Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Wish Upon the Pleiades
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HandofBobb
Posts: 81 |
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I know I'm late to the party, but I just finished the finale, and I really wanted to say, I got a totally different vibe from the girl's choice at the end. I think it's important to realize that they didn't say "I choose to remain the same"- they said "I will be me"- that, to me, is an entirely different thing. Earlier. in the previous episode, the President was saying that they couldn't catch up to the final fragment because part of them didn't want to, wanted to remain Magical Girls forever; now at the end, when they could choose that for themselves, they've finally accepted their lives and chosen to move forward...
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SailorTralfamadore
 Posts: 499 Location: Keep Austin Weeb |
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I might be a little late to this discussion, but....
For the record, I'm not unfamiliar with other magical girl shows. I grew up with Sailor Moon, I read a lot of magical-girl manga in middle school, and I wrote a significant chunk of my master's thesis on Princess Tutu. I've read a lot of academic work on the history of the genre, and I know about the broad range of things they're each trying to accomplish. I get being fatigued at comparing everything to Madoka. But there is a reason people keep doing it besides just being infatuated with the show, or not having any other frame of reference (which is a really insulting assumption to make BTW). It's because it really is that influential to a degree that's undeniable. Madoka is a mainstream hit in Japan, on par with Evangelion back in the day. It was super popular and also artsy and had a lot of things to say, the center of both fandom and critical discussion, and that's the golden formula everybody wants their show to achieve. That's why just about every magical girl show lately save Precure (a popular, formulaic franchise that predates Madoka) has been super-dark and aimed at adult otaku. Pleiades is the exception to the "darkness" rule, but with its thematic stuff about "potential" it still is influenced by Madoka, just in a different way. Which is what I tried to explain in the review. You may personally not think that Madoka is as inspired as Evangelion. But that's not what this is about, it's about the larger conversation and trends. And Madoka is dominating those in anime right now. P.S. The Madoka naysayers compare it to Princess Tutu a lot, but other than both being "subversive magical girl shows" they're very thematically different works. They're subverting different genre expectations (Madoka the magical girl genre--and I still think that's less true than the Internet makes it out to be, anyway--and Tutu European fairy tales) and arguably come to opposite conclusions. Madoka has to accept the fate she's been forced into and work within it to create the best possible world she can. In Princess Tutu, it's all about the characters refusing to accept their fates, and in a way that's tied into stuff about how we create and discuss fiction. And the fact that Tutu is a "magical girl" is honestly a pretty small part of the show's point. I've never seen Madoka building on Princess Tutu much at all, honestly. They likely come from similar inspirations, but go in wildly different directions. |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5836 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Except that is not a realistic outcome. Yeah, some may choose that, but not all.
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WingKing
Posts: 617 |
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Yeah, I owe you an apology Rose. My frustration wasn't aimed at you, it was aimed at the broader internet fandom, where there are still many people out there who literally think that Madoka invented magical girl, or that no magical girl ever suffered or died before that show came along (no exaggeration - I've seen those sort of comments many times), but I let my emotions as a fan get the better of me and ended up expressing my thoughts very badly. I'm a history major by training, so it's almost hardwired in me to approach my own reviews and analysis of media from an angle of looking at historical backgrounds and root influences, and the ways that different shows build off their predecessors. That's kind of what I was getting at with finding opportunities to explore a series through a broader lens than just Madoka, especially with a "throwback" kind of series like this one that actually tried to give us a mahou shoujo that bucked some of the recent trends. Rereading what I wrote, though, it sounds like I'm criticizing you and your reviews, and that's not what I set out to do at all, so I'm sorry about that. And personally, I freely admit that I'm also a bit sensitive on this subject because I'm a card-carrying member of the Yuki Yuna fandom, and it gets very tiring dealing with people who insist on dismissing that show as a "Madoka clone" (often people when I check their MAL profiles who've never even watched another magical girl besides Madoka and YuYu). And for the record, I know that you do know the genre quite well, Rose, from some of the comments you've made in these dailies and in some of your other reviews. Your reviews on Pleiades often gave me a few things to think about and sometimes helped me clarify my own feelings about an episode. |
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SailorTralfamadore
Posts: 499 Location: Keep Austin Weeb |
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Thanks for the apology. I know what it's like, to get upset at a broader trend and make it look like you're criticizing a specific instance of it. I also know how it feels when you have specific fandom "buttons" like that, as I have a few of my own (don't get me started on the FMA 03 vs. Brotherhood debate, lol).
Please feel free to keep criticizing and disagreeing with my reviews, however. That's different from attacking the person behind them! Pleiades has some thematic connections to Madoka, but I agree with you that it is a throwback in many other ways, as I put in some of my other reviews. I think at this point that Madoka is so big that any magical girl show is engaging with it in some way, even if by rejection of its themes or aesthetics. That's still a form of "influence." There are all sorts of works and people like that in the history of art, and it doesn't mean the stuff that comes after it is "unoriginal" per se. Something can be heavily influenced by another thing and still have its own unique spin that makes it memorable. Also, thanks for the compliments about my reviews! I really appreciate hearing that my reviews made you think, more than you know. |
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