At first, we see the lovely story of Madoka, a typical ordinary girl, representing the stereotypical cute anime character - pink hair, ribbon, shool outfit and rather not too tall. With all that charm, she is drawn in a way that rather prevents her from being described as moe, but this is not quite a problem in here. The main misfortune is the fact, that among all characters, the main one is the worst one. She is just warmly-hearted, one-dimensional girl, that seems to be existing just to keep the plot going.
Well, what is the plot? As the title indicates, it is focused on the topic of magical girls, although there are quite not the same as in the most anime of its kind. In this one, the whole procedure of becoming mahous shoujo or puella magi, as you like, is telling your wish to Kyubey - a weird, but adorable cat-like creature, who has mouth, but never opens it while it speaks - and it grants it for the repayment of you starting a risky life as the magical girl, spending whole days on hunting the evil witches. The entire thing starts when the main character and her friend Sayaka meets Kyubey being chased by another character, Akemi Homura. It soon turns out that the cute monster wants to make contracts, as earlier described, with the two protagonists. The third one however, the mysterious Homura, wants to stop them from proceeding in this way. The reasons for her doing so and many other unknown facts concerning the true nature of magical girls in this universe are being revealed to us in the following episosed, making the whole plot much more complicated and darker than in any other anime of this kind. As many people claim, this is certainly not an anime for children. Althought the very begginning does not suggest it, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica has some very thrilling moments in it and is in fact overloaded with a hard, dreading climate.
One thing that is certain is that the audiovisual side of this anime is the factor that instantly keeps this climate going. Even if the plot is not very appalling itself, the way it is presented keeps the viewer's attention without any delays. The feeling that "something" may instantly happen is following you all the time as you keep watching the show. The music fits perfectly to the scenes, the opening is just great and the way in which this anime was drawn makes it even more appealing and outstanding, especially if you keep comparing it to the other mahou shoujos.
Nevertheless, despite how great this anime is, it still has a couple of drawbacks. As I already mentioned, the most annoying thing is the main hero. She really is the less interesting thing in the whole anime and despite her being the title character, one can argue that the whole show could even proceed without her at all. Apart from Madoka, there are not really many characters and the one that I most enjoyed is Homura. Always cool and mysterious, but having a completely different nature on the other hand, as it is revealed later on. She is the only non-one-dimensional character and the only one that you can at least sympathise with as far as I am concerned. Moreover, another problem with this anime, which I indicated on the beggining of this review, is the way it actually ends. I do not want to give you any spoilers, but I guess it is fair enough to warn you to not expect anything extraordinary. I had some hypothesis along before watching the final episodes and I was in fact closely enough with one of them and I did not find the ending scene that surprising. One may have other feelings regarding it, but in my opinion the last part was not that great as the rest of this anime.
So, how is it overall? If I have to sum it up, it is a very enjoyable anime overall. It has some cons regarding the characters and the ending is not that good as it could possibly be, but it still it a great piece to watch and I really liked the way it outstands on the background of its genre. I feel awkwardly sorry about the fact I cannot give it the highest score, but this does not change the fact that is a truly amazing thing to watch. Highly recommended!
