- spoiler warning*
What happens with the witches not existing isn't confusing at all. Basically Madoka's ethereal form plucks the soul gem away before it fully corrupts, mercy killing the girl. From Kyubey's end it's just like "Wait... she disappeared. That's counter-productive. Better not let that happen again." So now he doesn't deceive the girls into despair.
I know that feel bro. Not only were the witch fights trippy and confusing, but it was always very one sided. Either the girls won with little effort or... mumi why
I agree the ending wasn't confusing, it just seemed to try too hard and didn't sit too well with me.
And I am totally with you on the fights being one sided. After 3 episodes, and she was in the freaking opening... Mumi...
For me, the show was trying too hard from the beginning. Maybe more episodes would have allowed the dark and depressing some pace. The finale meanwhile just felt like the biggest cop-out ever. No effort what-so-ever. She just stands there and wishes for it. Instant problem solve. The only amount of thought required was how to make a wish without screwing herself and the universe over. And in the end, the world sucks just a little less.
The only very confusing part about the ending was the "demons", monsters that had never been mentioned before in the series. Maybe there had to be some other way for Kyubey to collect energy, but they seemed to come out of nowhere.
The witch backgrounds were quite jarring compared to the rest of the series, although with Oktavia, you can see the symbolism intended, both obvious (the concert hall) and subtle (the "look at me" runes).
I also agree about most of the fights being one-sided. One also has to wonder why no one thought of the single wish to solve everyone's problems, but then again, no one knew that much about magical girls before contracting wtih Kyubey.
Yeah, the demon things came out of nowhere. Definitely a bittersweet ending, and at first I couldn't help but rage, but after thinking about it I have to say it was smart, and definitely well done. It didn't work out well, but it makes sense that it wouldn't. It still doesn't set perfectly well with me, but I can recognize the thought that went into it... this thing is looking more and more like Neon Genesis Evangellion...
I still don't care for the animation of the witch fights, but I do have to say the fight with the concert hall was great. Around that point it became more symbolic, focused, and not just purely random. First seeing a bunch of stick figure mariachi men in the first episode with barbed wire and scissors melted my brain.
The animation of Octavia's enclosed space seemed more "symbolic and focused" because the background of this pencicular witch was known to us, the audience.
Lazy and pathetic.
The entire point of Demons is that they come out of no where, this is a completely brand new Universe where Witches don't exist. This isn't the same world that Madoka was part of, only now with no more Witches, it's a completely new Universe with it's own Enemies. As long as Puella Magi exist there will always be something to fight, these new enemies are "Personified Grief".
The Witch Fights animation is also supposed to be weird and strange, these are Eldrich Abominations that are completely foreign entities, the fighting animation reflects this. This really isn't stuff that's hard to figure out at all, I don't know why people insist it makes no sense or tries to hard when everything is right there.
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A series that leaves me divided
I went into Madoka with no expectations. A friend told me to watch it, and I knew nothing more than the meme of QB and that there were girls that could do magic. So I watched the first episode, and I was... well, confused by the shifts of tone, but interested enough to watch more. So I went through the entire series, and liked it a decent bit, though the end left a bitter taste.
The animation was certainly interesting in this series. All characters are fairly simply drawn with what seems like two outlines at points. They were pretty flatly colored, with backgrounds fairly detailed by comparison. When they transform into magical girls there is anime anatomy, which annoyed me. They could have found something to cover the stuff for broadcast, but they went the lazy route. Overall it was decent, but the witch fights were artistic barf. It was as though they took Andy Warhol, told him to make any thing he wanted, and then animated that into the witch mazes. It became more artistic than bizarre about halfway through the series. Comparing the fight with the concert hall setting to the first you can see the improvement.
Characters were all well given distinct personalities by the end, though it could take some time to really get them there. The girl who seems to be based off the common Rei archetype seemed very human by the end, though for a while she seemed quite generic. Other girls were similar cases.
Now onto the plot *spoiler warning*. It started off with the girls observing witch fights, and took a while to find it's feet. Then another magical girl is introduced, and more is discovered about QB and the characters' interactions. It seemed organic and enjoyable enough until the end, which simply went out of control. I think someone watched End of Evangellion before writing it up. Madoka wishes for all witches to not exist in any time, she bares the despair of would-be-witches (which no longer exist?), the world is recreated, she no longer has physical form but is ok with just observing for all eternity, and though there aren't witches the magical girls still have to fight other bad guys. There is still despair resulting of wishes, and you see a main character still dies... Not much changed, she just doesn't exist.
It was an enjoyable series for much of it, though the witchfights were out hard to swallow, and the ending was quite unsatisfying.