Puella Magi Madoka Magica

This triggers me.

Sayaka tries to get this injured musician to fall in love with her, but it doesn’t work out, because love is arbitrary and often unrequited. Oh no! Justice doesn’t exist in this universe! But wait, we already knew that.

• He completely missed the point about Sayaka's subplot. In fact, this is exactly the view that caused Sayaka to become a witch in the first place. Instead of wishing for what she truly wanted (Kyosuke's love), she wished for something that would lead to what she truly wanted. She masked a selfish desire with a selfless wish, and then realized that she had traded away her soul and humanity and hadn't even gotten anything in return. Her resentment over being resentful about this (since heroes of justice are supposed to put the needs of other over personal desires) led to her despair. It's not about justice, it's about Sayaka trying to lie to herself and only finding despair as a result.

Be careful what you wish for, because it could backfire! We see this happening with literally every wish that the magical girls make, and it’s just dumb as hell.

• It's not about Kyubey being a Jerkass Genie. In fact, he isn't a Jerkass Genie at all since he gives the girls exactly what they ask for. The problem is that the girls did not wish for what they truly want; Mami wanted her life to go back to normal, but she only wished to live (to be fair, she was also about to die and didn't have time to think). Sayaka wanted Kyousuke's love, but only wished to help him. Kyouko wanted her family to be happy, but only wished for her father to be successful.

First of all, it makes absolutely no sense for Kyuube to be so logical and intelligent and yet incapable of at least recognizing the patterns in human morality.

• Kyubey is a being of absolute logic, he never needed to thing about something as insignificant to his plan as human morality. Did the writer miss the line where Kyubey refers to human emotion as a "mental disorder?" If Kyubey had emotions it would break the plot.

Everything about the ending

• The idea is that Madoka managed to make a completely selfless wish, but in doing so had to sacrifice her sense of self. However, because she was honest about what she was doing she could defeat even her own despair. "The Power of Love" did not save Madoka; Madoka saved Madoka. And Madoka didn't become a "LITERAL NON-EXISTENT ENTITY", she just became a concept that most people could not perceive. Furthermore, since Homura's wish was explicitly linked to the being known as "Madoka Kaname," it would make sense that Homura is able to remember her.

Also, the concept that "witches are completely ignorant of the lives they lived as magical girls" is disproven by Rebellion.

This person sounds like some elitist /a/ shitposter who's butthurt about the number of Madoka threads at any one time. There's a lot more that I could say but I have an essay that's due tomorrow and I'm only halfway done.

I agree with a lot of what you said, even though I do have a problem with Kyuubey being around humans for so long and still having no understanding of them (outside of how to manipulate them).

We spend years studying certain animals and learning their behaviours; theorizing about why they do what they do.....and we can't understand a word they say.

Kyuubey can talk to humans in their own language, and has been around them since they were in caves, and he still doesn't get them even a bit. I do believe that that is bullshit.

Of course, it's far more likely that he just doesn't care. Emotions are useful for their despair fighting scheme, but beyond that, fuck them.

I agree with your assessment of Kyubey: I don't think that his deal is that he doesn't comprehend human emotions, it's that he doesn't give a shit about them other than as a magical battery, and as far as he's concerned he doesn't need to. He only realizes that human emotions are dangerous when AI YO happens and at that point its too late.

edited 29th Jul '15 9:39:36 PM by MoreThanBored

He understands them enough to know that emotions are important to humans. That's why he keeps Soul Gems a secret after all. Humans irrationally hate having their souls leave their bodies. He doesn't truly get what emotions are about, but he's competent enough to manipulate them to some extent.

If I spent thousands of years observing generations of people with a similar form of disordered thinking, I expect I'd get a good handle on what they mean when they talk about the walls glaring or smiling and be able to use that to manipulate them. I do not expect I will ever truly understand what it's like to go my entire life convinced that walls are expressing rage or joy at me, or that I will identify with these people in their beliefs about walls.

This, I think, is QB's relationship with emotions.

I agree with the others. Once again, you've given us someone's "review" where they prove that they have no idea what they're talking about. Why do you keep doing this? Admit whether or not you like the show and move on.

I just don't want to feel like I'm only hearing one side of the coin.

As I've said before, there is real criticism of Madoka out there. The stuff you show isn't it. If you disagree with the article, why do you link it without saying so and treat it as if it has a real point? If you agree, why don't you tell us so? If you want to know what the real criticism is, why don't you ask, "How could Madoka have been improved?"?

I see.

In that case, is there any way you guys think Madokaagica could have explored its philosophical themes a bit more?

Removing time and budget limits inherent to shows:

I'd have liked to explore the Incubators and their society more.

I'd also have liked more explanation of the Wraith world and how and why Madoka made it the way it is.

It would also have been nice to see that Incubators harvest from other planets too.

A better exploration of the themes could be that humanity wasn't the first race the Incubators harvested. because we're not special. That they've driven hundreds of races to extinction bwefore us and they're planning to keep doing so.

Confirmation by Kyuubey that "Hope balances out to dispair" is false and that reality is far worse.

Confirmation that Kyuubey can destroy witches but simply chooses not to.

Confirmatio in Rebellion that it's part of madoka's memory gambit (and a sequel where that comes to fruition).

A longer period of character development for Kyouko.

Have Kyouko realise that a witch she previously killed was her sister.

Confirmation that Madoka guides the souls of all to Pyuellahalla and not just M Gs.

Shots of Madoka collecting magical girls of other species from other planets and from the distant future.

Just a few things I can think of off-hand.

How could Kyouko's sister be a witch? Didn't her dad kill her?

Alien meguca, more on the wraith world and how it changed things for our heroes besides them teaming up and Mami not dying, probably some more on Homura's status quo, more character for Nagisa, and an explanation of what Madokami does when a dead meguca wasn't satisfied. That's my wishlist.

Good list.

Yes. The idea is that she would have also survived without Kyouko knowing about it.

There's a lot of things it could have done, but one of my favorite things about Madoka is that it's so compactly-constructed; nearly everything in it is essential to the story. Putting much more in would have drifted towards padding for time, the single most common problem that anime runs into (the second most common is running out of time and/or money and Madoka doesn't do that either).

It might have been worth devoting an extra episode to Mami and Kyouko's backstory, i.e. volume 1 of Different Story, instead of glossing over it with a couple of flashbacks. Mami isn't developed enough in the series (other than... y'know) and Kyouko smashing her way into the story with no explanation always seemed a little odd to me. Maybe cover most of it right after episode 3, and save how Kyouko went rogue for later.

To be absolutely fair, Kyoko's entrance into the story was motivated by Mami's death. If I recall correctly, she showed up when she did precisely because Mami was no longer around to maintain control of her territory. I think she actually said something to that effect at the end of episode 4.

I would've loved an episode adapting vol. 1 of Different Story, though. I just finished reading the first two volumes today and enjoyed them immensely.

Completely out of the blue: Are any of the other manga spinoffs worth reading? I've heard some not-very-nice things about Oriko and Kazumi.

From what I've heard Oriko's plot is pretty interesting, even though its artstyle is a mixed bag.

Kazumi's plot is kinda stupid but it has nice art and cute designs. It also cranks the Fanservice quite a bit, for better or worse.

I haven't really heard anything bad about Suzune, although it's pretty short, and I haven't really heard anything about Tart at all.

edited 31st Jul '15 7:19:56 PM by MoreThanBored

It's not that Kyouko showing up didn't make logical sense, it was just narratively weird. Almost halfway through the show, a new character (the only main character not introduced in episode 1) with an obnoxiously snarky personality (quite unlike everyone else) suddenly appears, and spends most of her time trolling Sayaka and/or trying to kill her.

It comes together more later on, as we find out that she's attacking Sayaka because she reminds her of the old personality and values she thinks she abandoned (but is actually still struggling with) to get past her family's death and the associated guilt... but her initial appearance felt pretty out-of-nowhere to me. Having some backstory before that could have made her (re)appearance more of a "why'd she turn so evil?" instead of "who the hell is this jerk?". But maybe the latter is more what they were going for, since that's how Sayaka reacts to her.

Showing Kyouko's sad backstory before introducing her is like showing Moemura before Homura. It ruins the surprise. PMMM just loves to show us megucas or potential megucas, let us get a handle on who they are, and then show how inaccurate that picture of them is. Q.v. Mami's loneliness, Sayaka's selfish streak, and Madoka's badassery as a magical girl. Having the subversion before the setup is more narratively wonky than A New Challenger Appears!

What More Than Bored said, pretty much. I'd add that Oriko's new meguca are great and Kazumi has a bunch of interesting ideas in it, even if it doesn't always stick the execution.

Actually Sayaka was the one who tried to kill Kyouko. Kyouko only threaten Sayaka and then Sayaka started the fight and pushed it into a life or death fight.

Is it weird that I actually kind of laughed at a couple of the things Kyueby did in the show? I'm talking about when he randomly ate up one of his disposeable bodies after being "Killed" by Homura and the almost cheerful way he told Madoka "So if you ever want to die for the sake of the universe, call me!". He's a hateable little bastard who deserves what happend to him in Rebellion, but he had his oddly entertaining moments every now and then.

Speaking of Rebellion, yeah, one of my complaints with the film was how it completly glossed over The Wraiths. It would have been nice to see them get a bit more attention considering that they effectivly replaced Witches at the end of the show, but now unless the world is changed back eventually I don't think that'll ever happen.

There is the Wraith Arc manga

That's why I did not suggest bringing up the sad part of her backstory so early. You'd only want to show the part they left out, where she meets and joins up with Mami, and save the disastrous part for the abandoned-church scene. Maybe end it when Kyouko goes missing, without showing what happened.

Homura is the "mysterious" character, and her backstory has more spoilers than a racecar convention, so that had to be saved until very near the end. Mami and Kyouko are more down-to-earth characters with Hidden Depths, which... we don't see very much of, because we only see their backstory in brief self-narrated flashbacks (the movies took out Mami's entirely). Immediately post-Mamideath would have been a good time to show a little of that instead of telling it, and would introduce Kyouko in a better way than that vaguely narmy scene at the end of episode 4, where she's like "I'm totally gonna kill Sayaka, 'cause I'm eeeeevil!" (One of the positives of the movies was their removal of that scene...)

Rewatched Rebellion.

I gotta say, it still holds up very well, and definitely left me with all kinds of emotions. Still the best "Plato's Cave" story this side of The Matrix as well.

Kyoko arrived in episode four. That's hardly "halfway through the series."

Do I emit, like, a nitpicking aura, or something?

Kyouko appears at the very end of episode 4. (And doesn't really do anything until the end of the next episode.) 12-episode series. And what I said was "almost halfway" through the series. I'd say that counts...

In any case, the point was more that all other named characters, unless you count witches, are introduced in episode 1. (Kyousuke doesn't appear, but they mention him.) Kyouko is quite the anomaly. That's not a problem in and of itself, but I felt like the way she was introduced was sort of jarring.

edited 4th Aug '15 11:50:09 AM by Kotomikun

She's the Replacement Goldfish for Mami once the Deconstruction hits. The first three episodes are classic Magical Girl shenanigans and then suddenly Mami dies and is replaced by a more callous, self-centered Magical Girl to set the stage for the darker second act.

Then Sayaka and Kyoko both die off and hit the road just in time for Madoka and Homura to become central figures for the Reconstruction in the third act.

The show is basically broken down into three major acts, each revolving around a different set of characters. Act I is about Mami's horrific "Shaggy Dog" Story, Act II is about Sayaka and Kyoko's tragedy, Act III is about Homura's hopeless, endless cycle, and it's all ultimately broken by Madoka solving the plot.

edited 4th Aug '15 2:12:34 PM by TobiasDrake