SHAFT, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, an Original!

This sections will be Puella Magi Madoka Magica, the first show created by shaft that was completely original, from no pre-existing works. It displays shafts originality, helping bring together everything that they’ve learnt thus far into one of the best things to hit the industry in 2011 which is only further justified by the amount of attention it received. This show gained the highest Blu-ray 1st week sales of any TV anime beating SHAFTS own Bakemonogatari by a few thousand and pushing it down to 2^nd, while coming away with over 12 animation awards. They also had a museum type exhibit for fans in December 2011 to show case many of the 'art' from the show.

Plot

The story revolves around a girl named Madoka who gets approached by an extra-terrestrial by the name of Kyubey who will grant any teenage girl a wish that she desires no matter how small or big in the condition that she will become a magical girl and protect the world from evil beings knows as witches. The story follows Madoka and various other magical girls as Kyubey leads them into a battle against witches to rid the world of evil, are things really as simple as they appear to be? 

The Character Designs.

Characters have been designed by Ume Aoki who was also the director of SHAFTS ‘Hidamari Sketch’ one of its cuter style shows as shown before.  The designs are typical of those that you wold be expected to see in a magical girl type show such as card captor Sakura, sailor moon, Precure and even Power Puff Girls, each girl having their own style and colour theme with designs also matching personalities very well. The character styles used help make the deconstruction of the genre attempted by this show all the more obvious, making it blunt that these are your ordinary  magical girl in a very different situation.

Backgrounds

The backgrounds are rather stunning at times with a lot of scenes having resemblances with famous real life structures. A good setting can always help bring a scene to life and using realistic/ well knows structures from time to time helps portray the fact that the show is trying to represent a scenario more realistically and helps people relate to this. It is well knows that a strong setting can add lots of atmosphere to an animation and this shows tries to take advantage of it wherever it can.

Weltstadthaus. Colonge, Germany (left) this is a shopping mall that madoka and sayaka visit after school.

Shanghai World Financial Center. Shanghai, China (right) a hallway at school were Madoka and Homura have a conversation, which looks similer to the 100^th floor obdervation deck.

Witches

These are the main antagonists of the show and are a creation of Akiyuki Shinbo; they use a style of cut-out animation (similar to that briefly used in Bakemonogatari and an opening of Sayonara, zetsubo sensei) as a backdrop for creating an alternate dimension in which the witches reside. The witches themselves are also done in the same extremely surreal cut-out style, the witches and there environment are designed to represent the witches past personalities with the dimension itself being a representation of the witch and how she was viewed at first glance, while a central courtyard type of place would be used to show the witches innermost personality and was where she would reside. This made for one of the more stunning aspects of the show and helped it stand out amongst any other show in the industry for a while. They take strong influences in terms of naming conventions and textual ciphers/ runes that appear throughout the witches domain from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's play Faust. Even the protection circles that surround the magical girls are written in German with a few quotes from his play.

Sound

While Background music can add a lot of live and character to an animation here it was used scarcely, but it went all out during fight scenes and witch encounters, while there could have been more in other parts it was a good attempt to use sound to add atmosphere during the more important situations. This could be seen as a decision taken to further boost the shows “what really counts” theme. 

Voice actors

While a lot of voice actors are from past shows a lot of though was put into this at times. The voice actor for Sayaka (the blue girl) is Eri Kitamura who is also the same voice actor for another magical girl show called ‘Fresh Pretty Cure!’ The character is named Miki Aono and also has the blue theme of that show. A Teacher in Madoka Magica who seems to have problems with her love interest is being played by Junko Iwao who voiced a character with the exact same situation in a show called Mai-HIME. In addition to SHAFT’s regular voice actors this familiar cast will help draw out the impact behind the stories motives and amplify the effects of the animation. Of course for translated/ dubbed versions such “clever/ tactical” choices are likely to be of no importance.

Songs

The opening and ending songs play a vital part in the show the opening song CONNECT by ClariS is a very upbeat fast paced song with strong lyrics that seem somewhat bitter sweet showing both desperation, happiness and longing. As the show goes on the lyrics begin to make a lot more sense and seem to fit the animation perfectly. 

Claris - Connect 

As opposed to the optimistic flavour of the upbeat opening the ending song, Magia by Kalafina is incredibly dark and deep in sound yet the lyrics are not of desperation, they talk of finding the courage and strength inside of you to fight off all you find evil; to protect the ones you love using childish dreams of love, fairy tales and omnipotence to find the strength you need. I should mention that the Animated sequences themselves also accurately replicate the feelings of the songs mood through its colours, but its meanings  through its animation.

Kalafina - Magia

The title

Titles are important, they give a good idea of what an animation is about and can help emphasise the animations meaning in a big way, most well-known pieces of art will always have some sort of title or tag that we instantly associate with them. While the title written in its original Japanese the word for magic was stylised and could easily be read as the word meaning cowardice or hesitation thus letting the title be known as wavering girl madoka magica, which in fact resembles her actions perfectly for almost the entire show.

Themes

The show as mentioned before is a magical girl show flipped on its head. This in a way could be used to help point out to those heavily influenced by such shows that almost everything will come at a price and the greater the reward the bigger the consequences that could come to haunt you “there is no such thing as a free dinner in life.” The show also helps to point out that it’s not wrong to break the norms and experiment a little bit; societies can be very fixed and closed sometimes in Japan often creating stereotypes, I feel the show in a way helps show the complexities and variances that occur from one individual to another, society doesn’t always have to be spoon-fed a perfect image sometimes showing the reality of a situation can help deter it. 

The relationships between people in Madoka's family are quite important too. in the Industry many female characters are shown to be either very feminine and weak of strong but to an extent they seem manly this provides a untrue and bias picture to the target demographic, there are very few representations of what a strong lady in a real life situation could be. Madoka's Mother is a prime example of this, she is an ambitious business woman who dreams of being on top and is only happiest when she giving her all dispite the stresses, this gives reason for Madoka to be a strong willed person herself as she has a respectable role model. Her father in comparison is actually a housewife but rather than being embarrassed about his situation he does all that needs to be done to keep the home running smoothly while working in a small but stable job time to time. While this is probably far from a revolutionary thought it does seem that it could send a good message to its audience, unfortunately the target audience is unlikely to be young/ teenage girls.

A Genre that was usually aimed at young girls being transformed into something that wouldn't even be rated at their age may even show how the nation is even more desensitised to events, events that should normally seem shocking or grime may appear to be very normal, and instead it is seen as a refreshing piece of art.

In a way the concept of magical power in this show can be a representation of drugs or smoking and other addictions people can take up, they seem tempting at first and give you your high, but once you have it there’s no letting go, while it makes the suffering worse, yet the only real cure is for it to not exist at all or to find something you desire even more.

Final Thoughts

A lot more could be said about this show but in terms of animation, it really is something spectacular in the Japanese animation industry as it is now, and there probably isn’t much in the west currently in terms of a serialised cartoon that can match up to the uniqueness of this show, regardless of whether or not the show is your cup of tea in terms of story or genre the “art” behind the show is most definitely praiseworthy and can be view in respect to that alone.

Despite poor animation quality on the Aired products the Blu-ray releases have noticeable improvements and should be seen to view the show at its best the say the directors intented it to be seen the first time around.