Anime Reflections: Madoka Magica

Holy shit Madoka Magica.

I'm going to talk for a little bit about Madoka Magica, AKA Puella Magi Madoka Magica (full English title), AKA Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica (Japanese title).

First of all, let me say this: if you are into anime, you should watch Madoka Magica.  If you are only sort of into anime, you should watch Madoka Magica.  If you watched Sailor Moon or Card Captors when you were younger, you should watch Madoka Magica.  There's always chance that you might not like it, but it's definitely a story worth checking out.  If you have not seen it, you should, and you shouldn't read this full article until you have (I'll explain why in a bit).

I was looking for some anime to watch, and this was one of the recommendations I got.  I saw that, hey, it was available on Hulu and was only a 12-episode anime, so I decided to give it a shot.  In other words, I went into it knowing pretty much nothing about it, and I'm so very very glad for that.

The first night, I watched the first two episodes.  Basically, the story follows Madoka, a young girl (canon says she's 14) in Japan.  After waking up from an unusual dream, Madoka goes to school where the class gains a Mysterious Transfer Student (TM) named Homura.  This girl happens to be the same one that Madoka saw in her dream last night!  Wow!

Later on, she and her friend Sayaka end up meeting this Cute Mascot Animal (TM) thing called Kyubey that looks like a cross between a cat and a ferret.

／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼

 

Homura is trying to kill Kyubey, and the two other girls save the catferret with help from Mami, a magical girl who shares the same Japanese voice actress as Navi.  You know, the blue fairy from Ocarina of Time who's constantly telling you to "Listen!"  Kyubey tells Madoka and Sayaka that if they make a contract with it to become magical girls, it will grant them one wish for anything they want, no matter how impossible.

 

A quick aside to those of you not familiar with anime genres: the "magical girl" genre is a genre where young girls transform into girls with magical powers.  Sailor Moon and Card Captors are examples of the magical girl genre.  If you don't know much about Sailor Moon or Card Captors...well, think of Power Rangers.  Everyone's familiar with Power Rangers.  The magical girl genre is kind of like Power Rangers, only instead of transforming into spandex-clad ninjas, they transform into Disney princesses.

Anyway, at the end of episode 2, the girls had been off hunting witches with Mami, which is the duty of a magical girl.  They still hadn't made their wishes and there was some obvious tension between Mami and Homura that made you wonder which one of them was "right" and which was "wrong."  Between that and the somber and mysterious tone the show set with the art and music, I found myself wondering what was going to happen all of the next day.  I wasn't anywhere near hooked, but it was the first show in a long time that had me dying to know what was happening next.  It wasn't until episode 3 that I was well and truly hooked.

It's impossible to talk about the show past that without massive spoilers, so just a quick rundown before I do: Madoka has amazing music (do not under any circumstances read the comments to that video if you're avoiding spoilers), a lot of wonderful experimental art shifts, and an amazingly paced story.  Like I said, it's almost impossible to go into any sort of detail about the show without spoiling it, and that's because the story is paced so tightly.  There are twelve episodes, and just about every single one of them has some massive plot development.  There is literally no filler of any sort.  It's basically a series of plot twists (though I'm hesitant to call them "twists" since that implies that they come out of nowhere) that lead into each other.  It raises mysteries, and then answers them in a timely fashion.  You can't talk about one event without talking about the events that lead up to it, and you can't talk about that first major one without completely ruining one of the most impactful moments of the series for anyone who hasn't seen it.

Overall, the wonderful pacing of Madoka Magica's story, the new look at the magical girl genre that it provides, the beautiful music, and the gorgeous art shifts make it quite possibly the closest thing to a flawless show I've ever seen.  It starts out knowing its story, and it doesn't waste any time in telling it.  Now, when I say that it's "flawless," I don't mean that it's the best thing I've ever seen.  There are plenty of things out there that have multiple flaws but are just flat-out more entertaining.  Still, it's very much worth watching, even if you've never much delved into anime and/or know next to nothing about the magical girl genre.

Anyway, now onto the part of my reflections that contain spoilers.

Warning: Massive Spoilers Follow

Madoka Magica really tips its hand on episode 3, when Mami, a young girl in midst of her elation that Madoka and Sayaka will join her as magical girls so that she doesn't have to be alone anymore, gets her head bitten off.  After that, Kyoko is introduced to show that no, not all magical girls are as pure and selfless as Mami.  And after that, it's just a series of despairs after despairs for our protagonists.

Sayaka becomes a magical girl to heal the boy she loves.  A battle breaks out between Kyoko and Sayaka over whether what's "just" or what's "smart" should be the ideal worth fighting for as a magical girl.  Sayaka chooses justice, but after she's hurt by her friend competing to win the heart of the boy she loves and seeing some of the darker sides of humanity, she becomes self-destructive, pushing herself further and further into despair.  As it turns out, Kyubey (or rather, "Incubator") planned for this, as magical girls exist to become witches.  He reveals that the energy produced in that transformation is what keeps the universe from destruction.  Kyoko sacrifices herself to stop Sayaka's witch form.

The mysterious and confident Homura is revealed to have been a shy girl from another timeline.  After Madoka (a magical girl in that timeline) protected her and showed her kindness before ultimately dying at the hands of a powerful witch, she became a magical girl and wished for a chance to do everything over with their positions reversed.  However, doing so only serves to make things worse as it places an incredible amount of destiny on Madoka and making her the most powerful potential magic girl--and consequently most potential powerful wish.  Homura's desperate attempts to keep her from becoming a magical girl over multiple timelines only end up making things worse and worse.

 

With Mami, Sayaka, and Kyoko all dead and Homura attempting to keep Madoka from becoming a magical girl, Homura is left to face the witch that originally killed Madoka alone.  Homura herself is almost pushed into despair, knowing that she'll have to repeat the cycle yet again, and will only make things worse once more.

 

Then, the show does one of the most powerful things ever: out of despair, it creates hope.  Madoka shows up and wishes to be able to destroy all witches, past, present, and future, as soon as they are created.  This means that she'll take all the despair of those magical girls upon her, but it also means that she ends up destroying her own witch in a sort of paradox only possible through her wish.  This ends up relegating her existence to nothing more than a concept, but it makes things better for most all magical girls.  When magical girls fall into despair, they no longer become witches, but vanish to join together with Madoka, who is basically exists everywhere.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that because of Madoka's wish, God exists and she's a fourteen-year-old Japanese schoolgirl.  In the end, Homura is the only one who remembers Madoka, but for her, that seems to be enough to keep fighting.

This despair-out-of-hope ending is something I absolutely love in fiction.  It's part of why The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is my favorite game of all time.  The despair only serves to amplify the hope, saying that yes, things may look bad, but they can always get better.  Madoka Magica was, as a result, an amazing series, and one that's, in my opinion, worth all the hype.

Project: Don't Shoot The Messenger Visual Novel

As some of you reading this might know, I wrote a blog called "Don't Shoot The Messenger," set in the Slender Man Mythos.  Basically, it was about an man trying to find who he was and where he fit in the organization he was part of.  I'm not going to really elaborate since those of you who know about it have read it, those who care enough will read it, and those who don't care enough probably won't even read this post.

Anyway, a bit ago, a friend of mine was playing Katawa Shoujo, which is an absolutely amazing visual novel with a terrible premise (dating sim/H-game about disabled girls developed by members of 4chan).  And then I thought back to DSTM and remembered how, early on, there were a few parts of the story that would be affected by how people shipped certain characters.  I jokingly tossed the idea of a DSTM dating sim around.

And then I thought a bit harder, and realized something.

While the Messenger was the narrator of DSTM, Poe was arguably the main character.  Most of the plot involved her somehow.  Unfortunately, due to her quiet nature and the Messenger's reluctance to go into great detail about his life, there was a lot of depth to her character that didn't see the light of day.  And many of the alternate story paths we were considering featured her.

So I figured, instead of making a dating sim as a joke, I could make a serious story told from Poe's perspective.  It would rehash some of the events of DSTM, expand the world some, and explore the story paths we didn't take.  And with those branching paths, a visual novel would actually be the best medium to tell Poe's story

And now...well, I'm stuck on the idea.  Even started writing some of it up.  It's not going to be easy, of course.  I have no clue who I'm going to get for an artist, and even less of a clue who's going to do the music (if I even include it).  AJ (Poe's author) insists on being involved.

So yeah.  A lot to do.  I have no clue what I've gotten myself into.

Rurouni Kenshin and Villain Designs

One of my blogs will be drawing a lot from Rurouni Kenshin at certain points, intentionally so.  One of the ways is that I'm going to be writing an arc with a group of ten villains, as a nod to the Juppongatana (or "Ten Swords") arc.  Of course, ten characters is a lot, and since I pride myself on creating strong characters, I started thinking about what exactly these villains are going to be like.  I realized that the job ahead of me was going to be harder than I thought.

You see, I want to pay homage to my inspiration, and that means creating villains in the same style that Watashi did.  And Watashi made some very memorable villains.  Almost all of them had not only a unique design, but a unique fighting style as well.

For example, the Juppongatana included Anji, a monk who knows a martial arts technique that can punch through stone; Usui, a blind, revenge driven man whose ears have become sharp enough to hear a person's heartbeat and sense changes in their body and emotions from it; Kamatari, a cheerful crossdresser who wields a giant scythe; and Henya, who has starved himself to the point that he can propel himself into the air with explosions and gain limited flight using his cape.  And of course, there's their leader himself, Shishio, whose skin consists almost entirely of second and third-degree burns after being burned alive.  In addition, he uses a serrated katana, which he sets on fire using the human fat that's accumulated on it.

These are only a brief description of just a handful of villains from one arc of Rurouni Kenshin.  Some are sympathetic (Aoshi, Anji, and Enishi come to mind), some are monsters (Usui, Shishio, and Gein), but they all have a certain flavor to them.  Something about them that's quirky or unusual enough or that just pushes the willing suspension of belief a little bit further (without breaking it) that makes them extremely memorable.

Now, let's compare this to another series.  One that's fresh in my mind since I'm currently rereading it: Shaman King.  Shaman King's villains seem similar to RuroKen's in some ways, at least in the terms I described.  But later on, when the villains gain more actual flavor and become more numerous, they lose a certain aspect to them.  You see, while they do have a lot of visual flavor, they lack the personality to be memorable.  RuroKen's villains always had a strong design and strong fighting method, and usually had strong personality as well (though some didn't get enough screentime to get to that point).  In Shaman King, the villains had a strong design, and not much else.  And unfortunately, a lot of these designs boiled down to stereotypes.  Sure, they were cool to look at, but they started to lose a lot of appeal when you found out that they weren't much past mariachi, cute witch girl, Gothic Lolita girl, or guy-who's-made-out-of-blocks-that-totally-aren't-legos.  They're good designs, but they lack the substance an the execution to make them good characters and, consequently, good villains.

So what's my challenge in this?  Well, I need to come up with ten characters who have a memorable design, and to make sure that I execute that design in a way that is memorable.  They all need to be unique, though.  Easily identifiable from each other.  Strong motivations.  And I need to do all of that without resorting to cliches or stereotypes.

This should be fun.

Project Updates

Just an update on what I've been working on lately:

Writing

Wandering from Death: My one openly ongoing Slenderblog.  I'm largely in the development phase for my plot at the moment, but I've got ideas.

Warrior, Wizard: a short story about, well, a warrior and a wizard (or, more accurately, "mage").  The two become close friends but are both forced to deal with their feelings of inadequacy as their growths differ.

Operation Stirling: A collaborative Slenderverse project that is currently remaining secret.  Let's just say that I'm finally starting to get to the meat of my part of the project, though.

I've also reacquired a ladybug bucket hat, so my "DaLadybugMan" persona can finally get back on camera and do some reviews I've wanted to.  I'm leaning towards House of Leaves for the first one.

In addition, I'm also occasionally working on A Terrible Fate, my Zelda fanfic, and a commentary for Don't Shoot The Messenger, though those are less frequent.

Reading

I'm currently reading Chronicles of the Black Company, a compilation of the first three Black Company books.  I'm also picking back up on reading the Trigun manga and have managed to find the first two copies of Video Girl Ai (by the same guy who did I"s, one of my favorite manga), though acquiring the rest of both series might be difficult as the former is fairly expensive and the latter is pretty hard to find.

Watching

I've finally decided on an order to watch the shows I'm catching up on in.  Top priority is ABC's Once Upon a Time, an entertaining (if not fairly campy) show about a town in Maine where storybook characters are living with their "Happily Ever Afters" taken away and no memories of their former life.  Kind of like LOST if LOST had magic OH WAIT

The next two on my list are Trigun, which is about a gunslinging pacifist on a desert planet, and Fullmetal Alchemist, which is about...a kid who's an alchemist, I guess.  A hotheaded alchemist working at his craft under the government.  There's obviously more to both shows, but that's the best I can put their concepts.

Playing

I finished Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, and was excited to transfer my info and launch into the sequel, Radiant Dawn.  Then I found out that my disc was one of the ones that didn't recognize Easy Mode saves (since the PoR "Easy Mode" came about when the translation was made easier; it didn't exist in Japan).  I COULD play Radiant Dawn anyway, but I want those few bonuses I get from transfering a PoR file over, dammit!  So basically, I'm going to have to pay through all of PoR again.

I've also gotten my hands on No More Heroes and No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle.  I've beaten the first three (of 10) bosses in the former, and so far I'm not particularly impressed.  I'll stick with it, though.  See if it improves.

Anime First Impressions: Upotte!!

This is how my friend recommended this series to me: "The girls are guns.  'Nuff said."

Of course, he had only seen the first episode.  I decided to check it out because, hey, the girls are guns, 'nuff said.  So I watched the first episode and was met by a show with a lot of promise.  A catchy OP, some fanservice and amusing innuendo regarding guns, an interesting premise....

And then, a few episodes later, I had sort of given up.

You see, Upotte!! contains girls who are anthromorphic guns.  Now, while some series would take this concept and make it ridiculous and fun, Upotte!! quickly makes it clear that it's about guns.  It frequently goes into explicit detail about the guns.  Now, maybe this is enjoyable to some people.  Maybe some people actually care.  But me?  I'm not a gun guy.  I couldn't care less about different models.  I think that an entry under Widget Series puts it best: "anime viewers who like moe [a sort of loosely defined "cute" visual style] will be put off by the guns, and gun fans will most likely be put off by the moe. Only those who can appreciate--or tolerate--both genres will be able to watch this show."  In addition, a lot of the humor is pun-based, and there are obviously some puns that don't translate very well.  There's fanservice, but it's almost not worth the time spent slogging through gun facts.

Really, I've come to the realization that it's basically Hetalia with guns instead of countries and yuri instead of yaoi.  If that's what you like, good for you.  Go watch your show about cute gun girls.  But anyone else will probably find it pretty boring once the novelty of the first episode or two wears off.

Anime First Impressions: Mysterious Girlfriend X

I know it's been a while since I've posted anything (not like my 2 followers have noticed), so I figured that I'd give my first impressions of a show I've been watching lately: Mysterious Girlfriend X.

When I started Mysterious Girlfriend X, I knew two things about it: that it was going to involve a mysterious girlfriend and that the title contained an X.  As a result, when I first started watching it, I thought it was the weirdest shit I had ever seen, even by anime standards. 

Basically, the story seems normal enough at first.  There's a guy (Tsubaki) who, as the protagonist, will naturally become the significant other of Urabe, the Mysterious Girl who is their class's newest student.  Of course, hints of the whole weirdness start fairly soon, as Urabe does several fairly unusual things.  First, she's extremely terse when addressing people, and second, she suddenly bursts out into hysterical laughter for seemingly no reason in the middle of class.  But that's fairly standard fare for anime.  The really weird part starts shortly after, when Tsubaki encounters Urabe asleep in the classroom after school, wakes her up, and then, after she leaves, um...tastes her drool.

It is at this point that my thoughts of the show went to "this is fairly mysterious" to "this is fucking weird."

So shortly afterwards, Tsubaki gets terribly sick (maybe because, oh, I don't know, he licked some random chick's drool), and Urabe comes to visit him at his house.  She tells him to open his mouth.  Then covers her finger with drool and shoves it into his mouth.  He instantly feels better, and she tells him that it was because he was going into withdrawal.  Why was he going into mouth-juice withdrawal, exactly?  Why,  because he was lovesick, of course!  From there, Tsubaki eventually asks her to be his girlfriend, and she says that the day she burst out laughing in class was because, while she glanced over at him in class, she heard a voice say that he would be her first sexual partner.

Um...what?

The theme didn't actually play until the second episode either, and once it did, there were three thematic images throughout: drool, scissors, and lemons.

Seriously, wtf?

Really, the thing that makes the show seem so weird at first is because, despite the elements that seem almost supernatural (the drool acting as a medium with which they can sense each other's emotions, the mysterious voice that comes out of nowhere) and strange premise, it is determined to play itself seriously and realistically.  Is it a science fiction or fantasy anime?  Nope.  It just has magic spit, and even then, that's treated as if it's a completely natural thing.  The tone of the show is also somewhat surreal and gives the feeling that something is slightly off.  Nope.  That's not it.  Although it's still enough to make me suspect that there's something otherworldly about Urabe that the show is going to reveal yet.

Once you get past that initial weirdness, though--once you've been watching it for a few episodes and can say "yeah, I'll buy that"--then the show becomes a lot less weird.  Mysterious Girlfriend X is a very appropriate title (minus the X; I'm not sure how exactly that plays in) just because Urabe is really the only mysterious thing about the show.  She doesn't seem to know how to conform to normal social standards, has a strange obsession with scissors (going as far as to keep a pair tucked in her panties at all times), and doesn't seem to know how to show affection, but it's clear that she does care for Tsubaki, and in Tsubaki's mind, it doesn't matter that she's strange.

At the heart of the show, however, lies something that I'm such a sucker for: awkward first romances.  Sure, the show's framing device is a mysterious girl who has a bond with a boy through drool.  But the show isn't really about that.  What the show is really about is the struggles both Tsubaki and Urabe have trying to figure out how exactly to have a relationship.  Not even big things like sexual encounters or even first kisses--not yet, at least, though the show seems to imply that both will eventually happen.  No, the show focuses on little things, like how to hold a conversation with your significant other, how to show your affection, dealing with feelings of possessiveness, and even something as small as whether or not to call your significant other by their first name (bit of a cultural gap here: in Japan, people know each other largely on a last-name basis).  It's about budding relationships and the difficulties.

So is the show any good?  Yeah, I think it is.  I picked it entirely randomly and I'm still watching it.  It's maybe just because it's the type of show that I like, but the show sets itself apart from others of the genre.  It's, if nothing else, an intriguing show, and one that's definitely worth looking into.

Thoughts: Circus Afro; or Madagascar 3's Genius Marketing

Yeah, you've seen this.  You've seen this fucking commercial, or at least this fucking clip.  And if you're anything like me, you fucking hate it so fucking much.

But here's the thing: people hated it so much that they began to love it.  It became a weaponized joke.  You'd start singing it or you'd post the picture of it, and everyone would rage at you because you got that fucking song stuck in their head and couldn't get it out.  It became a new Rickroll, and arguably a better Rickroll.

The Circus Afro dance is annoying, it is narmy, and--worst of all--it is catchy.  That is exactly what gives it so much potential for a meme.  And a meme it became!  A meme that, as part of a frequently aired commercial, became prevalent that even the people who don't know anything about memes can and will recognize it.

Madagascar 3 looks stupid.  It looks so incredibly stupid.  It's a type of movie that most people will look at and say "does there really need to be another Madagascar movie?"  It looks objectively bad.  And yet, the commercial manages to weaponize that badness.  The entire Circus Afro sequence, like I said, had potential to become a meme.  And that's exactly what the team marketing Madagascar 3 intended to happen.  They knew they had a pile of shit on their hands, and they knew that they could capitalize on it somehow.

You see, we live in an age where ironic enjoyment of things goes beyond a joke.  People will watch something bad for the sake of watching something bad.  That's what shock films like The Human Centipede and films full of bile like The Room are for.  If The Room wasn't so famous for how bad it was, would you even consider seeing it?  No.  But right now, there are people who are looking at this clip and thinking "Wow.  Madagascar 3 looks terrible.  I want to watch it so that I can laugh about just how terrible it is with people."

Yes, folks.  The marketing team at Madagascar 3 is selling their movie on the entire premise that it is bad.  The Circus Afro dance is an incredibly stupid trainwreck that makes you think "how could Chris Rock have fallen to this level?" and then makes you curious enough to entertain the possibility of actually going to see how far Chris Rock has fallen.  The catchiness ensures that you remember it and don't just simply wave the commercial off.

Madagascar 3 set out to sell a bad movie on the premise that it is bad by creating a meme.  And some of us will fall for it.  Some of us will actually go and watch Madagascar 3 for the Circus Afro, just like some of us watched Death Note for the potato chip scene or played Portal because of the cake and Companion Cube.  That, my friends, is genius marketing.  I applaud whoever made Madagascar 3's trailer.  You, sir(s) and/or madam(s), are brilliant.  I applaud you, but I will not fall for your wily ploy.