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bglassbrook wrote:

pachy_boy wrote:

spoiler[And after such a cliffhanger where Kyubey reveals the identity of the witches (among other things being revealed),]

It struck me as rather odd how much weight was given to that "reveal" at the end of episode 8. Mostly because somewhere in the back of my head, I remembered it all but being said very early on.

You're either physic, or mistaken. There was a lot of fan speculation towards that idea, but it was never stated in the show.

EDIT: Thought it was vague enough, but I'll spoiler tag it.

bglassbrook wrote:

On the plus-side, at least it will soon all be out there, and no more worrying about spoilers...

Since this is a very spoiler heavy series, there will always be a worry about spoilers and keeping them in check, because there will always be new people just starting to watch it who have never seen it before.

Nice review for a very good series.

It's good to see so much thought given to a little Magical Girl show. I love how the writer(s) play with fan expectations, starting out in a very conventional fashion, and then..bam! Deconstruction, deconstruction, deconstruction.

This second part of the series, it's my favorite. The beginning was too tame, the ending is a bit...weird? (Still a better ending than Mass Effect 3), but these episodes? Pure awesomeness for all the reasons stated in the review.

bglassbrook wrote:

pachy_boy wrote:

Quote:

spoiler[And after such a cliffhanger where Kyubey reveals the identity of the witches] (among other things being revealed),

It struck me as rather odd how much weight was given to that "reveal" at the end of episode 8. Mostly because somewhere in the back of my head, I remembered it all but being said very early on.
On the plus-side, at least it will soon all be out there, and no more worrying about spoilers... including the dreaded "it bends all the genres" (so you know to expect the opposite of normal) and such-n-such character is evil (so you keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.)

Well, you could continue worrying about some spoilers by actually spoiler-tagging what I spoiler-tagged for you when quoting your post. I guess pachy_boy didn't do that with his post, but still Razz

. I'm sure that there may be a few wandering into this thread that haven't seen all the episodes that are on this disc, you know. Like Surrender Artist, for example.

Well, I was able to find some time to get through episodes 5 and 6 all tonight. The way I've been doing it has been to see all the episodes once in Japanese, and then once again all the way through in English-- partly to save the more "exciting"/newer aspects of Aniplex USA's release towards the end, but also so I could see the complete dub for the first time with a sibling around campus come this weekend. However... there have been several moments while seeing it in Japanese that I was really tempted to see how the English version sounded, just to do a more direct comparison and contrast. I've succumbed to that temptation for a couple scenes anyway, and boy, not only can I easily become ridiculously anal that way ("no, your vocal pitch should've been slightly higher at xx min xx sec, Kyoko!"), but it takes away from the pacing of the episode. Really don't think I want to be doing that again... How have you guys been watching through your BDs/DVDs? (And/or how do you plan to continue watching them?)

That said. One of the audio track switcharoos gave me the chance to be too happy that Aniplex USA went ahead with translating the name of a particular witch as "Walpurgisnacht" instead of "Walpurgis Night" or "Walpurgis," in both the subtitles and the dub. The dub also got at least part of the German pronunciation right, with the "Wal" being pronounced more like "Val."

bhl88 wrote:

I asked Urobuchi if he hates Mami and Sayaka so much Anime hyper

Ans: Characters shine best when they are about to expire.

EDIT: And in the end... Madoka will have a sequel (and a remake).

Kinda like stars. Burn the brightest before the explode.

Zac wrote:

like a beautiful woman looking in a broken mirror, something that's using cutesy anime imagery to tell a very dark and emotionally brutal story

Loved that line, Zac.

Kohii wrote:

bhl88 wrote:

I asked Urobuchi if he hates Mami and Sayaka so much Anime hyper

Ans: Characters shine best when they are about to expire.

EDIT: And in the end... Madoka will have a sequel (and a remake).

Kinda like stars. Burn the brightest before the explode.

Zac wrote:

like a beautiful woman looking in a broken mirror, something that's using cutesy anime imagery to tell a very dark and emotionally brutal story

Loved that line, Zac.

Mami's brightest: when she cried.
Sayaka's brightest: a ton of T.T

belindabird wrote:

I'm extra-excited to see how the final installment fares, especially considering that it contains my personal favorite episode (episode 10).

Heck YEAH, that was my favorite episode also. It completely threw me off and it felt like I was watching a crazy revelation-expanding episode of LOST. It also had the best character development imo.

Well took a visit to 4chan that B grade makes sense.

Though Shaft did have a consistent habit of cleaning up their animations for disk. Dunno what happened here.

The most over-hyped show of the decade, worth a C+/B- at most for the first half, and B+/A- for the second half (except the last episode which is crap). Sleep-inducing material with uninteresting characters mostly and clichéd developments, only 5 good episodes in the whole series. But well, it's a Mahou Shoujo with dark elements, IT MUST BE SO GREAT, I'VE NEVER SEEN SOMETHING LIKE THAT, LOL.

Great review but i think you need to make distinction between Darwinist and Social Darwinist.

These episodes certainly deserve praise, but the end of the series just fell flat on its face. Every theme these episodes carefully built up got tossed aside in a deus ex machina ending that not only produced more questions than answers, but also created plot holes in the episodes before it.

The tragic waste of potential reminds me of Mirai Nikki. Sad

TheGotank wrote:

These episodes certainly deserve praise, but the end of the series just fell flat on its face.

I respectfully disagree with this. Without delving into spoiler territory, the entire series is set up in such a way as to lead Madoka to making certain choices. If those choices seemed like a "deus ex machina" cop-out ending, I'd recommend that you take what was learned by the end and use that knowledge during a re-watch of the series as a whole. This helped me get a better grasp on just exactly how each piece of the puzzle fit into the greater narrative.

I'd certainly be interested to hear more specifically about how the ending disappointed you, though. Have you posted about this elsewhere in more detail, or would you be willing to PM me?

TheGotank wrote:

These episodes certainly deserve praise, but the end of the series just fell flat on its face. Every theme these episodes carefully built up got tossed aside in a deus ex machina ending that not only produced more questions than answers, but also created plot holes in the episodes before it.

The tragic waste of potential reminds me of Mirai Nikki. Sad

This was exactly my opinion more or less.

belindabird wrote:

I respectfully disagree with this. Without delving into spoiler territory, the entire series is set up in such a way as to lead Madoka to making certain choices. If those choices seemed like a "deus ex machina" cop-out ending, I'd recommend that you take what was learned by the end and use that knowledge during a re-watch of the series as a whole. This helped me get a better grasp on just exactly how each piece of the puzzle fit into the greater narrative.

I'd certainly be interested to hear more specifically about how the ending disappointed you, though. Have you posted about this elsewhere in more detail, or would you be willing to PM me?

There was a discussion about this going on recently in the main thread for Puella Magi Madoka Magica in the "Anime" section of the forum. I also thought it was a massive deus ex machina. Yes they set it up to a certain extent, but for me that just means they tried a little harder to get an easy ending to make sense than most writers.

dragon695 wrote:

Poor dtm24 Sad

Why do you say that?

Last edited by Veers on Thu Apr 12, 2012 2:51 pm; edited 2 times in total

I guess I have to fill in for dtm42 in this thread. :D

Chagen46 wrote:

To those of you saying that Episode 10 is amazing, I hope you're right. Episode 9 was a large dissappointment, as it seemed like Gen was pulling stuff out of his ass just to screw with the viewer.

Are you talking about how that episode ends, or what? I'm sorry if you didn't see that coming, but a lot of people did because there were flags all over that episode pointing to that happening. The surprise came more from the fact that they followed through on it. It was no more an asspull than spoiler[Sayaka's demise]--which is to say neither were. I mean, holding on to hope is one thing, but given everything up to the middle of episode 9, did you seriously think that spoiler[Kyoko's plan would actually work?] Anyway, as this pertains to the last set of episodes rather than what this review covers, let's take this over to the Madoka proper thread if you wanna continue discussing.

Asterisk-CGY wrote:

Well took a visit to 4chan that B grade makes sense.

Though Shaft did have a consistent habit of cleaning up their animations for disk. Dunno what happened here.

They did touch up/redo many scenes. However, one of the most derpy ones (Madoka running in place) remained untouched. Many changes were very obvious to people who watched the original TV run/fansubs, some were more subtle and probably need a side-by-side to catch. Speaking of, you can check out the differences here http://wiki.puella-magi.net/Episode_revisions (has spoilers, you've been warned). Some interesting stuff.

Edit: Snipped additional ending discussion to move over to main thread.

belvadeer wrote:

Why do you say that?

He got (temp?) banned for flying off the handle a few day sago.

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REVIEW: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Vol. 2 Blu-Ray