Meet "Madoka"

Spoilers ahead.

The "Madoka Magica" anime franchise is one that I've been meaning to watch for a long time. When I was in my full-time otaku phase, I had a special interest in the "magical girl" genre, shows about girls who used magical powers to fight evil. "Madoka Magica" has gained a reputation for being a notable title in the genre, because it crossed over the typical, cutesy,"magical girl" story with more disturbing horror elements. It marks the inevitable culmination of a couple of 2000s era trends, the most important being that most of the "magical girl" shows were no longer aimed at little girls, a shrinking audience, but at adult anime fans, and catered to their tastes.

I decided to watch the "Madoka" movie trilogy. The first two installments, "Beginnings" and "Eternal," are made up of re-edited footage from the twelve episode "Madoka" series - with some tweaks and improvements. I was familiar with compilation films from other anime, but I'd never used them as a starting point before. Watching the first two "Madoka" films back to back felt like I'd binge-watched the entire series, which was perfectly fine. In fact, given the nature of the show, it turned out to be the much better option for me, because it meant I could skip opening and ending sequences, recaps, previews, and filler. However, I made a mistake in choosing the original subtitled versions to watch. Madoka is a "moe" heroine, whose chief defining quality is being innocent or cute. I find "moe" heroines tiresome, and Madoka is the most insufferable variant too - the whimpery, helium-voiced, super-empathetic sad-sack who is perpetually on the verge of a tearful meltdown. Aoi Yuki's performance as Madoka was incredibly hard on my ears.

Fortunately, Madoka is only one of five girls who feature in the show, the others being her bestie Sayaka (Eri Kitamura), older mentor Mami (Kaori Mizuhashi), a brash delinquent, Kyoko (Ai Nonaka), and a sinister transfer student, Homura (Chiwa Saito). The story starts with Madoka and Sayaka being approached by a cat-like creature called Kyubey (Emiri Kato), who offers them a deal to become magical heroines and fight evil witches, in exchange for having a wish granted. And because "Madoka Magica" is a subversion of the typical "magical girl" show and aimed at grown-ups, the deal turns out to be a terrible trap. Homura is eventually revealed to be the show's real protagonist, and her goal is to keep Madoka from taking the deal and becoming a magical girl, no matter what. The situation becomes more and more dire, and all the girls either end up dead or terribly traumatized - though there are certain metaphysical workarounds to counteract this.

"Madoka" largely sticks to the "magical girl" formula. You have the glitzy transformation sequences, the battle costumes, the magical weapons, and in the end, female friendship may be everyone's salvation. However, creators Gen Urouchi and director Akiyuki Shinbo, deviate from form in significant ways. Common "magical girl" tropes, like the talking animal mascot/sidekick and the magical totems become scary and harmful. Personal issues like disillusionment and possessiveness are no longer minor hurdles to overcome, but magnified to the point of out-and-out soul destroying horror. And it's the horror anime like "Elfen Lied" and "Higurashi When They Cry" that I found myself comparing "Madoka" to, though "Madoka" doesn't go nearly as far as those titles do in the shock and gore department. Still, there's often the same queasy sort of mismatch between the cutie characters and the horrible things they're exposed to.

Stylistically, "Madoka" looks like just about every other show from ten years ago featuring "moe" girls. The designs are so derivative (busty sempai, childish heroine, delinquent with a fang), you can tell a girl's personality type before she even opens her mouth. It makes the show look pretty blah, and this is a shame, because there's a lot of creativity at work in "Madoka." The action scenes and monsters incorporate a lot of collage art, putting the girls into these surreal landscapes of paper figures and found objects. Bits of design work and illustrations from many interesting sources find their way into the backgrounds. The animation is pretty basic, but it's evocative and does the job of making the girls feel emotionally relatable. The third and final movie, "Rebellion," has better production quality all around, and is able to manage a few impressive fight scenes.

It's also in "Rebellion" that "Madoka" really becomes a subversive work. The original resolution of the series was a hopeful one, negating much of the terror and darkness wrought by the villains. "Rebellion" delivers a nihilistic twist ending that uses the "love conquers all" theme to doom one of the characters instead of saving her. It's not handled in the best way - think "End of Evangelion" levels of apocalyptic imagery and narrative obtuseness - but it's a gutsy move and helps "Madoka" to leave more of an impact.

In the end, I came away respecting "Madoka" more than I enjoyed it. There are just too many creative choices I couldn't get behind, from the weepy heroine to the character designs that make even the adult women look like owl-eyed toddlers. But, all props for trying something different, and committing to the idea.

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