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Jul 20, 2017
Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica is a masterpiece. I've rewatched this anime 5 times over the years and can say that with utmost certainty. Why is it a masterpiece you might ask? You'll really have to watch and see for yourself, but I CAN tell you why it's worth watching.
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(Story - 10)
(Minor spoilers for episode 1. I recommend watching it first if you care.)
Madoka Kaname is your average middle school girl. She wakes up in the morning after having a strange dream and that day, a mysterious new student named Homura Akemi transfers to her class.
That same day, after school, she's hanging out with
...
her best friend Sayaka Miki when they end up encountering a magical familiar named Kyubey, who is being attacked by the aforementioned transfer student using magical powers.
A kind older student from their school named Tomoe Mami who also has magical powers hears Kyubey's telepathic plea for help and arrives, saving them from a witch's labyrinth dimension after defeating the witch. Homura promptly leaves and Kyubey is successfully rescued as well. Afterwards, Kyubey thanks them and offers to grant the two ordinary girls any wish that they desire. In exchange they must become magical girls and fight witches.
So far it seems like a regular magical girl series, right?
Magical familiar (✓)
Magical girls/magic being used (✓)
Recurring group of enemies they must defeat (witches) (✓)
This could just be Cardcaptor Sakura or something, right? But those darker undertones are already there.
Near death of the central magical familiar (✓)
Terrifying enemies (✓)
Bitter rivalry between magical girls (✓)
And that's where this show differs from "your average magical girl anime". You probably already know this, but the show is a psychological thriller for a freaking reason.
The world of Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica is a perilous place and things are not what they seem.
This anime may seem happy-go-lucky for the first few episodes, but these things are present all the time. And as you go on, you'll see these feelings of unease and despair become more and more apparent as they creep their way into these girls' realities more and more.
(Art - 9)
This gets a solid 9 from me. The art style is very unique. The character designs are pretty simplistic, but they're charming and their magical girl outfits reflect their personalities. All the main characters can be associated with their own color since their eye and hair colors are the same and they each have their own preferred styles, making them distinct as characters. The backgrounds/settings are really beautiful and creative (especially during fight scenes). Witches and their labyrinth designs are the perfect blend of unique and disturbing, but always with some sort of core theme to them. The animation is smooth as well. I don't really have any complaints, honestly.
(Music - 10)
The soundtrack of this show is absolutely amazing. From the opening (which stays the same the entire show) to the numerous ending themes to all the background music. I've found they're all exceptionally fitting to the various scenes. And the feels when you notice some of the lyrics of these themes... The various characters also have their own character themes which fit their personalities well.
(Characters- 10)
The characters are great as well. The main characters feel almost alive imo. You can really feel yourself rooting for them at times and in my opinion, each and every one of them has an equally important role in the series and they make this anime the masterpiece it is. They aren't one note and have a lot of depth to their personalities and their own reasons for doing things. Never would I have thought such a short anime could make me care for the characters this much. I won't say more to keep this review less spoiler-y.
My enjoyment and overall opinion of this anime is a flat out 10. Sure I may be a bit biased, having watched it 5 times, but it may just be my favorite anime. I hope my review convinced you that you need to watch it (if you haven't already). Oh and if you watch the series, make sure to watch Movie 3: Rebellion after words! (The first two movies are just alternate tellings of the anime.) Have a nice day! :)
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Apr 21, 2014
There are no reviews for this lovely piece of art, so I thought I'd write one. :I
Story (2, just because it's better than Mars of Destruction):
There isn't much of a story here.
Kirby crash lands into some 'princess' lady's face (who people speculate is the original design of Fumu/Tiff) and she gets up perfectly fine, just a bit angry when Kirby floats around like an idiot and gets in her face.
Then it's mostly just Kirby and this 'princess' showing off their moves and flying around...And King Dedede is trying to murder them (or at least Kirby), but fails every time. Afterwards Kirby offers
...
him a sausage as a peace offering, since I think he had been having a picnic or something.
Then later some other excuses for enemies appear. (Captain Stitch, Meta Knight, who isn't evil in the actual series, Ice Dragon, Dark Matter, Master Green, Blocky, Efreeti and then some others from various games. Those were all the names I could be bothered to look up.) They kill them in one second. Then Nightmare shocks them with some sort of weird lightning and they can't move. Then, it shows Kirby waking up to find it was only a very trippy nightmare. But wait, that means...did he ever even meet any princess or penguin? Or any of those people? Did he ever actually have a girlfriend? Nope, he had been sleeping the whole time. I think. Whatever, let's move on.
Art (3): The art. Well, to start, they kind of got King Dedede's design messed up I think, with his hat anyways. Lol, and the 'princess' is naked. And the animation...is not too great. This pilot seems more like some sort of test animation.
Sound (3): The music is mostly in the beginning and doesn't really match the "mood", though it's debatable what the mood even is. There isn't any voice acting at all. Also, there's a few sounds, but that's it.
Character (2): There isn't much character development. Basically Kirby and this 'princess' are innocent and everyone else is a complete and total asshole.
Enjoyment (4): I guess it was nice to see how much they improved when they made the actual show.
Overall (3): This was one of...the pilots of all time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Feb 7, 2014
I'd always enjoyed the Kirby games, but in many of the games, there isn't really a sense of community and the characters don't tend to speak that much. This show has a world full of goofy characters with personalities!
At first, I was worried that this show would taint my opinion of the games, but it provided some explanations for things and made me like this franchise even more than I used to.
Plot (7/10 - Good):
This show has a very episodic formula and the plot is typically just that King Dedede tries to defeat Kirby using the Demon Beasts he orders from Holy Nightmare
...
Co/Nightmare Enterprises (in the dub) while messing with everyone else in Cappy Town. Sometimes Dedede doesn't do anything, but it still mainly Holy Nightmare's fault that anyone has problems at all. Still, I found it a fun series and they always managed to keep things interesting.
There are also the Star Warriors and the Galaxy Soldier Army side plot who had some sort of war where they tried to rebel against Nightmare, but most died or went into hiding, which I found cool. Although most of the history with that isn't touched upon that deeply.
This series can be quite childish, as it is a kid's anime. Though it can sometimes be kind of dark/serious, at least in the japanese version. 4kids censored most of the darker moments in the dub and added a bunch of wacky music.
Art (5/10 - Average)
I enjoy the cheerful artstyle of this show. It seems decent in my opinion. Everything's colorful and there's so many cute things. The animation isn't that exceptional or fluid. It has definitely aged somewhat. There are segments where they used quite a bit of CGI/CE 3d effects and I think that it's fine mostly, but that's where its age definitely shows the most. In my opinion it's weird how they made Dyna Blade literally always 3d, she doesn't look too good ngl.
Sound (7/10 - Good ((scored for the Japanese version))):
The voice actors in this show are great in the Japanese version, though I dislike a majority of the voices in the English version. They express emotion well and Meta Knight sounds badass, you could forget you're watching Kirby lol.
Southern Dedede is a classic and pretty hilarious I must admit even as a sub watcher. He's like Foghorn Leghorn, but raspier and a penguin. Fake Hispanic Meta Knight makes me cringe I'm sorry, especially with that knock-off Zorro music they added in. But I may be biased, I've gotta admit I do dislike how campy 4kids' voice acting/added soundtracks are most of the time, especially after seeing the Japanese. Tiff and Tokkori, the bird guy sounded really annoying especially from what I've heard of them in English.
The music of the Japanese version is great. A lot of it is remixes of classic songs from the games, too. I've always really liked Kirby soundtracks. I can't say no to that and that weird-ass "Macho-san" weight loss song "Go Go Heaven", though it was weird, it was catchy af.
Characters (6/10 - Fine):
They've added some exclusive characters in this series. Some of them are just temporary one-offs, some are side characters, but others are even main characters. (Escargon/Escargoon and Customer service, two characters originally from the anime actually later appeared in the game Kirby: Mass Attack though as a cameo though which is pretty nifty.)
About the characters though:
There are the Cappies who are the main inhabitants of the town and instead of attacking people and wearing strange mushroom caps and bouncing around like they do in the games, they are a somewhat peaceful, civlized people, though they are quite stupid and due to this are manipulated by Dedede often enough in this show.
Kirby is a pink puffball who can copy the abilities of others or of things. He is a Star Warrior. He's confirmed to be a baby in this show, so he can't speak except for the made up word 'Poyo', but he's pretty cute. He seems to understand others just fine despite not being able to speak though.
Kirby loves eating, sleeping and playing with his friends. He's not the smartest and is quite naive, being a baby, as seen in many episodes where he gets tricked/ridiculed (mostly by King Dedede) very easily. He's cute, yet he can fight fiercely whenever needed, often aided by his warp star and copy abilities.
Fumu/Tiff is one of the villagers who is not a Cappy. She is quite compassionate towards others and one of the few of average intellect to smart in this show so I found myself agreeing with her quite a bit. Although sometimes she is also naive and gets annoyed easily, being a child. She is one of the main characters and usually one of the main reasons why Dedede's plans fail. She is very protective of Kirby and loves and cares about him. Due to that fact, she can control his warp star and calls for it when he needs it most.
Bun/Tuff is Fumu's younger brother. He is like Fumu's opposite, being brash and generally quite dumb, but they still get along well.
King Dedede is a spoiled, selfish, bratty penguin who always has to get his way. He's always buying new demon beasts/monsters for his amusement which he uses to try to defeat Kirby, but always fails and ends up with a huge bill for buying the demon beast without looking at the price. He seems to enjoy bullying Escargon despite him being his most loyal lackey.
Escargon is Dedede's sidekick/servant who gets beaten up all the time, yet stays with him. He seems to care a lot about his king and is very loyal, he will also happily join him in pestering others.
Meta Knight is the mysterious, cool-headed knight guy. He's an experienced Star Warrior who works for King Dedede, but will disobey orders when they're utter bullcrap. He's pretty strong, but he only ever helps Kirby if he REALLY needs it. Oh yeah and his eyes change color depending on his mood, now tell me that isn't sick.
The main cast generally have an interesting dynamic and there's plenty of conflict and bumps in the road to spice things up. All in all though, there isn't much to write home about. The characters have basic personality traits and not a whole lot of depth to them, but that suits Kirby just fine.
Some of the plots in this show teach lots of great life lessons btw, yup. Such as...
Don't kill people's dads...Don't waste food...and slavery is bad. :)
If you watch this series, I would recommend watching the original Japanese version. But I personally couldn't some of the later episodes with subs since these are all fansubbed and there was never an official subbed release like newer anime tend to get so that might be a problem for those of us who can't speak Japanese, unless you can switch to English and deal with that change for some episodes at the end.
But yeah... the English version changed many things including: bits of some of the characters' personality, some scenes that were deleted or heavily altered (like the reference to the movie Psycho in the Halloween episode lol) and things in general that were altered
Like instead of there being a rebel "Galaxy Soldier Army", all the rebels/army were unanimously referred to as Star Warriors, even if they're not Star Warriors. May be a nitpick, but Star Warriors were seemingly supposed to be great warriors with lots of power and higher up ranks, rather than just any generic soldier. They got rid of most of the original soundtrack, which was really nice as there were lots of remixes of songs from the games. Also, I found many of the English voices annoying, but that's my opinion.
Edit (2023): I enjoyed this show a lot as a kid. The original version of this review was actually written by twelve year old me growing up in foster care and I have tried to keep the original "feelings" intact even having come back to edit this to an extent so it's on the same level as future reviews. I hope you guys enjoyed reading this review though and have a nice day.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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