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Puella Magi Madoka Magika
I have to say right from the start: I am conflicted about Madoka Magika. So much so that I wrote only personal notes on it when I first watched it several months ago, and decided not to review right away, to give it time to sink in. But given that it was the season's biggest otaku hit, I suspect that it will be a topic of conversation at this year's SGMS con. So I want to go on the record now and say: this is clearly a groundbreaking work in the magical-girl genre, in terms of narrative structure and visual style. But there are a few things about it that are...troubling. To say the least.
Puella Magi Madoka Magika. [Mahou Shoujo Madoka Majika.] Dir. Akiyuki Shinbo, prod. Shaft and Aniplex, 2011.
Madoka Magika has two things going for it: genre-bending and background art.
In terms of genre, it takes up the archetypical "battling bishoujo" scenario -frilly-dressed schoolgirls fight evil monsters to save the world- and makes that scenario itself into a moral dilemma mixed with a personal crisis. At the start of the series, pink-haired, twin-tailed Jr. High student Madoka is set up to be the ideal magical girl heroine when she starts having dreams about a creepy-cute CLAMP-style mascot creature that needs her help. She then encounters a cold-eyed, dark-haired Mysterious Transfer Student(TM) named Homura Akemi who warns her off from getting into anything strange. But soon enough, Madoka falls into a weird parallel dimension with monstrous beings attacking, and *someone* needs to save this adorable creature, Kyubey. Madoka's all heart, and only wants to help. But she doesn't automatically have the ability to transform into magical-girl form. First, she has to make a contract with Kyubey in which she will be granted one wish, but at the cost of having to battle evil "Witches" in secrecy and maybe unto death. Should she make the contract or not? What are the consequences? Where does this power come from and why is it being offered? As the series progresses, it breaks more and more from the "monster of the week" mold and delves into these questions of free will, power, and the morality of intentions vs. outcomes through the idea of the contract (shades of FMA's equivalent exchange). In short, it does for the magical girl genre what Evangelion did for mecha anime: it takes the genre tropes and give them a thorough deconstructing.
The art style of the strange dimensions in which the Puella Magi battle Witches is really suited to shaking up convention. It's almost indescribable, a kind of surreal collage style that layers or "composits" superflat pop imagery, photography, and print art of objects, screens, textures, almost anything, into a decidedly animetic space. This is the space of animation itself, and every battle with a Witch is also a battle with perspective and layout. I think it's brilliant, and there's more to be said here than I can get into.
That said, though, what is all of this questioning and deconstructing and animetic layering working to support? It would be nice to say that a groundbreaking form automatically makes for a revolutionary series, in terms of ideology. I want to put Madoka along the trajectory of Revolutionary Girl Utena. But at the same time, it's all been so very much taken up by marketing. Madoka is a wonderful commodity. She exactly suits the Loli taste of otaku right now, the kind of thing you see in Akiba. And if you've been keeping track of all the Madoka Magika figures and curry sets and body pillows that are coming out, you can see how she fits like a key into the lock of the Akiba-kei "contents industry."
Speaking of otaku tastes, I have to say that even though I watched the show with yuri goggles firmly in place, they kept being thrown off by how much the girls really are *girls* -like, narratively 14, looking to me about 11. Though there has always been that "adolescence-liminality" association in anime, heroines these days are trending younger and younger. The Canadian press made the same sort of "too young, this is creepy" noises about Sailor Moon. But, look, I've been a fan since Sailor Moon, and these new designs are pushing even my suspension of disbelief when it comes to perceived age in anime. There's a difference in how the characters in Sailor Moon and Utena looked, and how these girls look, in terms of proportion, face and body shape, even costuming. I find the increasing Lolification of anime heroines a disturbing trend in anime lately. Maybe I'm just getting old.
To be fair, I might be down with it if I found Madoka, in being so girly, was still empowered within the narrative of the show, empowered as a young person with a human life. But --and without getting into too many spoilers-- there is very much an "ethereal transcendence of sacrifice" scenario in the end, in which Madoka, in becoming so powerful, loses any practical sense of human agency. The "transcendent powerful woman" has her value as a symbol within a symbolic order, but that presents definite downsides for women -in the plural- seeking something to grip onto in our own lives and bodies. I feel Madoka to be a very male-authored and -oriented anime that way. I much prefer Utena and Anthy setting out into the real world to live together at the end of Adolescence of Utena.
Well, I'm afraid my critique isn't as directed as I hoped. My copy of the new translation of Tamaki Saito's Beautiful Battling Girl from U of Minnesota Press is on the way, so expect more theoretical critique of both coming up.
Puella Magi Madoka Magika. [Mahou Shoujo Madoka Majika.] Dir. Akiyuki Shinbo, prod. Shaft and Aniplex, 2011.
Madoka Magika has two things going for it: genre-bending and background art.
In terms of genre, it takes up the archetypical "battling bishoujo" scenario -frilly-dressed schoolgirls fight evil monsters to save the world- and makes that scenario itself into a moral dilemma mixed with a personal crisis. At the start of the series, pink-haired, twin-tailed Jr. High student Madoka is set up to be the ideal magical girl heroine when she starts having dreams about a creepy-cute CLAMP-style mascot creature that needs her help. She then encounters a cold-eyed, dark-haired Mysterious Transfer Student(TM) named Homura Akemi who warns her off from getting into anything strange. But soon enough, Madoka falls into a weird parallel dimension with monstrous beings attacking, and *someone* needs to save this adorable creature, Kyubey. Madoka's all heart, and only wants to help. But she doesn't automatically have the ability to transform into magical-girl form. First, she has to make a contract with Kyubey in which she will be granted one wish, but at the cost of having to battle evil "Witches" in secrecy and maybe unto death. Should she make the contract or not? What are the consequences? Where does this power come from and why is it being offered? As the series progresses, it breaks more and more from the "monster of the week" mold and delves into these questions of free will, power, and the morality of intentions vs. outcomes through the idea of the contract (shades of FMA's equivalent exchange). In short, it does for the magical girl genre what Evangelion did for mecha anime: it takes the genre tropes and give them a thorough deconstructing.
The art style of the strange dimensions in which the Puella Magi battle Witches is really suited to shaking up convention. It's almost indescribable, a kind of surreal collage style that layers or "composits" superflat pop imagery, photography, and print art of objects, screens, textures, almost anything, into a decidedly animetic space. This is the space of animation itself, and every battle with a Witch is also a battle with perspective and layout. I think it's brilliant, and there's more to be said here than I can get into.
That said, though, what is all of this questioning and deconstructing and animetic layering working to support? It would be nice to say that a groundbreaking form automatically makes for a revolutionary series, in terms of ideology. I want to put Madoka along the trajectory of Revolutionary Girl Utena. But at the same time, it's all been so very much taken up by marketing. Madoka is a wonderful commodity. She exactly suits the Loli taste of otaku right now, the kind of thing you see in Akiba. And if you've been keeping track of all the Madoka Magika figures and curry sets and body pillows that are coming out, you can see how she fits like a key into the lock of the Akiba-kei "contents industry."
Speaking of otaku tastes, I have to say that even though I watched the show with yuri goggles firmly in place, they kept being thrown off by how much the girls really are *girls* -like, narratively 14, looking to me about 11. Though there has always been that "adolescence-liminality" association in anime, heroines these days are trending younger and younger. The Canadian press made the same sort of "too young, this is creepy" noises about Sailor Moon. But, look, I've been a fan since Sailor Moon, and these new designs are pushing even my suspension of disbelief when it comes to perceived age in anime. There's a difference in how the characters in Sailor Moon and Utena looked, and how these girls look, in terms of proportion, face and body shape, even costuming. I find the increasing Lolification of anime heroines a disturbing trend in anime lately. Maybe I'm just getting old.
To be fair, I might be down with it if I found Madoka, in being so girly, was still empowered within the narrative of the show, empowered as a young person with a human life. But --and without getting into too many spoilers-- there is very much an "ethereal transcendence of sacrifice" scenario in the end, in which Madoka, in becoming so powerful, loses any practical sense of human agency. The "transcendent powerful woman" has her value as a symbol within a symbolic order, but that presents definite downsides for women -in the plural- seeking something to grip onto in our own lives and bodies. I feel Madoka to be a very male-authored and -oriented anime that way. I much prefer Utena and Anthy setting out into the real world to live together at the end of Adolescence of Utena.
Well, I'm afraid my critique isn't as directed as I hoped. My copy of the new translation of Tamaki Saito's Beautiful Battling Girl from U of Minnesota Press is on the way, so expect more theoretical critique of both coming up.