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REVIEW: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Vol. 3 Blu-ray

spoiler[What if the world had been constantly reshaped many times before Godoka got to it, each wish adding a new layer while not removing any of the old ones?]

My problem with that theory is that spoiler[Incubators can't risk an all out war with Madoka. She is a goddess surpassing all logic and power and reasoning and I'm not sure Incubators would risk getting wiped out entirely if they keep attacking Madoka's idealized world so directly. And despite what Kyubee says about the lack of emotions, he seemed plenty frightened of what Madoka was going to do when she made her wish]

As far as them leaving things open to speculation, I do generally like when writers do that, and they did do a decent amount of that with Madoka, but my real hesitation to calling it an A+ classic has more to do with the conventional nature of the ending and the fact that the subversion was pulled back, rather than a question of whether or not they left things open to speculation.

And besides, it would be one thing if the creators were simply out there to make a statement against Magical Girl series in general and how flat they are at times, but... Madoka was never a case like that from the beginning! It paid tribute to past classics straight from thespoiler[ comedic opening movie to the figurative swirl of Kyouko's blood down to the naked and emotional space scene and final ribbon exchange.] (I've seen people mention that particular Nanoha reference, but was I the only one to notice the Sailor Moon, Revolutionary Girl Utena, and Kannazuki no Miko references here? I had to take my own screenshots to prove my argument...)

Juno016 wrote:

And besides, it would be one thing if the creators were simply out there to make a statement against Magical Girl series in general and how flat they are at times, but... Madoka was never a case like that from the beginning! It paid tribute to past classics straight from thespoiler[ comedic opening movie to the figurative swirl of Kyouko's blood down to the naked and emotional space scene and final ribbon exchange.] (I've seen people mention that particular Nanoha reference, but was I the only one to notice the Sailor Moon, Revolutionary Girl Utena, and Kannazuki no Miko references here? I had to take my own screenshots to prove my argument...)

No, trust me. All of those had been noted quite clearly beforehand. Check the Wiki if you don't believe me.

Really? I can't find them on either the English or Japanese wiki. Do you have a link?

I hereby nominate Kyuubey as Greatest Anime Troll of the last few years.

Juno016 wrote:

Really? I can't find them on either the English or Japanese wiki. Do you have a link?

Naked Space hug

Mixing Blood

Talk Page discussion of the Ribbons and about a bajillion other yuri references

The ribbon exchange is completely undeniable, Shinbo HAD to know what that would be interpreted as, since he did the original one as well.

Kannazuki no Miko's promotional picture is pretty famous in artist groups (there are countless parodies of it), but I'm surprised anyone knew what it was..

That's how time travel works and any story which violates this rule, including this series, means it's a bad story from that point on.

Animerican14 wrote:

*see above for reply*

1) "Casual Smoothness":

"I... I really don't think you should do something like that..." <-- Very anime-like. Natural for anime. Somewhat natural for Japanese. Not natural for English fluidity.

"....[hesitation]....I don't think that a good idea. At all." <-- Casual smoothness. It uses more commonly-observed linguistic patterns we'd hear in normal conversation.

Fans of anime who have gotten used to Japanese-like speaking patterns can probably deal with a lot of lines like the first example. Some people even adapt it subconsciously, but it's not common and it sounds artificial to a linguistically-trained ear (which most people have, even if they don't analyze everything they hear linguistically). Madoka's script follows the first example.

It's not so much wrong as... it sounds a bit too awkward for your common audience. And even those who are accustomed to hearing Japanese, even if they don't understand it, find it weird when a sentence is spoken like it was written from a directly-translated script rather than spoken with English casual smoothness.

In this dub, I feel like the script's direct translating makes it difficult to give casual, smooth, natural-sounding English. And thus, it starts sounding artificial to me. And I'd bet it would for a main stream audience (for instance, if they put it on Toonami).

3) "Good" and "Bad."

[...]
Glad they returned the actual terms [of "hope and despair"] in the next episode, though. I got worried when "good" and "bad" turned up again in episode 8. It still won't fix the disconnect of "hope" and "despair" in episodes 9-12 with the "good" and "bad" of 7-8, which were used to actually introduce the themes to the show. It'll take some analyzing to connect the points properly without them coming from out of nowhere in episode 9.

Those two quotes that you mentioned at the beginning... I assume that those are all hypothetical quotes you made up as examples, correct? ...Well, if they were, I'm afraid those aren't the best examples to prove your point to me. (And all the more if they were lines spoken in the dub/sub, heh.) Actually, "... I really don't think you should do something like that..." sounds just as natural to me as "....[hesitation]....I don't think that's a good idea. At all." The aforementioned sibling of mine, a graduate student that'll be teaching English this fall, thought that to be the case as well when I objectively framed a question surrounding these two examples. Heck, the former example feels a tad more natural than the other one. Now sure, people in real life may say those words together in the latter example more often, but include a pause for a period in between "good idea" and "at all"? That sounds stilted, however realistic it may be to phrase such things in this incomprehensibly diverse reality, and would probably appear more so than when put to cartoon characters.

It also bears mentioning (or reminding?) that American ADR teams highly value matching character's mouth flaps-- an area in which I feel that, though they may over-prioritize them by a bit, English tracks consistently beat the Japanese in at a technical level. Now, I'm not going to get into comparing the mouth flapping of both the Japanese and Englsih versions of Madoka-- but I feel comfortable in saying that the Madoka dub, like many/most other American dubs, gets the mouth-flaps down pat. To keep in line with that high standard in mouth flapping (a standard that, I reiterate, might take too much priority) while at the same time being strongly faithful to the original script, then, naturalness might be slightly edged out in a few corners here and there. (To look back at your example sentences, for instance, I'm not too sure if those two lines could be interchangeable with a single string of mouth flaps.) If awkwardness is somehow "truly" the case with the majority of the Madoka dub, well, Okay Then. (I have a feeling, though, that one person's awkward can be another person's natural; interpretations of what counts as awkward can be very subjective, I think.) With something as carefully and meaningfully written as Madoka, though, I'd think i'd take dub lines that may be a tad "awkward"-but-very-accurate over dub lines that may be very "natural"-but-not-that accurate any day of the week.

As I believe I indicated in the volume 2 review thread and/or the post that included previously unpublished commentary from my 2-month-younger-self, I don't think many people have made such a terribly noticeable semantic distinction, or thought that hard about the distinction, between "good/bad" and "hope/despair"-- myself included, until the discussion over it a month and half ago. So I don't think the use of the proper terms in episode 9 will really make anyone confused, or at least most people.

And besides, when they're brought up for the first time in episode 9-- and I believe this is how it is in both languages-- it's when Kyubey is expounding upon entropy and the purpose of magical girls. Viewers should be able to easily connect that explanation to what just happened with Sayaka, no matter what was exactly said. (And besides, the basic point of there being a balance to this whole system carries through in both languages.) Thus I wouldn't say that "hope/despair" comes out of nowhere in the dub... but hey, maybe that's just me.

Who exactly do you think the fanbase for this show is?

I was talking about the North American audience. I'm the only person I know who has ever even HEARD of the show.
But if that source originated in Japanese, then my question is invalid. I'm aware of the Japanese fanbase. Otherwise, it might not be worthy of being referenced in Madoka. =P