Milan Records celebrates the tenth anniversary of the critically-acclaimed anime franchise Puella Magi Madoka Magica with the first-ever digital release of music featured in the series, movie and the mobile game Magia Record. Included within the release are three albums of music from the Aniplex title, including two albums featuring music from the series and movie as well as one album from Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story, a mobile game based on the anime with its own original storyline...

Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story is a Japanese role-playing video game for Android and iOS. The game is a spin-off of the anime series Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

The music on this collection is, like the anime series, packed full of a diverse collection of themes. Some fade out rather oddly, so I'm assuming that these were originally designed in the game to play on an endless loop. In fact, this constant fading out was one aspect that really bugged me. There's some great tracks here, but just as they're starting to get going they suddenly fade out.

In total there are 49 tracks (1 hr, 15 min, 25 sec) and it pretty much covers all bases from quirky character driven themes ('Lost Tension'), tracks that sound like anime main themes ('Welcome to Mirrors'), fast paced pieces ('First Contact') and sweet, melancholic tracks ('Remain').

This works well enough on its own merits that it should appeal to a wider audience outside of fans of the game and anime series.

7

Darren Rea