| “ | I could not become my ideal magical girl. I was rotten to the core, and I was never going to cry or repent or suddenly discover my inner justice. I could say that for certain. But even so, I’d always sought my ideal magical girl. | „ |
| ~ Really? After revealing the true extent of your "ideal magical girl" goal at the end of WHITE and later in RED that it was just for self-serving reasons? No shit, Pythie! |
| “ | Off with your head! | „ |
| ~ And somehow, with those four words, Grimmy becomes an even worse version of the Queen of Hearts. |
The candidates.
With the Red arc of MGRP done, I've figured that it's of my best interests to propose the two MGRP candidates themselves: Grim Heart and Pythie Frederica, on a double proposal! Another proposal not from a video game. So this makes this both the 22nd and 23rd PE Proposal, respectively. As I've written Grim Heart's page itself and written Pythie's synopsis, I'll be copying their "What Have They Done" sections.
Considering how big this proposal is, bigger than my Kratek and Benoit PE proposal two years ago... Let the trial commence!
What's the Work?[]
Magical Girl Raising Project is a series written by Asari Endou.
The first two series, Unmarked and Restart, focuses on the magical girls fighting monsters and save the day. On the surface, that is. Until it is revealed that the whole system is a blood sport, all to compete each other by hunting down in a bloody battle royale, in the form of a selection test. On Unmarked it was run by Cranberry, Musician of the Forest, a ruthless sadist with a bloody desire to seek out strong magical girls, alongside with a sadistic Cyber Fairy named Fav. On Restart, it is run by Keek, a member of Magical Kingdom's Information Technology Department.
Over the next few arcs starting from Limited, the blood sport formula would be then foregone, focusing more on an overarching plot where the magical girls themselves are thrown into the darkest corners of the Magical Kingdom/Land of Magic and the high-ranking officials running it. This in return forces them into finding out the truth behind the magical girl killings from the first two arcs, while also uncovering more sinister goings behind the supposedly saccharine kingdom... And the people running it, as well as its rogue elements.
Who Are They?/What Have They Done?[]
Pythie Frederica[]
You tell me with a straight face that she "CARES" for the magical girls she mentors with after brainwashing Ripple to her thrall for over a year?! *cue Jameson laughing* Just ask Robin II/Red Hood from Arkhamverse and he knows what it's like to be tortured for over a year.
Pythie Frederica is one of the two main antagonists (alongside The First Lapis Lazuline) of the franchise. As a former member of Magical Kingdom's Magical Girl Resources Department, Pythie becomes disillusioned of the state of the current Magical Kingdom and so she wanted to reform the system. On the veneer, that's actually hiding her true nature as a ruthless, calculating terrorist, willing to use anyone she works with for her own ends. And she does this by finding an "Ideal Magical Girl" who will help in fulfiling her goals. However her goals are in direct opposition with TFLL, who wanted to destroy the Kingdom completely, seeing the system as corrupt and outdated.
Snow White Raising Project[]
Pythie's chronological first appearance. After the events of Unmarked, she begins finding the "Ideal Magical Girl" for her own goal, so she came to one potential candidate: Koyuki Himekawa/Snow White, whom she got a strand of her hair and put it to her crystal ball, all for the while that she wanted to shape her into the "Ideal Magical Girl" while spying on her closely.
Snow White hesitates when Pythie calls her again and asks whether she wants to become stronger even if it means losing people who are important to her. Pythie, with her insistence, encourages her to consider it, pleased by her moral sensibility. Later, Ripple is confronted by Pythie. She introduces herself as Snow White's new mentor, and when she learns of her protégé's need for power, she becomes alarmed and asks Ripple to speak with her about it since she thinks a friend would be more receptive.
An irate Snow White contacts Pythie the following day and demands to know why she spoke with Ripple. Snow White says she doesn't need her assistance before hanging up, despite Pythie's statement that she only wants to know why she desires strength. However, there is a disagreement after Snow White asks Ripple to train her and the latter declines. Pythie approaches Ripple after seeing everything and decides to modify her mind, claiming Snow White would otherwise train herself and suffer harm. Snow White then calls her and, at last, tells her that she has to grow stronger in order to stop Magical Girls like Cranberry. Happy with this response, Pythie says she has already persuaded Ripple to train her, which makes Snow White very happy.
Meanwhile, Pythie surreptitiously watched both Snow White and Ripple training each other, just after the latter quit school under her own advice. She later asks Ripple about the weapon Snow White needs, of which Ripple understandably refused following the events of the selection exam during Unmarked.
On the other side of things, Pythie creates her own selection exam, which reveals that she IS a co-conspirator alongside Cranberry, thus showing that not only she is no different from Cranberry herself, but she also used the death games as means of creating an "Ideal Magical Girl". However, similar to the Unmarked death game, her attempts at creating one ended in a disastrous failure, which killed all the participants involved, which shows her true colours. Of course, Snow White and Ripple finally realised that Pythie was just using them to her own ends, and so the two magical girls confronted her. As Snow White personally faces her in person, the former used her mind-reading abilities, thus exposing her crimes and being a co-conspirator with Cranberry. Despite being defeated by the two, which later led her to being sealed, she gives Snow White the infamous "Magical Girl Hunter" title, thus establishing the fact that she's responsible for turning Snow White into the person she currently is.
Restart[]
While she did not make an appearance following her imprisonment in Snow White Raising Project, it is revealed that Keek, the game master of her own Cyber World, was one of Pythie's students and was implied to be another of survivors of Pythie's death games. The revelation of Keek being Pythie's master was what resulted in Keek's downfall.
Limited[]
Sometime after the events of Restart, Pythie was rescued by a group of masked magical girls. It is revealed that Tot Pop, another of her past students, rescued her out of imprisonment. Pythie was surprised at Tot Pop's appearance as they escaped the Magical Kingdom prison complex in England. Tot Pop then suggested to Pythie into breaking both Pukin and Sonia Bean, two of the worst magical girls in England, which would later cascade into a series of events for the B-City itself: namely that the prisoners are pursuing after an assassin hiding there along with her partner. After breaking out of the prison complex, Pythie discussed the her goals of pursuing the assassin, revealing that the various Magical Kingdom factions were on the trail as well, putting their faction at odds against them. With that, Pythie, Sonia, Pukin, and Tot visited the barrier of B-City with the former's magic and stole a car.
Pythie then appears with the rest of her group, now colloquially known as The Prisoners, facing off against Ripple and the entirety of the Namiyama Magical Girls. As Pythie and Tot Pop escaped, both of them chase Hana, whom later telling the Investigation Team member that they're backups for the Investigation Team themselves. However, Hana saw through her lies, causing a confrontation between the two rogues and the Investigation Team member, where thanks to Tot they were able to knock Hana out.
Sometime later, Pythie's group hide up in an apartment after murdering the owner. They ask Weddin about the Namiyama Magical Girls and their conflicts with the Investigation Team; Pythie becomes delighted when she finds out that Ripple is one of them. They also question Funny Trick and Hana, whom Sonia had taken prisoner after killing Captain Grace. At first, Pukin thinks Funny Trick is the "assassin" since she doesn't seem to be grieving over Grace's passing, but she changes her view as Funny Trick starts to seem denial-ridden after she says that. Pythie suggests that Pukin brainwash Hana because she can't approach her without her using her magic on them, but she finds out that her sword can only be used on one person at a time. Pythie plans to have Pukin and Sonia go on a rampage and flee during the chaos, knowing that her benefactor—later revealed to be Pfle—is taking advantage of her.
Pythie then breaks into Kuru-Kuru Hime's house after finding her house's address at Namiyama Middle School, where her associate Pukin would kill Kuru-Kuru Hime's father while looking for a hair sample of whom she can use to spy on her and the rest of the Investigation Team. Attempting to nab the ribbon magical girl through a portal, her attempts were thwarted thanks to Ripple's intervention. But thanks to locating the Investigation Team, Pythie and her group chase the car, later realising that it was remote-controlled and rigged by the Investigation Team, causing the car to hit at the city's barrier. In the interim, Pythie's ball was stolen by Funny Trick, rendering her unable to use magic.
After Archfiend Pam and the Investigation Team located the criminals, Pythie and Pukin, as well as Tot and Sonia, ambushed Pam, to which the legendary magical girl fended off against the criminals, managing to kill Sonia Bean in the process. But all of a sudden, Rain Pow shows up and kills Pam, with Pythie revealing that Pow is the assassin that both opposing factions are pursuing around B-City, aided by Toko, a fellow fairy who is a criminal. Pythie attempts to talk to Rain Pow about negotiation, but it ended in failure when Pow attacked her, before it was summarily observed by Ripple. After seeing Ripple within the battle, Frederica flees, forcing the magical girl to fight off against the assassin, which would lead to Ripple's "death".
Pythie joins Pukin at their hiding place after fleeing. Sadly, she soon discovers that Sonia's passing has left her unstable, and she hypocritically accuses her of failing to save her friend despite Pukin's own advice to refrain from interfering. When Pukin tries to attack her, her runs away, unable to calm him down with her usual praise, with her unknowingly making the mistake of breaking the rogue magical girl from prison.
After escaping away from Pukin, Pythie then calls in the Investigation Team members for an alliance in stopping Pukin, Rain Pow, and Toko, but her offer was later rejected, now knowing that the Investigation Team wanted nothing of her. But then, she got an unknown number from someone. The caller poses as "an ally," and Pythie concludes that the said "ally" are the one who helped Tot Pop get her out of jail. Pythie consents to the caller's instructions and then embarks on a rampage across the city, creating a ruckus that she understands is intended to attract the Magical Girls to one place.
Pythie then leaves, while not realising that Pukin went on a rampage of her own, of which she would later kill off Toko and Postarie, as well as the brainwashing of Rain Pow into her servant.
With no other option left, Pythie resorted to a most drastic option: making alliances with the Namiyama Magical Girls, in a last-ditch effort to stop Pukin's vicious attack around the city. Weddin then used her promise magic in order for Pythie to honour the said alliance, forcing her to follow it. Her crystal ball was soon given back, sometime after it was stolen by Funny Trick.
As the confrontation proper between Rain Pow started, Pythie, being the pragmatist traitor she is, ditches Weddin and decided to lure Rain Pow by herself into a train station, with Weddin using a "stop" command to end the fight. That's when later Pythie knows a major loophole: Weddin's magic can overwrite old promises from the new ones. Using this to her advantage, Pythie then later killed off both Weddin and Rain Pow by sending them careening into the B-City barrier.
After Pukin was defeated for good by Tepsekemei, Pythie then rushed through the portal prior to Pukin's death before stealing her rapier. Somewhere else, it is revealed that Pythie was taking care of an injured Ripple, who was supposedly dead after the battle with Rain Pow. Just as everything else, Pythie would then used Pukin's sword to brainwash Ripple into her servitude, of which Pythie claimed to the now-brainwashed Ripple that she will train her to be an "Ideal Magical Girl" after her recovery. That would lead to Ripple becoming Stanczyka for the whole year, thus starting the events of JOKERS.
JOKERS[]
Pythie was never heard again until she firstly appears in S-City, being in charge of handling the package that she got from 7753, revealing to have come from Pfle. She also learns the Artificial Magical Girl project from The First Lapis Lazuline, a controversial form of magical girl creating technology, whose benefactor is none other than Pfle herself. Knowing that word would spread from the Magical Kingdom about its existence, Pythie is impressed of her cunning, yet Pythe herself is still under Weddin's promise magic ever since the B-City incident back in Limited. She is later seen talking to the brainwashed Ripple, of which she hid her from 7753's presence.
Sometime else, Pythie then reads documents she got from Ripple. Finding a strand of hair within it, she used the hair through her crystal ball, revealing a person of interest for her to spy: Prism Cherry. As the conflict outside between Magical Girls against the Shufflin clones continued, Pythie was observing her crystal ball as she was talking to her roommate, who asked her what she was doing. Then Pythie revealed something else in the midst of her spying: an interference later revealed to be the rogue Sage known as Grim Heart.
Meanwhile, after teleporting Ripple to safety in time, Frederica tends to her while she is hurt and unconscious in the inn. She then considers the visitor she just sent away. She pleaded to be sent back to the perilous situation from which Frederica had saved her in order to save her friends, even though she knew she would probably die.
Due to Pythie's actions, people like 7753 refused to work with her ever again, thus making an enemy out of her. Pythie then lamented Cherry's death, who sent her back out of her wish to save her friends who were to be killed by the Shufflin clones. However, like everything else she did, Pythie had done this for self-serving reasons, knowing that no one would be an interference to her potential goal of reforming the Magical Kingdom. In the interim, it is revealed that Pythie was responsible for turning Ripple into Stanczyka, when the former mentioned that the latter "played jester" for over a year after altering her mind with Pukin's rapier. Pythie would look forward at seeing Snow White crossing paths with Pfle.
ACES & QUEENS[]
In ACES, Pythie has been manipulating events in the shadows once again, this time by using the brainwashed Ripple to visit W-City and hunt down one of Puk Puck's protégés: Premium Sachiko, who was being sought after by Snow White and Uluru. Manipulating her into killing Sachiko, Pythie would then use the chaos to undo all of Ripple's year-long brainwashing. Ripple's actions would haunt her into hiding for a long time from ACES to WHITE, thus showing her manipulative nature once again.
In QUEENS, her goals of reforming Magical Kingdom would be at odds with Puk Puck's own faction. To do it, Pythie would encounter Ratsumukana-honome-no-kami, the leader of the Caspar Faction and one of the Three Sages, who in contrast to Puk and Grim, is much more benevolent. Off-screen, Pythie would soon vanquish Kana to a battle, eventually resulting Kana to be brainwashed by Pythie with her rapier and with Pythie taking over the Caspar Faction as its leader, a title she would maintain until Red. After Puk's death from being crushed by her own creation, Pythie would be then, once again, surviving the events of the arc, before infiltrating Umemizaki Private Academy in the shadows, kickstarting the events of BLACK. At the same time, she later encounters Fal, Snow White's Cyber Fairy companion, who shuts him down and throw his master terminal into space, thinking that she would kill him, not knowing that he would survive much later in RED.
The Colours Trilogy (Black, White, Red)[]
BLACK[]
Pythie was firstly alluded when Princess Deluge and Snow White were discussing about the prison transfer of a new student to Umemizaki, and with their goal of finding her and Ripple, who both went into hiding after the events of QUEENS. Unknown to the Magical Girl Class of Umemizaki, Pythie was actually spying on them in the shadows, listening to the conversation within the members of 2-F's Group 2 after their mock battle. She then attempts to surveil Snow White, but fails when she could not see her.
She is once again alluded in Chapter 6 when Lapis Lazuline III/Bluebell Candy became suspicious of Pythie recruiting magical girls from Archfiend Cram School, front and centre, to which Lapis Lazuline III only noted that information mattered and not manpower. Pythie then later meets up with Kumi-Kumi, one of the Group 2 members, at a night class, who was immediately treated with respect.
WHIITE[]
Pythie finally makes her appearance, sometime after meeting Kumi-Kumi, who was secretly communicating with the rest of Group 2. She was once again alluded by both 0 Lulu, LL1's apprentice, and Ripple, who had not been seen ever since being freed from the brainwashing, where thanks to finding a loophole in her surveillance network they were able to assist in getting revenge against the sociopath.
Elsewhere, Pythie worries because she hasn't yet gotten Group 2's report at her hiding place. Because Snow White can jam her magic, she has also had trouble utilizing it on Umemizaki. In any case, Pythie's crystal ball turns dark as she attempts to spy on the class from Kumi-Kumi's point of view, indicating that Kumi-Kumi is dead. Pythie attempts to call Kumi-Kumi, not anticipating a response, and is taken aback when she does. Pythie, bewildered, searches her hiding place for anything that could interfere with her magic but finds nothing. Pythie teleports to Kumi-Kumi for a checkup and gets a new sample after concluding that the issue is with her hair. Even if Kumi-Kumi behaved normally, Pythie is still uneasy.
Pythie later discovers, much to her rage, that Kumi-Kumi has been fused with a homunculus clone without her knowledge. Frederica phones Asmona, furious that Magical Girls are being messed with. After verifying that Pythie's magic is unaffected, Asmona suggests that she break off communication with Kumi-Kumi and designate Adelheid as her new contact. Frederica, however, chooses not to remove Kumi-Kumi from Umemizaki because she does not want to split up the group of friends and believes that they must first ensure that no one else in Group 2 is compromised.
She then pieced the puzzle on Kumi-Kumi's fate: it was after the latter got separated during the Calamity Mary homunculi incident where the principal of Umemizaki, Halna Midi Meren, was behind her disappearance. Pythie would then launch an ambush on Ripple and 0 Lulu with her mercenaries, sometime later, where she would send Black Knight Guennefirra, although they were soon put down by the two unlikely allies.
Pythie's goals of attacking Umemizaki directly was soon discovered by Old Blue's faction, causing their group to scramble in countering it. Unsurprisingly, even Asmona, a compatriot of hers throughout the arc, had regularly opposed on the idea of targetting the academy personally, although Pythie cared little about the consequences of it. Pythie had only seen the battle as her being "excited" about it, whom Asmona finally called her "crazy", yet once again the oracle magical girl did not care.
In the Epilogue of WHITE, Pythie would seen two of Marika Furukoi's friends, who turned out to be Mariko's drinking partners in real life, at a bar, whom she attempted to distract Marika, but they were promptly stopped.
Elsewhere, the dark secret of Pythie's goals of having the "Ideal Magical Girl" was revealed:
Before the raid on her hideout, Pythie used Pukin's sword to clone her previous personality onto her abandoned body, which Ripple just murdered, and transferred her consciousness onto the next body of the Sage of Casper, Ratsumukana-honome-no-kami. Pythie was more than happy to play the role of a "villain" in order to produce the "Ideal Magical Girl", taking her goal into a darker light.
Pythie devised a scheme to become a Sage in order to attain immortality, but her imprisonment had revealed a major weakness in her plan: her mortality. So to do that, Pythie used Pukin's sword to brainwash Ratsumukana-honome-no-kami in order to usurp her, which resulted in the creation of the current Kana, and then sent her to Umemizaki to further "corrupt" her.
In the present, Frederica, who is now Kashiki-akarukushi-hime, the new Sage of Casper, gets up from her chair to confront the Magical Girls in front of her. Eventually, this would result in her betraying her former Group 2 teammates including Thunder-General Adeheid, thus showing her true colours once again.
RED[]
Pythie would then start her mass-invasion of Umemizaki with her mercenary group of magical girls throughout the story in an arms race on who can get to the relic first, before Old Blue's faction and Halna's faction of homunculi magical girls could come to it first. First, she killed both Blade Brenda and Cannon Catherine within her hideout. She, or at least a clone of her, was present, killed by Ripple, only to find out that the said "Pythie" was fake and it was under the brainwashing through Pukin's spell as a decoy.
Pythie then appears in Chapter 2, being bent on searching for the relic hidden within Umemizaki Ruins, of which Old Blue herself considered it dangerous and had to be destroyed, should Pythie be unable to get it on time. As a group of Princess Lightning clones, Old Blue's trump cards which are a fusion of Shufflin and Princess Lightning's DNA, relentlessly attacked the mercenaries and Pythie herself, the latter managed to wipe some of them with her new body. However, Pythie later abandons her mercenaries to their fate, seeing them as weak.
Pythie learned of the true nature of the ruins and the relic from none other than Kana herself: it was done to seal off a "green hell" by The First Mage, which led to her sacrifice.
Lapis Lazuline III is still fighting Asmona at Frederica's manor since she can't use her magic to put her to sleep because her hat has a mind of its own and wakes her up right away. But then Ripple enters with Deluge and tells them that "Pythie" from the mansion is actually a body-double. Asmona becomes enraged with this realization, says it renders her pact with Pythie invalid, and quits the battle.
Later on, Pythie faces off against Old Blue, after realising that it was pointless and tiring to fight off against the clones of Lightning. Then Old Blue showed up with her forces, whom the former tracked her through smell, resulting in a battle between the Lapis Lazuline and the Sage. Despite Pythie's Sage powers and using Old Blue's foresight abilities against her, Old Blue gains advantage by being the commander of the clones. Pythie was then lured into a trap when Old Blue ordering the Lightnings to bombard Pythie with the Ultimate Princess Explosion, an Artificial Magical Girl combination attack. Desperate, Pythie attempts to get close to Old Blue in a way to not attacking their master by accident. But Old Blue quickly saw through this ruse, forcing her to use her crystal ball, or rather a multiple of them, which would eventually result in Pythie defeating Old Blue by getting caught in the Ultimate Princess Explosion from the clones. But the battle had left her injured.
Her mercenaries soon abandoned her, before facing off Kana by herself. As the only major threat standing in her way, both of them battled each other. Pythie uses skill and expertise to gain the upper hand over Kana. Kana tries to calm Pythie down by explaining the origins of the ruins: She and the other apprentices gained flawed immortality via incarnation after the First Mage lost control of the ceremony she had conducted there to attain immortality, birthing the Sage System. Kana, a Magical Girl and a Mage, casts a powerful spell on Pythie after she fights on unmoved. However, Pythie harms Kana severely by using her power to absorb the spell with one of her crystal balls and reroute it back at her through another. Then, Pythie tries to kill the Sage, but Ripple, Pythie's arch-nemesis, ambushes her, letting Kana get away.
Moments after Kana escaped, both Pythie and Ripple attacked each other face-to-face as arch-enemies, but the former was able to easily restrain her, as well as enduring her attacks. Pythie wonders if Ripple fooled herself into believing that ending her life would benefit Snow White. She then discloses her scheme: to take control of the "Sage System" within the ruins and turn into a "villain" that the Magical Kingdom can band together to oppose for the rest of time. As Ripple becomes disgusted of the true extent of Pythie's goal after claiming that her acts are for Snow White's benefit, Pythie accuses the former of having no comprehension of the latter's need for human connection and Ripple's abandonment of her as a means of revenge. Then Frederica lets go of a surprised Ripple, whose willpower is broken and she no longer even bothers to resist.
It is later revealed that Pythie desired the Sage System by attempting to usurp it. Given that it was initially intended for a single person, Kana considers it ironic that doing so will successfully resolve the energy issue. The relic is the fruit of the System, which acts similarly to a plant. When a Sage dies, the System creates a fruit that, when mature, transfers the Sage's spirit into a predetermined incarnation. Pythie is looking for the fruit's seed, which, if she eats it, will enable her to take that Sage's position in the System. Osk's fruit ought to be ripening right now, but Puk was just recently dead after the incident at her manor. Kana regrets that it has come to this, but she decides that destroying the fruits is the only way to stop Frederica for good.
Pythie, meantime, eventually arrives at the entrance of the ruins. Kana and the others wait for her to set off their set traps as she comes down the stairs. But Frederica is able to see their ploys with ease. As Arlie, Dory, and Mei try an ambush but are easily repelled, Kana strikes back, supported by Calkoro and the principal. As the only person remaining, Kana is ready to utilize her last option, which is to use a powerful spell to eliminate Frederica and herself. The Sage is deterred from pursuing by Pythie's refusal to accept Kana's taunts and departs through the gate into the inner ruins, stating that the others would perish from their wounds if they are not treated.
Pythie would soon enter the inner ruins, still resisting the effects of the moss thanks to her Sage body, while also dodging traps that Lillian set up for her. She then encounters Snow White's group including Mephis Pheles and Tetty Goodgripp. Pythie suddenly loses it completely after seeing Snow White's homunculus body, of which became more and more obvious that, in her eyes, she became a fake to her, showcasing the fact that she had cared little for her former protégé.
A violent battle took place once again, where despite the three's homunculi bodies giving them enhanced powers, Pythie single-handedly defeated them without a hitch, yet she was injured by Tetty. In response, Pythie sadistically kills Tetty and knocks Mephis down to a peg, before turning attention to her archnemesis. Pythie then reads Snow White's mind, hearing the latter's mental ranting, where she berated Snow White at how disappointed she is, before attempting to beat her up violently.
Pythie, in her seemingly gloating victory, takes Osk's fruit within the plant and begins eating it immediately. But her victory was short-lived when the seed refused to be swallowed, revealing that thanks to Mephis' own magic, to "corrupt other with her words", her plans came to naught. To add insult to injury, Kana, who was aiding Ripple, appeared as they resisted the moss, before Ripple unleashed the killing blow to Pythie by stabbing her throat with the seed on it, causing it to be stuck. In retaliation, Pythie beats Kana and Ripple altogether, before Snow White decided to kill her via Tetty's mittens, which not only crushes the seed inside of her, but it also led to her being disintegrated, thus finally killing her for good. Her death eventually avenged the ones who were killed by her, ending her reign of terror once and for all.
Grim Heart[]
One wonders how poor Shufflin has to deal with her master's abusive treatment.
Grim Heart, or rather Grimmy, is the main antagonist of the JOKERS arc. A member of Magical Kingdom's Information Bureau, Grim Heart is one of the two incarnations (alongside Lethe) of Chêne・Osk・Baal・Mel, one of the Three Sages. Grim is the brains behind the Artificial Magical Girl project. However, after an unknown person stole her research that resulted in the creation of her nemeses, the Pure Elements (Princess Deluge/Nami Aoki, Princess Quake/Chiko Saitou, Princess Inferno/Akari Hiyama and Princess Tempest/Mei Higashionna), Grim Heart enacts a conspiratorial plot by desiring their capture to kill them (due to the Elements being the only ones to oppose her) and the other magical girls through her enforcer Shufflin to hide her involvement. She serves as the arch-nemesis of the Pure Elements, as well as Shufflin's master and Snow White's arch-enemy during JOKERS.
Grim Heart firstly appeared in JOKERS, where the Pure Elements encountered her and an army of Shufflins inside the control room. Due to her magic, "Ignores those without proper manners", Grim was largely unharmed. Quake is held by Grim Heart after being subdued by the Ace Shufflin, along with Princess Tempest, Kafuria, and Umbrain, who were previously taken prisoner by the Shufflins and kept concealed in Grim Heart's 4-Dimensional Bag. The original purpose of the top-secret Artificial Magical Girl technology was to "create a clone army" by transforming homunculi into Magical Girls, which led to Shufflin and her magic. In the interim, she ordered the Joker Shufflin into beheading the child magical girls including Umbrain and Princess Tempest, whom Grim sees the latter as too annoying thanks to her crying and the former for screaming.
Grim Heart, revealed to be the incarnation of Chêne・Osk・Baal・Mel, one of the Three Sages controlling the Magical Kingdom, was dispatched to reclaim the Pure Elements and silence witnesses after someone stole them and used them to make them. When the majority of the Shufflins are dead, Grim Heart pulls the original, the Joker Shufflin, out of her bag and has her murder Kafuria in order to bring them back to life.
Meanwhile, after escaping, Grim Heart berated and abused Shufflin after her trump card, the Ace Shufflin, was defeated, which forced Shufflin to apologise to her master. She then ordered Shufflin to kill Umbrain out of her amusement to revive the Shufflins.
The facility was soon discovered to have been taken over by Grim Heart and Shufflin, who were on a secret mission to apprehend the Pure Elements, who had escaped from captivity, and silence witnesses who were fully aware of the Artifical Magical Girl technology. With their yet another failed assault, Grim Heart proposed a carte blanche idea: ordering the Joker Shufflin into using the weaker clones and by killing Princess Quake through decapitation to revive more of the Shufflin clones.
On the control room monitor, Grim Heart and the Joker discover that Deluge appears to have been kidnapped by the other Magical Girls, who make a deal: if they release them, they would give the Artificial Magical Girl to them. They consent to talks because they need Deluge alive. But they insist that the wounded Filru be their contact since they think it's a trap. Grim Heart and Filru meet in the corridor, where she deactivates her magic, presents her demands, and then almost instantly reactivates it to stop the discussions before Filru can even speak.
However, after realising Snow White's scheme, Grim Heart promptly changed the password in an attempt to trap them. Grim Heart's crimes and the Artificial Magical Girl system were soon exposed to the Magical Kingdom thanks to Snow White's actions, causing the sadistic Sage to lose it as she sent the Joker Shufflin to kill Snow White and Deluge, as well as Filru, which led to the latter's death at the hands of the Shufflin clones.
Grim Heart, meanwhile, rushes out to pursue Deluge and Filru after realizing she has lost despite the carnage in front of her. The Joker and the other Shufflins choose to stick with Grim Heart through to the very end, even though they know it's finished. Seeing Grim Heart upset also makes the Joker laugh. Nonetheless, both of them were arrested by the authorities, but it was revealed that they presumably died during the transport to the Magical Kingdom, a suspicion that they were being silenced. Nonetheless, her supposed death ended her terror for good.
Heinous Standards[]
Let's start with the core of it all: the Heinous Standards.
Magical Girl Raising Project is a series with a high heinous standard. Death and murder are essentially the DNA of the series, but there are some others who pass the in-series heinous standard and the baseline.
- Fav started a death game out of his sadistic passions along with Cranberry and manipulates them into killing each other, as well as falsifying reports to the Magical Kingdom about their actions.
- Cranbery was responsible for the deaths of many magical girls during her past selection exams and later the one in Unmarked, is responsible for Akane into being a vengeful murderer after killing her sisters and mother, as well as posthumously turning Halna Midi Meren into a callous sociopath later in WHITE. But she has one Freudian excuse: her care from her past friend Miiya Octave.
- Calamity Mary abused her child, as well as murdering innocents and magical girls alike around N-City to satisfy her delusions of sadism just because she can.
- Swim Swim followed Ruler's ideals to the letter, betrayed Ruler, killed multiple magical girls, including a pregnant Top Speed. Then again, she has a mitigating factor: her amorality.
- Keek orchestrated a series of kidnappings of Magical Girls from Cranberry's previous selection exams and runs her own death game unauthorised within her Cyber World. She also has a larger kill count due to also killing them in the real world.
- Toko was a wanted criminal who turned Rain Pow and later the rest of Namiyama students into magical girls, blended with the assassin Rain Pow, and manipulated the magical girls into fighting against the "evil witch", who turned out to be both Hana Gekokujou and Mana. She has one redeeming quality: her care for Rain Pow.
- Pfle was responsible for the deaths of 98 magical girls before the events of Restart, as well as being the shadow backer of The Prisoners, a group of rogue magical girls, in an attempt to destroy the Magical Kingdom. But she is an anti-villain and is genuinely friendly towards her butler Shadow Gale, even if the latter started catching up to her crimes.
- Pukin was responsible for the murder sprees across British Isles, abused her power during her term as a member of Magical Kingdom's Inspection Department, as well as producing many false accusations, leading to her imprisonment in the past, as well as allowing Sonia's magic to disintegrate evidence to cover up her crimes before her imprisonment. She's responsible for the deaths of several magical girls around B-City, as well as brainwashing Rain Pow into her servitude of whom she would kill both Toko and Pow's best friend Postarie, before devouring the former for her powers. But she is genuinely affable and close towards her subordinate Sonia Bean and became genuinely distraught after her death, leading to her descent to villainy.
- Shufflin, specifically the Joker Shufflin, ruthlessly murders multiple magical girls with her master, whom she is loyal with despite being abused, and uses their dead bodies as means to revive her clones, which increased in alarming regularity throughout JOKERS as she killed more magical girls just to redo the same thing again.
- Puk Puck abuses her surrogate daughters, who showed no remorse after they were killed off (except Uluru) by the magical girls during ACES and QUEENS. She brainwashes a whole army of magical girls into her servitude under the pretence of them being "her friends", brainwashed Snow White into being her military adviser, and brainwashes Shadow Gale into finishing The First Mage's device to brainwash all of Magical Kingdom under her whim.
- Halna Midi Meren secretly kidnapped magical girls within Umemizaki, kills them, and transplants their mind into homunculus clones, which have significantly shorter lifespans; even noting according to her logic that killing hundreds would be necessary to save thousands of them in the future. But she is still affably evil and genuinely cares for Class 2-F, as well as an extremist who wants to have "pure" magical girls.
But what about these two, you may ask?
- Grim Heart is just as bad as some of the villains listed above for few reasons.
- She is responsible for Osk Faction's existence, which existed for centuries, whom she twisted the entire faction into becoming the forerunners of twisted magical girl experiments (which includes the Artificial Magical Girls experiment) within The Lab, their secret research lab, operates the whole faction like a criminal syndicate in the shadows, and she freely allows its faction members to cover up their wrongdoings through fear, murder, and intimidation.
- Grim is also behind the creation of Pure Elements, of which she would chase them and later campaign a series of kidnappings and murders in her efforts to cover-up her twisted experiments and silence witnesses, who kidnaps and kills several magical girls with her right-hand girl Shufflin throughout JOKERS out of pure sadism and enjoyment. She has no care for Shufflin either, who often regularly abuses her whenever she fails her tasks. She also allows Shufflin to kill two child, elementary-aged magical girls including Umbrain and Princess Tempest without any remorse, simply because she finds them all too annoying and loud. Her complicity in the deaths of Pure Elements, as well as Deluge's friend Prism Cherry would result in Princess Deluge, the sole survivor, to become a vengeful, murderous terrorist at the start of ACES.
- Pythie Frederica, on the other hand, has a massive influence that she's essentially a major player in many of the series' events after Unmarked. She has a lot of worst actions under her belt, all of which were no less impactful and is essentially the reason why all of the main characters' sufferings throughout the series post-Unmarked would never happen without her.
- Being a co-conspirator to Cranberry in the past, Pythie would later create another selection exam that led to the deaths of magical girls except one: Keek, all in the name of finding an "Ideal Magical Girl", where she saw Snow White as one. She's responsible for turning Snow White into the cynical magical girl by giving her the Magical-Girl Hunter title. She enabled murderers like Keek, who molded her into becoming her student, before eventually removing her memories, which makes Pythie highly responsible for Keek becoming a game master within her Cyber World and the deaths she caused during Restart.
- In Limited, Pythie was freed by Tot Pop from being sealed and happily frees Pukin and Sonia Bean from imprisonment in England after accepting Tot Pop's suggestion. While she did realise how such alliances to two of England's worst magical girls would prove to be a mistake after Pukin turned on her and with Pythie allying with the magical girls (of which she did out of pragmatism since Mana and 7753 absolutely hated Pythie after Limited), this was still her own doing as she played a big hand in the murders of Namiyama Magical Girls, Archfiend Pam, Hana Gekokujou, and innocents alike during the chaos within B-City. Furthermore, she's responsible for tricking Weddin and Rain Pow into being killed together within the city's barrier, after tricking the former by using a loophole within her promise magic, and then brainwashing and mind-raping Ripple into her servitude for over a year, molding her into Stanczyka.
- She manipulates the brainwashed Ripple into killing Premium Sachiko in ACES by undoing her brainwashing magic, causing Ripple to be on the run out of guilt until WHITE for her actions. She then threw Fal's master terminal on space after QUEENS. She is responsible for brainwashing Kana with her rapier prior to the start of BLACK, of which the latter would gain severe enmity after regaining her memories. The reveal in WHITE's epilogue shows that the true extent of her "Ideal Magical Girl" goal: To be a Sage via immortality and to be treated as a villain for all of Magical Kingdom, which would mean more needless deaths from countless magical girls out of spite for no reason other than to fulfil her delusions of finding an "Ideal Magical Girl". Being the callous monster she is, Pythie, now a Sage, willingly orchestrates an attack on a school with her mercenaries (whom even then they saw her as a monster), resulting in more deaths including her own mercenaries, Blade Brenda, Cannon Catherine, Old Blue, and Tetty Goodgripp, all in the name of reaching the ruins for her selfish delusions.
Mitigating Factors[]
Grim Heart[]
None. She's a heartless, slimy bitch who not only kills anyone out of pure sadism (including decapitating a poor child magical girl, two of them, out of her sick amusement), but she absolutely has no care about her subordinate Shufflin and is a smug snake with a massive superiority complex, seeing herself as anyone above her and the rest as below. This is often exemplified with how Grimmy regularly abuses her underling every time she fails, when starkly contrasting Pukin's relationship to her underling Sonia Bean, who despite Pukin being an arrogant, murderous bitch of her own right, at least has some pet the dog moments to her. That is non-existent when it comes to Grimmy's relationship to Shufflin.
Pythie Frederica[]
A little tricky, but I'll try my best to explain.
One would think of Pythie's mentorship with Tot Pop would be a redeeming factor, since she's the one who mentored her into becoming a magical girl and thus proud of her abilities. But with Pythie's pragmatistic personality in full force, this is just a mordant facade that plays exactly on her delusions. In fact, after Tot's death, she was enraged at her death. But one would think Pythie would be so genuinely shocked? Nope. Her reaction to Tot's death was merely displaying her delusions of grandeur and not out of true care, since all it did was her being surprised and excited at her death. This clearly shows that Pythie doesn't care about her, THE same person who mentored and truly cared for her, thus throwing that said redeeming quality out into the trash.
This does not help the fact that she has brainwashed Ripple, turning Snow White into becoming a cynic after Unmarked, as well as betraying said allegiances she had been with, showing that beneath all that veneer she tries hard to hide, or even bother hiding, all it reveals is just Pythie, a callous sociopath who is willingly using and endangering others to her benefit and has no loyalty to anyone but to herself.
And then there's her "goal" of reforming the Magical Kingdom's corrupt system. While Pythie did see the Magical Kingdom as corrupt, especially after Restart, nothing suggests that she did it out of genuine causes, since she's only using others to further her "cause", even at the expense of innocents and even fellow magical girls she allied with including Asmona, who saw her plans as nothing more than a means to her end (a scale that not even Fav, Cranberry, and even Puk Puck would cross!). Blatant terrorism, given that time and time again in the series, Pythie commits even more morally questionable acts just to fulfil it, all to the point that any extremist intentions behind it were not-so-well-intentioned.
This becomes more pronounced later in Red, when she attacked an ENTIRE class, while putting other innocent students in potential danger, in her selfish goal to reach Umemizaki's ruins to gain immortality through the relic, so that she wants to be treated as an enemy for the Magical Girls to face (which would result in more magical girl deaths). Then she has the audacity to dispose Snow White, who was fused into a homunculus, as a fake, showing that she cares little for her supposed "student" even before that. So it's no surprise that when Snow White finally kills her in Red, it was never treated sympathetically but rather a well-deserved karma biting her ass, being that she's a depraved narcissist who played a direct and indirect hand behind the deaths of many magical girls throughout the series' run, so any sympathetic qualities she once held were all but gone.
Verdict[]
Yes for the even worse incarnation of Queen of Hearts and the rogue oracle magical girl. But as always in any of my proposals, I'll leave you to vote.