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This Week in Anime - What Happens When Magical Girls Grow Up?

Dark series will never go away--there will always be teenagers and young adults who'll feel the need to demonstratively reject their childhood--but as Western fandom continues to age and gentrify, one would think the desire to do a sincere show for adults is there.

In the rest of the "magical girls but daaaaark" space, I've honestly been enjoying Magical Girl Tsubame: I Will (Not) Save The World! over on Manga Plus, but it's hard to see it ever getting an anime. So much of the appeal is Mapollo 3's wild-ass art, which I'm sure the eight other fans of PPPPPP out there will remember was also its strongest suit -- and I don't think it'd work nearly as well in motion.

The first book/series, and the second arc too are more standard "dark magical girl!!!" type stories but after that point it starts getting really interesting.

I will throw my vote in for watching Daybreak Illusion if you haven't. Yes, it's one of the slew of dark magical girl series to come out in the years following Madoka, but the art style was unique and it didn't dwell on the misery as much as series like Magical Girl Site or Magical Girl Raising Project. Definitely a step below Yuuki Yuuna, however. Daybreak was another one with a really banger OP song as well.

In the rest of the "magical girls but daaaaark" space, I've honestly been enjoying Magical Girl Tsubame: I Will (Not) Save The World! over on Manga Plus, but it's hard to see it ever getting an anime. So much of the appeal is Mapollo 3's wild-ass art, which I'm sure the eight other fans of PPPPPP out there will remember was also its strongest suit -- and I don't think it'd work nearly as well in motion.

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and, notably, didn't reveal its cards about being anything other than a straightforward take until about episode three

This is a pretty standard narrative with Madoka, but it's also not how I remember it being received. Even from episode 1, people were saying "this is some wild-ass Shaft stuff, and it'll be interesting to see where it goes". There was already the ominous Kyubey imagery, the opening nightmare, the Faust allusions, the crazy set design, Homura being very suspicious, a beat or two that was very reminiscent of Nanoha's opening episode, and so on. Long before Charlotte happened, it was clear this was not a world where being a magical girl was fun and games.

(For me, it's kinda like how people talk about the OP being misleading, to which I always say: It starts and ends with Madoka crying. How much more representative can you get?)

Remember, Madoka already had a good amount of buzz before it aired, just from the staff. People already knew the Song of Saya dude was writing Shaft's first original anime since before the Shinbo era, just as they knew it had character designs by the Hidamari Sketch lady and the director of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei and Arakawa Under the Bridge would be directing. Nobody expected it to be typical Pretty Cure material. (Not that the then-current HeartCatch season was considered "typical Pretty Cure material" either, as I recall.)

Could be worse. Could be Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka.

I find Magical Girl most enjoyable when it is either Echi(Cutie Honey, KIll La Kill), Dark(Princess Tutu) or bizzare(Galaxy Fraulein Yuna).

...or for the series to suddenly switch from the cheery ED used for the first two episodes to the much, much darker-toned "Magia," which I still feel was a masterstroke for emphasizing that viewers were finally seeing the series' real face.

Could be worse. Could be Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka.