Take a seemingly innocent topic, use it to tell a dark and twisted tale. This is such a simple concept, yet in my opinion, no anime in the past has ever achieved anything near what Madoka Magica did.
The brilliance of Madoka Magica lies in which it extracted a very basis of a dark human desire, a desire that is so fundamental that it governs day-to-day life of almost every human being, yet most of us chose to simply look the other way because we are not willing to acknowledge the monsters we are, then twisted them around and presented back to us in the cruelest possible way. The result, is something so shocking, that it makes us want to start question the very basis of human moral value.
Towards the end, while it seems to suffer a slight arrogant brat syndrome, I do like that they actually address the "syndrome" directly by showing she did what she did with the full understanding of the fact her life isn't the only one here at stake by her chosen action. This, in my opinion, is a much better plot device for someone to break the plan and do something unthinkable than a simply being stupid and hot-headed brat.
It is not difficult to predict the story's ending involves someone being in the "God Mode". But this is not the ordinary random "God Mode" most other stories pull. They actually explained fully why or how this "God Mode" could exist. This is indeed a very well thought out plot that is executed perfectly.
Then underneath all these brilliant concept, there's the SHAFT style animation--a very visually intriguing style resembles a piece of abstractionism art. I probably don't have the background qualification to actually comment on how well it's done. But personally, it intrigues me in a very pleasant way.
Final Scoreboard:
Drama: 97 (Highly Dramatic)
Comedy: N/A
Action: 97 (Interesting)
Art/Animation: 98 (SHAFT Style)
Sound/Music: 95 (Good)
Character: 98 (Very Interesting)
Plot: 100 (Great)
Ending: 97 (Very reasonable)
Re-watch value: 80 - It may still be intriguing
Overall: 98 - Best of the Season
Recommendation: With a score like that, you know this is something you must watch, period. While in someone's book, it may deserve to be the sole possessor of the Anime of the Season Award, in my opinion, Madoka Magica and Level E differs fundamentally in its nature. After much thoughts, rather than having one over take the other, I'm simply calling it a tie, which means Madoka Magica too gets the
Anime of the Season for January 2011 Season
award. But don't worry, if it does come down to pick a winner from these two for anime of the year, I will choose one. Because only one could be the anime of the year.
3 comments:
I'll be on the look for a batch torrent then.
After watching it i came to tis conclusion:
The story was a piece of art, they know how to get the message across.
The bad thing for me was the fact it was a mahou soujo, i don't really have nothing against that, but it wouldn't fit propperly, another type of anime would have been better.
My time wasn't certainly wasted (even though you had put some spoilers in your post "god-mode" ... Wel since it is vague i can't really complain)
but overall i can't say it was better then level E. And at some points i found the characters a bit overdramatic.
end of report
In my opinion it actually help the case being a magical girl anime because it actually contrasts the darkness it brings out. I think overall, I'm more impressed with the message and how they presented it. Like I said, it's different type of anime than Level E, so it's really difficult to put them on an absolute scale to compare them.
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