Hello Bavitz, I hope you're doing well! I just finished reading Fargo, which was absolutely excellent rest assured I will mercilessly force it upon all my friends, and just had a few thoughts I wanted to share. Due to misremembering when you said you read MGRP (after Fargo and before Chicago) throughout my read I was thinking "oh I can thoroughly see the MGRP influence, the way the ensemble is focused upon and their thought processes are delved into, just how colorfully individualistic so many of them are (the Terminatrix would fit right into MGRP), the ways the deaths are written and happen, so often cruelly abrupt, the endings of many of the Minneapolis girls are so much more comparable to MGRP character deaths than Madoka character deaths" and now I've realized that's complete fortuitous coincidence derived from you and Asari Endou simply having similar thought processes and narrative styles, so no surprise you clicked to the extent you did with his work
I was also struck by how prophetic Fargo was of assorted Madoka spinoff material written well after it, principally a lot of MagiReco Arc 2 material @ Puella Magi gang warfare and structural navigation, as well as more specific things
In particular I was perhaps reminded most of Null Magical Girl, which may be the one and only Madoka spinoff you might be interested in, because it differs considerably from all other spinoffs that focus on miscellaneous characters living in PMMM world and are thereby inconsequential. It's a just above short story length title written by franchise outsider and deranged hard sci-fi author Kusano Gengen, whose general sensibilities I think well align with yours, and has a lot of philosophy, classic sci-fi, and generally approaches the systems of PMMM from angles I think you'd find interesting
That recommendation aside, absolutely loved Fargo, will read Chicago immediately as well as get into your other works, and will definitely write longer thoughts on Fargo soon!
Thanks for the support!
You're not the first person to think Fargo was also influenced by MGRP, but as you said, it's more than my sensibilities just happened to align with MGRP particularly well. Every so often I kick around the idea for an essay on the Death Game genre on the whole in which I would explain how MGRP is one of the few works that maximizes the genre's potential. (My recent obsession with the currently-airing Shiboyugi has gotten me thinking about this a lot recently, actually.) What's the point of a genre where the core conceit is "anyone can die at any time" if you're going to kill off characters in only the most predictable order? That MGRP develops in its later arcs into a complex political thriller involving a kafkaesque magical government is only icing on the cake, and it's that aspect of the series that most influences Chicago.
By the way, your timing is a bit unfortunate, as I'm currently finishing up Fargo DX, a new edit of the story. My goal is to have it done by the 10th anniversary of Fargo's finale (April 16). I'm working on the last 6 chapters now, although some of these chapters are the length of 3 or 4 chapters.
I've heard the name Null Magical Girl but never knew anything about it until now. I'll look into it.
If you write anything more about Fargo, let me know. I always like reading that stuff.
