Why so many people compare Madoka Magica to Utena/Princess Tutu/Evangelion???

TripleSRank said:
If someone is going to compare Madoka Magica to another mahou shoujo, it should be compared to Magic Knight Rayearth, which Madoka Magica borrowed from heavily and condensed into a shorter story.

I don't think Madoka is a "deconstruction" in the least wise since it didn't do anything new, but I still thought the TV series was very good. It doesn't even really come off as a "response" to other mahou shoujo in the same way Utena seems to be a response to Sailor Moon.

So yeah, I'm with OP on this one.

You said:
I'm still yet to watch Rayearth, what is it about and what's the similarities between it?

Lain666 said:
When I compare Madoka to Princess Tutu and Utena I do it to compare how well the characterization/character development of the main characters is done.

All of the mentioned series have drama in them and what I expect for drama is that the characters will be well-developed so that I will be given a good reason to care about characters.

Princess Tutu handled its characters very well. Ahiru is a dynamic character whose wish to return Mytho’s heart moves the story forward while at the same time she is fighting against her fate, since she is destined to turn into a speck of light and vanish the moment she confesses her love.

Utena also did a great job, but Madoka? It gave me very little reasons to care about Madoka and Homura. I admit that the plot was good, since the big plot twist didn’t come out of nowhere, so one cannot tell it was an asspull, but the show didn’t spend much time to develop these characters. Even worse at some point other characters basically steal the show from Madoka.

To sum it up. When I watch drama, I don’t necessarily want to be surprised by the plot, which as long as it is not an asspull I can predict where it can go and in Madoka's case I did. What I want are well-done characters about which I care. In this regard Madoka didn’t deliver whereas Utena and Princess Tutu did a splendid job.

Lain666 said:
I compared them since all of them have the element of drama. All of them want to make me feel for the characters and for me to have drama work, you need to do a good job with the characters.

So I pointed out that Princess Tutu and Utena are doing it right. They make the drama work by developing their main characters. The main characters in these shows need to deal with their failures, fears, etc. which allows them to grow. Madoka does not do it right. It allows other characters to steal the show, kills them off and then goes back to Madoka and Homura at the climax of the story expecting that I will give a damn about them even though I know next to nothing about them and as a result don't care about them, especially about Homura. It is not just that Madoka is shorter. It is also that what little time it had, it used badly.

I also think that comparing Madoka to other magical girls explains pretty nicely the main difference between magical girls aimed at girls, where the plot is generally less important than characters, though I would say that Princess Tutu has a very good plot, and the dark magical girl like Madoka aimed at older audience that consists of males, whose main appeal relies on the plot. And why I personally prefer series which are aimed at girls.

I am just not a fan of plot-driven series that relies more on plot twists than making interesting characters that can overcome their weaknesses and develop. I am not saying that liking dark magical girls is bad. Each to their own, but I also think there are situations where such comparison is OK and I see no problem with it.

Jack_100HP said:
i compare madoka to https://myanimelist.net/anime/3285/Himitsu_no_Akko-chan

both are magic, school, shoujo

You said:
So by your logic, all drama must be character driven? or you just dislike the pretext of a story being plot driven at all? Well there's no problem with all of them, but still these shows aren't similar in what they aspires to be.

CatSoul said:


I wish this wasn't private because just the concept of this comparison is blowing my mind.

Lain666 said:

If I am supposed to be emotionally invested in character' struggle and feel sorry for them, which I believe Madoka also tried to do, then yes or at least I expect that it will be a plot-driven series with strong characterization/character development.

So I would expect something better than barely showing some character and only throwing a sad backstory for this character at the climax. Give me a reason to care before this.

I was even mildly interested in Sayaka and Kyoko, but the moment they got killed and the story returned to sidelined Madoka and Homera, I totally lost interest in this show. Even this big plot twist could not save it, since I found it pretty easy to predict that something nasty may be going on and more importantly it concerned two characters which were least developed and as a result uninteresting in my opinion.

If I had cared about them, I don't think I would have minded. I watched/read shows like Pandora Hearts where I figured out the big plot twist and still cared after my predictions came true, because I liked the characters.

You said:
eh? So tell me, do you know that all the characters serves the same purpose? Coz I feel like you got the show message differently than me.

Lain666 said:

It was obvious after some time that it wants to break the cutie. I would not say that it shows how to deal with depression, since Sayaka gets killed and this is all there is to it. It doesn’t show how she overcomes problems like getting over this boy, etc. I don’t remember any of the characters learning a lesson, moving on and becoming happy again. Madoka enters into the contract very late and makes a sensible wish, but it is due to Homura’s efforts rather than Madoka’s reluctance to do it earlier. And Madoka could make a sensible wish just because of this and the fact that she had facts about the situation thrown right into her face by Kyuubey, not because she realised that she was too passive and started to investigate the situation, etc.

So basically, I think the idea for this anime was something like ‘Well, let’s make a dark story where magical girls are dying, but maybe, on second thought, not too dark.’

Lain666 said:
Interesting, but I don’t think so that the intention was to show that magical girls are too rush at making decisions, which can have negative consequences. If it were so, then why was Madoka allowed to make a sensible wish through efforts of others and coincidences? What would be the point of it? To show that sometimes you may die, but sometimes you can get lucky?

You said:
Oh that one? Well it's not a coincidence IMO, and that's what Homura strive to do (and finally achieved). Homura make rash decisions too in just wanted to rewind the time when she met Madoka again, but thankfully due to the nature of time travel, it gives a speck of hope that after Homura realized the whole consequences and that Madoka haven't become a magical girl yet at the beginning of when she do a time reset, Homura must make Madoka not transforming to a Magical Girl by making her realized all these consequences before Madoka transformed to one (She only realized the former but in the end she accomplished the latter too). All the failures of the previous iterations Homura did has this similarities, which Madoka has become a magical girl the moment she see magical girls turned to witch in the end.

So yeah, that's not a coincidence. Homura just realized that must make Madoka not transforming to a Magical Girl though, not that of making her realized all these consequences before Madoka transformed to one. But as how the series theme on well thought decisions, Madoka make a wish in the end. Pretty positive if you ask me.

Lain666 said:

From Madoka’s POV she was still lucky that someone was desperate enough to keep her out of this mess, but I agree that the end of the series can be interpreted as Homur’s success.

This, however, makes me believe that Homura would have been a better main character. Either that or make Madoka realize her mistakes so that she would become less passive, started to analyse the situation and after some time and effort, she could find a solution.

It would turn Madoka into a much more interesting character if she weren’t just a passive observer of the situation who owes her achievement to another character.

AmMar-Sama said:
How can you care about the random people in Mushishi? Most of them are around for one episode.

InsaneLeader13 said:
The comparison is usually for these reasons:

A) Compared to TuTu because both TuTu and Madoka's creators are very aware of trappings of the Mahou Shoujo genre, and write with these trappings in mind, usually with the idea of using said trappings in unexpected ways.

B) Compared to Evangelion for the existential dread and depressive tones that the series really loves laying into its' characters. Obvious spoilers. Madoka and Sayaka both suffer from survivors guilt after observing events in episode 3, while Shinji, Asuka, Misato, and hell nearly ever character in NGE are all suffering from some variant of depression and guilt. Add to that the scale of terror that the closing episodes of both series like to lay onto already mentally-frail characters, and...well...

C) Compared to Utena because Utena is one of the few other series that will focus on relationships between characters while maintaining a trippy nature and showcasing a lot of deception. That said, I do feel that comparisons between Utena and Madoka for anything other then tackling the Mahou Shoujo genre in intriguing ways (And even that claim is debatable for Utena), albeit both of them did it in radically different ways.