Kira knows exactly what it is: a chance to watch these characters breathe without the weight of time loops and murder hanging over them. The first episode swings wildly at fanservice and misses for plenty of people; that's the cost of entry. But episodes three and four pivot hard into genuine character moments that remind you why you cared about Rika and Satoko in the first place, and the show earns that shift because it never pretends the earlier weirdness didn't happen.

The village of Hinamizawa gets a comedic makeover in this four-episode OVA, made to mark the franchise's 10th anniversary, that sets story aside in favor of fanservice and absurd scenarios. Rika and Satoko become magical girls who fight wicked magic crime syndicates, backed by a squad of cheerleaders. Rika ends up in a parallel Hinamizawa where Tokyo is full of super-powered henchmen and she herself fights as a magical girl. Once she gets back to her usual Hinamizawa, the timeline is still not quite right: her younger self from four years earlier has slipped into the future by accident. The franchise began as a murder-mystery visual novel series, but this entry mixes comedy, romance, ecchi and supernatural antics in a deliberately offbeat take on familiar characters.