We were all so much more innocent five years ago, weren’t we? Evangelion 3.0 was still a year away. There was no Love Live! game to be addicted to. And, as far as anyone knew, that new magical girl show with character designs by the Hidamari Sketch artist was going to be happy and fun and adorable.

We learned quickly.

A recent entry on Yaraon! serves as a retrospective of various magazine spreads issued before the series’s reliease, depicting four of the main girls appearing, by all accounts, very happy. The choice of art and layout make it look more like a new season of Pretty Cure than what it actually became. There’s also a notable absence of Kyoko, who stormed onto the scene mid-series.

Of course, it only took about three episodes for fans to realize the full weight of what they’d stumbled upon. Now, just seeing the art makes fans think back to gory beheadings and talk of entropy.

Though, in all fairness, “Dokidoki no mahou time” is not an inaccurate assessment.

Madoka Magica is still going strong, with the next scheduled release coming in the form of the smartphone game Magia Connect — which goes live in spring 2017.

Source: Yaraon!

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