Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Kids shows like Precure have basically no fanservice, but Madoka is pretty tame on that front given its target demographic and Shaft. Someone (possibly Urobuchi?) probably got them to tone down the perv camera this time.

Its almost strange since Shinbo was also on the Madoka team and shows of his like Bakemonogatari or Lyrical Nanoha have shown that he's definitely not afraid to sexualize younger girls. Then again with Ume Aoki's designs maybe it just felt... wrong, somehow.

edited 7th Oct '15 6:40:57 PM by MoreThanBored

Which becomes sad because when we talk about it, we're reminded their age like we're the problem.

It's like:

"Wow, they really sexualized her..."

"SHE'S 12!"

"Hey, tell the writers that, not me!"

Isn't the age of consent lower in Japan then in America? That's what I heard, and it would explain why teenagers in anime either get sexualized or at least still look older then they really are. Also, if I remember correctly there has been mildly fanserivcey official art for the series.

I think it's more that a lot of anime is aimed at teens, so naturally they feature a lot in it, and then get fanservice'd up.

Universal age of consent is 13 in Japan, although local laws in pretty much every prefecture forbid adults from having sex with girls under 17 or so. A sexual relationship between two people under 17 is legal with parental consent and I think girls as young as 16 can legally marry with parental permission

edited 7th Oct '15 8:53:42 PM by MoreThanBored

I do have to wonder, in the inevitable sequel, how they'll be able to top the awesome bullet ballet Matrixing from Rebellion:

Compare and contrast:

You gotta love that Rebellion fight scene, undoubtedly the best fight scene in the movie and one of the best fight scenes in magical girl anime.

I noticed that Mami didn't just yank the ribbon tied to Homura's leg and got that one over with since I assume Mami can control her ribbons' length.

My favorite part of that is when she attaches the ribbon. In a Freeze-Frame Bonus moment, as she walks past Homura to get the tea in the preceding scene, you can briefly see her ribbon in the bottom corner of the screen flash up and go for Homura.

edited 8th Oct '15 7:22:23 AM by TobiasDrake

The problem is systemic.

Holy shit! She attached it that early!

How soon did she start realizing something was up with Homura?

Then again, it's not like old Homu-homu has ever been good at subtlety.

Probably the moment she dropped her glasses.

I think it's implied that Mami and Kyouko are not completely amnesiac.

The moment she noticed that Homura was give Bebe a Death Glare.

Guess we really overlooked the fact that Mami is the magical girl mentor for all of the others.

Homura is about as subtle as a bolder rolling doing a mountain.

Pretty much.

She really doesn't know how to talk to people, so she's shit at hiding her intentions most of the time, unless you are completely misinterpreting her.

And as we all know, she's shit at explaining herself too, so it leads to even more problems.

You'd think Homura would have tried to take some classes on how to talk to people at some point in her timelines. It would've helped her a lot if she could have actually talked to everyone instead of doing it all on her own... Or her isolation just killed whatever tiny amount of social skills she had before.

Probably the latter.

I think the events of the third timeline just convinced her she couldn't really rely on anyone else (except maybe Kyouko, and even then, she doesn't really explain anything).

She can't really get along with Mami or (definitely) Sayaka (though Rebellion proves that could have changed if the latter were a bit less hostile from the start), and her former Shrinking Violet self likely makes it hard for her to talk to people.

I'd have to say being forced to kill Madoka herself hardened her to the point of being convinced she's the only one who even understands what Madoka even wants, and that includes Madoka herself.

The problem is, things keep changing, but she doesn't.

Hey, how do any of you guys picture a final confrontation fight between Madoka and Homura would be like?

I would imagine it'd be like this, albeit, you know, more magical girly.

The show didn't make it QUITE as obvious, but the movie made it pretty clear that Homura is only capable of giving a shit about Madoka at this point. Everyone else is a means to an end.

I'd wanted to believe different, but yeah.

I mean, it still seems up for debate when she refused to kill Mami when she had the chance (still opting to shoot her in the leg even though she was completely helpless, even if she had know way of knowing it was a ribbon clone), but I do think if she wasn't completely to that point in the earlier parts of the movie, she crossed it sometime after that.

She definitely did by the end of the movie.

She did. It ended poorly.

It's implied that there were many more revolutions than just the ones we saw. Homura herself indicates that she's tried to talk to the group multiple times, commenting in Rebellion Story that Mami has a soft heart and that revealing the truth with her around was "always difficult".

We only see her do it once but the way she speaks of it suggests that wasn't the only timeline in which Mami's flipped out upon discovering the true nature of Soul Gems.

I see.

That makes sense. I keep forgetting that. I guess the question is if it was always the fault of those she revealed the truth to that things went bad, or if there was a flaw in her method that she never caught.

Then again, considering the Failure Is the Only Option nature of her mission, maybe it doesn't even matter.

Yeah, people often forget that Homura went through something like 100 timelines and thus must have explored almost every possibility. In one of the few timelines we did see, Homura tried to tell everyone the truth about witches from the get-go but nobody believed her.

It's also shown that Sayaka always becomes a witch if she contracts and Mami always breaks when she learns the truth about witches, and so after a while its easy to see why Homura stopped trusting them. She does seem to trust Kyouko since she's The Unfettered (at least at first) along with being the most competent fighter besides Mami (who is too emotionally frail).

And even after all that time there are still massive hints that the old Moemura who still cares about her friends is still there. Homulily's witch barrier is implied to be Homura's ideal world, and it's one where every is happy together, not just Madoka. And even after Homura did everything right, the world that she creates still has Kyouko and Sayaka and Mami and Nagisa knowing each other and living happy lives. Even Sayaka admits that such as world may not be so bad.

Originally, although Madoka was her focus, she was still trying to approach the problem of Walpurgisnacht as a team, working with Mami, Sayaka, and Kyoko, trying to help everyone.

At some point, her faith in a Golden Ending broke. By the time we meet her at the start of the series, she's stopped trying to get full completion bonuses and has settled for the idea that even if Mami, Kyoko, and Sayaka all bite it, as long as she can save Madoka, that will be enough. The weight of the conflict has crushed her optimism and idealism.

She doesn't resent the other three and, as Rebellion shows, her idea of a perfect happy ending involves them being happy too. She still values them on some level. But she's been forced through countless failures to classify them as acceptable losses.

edited 13th Oct '15 10:45:04 AM by TobiasDrake