Nanni (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tiamatschild) wrote2013-01-01 04:45 pm
tiamatschild) wrote2013-01-01 04:45 pm
Entry tags:
Finished watching Puella Magi Madoka Magica with my brother
I. I don't actually know what I think. Except of course that Cleopatra lived into middle age. She was a grown woman when she died, so... ... ....
Yeah, I dunno if the production team realized that and did it on purpose or not.
She also very definitely left a body.
But I don't know what I think~! I loved Homura and Sayaka and Mami and Kyoko and Madoka, but I felt like Kyuubi was... superfluous to the story, even though he was key to the plot as written. The thing is that a lot of the thematic elements and tropes are things I really love. Like, keyboard mash on my soul type love. I love stories where the bargain you get isn't the one you thought you were making. I love stories where using magic carries a really heavy price and stories where magic is the key to doing something while someone who doesn't use it is straight in the middle, following along and muddling through trying to help without actually knowing the rules or the best way to do things. I love stories about loneliness and finding a partner, about wishes that backfire, about wishes that work, about worlds just alongside the normal world, about things that live in the shadows that can swallow you, about girls who are each others most important people. I love stories about entropy, and staving off entropy, about noble fights that are doomed to fail, about walking into death side by side with someone you care for, even if you never managed to know each other properly. I love stories where the person you walk into death with is the person you walk out of it again beside. I love stories where it takes a girl a long time to find her agency and strength, but the climax and catharsis is her settling into herself, and maybe she lives and maybe she kills herself with it and maybe someone else kills her for it or despite it but however it is she makes a choice and opens herself to it and is steady and determined all the way through it and all the way through the aftermath, and she understands it better than anyone around her can.
And multiple time lines. I love multiple time lines.
And uh. Narratives about young women destroying themselves/throwing themselves away/sacrificing themselves for other people are um. A bit of a giant red button I cannot stop pressing. I am not sure why that is so deep seated in my psyche, but it is.
But! Despite that, somehow, PMMM never fully came together for me. It doesn't quite work. I think this is because all the things that I love for their own sake are, in PMMM deployed as if they undercut another thing I love, and that I could readily love PMMM for, if I thought it took it seriously - the magical girl genre and its cheerful refusal of life destroying consequences for its young girl protagonists when they take power and exercise it and have more of it than anyone else in the story.
Maybe that's why Kyuubi doesn't fit. Because magic doesn't need an agent to be perilous, and true magical girls' cute mascots/sidekicks/guides are not more powerful than they are. In general magical girl sidekicks don't say "I can give you power." They say, "You have power, and you can't run away from it."
Yeah, I dunno if the production team realized that and did it on purpose or not.
She also very definitely left a body.
But I don't know what I think~! I loved Homura and Sayaka and Mami and Kyoko and Madoka, but I felt like Kyuubi was... superfluous to the story, even though he was key to the plot as written. The thing is that a lot of the thematic elements and tropes are things I really love. Like, keyboard mash on my soul type love. I love stories where the bargain you get isn't the one you thought you were making. I love stories where using magic carries a really heavy price and stories where magic is the key to doing something while someone who doesn't use it is straight in the middle, following along and muddling through trying to help without actually knowing the rules or the best way to do things. I love stories about loneliness and finding a partner, about wishes that backfire, about wishes that work, about worlds just alongside the normal world, about things that live in the shadows that can swallow you, about girls who are each others most important people. I love stories about entropy, and staving off entropy, about noble fights that are doomed to fail, about walking into death side by side with someone you care for, even if you never managed to know each other properly. I love stories where the person you walk into death with is the person you walk out of it again beside. I love stories where it takes a girl a long time to find her agency and strength, but the climax and catharsis is her settling into herself, and maybe she lives and maybe she kills herself with it and maybe someone else kills her for it or despite it but however it is she makes a choice and opens herself to it and is steady and determined all the way through it and all the way through the aftermath, and she understands it better than anyone around her can.
And multiple time lines. I love multiple time lines.
And uh. Narratives about young women destroying themselves/throwing themselves away/sacrificing themselves for other people are um. A bit of a giant red button I cannot stop pressing. I am not sure why that is so deep seated in my psyche, but it is.
But! Despite that, somehow, PMMM never fully came together for me. It doesn't quite work. I think this is because all the things that I love for their own sake are, in PMMM deployed as if they undercut another thing I love, and that I could readily love PMMM for, if I thought it took it seriously - the magical girl genre and its cheerful refusal of life destroying consequences for its young girl protagonists when they take power and exercise it and have more of it than anyone else in the story.
Maybe that's why Kyuubi doesn't fit. Because magic doesn't need an agent to be perilous, and true magical girls' cute mascots/sidekicks/guides are not more powerful than they are. In general magical girl sidekicks don't say "I can give you power." They say, "You have power, and you can't run away from it."