Forum - View topicShelf Life - QB of the Year
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Kaioshin_Sama
Posts: 1215 |
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I don't hate Madoka and actually found the show surprisingly interesting (TV series that is) when I expected all the buzz to amount to nothing in my books like it usually does (I really don't share the same interests as a lot of the current anime fanbase does at all like for example my rather infamous dislike of the Monogatari series in some circles which I just cannot see why anyone could possibly like to the degree that they do) but I certainly wouldn't put it in the upper echelon of all time favorite series watched nor does it have particularly strong rewatch value for me.
I think it's timing was impeccable since anime was desperately in need of some sort of counter-culture to the ultra moe series that were coming out at the time and that a lot of people rallied around it for how it framed some of those tropes in an unexpected light, but honestly sometimes I just kind of grow tired of it seeming like the only thing people ever want to talk about or recognize as especially good these days. I just don't think it resonated with me quite so much as it did with a lot of people though that's not to say it didn't, I just tend to have a more muted reaction to anime than a lot of people period. Also the fanbase for it can get pretty obnoxious and self-important at times almost as if they can't accept that anyone could ever not consider it the be all end all along with the writer whose career it helped launch into the stratosphere but IMO has yet to deliver anything nearly as interesting thematic wise since. There's definitely a certain degree of fanboyism surrounding the franchise that I could totally see being a turnoff for some people. |
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ANN_Bamboo
ANN Contributor
 Posts: 3904 Location: CO |
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Madoka and the rest of the "magical girls" are not even magical girls at all. They are only referred to as magical girls because that is what Kyubey uses to lure them in, as he's promising Wishes! and Powers! and Costumes! and Cute Talking Mascots! The fact that they even look like frilly magical girls (recall that Madoka gets the outfit that she doodles for herself, because that's what she thinks of when she thinks of magical girls, likely from manga and anime influences) is because that is what magical girls are supposed to look like, both in the eyes of the characters, and in the eyes of the consumers.
If you consider what makes "magical girls" magical, aside from their magical powers (duh), you'll see that they all have similar traits, and similar justifications for what they're doing. They are saving humanity from a laundry list of villains. They are rarely force-fed back into the system that created them for no other purpose than collecting energy. Or, in the case of media, blind consumerism and air wave filler. Magical girls, both in Kyubey's eyes, and perhaps in the eyes of production studios and licensors, if you want to make that leap, are expendable. Their ideals do not matter because they are manufactured to make themselves and their audiences feel better. What better way to illustrate this than literally having the Madoka Magica girls be nothing more hollow shells that don pretty costumes? And when their purpose is served, they just disappear. I think there are many ways that people can think about Madoka Magica. I don't think any of them are more wrong or more right than others, and I think if you just want to stare at the pretty colors, that's fine. But I think that calling one person's interpretation or analysis of the show "wrong" is a stubborn refusal to look at anyone else's interpretation but your own. That having been said, I think as with most media, there are plenty of times that consumers have ascribed meaning and symbolism to things that the creators didn't intend, or didn't think about. Maybe the Madoka people just wanted to draw cute girls. But I think that is the great thing about media-- everyone gets to consume it in their own way. |
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Juno016
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GVman and sunflower both have pretty much the only kind of [somewhat] respectable dislike of the series. Their reasons are "I had expectations and they didn't live up to my expectations." There's nothing wrong with that at all. What ends up being "wrong" when people criticize the show is when they start making assumptions about what the show is or isn't, and/or they claim that anyone who enjoyed it or understood parts of it in their own way were stupid for whatever reason. The plot of Madoka IS interesting. The characters AREN'T bland. They fit a certain niche of storytelling value. But if the way they were written is not a way that interests you, then you have every right to claim otherwise because "interest" and "blandness" come from individual taste. This is also something I wish I could tell all of the hype-happy fans who claim that there is some kind of standard to "interest" or "blandness" and anyone who doesn't get this in the series is wrong. There's nothing that ruins someone's experience of a show faster than someone who claims the show to be awesome, and then the person watches it to find out it doesn't appeal to them. Sometimes even because unrealistic expectations were set, or maybe even because the fan claimed something that wasn't necessarily true in the series, either, affecting the viewer's expectations and, eventually, their experience and what lens they view the show with.
Well, they fight using magical powers, so... I think that qualifies them to be "Magical Girls." Trying to limit the term to a certain storytelling mindset will only make it stale. The people who claim that the show is a "sci-fi" instead of a "Magical Girl" genre show are likely forgetting/unaware that the genre itself is not just a bubble of PreCure, Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, and other popular series with similar themes/mindsets. Princess Tutu is a ballet shoujo with fairy-tail-subverting themes and it's a "Magical Girl" series. Some people would even be surprised to find out that Revolutionary Girl Utena is also sometimes classified as a "Magical Girl" series. Others aren't surprised. There's no real classifier for the genre except "main females use magical powers". Storytelling and subverted concepts can go in any direction. |
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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On the one hand, I can understand why some people (a substantial percentage, it seems) dislike Madoka. My current theory is that most of them are extroverts who can't relate to the extremely angsty introspective content, and only really notice the... erm... brony-esque portion of the fanbase, which turns them off even more. It's not as if extroverts can't enjoy it or that introverts are required to (there's a spectrum between the two, after all), but there's definitely a dividing force there. Kaioshin_Sama's post describes exactly how I feel about "extroverty" shows like Attack on Titan and Kill la Kill and Gurren Lagann-- I can tell they're good at what they do, but they don't resonate with me much, if at all.
On the other hand... it's sort of hard for me to comprehend because Madoka is literally the only thing that I have ever truly considered myself a "fan" of. I rarely re-watch or re-read things because they tend to suck the second or third time even if I loved them the first time; Madoka went in the opposite direction. Like an endless fractal pattern of emotion and philosophy, it seems to connect to practically everything about life and the universe, and if you said that about anything else I'd probably think you were nuts (then again, if it was created once, it could happen again...). My interest in it is kinda over-the-top, but it baffles me that some people seemingly can't see any of the value in its thematic content, or focus on one thing and complain about it instead of noticing any of the interconnections or the bigger picture of how they all fit together. The "shock value" complaint is common, and very strange because I didn't even know there was any until it was pointed out to me. Most of the "crazy shocking twists" really weren't in context; most of them were foreshadowed or downright telegraphed, and I felt like the plot flowed along very consistently with no ridiculous leaps at all. But I guess it depends on what you pay attention to. I'm apparently blind to whatever it is that makes people love high-energy things like Attack on Titan, after all. |
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Maokun
Posts: 53 |
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This is an over-simplification of the series' storytelling twist. It's not so much that spoiler[QB was evil (by the way, he is not, he and his race are amoral from humanity's point of view,) but rather, that the whole "Magic Girl" system was corrupt. Usually Magical Girls are empowered by forces of good to battle the forces of evil. In Madoka's universe they are empowered by a self-profiting interested third-party to battle against themselves in a never-ending circle of despair. Even if QB had been just some mascot and the Witch system was being implemented by an unknown moustache-twirling villain behind the scenes, the genre twist would still be quite effective. Think of it like this: In most MG series, the "last boss" is a person or being, the commander of the "evil forces". In PMMM, the "last boss" is the very Magical Girl system itself.] |
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Ghostalker85
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Watched the PMMM TV series about 5-6 times before watching the movie versions 6-7 times by now, the thing is I use to complain about the cuts in the movie version in the first time I watched the movies, but eventually the movie version grows on me, now for some reason I prefer the movie versions than the TV series. If I got the feeling of wanting to re-watched PMMM, I always go to the movie versions, I can't really explain why.
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rizuchan
 Posts: 976 Location: Kansas |
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Not to disrupt the discussion of Madoka movies, but...
Another CCS fan that lives in Kansas? And is that Clannad and AIR I see, too?? Why aren't we BFFs??? |
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Ahiru
 Posts: 62 Location: ...just a duck in Oregon |
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Completely agree! "Comedy" anime are usually a hard sell for me, and it's rare that one ever has me laughing out loud; Nozaki-kun is definitely in my top 5 anime of any genre for the year 
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Juno016
Posts: 2394 |
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The twists themselves came more out of a betrayal of biased expectations from the viewer. The original series really excelled at shocking people because, despite its heavy foreshadowing that becomes far more obvious the second time around (and beyond), it still held several tropes at the beginning that fit the Magical Girl genre really nicely. If someone is cynical enough, they're probably going to think, "This is talking about suicide and stuff, which is pretty heavy, but they might not actually do anything truly substantial with it. It might just be in there to make the series seem dark when it really isn't." I saw this sort of view prevail after the second episode aired. The first episode, too, was only ever "shocking" because of its InuCurry moment, but that was more weird than shocking. The famous episode 3 proved that they planned to go further with it, but again, cynicism led a lot of people to claim it was done for "shock value" and wouldn't matter much later on. When Sayaka made her contract and shrugged things off, I remember the common complaint I heard was something like, "The writers just forced her to contract and now Mami's death doesn't matter anymore." Alongside the "How can we consider this good writing when the main character hasn't even contracted yet?" Naive complaints, but that's why the series kept shocking people. Expectations kept getting overturned and it had people invested in the rollar-coaster ride of the plot. It isn't until people know what's going to happen when they re-watch the series that they end up paying far more attention to what characters are saying and how it makes sense in the context of the story and what's going to happen later. Foreshadowing becomes far more apparent, too. So basically, if you expected the series to be happy-go-lucky, you were probably shocked heavily by the twists. If you weren't cynical or had no direct expectations, then chances are, the "shocking twists", while still big, were probably more fluid to you than to other people.
We're discussion Madoka because of its relevance to the actual article. I don't see why you're interrupting anything by posting about CCS when it's related to a previous post. Just because Madoka incites a lot of conversation doesn't mean that it necessarily hijacked the topic. D: Don't let our discussions deter you from posting about the article's other topics! Speaking of which, I'm a fan of Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun. A sleeper hit, for sure, but it hit my comedy sweet spot. Even when it was less interesting, it still had me in stitches. I actually still gotta watch the final episode, too... Gah, should I...!? D: |
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ANN_Bamboo
ANN Contributor
Posts: 3904 Location: CO |
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My entire point was that magical girls are more than just their magic powers. There's "magical girls" as the genre that we're accustomed to, with the characters that we're accustomed to, and "magical girls" as mere pastiches of conventional archetypes.
I think if that's the message you're pulling from people's discussions of Madoka, either you're talking to the wrong people, or you're not actually listening to what's being discussed. |
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SquadmemberRitsu
 Posts: 1391 |
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Yes, you made a point. And I made a point that it's not worth rebutting.
So basically, you're insulting me for the sole fact that I like something you don't... yet at the same time you can't explain why that thing as bad. Sorry, I'm not really seeing how that proves you're smarter and more experienced with literature than me. Cool buzzwords though. Keep em' coming
What bias? Do I have to absolutely despise a show to be able to tell you why it's not bad? Am I a fanboy solely because I called you out on your bullshit? You're not making any sense. Pacing and animation is not everything no matter what show you're talking about and Titan is no exception. You could talk about how one of those problems drags down the show as a whole (There were certainly a lot of genuine problems caused by the weird pacing) but on their own they don't add up to much. How about you tell me how one of the show's flaws drags the rest of the show down? You mentioned that you didn't like the themes in that incredibly non specific blanket statement (Which you basically just used to insult me even though you obviously had no clue what I was talking about) so let's hear your criticisms of that. At the very least try to make some sort of genuine point about the series without resorting to buzzwords (Fanboy is most certainly one of those by the way) or ad hominem. |
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Sylontack
 Posts: 193 |
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I'm not fond of the series, however I agree, it's not a brainless series, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it smart either. I think an offhanded mention of mindless entertainment would be passable but the review put major emphasis on the brainless popcorn value. As a Madoka fan I actually found that despite a few missing scenes, the Madoka films were a vast improvement. I always insist people watch the series first because the films take out some of the slower scenes and a few reasonably important character development scenes spoiler[Most importantly for Mami, only because she has so little screen time already]. But for fans who want to rewatch the series, it provides a slightly quicker run time, compresses the series into two films (far less daunting than 12 episodes), improved acting, animation and soundtrack all while still making a very much coherent and enjoyable experience that does not differ from what is taken from the series (unlike most compilation films which only make sense to people who know a series back to front already). Which is definitely a feat for a compilation film. |
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Kaioshin_Sama
Posts: 1215 |
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It's more like eventually when a fanbase refuses to ever stop beating the drum of how astonishingly and transcendentally great and above all other things their favorite show is for such a long time now eventually you start to try to tune it out more and in the process kind of tune out the show itself in a way. Some people may call it cynicism, I call it taking a step back to try to achieve a measure of clarity and making sure I'm not missing the bigger picture. If anything I also consider that sort of behavior very "extroverty" because it's like constantly propelling the appreciation for something outward in a manner that just kind of feels suffocating to people like me who tend to prefer a more "Introverted" reflection on and appreciation of their favorite works. I don't know even for my absolute very favorite works I'll talk about them with people and tell them what I like about them but I've never felt the need to embellish my appreciation of them and try to be the loudest possible voice of praise the way I see fans do for Madoka often do. I guess maybe it's just the kind of popular show that attracts a certain fan type that just likes to act that way about it though. It wouldn't be the first show I've seen that get of approach over the years. So yeah if there's anything I dislike about Madoka it's not the content and execution itself which is pretty decent, it's this sort of atmosphere that surrounds it now and that if I ever want to talk about it I basically have to approach it in this highly reverent way since that's how the vast majority of it's fanbase seems to or just not bother which is generally what I prefer to do. |
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EnigmaticSky
 Posts: 750 |
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I genuinely didn't like Madoka for various reasons. Sure , it deconstructs the genre, but that doesn't mean necessarily that it is good. I feel like the characters are all just weak. spoiler[You get no connection to Mami, she is just the tutorial character. She explains what the girls have to do, and then when she has done that she dies. Yeah, it's shocking, but you don't feel sad. Red girl goes from wanting to murder blue girl to wanting to save her because the plot says so. Madoka is plain and lifeless; she just stands there the whole time and reacts to nothing. Homura was the only character made 3-dimensional.] I also felt like the ending was just a giant ass-pull, but that wasn't the biggest concern. I didn't feel like it was as intellectually challenging as everyone says it was; sure there were allusions to Faust and it got fairly dark, but again, I don't know if that equates to "good." Genuinely didn't care for it, and now I have the over-priced limited editions sitting on my shelf because I was almost certain I would like it before I watched it. [/spoiler]
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Juno016
Posts: 2394 |
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Could you explain that in more detail, with some examples, maybe? I'm going off the idea that the genre itself has evolved over time and branched into several sub-categories (sometimes comprising of sub-categories of their own, or including only a handful of trademarks/series), and all of them are still part of the "Magical Girl" genre, united with the simple idea of "girls using magic." Almost all of the ones that turned the genre and its sub-categories into what they are today copied tropes from previously-established series and made some sort of change to it. In Madoka's case, we can call it a "Magical Girl" series with a "sci-fi" twist. I mean, in the first place, even with all the sci-fi in there, the incubators claim to not even know WHERE this Magic comes from or HOW it works. It just works, and they have only ever scientifically tied it to a person's karmic potential. Not even sci-fi can cover all aspects of Madoka.
I'm speaking in general, but I'm also replying specifically to this:
This is not always true. The genre never even started out that way in the first place. Looking back at classified history, the first several Magical Girl series never had villains. They had life lessons, or their magic brought them misfortune because they misused it, and sometimes it brought them ideal happiness because the show was meant to glorify a fantasy to little kids, too. Not all Magical Girls transform(ed) either, whether they were playing out their daily lives or fighting "evil". And if we're looking at "Magical Girls" in the light as was described in the second paragraph, then that applies similarly to other series, such as Princess Tutu, where the main protagonist was purposely turned into a "Magical Girl" for the sake of going along with a dead man's whims. He didn't necessarily CALL her a "Magical Girl", but the idea that he was behind her transformation and was using it to manipulate her is similar enough that I can't see too much of a distinction. The only thing you described that really sets Madoka apart from its predecessors is how the girls are technically souls inside a gem that control a hollow body that transforms (rather than the gem itself). Thus, it's very possible that a lot of what makes them carry the tropes they proliferate come from a representation of Magical Girls instead of actual Magical Girls themselves. Still, despite being the only one of its kind to do that thus far, that doesn't mean that the girls aren't Magical Girls. I might still be misunderstanding something fundamental, but that's how I understood the topic. I'm open to correction and further discussion, of course.
A victim of the over-hyped expectations! D: Seriously, it sucks to have something so expensive that you ended up not finding worth the purchase. That said, you could easily sell them for something, even used. The demand for those sets is still pretty high and there has to be a good number of people who wouldn't mind a used copy for a slightly more affordable price. Especially of the limited editions. Anyway, I don't necessarily intend to change your mind, but this seems to be the popular criticism of Madoka for "haters" or people who didn't care for it in general. It pains fans like me to hear such an opinion because we have tons and tons of evidence/proof in the show alone to suggest/prove that every character was more than a device to the plot (as much as the plot "used" them, their individual character was epitomal to the themes of the series and the series would not have been nearly as respectable without well-written characters to carry the message throughout). Other elements of Madoka that are attractive, such as the aforementioned "deconstruction" concept, the general "dark" atmosphere, and the "allusions to literature" were more like the icing on the cake. Or rather, they weren't just bonuses so much as they were also devices to create the whole that became the series. Individually, none of them necessarily make the show "good", but when conducted in the order and manner they were put together in the end, they all make Madoka unique and special to the fans, and their contributions to the story and execution itself are meaningful. If you're interested, I once challenged a group of several anonymous fans of the series to stop looking through their biased lenses and try to figure out why respectable anime fans might not have liked the characters of the show. The discussion came out really nice, and you can find it here: http://walpurgischan.net/meduka/res/5237.html |
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