I just re-watched Gen'ei Wo Kakeru Taiyou or Day Break Illusion or whatever that other foreign title for it is. I feel the need to share my opinions on it despite it being one of those shows few people watched and fewer people remember. There's spoilers but I doubt any of you care, so here goes. What the show did right: -Middle Arc: The show's first half is monster-of-the-day shenanigans as the magical girl squad of 4 get to know each other all while killing abhorrent monsters created by the negative emotions of humanity. The next three or so episodes take off with some interesting plot points: The monsters (called daemonia) apparently have some kind of intelligence behind them that is co-ordinating them. This leads to the debut of the minor antagonists, the negative-clones. These clones draw from the same source of power as the magical girls they are cloned to fight, so their powers are exactly the same and more importantly, killing one also kills the other. This creates some great scenes as all the magical girls in the group have to come to terms with the fact that they may one day have to kill themselves to kill the enemies they've been working to fight so far. The camaraderie they cultivated over the previous episodes shows a bit here, as the group talk amongst themselves about what they'd do if faced by their negative clone, it's some great tension and leads to my favourite character Ginka having a heartfelt talk with her dad before going off to kill her clone (and herself.) The loss of Ginka, the girl who brought the group together, actually has quite the effect on the group and they all seem a little more distant after that. -Luna: Luna was literally nothing: the character for the first six episodes. There was a little bit about her being a part of a royal family and disregarded for being a child and used only because of her blood. There was also a little bit on how she relied on her sister, who mysteriously disappeared, and how she turns to rely on Akari, the main character, to a worrying degree. Throughout the six episodes there are little scenes where she is part of the group but left out (due to her SUPER BETA-NESS, she misses out on all those hot yuri flags with Akari, such as the "sharing food" flag, "helping akari up after she fell over" flag, etc), but at the same time everyone still is happy and it seems like she gets over it. Then at the end of the clone arc, she gets duped by the intelligent leader Daemonia, stabbed through the stomach, and experimented with by imprinting a Daemonia into her while she was still alive. Which leads to some horrible consequences, like her being turned into a rabid magical animal hell bent on killing all her friends. But all of it was due to her obsession with Akari and her lack of will to fight, and it was quite the "oh shit" moment when it happened. -The artstyle: When it works, it's pretty unique and I love gradient hair so it looks extra pretty. I like most of the character designs and I'd kill for a scale fig of Ginka. What the show did wrong: -The artstyle: While it looked nice when it worked it also had some problems with eyes looking weird (mainly with seira and her SUPER SLANTY SERIOUS EYES) and also the problem of drawing all characters like little girls. The men's heads looked too big along with their eyes and it was just weird. -Everything after the Clone Arc: It's hard to talk about a dark magical girl show without bringing up madoka, so here goes: after the clone arc is kinda dropped in favour of doing a SUFFERING part like Madoka had. Complete with replaying a series of events that always end with Akari killing her cousin who she was really close to, even. It wasn't anywhere near as well-timed or powerful as Homerun's Time Trek, and in my opinion exploring the clones would have been a better way to have an ending arc. Also the final boss, who was the intelligent Daemonia who throughout the story had been manipulative and conniving rather than a brute-force attacker, naturally turned into a three-story tall demon and fired laz0rs at the girls. It was a total turnaround from what the guy normally did and was just a big fight for the sake of big fights. -Dropping the clone arc: This brings up a lot of Frodos. There's a notable amount of power within specific tarot cards (tarot cards correspond to magical girls) and since the clones had the same amount of power as their magical girl counterparts, it begs the question that they didn't summon the Emperor and the World and orbital strike the magical girls (the orbital strike being an ability the holders of the Emperor and the World had and used, mind you). Plus, only three clones out of eight magical girls present ever came up. I guess you could say that they took time or energy or human souls and tears to make, but then they could have just went and bided their time until they could buy the strongest tarots, make negative clones from them, and then kill everyone because the orbital strike is broken powerful. -Other things that got dropped: Everyone gets better after Akari trades herself for a wish (and then the people she made better with the wish turn around and save her from the clutches of the demons. Oh well. I don't know why they actually granted her the wish especially since they stated to her that she'd never return to the mortal world and would never have a way to figure out whether or not they granted their wish.), and wishes for everyone to recover. Well, that's fine and all, but the wish also apparently just made them all get over all the problems that got in the way as well, despite Luna's emotional instability being caused by a lifetime of mocking and abuse; I guess the wish was just that powerful. Also Ginka came back to life. That was explained slightly better but it was mainly just to have a happy ending and also to have an (admittedly badass) scene where she comes in and clears a path for everyone to save Akari from the grips of evil demons. There's a few other plot threads that don't really go anywhere but those are the main ones off the top of my head. My synopsis: it's okay. I wouldn't recommend it. If anything I'm just sad that they didn't explore the negative clone idea more, because it'd have been cool to see all the characters either come to terms with the idea that they need to sudoku to kill their enemies, or finding a way around killing their enemies but still dealing with them. But it has gradient hair. That counts for something.