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Madoka is hands-down the best anime series of 2011 thus far, and a contender for the best anime series of all-time. How could an original, non-adaptation magical girl show of all shows end up rousing the anime community in such a fashion?

What starts out as a regular, pastel-colored magical girl show quickly turns on its head as the magical girls come to realize that they're in a zero-sum situation: the stakes are real, and for every bit of hope given in the world, an equal amount of despair must be displaced. The first three episodes have a sense of normalcy to them, but it is ... this calm before the storm that sets the stage for the chaos which resides through the rest of the series.

As each revelation is presented, the viewer is left with some thought-provoking questions. Is the antagonist truly evil, or just looking out for the needs of the many? Is Madoka, the lead character, selfish in delaying her decision to be a magical girl? And what about the true intentions of the other magical girls? The answers to those and more are carefully presented at the right times, never too fast or too slow. However, the more the viewer learns, the more the viewer realizes that there's still much to be realized. Nothing is ever certain, and the viewer is kept on edge the entire way. It is not until the final two episodes that all the pieces connect in a harmonious manner.

Presentation of the series is spot-on. The imagery of each of the witches' labyrinths is unique and firmly brings each combat scene into one of terror rather than one of indifference or skepticism. The rough, imperfect drawings of the characters' expressions only serve to remind the viewer that none of them are the ideal, righteous heroes that they thought they would be. As for the orchestral soundtrack, it blends in so well that you almost don't notice it's even there. Only the ending theme played at certain combat scenes steals the spotlight.

The hype leading up to these final two episodes (that were aired together) was unprecedented, the likes of which had never been seen before. Full-page ads for just the final airing were printed in major Japanese newspapers. Multiple volumes of the blu-ray release were sitting at the top of Amazon JP's preorder list. Some shrewd people were even streaming live feeds of the final episodes over the internet. Everyone and their dog had an opinion on the show in the blogosphere, and a wiki site was created for the series. There were passionate discussions of a wide variety, such as the basis of entropy, the emotional breakdowns of the characters, the parallels with previous historical works such as Faust, and of course, the merits of specific scenes in the ending. Madoka took the pure, proud obsession of anime fans and gathered them together for one main event.

So is Madoka truly the greatest anime series of all-time? There can never be a concrete answer to that given the unique tastes of each individual. Indeed, there will always be people who will claim any sort of personal issue or technicality to prevent giving this a 10. However, it does what almost no show does: transcend its genre while maintaining homage to what it surpassed, requiring little prior knowledge of the anime medium as a whole. If there was to be any half-season series that you could show a friend who wasn't into anime at all, this would be the one. All that hype was definitely real. Thankfully, you can now marathon the whole series in one sitting instead of becoming crazy while waiting for the next episode, as many people were.