Puella Magi Madoka Magica - Reviews

 This is my first time being moved by what essentially is a mahou shoujo anime which shows that anything can happen in life. Anyway being concious of the massive amount of review before me given in tribute to what I consider to be the best of the spring season I will write this review as unique as I can.

  First off I will start with the animtion which I fiund unique and refreshing. It is a I admit not the best but rather one I enjoyed. The shading and colour having a special place which I will put in my brain to remeber. This is actually what made me keep watching after the the slow paced start and the seemingly endless unexplained mysterys, up till the next ep I thought it would have continued like this as a very average and cliche mahou shoujo anime but soon my false accussition was shattered without mercy and a hook thrown from the screen of my laptop to my eyes. I was instantly compelled to continue this series down its continuous winding path. If this was a path then Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica whould have started off as a main road which then goes into a side road gradually getting narrower and more dark until suddenly you diverge into another main road with a taste of a good stretch with you car suffering many minor scratches. thos scrathes represent the bittersweet feelings that you are left with as the series enters it's final moments. However you are led to believe the world became better even if the sacrifice did not completly erase sufferinf/despair, you know it was for a good cause. I would consider this to be a candidate for a legend but it will be the majority's sa which will count I hope that many of you will try this and not be put off by the start.

Perhaps the best show to pull of the "reality hitting you like a truck" genre. It starts out making you think its just some happy go lucky magic girl wonder adventure where noting can go wrong then bam, (crunch?, sorry) reality sets in like a truck and the plot gets real. The characters all prove to have more than the one dimension they were intially given and the plot thickens into something severly dark and thought prevoking.

If you can get past the odd animation quality Madoka Magica is a must watch.

Wow. This show is crazy! The crap they can fit in 12 episodes is amazing! I haven't seen an ending this crazy since Evangelion! All the characters are not what they seem. The character development is amazing. The plot was extremely unexepected and the suspense was insane! I hated characters, then I loved them, then hated them again. It's a little preachy about the concepts of sacrifice and acting for the greater good, or our personal wishes vs. the real effect that may follow. Or "be careful what you wish for" explains it well. The character design wasn't perfect. Shaft studios has a more simple or dull character style in general, but everything else makes up for it. I would highly reccomend this series to anyone as it showcases how far animation skills have come. And the plot is on a grander scale than you'll see on most shows.

This review is mainly to tell you... DO NOT SHY AWAY FROM THIS ANIME IF YOU THINK IT IS A TYPICAL "MAGICAL GIRL" ANIME.

Dont even judge it as "magical girl".

Give it a shot for the first few episodes, and once you see the first major brutality, you will probably be hooked.

I get a large amount of satisfaction watching naive little bitches do stupid shit, that they think is right, but because of their extreme stupidity, the things they do wind up doing the exact opposite of what they wanted. lol I may be horrible, but i have no sympathy for people that dont learn from their mistakes and foolishly ignore reality because it isnt pleasant.  I may be exagerating a little, but you get my point.

Something to note: The art style is attractive/unique. It has, in some places, a "little big planet" feel to it.

WARNING - SPOILERS AHEAD - WARNING

After finishing the anime, I am a little disapointed. Only a little though. Madoka fixed the problem, but since that problem didnt exist a new one formed and the black haired girl, yet again, is the one to shoulder the burden and continue to fight.

I hate madoka because she is so stupid and she likes to think positive and do the 'right thing' (whatever that is, its subjective). She never gets what the little fur ball is saying (neither do the others), while I do perfectly. She cares so much, yet contradicts herself by being so stupid. The fur ball is telling her that they are beings that watch over the universe and have a system that allows them to fuel it. Maybe that system is disliked by humans, but you cant please everyone, and its the very fact that humans get emotionally upset that they choose earth/humans in the first place. Madoka completely ignores this explaination (Im not saying to believe the little deciever, but give it a little thought). The only reason why i wasnt completely satisfied with the ending was because I wished they would have completely shattered her hopes and desires and watched as her eyes loose life in compete hopelessness.

I just wanted to note this to defend myself: I dont agree with the ways that the fur ball (incubators) is doing things. He is blatently decieving them and using 'save the universe' as an excuse. In the end it shows that they now have to deal with demons instead of witches. and.... it shows the fur ball and time traveler girl talking about how the incubators found another way of fueling the universe or w/e. He did mention that it wasnt as good as if witches existed, but that they did find another way. So, yes, I do dislilke the naive little girls, but that doesnt mean that i completely back the fur ball up.

Overall: It is a great anime, but i would have liked to seen more of the brutality because of the characters stupidity. (they were stupid and now they get what they diserve)

Cardcaptor Sakura: Dark Mode

Nothing like a good old fashioned deconstruction to highlight how strange and often problematic the tropes of a genre are.