YES "PMMM is little more than cynical, mean-spirited, and gorgeously stylized dreck attempting to pass itself off as groundbreaking critique." Inject this into my veins.
I would clarify that this is more of a general pattern of Urobuchi of attacking idealism than deconstructing the magical girl genre. As usual, he writes gratuitously cruel scenarios not exactly for gore porn, but to "prove" how idealism is wrong, which he did in abundance in Fate Zero. After a long debate with a fan of PMMM, the fan brought up the point that the series was trying to show how there is a balance of positive and negative in the world and that the girls' wishes created something positive which must be balanced out by something equally negative.
Either way, Urobuchi takes a heavy handed approach to his themes in which he tells them rather than shows them. He delivers his message by forcing things to happen that fit the message which results in most of the negative consequences in his stories being abrupt and distastefully excessive.
This is what I wrote in my MAL review: "However, I do think the show's reliance on shock factor to deconstruct idealism and heroism undermines what it's trying to do. And this is because shock, by its nature, is jarring and unexpected. Thus, using shock factor to show that there are negative consequences to idealism and heroism causes a disconnect between cause and effect. Instead of telling a fluid, reasonable story about how being too idealistic can gradually turn someone sour and lead them down a path of self-destruction, the situations in Madoka Magica come across more as, you tried to do the right thing, but then that inevitably leads to something bad happening even if that something had a 1 in a million chance of happening. As a series of coincidences, the story is blunt and heavy handed in its attempts to discuss idealism, but in fact it goes further and lays down laws of karmic destiny that stipulate that something bad happens every time you try to do something good. By contrast, Griffith's actions at the end of Berserk certainly created a lot of shock, but at the same time his decision felt natural because the show had spent so much time creating ambiguity around the nature of Griffith's ambition. Madoka Magica came the closest to this with Sayaka's story, but not only is it too rushed, the introduction of karmic destiny and the inevitable fate of magical girls undermines all the naturality of her arc. It's quite telling about his philosophy that Urobuchi used Osama Bin Laden as an example when he said that good intentions don't always lead to good results. Terrorists' "good intentions" meant killing a whole bunch of people and they succeeded. They achieved exactly the result they wanted. Urobuchi has characters try to help other people, only for it to somehow backfire and lead to them getting killed."
Was gonna say a lotta what the other guy did, but he got there first.
That said, I think I'd instead use his terrible animated Godzilla movies as a better point of comparison, because Urobuchi's artistic freedom on them was much broader than in Fate/Zero. It also helps dispel the notion that this show's thematic problems are based in sexism rather than ugly, nihilistic anti-humanism, since in those movies the problem is that anyone dares to dream of a better world, have hope things can get better, or otherwise fails to reject all forms of higher idealism in favor of primitivistic, simplistic "win/lose," "survive/die" thinking. It even shares similar setting elements, like the heat death of the universe motivating the obvious and manipulative villain's actions.
It also meant that, unlike Fate/Zero, which was forced by the necessities of the plot it was a prequel to to hold up human relationships and love as a potential method of salvation from the emptiness of ugly, anti-humanistic nihilism, Godzilla can go the route of Madoka and full-on reject the possibility of human relationships to provide meaning and hope in a meaningless world.
I kinda wonder if Magia Record is a rejection of Urobuchi\'s philosophy, since he seemed to be less involved in that compared to the source material.
Well, to be fair, the show does have a positive ending featuring self sacrifice and salvation for the magical girls, but everything that lead up to it was so dumb it was hard to get any catharsis from such a conclusion. Also, the idea that this moe girl with little life experience would become the savior of the universe is laughable.
I would agree that the sexism in PMMM is largely incidental to Urobuchi's philosophy. I think its application to the magical girl genre is part of what makes it especially grating/grotesque here, though. One of the genre's greatest strengths is the way it can use its inviting, fantastical visual stylings to explore complex, emotionally charged topics, while PMMM is forced to squander its brilliant designs on the misanthropic horseshit of an Urobutcher plot.
Honestly, what makes me most frustrated about PMMM is the ridiculously high profile it enjoys compared to genuinely thought-provoking deconstructions like Revolutionary Girl Utena or Princess Tutu. Even the pre-Evangelion show Magic Knight Rayearth does a better job deconstructing the unreasonable obligations magical girls are forced to uphold. And, y'know, all of them were produced by artists and writers who had been deeply involved in the genre for years if not decades.
I also find it kind of weird that a man with such a self-described nihilistic ethos is so fixated on the cosmic enforcement of an incredibly rigid karmic balance. To be charitable, I guess I'd consider it a very moralistic perversion of the law of conversation of energy, but that contradicts the whole inherent meaninglessness of nihilism.
That sort of universe would have to be fundamentally devoted to deciding the exact amount of good or evil produced by a singular action so it could then assign it a reaction it judges to be equally good or evil. It goes beyond nihilism to something actively misanthropic, especially since the focus isn't on evil always being met with equal good, but on good always being negated by equal evil.
On the one hand, exploring how a universe and its inhabitants would operate under that kind of system is really interesting. But, on the other, that's not what Urobuchi actually writes. It's more like he plops a contemporary society and its values in that kind of setting to dismantle them. It's much less insightful, on the whole.
\"The idea that this moe girl with little life experience would become the savior of the universe is laughable\" That\'s kind of true of every magical girl show or anything with child/teenage heroes.
The setup of a system biased against the protagonists, in which using their power for good is doomed to backfire, can seem arbitrary, but it\'s not unique to Urobuchi. The Magnus Archives has something similar, as does Vampire: The Masquerade. It\'s fairly common in horror, and a lot of cyberpunk pits heroes against a system where they can only treat some of the symptoms. Also while Homura believes that witches do evil equal to what good they did, it\'s never proven to be so; all we can say is that the power of a witch to curse is proportional to their power as magical girls to save. I think the idea of karmic zero-return is meant to reflect the conservation of energy theme rather than follow any in-universe logic.
And yes, Urobuchi is not nihilistic. One recurring complaint about his work is how heavy-handed the morals are, which is the antithesis of nihilism. He believes in ethics, but he is skeptical of what heroism can achieve.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
"That's kind of true of every magical girl show or anything with child/teenage heroes."
You're right, but the context is different. In most of these stories, their tone and story content makes for fun action adventures for kids where saving the world and passing your math test in the same week is a regular occurrence. The show doesn't take itself too seriously and neither should the audience while watching middle school girls save the world in dresses.
But Madoka Magica's tone and content are deadly serious and what's more, it's going for deeper themes, which clashes sharply with the moe style and archetypal shoujo characters. Madoka is presented as a JESUS figure; defeating the big bad and saving the world is one thing, but self sacrifice to change the laws of karmic destiny while ascending to God-hood is another thing.
I don't know about the other pieces of media you mentioned as examples of cosmic horror, but I don't think that such a precise karma system is necessarily bad. However, it seems like those games are using it for the purpose of horror and suspense, but Madoka Magica, which doesn't function as a horror show, uses it to propagate Urobuchi's message.
Even then, the idea of conservation of good and bad, even if arbitrary, wouldn't be so offputting if it weren't for the way that Urobuchi executes it. Like I said, he could have shown how being too idealistic gradually sours a virtuous person or explore the price of one's dreams like Griffith in Berserk. If we're talking about cyberpunk, the feeling of the futility of trying to do anything against military-industrial complexes and a technologically controlled society is very plausible and thus is more suited to such a theme. But with the scenarios Urobuchi sets up, his themes cannot comment on, describe, or illuminate anything in the real world because the way his system works is only within his constructed world. Which means though it can potentially function as a thought experiment or entertaining world for a story, it has no thematic weight at all.
Ah, this series... I don\'t know, I never saw it. But I did read a lot of stuff about this new \"genre\" that it created... It\'s generally really divisive. Everything that creates a big impact is going to generate a bit of a hype-backlash, I understand it... but, as weird as it is, I think it\'s more difficult to evaluate something that takes everyone by storm through innovation, because qualitative evaluations become difficult by contrasting it with other stuff that it originated. So, I want to ask, with a genuine but unsure spirit, what is the general feeling about the series? I mean, it seems negative from here, but who knows, maybe it\'s more divisive than negative.
I really don't want to brag or anything, but...
Much as I hate it, opinion tends to lean more positive than negative in the world overall. Much like most of Urobuchi’s work, honestly, with the notable exception of the animated Godzilla films.
Going by the MAL reviews it's got an overwhelmingly positive reception, which doesn't mean much by itself (but I must confess that I wasn't there when it landed on the scene). The people who wrote about how groundbreaking PMMM was probably haven't seen Revolutionary Girl Utena or Princess Tutu, as was previously mentioned. Both of these had better discussions around idealism. They most likely haven't seen Red Garden either, which is a gothic horror story about how four girls in New York City deal with doomed fates fighting the supernatural. In fact you'd be interested to know that these four girls deal with the same conflict Sayaka deals with but it's executed much better without Urobuchi's tendency for over-dramatic reactions out of characters. All three of these shows came out way before PMMM.
At the risk of being a snob, I've seen pretty much all the so-called experimental/avant-garde anime. PMMM was nothing groundbreaking or innovative and probably only took by storm those who aren't as familiar with the medium. After all, I've heard that it was the first magical girl show to have broad appeal. It can't pull the "too experimental to be judged by traditional metrics" card, especially when it is perfectly in line with Urobuchi's signature style.
@Goodvibrations
The designs of their Witches and their labyrinths, as well as the battles with Witches in general, are really stellar. They\'re my favorite part of the show, in part because they\'re one of the few parts where we\'re shown things rather than told them. Like, I really can\'t think of anyone who doesn\'t like the Witches. As for people who don\'t get them, they\'re a lot more common. Especially because a lot of important information about the Witches is frustratingly tucked away in various supplemental materials.
As a piece of visual media, it\'s technically impressive and well-composed. As a narrative, I think it\'s an excessive, incoherent mess with one-dimensional, inhuman mouthpieces in lieu of actual characters. As a product, I think it\'s sensational and exploitative, seeking to blindside viewers (especially those with little more than a passing familiarity with the genre) with a barrage of shock and awe and hollow drama. In that sense, it\'s really effective It can be very captivating!
It goes to great lengths to maintain an image of depth and maturity, and a lot of its symbolism is deliberately ambiguous. The cynic in me says that\'s to thwart more critical analysis, but, regardless, there\'s a lot to dig your teeth into if it happens to draw your interest. What exactly you\'re biting into is pretty rancid, however, for reasons discussed throughout.
Recynon, you're punching a strawman. Plenty of critics who praised PMMM had seen those shows; Jesuotaku, for instance, who also made a review of Red Garden (praising its horror aspects but deploring its mystery angle, plotting and much of the melodrama). And I have never seen anyone call it experimental or avant-garde, probably because it was made by the same director as Bakemonogatari, which has a similar visual style but more surreal and quirky. After that, PMMM felt pretty grounded. And I can say Utena does not compare. It's an intriguing study of people's place in society, but has none of the momentum or horror of PMMM.
PMMM is very different from most Magical Girl Warrior stuff, and not only in its horror; it is a short, plot-driven show, while most of them are long and character-driven with mostly monster-of-the-week battles. Because of that, its audience is quite different.
If you want to talk about whether it is exploitative, maybe the best comparison would be with the likes of Clannad, which panders to some of otakus' worst desires regarding cute girls, or School Days, whose ending was not really a shock but was playing up the gore.
(I am currently watching Uta Kata, an earlier magical girl show that goes dark, and I can say that whether or not it handles its themes well, it is pretty dull to watch.)
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
I admit that I don't watch magical girl shows (outside of Little Witch Academia and Tweeney Witches, both of which are considerably different than the norm of the genre) so maybe it is innovative with respect to that genre. Also, I'm not saying that people who praise the series haven't seen those shows, but rather that people who praise the series for being innovative haven't seen those shows. As for the experimental or avant-garde part, I'm only going on what Good Vibrations said about it being too different to be able to judge, which I don't think is the case even after reading what you said. Personally I've never heard much talk about it being that different outside of the obvious differences within the magical girl genre. I compared PMMM to Utena and Tutu because these shows play with fantasy ideals, while PMMM never really struck me as a horror show. I assumed that people were referring to its thematic exploration as what was so groundbreaking about it, not the choice to combine cosmic horror with a magical girl show and make it more plot driven. If its claimed innovation is really in that area, then I have no objection.
If you were still referring to me, I never claimed that it was exploitative.
I can't find Jesu Otaku's review of Red Garden, though I'd say it wouldn't be fair to complain about the melodrama in Red Garden if he's praising PMMM.
Well, we have to remember that the concept of "innovative" is really broad. In fact, I made a mistake: I should have said "influential", I don't actually know how innovative this series is. The fact that it was (is?) influential is pretty much accepted. I was just curious about the overall judgement. I decided to watch it and form my opinion. Thanks for the answers though... And the series proposed by Recynon all seem interesting, I should give a shot to all of them when I have a little bit more time. I was curious about this series in particular because it has a great number of reviews and reactions, both here and on MAL, so I got interested.
I really don't want to brag or anything, but...
PMMM was a huge hit, with plenty of spin-offs, but it took a while for anyone else to try cashing in on dark magical girls. Only two years later did we get Gen\'ei o Kakeru Taiyou, also known as Il Sole Penetra Le Illusioni, or as it\'s more often called, \"Shit Madoka\". A few more have followed, like that Spec Op Asuka thing, but overall it has few obvious imitators. It\'s very different from Evangelion, whose influence can be seen everywhere. So successful as it was, I\'m not sure if I would call it influential.
Jesuotaku\'s reviews were lost when Blip shut down, but you can find most of them mirrored on Youtube.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
I always thought that the it was imitated in the approach, I never meant to say that it has obvious clones. As I said, I haven\'t watched it, so I really can\'t judge right now.
I really don't want to brag or anything, but...
I think the genre is really irrelevant to what the show actually is; an incarnation of existential dread and the feeling of helplessness
I don’t think it’s supposed to be a deconstruction or anything though. It’s a Cosmic Horror Story merely masquerading as a Magical Girl show. As Elice said, the magical girl aspects are incidental to the actual point of the show. Besides, it’s a Seinen show, whereas ‘real’ Magical Girl shows are Shoujo, it’s supposed to be more serious.
Waterfall, Let the rain come wash away it all, One final overhaul, Until we dream no more
Saying it isn’t at least partly intended as an extremely dark take on traditional magical girl storytelling is extremely disingenuous, and that’s putting it politely.
That doesn\'t mean it\'s a deconstruction, though, which is the actual point being made. That some fans of PMMM take it that way is really more of an indictment of how misunderstood the term \"deconstruction\" is more than anything else.
And yet, I do think this extremely dark take on the traditional magical girl story structure was intended to comment on the genre and explore some of the darker consequences of its logical outcomes, like granting young girls’ wishes.
It just wasn’t done particularly well, so now fans of the series are trying to pretend it was never trying to do it in the first place because it reflects poorly on a piece of media they enjoy. Which is putting it impolitely.
Well, I think I'll avoid talking to you in the future. Don't feel like being around that kind of attitude if that's what you think is acceptable behavior. For any reason.
Well, I won’t pretend that doesn’t hit me at all. Lord knows, I’ve treated many other people on this site much the same way, albeit people either being significantly rude than I was just there or outright abusive.
But at the same time, I don’t think that saying the show is not trying in any way to comment on or examine genre troops is a good-faith argument, and the obvious conclusion to draw from there is that the people making it are moving the goalposts because they recognize on some level a show they like tried to do something, did a very bad job of it, and now needs to have this attempt swept under the rug no matter how big a bulge is left behind. And I don’t know what course of action there is when faced with such an obvious active bad faith than to either keep quiet and let them feel like they got away with it and no one noticed or point it out for what it is.
I have to say, I strongly disagree with a lot of the sentiments being expressed both in this review and the comments. I think this show holds up beautifully. Yes, it’s dark and the characters suffer a lot. But the point of that suffering is to make it clear just how necessary it is to change the system they’re trapped in, and show how noble characters like Homura and Madoka are for continuing to fight against it even as they lose time and again. Then in the ending of the series it shows not only how good Madoka is in her sacrifice, it also demonstrates that the characters efforts beforehand were necessary in order to reach this point. If Homura hadn’t made time revolve around Madoka, then Madoka would never have had the power to save all magical girls and rewrite the Incubators terrible system. The ending may be bittersweet, but it’s a lot more hopeful than bitter.
I'm a geek.
…And I should really slink away in silence, but, when someone whose even-handed reviews I respect shows up, I feel compelled to respond.
I will admit, it’s been a minute since I watched it. I was forced to do it by my college anime club, which probably had a negative impact on my viewing experience, I was a college boy at the time, which could easily have had a negative impact, and although I had not yet known Urobuchi’s name so that wasn’t a factor, I can confirm that in the years since I haven’t liked a single one of his new works and have soured on the one I used to like, ‘‘Fate/zero’’.
But I’m not only picked up on many of the original reviewer‘s criticisms of the ending you were praising, I also had to watch the movies and while I admittedly don’t remember much about them (I may have walked out in disgust?) I do remember feeling they negated that ending really hard in favor of more emotionally empty nihilism for angst’s and edge’s sake.
Princess Tutu deserving much of this show’s acclaim and success is also a sentiment of the original reviewer’s I share, though I hesitate to say it, simply because I know I personally have been turned off works I’ve never heard of permanently by the person who recommended them to me coming across as an obnoxious snob, which I am not sure I’m not sounding like.
I didn't want to continue this discussion because it'd make me seem like I'm going out of my way to hate on the show, but I feel like what I'm about to say is at least somewhat helpful for clarifying my points of critique;
For I don't entirely agree with the notion that the show is trying to be mean-spirited, nihilistic, and opposed to all heroism. Rather, it's trying to come off as smarter than it actually is because Urobuchi is trying to subvert and critique conventional notions of heroism and idealism, so he's trying to come up with ways to undermine the characters' attempts at heroism and idealism. You can look up interviews and you will see that this is his mindset. Which is not necessarily the same as saying that doing good is meaningless or that all attempts to do good are doomed to fail in the end (hence, why the show has a hopeful ending). After all, there are shows that are extremely dark and/or portray the characters suffering for an extended period of time, which I personally like or take much less issue with than Madoka Magica. So I get the whole idea of, portray a lot of bad stuff because the world is like that sometimes, but still offer hope in the end despite it all. So the problem is NOT that it's too angsty, too edgy, or too nihilistic (because it's not nihilistic).
The problem is, if you're going to show the consequences of blind heroism and idealism, and portray how fate can seem like it's programmed towards negative events, then you better do it right. Madoka Magica, in trying to make this point, forces nearly every single event such that it loses all thematic relevance and for me, believability. Thus, the darkness and suffering it portrays seems especially jarring and mean-spirited to some viewers because it seems forced by the hand of the author rather than natural. Think about it: if a story takes place in a war zone, people would not complain about the high amount of suffering and tragedy because it's expected. But when you have events like this (SPOILERS AHEAD):
-Kyouko's father turning crazy and killing his whole family, after being an extremely pious man, because he found out his followers weren't really voluntarily following his religion. -Kyouko reversing her stance on Sayaka from disliking her to sacrificing her life for her in a short time -Sayaka rapidly descending into existential despair because she thinks her crush wouldn't accept her new state as a magical girl. Functionally speaking, there's no difference and it bothered none of the other girls where their soul was located. And it's a fricking middle school crush. -Homura becoming so obsessed with Madoka after like two days of knowing her that she goes through who knows how many time loops in order to save her. -Madoka, this 14 year old girl, makes the decision to sacrifice herself and become God/Jesus basically, which has universal ramifications. -The idea that many of the women of power in history were magical girls and all of them suffered bad fates for their wishes because karmic balance -The idea that somehow the entropic heat death of the universe is negated by the suffering of little girls. -The idea that all positive things must be arbitrarily balanced out by negative things like karma was the IRS and was keeping track of everything. -The idea that magical girls are going to become witches no matter what, such that Madoka needed to rewrite the laws with her wish so that that doesn't happen.
(ENDSPOILERS)
Then the darkness/suffering is going to be much harder to accept. You can make somewhat plausible argument for any of these events/ideas individually, but all of these things together make the entire show feel completely forced, coincidental, arbitrary, artificial, etc. In addition, the moe/magical girl exterior hurts what it's trying to do, because the show is tackling extremely dark subject matter and more than Saturday-morning cartoon level ideas, which require a more grounded feel, tone, and characters to realize them. Spectral Time is right; the choice to masquerade as a magical girl show wasn't just to play with genre conventions for pure shock value; it's clear that the show is attacking the values of the genre for being unrealistic. Gen Urobuchi's interview with Ultra Jump Egg can't be found anymore, but at the time of my review it was still up and he specifically said that good intentions don't always lead to good results, and used religious extremist Osama Bin Laden as a real life example. CLEARLY this guy is trying to say something serious using the magical girl genre's optimism/idealism as a straw man and not just trying to make a cosmic horror story to evoke a feeling of dread and despair. It's not just doing this for excitement and suspense but to fuel a message, which is why it's so egregious. There's an agenda here and that's what's rubbing me the wrong way.
Because while I myself am not a fan of magical girl shows, the pure-hearted, innocent belief in such values is THE POINT. Magical girl characters have their charm and appeal BECAUSE they're unrealistically pure-hearted, innocent, and idealistic. Trying to make a point of subverting this characteristic is like making an action movie denouncing violence, or taking a show like Curious George and trying to portray a realistic scenario involving a monkey in the city in order to subvert it. There's no point and trying to do so comes off as "Hah! I'm so smart for pointing out that stuff that's obviously not meant to be taken seriously is unrealistic".
So basically the show is trying to bring in cynicism to a genre that's purposely and self-consciously optimistic and idealistic. The events that happen are dark but the characters are plucked straight from the magical girl stock archetypes with all the minimal depth and realism that those archetypes have. Whereas if you had realistic characters (AKA NOT MOE) in a realistic setting to begin with, like Red Garden, and then do the whole existential dread/doomed fate thing, and take your time to develop the numerous twists and turns, the whole thing would be much more natural, less heavy handed, and come off as a good faith attempt to simply tell a story than to make an asinine point. It'd still have tons of depressing, dark stuff happen, and still give off the message of hope in the end, but I wouldn't be complaining. Or, alternatively, sure, make the glossy, naively idealistic magical girl show in which the characters face relentless failure and all hope seems lost, only for them to keep fighting; that DOES NOT require a discussion around karmic destiny and the girls' wishes backfiring. Then it'd be like episode 16 "Failsafe" of Young Justice; heroes die in a genre where dying is rare, and you have all the cosmic horror you can eat, and NONE of the talk about karmic destiny, heroism, ideals, etc, nor the sudden shifts of character to fit the plot. You can ALSO say that this episode is a cosmic horror story that subverts the idealistic superhero genre. But that's not ALL that Madoka Magica is because it's trying to be more.
So in the end, you CAN enjoy the show as cosmic horror story masquerading as a magical girl show, and be on your merry way, and that's obviously perfectly fine, but I just hope to explain why some people can't avert their eyes from the intention behind it. If you don't agree about the show's intentions and don't think it has forced events, I don't want to argue over that, but I just don't want my viewpoint to be boiled down to "it was too edgy" or let it just be negated by "it wasn't trying to be a deconstruction because you don't know the definition of deconstruction". Like fine, it's a "subversion" but all my problems with it still remain.
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Excessive and Exploitative
Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a show that takes a genre centered around girls' empowerment and turns it into a series devoted to making young women suffer and die cruel, callous deaths.
This is not an exaggeration; it is an inescapable facet of the setting that only the energy produced by the overwhelming misery of young women can prevent the heat death of the universe. Even when Madoka obtains literally god-like power (through her repeated, increasingly horrific deaths in alternate timelines), she cannot alter this fundamental truth. Even after Madoka eliminates the monstrous emanations of all this suffering, the Witches, every Magical Girl is still fated to be fatally consumed by her grief and anguish.
This is a fate exclusive to Magical *Girls* as well. Girls alone are framed as the only people emotional and irrational enough to become Magical Girls (and, more importantly, Witches). The desires of PMMM's Magical Girls only ever hurt them; they are punished with a fate crueler than death for daring to wish for anything at all.
This punishment is not a merely a construct of the incubators, either. It is the central conceit of the setting itself. The ending, while framed as a bittersweet triumph over the cruelty of the incubator's Magical Girl system, only serves to dismantle that same systemic critique by framing the source of this exploitation as irrevocable natural law.
Even the most complex and compelling element of the series, the Witches and their deeply personal labyrinths, is ultimately undone by Madoka's apotheosis. Where before fallen magical girls achieved agency and self-expression through their inevitable corruption, they now find only death.
PMMM's thesis is one of punishment and passivity, where a girl's chances of finding happiness and fulfilment are inversely proportional to the lengths she goes to seek happiness out.
—
If PMMM were simply an earnest deconstruction of the unrealistic expectations embodied by conventional genre archetypes, I would find it at least defensible, if not distasteful and incoherent. But it's not. From its very inception, PMMM was intended to be a shocking, gruesome *subversion* of the magical girl genre, one written and produced by and for adult men. PMMM is little more than cynical, mean-spirited, and gorgeously stylized dreck attempting to pass itself off as groundbreaking critique.