Suzune Magica: Difference between revisions

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Cover of the first volume.

Puella Magi Suzune Magica (魔法少女すずね☆マギカ, Mahō Shōjo Suzune Magika) is the fourth spin-off manga in the Puella Magi franchise, written and illustrated by GAN. It is one of three spin-offs that have been released after Rebellion, with the other two being Puella Magi Oriko Magica: Sadness Prayer and Puella Magi Tart Magica: The Legend of "Jeanne d'Arc".

Unusually for a manga series, Suzune Magica was initially released as a single volume, with all other chapters being serialized in Kirara Forward. The first volume containing chapters 1 - 4 was released on November 12, 2013, and it began serialization with chapter 5 in Manga Time Kirara Forward on November 22, 2013, with serialization finishing a year later on November 22, 2014. The second volume containing chapters 5 - 10 was released on June 25, 2014. The third volume containing chapters 11 - 16 was released on December 12, 2014.

Blurb

Note: These are all fan translations.

Volume 1: The admirable junior high school student who works as a live-in employee, Suzune. The girl who lives her everyday life always smiling has a hidden side. That is, she's a magical girl assassin. What's the fate of the four girls she ambushes? And the existence of magical girls, is it good or bad? This is the spin-off's first volume!

Volume 2: The admirable junior high school student who works as a live-in employee, Suzune. The girl who lives her everyday life always smiling has a hidden side. That is, she's a magical girl assassin. As the magical girls of the city are wiped out one by one, what's the way that's left to go amidst the despair and frustration...?

Volume 3: The admirable junior high school student who works as a live-in employee, Suzune. The girl who lives her everyday life always smiling has a hidden side. That is, she's a magical girl assassin. Confronted with the appearance of a new magical girl, Suzune is exposed to the anguish she kept hidden until now. Now she will invite in the final outcome...

Plot

See also: Suzune Magica/Plot for a full, detailed synopsis.

Volume 1: Suzune Amano is a magical girl who by day is a transfer student at Akanegasaki Middle School who also delivers newspapers as a part-time job. By night, however, she is a killer who murders magical girls after asking for their names. Hearing rumors about the killings and how all the victims are teenage girls, a group of magical girls — Arisa Narumi, Haruka Kanade, Chisato Shion, and Matsuri Hinata, the latter of whom is Suzune's classmate — investigate the city at night in search of clues. Chisato encounters Suzune that night and is killed by her, leaving Arisa in shock. After Suzune refuses to say why she kills magical girls, stating they are better off not knowing, Haruka and Matsuri retreat with Arisa, hearing from Kyubey about how Suzune is their natural enemy. The next day, Arisa recounts her past and how she met Chisato, and both Haruka and Matsuri attempt to talk with Suzune, but Suzune once again refuses to say anything. The day after, Haruka encounters a witch, which starts probing her memories concerning her feelings of hatred towards her sister. Meanwhile, Arisa and Matsuri encounter Suzune, who is planning on confronting Haruka, and engage in battle with her.

Volume 2: As Arisa and Matsuri battle with Suzune, Haruka escapes and defeats the witch tormenting her with her past memories. Despite Suzune's efforts to kill her and Arisa's and Matsuri's attempts to reach her, Haruka becomes a witch, revealing the dark secret of magical girls to Arisa and Matsuri. After Suzune defeats Haruka's witch, Kyubey appears to explain the magical girl system. Suzune departs, and Matsuri asks Kyubey about why Suzune kills magical girls. Kyubey shows her visions of Suzune's past, where she was mentored by a woman named Tsubaki Mikoto. However, Tsubaki became a witch, and thus Suzune inherited her pendant and began her hunt for magical girls. The next day, Arisa is seen truanting school, losing games in an arcade. She visits Chisato's home, meeting and running away from her father, and thus recounts the event where Chisato told Arisa her wish; upon arriving home, Arisa breaks down, regretting the fact that she became a magical girl. The next day, Matsuri tries reaching out to Arisa, explaining that she used to be blind and made a wish to see, and that she doesn't regret her wish. Arisa, however, announces her intent to kill Suzune, and departs, leaving Matsuri behind. That night, Arisa confronts Suzune in a dark alley, and they begin to fight. Meanwhile, while Matsuri debates on what to do, she is struck by sudden visions of past memories she once lost, before being approached by a mysterious girl in a magical girl outfit, who greets Matsuri with, "I'm home."

Volume 3: A mysterious magical girl by the name of Kagari Hinata approaches Matsuri. Matsuri questions her intentions and realizes that Kagari is after Suzune. When Matsuri attempts to leave to intervene in Arisa and Suzune's battle, Kagari knocks her out and intervenes in the fight herself, killing Arisa to get her out of the way. Kagari shows Suzune visions of her past, where Matsuri and Kagari were taken care of by Tsubaki in the absence of their dead mother, how the twins went looking for Tsubaki after she disappeared, and how Kagari, upon seeing Suzune with Tsubaki's pendant and learning of Tsubaki's death through Kyubey, became a magical girl to exact revenge on Suzune, taking away Matsuri's memories of how she met and became friends with Suzune, and altering Suzune's to make her believe Tsubaki's death drove her to hunt down magical girls. In the present, Kagari beats down Suzune both physically and mentally before preparing to kill her, but Matsuri intervenes, saving Suzune and confronting Kagari on her reasons for revenge, saying that Tsubaki wouldn't want this. Kagari attempts to kill Matsuri, saying that she doesn't understand, but is defeated by a combination of teamwork by Suzune and Matsuri. Kagari pulls her last resort card, turning herself into a witch, supposedly eating Matsuri. Suzune defeats Kagari's witch, and upon realizing that Matsuri survived, carries her home and prepares to leave Yunagi City. Matsuri, upon awakening, follows Suzune, who tells Matsuri to live on, before collapsing in pain. As Matsuri cries and cradles Suzune's body, promising she'll never forget Suzune, Tsubaki, Kagari, and Arisa and her friends, Suzune thanks her, before committing suicide by destroying her own soul gem. Matsuri is later seen on the roof of the school, tying Tsubaki's pendant into her hair, as she heads out with Kyubey to hunt witches.

Characters

See also: Suzune Magica Characters

Observations

"Hating someone so much you wanted to kill them" appears quite a bit in Suzune. Haruka wished for Kanata to be erased out of her jealousy, Arisa hated Suzune for killing Chisato and challenged her to a duel to the death, and the whole story happened because Kagari hated Suzune for killing Tsubaki and crafted a gambit to make her life miserable, prior to trying to killing her at the "climax" of said gambit.
Suzune's overall story is similar to the original request that became Madoka Magica, with the request asking for a bloody story where the girls dropped off one by one.
Kyubey says at one point in volume 1, regarding Suzune hunting other magical girls, that from one point on, she suddenly started targeting magical girls and that he didn't know why. This seems inconsistent with a flashback in volume 2 where Suzune inherits Tsubaki's pendant and vows to kill all magical girls, a scene in which Kyubey is present for... until it's revealed in volume 3 that Suzune's memories were altered by Kagari, which Kyubey was not present for; so to Kyubey, it would seem that Suzune's hunting of magical girls was sudden.

Speculation

It is speculated that Suzune Magica had such an odd release life due to poor sales. After volume 1 sold poorly, it was given a chance to get more attention via serialization alongside volume releases. Due to volume 2's poor sales, however, Suzune is speculated to have been cancelled, resulting in the rushed final third where everything is wrapped up and concluded at a fast pace. However, since there has been no word by GAN on this, it is all merely speculation.

Trivia

Matsuri, Kagari and Tsubaki are all named after flowers.
All the characters' first names are spelt with katakana in the story, with kanji only appearing in the profiles at the end of the collected volumes. The only exceptions are Tsubaki, whose kanji name appears in a speech bubble in volume 3, and Kagari, whose kanji name was revealed in a tweet by GAN.
Chapter 14 is the only chapter without a title.
Volume 1 has only four chapters whereas volumes 2 and 3 have six chapters each.
Like some of the other Puella Magi spin-offs, Suzune Magica received mixed to negative reception. Some of this is due to the story's use of too many of the series' basic cliches, and too little original or distinguishing elements compared to other Puella Magi installments.

Gallery

Front covers

Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3

Official art

1422720685116.jpg

Special Arisa image drawn by GAN, and a stripped version of volume 2's cover.
Art of Suzune.
Art of Arisa. Note that Arisa has blue eyes here, even though the manga covers give her pink eyes.
Art of Chisato.
Art of Haruka.
Art of Matsuri.
Art of Kagari.
Art of Tsubaki in a maid outfit.
Art of Kanami.
Power ranking and elements of all characters for a hypothetical game situation. From this tweet.

Manga pages

Suzune's profile.
Yunagi girls' profiles.
Volume 1 bonus colour page.
Volume 1 bonus end page.
Chapter 10 colour page.
Chapter 13 colour page 1.
Chapter 13 colour page 2.
The Yunagi magical girl quartet.
The Yunagi quartet transforming.
The two women who work at Yunagi Newspaper with Suzune.
KagarMatsurifather.png

The Hinata twins' father. He's a minor character, only appearing in about three pages.
Chisato's father.
Arisa's mother.
Silhouettes of magical girls Suzune has killed.
Yunagi girls whose deaths Suzune was responsible for; Kanami; and a few other silhouettes.

Miscellaneous

Kirara Magica series announcement pages, with the initial character designs for some of the series' characters.
Page two of the announcement.
Suzunebonusmaterial.jpg

Volume 3 bonus material.

External links

The first twelve pages of Suzune are available for official preview here. Click on the orange button. (Japanese)
Various download links for Suzune Magica on Walpurgischan.
GAN's pixiv account. (Japanese)
GAN's twitter account. (Japanese)
Set of official art by GAN on pixiv. (Japanese)
Tumblr post containing trivia tweets and art of the characters from GAN. (Japanese)
Tumblr post containing the more art and trivia from GAN. (Japanese)
Unofficial Tumblr for everything Suzune related.
Walpurgischan's Suzune thread.
Puella Magi Suzune Magica on TV Tropes.

References

@@ Line 27: / Line 27: @@
 ;Volume 3
-:A mysterious magical girl by the name of Kagari Hinata approaches Matsuri. Matsuri questions her intentions and realizes that Kagari is after Suzune. When Matsuri attempts to leave to intervene in Arisa and Suzune's battle, Kagari knocks her out and intervenes in the fight herself, killing Arisa to get her out of the way. Kagari shows Suzune visions of her past, where Matsuri and Kagari were taken care of by Tsubaki in the absence of their dead mother, how the twins went looking for Tsubaki after she disappeared, and how Kagari, upon seeing Suzune with Tsubaki's pendant and learning of Tsubaki's death through Kyubey, became a magical girl to exact revenge on Suzune, taking away Matsuri's memories of how she met and became friends with Suzune, and altering Suzune's to make her believe Tsubaki's death drove her to hunt down magical girls. In the present, Kagari beats down Suzune both physically and mentally before preparing to kill her, but Matsuri intervenes, saving Suzune and confronting Kagari on her reasons for revenge, saying that Tsubaki wouldn't want this. Kagari attempts to kill Matsuri, saying that she doesn't understand, but is defeated by a combination of teamwork by Suzune and Matsuri. Kagari pulls her last resort card, turning herself into a witch, supposedly eating Matsuri. Suzune defeats Kagari's witch, and upon realizing that Matsuri survived, carries her home and prepares to leave Yunagi City. Matsuri, upon awakening, follows Suzune, who tells Matsuri to live on, before collapsing in pain. As Matsuri cries and cradles Suzune's body, promising she'll never forget Suzune, Tsubaki, Kagari, and Arisa and her friends, Suzune thanks her before committing suicide by destroying her own soul gem. Matsuri is later seen on the roof of the school, tying Tsubaki's pendant into her hair, as she heads out with Kyubey to hunt witches.
+:A mysterious magical girl by the name of Kagari Hinata approaches Matsuri. Matsuri questions her intentions and realizes that Kagari is after Suzune. When Matsuri attempts to leave to intervene in Arisa and Suzune's battle, Kagari knocks her out and intervenes in the fight herself, killing Arisa to get her out of the way. Kagari shows Suzune visions of her past, where Matsuri and Kagari were taken care of by Tsubaki in the absence of their dead mother, how the twins went looking for Tsubaki after she disappeared, and how Kagari, upon seeing Suzune with Tsubaki's pendant and learning of Tsubaki's death through Kyubey, became a magical girl to exact revenge on Suzune, taking away Matsuri's memories of how she met and became friends with Suzune, and altering Suzune's to make her believe Tsubaki's death drove her to hunt down magical girls. In the present, Kagari beats down Suzune both physically and mentally before preparing to kill her, but Matsuri intervenes, saving Suzune and confronting Kagari on her reasons for revenge, saying that Tsubaki wouldn't want this. Kagari attempts to kill Matsuri, saying that she doesn't understand, but is defeated by a combination of teamwork by Suzune and Matsuri. Kagari pulls her last resort card, turning herself into a witch, supposedly eating Matsuri. Suzune defeats Kagari's witch, and upon realizing that Matsuri survived, carries her home and prepares to leave Yunagi City. Matsuri, upon awakening, follows Suzune, who tells Matsuri to live on, before collapsing in pain. As Matsuri cries and cradles Suzune's body, promising she'll never forget Suzune, Tsubaki, Kagari, and Arisa and her friends, Suzune thanks her, before committing suicide by destroying her own soul gem. Matsuri is later seen on the roof of the school, tying Tsubaki's pendant into her hair, as she heads out with Kyubey to hunt witches.
 ==Characters==