I’ve always been intrigued by the artstyles of the witches, love me some fun monster design.
But wondering what the show is like. As I get older I find myself having less patience for certain types of anime bullshit (libertarianism, loli, that kind of cringe)
So, is Madoka worth watching or is it
It’s actually good the whole show is a critique of how young girls desires are manipulated from a young age to participate in the systems of society that destroy them. Really great politics and interesting delivery of them
tv madoka portrays social democracy and is cringe
movie madoka portrays stalinism and is based
sadly you gotta watch the tv madoka for the film madoka
It’s been at least a decade since I watched it, but it was one of the best I’ve seen. AFAIK it invented the Anti-Magical-Girl genre.
It’s just a well done subversion of the popular tropes in its genre when it was made, which earned it a lot of points back when that was novel and you went into it just thinking you were going to watch a magical girl anime. When you know that that’s not what it is it loses a lot of the magic, as it were. It’s fine, but it didn’t really blow me away.
It’s not made for pedophiles though. Shouldn’t be any risk of running into that sort of stuff.
It’s just a well done subversion of the popular tropes
Do I need to watch 500 magical girl animes first for context? I’ve only watched the first two seasons of Sailor Moon.
It’s tough getting into details without spoiling some of the aspects of the show, but yeah there are definitely problematic elements. The character designs are overly sexualized for being middle school girls (case in point, Mami). A key subtextual theme is about how society exploits the images/bodies/persons of young women for cynical profiteering, but the show itself literally also does that as well. There are definitely parts of the show that feel edgy for edginess’s sake, although it’s probably not the most egregious anime in that respect.
To be honest, I’ve watched the show a couple times as well as listening to a whole (100% femme cast) recap podcast on the show, and I still have mixed feelings about it. I think it’s certainly an influential show, and one that’s worthy of critical discussion, but idk if you would have a good time watching it.
