This is why I love(d) Madoka Magica

Madoka Magica has the per­fect one-two combo to utterly tank with its end­ing. Firstly, a large part of the shows appeal is the shock value from plot twists and reveals. Not to under­rate the overly­ing themes in the anime, but the twists lose their value sig­ni­fic­antly in ret­ro­spect if the end­ing they were lead­ing up to fails jus­tify the emo­tional energy you put into them. Secondly, the char­ac­ters are for­get­table. Their stor­ies are fas­cin­at­ing, but as people they have little per­son­al­ity that I can bring myself to care about.

I can think of two anime that had these two points plus a miser­able end­ing that caused my opin­ion of the show to tank com­pared to my enthu­si­asm I had for it while watch­ing it, those two anime being Ride Back and Mai Hime. While Madoka Magica is a sig­ni­fic­antly bet­ter show than both of these, these points about the reli­ance on plot twists and for­get­table char­ac­ters remain the same. As of time of writ­ing, Madoka Magica has had 10 out of it’s planned 12 epis­ode run aired and is cur­rently set up beau­ti­fully and dan­ger­ously for a dread­ful end­ing. This post is both to explain to those of you now why I love this show and a mes­sage to future me, should the end­ing tank, that there was a reason why I was so enthu­si­astic about Madoka Magica.

Fair warn­ing: There will be spoil­ers, up to epis­ode 10.

I hes­it­ate to use the word ‘sub­ver­sion’ when describ­ing Madoka Magica, as it’s a word thrown around by many, not under­stand­ing what it is Madoka is sub­vert­ing in the first place. What I see is a group of girls, who oth­er­wise would spend their time eat­ing cake, being cute and gen­er­ally being insuf­fer­ably nice to each other, hav­ing great powers given to them and then made to suf­fer because of it. This power is that of hav­ing their wish gran­ted in exchange for being a magical girl, some­thing other magical girl anime, and anime stor­ies in gen­eral, paint as being a glor­i­ous thing. How­ever in Madoka Magica, this wish and power bring each char­ac­ter noth­ing but des­pair. Not only do their lives effect­ively end because they became magical girls and suf­fer in the gruelling battles against the witches, their wishes that are meant to be an equi­val­ent trade off bring them noth­ing but more mis­for­tune as well.

Sub­ver­sion or not, the main appeal of Madoka Magica is what a per­fectly told story it is. There’s a very delib­er­ate and clear path behind each character’s devel­op­ment. While she is far from the fan favour­ite, I’ve been find­ing Kaname Madoka’s devel­op­ment the most fas­cin­at­ing, espe­cially in con­trast with altern­ate dimen­sion Madoka in epis­ode 10. Because of her own wimp­i­ness and not becom­ing a magical girl, she keeps draw­ing more and more into her­self, get­ting increas­ingly depressed with everything that hap­pens to the girls around her. Shaft’s anim­a­tion, often one that is more gimicky than use­ful, add hugely to the story-telling here. The altern­ate dimen­sions of the witches are fright­en­ing and bizarre places. The back­grounds have become increas­ingly dreary as the series goes on, mim­ick­ing the change in tone and depres­sion of Madoka. Also spe­cial credit has to be given for the way they frame Kyubey.

Kyubey is mag­ni­fi­cent. In a show with a cast of rather for­get­table char­ac­ters, if mem­or­able stor­ies, Kyubey stands out as the most fas­cin­at­ing and deadly vil­lain since Johan Liebert of Mon­ster. Again, full credit has to be given to Shaft’s art­work and how they frame Kyubey. How his shad­ows cast over the girls, stand­ing on their shoulders or their win­dowsills, push­ing Madoka into becom­ing a magical girl her­self. How they fre­quently draw atten­tion to his unmov­ing expres­sion, one that doesn’t change no mat­ter what latest cata­strophe these girls he per­son­ally made magical girls face.

But what really makes him so chilling is how he simply doesn’t under­stand. What we and the char­ac­ters see as evil is at a level he can­not com­pre­hend. Kyubey isn’t evil, and never was, which is pre­cisely why he works so well. Pos­sibly the best line in the anime came in his con­ver­sa­tion with Madoka and why he made them magical girls, say­ing “if you feel like sac­ri­fi­cing your­self for the uni­verse, give me a call”. The heat death of the uni­verse is so far bey­ond any­thing Madoka her­self can com­pre­hend or care about, entropy not hav­ing any effect for a bizz­lion odd years, but equally Kyubey can’t under­stand why his actions cause the girls to hate him so much.

There are some prob­lems with Madoka Magica though. Well, one spe­cific prob­lem. The char­ac­ters are dull. Their stor­ies are fas­cin­at­ing, cer­tainly. I’ve got­ten pretty emo­tion­ally inves­ted in the wimpy­ness of Madoka and Homerun-chan the time trav­el­ling les­bian, but as people they simply don’t have much per­son­al­ity. Without Kyubey, this would just be yet another anime about a bunch of incred­ibly dull girls being insuf­fer­ably nice to each other, except with some occa­sion­ally nice visu­als. Well, not all nice visu­als. I’m rather par­tial to the square-head design of the char­ac­ters, but their facial fea­tures go rather array when the shot of it is any­thing other than a close-up.

Over­all though, Madoka Magica is pretty fant­astic anime. It’s per­fectly con­struc­ted and very delib­er­ately paced, keep­ing enough rev­el­a­tions with each epis­ode to keep it riv­et­ing while keep­ing to the themes of the story without des­cend­ing into shock tac­tics for the sake of keep­ing out interest. They have to keep the twists com­ing, oth­er­wise the story would flounder when stuck with these bor­ing char­ac­ters, but it hasn’t done that once over the course of the show. Well, per­haps bar the first two epis­odes, but the speed at which it upped the ante after set­ting the scene means I’m will­ing to for­give the show for that.

So that is why I love(d) Madoka Magica. The end­ing still has the capa­city to capit­u­late, although after epis­ode 10 I have more faith in them pro­du­cing an end­ing I’m happy with. If so, then the main point of this post is made redund­ant. How­ever if I can trade one of my posts being made use­less in return for a Cart Driver qual­ity level end­ing for Madoka, then I’m more than happy to do so.