A Fairy Tale Crueler Than Any Storybook
What exactly is a Magical Girl?
A dazzling hero in a glittering costume, blasting magic and crushing demon beasts? Adorable little girls showered with joy and applause, cooed over by adoring crowds? Apostles of justice who fell every monster with a single blow, never once facing the threat of death, flawlessly fulfilling their duty? Ordinary elementary schoolers who, once everything was over, simply went back to school and to the happy rhythm of everyday life?
Yes, that's what most people would say they know. Every magical girl in every anime and manga was magnificent and radiant, after all.
I thought so too. I truly believed it, once.
"Somebody help me..."
"Please! Please, I'm begging you! Don't eat me!"
"Kyaaaaagh!! My arm... my arm...!"
Then what, in God's name, was the scene unfolding before my eyes?
Corpses strewn carelessly across the ground. A girl who had lost her mind staring at her friends' severed heads. Another girl, driven completely out of her wits at the sight of her own body lying detached from her.
Reality was crueler and more savage than anything in the manga.
"The world I knew was never supposed to go this far."
I'd known there were anime out there with a fair amount of cruelty to them. That was exactly why I thought and thought and thought again — determined not to let a bloodbath like this ever come to pass.
"Serena..."
A girl looked up at me with eyes pleading for salvation. From those dimming eyes, blood streamed down her face — not tears.
"I want to live..."
It had all been for nothing. The moment I sensed a crisis and overcame it, a greater one loomed ahead; the moment I pushed past that, an even greater one came to greet us.
If I had simply become the villain, the way the original story demanded — would none of this have happened? If I hadn't tried to change this world's future — would these monsters never have appeared?
Even as I wasted my thoughts on useless questions, my comrades were being torn apart, mercilessly, one by one.
"So tell me — what in the hell was the justice I was searching for?"
A fairy tale crueler than any the world believes in. That is the reality of this world — the world I am doomed to live in.