Anime Review: Madoka Magica + The Rebellion Story

a.k.a. I Can (Not) Give a Fair Review of my Favourite Show Ever

(DISCLAIMER FOR DEVIANTART: This will be the final one of my reviews I will post here; I figured this would be a good one to end on. I will continue with my random ramblings over on my Tumblr, so if you find my reviews interesting please consider following me here: hawk-in-a-jazzy-hat.tumblr.com…)

Madoka Kaname is a sweet, average middle school girl who loves her life, family and friends, who suddenly finds her life to take an interesting turn when she encounters a new transfer student, Homura Akemi, who warns her that if she wants to keep her wonderful life she would not dare to change it for anything. Madoka agrees, but soon finds herself wrapped up in a world of magical girls and wicked witches, and meets a strange creature known as Kyubey. Kyubey offers her a contract; to become a magical girl and fight the terrible curse-giving demons, and in return he will offer her any one wish that she wants in the world…

I have not been looking forward to this review. I really haven’t. Because I genuinely don’t know what to say.

Okay, I know how to begin. If you are at all interested in watching this show, then stop reading this, right now, and go and watch it. Any plot details, character details; anything I talk about will pale in comparison to the show itself. Madoka Magica needs to be watched completely blind for the full experience. So go on. I won’t stop you. Go and watch it.

For everyone else, I’m afraid there might not be much here for you since I can’t bring myself to talk about anything in great detail. Partly because of the reason above (that this show must be experienced blind) and partly because there is literally nothing I can say about it. I cannot, in any good conscience, try to justify a show I love as much as this.

This is my favourite show. This is my favourite story. This is my favourite piece of media out of everything I’ve ever watched, played, read or listened to. I love every character and every plot twist. I love every symbol and every theme. I love every frame of animation and every note of the soundtrack. And I genuinely feel bad for writing this, but there is nothing I can say to critique this. I don’t think it does a single thing wrong. I know several people who vehemently hate this show, and have valid reasons for doing so, but I still can’t bring myself to dislike even one moment of it. I think that’s what comes from having a favourite show; people could rip it apart right in front of you and you wouldn’t love it any less. And people love different things. That’s what makes this world so interesting.

So yeah, I can’t talk about the good or the bad of the show itself. That clearly makes this already a pretty crap review. “Hey guys, this show is amazing, 10/10, go watch it, bye”. Maybe, at some point in the future, I’ll go back to this show and do an episode by episode analysis on every cool little thing about it. But that will require a lot of planning and far more time than I have right now, so instead, for now, I’m going to take you on a journey. My journey, watching this show. I won’t be going into any plot-specifics but again, if you’re at all interested in watching, you should already be doing so and shouldn’t have read this far.

I was about 18 years old. It was my last summer before uni began and I had only just discovered this new medium that was anime. I’d seen three series; Soul Eater (which was a fun romp from start to finish), the original FullMetal Alchemist (which had to grow on me but is now one of my favourites) and Death Note (which is clunky but with good moments), all of which were good but none of which had really cemented anime for me as anything particularly special. Then, after following a popular anime critic for a while he released a video about this show I’d never heard of before; Puella Magi Madoka Magica. A magical girl show that had a few twists and turns down the line and represented the epitamy of a good tragedy. It looked pretty, sounded pretty, and seemed unique, so I began to watch it. At first it seemed like pretty standard anime. High school girl meets magical macguffin creature and becomes magical girl to save the world from evildoers, yada yada., though even in the first couple of episodes there were hints at something more complex down the line.

Then the third episode happened, and I was hooked. Suddenly this premise which was given to us was shattered on the ground and was slowly being picked apart into something far more twisted. And yet it made sense; these felt like real people suddenly trapped in a struggle way beyond them, and once they’d touched it, it wouldn’t let them go. And with everything they tried to do to fight it, the worse things got for them, despite the best of intentions.

Okay, I’ll mention one character. If Vash the Stampede is my favourite character of all time, then Sayaka Miki is easily my second favourite. And yes, it is for the same reason, though it’s completely different in the context of their stories.

Needless to say, the end of a certain episode had me completely reeling.

Things got worse and we saw just how deep this hole of mistakes and wishes and curses really went, and worst of all it seemed like there was no other way. This was the best alternative; there was nothing else that could be done, no matter how hard you tried to fight against it. Idealist or cynic, selfish or innocent; the world was a cruel place and the universe would never even know of their fates. And then the ending happened. The most perfect, most hopeful and most truly beautiful ending I’ve ever seen.

Why is this my favourite show? Because it changed me. It changed the way I saw the world. It truly showed me, right in front of my eyes, the power of hope. The power of selflessness. That it isn’t wrong to keep fighting. That you should never regret making someone else’s life better. And that no matter how dark things get and no matter how dismal the world becomes, no matter how many people have tried before you and failed, that your fight still matters. That you can fight for a better world and know that your fight has been worth it. You can still have hope.

It’s hard. It’s so hard. Even the show knows that. Watching The Rebellion Story for the first time, I absolutely hated it, merely for a single plot twist. I hated that it seemingly betrayed everything that the series had tried so hard to prove in one cruel stroke. But actually, watching the series again, the message still holds true. Hope is still important, even when things are worse than ever. In the end, the final scene before the credits, there is the faintest glimmer. The irredeemable still have a chance to turn around. It’s never too late.

Maybe it’s because I’m an eternal optimist that I love this show so much. Maybe it’s even because I’m a Christian, and I wholeheartedly believe in a better world and a better life out there, within everyone’s reach, despite how utterly dour and terrible things can get down here. Whatever the reason I love this show, it is one of the things which always inspires me. Every. Single. Part of it. I’m studying to be an engineer today because I believe I can change the world, or at least a small part of it. If I can one day help make jut one person’s life better, that’s good enough for me. I have hope, and I will give everything I can to keep that hope alive.

Look at me; over 1,000 words gushing over a cutesy magical girl show and I didn’t even talk about the show itself, what is wrong with me. Well, I don’t care. This show changed my view of the world; I feel like I owe it that much. I can’t say whether or not you’ll love or hate this show, or just be utterly confused by it, or even just find it ‘meh’. At the end of the day, these are just the random ramblings of a guy still trying to make sense of his own life and who still occasionally bangs his head on the kitchen cupboard. I have no say over what show you should or shouldn’t love.

What I can say though, is that for every piece of beautiful imagery or haunting orchestration, every terrifying witch or frightened young girl, every one hundred shreds of despair and every single piece of hope; for every single thing that this show does and has done for me, I can do no less than call it utterly flawless.

My score: 10/10

“If someone says it’s wrong to hope, I will tell them that they’re wrong every time.”