• Tiresia@slrpnk.net
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      5 hours ago

      I don’t get what the big deal is, it seemed like a pretty standard Japanese descent into hell anime to me.

      Maybe it’s like Watchmen (the American comic) where you’re supposed to have decades of Magical Girl trope logic that it brutally defies, but at least Watchmen was original. Madoka seemed to hew pretty closely to Neon Genesis Evangelion.

      • domdanial@reddthat.com
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        29 minutes ago

        I think a big part of it is that narrative flip from regular magical girl shows. I didn’t watch magical girl stuff when I got it recommended to me, but I also didn’t get any spoilers, so it still hit well. Similar to One Punch Man if you haven’t seen the decade of shonen, the parodies of them don’t hit.

      • isyasad@lemmy.world
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        41 minutes ago

        where you’re supposed to have decades of Magical Girl trope logic that it brutally defies

        From my experience, it’s the opposite. If you’ve seen lots of magical girl anime, Madoka doesn’t really stand out. If you haven’t seen any magical girl anime before but you assume it’s all shallow and happy, then you will be surprised by Madoka.
        The eternal struggle of being a mahou shoujo fan is hearing people talk about how Madoka is such a shocking genre deconstruction and then finding out that they haven’t seen any other mahou shoujo before. It’s obvious that they’re just repeating what they’ve heard other people say.

        To be fair, Madoka is probably much darker than Pretty Cure or Aikatsu, but it’s only marginally darker / more mature than Cardcaptor Sakura, Princess Tutu, Lyrical Nanoha, or Creamy Mami. And it’s not a bad show, it’s just wildly overrated. Maybe I need to rewatch it