competition to keep their powers becomes a vicious battle for the girls' very lives...

I love how this is kind of a little bit dark but it has really cute chibi's at the beginning in the colour pages to introduce you to each character! I was like aawww Chibi's and then I read the prologue and was like wooooww  okay.

One thing I really liked about this was that it told you about the game as if you're looking at the back of the game packet, if you know what I mean? It was an interesting way to relate the information without putting a, probably, overly long explanation in to the narrative and killing the pace. I also liked how the chat portions where set out as it provided a nice break to the narrative. 

This gets quite dark quite quickly, it's like the Magical Girls edition of the Hunger Games. There's blood, stabbing, death, and various other forms of gore, and considering one character turned out to be fairly young, it was a bit disturbing. Just fair warning. I actually think it was a nice change to all the OMG Magical Girls *unicorns* *rainbows* kinda stuff I usually come across. Seriously this goes from "aw look magical girls, aren't they cute!" to "stab stab stab, murder, murder, dismember, blood, gore, death" in like 0.5 seconds. 

I was really intrigued from the start by the darker tone. We get to see all of the girls POV's mostly, I think, and each was very different from the other. They all wanted different things, they all thought differently, had different opinions and had different voices to their narratives. I feel like this kept the narrative fresh and gave some great character insight. 

Speaking of characters, I had some that I loved and some that I hated...then there was a complete psycho. Can't say I wasn't happy to see the back of her. The world of the game was intriguing, and there's lots of action and blood and murder. I liked that you saw through the characters two completely different mindsets or types of people. Those that would help each other and do things the right way and those that immediately resorted to cheating as soon as they where able to. I really had to question how some of them made it to being a magical girl to be honest. 

I gave this four stars because I had a couple of niggles. First off, I feel like I was supposed to connect with Snow White, but I really wasn't that bothered with her, she got on my nerves a wee bit and rather than stepping up like all of the others she was kind of on the sidelines not really doing much so I was rooting for Ripple instead! 

My other issue was that there where a fair few characters that I was excited to see and get to know more of but they where killed off and I didn't get to see as much of them as I would have liked. I kinda figured that this all out kill war was going to go on for a few volumes, I wasn't expecting the whole story to be wrapped up in one volume, so I'm interested to see where the story is going to go after everything from this volume, but I do feel like a few things where rushed, I'd have liked a bit more world building too!

All in all, Magical Girl Raising Project shows the different sides to human nature through the girls and their actions. There's characters to root for, and characters to hate, and there are some really sad moments as well as some really murdery moments. There's plenty of intrigue about the world, characters, and why they're having to do all of this. Plus everything being wrapped up in this volume makes you super intrigued to see what's going to happen next. Do we get a new set of girls? Or does the story of the survivors continue? 

I don't usually read Magical Girl light novels/manga, but I was interested in this one because it sounded a bit different and from my experience I wasn't disappointed! It was definitely darker than I expected, but it pulled me right in! 

Sound like your cup of tea? Yen Press are giving away five copies on GoodReads!