Story...
The set up, without spoiling anything, revolves around magic girls fighing evil 'witch' entities. There is no real case of 'she is the chosen one' - all girls pretty much bought the situation upon themselves.
Madoka - the leading female, is a nice girl who is new to the chaotic life a magic girl has to endure.
Though if you take this concept and think that Madoka (the lead) then goes on to continuously save the day - you're wrong. :P
Character...
We often see the intro 'normal highschool student' in order to describe the 'n00b' placed into an odd situation.
Within this series, effort has been put in place in order to show use that Madoka is not only 'normal', but 'ideal' - she's a nice girl who has no reason to be unhappy, she has; two loving parents who are actually interested in her life, a cute little brother, a beautiful home, good friends and she attends a pleasant school, there isn's a hint of malice within her.
Madoka may be the lead, yet she doesn't dominate the plot - we are introduced to a number of girls, all possessing a differing personalites, motives and backstory put forward as the story progresses - there's bound to ba a character for everyone.
Art...
The are has me a tad mixed - the art isn't bad and bad art alone doesn't put me off, however, the characters are the typical 'moe' design (I'm not a massive fan of) we see quite often in anime these days, but not only are the cast purposley 'cute', but they look like cardboard cut-outs.
As cheap as the chracter design appears, production seem to have blown the budget on the scenery artwork, which provides us with numerous different trends of stunning artwork that almost doesn't fit, yet is entirely appropriot down to the situation.
Overall...
I would say that I personally enjoyed this story and would reccomend this to anyone.
Though I don't generally seek out magic girl anime's, even I can tell that this is something different, not conforming to what's 'tried, tested and apporved'.
