Mindless Madoka Fans, That's Enough

I’m leaning toward being a Madoka hater now. Main reason: there are so many mindless fans that I’ve grown to dislike Madoka Magica more and more. But to hate on it properly, I rewatched the whole thing a while back.

Gotta say, it really is a solid work. Not a masterpiece, but definitely above average.

• First, the premise is fresh. Magical girls used to be about getting amazing powers, having a magic companion (a perverted animal), shouting about justice and destroying evil, and ending on a happy everyone-lives ending. Madoka flips that: the evil side was once the good side, a magical girl’s final destination is becoming a witch, and it raises the genuinely thought-provoking idea that “the result of hope is despair.”

• Then the fight scenes. Madoka’s battles are seriously cool, no wasted motion at all — whether it’s Mami’s unlimited gun works or Kyoko’s spearplay, you can tell these are battle scenes made with real care. Except Blue’s fighting style is kind of just swinging wildly… I won’t go on about the rest of the Shinbo-style visuals.

• Next, the music. Nothing to say here — anyone who’s heard the OST knows what level this is. Especially the pyramid scheme song, the first witch battle track, and Blue’s theme are all great.

• What hits hardest is the story. You can feel Urobuchi’s distinctive style — making you find hope in despair, seeing sunlight in total annihilation. And then episode 10 rolls around and every question you had before gets swept away, with zero forced stretching. You feel like the whole script accounted for every detail — which is exactly what theorycrafters live for. The little clues you dug up in episode 1 all get confirmed later, which shows how meticulous this work is. And after episode 10, clearing up the earlier mysteries brings a new hook: the final boss. As I said, in Urobuchi’s scripts the final boss is someone you can’t possibly beat, or even if you beat them it’s still a Bad End — which makes viewers desperate to know how it’ll end. Add the earthquake hiatus, and attention shot straight up.

But watching Madoka now leaves a bad taste in my mouth:

• First, the mindless fans. Madoka isn’t the first to do worldlines and time travel — Doraemon used that stuff, and used it well, like Nobita’s Great Adventure in the Underworld. But mindless fans think every time-travel and loop story is copying Madoka, and spam “Madoka! Madoka!” everywhere. See a blonde with big tits? “Mami!” See someone lose their head? “Mami!” See a pink-haired girl? “Madoka!” It’s as gross as the “mindless CF clone” crowd.

• Then the bandwagoners. Madoka is a good work, but calling it a masterpiece is going too far. Same as Steins;Gate and Fate/Zero — upper-tier good, and that’s honestly accurate. Masterpiece? Get out of here. I figured anyone watching anime these days would be a college student or older, but after hanging around Niconico for a while I found out it’s all elementary and middle schoolers… I feel the generation gap, and the sadness of mindless bandwagoning — they like something but can’t say what they like about it. Most of them just hype Blue and Red’s ship, Mami’s head, Pink becoming a god. They never think about the essence of Urobuchi’s script, never think about the “despair behind hope” he writes. Urobuchi likes to build an absolutely hopeless moment first, then give you a sliver of hope so you understand how precious hope is — the process just has some dark content. But mindless fans only know “Urobuchi’s scripts definitely have people dying, heads coming off, tentacles, corpses.” Is Urobuchi just someone mindlessly piling up “blood, corpses, tentacles”? Obviously not. Same as the share-happy crowd at school — I bet barely any of those mindless fans actually read that insanely long analysis post, let alone thought about it. At most they hit “bump” at the end, i.e. “I don’t get it, but it seems really impressive.”

Mindless Madoka fans, that’s enough. Close the computer and go do your homework.