Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Puella Magi Madoka Magica is one of those weird shows — you know the kind. It's one of those series that doesn't have anything noticeably wrong with it, nor anything outrageously awesome going on, but I find that the fanboy community loves it a whole lot more than I ever possibly can or will. It's like a twisted, uneasy Sailor Moon, but it never takes its own macabre elements as far as I felt it needed to in order to really make an impression. To me it's just another (but darker and moodier) magical girl show with a waterhead as the lead character.

Madoka Magica is all about this little mousy, ho-hum girl (with no abilities, talents, or dreams whatsoever) named Madoka Kaname who helps rescue Kyubey (a little white cat-bunny creature that can talk to her telepathically) from her new classmate, Homura Akemi, who also happens to be a grumpy-pants magical girl who hates the always smiling/smirking Kyubey because, well, for the first obvious reason I'd say because Kyubey is one of the creepiest fucking things ever drawn. But also because the familiar creature (familiar as in "an animal, as a cat, that embodies a supernatural spirit and aids a witch in performing magic," but the disturbing Kyubey is also familiar in the fact that he looks like an albino Ryo-Ohki) likes to talk nice girls into giving up their normal lives in service to the vague cause of becoming puella magi (magical girls) and hunting down naughty witches for sport.

See, it turns out that evil, nasty witches are apparently always tooling around unnoticed by normals, trying to corrupt innocent souls and cause death and destruction and delirium all around them... Oh what terrible creatures they are. Anyway, Kyubey likes the cut of Madoka's jib and tries to recruit her and her pal Sayaka into signing a mystical, binding contract with her wherein the little white floppy turd would grant the girls a wish each, and they'd become puella magi and put their lives on the line daily in the fight against the powerful (and really twisted) witches that have started appearing all over town.

SPOILERS (Really... I'm not fucking around. I warned you.)

Homura apparently thinks that being a puella magi kind of sucks though, and tirelessly attempts to keep Madoka from jumping into an agreement with the little cabbit fucker (which should be easy, since Madoka is so dense she can't even think of one wish to make in order to seal the deal with Kyubey in the first place). But despite a puella magi good friend of Madoka's getting killed in the line of magical whore duty in a most untriumphant way right in front of her eyes, and Madoka seeing so much pain and suffering just by being in the presence of some other witch hunters, she of fucking course finally contracts herself out to Kyubey (despite every super convincing reason Homura ends up telling her about her directly causing Ragnarok and whatnot) because she is legally retarded. Then shit turns sour and we have to watch the universe take a giant, fetid dump all over the moron and her pretty idyllic life — not to mention the world as a whole getting shat upon by the rancid ass of the universe — and then we watch it again, and again thanks to a quite ineffectual time traveler.

That's pretty much the whole point of the show: watching these girls trade their comfortable, loving-family-filled lives for ones of heartache, pain, and nightmares for NO DAMN GOOD REASON at all (and it's usually their own wishes that end up fucking their lives over in the first place, because they're all stupid). Despite being 14 years-old, Madoka especially makes all of her decisions with the logic and thought patterns of a 3 year-old child. A dumb 3 year-old.

I found myself frustrated with this show from the first episode, but it took me till around episode 6 to realize why: Madoka reminded me so much of that kid in your high school class who you felt so sorry for because she was so nice, but sooooooo fucking stupid, and so you try to befriend her only to find that she's just so goddamn simple-minded that you want to strangle her the minute she starts talking. My god! Why won't she shut up about all that shit that nobody cares about! She's not even that cute and constantly looks like she's about to fall asleep! Why did I ask her out and then fuck her behind the 7-11 that one Friday in March?! Thank Christ on a crutch my family moved after that school year, or I swear I would have killed her with a brick. I am so glad I told her I was moving to Yemen so she never tried to follow me... But I digress — my point is the character of Madoka is a total dipshit and I found no sympathy for her or her plight that she brought upon herself, especially after she was warned by a time-traveling friend multiple times to stop doing those stupid things. Well, she kept doing those stupid things even after the many, many warnings, which then caused her X-Men Bishop-like pal to have to go back in time yet again, and again, suffering and causing betrayals and ludicrous amounts of pain each time she did in a vain effort to stop the madness one more time.

Oh, and as someone just reminded me, Madoka is far from the only mongoloid in this show. Let's take a look at her best friend Sayaka's thought process over the course of this story: "Magical Girls! Happy happy joy joy! HOLY SHIT! That blonde chick just got her fucking HEAD BITTEN OFF by a goddamn MONSTER!... Boy, I sure hope that Debbie Downer of a guy I get all moist over gets his broken hand healed so he can diddle me.... OH! I'll make a contract with that demon cat, and with my super mega wish (my wish that I could use to create lasting world peace if I so chose, or have them make a new Guns and Roses album with the original band all participating) I'll wish that a wimpy boy has his hand fixed!... Then I'll leave him alone and let my even wimpier friend bang him... Then I'll GET MAD! GRRR! RAGE! WARGARRBLE!..... Now I'm dead :("

End scene.

END SPOILERS

I did like certain things about this series though — I mean, it's not like I disliked every aspect of it due to Madoka and her friends' lack of brain activity, but that was such a negative experience and left such a stupid impression on me that it really hurt my enjoyment of the show as a whole.

I really did like the creepy vibe that pervaded the series right from the start. Even in the first episode, where everything should have been sweet and cheery and innocent, there was an overall mood of dread — like there is something very wrong with the futuristic and slightly magical world that we're watching, but we just can't seem to place our finger on it. It really is a one-of-a-kind ambience of unsettledness. I also truly enjoyed the music (bgm and songs), and I did like the way-more-complicated-than-I-ever-thought-it-would-be last few episodes... Storywise at least. I just never grew to love (or even like) Madoka or her friends. Honestly, I really thought they totally deserved the crap sandwiches they themselves chose to eat. No, wait, I stand corrected: I liked Homura and appreciated her tenacity, but I still wanted Madoka to fail, and although it was fun to watch her do so (like it came so easily to her), when you take a step back and realize that you're cheering for the main character to die a painful death instead of saving the day you have to wonder why you're wasting your time with the series in the first place.

So in the end, what'd I think of Puella Magi Madoka Magica? It never really made me love it. With all the praise it had been receiving I thought it was going to be a total grand slam, but by the final episode I just felt like "Ummm, oooookay? Really? That was the big show to beat this season?" It tried so hard to be unique, but that's all it had going for it. It should have put some effort into enjoyable personalities too. When the main character is such a maroon that I just can't root for her and her self-imposed stupid path that she chooses (over and over again) it seems like the show failed on some epic level. I give this series 52 out of 78 Magic Wands of Magnificence. The story itself is not really terrible (plot isn't its problem; it's a far, far cry from being Dragonaut bad), and with different characters I would have probably given it a 70 out of 78 Magic Wands of Magnificence.

If you have a high tolerance for stupid people you might enjoy it, but I think you can skip it.

Yo, this was like watching an animated Forrest Gump, but with an asston of Southern, inbred, retard girls instead of just Tom Hanks and his slutty whore Jenny. So much dumb shit keeps happenin, G, and it's all easily preventable. Oh, and that goddamn cat-rabbit thingamabob.... could they MAKE a little creature that was more flesh-crawlingly evil? No. The answer is no.

Really now, what is up with all the grown men who love the shit out of this crap? There were Japanese men who was all claimin' that they couldn't die until they saw how Madoka Magicana ended when its last two eps were pushed back a month after the 9.0 Japanese earthquake in March. Really? I can see wanting to keep on livin' until The Hobbit or The Avengers comes out, but having to make it until the last few eps of a magical girl show airs?.... I hope your death is extremely violent and painful, bub.

Dumb, dumb dumb dumb duuuuuuuuuuuuumb! I think you're as dumb as that Madoka broad if you take this to be good entertainment.

I reckon I really like this show for the main reason that it makes finding fairies on web forums that much easier when they claim an unending love for it.

Let me explain something to you, guys.... This. Is. A. Magical. Girl. Show. A show about a little girl who makes a wish with a talking cat and then transforms into a flowery costume and fights bad witches. You are most certainly gay if you like it. No, it doesn't matter if you claim "Bu-bu-but it's daaarrrrrrrrk! It's so dark that it's grown up and okay to li~ike it." No, you're gay. Start practicing swallowing kielbasa whole. And get off the interwebs.

This crap is why we can't have nice things.