Puella Magi Madoka Magica Review

[IHaveNoMouth]

Animation 6/10
The show is plagued by horrendous animation and bland artwork to the point where you can easily notice poor quality moments in the first episode of the show. I am being deadly serious.
I appreciate that Shaft is a low budget studio (Shinbo probably spent all the masses of money they made from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei on more LSD) but the amount of off model shots is frankly embarassing. The promise that it will all be fixed on the bluray release just shows how far standards have fallen in the industry.
However the animation does have one saving grace; the abstract look of the witch fights (especially in the fight against Gertrud) is absolutely gorgeous. They are, however, far too fleeting to save the overall animation quality of the show.

Story 5.5/10
At first the story starts off being relatively interesting. Watching the show along with /a/ provided a fun experience as no one was really sure where the show was going to go. Once the series started to become darker things got a lot worse.
Note to writers everywhere: making your characters every waking moment utterly miserable and forcing drama IS NOT GOOD WRITING. It is not deep, it is not deconstructing genre conventions, it just makes the anime seem like it was written by a dumb teenager. Of course due to the average anime fan having the intelligence of a house brick; people praise the show just for being dark and having more realistic characters. Hell, TV Tropes manages to outdo itself and call it a "multi layered deconstruction". I'm sorry but any show that has a plot twist involving the universe constantly losing energy is not intelligent enough to be classed as a deconstruction of any kind.
And then theres the ending, which has to be one of the biggest ass pulls in anime history. The face that people compare this show to Neon Genesis Evangelion and Serial Experiments Lain is a massive insult to both of those series.
Well at least its not another light novel adaptation.

Music 8/10
While the opening theme leaves a lot to be desired (although it was in keeping with Shafts rather devious attempt at conning the early viewers into thinking that this was just going to be another magical girl show), in general the soundtrack for the show and in particular the ending theme Magia do a lot to enhance the mood of the series. Shame the plot and animation couldn't do it justice.

Overall 6/10
Despite a laughably stupid plot and hideous animation at points, the series still manages to be above average and better than most currently produced anime. Is it the next Evangelion? Sales wise, maybe. Quality wise, absolutely not. Maybe now Shaft has a successful original series under their belt they will make a quality, original show that doesn't fall victim to bad writing and animation. Until then, Shaft can take comfort in that for once they managed to make a series that was more entertaining than one of their opening sequences.

For discussion value, what are your thoughts on the series? I know that I'm hardly with the majority on this series

 

[Cowabungaa]

Just to point out, I clicked on this because it popped up in the little screen with topics on the far right of the main page. I am greeted by random stuff, and I have no idea what it's about. You should start out with a little summary/synopsis of what you're actually talking about here. Perhaps even what you expect, or what expectations the creators made, that sort of thing. Just a little tip.

 

[Solasty]

While I am not going to say your opinion is wrong, since it is an opinion, there are a few issues I have with your statements.

For anyone else reading, these are spoilers so consider yourself warned.

First of all, the universe constantly losing energy, I believe, is a perfectly fine plot device. First and foremost, it's good science. Entropy is a real concept and as far as I understand about it the universe is constantly losing "useful" energy. Now obviously channeling emotional energy into real useful energy requires a bit of suspension of disbelief, but for most animes that is a requirement.

To continue along those lines, I'd also like to believe that this twist adds a certain level of complexity to the situation. If this were not explained, Kyuubey would simply be a horrible contractor ruining the lives of teenage girls for his unknown agenda. Basically an absolute evil. What makes this more complex and even realistic is that while he may seem evil to those girls, he and his unknown society is working towards prolonging the life of the universe. Basically the relationship symbolizes the argument that is quite prevalent in anime: to sacrifice individuals for the greater good or to save the individuals in front of you.

Secondly, you are criticizing the writers for making the characters miserable for the majority of the series. My question to you would be why would they not be? To recap on the plot, they were at first happy about the entire idea of being magical girls, heroines. Then Mami, their friend and mentor, was killed in a battle. Shortly thereafter, they find out that not only are they not human anymore but that they will become witches, the very things that killed Mami. During that time, Sayaka finds out her friend is also in love with Kamijou. I believe this is not that uncommon in the real world and thus a perfectly viable side plot. At any rate, Sayaka then becomes depressed and becomes a witch who they now have to fight. That's when Kyouko sacrifices herself to stop Sayaka because no one wanted to kill her.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by it's not realistic or that it was written by a dumb teenager. As far as I understand, the story happens over a very short span of time and they are beset by tragedy upon tragedy. Realistically speaking they SHOULD be depressed and miserable. As said in the show they're normal girls. They're not sociopaths. They can't just start laughing with each other after their friends have been killed in front of them. I would call that bad writing.

While I understand this is just your opinion and that you are entitled to hate it for the reasons you have written here, I'm posting this not just to try to sway your opinion a little bit or at least make you reconsider some of the finer points of your hate but to hopefully provide a counter argument to potential viewers of what I consider to be a excellent anime.

 

[DaphneRose]

Most likely spoilers will be involved in this. Don't read if you don't want to know.

I don't agree with most of what you have to say and usually I'd be fine with that. But it sounds like you're trying to be brutal for the sake of being brutal.

I'll agree that some of the animation was bad. But the anime was a deconstruction of the magical girl trope and, frankly, it does it well. Likewise, I felt the girls' reactions were fairly realistic, considering the circumstance. Out of curiousity, how are preteen girls supposed to act when they see their friend murdered/sell their souls away/realize that they will eventually become witches and the cattle of some alien race? And they can't stop and just live a normal life without risking their friends or loved one, which is established early on. I feel that they were quite right in being miserable (though we only really see the extremes of that in one character, who breaks down and commits a type of suicide). After all, they're risking their lives and in the end, I think all but one of them is killed.

The characters were generally bland or, in some cases, over the top. But the anime set out to do something and did it. In fact, it's probably one of the best deconstruction of the magical girl series yet. Is the odd little animal's reason for utilizing them very strange and farfetched? Yes, of course. But they needed a macguffin to help steer the series in a totally new direction. And it works for this series. Parallel dimensions and time traveling go hand in hand with that. What's more, utilizing the entropy and heat death theory, which is a very real thing [http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2009/10/05/new-calculations-suggest-universe-may-be-a-bit-closer-to-heat-death], was actually a very clever and realistic twist.

For something you deem better than average, it doesn't really seem like it. Being more objective would probably help people take you more seriously.