I did appreciate the danger (and obvious cliffhanger), until that entire attack only scratched her cheek. Not to sound like mfauli, but this could really use some danger to make the stakes real. This narrative idealism, as if this were a magical girl show for little girls, betrays the show calling magical girls a 'respectable' occupation, as if it entailed real effort or danger/sacrifice. Between the tech-bro versus big corpo themes, shouldn't there have been at least mention of the dangers inherent to this job? I guess all the magical girls are really good at this and never make mistakes as far as we know?

8-9

So the tech expo was a vehicle for programmer boy to strut his stuff... after overcoming his social anxiety. At this point, magic is completely presented and handled as computer code, for better or worse. Magic operating on the 'something out of nothing' principle is a bit disappointing, but, given how low the bar is, any explanation at all of how magic works or is 'developed' puts this above ~90% of magic girl shows in its world building.

Sadly, the sluggish panel by panel adaptation isn't doing any favors for Magilumiere, as scenes with any supposed urgency fall victim to endless feeling 'anime time' that could have been avoided by a more skillful adaptation. When there is X amount of exposition needed to advance the story and only Y yen to animate it with, you have to get creative, or we get... this: boring generic shots of Kaii slithering while the pro magic girls... float and repeat programmer boy's name ad infinum; cut to self doubt monologue- then to flashback- then to hopeful resolution with the power of confidence and nerd-sourcing...

With some better editing of scenes to cut down on panning shots, perhaps interspersing the backstory segment across the entire expo (not just lumping it all in one scene) and giving the girls more to do or other objectives that didn't require flashy animation, this could have been much less of a slog to watch. Especially since the animation is buckling big time now.

Just a reminder that an adaptation can be more than a few key frames between trace overs of the original manga! The show is still barely holding on to me (specifically the tension with AST), but it could be dropped with as little as one more boring episode/arc.