Holy cow! I'm the first to comment for once! OMG! Yippee! And yay, your Kyubey plushie is back!

I LOVE Madoka Magica. I have the first volume of the manga and two of the DVDs (I wish I could order the third one!)! I'm so happy you got to review this!

Didn't think anyone would take this long to review this series...

Though i always did wonder why anime got talked about so much in the anime boards, and... why people say it's so fucked up.

No I' serious here if this realy is a Shaft production it was bound to be Fucked up one way or the other and had no way to escape that fate

Wait, that doll/plush/whatever sounds like Rina-chan... Or maybe I'm crazy and just tend to hear her voice way too often.

Your title card artist is really good!

A very, very interesting review, JO, even if (As per your recommendation) I had to listen to it, rather than watch it. I was intrigued by the few things I've heard about PMMM, but until you started showing some of the visuals, I wasn't sold.

Though you didn't talk very much about Madoka itself, the fact that it's able to inspire such a broad and fascinating discussion of different topics really interests me. Guess I better start saving up to by the DVDs.

OK, i watched this review, and then watched the show and.... what's so bad? I mean, i'm a couple episodes in, besides the weird premise and witches... i haven't found anything strange. I guess i'll keep watching. Meanwhile... i want that kyubey doll!

reminds me that I have to get the Soundtrack somewhere.
Really liked this Anime, great well thought story.

This anime was tough for me. I did watch it all the way through, but I didn´t think it was "THE BEST" I´ve ever seen. All and all I can understand it being well written, but nevertheless I was stuck with mixed feelings in the end since my expectation of the show came above everything else due to it´s popularity.
This somehow leads to wanting to know, what was good and what was bad about it.

In the end there´s one thing I can say about the series that always makes me react: Kyubei!!

I'm surprised you picked Cassandra Lee as Kyubey as the standout dub actor. For me Lauren Landa as Kyoko blows away most of the other actors in it. Agreed on Cristina Vee as Homura though. And agreed in general on the dub - it would be greatly improved by more natural-sounding performances. Especially for Madoka herself, who's so stilted that half the time she doesn't sound like a human being. FUNimation are fast becoming the only dubbing company that I can trust to do a great job anymore.

I wish you had gone deeper into the philosophical themes, since that's a huge part of what I like about the show, but I guess you just had to avoid spoilers. I like what the show has to say about wishes in particular.

An anime with a satisfying ending eh? hmm.:3

But those anime eyes, cartoony stylizations, argh, it takes me out of the dark mood. But I love Kyubei, cutesy but powerful being, I can already tell its got its own intentions. It's creepy in how overly cute it is.

EDIT: Arg, TRIED to watch it, can't get through the Moe cuteness,(even in the battles) hurts too much. Cowboy Bebop is just more perfect to me and darker. Sorry, I can't like this show, this will never be dark to me no matter what color palette they use or what happens to the characters.

"EDIT: Arg, TRIED to watch it, can't get through the Moe cuteness,(even in the battles) hurts too much. Cowboy Bebop is just more perfect to me and darker. Sorry, I can't like this show."

It was a similar case for me. Trust me, after three or four episodes, shit gets real.

"Trust me, after three or four episodes, shit gets real."

I'll try again soon, the story sounds too good despite my repressed moe flashbacks. The music is great too. I'm just not as open-minded as I was when I first watched anime.

Give it more of a chance. Like another said, you can't often judge a show off of its appearance just like you normally can't judge a book by its cover. (The latter is more often true, but still) It's kind of like the show Narutaru where the opening is really cute and upbeat and after the first 3 episodes (It's the same amount of waiting time for both shows, imagine that) it gets super dark and depressing. In fact, I heard the reason the show was given this cutesy look was to troll children into believing they were watching a child-appropriate series.

i've never seen cowboy bebop, but i do like madoka, but again... i didn't find anything bad about the premise! No, I didn't find anything scary about the premise. and i'm on the 7th episode.

" Sorry, I can't like this show, this will never be dark to me no matter what color palette they use or what happens to the characters."

Well, that's an incredibly shallow reason to dismiss a show.

a strange show. so dark, yet its artwork gives you aids. talk about mood dissonnance.

Oh wow... this review, it must have been so difficult not to go into spoilers, I mean the most infamous happens in episode 3...

And damn it, I've been pronoucing it wrong... what's worst is that the episode of my webshow deals with a Madoka Magica fic...

are you saying you never watched the show and made a fan fic...?

No... I'm saying I pronounced wrong and the newest episode of my web show (which has been delayed because of the death of my cat... long story). The web show thing is that in the new episode I pronounce "Magica" like the word "Magic". I review fanfics by the way.

I have seen the show and I love it, in fact I watched episode 3 with one of my best friends and it mentally scared him. Now I tease him about it all the time about it... and it's really funny because he LOVES horror movies.

You are pronouncing it right, Crossover Princess. "Puella", "Magi" and "Magica" are all Latin and should be pronounced as such ("Magica" actually being the latin word for "Magic"). JO is pronouncing it like it is heard in Japanese so it's not exactly wrong, but it's not entirely right either.

Technically, the Japanese pronunciation that JO uses reflects the classical Latin pronunciation of the letter g. In classical Latin g was pronounced hard (as in the word "go") in all positions except (arguably) before n, where it was probably pronounced like the English "ng" sound. As Latin transitioned to its later stage sounds started to shift and g started to be pronounced differently before i and e. English borrowed this pronunciation in Latin words from Old French, which is a descendant of late Latin and thus inherited the aforementioned sound shift (modern French shifted it further to the j sound as in "Jean" and "fromage"). The Japanese were never under the influence of late or medieval Latin, so they tend to use the classical pronunciations when transliterating from Latin.

tl/dr: Neither pronunciation is wrong, they just reflect different stages of Latin.

I seriously LOVED this anime.
I came into it completely blind thinking, "I feel like watching a simple magical girl anime. :3 ...I've seen pictures of this anime all over the place, I should watch it!"

And boy, was I pleasantly surprised!
It was such a satisfying experience, I totally agree with you. GAAAH! I love it.

I totally wanna cosplay Madoka in the near future. >:T

I absolutely love this anime! I'm glad you reviewed it, I was curious to hear your take on it. I definitely think any anime fan should at least give it a try. It's unfortunate (but probably for the best) that you couldn't really talk much about the show's real grab without spoiling it.

Also, I much prefer the Japanese voices. Possibly because I watched that first and was used to it. But I REALLY don't like Madoka's English voice--it's actually the same voice actor as SquidGirl, and while that voice is perfect for SquidGirl, it's just too over-the-top squeaky for Madoka.

Hmmm, very well done review (can definitely see the effort put in to keep it spoiler free). I been hearing good things about this anime on the web but they were little more than "zomg!" style appraisals. But your review has given me interest to try this anime out (will be the first time trying out a magical girl genre series) since you elaborated on why it is indeed is a very well written story (and not just a squishy feel good or dark for the sake of dark story).

Next review Nadia: Secret of Blue Water

SHOOT I'D BETTER GET ROUND TO WATCHING IT BEFORE THEN.

CARD CAPTOR SAKURA AND CYBERTEAM IN AKIHIBARA ARE 10 TIMES BETTER THAN MADOKA!!!

says the blatant trololol?

Not having seen Madoka, I really appreciate the lengths you went to in order to not spoil the anime.

That said, I can't really comment on the quality of the anime or the accuracy of the review, but the review was very well done, and I'm pretty much convinced to watch this, even though I usually watch anime with less substance.

On an unrelated note, I spy the Digimon board game (loved that when I was a kid)!

Call me lame for this, but I really thought that in the very beginning of the video, where there was another message coming in, and JesuOtaku said "main screen turn on," the MORNING RESCUUUUE commercial would play. :-P

Also, here's a fun fact: this anime was directly inspired by the plot of Kamen Rider Ryuki. Check it out and you'll see why!

lol, epic inside joke for people that watched the fansubs

I was also expecting "MORNING RESCUE" to be sneak in the review too but sadly she didnt...

Okay, NOW I wanna watch this.

Actually I would say Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet had a happy ending. I mean their deaths stop the the war between the Montagues and Capulets.

Love the title card.

Hm, I had not heard of this before, but am slightly intrigued. While I am not really an anime fan (only watch one series currently)I might want to see it. Though I suppose it does bring in a question into my head. Why are there no such series that are constructed like this in American television? Well I know the first is money, but I mean, if the story is good, entertaining and has a beginning middle and end that makes the watcher think or feel, I imagine it would do very well. But I guess that is to much to ask for.

GEMINIA999: Because Americans still think that cartoons are:

1. For children.
2. For any age, but as long as they're comedies.


Yeah, it's a problem. :-

More or less because the American TV system is built around money. Rather than trying to make series that tell a complete story and end where they should, series are ordered to go on until they're no longer profitable enough. Which usually means a series will go on at least 1 season longer than it's worth.

Japanese TV isn't all that different. Their biggest money makers are the infinitely long-running anime/manga juggernauts like One Piece, Bleach, Naruto and Pokemon. These also happen to be the most popular anime series in Japan itself, mainly because they have actual mainstream popularity. The 12 episode series like Madoka tend to be targeted at niche markets of hardcore otaku. Sure, they tend to get disproportionately popular among us overseas anime fans, but we aren't the ones who determine the shows' ratings on first airing.

This review has peaked my curiousity, I have always heard of Madoka Magica but never seen it myself until now.


Also, was .Hack//Sign really all that bad?


I remember watching a few episodes here and there ten years ago, but it was THE anime I was first exposed to when a girl made it her routine to have me watch it with her every Saturday night at the dorm. And ever since then I have been fascinated with anime up until now.

But I never thought of it as that bad a show, a bit non-linear and confusing as far as storyline but it couldn't have been all together horrible could it?

.hack//sign was SLOOOOWWWWW, even if you somehow were engaged with the main story.

Another problem was the rather dull representation of a (fictitional) MMO it was supposed to be.

It's the characters.

.Hack//Sign was one of the most BORING FUCKING SHOWS I'VE EVER SEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh god.....no wonder my friend made it her perogative to get me to watch it, she was probably the only fan of the show and needed someone to connect to. o.o



Still, I hold no ill-will against her or the show, if it wasn't for either of them I never would even know what anime was.

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.hack//SIGN is slow but meaningful in my humble opinion. Unlike a lot of other shows it keeps a consistent mood rather than bouncing between comedy and drama and keeps it's characters in check as opposed to derailing them. It's a pretty engaging cyber-punk drama and goes into the player's psyche. Not exactly an action show but that's what the games and .hack//Quantum is for. Animation at time lags however so do expect a lot of a camera movement to keep any illusion they can muster on what must have been a pretty limited budget. If you want to get mad about that at anyone you could get mad at Bandai or even then Bee Train parent Production I.G which could have thrown a few more Yen their way.

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Long winded opinion piece now:

I loved Madoka Magica and well not too surprised to see you give a perfect score on this one, JO. It's a hard series to review without spoiling so major credit to you for being able to pull it off

Not too happy about the digs against Noir, .hack and Tsubasa Chronicle all shows I really enjoyed as well plus with their more than outstanding OSTs by Kajiura as well. Which are a so much better than some of her recent works, I hate to say.

Sword Art Online and Fate/Zero are just very very boring scores from her. Madoka Magica is a good score from her, but still not her best. You can argue the music is distracting in those series due to the fact it certainly draws attention to it self but it really enhances the mood and atmosphere of those shows and become apart of the character of those shows instead of just pieces of music to compliment the show. I don't see why music always has to be subversive and quiet and just put into the background. Not saying it works for everything, it's always case by case.

I say I'll take a handful of really memorable pieces over a large range of dull pieces which frankly Kajiura has done of late. Love her anyway!

Not quality writing for those shows, JO, really gotta disagree with you there. I still find Yosuke Kuroda's scripts for MADLAX fantastic, Kazunori Ito's writing for .hack is great as well. Though I'll give you this, I can find Noir and Tsubasa bit hit or miss on the writing department.

For a supposedly attempted spoiler-free review, you sure did spoil a lot of things. I'm not talking just "imagery", more like showing all but two most important scenes from the show.

Good thing you also wrote not to take your definitions of drama too seriously. Because they're pretty much 100% incorrect. Also, the opposite of tragedy isn't drama, it's comedy. These two are subsets of drama. You knew that, right?

You uh...you did listen to the part where she set up what she meant by each term, right?

She DID say she knew comedy was the correct literary term. She didn't use that because it wouldn't fit the concept she was trying to define anyway so she might as well use "drama" incorrectly because it's less confusing to an average audience who doesn't study Greek/classical drama. The only reason she used those terms in the first place is because they're familiar so it facilitates the explanation. No need to get your literary panties in a twist.

Also, she did say to just listen and not watch the video if you didn't want to be spoiled. You're pretty much chastising her for things she clearly explained in the review.

yep she said that in the review and in the explanation it did say not to take it seriously.

You did an excellent job. After having watched this series at least 3 times fully, it is EXTREMELY hard to really describe and promote it to others without busting out the "OMGZ DARK SUBVERSIVE MAGICAL GIRL, THE EVA OF THE GENRE, ONLY BETTER" fangirl banter. I honestly believe it was the best series to come out of 2011.

I learned from a native Japanese speaker that the "x" in titles is silent, so Hunter X Hunter is pronounced "Hunter Hunter" and Romeo X Juliet is pronounced "Romeo Juliet"...she also thought the names of manga were pretty silly.

I knew the music sounded similar to .hack! Makes mewonder why I don't keep tabs on tv composers the same way do for video game composers.

Ah JO i'm so glad you are on this site, it's hard to find new animes to watch (as you know some are really bad or just wtf when you watch them) Most people here don't know what anime is even if they have seen them (yugioh or dbz) So thanks and keep the reviews going please :P

Wait a second I saw those school outfit skirts were like 20cm long and yet the most of fan service is the transformation sequences. Well that makes it groundbreaking it two ways or more

Well I would wish for a V-Watch. Not simply magic. No repercussion would make that wish not worth it. None. My love for the great Viewtiful Joe has no limits!

So you like Viewtiful Joe? I used to love Joe! How I was introduced to Joe was because of the TV show. Back then I thought it was cool and clever for a super hero to fight evil in a movie-like world. Oh the nostalgia. :3