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Ever wondered how a magical girl series written by Garth Ennis would look like? Look no further.
Warning: I will talk about death and sexual violence against teenagers a lot, as well as incest and violence against animals. Also, spoilers to the ending of the manga. Seriously, this series required ALL the trigger warnings on Scans Daily, proceed with the utmost caution.

To say that the life of Aya Asagiri sucks is an understatement. She is both viciously bullied at school and abused by her older brother at home, with implication that the abuse sometimes turns sexual. And her father would be the worst person in the world if all those villains didn’t exist. One day, Aya finds her kitten murdered by her bullies and later finds a gun in her locker. If it was a realistic story, it would be much shorter. However, it’s a tale of magical girls, so when cornered by bullies dead set on violating her, she shoots then with the gift. It kills them, but by transporting them just in front of a speeding train, thus making it impossible to link her to the crime. However, a surviving bully is certain it’s Aya’s fault and attempts to murder her, but Aya is saved by a girl who can stop time, Yatsumura Tsuyuno. The two discuss the origin of their magical gadgets, face a magical girl killer, discover the titular website with a mysterious counter, befriend other magical girls and fall in love.

When described that way, the story doesn’t seem too bad, right? Unfortunately, not. The narration takes delight in raining suffering on its female characters, magical girls and bystanders alike, most of it of sexual nature – to the point that the narration of the final battle gets stoppen in its tracks to show that a character’s mother was randomly gang raped in prison. It gets really repetitive – a girl gets terribly hurt by a violent, crazy man, thus making her susceptible to become a magical girl. It is best seen in the finale, where a perfect world free of suffering is created by… police officers being at right places at right time. That’s literally it. Furthermore, in the whole manga there are only two male characters who are neither abusers nor rapists, and those are a man avaiting death penalty for multiple murders he DID commit (it’s complicated) and a boy who sexually harrasses the girl he has a crush on. That unfortunately includes the handful of gay men in the story, including a terribly racist portrayal of a Black gay bear. Why do you hate men, author, aren’t you one?
Also, a suicidal girl now can heal others (but not self) by having them drink the blood from where she cuts herself. What the FUCK.
As the story goes on it becomes needlessly complicated and sometime after the first of the many time skips the readers are bound to realize that the author has no idea how to end it. It was never particularly well written, but the narrative in the last few volumes is simply awful, to the point that I didn’t care at all about the happy ending. Furthermore, last second reveal about the gender and magic undermined the volumes of positive portrayal of a transgender magical girl and is downright insulting to male rape victims. Even the main characters returning to life and continuing dating is kinda icky when you remember they are twins, of which only Aya is aware.
So, that’s it. Don’t read the manga, its few redeeming qualities aren’t worth it. If you are curious about the transgender magical girl and the romance between the protagonists, you can watch the anime – it has an original ending taking place right when the quality of the manga goes sharply downhill, and it’s honestly pretty cool. It still has gratitous violence and mysery porn, though.
For something more light hearted, below are some pages from Aya and Yatsumura’s first date in chapter 54, volume 8.