Last time when talking about Sailor Moon, I mentioned that there was another show that had to be addressed when it came to studying the growth and evolution of the Magical Girl genre. There are plenty of other big, famous landmarks in the genre, like Lyrical Nanoha or Pretty Cure, but the game-changing elephant in the room is Madoka Magica.
In some senses, it feels almost perfunctory to talk about Madoka, the same way it did to discuss Neon Genesis Evangelion. But as with Neon Genesis Evangelion, I need to establish a baseline to talk about other works, both the two remaining in the Magical Girl May series this year (yes, I’m actually going one week into June) and any other post-Madoka Magical Girl show I may choose to review in the future. So, let’s dig right in.
The show opens in media res. Our main
character, Madoka Kaname, runs through a bizarre place, before
emerging into a ruined city, watching a dark-haried magical girl
fight a gigantic enemy. The girl is losing, beaten and bloodied, but
the show’s cute little mascot creature says she has the power to
change this outcome by making a contract and becoming a magical girl.
At this point Madoka wakes up, and the
opening is left as a weirdly prophetic dream for most of the show.
Madoka goes to school with her friend Sayaka Miki, where she
encounters the new transfer student, the dark-haired girl from her
dream. That girl, Homura Akemi, has a cold attitude but a strange
seeming interest in Madoka.
After school, Madoka is drawn by some
psychic pleading to quite a scene: The cute mascot creature, Kyuubey,
being pursued and violently attacked by Homura. Madoka grabs Kyuubey
and Sayaka grabs her to get them all away, leading them to the first
of the show’s Labyrinths.
As will shortly be explained to the
leads, a Labyrinth (or Barrier, depending on how you adapt the show
to English) is a sealed-off realm created by a monster known as a
Witch. The Labyrinths and Witches are some of the most visually
creative things you’ll see in Madoka Magica, and probably in Anime as
a whole. Each Labyrinth and Witch takes on a unique visual style,
transporting you to their alternate realm with effects that make it
seem like the characters may have been transported into another show
altogether.
Really, in general, the visuals in
Madoka Magica are downright inspired. There’s something of a meme of
finding derpy-looking frames from the show (made in easier by some of
the technology used to create it, which was new at the time) but in
motion the show looks gorgeous. The city, the creatures, the
costumes… they all fit and they all indicate a level of thought
placed into them. The shot framing and cinematography are on point,
and serve to build mood and atmosphere notably well. This is
absolutely the kind of show where you notice the directing, an
element that often fades into the background even in good shows, and
while the choice to emphasize such elements can sometimes backfire if
they aren’t strong enough, Madoka Magica pulls it off.
Madoka, Sayaka, and Kyuubey are rescued
from the Labyrinth by another magical girl, Mami Tomoe, who has a
brief standoff with Homura once they’re on the outside. Kyuubey then
reveals his intentions: he wants Sayaka and Madoka to form contracts
with him, and become magical girls.
Going forward, the nature of the
contract is explained: The girl receives one wish, which will be
magically granted, but in return they will be bound to do battle
against Witches, fighting back the threat those monsters pose to
normals. It’s a dangerous life and an irreversible choice, so a
contract shouldn’t be made lightly. If this sounds like a deal with
the devil to you… good.
However, it’s worth noting that, in
context, it’s not quite as easy a guess. True, Homura tries to warn
Madoka and Sayaka, multiple times, to not associate with Kyuubey, but
there are also aspersions cast on her motive, since Magical Girls are
normally at least somewhat territorial, with the Grief Seeds they
need to obtain from defeated Witches being a scarce resource needed
to clear the Soul Gems that are the manifestation of their magical
power and their selves. And while to an uninitiated Western
audience, Kyuubey seems at least a little sinister from the start,
given the previous reputation of Mascots in Magical Girl shows,
suspecting him too much would be like suspecting foul play from
Obi-Wan Kenobi in A New Hope: sure, he could be something sinister,
but the established genre conventions that you base your predictions
on all suggest that’s not going to be the case. At least the first
time out, playing to the show’s intended audience, Kyuubey could get
away with a lot, and not just because he’s a cute cat-like creature.
Madoka and Sayaka both hesitate on
making contracts, as Mami offers to show them the ropes before they
make a final choices. She takes them along when she hunts down the
witch from the previous day, and makes a good show of it, gaining the
Grief Seed that the Witch leaves behind when it dies. Homura
continues to try to prevent Madoka from becoming a Magical Girl,
confronting Mami as well as Madoka herself. We learn more about
Sayaka, and her crush on a boy named Kyosuke, a violin prodigy who
was crippled and can play no more. The girls end up entering another
Labyrinth, with Mami control-casting Homura when she shows herself,
though Homura had seemed to take a strangely concerned, rather than
imperious approach. Mami and Madoka have a nice conversation along
the way in which Madoka offers to become a Magical Girl so they can
work together saving people, and so that Mami won’t have to be alone
and lonesome any more. She doesn’t have a wish she wants granted,
but thinks that doing good might be enough for her. Mami enters
battle in high spirits… and dies horribly.
The death of Mami Tomoe is a a hugely
iconic moment, for a ton of reasons. One is that the scene itself is
one of the scenes in anime (or cinema, really) that I would call
“perfect”. The shots and pacing are carefully chosen and
artfully done to provide a solid medley of surprise, suspense, and
dread so that you experience all of them. Immediately before she
dies, Mami is like a deer in the headlights… and so is the
audience, shocked by the turn but cognizant enough of what’s about to
happen that it’s properly horrific. There are not a lot of scenes in
any media I know that give people nightmares, but I’ve introduced
several friends and family members to Madoka Magica, and this one has
done it. And that with no gore, nor even any blood. Mami’s death is
psychologically effective beyond shock value in dread and despair.
Another reason is that it’s such an
important scene is because, up until this point, the show has been
trying to bluff its audience. The intro is cute and bouncy, and the
ending theme for the first two episodes is too. While the Labyrinths
are visually stunning, they’ve also not exactly been graphically
dark, more weird than generally threatening. The girls talk about
fighting, and even dying, but so does Sailor Moon. The witches can
draw people to horrible fates by feeding the subtle sadness and dark
thoughts inside, but that also seems like something pretty par for
the course, and the one Witch-fueled suicide attempt we’d seen was
stopped. Now, though, the reality is thrust into the viewer’s face.
It’s a similar experience for Madoka
herself. Her new friend was decapitated before her eyes, and won’t
even be found or remembered. Homura, freed from Mami’s magical
bindings with the latter’s demise, saves Madoka and Sayaka by killing
the witch, but she doesn’t depart without letting them have an earful
about how this is the true nature and fate of Magical Girls.
Naturally, this fairly intimidates Madoka out of any thought of
making a contract straight away.
Sayaka, however, isn’t sufficiently
scared away – soon enough she makes a contract, her wish to heal
Kyosuke. This works out pretty well at first since she saves Madoka
from the show’s next Witch. However, the next major arc is, to an
extent, dedicated to Sayaka’s decline and fall.
Along the way, we’re introduced to
Kyoko Sakura, another veteran Magical Girl who Homura wants to help
battle the upcoming “Walpurgisnacht” – later explained to be an
astoundingly powerful Witch that will soon appear in the city. Kyoko
acts as something of a frenemy to Sayaka – at first she seems
downright hostile, going so far as to threaten Sayaka’s life, and her
callous and selfish demeanor rubs everyone else the wrong way to say
the least. However, after a confrontation sees Madoka snatch
Sayaka’s Soul Gem (up to this point simply used as a transformation
trinket by the show) to prevent Sayaka from taking the bait and
fighting, and the result of that action brings the revelation that
“Magical Girls” in this setting are the cutest little liches you
ever did see, unliving shells with their souls housed in the gems,
Kyoko softens somewhat towards Sayaka, revealing her backstory, the
reason for her attitude and quirks, and that she was, in her own
dysfunctional way, trying to actually help Sayaka adapt to life as a
Magical Girl.
Sayaka, though, is in a downward
spiral: the terrible truth about her body is one thing. Another is
that a normal but dear friend of hers and Madoka’s is planning to
confess her feelings for Kyosuke, the boy Sayaka sold her life to
heal… and Sayaka can’t bring herself to oppose the second thanks to
the first. She uses her knowledge of the fact her body is basically
a “fake” combined with her healing magic to take on a brutal
fighting style, highlighted in a dramatic Labyrinth where the world
is rendered in harsh black and red shapes on white. Sayaka killing
that Witch, as she forces herself to not feel, is positively grisly.
Like Mami’s death, it’s not technically graphic (moreso, but still
not really), but it makes Sayaka, however briefly, look and feel the
part of the monster to the audience as she does to herself.
Sayaka’s slide continues as she refuses
to take the Grief Seed and cleanse her Soul Gem. Even Kyuubey seems
worried that something terrible will happen if she doesn’t. The
confession happens, and Sayaka goes deeper. Homura tries to give
Sayaka a pity Grief Seed, but Sayaka rejects the charity, prompting
Homura to try to kill her, supposedly because her continued descent
will hurt Madoka more than that, but Kyoko gets Sayaka out of the
situation. Kyuubey tries to convince Madoka to contract up with a
wish to save Sayaka, but Homura stops it by shooting Kyuubey full of
holes (no worries, he shows up in a new body moments later) and makes
a teary plea to Madoka to not be so self-sacrificing.
Kyuubey, thereafter, states that he has
Homura finally figured out: she’s a Magical Girl from an alternate
timeline. This will come in handy to know later.
Sayaka, meanwhile, is out late, having the ugliness of humanity shoved in her face by a couple of jerks on a train. This is another critical moment for the artistry of Madoka Magica. Not only is the cinematography throughout these last steps of Sayaka’s fall on point, and matched perfectly with the music and voice acting, but the writing shows a deep nuance. When Sayaka is faced with the fact that normal people can be bastards, it’s not like Elfen Lied where “normal” was overwhelmingly sociopathic. The people she runs into are just kind of jerks, the likes of which just about any adult has encountered, however briefly, in their life… but in Sayaka’s vulnerable state, it robs her of much needed faith in humanity, crushing the last vestige she had holding herself together, that she was doing good by saving lives.
The scene is ambiguous what Sayaka does
there, whether she goes her own way, or takes a couple of lives.
Kyoko made clear in her early appearances that Magical Girls can use
their powers on normals and even expect to get away with murder.
Either way, when Kyoko finds and tries to comfort Sayaka after the
scene on the train, Sayaka is completely broken. She bemoans that
she’s been stupid, and as her tear falls onto her darkened Soul Gem,
it shatters… and re-forms into a Grief Seed as a Magical Girl dies
and a new Witch is born. Homura arrives just in time to get Kyoko
out of danger.
The contest of hope and despair is one
of the strongest motifs in Madoka Magica. In some ways, it’s one of
least innovative, in that it’s the sort of territory that Magical
Girls had been playing with basically since the beginning of the
genre, but Madoka Magica takes no half-measures in its study. It
would be a mistake, if an easy one to make, to look at Sayaka’s arc
and say that in the universe of Madoka Magica, Despair is stronger,
making it a dark and miserable reality. However, the other stories
of the characters don’t entirely bear that out. There’s a certain
narrative of inevitability from Sayaka and Kyuubey that Magical Girls
will and must eventually fall and become Witches by giving into
despair and coming to curse life and humanity. Madoka, on the other
hand, is an advocate for hope. Not just in the ending, where she
loudly rejects the idea of despair and inevitability, but throughout
the show where Madoka is always the one speaking for a better world.
She clings to hope, and inspires others. Homura and Kyoko, in some
ways, represent a third facet: Determination. Both of those Magical
Girls are beaten down and sour, but they haven’t slid into existence
as a Witch the way Sayaka dead. Instead, they demonstrate a
difference between people, that it’s possible to keep putting one
foot in front of the other. Kyoko, it’s already been seen, has
suffered terribly even after becoming a Magical Girl, but in her
bitterness she found the will and reason to press onward. Homura?
We’ll get to Homura.
When Madoka learns the truth about the
nature of Magical Girls, Kyuubey explains the reason. His species
are advanced aliens, who can use the energy thrown off by the
transformation of Magical Girls into Witches (Much greater than what
it takes to empower Magical Girls, apparently) to defy the
conventional laws of thermodynamics. If they gather enough, they
could even be able to stop the Heat Death of the Universe. He frames
it as being a matter of the greater good, preserving the wider
universe that humanity will one day partake of, and justifies his
treatment of the Girls caught in the crossfire by likening it to
animal husbandry. Madoka in particular has a vast potential: her
becoming the greatest Magical Girl, and subsequently the most wicked
of Witches once she gives into despair, would provide Kyuubey a
windfall he implies to be of individually great value to the
universal goal, so if she’s ever interested in sacrificing her soul
for the sake of the cosmos, he’s listening.
Madoka holds out hope that, with
Sayaka’s body recovered, something can be done to turn her back, and
Kyoko and Homura both support her, and Kyuubey… carefully doesn’t
say it’s impossible, though he uses enough weasel words doing so that
adult viewers are likely to pick up that, even if Magical Girls do
continually redefine possible and impossible, he probably well knows
it’s a fool’s errand. And sure enough, it is: The battle against the
Witch form of Sayaka is fierce, and ultimately Kyoko has to sacrifice
herself to take it down. This works out to Kyuubey’s advantage, as
he quite eagerly reminds Homura that, with Kyoko gone, she doesn’t
have the strength to take down Walpurgisnacht unless Madoka becomes a
Magical Girl.
Why is this so important to Homura? At
this point, the show takes an episode out to tell us. We cut to
Homura Akemi, a weak and sickly girl barely ready to start attending
school again. There she meets Madoka Kaname, who befriends her with
simple kindness, encourages her to believe in herself, and otherwise
proves uplifting. Homura later learns that Madoka is a Magical Girl,
battling Witches to keep the world safe. But when Walpurgisnacht
descends and disaster is everywhere, Homura makes her contract with
Kyuubey, wishing for another chance, to set right what’s all gone
wrong.
Homura tries, adapting to her powers
(Time control and hammerspace) and helping the other girls fight, but
it’s not enough. Homura, however, can press rewind on the whole
thing, traveling back to the day she met Madoka to try again. And
she does. And she tries again, and again, and again to save Madoka.
Along the way she learns the dark truths and watches her fellows go
insane and die time and time again, but for Madoka’s sake she keeps
resetting the board, taking what she’s learned to have a better
chance against Walpurgisnacht. After many loops, Homura and Madoka
lay dying on the battlefield, victorious but so drained of their
magical power that the transition to Witch is inevitable. Madoka
uses her last Grief Seed for Homura and makes a request: she asks
Homura to not let Kyuubey trick her into becoming a Magical Girl.
Homura then has her new mission: she
needs to get through Walpurgisnacht’s arrival with Madoka alive and
not a Magical Girl. Walpurgisnacht’s overwhelming power and Madoka’s
own kind nature make this by far an uphill battle, and the failure of
the others leads Homura to become ever more bitter, unwilling to rely
on anyone but herself as she lives through an endless hell for her
dear friend. And the failures, it seems, get ever more intense,
including one vision of a world where Madoka used her wish to defeat
Walpurgisnacht, only to fall after the battle and become a witch
vastly more powerful and deadly, capable of consuming the entirety of
the world. The Kyuubey of that timeline was dispassionately not
displeased, given the bounty he reaped from the exchange. As we
return to the current timeline, Kyuubey solves two mysteries in one:
Because Homura keeps turning back time for Madoka’s sake, Madoka’s
karma is being multiplied; her potential is so vast because she’s
tied to the fate of not just this world but all the other failed
worlds before. The revelation that her resets are ‘hurting’ Madoka
by making her a more and more tempting target for Kyuubey shakes
Homura, but not enough to keep her from preparing for a final battle
with Walpurgisnacht.
Homura’s background is the second
turning point of Madoka Magica. Unlike Mami’s death, in this case
it’s entirely a turn in-story rather than one having to do with
meta-level perceptions. Essentially, the entire stake and meaning of
the show, down to who we thought the essential protagonist was, is
rewritten. In-setting, Madoka is the crux of fate, but from a
writing standpoint, this is in many ways now Homura’s story.
Determination is never outwardly stated
to be the answer to both hope and despair, but Homura displays it in
an intense sense. She’s clearly given up on any sort of bright hope,
if not the concept entirely than at least Madoka’s belief that
darkness and suffering can be entirely averted, yet she doesn’t
despair or curse the world like Sayaka; she accepts her suffering and
trudges onward, working for a better outcome, which I think is an
interesting contrast with Kyuubey’s talks about the inevitable slide
from Magical Girl to Witch that he relies on.
Homura makes an… interesting stealth
protagonist. Her enigmatic actions earlier in the story click into
place with the reveal of her past and her motivation, but she still
has a fairly limited presence in the early parts of the show. Her
motivation is highly sympathetic, and the suffering she goes through
on her endless path is well-presented, but at the same time it’s not
made easy to really get behind her bitter, jaded view on the universe
or the harsh if coldly logical decisions she makes at times. She’s
very earnestly loving (I would say what she feels counts for that
word, whether you believe it to be romantic or not. I for one don’t
think there’s evidence either way and err on the side of it not
mattering) but she’s also not mentally well by the loop on which we
spend most of our time with her, having spiraled into a form of
obsession with Madoka and Madoka’s fate as her anchor to reality.
It’s in large part because of Homura’s
reveal that I think Madoka Magica is a show that the uninitiated
should watch twice: once unspoiled if possible, and once knowing
what’s really going on. It really does change your second time
through.
For the first time though, though,
there’s not a lot left. Homura fights Walpurgisnacht, who arrives
with no Labyrinth and bringing natural disasters with her, but all
her prepared military ordinance, while awesome to see in play,
doesn’t crack the witch. Madoka arrives, and seeing Homura poised on
the edge of death, trapped between facing a final loss to
Walpurgisnacht or a final surrender of herself on one side and the
consequences Madoka will suffer for another reset on the other,
Madoka makes her wish. She’s thought it out though, and with her
artificially vast power she thinks she can pull it off.
Madoka wishes to destroy all witches in
the moment of their creation. The violation of causality this
represents – not all future witches, but all of them – makes
Kyuubey experience the closest thing his emotionless species can to
terror, but the Contract was offered and he can’t take it back
because he doesn’t like the wish, only ask in horror if Madoka is
trying to become God.
Which she probably wasn’t, but that’s
basically what she does anyway. With Homura (and at first, Kyuubey)
brought along for the ride, Madoka’s ultimate form echoes through
time and space, freeing the Magical Girls from their cruel fate and
giving them peace in their final moments. Walpurgisnacht
disintegrates. Even Madoka’s own future witch, mighty and terrible
enough to shred the cosmos, is obliterated and brought to peace
without issue by Madoka’s own hand, because her wish to destroy the
Witches didn’t exempt herself. The universe implodes, and Madoka and
Homura are left having one last conversation before Homura is
deposited in a new reality, one governed by Madoka’s law where
Witches cannot exist… but one where “Madoka Kaname” doesn’t
exist either. There are still Magical Girls, who do battle with
wraiths formed from negative emotions, but when their time is up or
their spirit crushed, Magical Girls vanish. Homura talks to this new
universe’s Kyuubey about the old one, and Kyuubey finds it a quite
curious hypothesis. She also briefly meets Madoka’s family,
including her little brother who repeats her name, indicating that
while Madoka may have ascended, an echo of her presence is still in
the world.
That’s where the show ends. In terms
of the Magical Girl genre, Madoka Magica became the next big thing,
even potentially eclipsing Sailor Moon as an access point for new
viewers, especially in the West. Some have argued it’s a
deconstruction of the genre that, because of the many imitators that
followed in its wake, became an orthodox cornerstone instead. Others
would suggest that Madoka Magica simply represents an evolution of
the themes and ideas into new territory. I believe I hold somewhat
more to the latter point of view. There are certainly deconstructive
elements, but playing with genre tropes does not, on its own, create
a deconstruction. A salient argument could be made that Madoka goes
the extra mile on that score, but what’s inarguable is the
demographic shift: In Sailor Moon Crystal, I talked about how, while
the show is entirely watchable to men and adults, it was clearly
targeted at teen girls. Madoka Magica, I firmly believe, could be
watched by teen girls (though only ones with a good tolerance for
dark material in their media, given the psychological impact a few
scenes in this show can have) but seems to be written more for
adults.
As with Sailor Moon, or perhaps even
more so, the traits that Madoka contributed to popularizing in the
genre did not begin in this show. Magical Girls had suffered and
died before, they’d failed to redeem the corrupted, there had even
been some disagreements of note between Magical Girls and their
usually helpful mascot critters. There were even Magical Girl shows
aimed at adults and boys since the beginning, they just hadn’t been
typical examples with the full trappings of the lighter series.
However, Madoka combined these darker elements into a singular and
influential package that did serious work to redefine the genre going
forward.
However, Madoka cast a long shadow over
the genre. The fact that this show reached a huge level of
popularity with its “nothing is sacred” take on the universe,
dark bordering on nihilistic moments, and adult core audience opened
new doors, but also inspired a ton of copycats that each might or
might not get even some of the movements right. Not everything
followed in Madoka’s footsteps, but enough did that there’s now
recognition of perhaps its most basic premise: that being a Magical
Girl is a curse. And that’s a far cry from the wish fulfillment
inherent in so many older entries.
But enough about Madoka’s place in
history; how does it hold up on its own, as a show?
Honestly, Madoka Magica is one of those shows that’s gotten better every time I’ve watched. It impressed me the first time, but only on repeated viewings did I start to really appreciate just how intricate and careful the show is. When I reviewed RahXephon, I had a lot to say about that show’s visual storytelling, visual metaphor, and symbolism both subtle and unsubtle. Madoka Magica has all of that. I don’t think there’s one image that was placed anywhere in this show without some kind of purpose. Every component of every shot says something, sometimes in the art of cinematography and sometimes in higher levels of meaning and interpretation. The Labyrinths, while also being the most gorgeous and creative elements of the show, say vast sums by how they are encountered when and what their strange style and imagery is. When Madoka is trapped by the witch after stopping the mass suicide, the television imagery helps evoke Madoka’s own feelings, enhancing how you understand she’s been experiencing most of the events as an observer, and the change of her own model into the Labyrinth’s style indicates, wordlessly, what the mental assault means before Sayaka comes in and saves her. As a whole, the Witches, beings that never speak and are only named in strange cryptograms appearing on screen (which have been cracked. The Witch that kills Mami, for instance, is identified as “Charlotte”) function almost like characters because of how much their Labyrinths say about their nature, and which Witches and Labyrinths are encountered when are perfectly placed in the larger context of the show.
It’s almost shocking just how many
memorable, dynamite scenes are in this show. Most alright shows have
a handful of powerful scenes in their run. A very good show might
manage a potent sequence every few episodes, with breathers between
them. In Madoka Magica, almost every episode contains an iconic
moment, something that really deserves to be a dramatic standout
either because of its composition, its content, or both. The action
is on-point; Madoka Magica features intricate fight choreography that
puts many other shows to shame, it’s dynamic and powerful with
nothing wasted. The emotion is on-point; the characters in Madoka
Magica go through a lot, both highs and lots of lows, and they
express themselves to the audience or let the direction do it for
them in a way that really reaches through. The talking is on point;
the conversations in this show say something, usually without
retreading or feeling excessively rehearsed.
In short, Madoka Magica is a very rare
show in that I have trouble picking out any flaws, what I would make
stronger or cut as unnecessary. At worst, Madoka and Mami might be a
little flat, but they’re both essentially decoy protagonists; Mami
because her purpose is to display through her death what kind of show
we’re really in, and Madoka because she serves as the ideal that
Homura, a significantly more nuanced character, reaches for. And
neither of them is actually bad, they just don’t stand up to the
level of Homura, Sayaka, or Kyoko who are studied in greater detail.
Maybe something about the reset ending? But then, in another
comparison to RahXephon, Madoka Magica actually pulls off the reset
without the show losing all meaning; we understand the better
outcome, and that everything was needed to get there.
When the biggest individual fault I can
find in a show is something that might be more indicative of
efficient writing than an actual fault, and simultaneously the show
has an endless barrage of “wow” moments, there’s little question
that it must be graded at A+. In an objective sense, as much as such
a thing can exist in the realm of media criticism, it might be one of
the best anime shows out there, seldom matched in technical
excellence even if each individual viewer’s personal tastes differing
means that there’s not going to be the same agreement on ‘favorite’
or not. It’s a show that deserves to be watched carefully,
considered at length, and studied thoroughly. As such, it’s little
wonder that it hit its genre like a truck and spawned many imitators.
The question then becomes what those imitators, and other new
interpretations, can bring to the table apart from shadows of Madoka
Magica.