Let's get to it.
Story
PMMM starts by following the protagonist, Madoka Kaname, a 14 year-old normal girl, who, besides having a strange dream with a dark environment and a lone girl fighting a sort of monster in the middle of a ravaged world, leads a normal life with a normal family in a normal ultra-futuristic house, goes to school to a normal ultra-futuristic school that looks like a mansion made of glass and has normal friends. As everything seems normal like always, a transfer student named Homura Akemi, who is definitely TRULLY normal and definitely NOT interested in Madoka, appears. After Homura saying some slightly creepy things about family, friends and shit to Madoka, the latter and her best friend, Sayaka Miki, go shopping in a music store. Suddenly, Madoka hears a voice in her head asking for help. She and Sayaka follows the direction of the voice and find a strange extra-terrestrial cat-like creature named Kyuubei, which is as unsuspicious as a rapist drug dealer. The unsuspicious cat is hunted down by the unsuspicious Homura. After Madoka and Sayaka get trapped in a strange and creepy world with mustached clouds, walking butterflies and flying scissors, they are saved by the golden-haired Mami Tomoe, who persuades Homura to leave. We then learn that Mami is a magical girl, whose mission is to hunt down witches that break the balance of the world, and that Kyuubei can make girls transform into magical girls. In exchange for hunting witches, the girl has the right to make any wish she wants, absolutely anything, and Kyuubei will grant it. Mami shows to Madoka and Sayaka how a magical girl lives and the nature of their mission. Every magical girl has an object called the Soul Gem, which works as a power source. However, every time they use their powers, the Soul Gem gets tainted with darkness. To solve this problem, they can use Grief Seeds, an item that drops out of witches after being defeated; by using them, magical girls can restore their magical energy and transfer the taint from the Soul Gem to the Gried Seed.
Despite the bizarre and creepy worlds the witches create to hide themselves, everything seems fine and the two girls get very enthusiastic about the whole idea of saving the world from evil witches. At that point, we already know that PMMM is not going to be like any other magical girl show, but until these parts, there's nothing extremely different from the others. The whole idea remains the same... Until THAT scene. The famous moment referred to as "That scene", is THE true changing point of the entire anime... and the entire genre. I won't say anything else about the story, otherwise it would mean major spoilers. From that point on, the anime turns into a very dark, dramatic and psychological show that I personally didn't see coming. After that moment, the story gets more and more twisted as we slowly learn more about the true meaning of being a magical girl, the secrets behind the contracts and see the different characters completely change; in one case, the changing goes180 degrees, and it gets very creepy and demented. The more the anime went on, the darker it was becoming. We were feeling the emotions and despair of the characters; I was getting closer and closer to them, because of the constant darkness and drama that this show had.
This anime really is something else. Normally, magical girl shows are cheerful, with bright light colors, happy endings and good vs evil fights with multicolored sparkles all over the place. PMMM is the complete opposite: dark colors, drama and tragedy, despair, tears and harsh reality. This is the pure example and definition of "genre deconstruction"; everything we knew about magical girl shows has been oriented to a completely different direction...And it is the reason why I consider this anime to be a masterpiece.
Characters
The characters of the show don't get into my favourites, but that certainly doesn't erase the fact that they are freaking amazing. We get to follow 5 magical girls, their ideals, intentions, personalities and backstories. Everything was executed to a level of perfection.
- Madoka Kaname, the main protagonist of the show. She is a very kind, gentle and caring girl from a loving family, who dislikes fighting, and would prefer magical girls to help each other, instead of competing over Grief Seeds. She sees herself as someone without any special qualities or talents, and aspires to become a magical girl and help people, after encountering Mami. According to Kyuubey, Madoka has one of the biggest potentials in becoming the strongest magical girl. While being very excited in becoming one at first, as the story and world become more and more twisted, she grows uncertain and hesitant. A big part of her character is her debate of becoming a magical girl or not.
- Homura Akemi, the black-haired girl, who acts cold and indifferent. She is harsh and is constantly trying to prevent the two girls, especially Madoka, from becoming magical girls. She doesn't like Kyuubei for... very understandable reasons. She seems unlikeable at first, and I even thought at a point that she may have been an enemy. The truth however, is very different. This girl has, imo, the saddest story out of all 5 girls, more than Sayaka, more than Mami and more than Kyoko. Everything she had to go through is so sad and depressing, it almost made me cry. She is a great character.
- Sayaka Miki, the tomboyish best friend of Madoka. She is an energetic and lively girl with strong ideals of lawfullness and love. She is protective of Madoka as a good friend and dislikes Homura from the very beginning. She builds a strong bond with Kyoko, even if they hated each other at first. She plays a very big part in the points of view of Madoka... and the way it's done is... wow, just wow.
- Mami Tomoe, the golden-haired big-breasted kind and cheerful girl, who however feels very lonely as she has no friends. Her primary resolution is to help others as much as possible, as a result of her past. She is a veteran magical girl and guides Madoka and Sayaka through her world. She became very close to Madoka who proposed she becomes her partner.
- Kyoko Sakura, a red-haired veteran magical girl. She is almost always seen with food, as she has a voracious appetite. Because of her past, she only uses her magic for herself and never shares anything with others. She clashes a lot with Sayaka when they first meet, but she gradually changes and accepts others through the influence of Sayaka. She was a honorable magical girl.
Then we have some supporting characters, like Madoka's mother, the love interest of Sayaka and the other friend of Madoka, Hitomi. All three of them have their roles on the story and provide to the development as well. All the characters in this anime are extremely well-done and built up. They have very fitting personalities, act logically to their ideals and emotions, and at no moment did I think there was something wrong with them. The character development is amazing and the interactions are executed at master level. Nothing is pushed, everything is placed at the characters' pace which is defnitely good. And finally, we have motherfucking Kyuubei, the bitch king itself. This cute little creature and its round, hypnotic red eyes have made many people dislike him, including myself. It's not that this character was done badly; it was actually very good, just like the others. But what he does and plans to do made me want to throw him into a pool of lava, after stabbing, shooting, crushing, smashing and cursing him with a voodoo doll. Yeah, I love him so much...
Awesome characters, certainly some of the best anime casts.
Sound
The soundtracks of PMMM was composed by the one and only Yuki Kajiura. Just by hearing this name, the compositor of the music in Fate/Zero, Tsubasa and Sword Art Online, someone should know that the music is going to be fantastic. And once again, she did a fantastic job. Every single music matches each scene perfectly, either it shows joy or drama or insanity or hope or crisis. One of them, "Sis Puella Magica" is right now my 5th favourite anime soundtrack ever; because the voice in the music is latin! It's not that I'm a fan of latin (I actually don't really care), but here is different. I am pretty sure that 85% of the time, anime soundtracks don't have voices, and when they do they are mostly japanese or english. But this one has latin! And it makes it that much more unique, deep and beautiful. The other soundtracks are amazing as well. The opening is "Connect" by ClariS, while the ending theme is "Magia" from holy Kalafina, whose amazing songs were also used in Kara no Kyoukai and Black Butler. I really liked both the opening and the ending. For the most part, the opening shows some generic-to-happen things, but towards the end of it, we see Madoka running with all her strength under the rain and after that, Madoka is facing Homura. The look on Madoka's face while she's running shows that real shit is happening now and that despair and dramatic events have taken over. The Madoka vs Homura scene at the very end shows the clash of ideals and goals between these two, even if at the final point they both want the same thing. The ending is much darker, both in music and visuals. Kalafina made, once again, a fantastic performance with this song; as it goes on, we follow Madoka passing by the other 4 girls and slowly penetrates into total darkness with no escape: it portrays very well the extreme dark fantasy and drama of the show. Finally, the voice acting: it was superb. Each voice actor really put a lot of effort into making the characters sound as the should, varying the tone of the voice, depending on their mental state and the situation they are in. Aoi Yuki, Chiwa Saito, Eri Kitamura, Kaori Mizuhashi and Ai Nonaka voice the 5 girls in the same order as the Characters part. Five great voice actresses for five great characters. It is perfect.
Animation
The animation was done by Shaft, well-known for the Monogatari Series. It was very clear and beautiful and a lot of effort was put into the details. The way it is done was something I hadn't seen before, so I was a bit surprised at first. But I need to say that this type of animation matched PMMM very well. The characters are cute, while they are surrounded by a dark reality. The most interesting part though, is the world of the witches. They are very interesting, mysterious and even at times creepy I mean, there are a lot of bizarre "creatures" in there; the witched themselves are strange-looking and creepy. Everything is these small worlds looks like it was made out of collage, from the monsters to the surroundings and environment, something which adds a lot to the dark aspect of the anime. The animation is extremely well done, both beautiful and dark at the same time, except the witches, which are creepy and dark.
Final Verdict
Story: 9.8
Characters: 9.5
Sound: 9.7
Animation: 9.6
Enjoyment: 10
Total: 9.72
Puella Magi Madoka Magica is at 100% a masterpiece, with perfect scores in everything. It is completely different from other magical girl anime and is the pure definition of "genre deconstruction". The only similar things are the transformations and the magical animal, and even that is not lovey-dovey happy bullshit. The story is very dark and dramatic with many psychological and tragic aspects, the animation is amazing, the music is marvelous, the voice-acting is superb and characters are very well-developed, each of them having their own specific personality and role in the story, even the mother.
This really is an anime that absolutely everyone has to watch: you will enjoy it, in a way or another; guaranteed.
This ends my 8th anime review. I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to comment in the comment section below, if you want to express your opinions on this anime. Thank you for reading.
Youtube account: http://www.youtube.com/user/scorpy163
MyAnimeList profile: http://myanimelist.net/profile/GoldenPincers
No comments:
Post a Comment