Forum - View topicREVIEW: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Vol. 2 Blu-Ray
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Veers
 Posts: 1197 Location: Texas |
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In the meantime, so as not to further clutter this thread, we have moved our black walls of text over to the Madoka Proper thread for those wanting to discuss. |
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Monster in a box
Posts: 671 |
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Basically, except for the grades are too high, and there aren't 5 good episodes, but this was the only not-overwhelmingly positive comment I found thus far. The crazy amount of praise for this show continues to confuse, upset, and irritate more than anything else on the internet. More than SFxT backlash even. Remember that time this show had no characters except Homura who is boring. Killing off little girls doesn't make a show deep, and they're all supposed to be 14 or 15 anyway, so that's like, par for the course as far as anime in general goes. |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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If it bugs you so much and you hated the show, why then do you waste your time in comment sections or ever bother reading what other people have to say about it? Wouldn't it be easier to just move on? As it is it isn't like you have any interest in a substantive discussion about what you feel the show's problems are - it's just "this is overhyped garbage you're all wrong I'm right". Which isn't any more helpful or meaningful than all the praise you're complaining about. |
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Chagen46
 Posts: 4377 |
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The show may not be absolutely 100% perfect, but it sure is amazing compared to most anime.
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Monster in a box
Posts: 671 |
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I readily admit that explaining my opinions is something I have a lot of trouble doing, and considering it's me vs hundreds of other people, that makes it nigh impossible to do effectively. I just don't want people who haven't seen the show coming in here and seeing literally nothing but glowing praise for the show. It's incredibly disrespectful to basically any show that actually deserves this praise. That said, I didn't even 'hate' the show, I just thought it wasn't good. There's a big difference. I'm pretty easy to please when it comes to anime. I basically like, to some extent, everything I've bothered to watch that wasn't the second Inuyasha movie, or The Girl who Leapt Through Time (also critically acclaimed, somehow). This show is just so run of the mill, so boring, so serious all the time while not really having anything to say at all. It doesn't help that it aired the same season as Wandering Son, which I absolutely loved (and haven't finished because I stalled out thanks to the stupid decision to chop up episodes 10 and 11...I'll finish it in a few weeks when classes let out, I swear) and nobody watched it, and the most common thing I see anybody say about it is 'it's based on the manga, but doesn't start at the beginning so it is bad'. But no, this isn't about Wandering Son, I don't want to get stuck on that. What this is about is people acting like there's never been a dark show with little girls before (and once again, they aren't really that little). It's about people who have never actually seen a magical girl show claiming that this show broke new ground. It's about YOU of all people giving such high praise to such a 'moe' show. If the show hadn't been so popular, I'd probably have forgotten all about it by this point. Maybe I wouldn't have even finished it. The only episode that made me feel anything at all was episode 10, and you have to go through quite a bit of nothing to get there. I have to give you credit though, your review really does make the show sound like it has merit. You're a much better writer than I, clearly. |
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Fencedude5609
 Posts: 5088 |
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THIS IS WHY MOE IS NOT A GENRE Jesus. (Also, I loved both Madoka AND Hourou Musuko. So there!) |
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Monster in a box
Posts: 671 |
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Good, I'm glad.
And no, moe absolutely isn't a genre, I didn't say it was. But the show pretty clearly wants you to 'want to protect' the characters; Madoka especially (and I guess it didn't do a great job there, since she's basically the least popular one!). |
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Fencedude5609
Posts: 5088 |
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Yeah, you completely missed the [expletive] point. Also, Hourou Musuko is at least as "moe" as Madoka by that definition. I certainly felt extreme moe for a good chunk of the Hourou Musuko cast. Also, most of your criticism in the previous post are hilariously baseless, relying on strawman arguments about the fanbase and denigrating the show as generic. This is not the place for a full discussion of why your post is such complete bullshit, but really it just boils down to "BAAAAAWW PEOPLE ARE LIKING THINGS I DON'T LIKE!!!" |
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Monster in a box
Posts: 671 |
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Your argument against my argument is that I have no argument. Not exactly compelling.
And yeah, I could see somebody calling Wandering Son 'moe', except that Wandering Son is relatable. Madoka is not relatable at all. I think that's a pretty important distinction. Wadnering Son pretty much always had me feeling emotions. Unusually intelligent children aside, it felt a lot more human than most fiction. Madoka is at the polar opposite of that spectrum. The scenario presented is pure fantasy, and the characters are totally one-dimensional. I'm not sure which part of the show I was supposed to be able to relate to, but it didn't happen. It left me wanting to see what would happen next, but at the end of the day I felt no attachment to any of the characters. |
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Bonham
 Posts: 419 Location: NYC |
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Zac's reviews are honestly what have pushed me to check out the show, so I'm grateful for them.
Yet my hesitation is whether or not to wait for a complete blu-ray collection. Funds are limited as a college student, and the pricing - even for the non-limited editions - is nothing to scoff at. So while I really, really want to watch Madoka Magica, I don't know whether I should invest in the single releases in the near-future or to wait for a collection (which may or may not happen?). |
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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With your first point, well, it's not like Bokurano had any sort of popularity. I know Viz released the manga which is good, but you can't expect everyone to have seen it (or Narutaru for that matter). But yeah, there is a reason that the lyrics to the opening theme of Bokurano fit so well (video contains rather minor spoilers for PMMM) in the context of the plight of the puella magi. But as far as magical girls show go? Yeah, this one definitely broke new ground. All the other shows were about how fun and cool it is to be a magical girl. This one actually shows the repercussions and that it's not all fun and games. Just like how Bokurano was about the kids getting into a 'game' about piloting a cool mecha, but the actual consequences for doing such were far above their heads. It is amusing to wonder why PMMM had such critical acclaim and Bokurano never got much more than a passing glance by most people. I may have to write a blog post about that someday. |
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The Coffee God
 Posts: 412 |
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The chance of a cheaper complete set is very small since they're releasing RE for both DVD & BD. If they do release a complete set, it'll probably be way off in the future. However, if you want to check out the series subtitled without the dub, you could wait about 3 weeks until all the episodes are up, and get a 14-day Free Trial on CR and stream the series in 1080p. http://www.crunchyroll.com/puella-magi-madoka-magica Just to see if it's worth your money to invest in the RE releases. |
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Monster in a box
Posts: 671 |
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You mean the repercussions of just being a magical girl? Those are a plot device that didn't exist in other shows, so yeah, I guess in that sense it broke new ground in like, the same sense that Battle Athletes broke the ground of plot device running-into-light. I haven't seen all that many magical girl shows, but it's not like Sailor Moon was rosy all the time. I've only seen the first 3 seasons, but some pretty unfortunate things happen in that too, they just wind up not mattering in the end because they wanted to make more seasons, haha.
I haven't seen Bokurano or NaruTaru, but interestingly enough, within the last month my cousin watched both anime, and read both manga, and said the manga for both were a lot better than the anime adaptations (or rather, the NaruTaru anime didn't have enough episodes, and the Bokurano anime changed a lot of things for the worse), and also he watched Madoka and said it was the worst thing he's ever seen. Maybe I should get on those two... |
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SereneChaos
 Posts: 384 Location: Middle of Nowhere, USA |
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Glad to see the music mentioned since that's my favorite aspect of the series and what made me start watching. I'm a big Yuki Kajiura and Kalafina fan, so I'm willing to try any series they touch. Surprisingly, picking new shows to try based on the music works really well. I have yet to find a bad series that way.
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Fencedude5609
Posts: 5088 |
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I can't respond to something that doesn't exist.
Huh? What does this have to do with anything? Also "relatability" is in the eye of the beholder. As a general rule, I don't "relate" to my favorite characters, since they tend to be female, and frequently lesbian. I don't "relate" to either of those aspects. But so what? I don't need to "relate" to a character to like them, or find them sympathetic.
Same for me...and I felt emotions for the characters when watching Madoka. Again, what does "relatability" have to do with feeling emotions for a character? Were you going for "Empathizing? Because I certainly empathized with characters from both shows, even if I didn't "relate" myself to them.
A frequent aspect of fiction.
Assertion without evidence. This volume in particular spent four episodes fleshing out Sayaka and Kyouko's motivations and character.
Since when was "relating" to a show a necessary aspect of enjoyment?
Fair enough, but many, many, many people felt lots of attachment to the characters. |
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