Reviews Fanfic / Shattered Skies The Morning Lights

Utterly Missing the Point

So the author for this story set out to tell a story about 5 different magical girls shows. However, it’s clear from his writing that he cares less about any real kind of event and more about putting the characters through endless torment.

Gone is the sense of hope and idealism that the Magical Girl genre is literally built on, replaced with several chapters of the heroes doing nothing but not only losing to bad guys that they should not struggle with (since most of them are Monster of the Week characters), but also undoes every achievement the heroes achieved in their respective canons, such as reverting the Heel–Face Turn characters back to the side of evil, in addition to borderline torturing other characters. The author was clearly trying for Darker and Edgier, but he seems to focus more on the “Edgier” than the “Darker”. And the worst part is that despite advertising itself on the meeting of these 5 franchises, it takes until chapter 21, of currently 55 for them to even meet, during which we are for incredibly formulaic and generic destruction scenes.

It also doesn’t help that the author’s writing is not only extremely inconsistent, in that it renders Gratuitous English Calling Your Attacks in italics (like I do), but has a character who’s whole schtick is Gratuitous English speak in Gratuitous French instead for no real reason, but also incorporates blatant fan-pandering, as despite Sailor Moon specifically being the 90s anime version Sailor Mars is erased and replaced with her much less controversial Manga counterpart, a fate that befalls none of the other characters, despite them also being drastically different between versions. And the Madoka segment has the other girls finding out what Homura did in Rebellion and turning on her for it, which I assume is a Fandom-Specific Plot (I’m not familiar with Madoka fanfiction, beyond passing). And then most of his translation choices for the Japanese stock lines are inconsistent with the ones favoured by fan subs, official translations and dubs

And that’s just the first act. And from what I’ve heard, the story does not improve in any of these regards. If anything, it gets worse about it, with the main benefactor being utterly apathetic about stopping the evil and any villains that get Killed Off for Real simply get replaced.

TL:DR. I would not recommend this fanfic to anyone as a must read. If you want something of a similar flavour, then I’d recommend Super Sentai vs. Super Sentai, (which is far more true to its source material’s spirit, or my own Fractured Infinity, which I set out to make the Spiritual Antithesis of this fic before I’d even read it, a conceit I intend to double down on from here on in.