Puella Magi Madoka Magica
(12 episode series)
Wow, this has to be about the only magical girl anime I've ever actually enjoyed, or at least to this extent. What does it say about me and my tastes that it's also hugely depressing and that, well, there are some similarities to
Higurashi?
I'll try not to spoil you too much, but you have to keep in mind that this is one of
my reviews, and I tend to like to talk about the stuff I wished I'd known about going into a series. Speaking of which, I totally knew that this series would be a lot more serious and depressing than pretty much any other magical girl anime in existence thanks to another reviewer's brief commentary on this series, and in fact it's the only reason I bothered to watch this series, because as you know, magical girl anime is not a genre I typically watch unless I'm looking for some fan service or it's something that's making fun of the genre. In this case, this series is more like a deconstruction of the genre.
For the most part we follow Madoka Kaname, a 14 year old girl with a househusband father and a cutthroat businesswoman mother. You know, the average middle school student of the future, where schools look like glass cages (as they should). Like most teenagers, while she doesn't really have anything to complain about, she still wishes her life was different and more exciting. Since this is a show, naturally that's exactly what happens.
Actually the show starts us off right from its very opening with this weird South Park-ish magical world where all the fights take place, and in doing so it not only introduces us to the kind of weirdness seen above, but gives us a hint that this show isn't so much about magical girls taking skyscrapers to the face as it is about them getting worn out and suffering deadly consequences if they fail. Yup, that's right, in this show magical girls die and are not brought back to life. Oh, for the first couple of episodes the show tries to fake us out, in more ways than one. The first is by introducing Homura Akemi as a strange transfer student who comes off as a possible villain. It isn't until later that we learn the reason why she's so hostile toward Madoka and her friend Sayaka Miki. Of course by that time, we've already seen a magical girl die a horrific death by being eaten by the cutest witch/monster caterpillar ever.
And that's a big part of why I liked this series. It's kind of like
Higarashi that way – it contrasts cuteness with horrific things happening. And this in turn contrasts this show with other magical girl shows, because while other shows of this type tend to play up how awesome it is to be a magical girl because they have flashy clothes, fight monsters, and save the world while balancing school and a social life, this one shows us what's being glossed over. These are children. Constant combat will wear down even adults who are mentally prepared for it, and the consequence of failure is death. Most of the drama in these shows is derived from the possibility that the magical girls might fail, but they always win in the end. It's even been brought to my attention that Sailor Moon actually died to push this even further, but she was still brought back to fight and defeat the bad guys in the end (as far as I know). That doesn't happen here.
Like pretty much every magical girl show, there's a cute little magical animal companion, usually a cat. In this case it's kind of like a cat, but instead it's an alien named Kyubey and his job seems to be recruiting young girls into making contracts with him to fight and destroy witches. He'll even let the potential recruits tag along on missions with current Puella Magi to get a taste of what they're in for. Like any recruiter he plays up how awesome it is to be a magical girl, and he even promises to grant any wish the girls can think of in exchange for a life-long commitment to serve as a Pulla Magi. If that sounds like making a contract with the devil, well, they kind of gave that away by giving Kyubey beady red eyes. I don't care how cute and cat-like an alien is, you just can't trust a face like this:
God he's creepy....
In any case, though they witness the horrific death of a Puella Magi and are constantly being warned off by Homura that they are getting in way over their heads, Sayaka is guilt-tripped by a boy she likes into making a contract because he really liked playing violin and because of a crippling accident, he can't anymore. You can guess what her wish was? And since this show lives on being depressing, the little bastard doesn't end up hooking up with Sayaka, and she spirals into self-destruction, just so we can see exactly what witches are, and how horrible and alien Kyubey really is. Which to be fair, his being horrible has mostly to do with his being alien, what with completely lacking human emotions and anything resembling morality. Which just makes him all the creepier. Still, while some fans try to excuse Kyubey for this reason, I still feel it’s obvious that he knew he was manipulating the girls he made contracts with and was simply too amoral to care. Then, to depress us even more, we get to find out just how like
Higarashi this show is by the revelation that Homura's magical power is time manipulation, and she's actually been going back in time multiple times in a so far fruitless effort to keep Makoda from becoming a Puella Magi and dying soon afterwards while fighting a hopeless battle against a really powerful witch. So, much like Rika Furude, Homura isn't exactly the pleasant moe blob she started out as anymore. The really fun part is that in one time loop she tried to warn them all, but seeing the ultimate fate of Puella Magi, one of the especially nice and friendly ones goes nuts and kills most of the rest of them.
The one let-down for me was kind of a big one in that the ending was pretty much a cheat. I have to admit that there isn't a whole lot they could have done because they'd essentially written themselves into a corner, but this is probably because the pacing had been set too slow for such a short series. Now, I'm not saying the show was boring, and to be fair, I tend to like it when a show takes its time, slowly unraveling everything for us, but when there were only 12 episodes to play around with, saving the resolution for the last episode kind of made it come off as very sudden and a cheat. I say cheat because the ending basically was a way for the show to have both a happy and a depressing ending, both resolving the series and leaving it unresolved. It could be that the creative staff is trying to hook us for another season, but at the same time there isn't a lot they can do without again cheating, the same way
Code Geass did.
The characters in this show were for the most part kind of "meh." The focus is fairly limited, so we don’t get to learn all that much about anyone other than Madoka, Sayaka, and Homura. To be honest I didn't care much for Madoka. As was pointed out by Homura in the show, she's kind of selfish and honestly seems to be depressed about nothing. She has a loving, wealthy family, at least two close friends, and yet feels like something is missing in her life even before the whole magical girl thing comes up. So I found her kind of boring. Sayaka, honestly not a whole lot better. For me, Homura was the interesting one. She went through hell and was very versatile despite not having the kind of flashy powers the other Puella Magi had. Instead, she used her time manipulation power to steal guns that she hid in her own version of hammer space. She was also a very pragmatic character, and I dig that. The only other character I much cared for was ironically Kyubey. I thought he was written fairly well as far as the alien aspect of him. Much like the Borg from Star Trek, he honestly thinks he's doing these girls a favor, even if he's actually doing something quite horrible to them. He honestly doesn't understand why the things he does end up disturbing some of the girls he makes contracts with, because an alien probably wouldn't. Of course, I do still think he's intentionally manipulative, and I think part of his lack of understanding human emotion comes from him not seeing humans as being any different from cattle.
While the ending was kind of a let-down, I would still recommend that you check this series out, even if the whole magical girl thing isn't normally what you'd watch. If you stick it through to the third episode, this series will surprise you, hopefully to your enjoyment. 8/10.
/人◕ ‿‿ ◕人\
