I suppose if anything was going to get me to write Too Late
Reviews again, it would be a show that I obtained a couple years ago and didn’t
bother attempting to watch for thirty months.
Better yet, I finished watching this show about two months ago and didn’t
bother writing anything about it until now.
The anime series that I will review today is the show
“Puella Magi Madoka Magica”. Yeah, it’s not
the best title for an anime. I’m going
to be quite hampered in writing this review by the fact that this show is one
of the best misdirection shows that I’ve run across. I suppose that the best thing to do in order
to review the show is to write a paragraph describing the things that the show
does generally and then to put up a “spoiler space” sign below so that I can
discuss the plot on more depth.
The back-of-the-envelope summary of this show is that it is
a magical-girl anime. Middle-school girls are tasked with the protection of the
world against creatures that would do havoc to the people around them. While the animation in the “real world”
segments of the show is conventional, when the magical girls are fighting their
foes, the animation changes to a hybrid of CGI and the previous 2D, and the
segments are very interesting as a fan of design.
The other point to make about this show is that it is very
short, only twelve episodes. This is an
anime that can be consumed in a very short time, over a single Saturday if you
so choose. The shortness does help, it’s
a complex show and the viewer may very well want to rewatch the show, I know
that I really wanted to see it again when I finished the first time. If I may though, I think that the best method
is to watch one episode every day or perhaps two at the most, because it’s also
a show that needs to be digested. Its short
length means that the plot goes by pretty quick and if you run it through too
quick, you may miss a couple of rather important points.
It’s hard to come up with a good analogy with this show,
because it is legitimately one of the first shows of its kind that I
watched. This show is like watching a
building come together. The show builds
a solid foundation, gets to work on its first floor, builds out a fascinating
plot, and then next thing you know you realize that the foundation is
completely different than you realized at first, but that the building is that
much more fascinating as a result. As previous warning, about the only
complaint that I had about this show would be its ending… but the complaint is
minor, and the show itself is worth watching just for the imagination put into
the plot and the design work.
SPOILER SPACE HERE
As before, this IS a magical girl anime. Madoka is the sweet little girl of a rich
family in Japan, whoise mother is a kick-butt VP and her father is a
stay-at-home dad to her baby brother.
She goes to school at a rich private academy with all the latest in
school gadgets. A new student comes in,
who has been “sick” for the last couple semesters, and she (Akemi) takes an
immediate interest in Madoka. While
Akemi needs medicine at the nurses station (and knows where it is, oddly) she
also manages to be the best athlete.
Akemi also manages to drop cryptic warnings to Madoka about only being
who she should be.
Madoka ends up getting into trouble later and runs into the
‘cute anime mascot’, Kyube (think Q-Bay), who was hunted by someone. It turns out that the hunter is a huntress –
Akemi. Akemi lets Kyube go, but not
without more warnings to Madoka. In the meantime, one of the evil beings in
this anime – witches – shows up and causes havoc. Madoka and Kyube watch as
Mami, a magical girl, takes care of the problem. Mami and Kyube know each
other, and Mami serves as the first backstory guide.
In essence, Kyube helps these girls to become magical girls,
and also gives the girl a wish in exchange for her services. The girl then starts to fight these witches,
who when defeated drop “grief seeds” that allow the Puella Magi to recharge their
magic.
Mami is rather clear-headed about the whole process, talking
to Madoka and her friend about the choices that they have to make about
becoming Puella Magi. Madoka is content
to listen mostly to Akemi’s warning, but her friend does decide that she’s
going to become a Puella Magi, and uses her wish to wish that a classmate she
has a crush on is healed from his injuries in an accident, allowing him to play
the violin again. With that, Madoka is
pulled ever more deeper into the story… even though she’s not defeating any
witches, or having any of the story elements affecting her… … yet…
SPOILER SPACE OVER
The plot starts running fast and furious at this point, and
I really can’t do this show justice if I keep reviewing the action. Suffice it to say that this is one of the few
shows that display actual consequences to characters’ actions and that this is
also one of the few shows that I have seen that really raises the stakes and
ends up being somewhat of a roller-coaster through the end of these twelve
episodes, including the redemption of characters that come straight out of
left-field. Practically everything in
this show is explainable and logical, and for someone who reads thin plots as a
matter of fandom, I was floored.
There is no sequel planned for this show. In a way, that is
actually somewhat satisfying, because if ever there was a self-contained story
with few loose ends, this is it. If you
are a person that wants to find out what happens to the characters “after”
though, you might be slightly disappointed.
This review might not be as humorous as past reviews, but I
definitely want to show how much I regard this show. It receives a 4.0 on my
four-point scale. This is because if you’re
anything like me, you’ll want to
watch this show again to see all of the little clues that added up to the ending
that was written for the show and realize the subtlety that the writers and director
used… and if you’re a writer or similar, you might find some awesome hints for
good writing in the future. This show is
highly recommended.
