assorted PMMM musings

[a_flyleaf]

or: In which I continue to fall down the psychoanalytical symbolic anime girl rabbit hole, except instead of losing it over heavily-implied incest I’m mostly flexing the general analysis muscles and gushing over how damn well this is playing out.

Binged Puella Magi Madoka Magica with my partner today, up to (and not including) episode 7! Since it was a live-watch all I have are fragments from chat, which means I’ve been forced to actually [gasp] compile my thoughts into a more readable format. (Granted, I’m not sure how much my RGU reactions make sense out of context, but sometimes I actually bother to copy lines of dialogue and such. Obviously that cannot occur if I’m typing as I watch without pause.)

I think my biggest takeaway, thus far and probably overall, is that this entire show is the meme of the woman screaming at the cat.

Things I knew going in, in no particular order:

• It is a deconstruction of the magical girl genre, or at least has a reputation for that; Shit Gets Dark. I am not familiar enough with the magical girl genre to comment on whether this darkness constitutes a “deconstruction” or, as I’ve seen floating around, is just a more cynical take on the tropes.
• Homura is stuck in a time loop and is probably smashing the A button to skip the cutscenes. She did this to herself, Because Gay.
• Sayaka fucking dies/turns into a “witch” and it’s very dramatic and tragic. It is related to crush rejection, somehow?
• The “witches” involve some extreme abstract art style fuckery and it looks very cool in gifsets.
• There are other people but I didn’t know a damn thing about them. I barely knew a thing about Madoka herself, Homura, Sayaka…
• The cat is evil. Deal with the devil, except the devil is making an owo face.

And… I think that’s it? Yeah, I think that’s about it. Also my friend Joy has written some psychoanalytical meta, which I read when it was posted years ago despite having zero context. Haven’t revisited it in ages, though, so the points above are pretty much it for my preliminary PMMM knowledge.

That said, loosely-connected thoughts and impressions!

• I was not expecting things to get abstract and fucked up as quickly as they did!! If anything I expected a fakeout similar to Talentless Nana, where the first episode is 90% generic moe anime and then the last 10% goes to hell; instead, it kicks off with a “dream” that I am almost certain is not a dream at all. I definitely didn’t expect to see any witch fights so soon, nor did I think Madoka wouldn’t have made a deal by the time the credit sequence drops its cheery facade.
• That said, the scenes that do take place in Grounded Real Society (and there are more than I expected, especially compared to RGU) are not only a visual treat in their own right, but the architecture gives even the school an element of unreality. The witch worlds are obviously rife with symbolism, with the medium-bending animation creating a hell of a surreal, almost eldritch feel. But real-world settings feature markedly modernist architecture (I think?? I am not an architecture history buff, but Madoka’s house is not a generic anime suburbs), and scenes with the hypersaturated red-orange-yellow glow are gorgeous as they are ominous.
  • “Ominous,” because an early scene cued me to associate a red glow with Kyubey’s influence, and from there it’s fucking everywhere.
• But yeah, the architecture is extremely cool. What kind school has giant glass panes between rooms? How about that one shot of Madoka’s mother in front of a not-window, the background of which dissolves around her before she moves and the shot cuts? It feels artificial, constructed. Hell, how about that “bathroom” full of mirrors. They don’t talk about these things in osmosed deconstruction-praises. I am enthralled.
• Speaking of things I didn’t have an inkling of: Madoka’s mom??? The introductory wakeup role reversal is kinda funny, then there’s work stress and dad clearly is not getting the memo; then Madoka has to help drag her drunk ass in and comments, briefly, “Again?”—and then! the scene where Madoka consults her for advice, and the mom’s response is basically “lol life sucks like that. btw would you like to know the worst thing you could possibly do about it?” It’s almost like a “you’re young, take risks, be bold!” inspirational speech, except what she’s actually doing is telling Madoka to make a mistake on purpose. Madoka mentions she’d like to drink with her mom someday, and mother agrees that’d be nice. And of all the fucked-up stuff that’s happened so far, this is the one part I had to stop and rewatch after the episode was done, because good lord.
• I think there’s a thematic relation there to how growing up is hard and nobody understands, but I’ll get back to that. For now I also want to bring up the fact that the scene is followed by one of redhead (I haven’t quite got her name) giving Sayaka the world’s worst romantic advice. And I dig that. (Er, the juxtaposition. Not the “Want to seal that boy’s heart? Beat him up, put him back in the hospital!” advice.) Putting the scenes back-to-back like this highlights their similarities, like a gifset-worthy visual parallel but for sequential art.
• And the series uses this scene-level juxtaposition numerous times!! There’s at least a couple other instances I spotted it, main one being Homura’s first mention of (paraphrasing) “kindness invites cruelty” followed by Sayaka and her crush in the hospital; I know that relationship is doomed somehow, and while I don’t know specifics, this seems to suggest Sayaka’s kindness is inviting cruelty (rejection) from her crush.
• I think the scene-cut technique is also used when the witch spawns near the hospital. Earlier I’d gotten the idea that witches don’t just feed on despair/suicidality, they’re manifestations of it, if only in a psychological way. A witch appears by the hospital where Sayaka’s crush is + we’ve previously seen he’s pretty down about his situation → is his paralysis making him suicidal?
• Speaking of Sayaka’s crush, the instrument motif (plus a thing I’ll mention later) reminds me of Miki and, while I don’t expect much development on crush-dude’s end, if he has a similar “you’re not Pure and Innocent enough for me” complex I’m gonna riot. It would be extra fucked considering how -gestures towards Everything with Sayaka and Kyubey- is framed. (“Impaled by a spear”? “You regret what was done to your body”?? 😬.) I’m not betting on it but like, it’s an Idea.
• Anyway, fuck that cat. I knew he was bad news but holy shit, he’s more or less framed like a groomer/predator. This is probably common knowledge in the PMMM fandom but still. I did not keep track of every time I said some variation of “kyubey Shut” but it happened a Lot. I think it’s commentary on dangerous people (or, as partner pointed out, concepts—like gender roles!) being presented as ~cute and innocent~? To an extent you could apply that to any “deal with the devil” setup in which the devil isn’t immediately painted evil, but still.
• On Sayaka herself… woof, negativity repression issues for $1000? I noticed early, with her wielding a baseball bat while Madoka sketched dresses, there’s some aspect of gender role duality with her, and I think it extends to her “thinking too much about stressors is silly! so I’m not going to! I know exactly what I’m doing (except when I don’t and briefly break down about how much I feel like no one special, but never mind all that)!” mentality. And based on her response to Hitomi after the suicide-zombie incident, Sayaka’s probably internalized some really fucked-up ideas about strength. Nor is it 100% internalized; she frantically talks over her crush when he tries to (rightfully, imo!) apologize for lashing out at her. Meanwhile, if she has family, they haven’t been shown (or even alluded to?) yet; scenes in her house feel empty. And, where I left off, she’s beating the absolute shit out of a “witch” that looks suspiciously humanoid (which I’m guessing alludes both to the “witches are magical girls” idea and represents Sayaka pummeling some part of herself to smithereens), So That’s Fun.
• Honestly, being over halfway through the show and Madoka still hasn’t had her magical girl transformation, and watching Sayaka’s repression eat her alive, all the while learning more and more fucked-up things about the whole magical girl mechanic and why it sucks—this is basically a Greek tragedy??? It’s a tragedy. This is going to go to hell, you know it will (magical!Madoka is like, right there in the intro), and the intrigue is not when Madoka makes her deal but why. 👌👌👌
• Madoka herself deserves more credit. She thinks she’s weak, but she stopped the “zombies” from killing themselves with the poison-gas-fluid-thing and has reached out twice now (first to Homura, later to her mom) when unsure. Whereas Sayaka has crammed everything down with prejudice, Madoka wears her emotions on her sleeve. I didn’t really osmose anything about her character development, as a person, and that’s a shame because she’s great and deserves some good magical girl therapy. (I mean, who doesn’t?) She’s like, token Team Heart except there’s no team and the best she can do is want people to stop trying to kill each other. To the point where she would’ve succumbed to the contract at least twice now, both via Sayaka vs redhead, had Homura Ex Machina not jumped in. Help her.
  • (“Which ‘her’?” Yes.)

And other, less-connected things I want to make note of:

• One of the really fun things about being spoiled well in advance is seeing just how the foreshadowing plays out. Like, besides her obvious (with context) familiarity with how everything goes, Homura immediately going after Sayaka’s soul gem before the other three realize its importance? Nice.
• In general I love that Homura is one of the most important characters here, but she basically just drops in to be ominous, bail Madoka out of making a contract, and then fucks off again. Iconic.
• Whipping out the Freud goggles for this one, but consider: Mami, “mommy,” I think she’s something of a mother archetype. There’s that shot of her reflection on the table with her head upside-down between her legs; it’s obviously foreshadowing her decapitation-death, but it also vaguely reminded me of a birth (rebirth, in this case?). Less abstractly, her character has parallels to Madoka’s mother: she’s Capable, a guide and a friend who Madoka looks up to, but she’s actually extremely lonely and seems guilty about guiding Madoka down the same path—if only for a second, before Madoka offers friendship and then Never Mind All That.
  • Also, the crux of Madoka (and Sayaka)’s motivation? They lost her, and cannot cope; something something growing up is scary, and in the absence of a good parental figure you’re more susceptible to manipulation.
  • On the other hand, I’m not sure what to thematically make of her contract having been made in the context of dying? It sure is a Contrast with Sayaka’s insecurities being preyed on; Mami’s was hardly, uh, Informed and Thoughtful Consent, but it was literally magic or death. (I should consider redhead’s deal here too, but honestly I don’t know what to make of her yet in general, except for this:)
• Redhead and Sayaka have some neat parallels, too, in a less Freudian sense. (Although, uh, no comment on the furious apple-eating. Genuinely not sure what to make of that, but it’s something.) They’ve both been dealt an extremely shitty hand that they thought they could use for greatness, that they signed up for specifically to take advantage of; now, despite disillusionment, they’re trying to Own it. But they’re owning it in such different ways, redhead through getting competitive and optimizing her profits, Sayaka through convincing herself this is a Heroic and Noble and Special thing to do. Also seems vaguely relevant they’re both kinda tomboyish (in the extremely base way of being outspoken and brash, especially in contrast to Madoka; #plsnocallout).
• The Debussy song that gets referenced at one point, “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair,” is a piano solo. The PMMM version is basically the same, replacing the right hand with the violin and changing the melody a liiiiittle bit towards the end. I’m not sure if this relates to local blondie, but from the Wikipedia page: “The image of a girl with flaxen-coloured hair has been utilized in fine art as a symbol of innocence and naivety.” (Hence also the Miki thought I mentioned earlier.)
• I’ve been told Hitomi is basically just a side character, which is a bit of a shame; her showing up in the suicide-zombie bit made me think she might have some deeper issues too, and there’s a compositional parallel between her in the café(?) with Sayaka :: Homura, earlier, with Madoka. Curious about (and also dreading) where this same-crush subplot goes, but I’m not getting my hopes up too high about her relevance past that. (That’s what she gets for being a jealous homophobe early in, smh 😔)
• Last but not at all least, that Shaft head tilt I’ve seen people memeing about? It’s probably thematically-relevant. There are a bunch of weird quickfire closeups scattered throughout the show. Hell if I know what they Mean but they’re an interesting flourish.

We’ll be finishing tomorrow and I have no additional commentary besides 👀🍿🍿🍿