All of my reviews contain spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning. Foreward Heres a hypothetical for you. Can a series that relies largely on a plot twistsome kind of tonal pivot at the very leaststill be compelling if you already know its coming? 880https://i.ur.com/76gnmhR.png Thats not actually a hypothetical of course. This is the perspective I went into Puella Magi Madoka Magica with. Eight years late to the party an inhabitant of a media landscape the series has undeniably helped shape. PMMM is something of a genre sea change point. There is the mahou shoujo genre before Madoka and there is the mahou genre after it itd be hard to mistake either for the other. In this way despite many other easy overdone comparisons I think Madoka is actually most similar to Alan Moores Watchmen. An outsider perspective on the genre that for good and ill irreversibly altered what followed in its wake. Every single magical girl series since Madoka has had to reckon with it in some way. This is the thread that unites things as disparate as FlipFlappers Symphogear Wish Upon The Pleiades Revue Starlight later Precure seasons and on and on. Curious that Madoka could be argued to be as much a cause as a symptom. Few other than Magical Girl Site predecessor Mahou Shoujo of The End are remembered today but PMMM was not the only thing doing magical girls but dark in its era. Why then has this one grown so tall and eclipsed the rest permanently casting a shadow on the genre that both birthed it and that it irrevocably changed? 880https://i.ur.com/CsCsKDb.png Well thats the question I went into PMMM hoping to answer. Talking about yourself is bad critical form but its impossible to separate an evaluation of this kind of work from the environment in which its watched and in which it comes out. I was 17 in 2011 and I had absolutely no time for something like Madoka. My anime taste at the time was very limited and I loathed depressing fiction Im not fond of it to this day honestly and well you know how teenagers are. I thought that since so many people liked it it must be overrated. Caring about things is a form of vulnerability so pointedly not caring about them is an expression of power. I was an asshole as a teenager and for these reasons and many more I very loudly Did Not Watch Madoka. For years afterward I was convinced Id made the right decision. Like Watchmen PMMM has a lot of detractors and fans alike that fail to understand the work in question or blame it for the effects its had on its genre. I was in this camp myself for a long time as I got more and more into both magical girls as an idea and the mahou shoujo genre proper I came to resent the series for so thoroughly blackening its outlook. Ive since come to believe that this is unfair. Nobody goes into a show thinking they have something bad on their hands but conversely few people know theyre about to drop a classic. But even when I got over that I had one last hangup. I reasoned that well I know how this story ends. Kyubey turns out to be an eldritch terror with the goal of using magical girls souls to stave off entropy. Madoka becomes God and sacrifices herself to save the world. Roll credits. I know that and as Im typing this have still never seen an episode of the show. If youre reading this you almost certainly know it too. 880https://i.ur.com/1JS5tWN.png So why go into this now? So long after most people have settled their feelings and drawn their lines in the sand? Two reasons. For one Symphogear undeniably a series that is a response on at least some level to Madoka is getting its final season in just a few days. I have a long running review of that entire franchise that I wish to finish after it concludes. How can I possibly form a truly qualified opinion on it if I have not seen the series it was allegedly made at least in part to converse with? Honestly thats a question that applies equally well to many shows that engage with this one and there are a lot of them. The other reason is simpler to look for more reasons. I want to like Madoka and dear reader you and I are going to confront this colossus together. So whatever that little number at the bottom of this page ends up being I am hoping that the 6 hours of my life Im about to spend will leave me with a greater understanding and appreciation for the genre on the whole than what I had when I started. Lets begin shall we? Puella Magi Madoka Magica It seems obvious to say that watching this show while knowing how it ends changes the watching experience. I have no idea what it mustve been like to be smacked upside the head with the end of the third episode when the show was airing mustve been like. On the other hand I genuinely envy anyone who can watch part of this early portion of the series without feeling a creeping stomachchurning sense of dramatic irony. Mamis dialogue in episode 3 feels like such a heavy telegraph that shes about to die that I wonder how it was received at the time. To me its clear that the main thing that Madoka shares with its parent genre is a certain enormity of emotion. This only makes sense if regular for lack of a better term magical girl shows are fueled by the power of love and all other manner of positive feeling then to make a dark one is to examine the flip side of that coin. The power of tainted love bitterness fear all that jazz. An example what eventually spurs Sayaka to accept Kyubeys contract is not a desire to help people or anything of the sort. Her wish is to fix the hands of her apparent crush a former violin prodigy who is suffering from the aftermath of an accident so he can play again. Is this selfish? Absolutely but its also very human. 880https://i.ur.com/XO3Sw1i.png Describing it that way makes it sound somewhat obnoxious maybe even meanspirited but unlike its contemporary and fellow influence on the current crop of dark magical girl anime Mahou Shoujo of The End nothing about Madoka actually feels that way at all. Either by intent or by strength of craft is only so relevant the show does what it does in this area well. Emotions being big of course does not mean theyre necessarily happy. Over the course of its run Madoka unsurprisingly gets pretty damn grim. A lot of this revolves around the character of Kyubey who if youve been on the internet at all in the past decade you likely already know as the creature that gives girls the contracts that make them become magical girls in the first place. Hes also the main villain as you likely also know. Kyubey is something that anime villains only occasionally are which is genuinely toptobottom detestable. Hes a wretch and knowing about his real goal ahead of time and that he genuinely thinks hes in the right somehow makes the whole thing worse. 880https://i.ur.com/iCMj5XN.png no but really fuck this guy But even with the rest of the castespecially the core ensemble of magical girlsemotions run high and run black. Sayakas crush is taken by a close friend Kyoukos father killed himself and the rest of her family after learning that his new religion was only attracting adherents because of Kyoukos magic. It goes on like this and while the scenes about this kind of thing are definitely wellmade theyre also a lot to handle and Id blame pretty much no one for being put off because of them. Then theres Madoka herself. Madoka is fascinating specifically because she seems like such an ill fit for such a somber series. In a normal magical girl show Madokas character would lend itself well to being that of the protagonist. She has a very real belief in the inherent goodness of people and spends much of the first couple episodes idly dreaming about how great it would be to be a magical girl so she could save everyone. In this show by all rights that should make her a terrible fit to play the lead role. This is a story where the world is puppeteered by eldritch horrors from beyond the stars. In fact for much of the series run it seems like Madoka has mostly been relegated to a supporting role in her own series. 880https://i.ur.com/cv71dTI.png sometimes literally The thing is even someone with her personality is not immune to being ground down by the kind of situation shes in. The series is not shy about showing the depths Madoka sinks to over the course of it. This is true for every character to a greater or lesser degree but with Madoka it feels more intense. Then there is Homura. Is there ever Homura. Homura is interesting because the kind of character she is in many ways comes from outside the genre entirely. Homura as we eventually learn is a time traveller jaded by countless repetitions of the same span of time in an endless quest to right a wrong. The tenth episode gives us the details. In it its her who occupies the protagonist spot in what would be a normal magical girl anime. By the time she meets Madoka and Mami in her original timeline theyve already become magical girls. Eventually they both die and in desperation she makes a contract with Kyubey asking to do it all over. In the next iteration she joins them as magical girls but they still ultimately die and in Madokas case become a witch respectively. This repeats. Endlessly living the same month over and over until we get to the timeline of the show her personality drastically changing over time. 880https://i.ur.com/XJ3nBER.png Homuras story in particular also unfortunately reveals something telling. The shows greatest narrative strength is its tone its not afraid to go allin on tragedy. But because of the nature of the genre it adopts its also its greatest weakness. Episode 10 is the first time I really felt the tragedy of the situation as it unfolded. Why? Because for better or worse the tonal space that PMMM works in is one more aimed at the brain than the heart. Homuras arc and the consequent dovetail into the finale are something of an exception here. The show has mountains of symbolism the narrative is legitimately interesting and the visuals and soundtrack are superb. Madoka has craft and talent for days. What it seems to have trouble with until its final few episodes is connecting in the same way that more straightforward magical girl anime do. The things that the girls go through are genuinely awful but the immediacy of their tragedies is to a point dampened by the surreal horror of their situation. It doesnt quite feel real. Until the last two episodes roll around and offer something of a solution. Famously the finale of PMMM involves Madoka becoming the apotheosis of hope itself. This is narratively the shows grand statement. Madoka becomes not just a magical girl but every magical girl. A Christlike figure who exists at the beginning and end of time to absolve the other magical girls of their karma before they can turn into witches. As a story beat it is a good ending to the series. But conceptually? Beyond the bounds of Madoka itself within its wider place in the genre? Its a little arrogant isnt it? What Madoka puts forward and indeed what drew Kyubey and the other Incubators to humanity in the first place is that it is humanitys capacity for emotion that makes us so remarkable. Madoka ends up embodying one of those emotions but in the process of doing so rises above humanity itself. Madoka disappears. Despite her attempt to assuage Homuras fears inshow the fact remains that from any reasonable point of view this is a huge sacrifice shes made for the benefit of everyone. 880https://i.ur.com/GERECM9.png And that right there is the one splinter that keeps me from loving this series instead of just respecting it though I do respect it. Much more than I initially expected to honestly. Even in the show itself Madokas absence is felt keenly in the closing episode. And this is all painted as a grand statementagain Madoka as not just a magical girl but an avatar as every magical girl. In its last moments the series offers us this: 880https://i.ur.com/GVkxlko.png Its again a nice statement in a narrative context. Given the constraints of her universe the universe Madoka creates is undeniably a better one. The problem though is not on a narrative level its in a broader meta sense. Madoka isnt every magical girl. Theres Sailor Moon the countless Pretty Cure teams Nanoha the eponymous Sakura of Cardcaptor Sakura. Theres countless magical girls from the 80s that predate western awareness of the genre. Beyond traditional genre standards theres Papika and Cocona Hibiki Tachibana Karen Aijo. Hell theres even Shoutan Himei somewhere way out in the weeds. Perhaps looking on with envy. Why the list? To emphasize that despite Madokas stab at universality the story it tells is actually a very small one one mostly about Madoka herself and Homura. On this level understood just as much as part of the world story genre that also includes frequent pointofcomparison Neon Genesis Evangelion Madoka makes much more sense. Honestly taken that way and consequently much more charitably its a great entry into its genre. However part of experiencing art is living in the culture it spawned. And as I pointed out near the top of this review and several realworld days ago for myself we live in a world that is thoroughly postMadoka and the series impact has been largely on the magical girl genre. Has that impact been negative? Well its hard to say. Certainly as muchif not significantly moresothan the meaner its magical girls but daaaaaarrk stuff like Mahou Shoujo of The End Madoka has spawned no shortage of imitators and disciples. Curiously though a lot of those shows hit the sense of universality that Madoka aims for better than the series itself does at least the ones that take the right message away from it. And if Madoka has a message its the same as the one found in an old phrase I heard once long ago that I cannot recall the source of To everything even sadness there is an end. Its bittersweet and imperfectmuch like Madoka itselfbut in the right circumstance it can brighten your life and make it feel not so bad. Similarly while my own feelings on the show are a bit more muted than I mightve liked itd be genuine arrogance to act like I dont understand why it means what it does to so many people. Sometimes you really do just need a reminder that always somewhere someone is fighting for you. That none of us are ever truly alone.