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
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