YMMV / Magical Girl Site

• Accidental Innuendo: The artifacts being called "Sticks" can lead to some viewers channeling their inner-Beavis And Butthead. It reaches the point of hilarity when characters discuss overusing their Sticks or worry about their Sticks getting taken.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Are Aya's parents really incredibly oblivious to Kaname abusing her, or do they just not care? Considering what we later learn about Mr. Asagiri, the latter is possible.
  • What exactly did Kiyoharu mean when she planned on ruining her bullies' lives after they had families of their own? Considering her stick gives her telepathy, some theorize she meant something along the lines of exposing their darkest secrets. However, others took that to mean something much darker, like killing their families.
• Base-Breaking Character: Aya Asagiri, the series' protagonist.
  • Some like her for being the only decent human being on her team and for being a huge Woobie. However, others hate her for her passive nature and unwillingness to kill or harm others (especially those who have done harm to her), which has resulted in more suffering in the case of Sarina coming back and Kaname getting away with killing two people, one of which was her ally, because she didn't tell anybody that Kaname has a Stick. While her behavior is understandable, some audience members grew tired of it by the time the first arc ended.
  • Her Character Development post-Yatsumura's death also polarizes opinions. Some viewers like to see Aya finally Took a Level in Badass, while the others think that her stick practically becomes the Infinity +1 Sword and that Aya herself becomes too powerful to be enjoyable.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • The vast majority of casualties in this series are Asshole Victims, and their deaths are so satisfying.
  • Kaname finally pounding the living shit out of his father in Chapter 106 is very satisfying.
  • All of 80 and 81.
• Complete Monster: Rei Kurorogi- see the Magical Girl Apocalypse YMMV page for details.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Readers are pretty fond of Kiyoharu for being a sympathetic trans girl, which is pretty rare in Japan due to severe Values Dissonance ^note Transgender issues are considered a strong taboo subject in Japan, and transgender people often face social stigma to the point where transgender people are often forced into sterilization if they transition, and for being one of the few Magical Girls aside from Aya that's a pretty decent person (grudge against her bullies withstanding).
    • Kiyoharu's mother gets a lot of love for how supportive she is of Kiyoharu, and for being one of the few adults in this series who is neither inept, abusive, or evil.
  • Kayo and Sakaki have been getting rather popular, given the two of them have rather intriguing personalities and have avoided becoming Unintentionally Unsympathetic the way some of the rest of the cast have.
  • While his manga counterpart is disliked for the right reasons, the anime version of Kaname won over viewers with his hamminess and his memetic expressions.
  • Anjou is the most popular character to come out of the Sept. spin-off prequel since she's considered more interesting than Tsurara and Hyouka. While she's certainly not a nice person, her Lack of Empathy and tendency to troll everyone made her rather hilarious and it helps she hasn't done anything as horrible as, say, Sarina, Kaname, or the Site Admins. There's also the fact that she is "A" and she's had a direct hand in the creation of Nana, Misumi and Alice getting involved with the Admins, and the incident that led to Kayo becoming a Magical Girl. That this is all part of a larger plan to destroy the Mahou Shoujo Site as revenge for ruining her life endeared her even more to the fans. Her facial expressions and design are also rather well-liked.
• Fan Nickname: Reddit users tend to give Kaname the ironic one of "Onii-chan."
• Fountain of Memes: Kaname's expressions and over-the-top rants make him this.
• Funny Moments:
  • Shioi enrolls into the school and suddenly enrages Nijimi. So what do Aya and Yatsumura do? They steal her panties! Cue cheers from the boys in the anime adaptation.
  • When Rina and Yatsumura are staying with Mikari, Rina's reaction to the fancy food prepared for them is hilarious.
    "I DON'T WANT TO EAT THAT SMALL AS SHIT FRENCH FOOD ON THOSE BIG ASS PLATES ANYMORE!"
• Growing the Beard: The flashback intermission arc when the series made the jump to a weekly magazine was considered a narrative improvement because of Kayo and Sakaki being likable characters and the mystery of "A" being rather compelling.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Yatsumura's transformation from a stoic, traumatized young woman to someone happily spending time with Aya, leading up to their very first kiss.
  • Kayo and Sakaki meeting other magical girls listed in the Slaughter Note. The first they encounter is Hiroko Shimozono, who explains how her Stick (a remote control that causes nausea and vomiting) got her bullies to back off but alienated her from her classmates and earned her the nickname "Noroko" (a pun on norovirus). She happily allows Kayo to copy her Stick, but only asks that she and Sakaki become her friends since she doesn't have any. While there's some slight teasing about the nickname, Kayo and Sakaki happily accept Hiroko as a friend and offer to chat with her online later that night. The rest of the girls they meet are likewise pleasant individuals who openly allow Kayo to copy their abilities, at least until they met Rina Shioi.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Those fans who preferred Kayo/Sakaki over Aya/Yatsumura had no idea they were supporting the coupling that wasn't incestuous, but are now feeling pretty relieved that they did.
• Iron Woobie: Yatsumura. She used to be a nice girl with a loving family, until one night a burglar came, murdered her parents and unborn sibling, and threatened to come back for Yatsumura to "do things" to her, whether or not she told the police about him. Poor girl lived in fear for years. Until the mahou shoujo site showed up, that is...
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Most of the Magical Girls aside from Aya, Kiyoharu, and Kayo are Jerkasses at best and Sociopathic Heroes at worst, and most of the time, it's because they suffered a huge trauma that led to their becoming of Magical Girls.
  • Kaname. As much of a psycho as he is, he's like that because his father pressures him academically and beats him if he fails. Rather than face proper justice for his crimes, he's instead kidnapped and repeatedly raped by a Dirty Cop. Even when he tries doing something legitimately altruistic, like trying to save his mother from the Site Admins, he gets rewarded with his father forcing him to study through mind control.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Many come to this show just for Kaname.
• Love to Hate: The series does a good job making Kaname detestable, combined with his memeticness and Nobuhiko Okamoto's performance in the anime.
• Memetic Molester: Kaname, thanks to his overly expressive faces and Nobuhiko Okamoto's voice performance.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Have to hold it in today◊.
  • Crying Aya Asagiri from Chapter 103. Despite the heartbreaking in-story context, the panel which shows Aya crying is often used to joke about teenager girls from first world countries being depressed over trivial things. It's also used with the "Please stop saying dumbass things" meme, in which Aya is crying while saying that to the other person, who typically replies with a song that has loud vocals or makes the King Bach joke.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • While Kaname was no saint, constantly beating up his sister as stress relief, he sails straight into it by unremorsefully using Nijimi's Stick to make Keisuke kill himself, just to test the powers out.
  • Reiko Maguchi, one of the teachers in Sept, plastered the nude photos of Tsurara on the school walls because she was pissed off the tennis coach Kuraki was sleeping with Tsurara and not her like he used to. When Tsurara kills herself by jumping off the school roof, Reiko has to conceal that she's laughing because she finds her death hilarious.
  • Mr. Asagiri was always an abusive Jerkass, but he fully crosses the line when he uses Nijimi's Stick to force Kaname to study after he had been missing for months and even went through the effort of making sure he and his wife weren't harmed by the Site Admins. If he didn't cross it then, then he definitely crossed it years before the story started when he beat his pregnant wife until she miscarried, leading to her being unable to bear children anymore.
  • The Site Admins crossed this line through their manipulations and brutal slaughter of any Magical Girls who start snooping around, but the absolute lowest thing they've done was setting up and making sure Aya and Yatsumura would enter each other's lives. They knew the girls were twin sisters and figured they could gather a lot of negative energy by getting them involved with each other, which means they indirectly manipulated Aya into falling in love with her own sister.
• Narm Charm: Kaname killing Keisuke manages to be both hilarious and terrifying. On the one hand, he proudly takes his pants off to reveal he's wearing Nijimin's panties. On the other, he's giving Keisuke a pretty cruel "Reason You Suck" Speech right before making him stab himself.
• Never Live It Down: While the series is no doubt dark, it reached Torture Porn levels in the first chapter. Even though the series does dial it back afterwards, many were turned off because of it.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Sarina for some following her near death at Nana's hands, where she starts becoming a little kinder towards the main cast. She was pulled even further out of it when she was the first to offer some of her remaining lifespan to Aya.
• Signature Scene:
  • Kaname using Nijimi's Stick on Keisuke.
  • Aya and Tsuyuno's The Big Damn Kiss.
• So Bad, It's Good: Due the massive Values Dissonance, excessive edge and hysterical expressions made by the characters, many readers and viewers have come to adapt a view like this about the series.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: There are tons of Magical Girls out there with interesting designs and interesting Sticks, but they end up getting killed. This is especially so in the final battle where the girls decide to add any remaining Magical Girls to their ranks, only to find that the Site Admins killed them all.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The reveal that the Magical Hunter/ Shioi's latest form is that of Sarina's sister. Aside from getting Sarina to find out something is wrong and leading her to meet the Site Admin, it isn't been brought up again until the final arc, and only briefly before Sarina dies.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring:
  • Save for a few characters like Aya, Kiyoharu, and Kayo, it's very hard to care what happens to the characters when virtually all of them are horrible people who border on being outright sociopaths, not to mention how excessively and pointlessly gruesome it can get at times. Perhaps because of this, most reviewers have not been particularly kind towards this manga. In fact, some see the series as more of a comedy instead due to how over the top the edginess is.
  • Chapter seven of Sept is possibly by far the darkest chapter in not just the spin off, but the entire franchise, given the following events occur. The nude photos taken of Tsurara when her coach was raping her get plastered over the walls of the school, everyone starts calling her a slut and a whore, her seemingly kind boyfriend Akai promptly dumps her and screams she should die, when she tries to tell him she's pregnant with his child (she's not; it's the coach's child) he denies her further and then everyone in the classroom except for Hyouka and Anjou start screaming she should kill herself, so she runs up to the roof and does exactly that. The entire chapter is just so uncomfortably brutal and disgusting, it feels like the majority of the main series' early chapters condensed together.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Sarina. While the story paints her as a Jerkass Woobie who just lost a friend, it's hard to feel sorry for her when said friend was killed in self-defense because she was trying to get her boyfriend to rape Aya.
  • Keisuke. He spent the majority of his page-time obsessing over Nijimin and tried to murder Kaname just for talking to her. Kaname using Nijimin's Stick on him is supposed to be his Moral Event Horizon, but since it's really hard to sympathize with Keisuke, many fans read/watched the scene thinking that no matter who kills who, it would be a good outcome.
• Watch It for the Meme: Chances are, you probably know more about the "Crying Aya Asagiri" meme than the manga, or just about anything else really. It's probably for good reason too, since the manga is known for being extremely grimdark and as a result, is more well known for the meme.
• The Woobie: Aya. Within the first chapter alone, she has her locker and desk vandalized, is beaten and strangled by her older brother, has the stray cat she was playing with thrown in front of a train, and is nearly raped. It looks like things are only going to get worse from here on out. You just want to take the poor girl and give her a hug.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The large amounts of blood, gore, and profanity, combined with exploring very controversial themes such as bullying, rape, and suicide would make this manga look like a seinen series, but much like the author's previous work, this series runs in a Shōnen magazine, Weekly Shonen Champion.