Thank you, Triple-R! I would certainly be interested in hearing/reading about other people's experiences with Madoka Magica, especially the characters. Not that I dislike the plot -- it was oh so amazing to see practically every little detail explained or tied up to everything else in the show eventually, from Kyōko's food consumption to the little cat (Amy, I think?) that appears in the opening scene but almost nowhere else... From the meaning of the opening and ending songs to the little "obvious" clues like calling their jewels "soul gems"... -- the sheer amount of thought involved in each of these details makes me feel that the plot and execution of PMMM is just as well crafted and polished as the best soul gem.
Yet it's the characters that always get me. Not because there weren't other characters that I could feel very emotional about (the entire cast of New Genesis Evangelion is, I think, as meaningful to me as Madoka's characters), but because everything was done so well in their development and execution that I could only stand in awe at the result. Many peopel have said that the show could have benefitted from having more episodes, and I tentatively agree with that (I would have loved to see Kyōko's backstory being played out in detail in two or three episodes, for instance; also, other possible relationships, like the apparent previous meeting and colaboration between Mami and Kyōko before the beginning of the series); but at the same time they did it so well with only 12 episodes, I wonder if having 26 wouldn't be like inviting trouble, like asking for entropy (heh heh) to cause at least a few of these episodes to be failures. (All the bad rep that NGE gets comes from execution mistakes, I think, since the basic idea and the actual characters are so mind-blowingly good. I am so happy to see Madoka Magica exempt from this possible failure...)
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Why more people don't "see" the main cast more like you and I do is indeed a bit of a mystery to me. Like yourself, I find the main cast to have considerable depth of character. So much so that, yes, they feel like real people to me. While I think there's some truth to the characters being archetypal, that just makes the sense of realness coming from them that much more remarkable. Each of the main cast characters manages to exemplify a certain popular anime character/personality type as well as stand for certain ideas - But even while doing this, they still feel like real people to me.
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I think it's difficult to define what exactly makes a character "come alive" to you, what is the moment, feature, or little event in the series that makes you see them as more than simply drawings with voice actors behind them. I can sort of relate to what these people say about the Madoka characters, because in a certain sense they seem to be "too well defined" (Madoka is 'obviously' Hope Incarnate + the Heart that Understands Everybody [to the point that it is a Big Deal when she says to Kyubey 'then you are indeed our enemy' -- Madoka is not the kind of character who says such things easily], Sayaka is 'obviously' Courage Incarnate ['no matter how many times I beat you down, you always stood back up...'], their relationships are oh so pure, oh so strong [Madoka is ready to sell her soul for Sayaka, Homura goes through hell for Madoka, Kyōko eventually kills herself for Sayaka) -- if you compare the Madoka characters and their 'perfect' feelings to the much more messed up and thus more realistic characters in NGE, you can see where the critics are coming from, I think.
But still... I have seen 'archetypal' characters that I couldn't connect with very much precisely because their design and execution were 'begging' me to connect with them. Angel Beats! comes to mind: lots of Bad Stuff happen to the main characters, they have to go through hardships and evolve, and their dedication to themselves and each other is also commendable, and yet... I end up empathizing with non-main characters like Yui or Iwasawa over main characters like Yurippe or Otonashi.
Not so with Madoka Magica's main characters. Each of them seems to me to be much more carefully crafted than the main characters of Angel Beats!. Their revelations do not seem to come out of left field, unexpected and slightly contrived; rather, they follow naturally from their personality and character. I think it ultimately boils down to how these characters are executed: how they are drawn, how they move, how they reveal things without spelling them out loud, without shouting them for the viewer to understand. Most people picked up on Kyōko's eating disorder and connected it immediately to the hardships she had to endure in a family that often did not have food, without the show having to shout "Trauma!" as Angel Beats! often did when telling the life stories of the main characters.
Yes, Madoka Magica in constructed in such a way that every time you rewatch it you learn something else about a character's personality and views -- you pay attention to a little gesture that you hadn't noticed, and it tells you something more about that character. All those details seem to scream "I am interesting! I could be the MC of my own spin-off animē if I wanted! I have a lot that I'm not showing here just because we don't have time!" So if you don't pay attention to these details or are not drawn to them (which is a way of saying that such reactions may depend more on the viewer and his/her personality than on the actual animē), then I can see how you can end up thinking of the characters as 'archetypes' without much reality. After all, we only see them for so many minutes; what they actually say and do in the main plot can be summarized in a few sentences. Any implied depth remains just that: implied. (Just consider the possible previous history between Mami and Kyōko, implied in Mami's warning about not making wishes for others without thinking about all consequences, and also in Kyōko's mention of Mami by her full name, Mami Tomoe) If you're the kind of viewer to takes that and dreamily speculates on what lies behind it, then the characters become much more real, they really come alive. But if you don't like this kind of speculation, if you don't want to read every little thing as evidence of depth, then the characters basically become their arcs -- Kyōko is "the redeemed bitch" who ends up sacrificing herself, Sayaka is "blind courage and good intentions" who ends up damning herself, Madoka is "hope incarnate" who saves the world with the kindness of her heart, we've seen this all before, etc.
I'm the 'dreamy speculative' kind, so Madoka's execution resonated perfectly with my own artistic sensitivies and my own personal worldview. Other kinds of people would resonate less, or even not at all, with this kind of show.