Puella Magi Madoka Magica Episode 1

After skimming through some episode summaries on this season's anime shows, I gained an interest in animation studio Shaft's latest, Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

Don't let the colorful promotional art fool you. Although it is indeed an "magical girl" show (like Sailor Moon or one of my favorites, Cardcaptor Sakura), Shaft and production staff promise a magical girl show with a dark twist, full of despair and strange visuals. If you hate magical girl shows like Sailor Moon or Cardcaptor Sakura, this isn't going to do anything (especially early on) that is going to make you change your mind. However, if you're at all interested, get ready for one hell of a ride. I'm going to talk freely about the show, so be warned about any spoilers.

The first episode is definitely the slowest, but as with most first episodes, one must watch them to get an idea of what's going on with the show.

 

 

In the beginning of the first episode, our heroine Madoka (the pink-haired one) finds herself in a strange, apocalyptic world. She sees a girl fighting a losing battle against magical creatures. Next to her, a bunny-thing appears, commenting that although the girl she sees is strong, there is no way she can win. It then tells Madoka that she can reject destruction and change the future, if she would make a magical contract with it and become a Puella Magi (magical girl in Latin).

As it turned out, the whole thing was a dream. Madoka then goes downstairs for happy family breakfast time with her business executive mother, stay-at-home dad, and toddler little bro in a very swanky and modern house (the mom must make some serious cash). Madoka leaves and meets up with her two friends, and they walk to school together, where the walls of each classroom seem to be made of glass (kind of reminds me of the conference rooms in the SpaceX building, but I digress).

The family bathroom (or at least the sink). HUGE!!!!

 Left: Hitomi///Middle: Madoka///Right: Sayaka

The teacher then has an announcement. It's about her breaking up with her boyfriend. Almost as an afterthought, she announces to the class than they have a transfer student.

Madoka immediately recognized the new girl as the one she saw in her dreams. And apparently the new girl, whose name is Homura, recognizes Madoka, as well, although they've never met. When Homura manages to get Madoka alone, she warns Madoka that if she tries to change who she is, she will lose everything. Madoka, of course, is left very confused.

Later, Madoka and her friend Sayaka are hanging out at the mall. They're in a record store checking out tunes when Madoka hears a voice calling for help. She wanders off and finds the bunny-thing lying in pain, hurt by none other than Homura.

Sayaka runs over and sprays Horuma with a fire extinguisher, distracting her long enough so that Madoka, Sayaka, and the bunny-thing (Kyubey is its name) can get away. They haven't run for long when their environment starts to change.

They're surrounded by creepy meatballs with mustaches and strange butterflies. However, they're saved by another girl named Mami, who introduces herself as a magical girl in contract with Kyubey.

She transforms and summons a LOT of guns and obliterates the strange things. The crazy, trippy world fades away. The group is then approached again by Homura, and it is made clear that she is not going to be their friend. And so ends the episode.

In the beginning of the Winter 2011 anime season, I'll admit I wasn't terribly interested in this show. "Just another magical girl show," I thought. Then the third episode came out, and people were going crazy over it. I was mildly curious. So I marathoned the first three episodes of the show and was very impressed all the way through, especially at the part near the end of the third episode that got everyone riled up. I'll show it to you, but I'll warn you first:


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Ok, here it is.

Yeah, Madoka's reaction was pretty much the same as mine. Near the end of episode three, Mami bites off more than she can chew (or the other way around), and gets her head bitten off and subsequently gets unceremoniously eaten by the thing she was fighting, a creepy clown-faced caterpillar thing. Yes. She dies. One of the four main characters in the show gets brutally killed in the third episode. If you don't believe, here's a GIF:

And here's a YouTube video of the whole fight, with massive spoilers (but you already knew that):

Wow. Just wow. The episode as a whole was great. Although, if one was careful, one could see this happening from a mile off (they do happen to foreshadow this quite well in the show). However, if they had just shown the death, it would not have had the impact it had (that's kind of what I'm doing now). The episode does a very good job of completing Mami's character and making the audience feel for her right up to the sudden moment of her death. If Madoka Magica manages to keep this pace for the rest of the story, it may very well turn out to be one of the best anime this season as well as one of the best magical girl shows I've seen (still will never top CCS, but that's just my bias speaking).