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

Juno016 wrote:

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

What the...?

Who do you think made that wiki? Who do you think cracked the Rune Cypher? (hint: It wasn't the Japanese), who do you think came up with all these theories and speculah when it was airing?

If you are just talking about "people who only watch anime after its available on DVD in the US", thats one thing, but the English Speaking fandom probably did more to analyze and interpret Madoka than even the Japanese side did.

I was just surprised that there was anyone else on this side of the pacific who knew Kannazuki no Miko enough to catch the reference. I'm not really blown away, but rather like, "Huh. This is the first time I've heard of it."

but the Japanese fanbase on 2ch was cracking the code only hours after the first episode aired, before there were any subtitled files around... so I'm not sure how to take what you just said.

Juno016 wrote:

but the Japanese fanbase on 2ch was cracking the code only hours after the first episode aired, before there were any subtitled files around... so I'm not sure how to take what you just said.

No one even suspected the Runes were a code until episode 2, and it wasn't until someone on /a/ matched up Runes from Gertrud's barrier with the Faust quotes (which were in german!) did anyone figure out how to crack them

No one even suspected the Runes were a code until episode 2, and it wasn't until someone on /a/ matched up Runes from Gertrud's barrier with the Faust quotes (which were in german!) did anyone figure out how to crack them

But that doesn't make sense to me. I had some minor interest in the show because Kajiura Yuki was doing the background music (the trailers kept turning me off... lol). But when the first episode aired, I saw some threads on 2ch covering new anime turn to start analyzing the artistic direction (and make jokes on it) and they covered the runes and pointed them out, looking at possible ways to interpret them. That's what got me to watch the show only a few hours after its first broadcast (instead of waiting a week or two to hear feedback like I usually do). It's been a while, but I am very confident in my memory in this case. I'd stake my life on it.

Dude, I blogged Kannaduki back when it first aired. Its pretty much one of the all-time most well known yuri anime, it was released by Geneon on DVD over half a decade ago!

Juno016 wrote:

But that doesn't make sense to me. I had some minor interest in the show because Kajiura Yuki was doing the background music (the trailers kept turning me off... lol). But when the first episode aired, I saw some threads on 2ch covering new anime turn to start analyzing the artistic direction (and make jokes on it) and they covered the runes and pointed them out, looking at possible ways to interpret them. That's what got me to watch the show only a few hours after its first broadcast (instead of waiting a week or two to hear feedback like I usually do). It's been a while, but I am very confident in my memory in this case. I'd stake my life on it.

No one actually knew the Runes were an actual cypher language until /a/ broke the code after episode 2, because it was in that episode that the key (the passages from Faust) were provided. It was literally impossible to figure them out beforehand, not the least because no one even knew what language (German) they were a cypher for!

But they were already questioning if the runes were actually a symbol-based language or if they were made up, and if so, what did they mean? They had already been matching them up with English letters to see if there was any Japanese romanized or English words they could make sense of. After episode 2, things like Gertrud's name and the writing on the walls were being talked about on 2ch. I remember seeing lots of fan-made charts trying to decipher the language with the English and German alphabets. I don't think they were able to make a complete and accurate chart until around episode 6 or 8 or so.

The timeline for this is very well established, and the initial breakthrough was made by /a/.

This is not a debatable point, its what actually happened

Then what exactly happened on my end?

During the Aniplex USA Madoka Premiere, production staff was very surprised when overseas fans cracked the runes. It was stated that even obsessive Japanese fans had not gone that far.

I think you make a good point about the origin story concept, which I think is interesting but I don't think that's how they indicated things were going with the ending because spoiler[she removed herself from existence]. If she had turned herself into some kind of ruling queen or existing god, then I would probably be in agreement with that position but I get the impression that going forward (assuming the movie sequel) the story won't really be about Madoka.

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.

Best Japanese Dub Performance – Female
Emiri Katou should at least get an honourable mention here, her wok of Kyubey was pretty good. But I think that Chiwa Saito's depiction of Homura was an even better performance, the right mix of jaded veteran and traumatised little girl.

spoiler[Well, we don't really know to the extent Madoka influences and continues to rule the world/universe though. That's kind of a funny thing that many magical girl queens/princesses do too, in that they rule in a higher plane of existence where the only occasionally come into contact with the physical realm. Might be something similar with Madoka too, but it's all a speculation either way]

I'm a bit more partial towards Sayaka's performance considering it just felt a bit more nuanced at times.