They really didn’t. They just misguided them.
The unthinkable happened; I was wrong! Wrong about everything in this entire anime! I’ll admit that wholeheartedly. Not only did Madoka pull a fast one on me with its twist ending, it also made me laugh at my first post. I wasn’t laughing at any incompetence or anything, it’s just that in hindsight, everything I said turned out to be grounded in some sort of ignorance to the series. How could you blame me? I was only writing what I was witnessing without thinking that this would be the outcome.
Anyway, what’s there to say about this series? Now that I’m done with it, I can say that it left me thinking one word over and over again: “WHAT?”. Seriously! This is one of the more confusing endings to a series I’ve seen in a while. After giving it a little thought, I guess I can piece together what was intended to happen.
What I learned from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Episodes 7-12
1. There’s just so much crying in this anime. Everybody cries. Then again, everybody dies, so the crying is pretty justifiable. It’s just a little annoying hearing Madoka do nothing but cry for nine episodes straight though.
2. The ending was WAY too meta. I’m fine with endings surprising the hell out of me and becoming super abstract, but this one seemed to come out from nowhere. Yes, we know that Kyubey is trying to use humanity for energy, and yes, we know that magical girls eventually become witches, but why did Madoka have to absorb all the grief? I’ve thought about it, and it just doesn’t make much sense to me.
3. Kyubey isn’t bad, he’s just an emotionless being who sees humanity as a means to an end. He’s like Spock in Star Trek in the same sense that both characters do not have any emotion and only use logic to justify their needs. Saying that a character like Kyubey is evil is like saying HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey is evil. Neither of them are evil, they’re just logical beings that uses everything possible to satisfy their ends. Sure, their actions might seem evil to us, but that’s just because they don’t see the evil in harming humanity to accomplish a mission. Having said that, it was nice to see him become “good” in the end by having a plan that doesn’t turn magical girls into witches.
4. This is the most accurate representation of my reaction to episodes 10-12:
5. The manner in which the story is told is perfect. Looking back at my first two posts on this series, every speculation I made about the series can essentially be thrown away. Because this series started off with nine episodes told conventionally, ending with three that flipped everything upside down, it made me think about everything that happened. I actually like it when a story doesn’t make perfect sense to me until I have to pause and think about it. Plus, all of the girls have back stories that range from sad to devastating. In the end, I found myself very attached to their characters.
6. The ending isn’t really happy, but it’s not sad either. It’s more bittersweet. The world didn’t get destroyed, and that’s a good thing. However, Madoka never existed to anyone. It was sad seeing Madoka’s parents without her and with no recollection of her. So in that sense, the ending was pretty sad. Weighing those two aspects of the ending together, the end result falls somewhere in the middle.
7. The fact that Homura has been trying to protect Madoka this entire time, and the fact that the story we see is only the ending of the entire loop, was a legitimate (and welcome) shock to me. I haven’t felt this shocked at the direction a show has taken in a long time. She came off as arrogant and somewhat antagonistic throughout the entire series, but we see that it’s all just to protect Madoka from dying again and again.
8. The scene between Madoka and Homura in episode 11 where Homura hugs Madoka and tells her that she’s been trying to protect her was the most emotional scene I have ever seen in any anime, show, or movie. We find out that Homura has seen Madoka die so many times. She carries that emotional baggage, and it all just accumulates over time and eventually bursts out. Seriously, this is one of the best scenes I have ever seen. Yeah, there’s a lot of crying, but for once, it seemed completely justified.
9. It feels that Homura is the main character, not Madoka. Madoka seems to be the main character purely because everything that everyone does revolves around her. That makes her more of a plot point than a character. That’s not necessarily bad, but the way this show is advertised, it is sort of misleading. Some would say it’s a good way to deceive the viewer to enrich the story, and I’d probably be in that camp.
10. When Madoka became, in lack of a better term, God, I was tempted to stop watching in refusal that this is how the series was going to end. It feels as if everything the series was building up to just got thrown out the window. The whole idea that all witches can be vanquished just from one wish is almost the equivalent of ending the series with Madoka waking up and saying, “Phew! It was all just a dream!”. You’re telling me that these four girls are the first to find out about Kyuubey’s plan? That’s impossible, Kyuubey himself admits that they’re not the first. So why is Madoka the first to make that wish? Maybe she’s the first non-magical girl to find out. Still, though, it seems sort of lazy to me.
My thoughts last week were more negative. This week, they’re much more positive. Sure, I can find a bunch of flaws with this show, but they all seem so trivial in the end. The journey to the last three episodes was a long one, and it wasn’t all that eventful, but it helped make the payoff pretty good. Yeah, I didn’t like the exact way the series ended, what with Madoka becoming a god, but the story was so well thought out up to that point. Although I don’t think Madoka is a masterpiece in execution, it’s somewhat of a masterpiece in storytelling. I might not watch this anime very often in the future, but the next time I watch it, I think I’ll be able to enjoy it a little more. So, do I think it’s good? Nah.
It’s great.
*Also, to everybody whose comment I didn’t reply to last week, please consider this entire post your reply, as it practically contains what I would have said in reply to all of you*
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Ben
20 year old university student studying economics by day, snooty anime blogger by night! I have high standards for anime, but I also keep an open mind when it comes to shows outside my comfort area, which usually includes dialogue-heavy drama. Always happy to have a discussion.
Latest posts by Ben (see all)
- What Ben Learned From Watching Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Part III (Episodes 7-12) - July 11, 2014
- Notes of Space Dandy Season 2 Episode 1 - July 8, 2014
- Summer Anime 2014: Sabagebu! Impressions - July 8, 2014
- Notes of The File of Young Kindaichi Returns Episodes 10-14 - July 7, 2014
- What Ben Learned From Watching Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Part II (Episodes 2-6) - July 4, 2014
