Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 11: QUEENS

Magical Girl Raising Project Light Novel #11

by Asari Endou, Marui-no (Illustrator), Jennifer Ward (Translator)

WILL YOU BE MY FRIEND?

Puk Puck’s plan to reform the Magical Kingdom is proceeding smoothly now that she has the help of her new friends Shadow Gale and Snow White…but friendship only goes so far. Uluru has defected from the Puk Faction in order to aid the magical girl Pfle, who has several risky tricks up her sleeve to stop Puk Puck’s devious scheme. What kinds of drastic measures will Pfle and her allies take to rescue the brainwashed Shadow Gale and Snow White?

Genres: Fantasy, Light Novel

277 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 10, 2016

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hopelessly hooked until this point, but this was the first volume I found kinda... disappointing. There's been a growing theme of transitioning from a self-contained disaster (the fun kind) in a novel, to gradually setting up stuff for a hypothetical future confrontation. The last one I was really interested in was JOKERS, or maybe even further back to Limited...

For some reason, this one missed a lot of the elements that make the series so good. The primary gimmick magic of this story took the agency of many of the primary players, which was a weird shift. And even then, the fights in this book had relatively little to do with the characters' abilities at all, it was mostly just random conflicts and running around. In the older books, a lot of the Magical Skills were probably written specifically to counter each other in interesting ways... so bringing back all of these old characters instead are probably WHY it didn't pan out very well either.

Then on the other hand, even though the fights were disappointing, the way these characters interacted was lackluster as well. Considering this was supposed to be the culmination of the last few books (Jokers, Aces, Queens?), there was a huge lack of character development. In fact, there was more character un-development than anything, characters who showed up for no reason, and others who perished or lost things for no reason whatsoever. This series does have a habit of being "unfair", but this feels less unfair and more baffling than anything. Usually Endou does better with quickly building characters up and then twisting the knife, so to speak....

Part of it might've been due to the fan translation I read, but even looking at the core of it, I think it would've been the same experience. There was definitely a large chunk in the first half that was weird political back-and-forth, and that might've been dulled by funky translation, but otherwise, this one was a miss. If you were a big Pfle fan, then I think you might enjoy this one. Otherwise, everyone else essentially stays the same over the course of the story.

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, what a volume! So much happening in such a short period of time. As usual it's sad to see some of the magical girls leaving the story, I would have loved to know more about them and their powers (at least they may show up in a future short story volume).

[Briony Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally back to the plot after 2 side story books we are treated to thrilling action and excitement. I couldn't put it down!

[Michie · Rating 4 out of 5]

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[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know what to think... I'm blank. My dear Pfle... we managed to get Puk...