I watched Madoka
Magica back when it was airing and I recall not being very impressed with
it back then, but I was blasting through it in Japanese and there was a long
hiatus due to earthquake. I don’t know why I was so underwhelmed with the
series. I didn’t hate it outright, but I wasn’t spazzing over it like everyone
else seemed to be.
For those of you who don’t know, Madoka Magica (full title is Puella
Magi Madoka Magica) is as follows: After experiencing a bizarre dream,
Madoka Kaname, a kind 14-year-old girl, encounters a magical creature named
Kyubey. Madoka and her friend Sayaka Miki are offered the opportunity of
gaining magical powers if they agree to make a contract with the strange little
being. He will also grant them one wish, but in exchange they shall risk their
lives by accepting the responsibility of fighting witches. Invisible to human
eyes, witches are catalysts of despair in the areas they inhabit. An ally of
Kyubey, a magical girl named Mami Tomoe, befriends and encourages the two girls
to accept the contract. For an unknown reason, another magical girl named
Homura Akemi is determined to prevent Madoka from accepting the deal.
At first glance, the series doesn’t seem like anything
special. It’s just doing some of the same old anime things and the same old
magical girl tropes. The opening sequence, for example, displays a very typical
magical girl transformation from Madoka, the protagonist. But the show soon
separates itself from the rest of the bunch in episode three.
But the first two episodes are a lot of world building and
the character and architecture designers showing off their stuff. We get a view
of their “world of tomorrow” world they’re in, which includes some high tech
stuff, some tech that equals our own, and building designs right out of the
future magazines us nerds like to drool over occasionally.
What really impressed me, and continues to impress me, is
the character designs and the architecture designs in the series. Each of the
dresses for the magical girls are extremely outlandish and (I’m probably citing
the wrong era here, but whatever) very Victorian-era in the details. And each
girl has their own color scheme (Mami-yellow, Homura-black/white, Kyoko-red,
Sayaka-blue, Madoka-pink), which sets them apart from each other very well
(they look kind of like this: http://tinyurl.com/7qwoulq). But
it’s not just the character designs, which look stunning and set the characters
apart from any other series I’ve seen. It’s the architecture. I’m not big on
architecture, but I was stunned by the amount of detail and thought they must
have put into the designs here. If we isolate it to just Madoka’s house, it is
two stories with a glass décor and the inside isn’t half bad either with
weaving polygons of structure and glasswork that makes you want to live there
because of how cool it looks.
Where the designers are really showing their stuff is in the
witches world. The one I’m thinking of in particular doesn’t appear until episode
three (I believe), but it is more cartoon-y than any other creature I’ve seen
prior to this series. And it brings out your deepest psychological fears about
clowns that you didn’t even know you had (hyperbole, but go along with it). I
was even more stunned about the visuals in these worlds than I was with the
previous two episodes combined. They really are straight out of a child’s
nightmares and the witches that the magical girls fight against are very much
the same; scary, cartoonish, and often grotesque in ways I didn’t realize were
grotesque.
The progression of the series itself is done at a brilliant
pace and character developments are done before we even know they’re going on.
Having not remembered the series very well, I found myself asking why certain
characters were acting the way they were acting. But they get to the end of
their sentence and reveal this huge character backstory that explains their
initial hostility and the eventual resolve between the two characters.
The gradual reveal of both the world and of the character’s
motives is very in pace with the show’s own antagonist. So if you’re watching
the show and you find yourself unable to grasp what exactly is going on, it’s
because they want it to be that way. Everything will reveal itself as it moves
along in the story.
The acting in the series from the English dub actors is
above par, which is interesting considering they used unknowns and relative
unknowns to the voice acting community. Christine Marie Cabanos as Madoka
Kaname is excellent, on par with what I remember from Aoi Yuki’s Japanese
performance. And I can say with utmost certainty that Cassandra Lee eclipses
Emri Kato’s performance of Kyubey in my mind. I think my favorite actor thus
far has been Carrie Keranen as Mami Tomoe, but the entire vocal cast and dub
script has been absolutely amazing. I’ve seen bad scripts and I’ve heard bad
voice acting, but Madoka Magica
contains neither of those. I am continuously stunned at how these adults can
sound like junior high kids, yet still sound so mentally mature.
Thus far, the series has been absolutely amazing. I cannot
for the life of me determine why I didn’t enjoy the series this much when I was
watching it in Japanese. Maybe my subconscious was making me feel bad for
pirating it and thus making me enjoy it less. Well, now I own the limited
editions with the DVD, the blu-ray, and the soundtrack. So take that past me
for pirating things.
If you are a fan of fantastical magical worlds, most
definitely pick this show up. If you dislike magical girl shows, give the show
three episodes and I almost guarantee that you will enjoy yourself. This show
has every facet, to me: characters, plot, pacing, world building, character
building, designs of both the worlds and the characters, and a brilliant dub
cast.
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