Originally Posted by
Backmask
Watching blind sheep wallow in a pile of filth that they believe is gold can only be described as pathetic. I take it that Madoka your first Gen Urobuchi story? I say this because anybody that isn't an edgy teen can comprehend that Urobuchi's writing is formulaic and stale. His always has his characters die off a few moments after they get their (hamfisted) development in an attempt to force the audience's emotions. This is an unruly method that shows immaturity and incompetence. Compare it to, say, Kei Amemiya's death in Jin-Roh. Her character evolved throughout the movie and featured a twist that, though was surprising, wasn't abrupt. Through her character we get to see an actual dilemma in Constable Kazuki Fuse's story in which he must make the choice between soldier or bystander with the undertones that once your involved you can't get out. Her involvement in the story had meaning, her development was well paced, and her death had subtle undertones that were only evident to the viewer through inspection, as opposed to being filled with preachy overtones. To continue on with the subject of Urobuchi's characters, let us move on to the characters themselves as opposed to how he uses them. Let's discuss the characters of Madoka, Mami, Kyouko, Sayaka, and Homura. Mami and Kyouko's characters were the second most flawed characters in Madoka, in my opinion. It's obvious that they were to serve as the "seasoned veteran" characters with Mami assuming somewhat of a guiding role while Kyouko served a role to show how Magical Girls rivaled one another (Before we got to her, we only saw a glimps of that with Homura and Mami.) Mami's character was extremely two-dimensional in comparison to, say, Lisa Lisa from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 2: Battle Tendency. They both were veterned characters who were to guide the characters (Mami = Sayaka and Madoka, Lisa Lisa = Joseph and Caeser). Mami's character, however, was just that, a guide. That was it. I wouldn't have too much of an issue with this if it weren't for the fact that she was given some "development" before her inevitable and obligatory death. If you are going give a character development, do not do it in this last minute manner. At the very least, build up to this moment, show some signs of her development. Do whatever you can, but at the least avoid it. Lisa Lisa's character was great. Her emotions were shown when they were necessary. For example, look at the time when Caeser died. How does she react? Well, at first we are lead to believe that she cares not for the death of her pupil; however, when she "fought" the vampire (The one that says "OK" at the end of his sentences) We see a great deal of her character as she attempts to hold in her grief and gets an obviously lump in her throat. As for Kyouko, let's talk about her relationship/rivalry with Sayaka by comparing them to that of Dio Brando and Jonathan Joestar's relationship/ rivalry. Kyouko and Sayaka's relationship/ rivalry developed too quickly for it to even be considered well written. It was a spur of the moment ordeal in which Kyouko suddenly became Sayaka's best buddy who would do anything for her, while completely disregarding their past confrontations. Dio and JoJo's relationship/rivalry grew into a monumental rivalry. One was a charismatic con-artist from a family of con-artists while the other was just a gullible child who wanted nothing more than to do the right. We see Dio and JoJo's relationship go from your average squabble in between brothers to a monumental rivalry of tremendous proportions. JoJo overcame the bounds of being a human to fight against Dio, a genetically superior vampire. After all, JoJo was acting out of grief for his father's death and could care less about what happened to himself. We see more of how JoJo felt when he "killed" Dio. He struggled when he "killed" him. He still, despite all of what had occurred, thought of Dio as family and couldn't let go of this fact. Their rivalry was great. We didn't have rushed development with them. Their rivalry still had their brotherly bond involved, and wasn't black-and-white such as Kyouko and Sayaka's. As for Homura, well, her character was just poor in general. Her motives, though clear, were generally idiotic and went along the lines of, "I will save one person, at the price of the world." This was just insanity, especially because this occurred because Madoka was nice to her in class. I generally dislike characters such as Homura (Characters whose motives are just bi-products of extreme overreactions.), so I might have a bit of a bias, thus, I won't get into her character to avoid a biassed review of her character. Madoka herself is a fairly average, but has barely any focus placed onto her. It would have been more impactful to give her some more inner monologues, so we could get more from her character and find out what she thinks about the specific situation. Unfortunately, we barely get much of her thoughts on being a magic girl. Especially around episode 8 or so in which the show pretty much becomes Homura Magika. This leads into another issue, the ending. Let us compare Enrico Pucci's universal reset to Madoka's universal reset. Madoka's universal reset was a pretentious deus ex machina, another unruly literary tactic. The animation of it all happening was completely unnecessary and ruined the entire moment in that it was blatantly just SHAFT using up the rest of their budget and Shinbo being a horrible director, as usual. The scene would have been better if it just acted as a reset, rather than Madoka doing some TTGL ****. It's like Scar Symmetry's Morphogenesis music video. The directing of the music video detracted from a great song. You see, Enrico's ability to reset the universe was explained before hand and the audience was well aware of it. We also weren't subjected to some tedious panels to lead into this, we just got one page to focus on it, and that was it. It wasn't delivered poorly either. In fact, the universal reset lead a monumental change in the world that affected the entirety of the story (as opposed to some minor effect such as Madoka's Demons = new Witches and Madoka = Magical Escort to Magic Girl Valhalla) The universal reset (The one that led into Steel Ball Run) occurred because of the defeat of the main antagonist, as opposed to occurring to combat the antagonist due to the author writing himself into a corner. By the way, never use that He-Doesn't-Like-It-So-He-Must-Hate-The-Whole-Genre "argument." It just makes you look like an immature child who can't handle differing opinions. Although, the shoe fits in this situation.
I see that you're still using that strung-out, hypocritical garbage that is essentially a glorified way of saying, "ur a faget" as an argument.
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