Light Novel: Magical Raising Project 2

Magical Girl Raising Project Vol 2
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

The hit social network game "The Magical Girl Raising Project" selects one out of every tens of thousands of players to become a real life magical girl. The lucky chosen girls gain magic powers as well as incredibly good fortune, and spend their days blissfully. 
But one day, an absolute announcement declares that the number of magical girls has risen too high and must be cut down to half. Sixteen young maidens are thrust into a merciless, deadly contest to survive...but how many will come out the other side? 

The first volume surprised me with how much I liked it and how dark it actually was, this volume isn't quite so dark as the first one because they're not all out murdering each other like in the first volume. This volume has another group of girls all with interesting and fun powers once again. I love the art page that lays out who's who and what they can do! 

A fair few of the characters are relatable, you can empathise with them. Like Chika...she was so freaking relatable, and Kiku was a bit too! Interestingly Kiku was like a magical girl veteran, she had an anime and everything. Masked Wonder...she just cracked me up. Detec Bell was like a magical girl version of Sherlock Holmes and therefore one of my favourites of the volume! Along with the nice ones we of course had some not so nice ones in the form of Nonako, Pfle, Clantail and Rionetta. Snow White pops up too....

There's foreboding moments provided by the prologue, the texts and the Katana girl, plus the fact that I read vol 1! Master Sides was pretty damn creepy too. As we start the volume, we quickly get introduced to some of the girls and how this whole thing is going to go down. It's kind of similar to the first volume in that all the girls are pulled in and are being made to play a game. However, instead of just killing each other like in the first volume, this one has more of a murder mystery vibe to it, than Hunger Games. 

Volume one was bloody and brutal, and like I said, it was kind of like a dark magical girl Hunger Games. this one is like a Magical Girls SAO murder mystery.  I was worried they'd do it the same as the first volume so I was pleased that it was different and had a different vibe to it. This volume is bloody and brutal to some extent, and it's definitely dark, but we have everything going on in a game, kind of like SAO like I said. Because if you die in the game you die in real life. The setting and vibe of this volume are different, and the killing isn't outright. It's secretive and like I said...very murder mystery which is why we have a detective character I assume. The ending leaves you with plenty of questions and possibly a few suspects as to who's behind the killing. It's clearly all to do with Snow White who we know from the first volume, I did like the way she was incorporated. 

I really loved this second volume, it was another surprise, just as dark but dark in a different way. I'm intrigued to see who's behind it all, who the killer is and how it's going to play out in the next volume!