Madoka Magica is overrated. That being said, Madoka Magica is a great anime. I have watched this anime several times analyzing and taking into consideration all the aspects that compose its essence, substance and style. Due to this analysis I've been able to reach different conclusions regarding what aspects of Madoka Magica make it a great anime, and in which aspects this anime fails miserably. Before hating, please I encourage you to read this review carefully.
PRODUCTION VALUE
On this point I am pretty sure that nobody will argue with me: Madoka Magica is visually amazing and sounds beautiful.
The overall art style changes from joyful and full of colour to dark and creepy in a matter of seconds. But this transition is done with great animation, stunning effects and specially breathtaking backgrounds. Combined with moe characters, this use of art and visuals add a lot to the shock factor that the anime aspires to.
The voice acting was really well done and the soundtrack by Yuki Kajiura is masterpiece as always (although I am getting a little bit bored with her work).
STORY
Alright, here is when things start to go downhill. I am not going to spoil anything but you should read MAL's resume in order to understand where I am going. Basically, Madoka Magica is supposed to be a deconstruction of the magical girl genre the same way NGE was a deconstruction of the mecha genre. Madoka bets on its shock factor: it deceives you into thinking that you are watching a cute and nice show about girls with pretty dresses and magic, and suddenly it turns into a dark world full of suffering and misery in which the threat of death is real and you need more than just "the power of love and magic" to survive. The combination of top-notch fights with stunning visuals, and absolutely heart-breaking situations in a dark and constantly deppressing world was a lot of fun.
However, in terms of story Madoka Magica felt unsatisfactory due to two major problems: conclusion and pacing. The first one is easier to explain: Madoka's ending sucks, big time. Is a complete asspull "deus ex machina" that leaves enormous unsolved plotholes, unanswered questions and feels like it was made up at the last moment. And no, the 3rd movie didn't provide a satisfactory conclusion either. It just made the plotholes bigger and threw more questions on the table. The pacing problem requires me to talk about the characters, but let's just say that the series felt rushed. It was going too fast.
CHARACTERS
Considering that Madoka was supposed to be a psychological thriller, you would expect Death Note-tier or NGE-tier characters that could drive the anime instead of the action and the story. Well, sadly Madoka Magica's characters are average at best.
Regarding characters I feel obligated to discard both Mami and Kyoko. Mami is a Mary Sue, supposedly the most perfect of the magical girls, who lacks any personality beyond her super-confident attitude, any backstory or any motivation. As for Kyoko, she is your typical badass character, with not-so-clear motivations or objectives, a 5 min. speech backstory, and a rushed, messy and inconsistent development.
Kaname Madoka is one of the (if not THE) blandest main character in the history of anime. She lacks any kind of development. Her personality is nonexistent, except for her obvious shyness and fearfulness, and the only thing she does is question herself for 12 episodes on wether or not she should become a magical girl. With the exception of the totally unsatisfactory conclusion, she plays no role in the anime. Literally Sayaka could have taken her spot and be a better MC.
This leads me to Sayaka and Homura, the two characters that save this cast from being downright terrible. Sayaka starts off as a naive and energetic character. Contrary to Madoka she has clear goals, and she has a multi-directional perspective as a character, meaning she has different worries and objectives. Her development is really well handled and she evolves clearly but with subtlety, turning into a completely different character (but not in a messy way). Unlike Sayaka, Homura lacks a multi-directional perspective. She has one goal and one goal only, although she indeed pays attention to different things and she approaches her objective through different means, meaning she has a wider range of thought than most characters. She also has a clear backstory that reflects her intentions, and a development just as well handled as Sayaka's.
All I am going to say about Kyuubey is that he is awesome and he totally rocks.
Back to the pacing problem, it has a lot to do with Madoka. I feel that the anime didn't have enough time for her and instead they just threw her development on the last episode as a big ball of unexplained things. This seems weird, wasn't SHE supposed to be the main character? I am sure that having Sayaka as main and completely erasing Madoka would ended much better for the series. Or having more time to focus on Madoka might have gave us a well developed girl that transformed from a moeblob to an all-around 3rd dimensional goddess.
CONCLUSION
Did I enjoy Madoka Magica? Yes, I did. I did greatly enjoyed it. As a matter of fact I constantly encourage people to watch it because I believe is one of the most fun and well done anime I have ever seen. On the other hand though it is true that it poorly handled its main character development, its pacing and ending, thus leaving a bad taste in many viewer's mouth that maybe were expecting too much.
Still a great deliver by Shaft that I higly reccomend.
