The Fall 2026 Anime Preview Guide

Magical Girl Raising Project Restart

Some magical girls fight. Others do not. Chosen by the mysterious Land of Magic, unknown to the rest of the world, magical girls are each granted a unique power. Pechka, whose magic makes food delicious, is forced to take part in a mysterious virtual game together with 16 unfamiliar magical girls, each with her own distinctive personality. It was supposed to be a safe training exercise designed to improve their magical abilities. But instead, it marks the beginning of a carefully orchestrated nightmare - a forbidden trial. A new Magical Girl Raising Project has begun.

Magical Girl Raising Project Restart is based on the Magical Girl Raising Project light novel series by author Asari Endō and illustrator Maruino. The anime series is streaming on OceanVeil on Mondays.

When it comes to snagging licenses this season, OceanVeil seems to be waking up and choosing violence. And speaking of violence, here's the thoroughly unlikely seeming decade-later follow-up to Magical Girl Raising Project. The big batch of new characters might make it seem newbie-friendly, but then a fresh cast was sort of necessitated by the way the original season murdering off just about everyone. Original battle royale winner Snow White does show she's still active by the end of this episode (and well-versed in fire safety!); the musings by the apparent overseer of this current event indicates that Restart will be following up on the ideals detailed about "dark" magical girls by the first season's end. I can't say yet that this will turn around my opinion on the cynicism of that finish, but it does make clear that this series is in direct conversation with the first, and should be taken as a proper sequel despite the virtual fresh start.

That start is otherwise superficially similar to the original Magical Girl Raising Project for the first couple minutes: everyday girls have been granted the power to transform into magical girls with unique powers and ostensibly tasked with do-gooding. They've all got their own situations and desires, and there are some interesting concepts already in leads like Daisy, the burnt-out, broke college student carrying on as her apparent childhood magical girl identity, and Pechka, whose secret stalking and photographing of the crush she gifts a magical bento to paints her with just the inklings of being something of a little freak. These are types that are primed to be wrung out by the horrors that viewers should already know the new Raising Project is designed to subject them to.

But that's barely the outset before there's an upset. I admit I'm a little exhausted that even the bygone trend of dark magical girls can't escape being pulled into the neverending evergreen indulgence that is the VRMMO/Isekai angle. And the empty, Fallout-76-ass wasteland arena all these would-be magical murder misses are dropped into to (eventually) fight to the death is just inherently less interesting than the lovingly rendered locality of the city the previous batch battled in. But then Restart is still in figuring-things-out mode. Pechka pointedly has no clue what's going on and lets herself get saved from one encounter before getting hoisted around by another batch of girls. If she's meant to be the lead character, she's a frustratingly passive and ineffective one. Daisy's much more interesting to follow, as though she also admits she has no idea what's going on, she can at least take charge and take care of herself. Her multi-stage brawl with the samurai magical girl has some sharp cuts to it that showcase the anime as it should in an attention-getting first episode.

That's a much-needed highlight, since so much else of this premiere is dedicated to frontloading the cast and teasing at the utterly uninformed mystery that brought them here. It's an eclectic gaggle of girls, sure—though in the current era it really stands out how much crossover there is between Raising Project's magical girl design sensibilities and Vtubers. But it's hard to get too attached to them when they're all paraded about at once like this, to say nothing of being experienced enough to know that 90% of them are going to be piles of hamburger before this is over. Jeez, there's the cynicism of the previous season affecting me already.

Daisy, at least, does have an interesting concept powering her. She's a magical girl (or at least based on a magical girl) who's actually famous in this world, eliciting different reactions from others who are aware of her. It already sets up a neat contrast with the likes of Snow White, who has her own fame both in and out of the show. The question of how long has passed and how the constant shifts in the system have affected Snow White posit an interesting mystery box for fans of that first season to follow up on. But given the kind of show Raising Project is, I can't help but feel it's mostly mystery boxes all the way down at this first stage. What is the mysterious MMO world? How do all the magical girls' powers work? Why the hell is one of them a hamster? Thankfully, Restart does have the background of the previous season to earn it something of the benefit of the doubt, plus at least one engaging characterization in Daisy. It's a pretty uneven premiere out of the gate, but it's at least interesting in its setup and execution in the same way that's made me a bit more fond of Magical Girl Raising Project for its swings in its decade-long absence. Between that and bonkers choices like winding up streaming on OceanVeil, being interesting is the least I can ask of a series showing up like this.

Coming off of reading the original books and an interview with the show's director this past month, I wondered how exactly this anime would handle this first episode. Would it follow the book beat for beat? Would it rush the story to hit the first “oh shit” moment that would be sure to hook viewers and bring them back for next week? The surprising answer is “neither.” And while many internal monologue-heavy scenes have been truncated and one major flashback from later in the first book has been moved to where it would fit chronologically, it's undoubtedly to the benefit of the anime as a whole.

This is because the point of this episode is to reintroduce us to the world of Magical Girl Raising Project by introducing us to two radically different magical girls. On one hand, we have Magical Daisy. A veteran among veterans, the now college student has been doing the magical girl thing since she was in middle school. She's so well known that there is literally an in-universe anime about her. She's strong, ultra-experienced, and quick thinking—knows exactly when to go all out and when to pull her punches.

On the other hand, we have Pechka. As Pfle (the magical girl in the wheelchair) puts it, there are two kinds of magical girls: those with combat-focused powers and those without. Pechka is very much in the later category. While she has the super-strength, durability, and agility shared by all magical girls, her unique power is making delicious-tasting food. That's it. Moreover, while Magical Daisy has made her superhero activities the priority in her life, Pechka is more concerned with using those powers for her own personal gain. Oh sure, she's not a monster—she'll help a little girl get her lost balloon—but she's far more focused on winning the heart of the boy she's crushing on through her magical food and super-cute magical girl body.

So, seeing Pechka and Magical Daisy like this, we are left with the logical question: What is it that these opposites share? What is it that has caused both of them to be chosen and pulled into the virtual world with little guidance and no explanation? And while we don't get an answer outright, we get the shape of one in the show's closing moments.

In the time since the first season, Snow White has found a new mission in life: to hunt down and defeat magical girls gone rogue—i.e., those using their powers solely for self-gain or other evil purposes. And it seems her training with Ripple has paid off as she easily defeats a fire-wielding magical girl—and within a burning building no less. But more important than what Snow White has becomes is what she did. What ever is happening with this new group of Magical Girls in the virtual world is a direct, if unintended, consequence of Snow White and Ripples actions in the death game.

As a reader of the books, I'm exceedingly happy with this first episode. The animation quality is above average, the character designs look fantastic, and the anime is not afraid to change things to better fit the format. And best of all, I got to watch Snow White beat down evil with a fire extinguisher. It's a good day to be a Magical Girl Raising Project fan.

You would be forgiven for forgetting about the first season of Magical Girl Raising Project, or if you had never heard about it in the first place. While I found it one of the more tolerable post-Madoka capitulations into “dark” magical girls, its death game antics very clearly failed to amass the same kind of cultural cache as Madoka and Homura's cosmically tragic situationship. Regardless, here we are ten years later with a follow-up season subtitled Restart, and that name feels appropriate. You can jump into this episode without the fear of being lost, because this involves a new cast, a new setting, and a new set of deadly gimmicks sure to befall these girls of a magical persuasion. The slate is wiped clean and ready to be stained with slaughter once more.

The other reason you can easily pick the narrative up here is that not much of consequence happens. The bulk of the episode is spent introducing its rogues' gallery of magical girls, and with 16 participants and only 21 minutes of runtime, the math tells the story. Some characters receive nothing but a line or two of dialogue sketching the broadest strokes of their particular gimmick or personality trait. Another consequence is that the storytelling is sparse. We learn that everyone has been teleported into a virtual world full of chibi skeletons, and there are hints that this isn't the first time this has happened. That's about it, so unless you're already on board with the general concept of a VR death game (and something tells me that if they die in the game, they die in real life), there isn't a whole lot in the plot department to hook you.

Character-wise, Magical Girl Raising Project has more going for it. Our two main heroines this episode are Pechka, an average schoolgirl who acts like a bit of creep to her crush on the baseball team, and Magical Daisy, a broke college student still dedicated to the magical girl craft that garnered her fame in middle school. The first season's cast came from all walks of life, with all kinds of personal problems, so I'm happy to see that pattern continue here. Other promising cast members are a wheelchair-bound girl with a keen strategic mind, and a worryingly young maid who can influence other people's moods (and who is almost certainly hiding something sinister). While I don't expect every character to be rich and three dimensional, I hope the show can provide a solid collection of clashing personalities to fuel its carnage.

I also like the character designs. They're not too busy, and each girl's aesthetic is distinct, which is another facet I thought the first season did well. There's whimsy here, too, like with Pechka's giant spatula weapon, or with the centaur girl who apparently doesn't mind being her party's pack mule. Otherwise, though, the episode's visuals are quite dull. The desert setting has nothing to distinguish itself from the generic concept of a desert, the fight scenes are tolerable at best, and the CG skeletons don't give me much hope for how the production might look later on in the season.

Fans of the first season will see a couple familiar faces in the final scene, which prompts the question of what Snow White, our previous protagonist, has to do with this new death game. However, that extra dash of mystery doesn't add enough flavor to salvage a bland premiere. It's not a bad premiere, mind you, but it doesn't provide enough information or moxie to stand out. The show could improve from here just as easily as it could fall apart. I don't think we'll know until the first blood is spilled.