omg yay, Madoka is my new summertime obsession :3
I watched it last year but I was too into Utena at the time to really pay attention, so I've watched it two more times in the past couple of weeks. I got my sister to stay up all night and watch all of it the other day :>

I dunno what else to say atm except I want plushies to cry on

Your parents watch anime with you ;_; I've been trying to get Mom to watch Utena, but nope
I let a friend watch the first ep the other day but he kinda judged it quickly because I think he didn't want to watch it at the moment and said he didn't like it... >_> He agreed a few minutes ago to watch it with me next month after we go to the mini-con.

I want the DVDs, too, but man it's so much. Like..goodness -o- But I wonder how the English will be.




i'm marrying homura

If you guys want to know more about the English dub, you can watch the English-language trailer and voice actress cast videos from Aniplex on youtube. Here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL … ature=plcp

I probably will always like the subbed version more, but it seems like the people they got for the English dub aren't half bad. And it's also fun to watch them answer questions like "Would you ever be a magical girl?" without spoiling the whole series.

My mom is mainly the one who will watch anime with me when she's not working. It's harder to get my dad to watch it. I probably can't get him to watch the rest of Madoka Magica unless I get on DVD and beg him to watch it with me. We have a 1980's TV and a good DVD player with a fancy speaker system, so maybe I can get him to watch the English dub. (He has problems reading the subtitles because they usually aren't big enough because we don't have a widescreen TV.)

I did watch Devil May Cry one time and my dad ended up watching a few episodes, even though he'll never, ever admit he liked it. (Even though he made a lot of different jokes about the evil demonic mask that grants wishes.) So, the tl;dr version is that getting my dad to watch anime with me is complicated.

@puplepolecat

I was glad the ending was a least somewhat happy because the whole series was so depressing up until that point. It was still pretty bittersweet, considering what happened to Madoka, but I did like the ending. Oh, and according to http://wiki.puella-magi.net/ there are going to be three movies for this series. The first two are basically re-telling of the 12-episode anime and the third one takes place right after the very end of the anime where Homura is fighting those demons. By the way, that wikia is awesome and has a lot of information that you might have missed watching the show, such as what the runes mean. Obviously contains major spoilers.

I agree that Madoka is an epic mind screw, although it is a little easier to understand than Utena is. I think I need to watch Evangelion since a lot of people keep recommending it.

I was wondering how everyone felt about how the series dealt with the whole "Be careful what you wish for" concepts in the show. I liked that Kyubey wasn't exactly a trickster genie, but that in a lot of cases people end up not wishing for what they really want. (I'm looking at you Sayaka.)

I think I need to watch Evangelion since a lot of people keep recommending it.

The characters in Evangelion are, IMHO, less well-fleshed out than Utena, with the supposed deep emotions coming off flat/contrived at times.  What makes Eva an everlasting classic, however, are the stunning array of well-animated Angel types, along with the dramatic music and spectacular action scenes.

I'm firm in the belief that IRG has never steered me wrong as far as anime that twist the Magical Girl genre is concerned and PMMM has been on my radar for a bit so I'm probably going to have to finally check it out.

what is it Coobie?

I wish I hadn't known what was coming on episode 3 before I watched it the first time. It would've been more terrible (fun). I watched it in a youtube video I saw on fb some months before I watched the actual show, so it was my first impression of it!

So I watched the English dub of the whole series on the internet and too summarize:

No. Just No.

Okay in seriousness the English dub voice actresses weren't that bad for the most part. None of them had particularly obnoxious or grating voices and while I think Homura's Japanese VA will always be the best Homura, the woman who voiced Homura in the English dub was pretty good.

So then, the problem with the English dub lies in the way they decided to re-write the dialogue. I get that translating Japanese into English is complicated. Some of the dialogue in PMMM would sound oddly stiff and formal if someone said it verbatim in English. I don't have a problem with changing the sentence structure a little bit but still keeping the meaning of the dialogue.

However, the dub doesn't just change a few of the more formal sounding pieces of dialogue. Instead, it dumbs down a lot of the dialogue and adds in chatspeak. That's right, chatspeak. Sayaka uses the phrase "For Realz" several times and it just sounds stupid and out of place. Kyoko uses the term "BFFs" at one point.

As for dumbing down the dialogue, Kyoko's speech about how hope and despair balance out to zero got reduced to "good and bad kinda balance each other out". Really, the target audience for this show is people age 13+ according to the rating on the DVDs; I think they can wrap their minds around concepts like "hope" and "despair". We also have God!Madoka saying that she has "nothing to worry about" if all the witches are destroyed instead of "having no reason to feel despair".

Needless to say, I was really disappointed with this dub. While I do prefer to watch shows and movies in their original language, it is always nice to have some decently dubbed anime to share with aging relatives who can't read the subtitles fast enough.

Not to mention, PMMM did have a decent voice cast, so if only they had hired a better script writer, this could have been a decent dub.

Madoka Magica? What can I say about it...

Normally if you do want to cry and see a sad story, these stories can be escapist. Soapy stories where people randomly die because it's OMG SAD, but it's also easy, cheap writing. The point I'm trying to make is that the world is filled with great, modern uplifters. But, what about a downer? That is a rare breed. It's not dark or disturbing for its own sake, it's not manipulative and schlocky to jerk tears at the expense of brain cells.

If you're at all curious, I say give it a try. 10/10

Last edited by Dazmi (09-26-2012 11:38:12 AM)

I also think that Madoka works on two entertainment levels.  If you are not familiar with magical girl anime or don't give a flip about the more, err, I guess you could say "symbolic and intellectual" aspects of the series, you'll still enjoy yourself, because it has amazing action sequences, animation and music, and the plot is twisty and well paced even if you don't care about the meaning behind any of it.  In regards to Magical Girl stuff, you can have your cake (TRANSFORMATION, COLORS, HAIR, MAGICAL ACCESSORIES, ACTION AND CUTE MASCOT) and eat it to (subversion of all of the above!)  That fact that those elements are being subverted or explored in an unfamiliar way does not make them any less, well, totally cool.


Just because becoming a magical girl has horrific consequences doesn't mean they aren't fun to watch fight.  >.>

Last edited by OnlyInThisLight (09-28-2012 09:55:54 PM)

CausalityStar wrote:

I agree that there was foreshadowing even before the you-know-what happened in episode three that PMMM wouldn't be that happy of a show. Those witches are some seriously scary acid trip creatures.

And Madoka's nightmare at the very beginning of the series was a pretty big clue as well.

gorgeousshutin wrote:

(i.e. will the show end up being flawed by flat, uncharismatic characters just like Mawaru-Penguindrum?)

The PMMM characters felt to me like blank slates, as though their entire lives began with Episode 1. Beyond that, I thought they were well characterized.