Brainless? Harmless? Cute? Nope. Puella Magi Madoka Magica takes us to the disenchanted world of magical girls, in the middle of a Faustian tragedy.
Director Akiyuki Shinbo is always creating graphic ideas to surprise the audience. His style works fine with comedies, as he’s using the narrative rhythm to create visual fun ideas. But most of the time, he’s not that interested in telling stories, it’s more about using ideas to experiment things. Madoka Magica is different, as he’s finally mixing narrative power with visual ideas. Not perfect, but ambitious, and nice.
Basically, Madoka Magica is about girls who become magical girls if they exchange their souls.
Unexpected
First surprise here, the very first sequence of the show is made of strange, almost conceptual visuals, followed by an apocalyptic scene. But then, the heroine wakes up, introducing a whole new different style, it’s more down-to-earth, cheerful, colorful (the naive character eating breakfast with her family, then walking to the school along her friends…). It feels like this first surprise was just a bad dream (watch the video at the bottom of the article)?
Yet, the show carefully avoids the pitfalls of “kawaiism”: no fan-service, no funny sidekick… And will soon reveal what’s behind all these colorful elements through a much more complex story than one could have expected.
Welcome to the abstract world of… Kawaii?
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Black&White
We won’t watch the magnificent adventures of some magical girls fighting Evil. The series chooses another way, where it’s not about Good vs Evil, not about “Puella Magi” vs Witches. In fact, lines between what’s good or not are blurry. Because the story revolves around the origin of these magical girls – the magical pact: to gain powers, you only have to make a wish.
But what does it imply? That’s one of the main question asked by the series. Turning this simple story into a psychological drama, where young girls are suddenly confronted with deep & complicated questions. They must understand what they really want, need, hope. And also, the consequences of action (ep 3), the meaning of sacrifice (ep 10)… In other words, to face their inner fears.
The true face of Magical Girls?
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Passive heroism?
Quite an interesting choice, the title character isn’t an active one. Madoka, as a young and naive girl, doesn’t know what to do. She’s facing things that are way beyond her. So, she just watches her world falling apart, deep into despair. The fact she doesn’t transform right at the beginning isn’t frustrating, because the more she waits, the more she has to find answers about what’s happening, about her choices, her own destiny. In fact, she has to stop wandering around, and has to find her own path.
Where the good road?
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Experimentations
Every fight against Witches offers the opportunity to discover new strange worlds. Visually speaking, quite far from some moe-kawaii animation. Colors are darker, or nightmarish, forms aren’t so lovely anymore, it mixes rough sketches/drawings strangely animated. Sometimes, it’s grotesque, sometimes, it looks cartoonish (less “welcoming” though).
This visual choice really highlights the different state of mind between Witches & Puella Magi. It’s strange, disturbing, it feels like characters are suddenly put out of their comfort zone. This choice leads to some fascinating scenes. For example, the fight from Episode 7. Where the desperation of a magical girl, who finally understood the reality of her choice, is perfectly rendered (also on the emotional level) through shadows. That’s the “power of animation!“.
Angry cartoon vs Fury shadow
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Other things…
The series offers also stunning frameworks, using environement as narrative element. As you can see in most long shots, where girls are set in a very simple place, barely animated (one of the numerous examples of Shinbo’s limited animation?). In the following image, the magical girls are between the calm river and the silent wind turbines — you can’t hear it, but is something going to change soon? Next image, a deserted urban place, with sinous lines pointing out the fact the “straightness” of the character may be soon redefine?
On the left, characters are visually separated from each other, while surrounding by darkness. On the right, a more complicated “visual separation”. The two girls are literally given the choice of reaching the first step of the stairs — becoming magical girls, just like the girl they’re talking to. A difficult choice, considering the stairs are actually imprisoning the “magical girl”.
It must be said, these compositions also reflect Shinbo’s limited-animation style; these are large pictures, with minimum animation required! That’s called saving time & money!
Another last few things to notice, dramatic elements/words during dialogues are streightened by smalls elements cutting into the dialogues (let it be a car, a shadow, or the face of Kyubey).
