Forum - View topicREVIEW: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Vol. 3 Blu-ray
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Asterisk-CGY
 Posts: 398 |
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Ending works for me. I like the "I got this" and being a total badass x10. It's freaking sweet.
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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First of all, great review, Zac!
I don't understand why so many people complain about "spoiler[Deus Ex Magica" (  )]. It was foreshadowed by Kyubey when he told Homura spoiler[that Madoka had so much magical potential that she could become god-like.] It would have been disappointing had she not went all out on her wish.
That doesn't make the ending perfect. The rules may change, but the game stays the same.spoiler[ Emotional energy is still collected by the incubators when magical girls fight "wraiths," the origins of which are not properly explained. Do people's negative emotions float into the atmosphere and form into wraiths? Are wraiths as damaging to innocent people as witches were? And what happens to a magical girl's body and family when she simply disappears?] Episode ten is confusing as well.spoiler[ In the first timeline, Homura becomes a magical girl after Madoka dies fighting Walpurgisnacht, implying that Madoka played a Mami-like role to her. By using her wish to go back in time, she manages to meet and befriend Madoka before Madoka makes a contract. She tells Madoka that she had suffered from some kind of heart ailment, but it was cured by the time she became a magical girl and started training. I wonder if Madoka's initial wish was to cure her new friend's heart condition. (I know I'm getting my details confused a bit here; was Homura completely cured before she met Madoka? If it was Madoka's wish, it would certainly explain her powerful connection to Madoka after only knowing her for a month even the first time around!)] Another thing no one mentioned in 16 pages of comments is the montage of magical girls throughout history, including notable names like Cleopatra and Joan of Arc. It added a sense of depth to the show's universe while reminding viewers that there were young women throughout time who used their strengths and wits to make history. "Real life magical girls", so to speak, which is definitely a refreshing way to view the genre! |
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dandelion_rose
 Posts: 657 Location: Kuala Lumpur |
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The scene that really moved me was a scene involving a Muslim girl -- indicated by her wearing a hijab - in what looks like a war-torn country spoiler[being one of the girls that made a contract with Kyuubei]. The stereotype of Muslim / Middle Eastern countries being perpetually war torn aside, I thought that it was a powerful gesture. Who else would want to make a wish more strongly than someone who lives in war, and who else would be more susceptible to despair if the wish failed? |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Okay, first of all I just want to say that I have gone back and tagged my posts. But really, Zac didn't just mention "some spoilers", he spent five massive paragraphs analysing series-critical spoilers. Like, most of them. May I ask why we have to tippy-toe around with spoiler tags in the discussion thread of a review where the same spoilers are thrown out untagged? It just seems really weird to me. Last edited by dtm42 on Thu Jun 14, 2012 3:23 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Fencedude5609
 Posts: 5088 |
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Madoka's very first spoiler[wish was to save the life of a cat that was hit by a car. The cat is named "Amy", and is in fact the black cat she is seen holding in the OP. This is revealed in the first Audio Drama included with the JP volume 1] |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Now that the thread has died down, I have time to catch my breath and remember to ask this question; can people please remind me as to how spoiler[Homura remembered Madoka and everything after the reset?] That is another problem that has been bugging me actually, and I have been holding off rewatching the last episode until my LE pack arrived. Since it has yet to arrive I was hoping some kind Forumite could help me out in the meantime.
Thank you in advance. Edit: this is my nineteenth post in the thread and it has barely been ten hours. Holy cow. |
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Fencedude5609
Posts: 5088 |
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She was spoiler[carried along for the ride when Madoka transcended space and time, and thus was outside of the universe when it was being rewritten. She was busy having a naked cuddle with Madoka.] |
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Wakazhi
 Posts: 203 |
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I partly understand your argument with how Madoka becoming a god feels like a cop-out to resolve all the conflicts. But a lot of things in the end were still not "perfect". - All the mahou shojo in the past still died at a young age (which helps keep history somewhat stable). - The earth is still filled with despair and chaos. - The universe is still subject to entropy (otherwise Kyubey wouldn't still be hanging around). - Sayaka didn't get to come back to life because mahou shojo are still bound to eventually die, the difference is they won't die miserably or turn into witches. - No one else remembers Madoka (except for Tatsuya and Homura sort of). - Madoka had to destroy her own witch (which was only possible because she had become omnipresent) on top of having to kill every witch without rest for eternity - And now the mahou shojo have to deal with an endless number of Wraiths in order to keep the balance of good and evil intact. "Conventional" usually goes along with "convenient", and with those supporting examples I listed, I don't see how most of these results are all that convenient realistically. Yeah, it's true that the mahou shojo will no longer have to kill each other after becoming witches or deal with innocent people being cursed by witches, but life for them still kinda sucks. You think it was "too neat"? That's like saying "Well we don't have to deal with nukes dropping on us anymore, but now we have to deal with terrorists, snipers, more advanced weaponry, falling economies, and not to mention all the other inhumane and black market junk happening around the world; yep, getting rid of the nukes has neatly wrapped up life for everyone in a neat little bow..." It would've been conventional if everything that Homura wanted to happen had happened, but most of the ending was not how Homura expected or even necessarily wanted things to end up. When I looked at some people's reactions last year over the ending, they were saying that Madoka's sacrifice was in vain because of how messed up things still were. Even with the witches gone, I still wouldn't want to live in that world, lol. And that goes back to the whole "balance of good and evil". Yes there were a lot of things resolved, but a lot of crap and FML's came with it, seriously. I don't mean to be a complete jerk, but I hope those points I listed helped you think more about what really happened at the end of the show and it wasn't just a neatly rapped bow for the people in that world, especially from the mahou shojo's perspective (and knowing myself, I probably forgot a few things to mention, lol). |
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Mesonoxian Eve
Posts: 1858 |
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Maybe for you, but since you wish to be rude, I'm going to reciprocate the attitude. I find your opinion of this series to be flawed, and it's based on such trivial crap, it makes you look pretty stupid. Great writing? I don't believe time travel is great writing. It's a cop out. So many people are talking about Madoka and her choice they all fail to realize the series isn't about her at all. It's 12 episodes dedicated to Homura's selfish desire to see her live. We see this as the series closes. "Nope, don't like that outcome. I'll try again." And again. And again. Oh, wait. I'll settle for this one spoiler[because she actually tells me it's okay she'll sacrifice herself.] I believe this is poor writing, and nothing you can say is going to make it any better. We all watch as each and every single character runs through a bevy of emotions (here's a box of kittens, now watch them get kicked) and they all become pointless when the one final path is chosen and we see clearly Homura didn't give a shit about anyone but Madoka. I believe this is poor writing because some of us ask spoiler["Why didn't she keep going until she picked the path where everyone lives?" (time travel allows for this due to the infinite number of possibilities)] I'm sorry you're incapable to think beyond this scope, but that's not my problem. When it does become my problem is when you're giving others shit because their opinion differs from your own, rudely. Do it again, and you'll see another thread started in Talkback requesting your account be permanently banned. |
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Shippoyasha
Posts: 459 |
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Well, personal attachment to the point of obsessiveness is kind of the theme of Madoka. It is not surprising at all that Homura focuses on Madoka, Kyoko on Sayaka (maybe vice versa as well), Sayaka on her one sided love.
It's really not about being a saint or solving anything. That is the whole point. That they would go far with their emotion and drive, as morally gray as it can sometimes get. Personally, I don't think the time travel aspect is some 'cop out'. Because the entire story was done by one person and it was throughout perhaps 3-4 weeks of time according to interviews (maybe even less time than that for the general outline). Plus, the ENTIRE SHOW is based on the time travel aspect. So how is that a copout when they didn't just come up with that. It's not like they come up with a plotline of an anime week after week. It doesn't work that way. |
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danilo07
 Posts: 1580 |
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Great review!
If I remember correctly Kyubei told Homura spoiler[that her experience of being with Madoka,might have been hallucination which creates the possibility that she is just created character used by Homura to ease her life in a desperate world.] |
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Mesonoxian Eve
Posts: 1858 |
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This is contradictory. This series is clearly dedicated to Homura solving a single dilemma regarding Madoka. If the series had just stuck with the "final" path, then told its back story, the execution would have been much more graceful. Instead, the story chose the "Here's a box of kittens, now watch them get kicked" approach.
Many don't, and that's okay. They're much more lenient to this element than I am. But it bugs the hell out of me when I'm watching an exceptional story get undone when some screams "RESET!".
I disagree because we're never privileged to Homura's gift until we see the linearity we're watching doesn't end to her satisfaction. That's when the series screams "RESET!", and it's at this point I scream back "WHAT THE F...!???" I simply can't just "turn off" my hatred for time traveling stories, because I've witnessed too many which always does the same fault: relate an outcome to a single event on an unrelated path. Steins;Gate actually took this into consideration, and it really changed the dynamic of the story. If you think about it, the two plot lines are identical, but their execution was completely different.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "they". The cop-out is referring to the story, not the characters.
Ah, but you see this is where the statement is false. In theory, Aniplex could continue to release volume 3 week after week, and each with a different ending. Because that's what time travel stories do: they present an infinite number of possibilities but we're only given a few, and most of them are "cop out" endings. Here's proof: we know how Madoka fits into all this. Care to explain why we were only given the good ending? I'd like to see the ending where Madoka is the witch. 
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jl07045
 Posts: 1527 Location: Riga, Latvia |
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My two and a half cents.
I have a weird relationship with this series. I started it through word of mouth around episode 4. It really grabbed me because of plot and atmosphere and Kyubey. However by episode 9 I was tired of the atmosphere and I felt I knew where stuff was going. So in the end although I could praise it for being very well constructed and paced, without visible plot holes and inconsistencies (Kyouko aside) and thematically sound (although the whole system of spoiler[lolentropy] and magical girls is designed to suck, which cheapens the message a bit) and visually interesting, I did not feel as satisfied as I should be out of a series I'd give some 8.5-9/10. One reason might be that I don't care about magical girls as a genre. It is meant for people who are either younger than me or creepy in a different way than me. But the main one is probably that I couldn't care much about the characters. There are 3 reasons for that: 1) they're middle school girls that are not seriously messed up, so they don t particularly interest me; 2) the character designs made it hard for me to consider them people instead of anime people; 3) I felt that they were more constructs than characters that matter as people. What I mean by that is that I felt like they were set pieces meant to represent some ideas that Urobuchi deem necessary or to drive the plot, everything with the final purpose of getting Madoka to do what she did in the end. Maybe it would be different if the series was twice as long, but that would likely bring other bigger problems. I'll likely rewatch it some day, but I don't think I'll ever consider it more than a very well crafted piece of entertainment, which is itself a worthy praise. Last edited by jl07045 on Thu Jun 14, 2012 7:07 am; edited 1 time in total |
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JaffaOrange
 Posts: 251 |
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Out of curiousity, does Zac know what entropy means? The show seems a little confused on what it is and the use of the word in this review is a bit off in my opinion.
Just a petty remark on semantics. I still agree with all the major points in the review. |
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ChibiKangaroo
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None of this shows that he doesn't have to grant the wish once he makes the contract. Like I said, I was referring to "control" as in the idea that his people came up with the system and could come up with another system. I wasn't speaking to control as in they could violate the system they already came up with. |
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