[Kaioshin Sama]

I had nothing else going on tonight so I decided to throw on some episodes of this.

So this series is going to be all serious business then. We find out this episode that being a magical girl is actually dangerous in this show cause weird snowman face monsters can eat you. Apparently Madoka has a lot of potential as a Magical Girl, but have they ever stated why that's the case or did I miss a bit of dialogue or did I miss something? Perhaps it's because some of the imagery in this show can be really distracting at times, which is a bit of a problem I'm running into in this show.

The weird world that the witches seem to live in is just so different from the rest of the artstyle in the show that I have a hard time accepting it as part of the universe of this show and it kind of detaches me from what's going on with all the characters. That's a bit of a problem cause there's a lot of dramatic dialogue (not the most eloquent stuff either given the severity of the speeches being made) in this episode and it's kind of hard to absorb it when the source of the trouble is giant photorealistic cookies in the background and weird snowman face monsters. It's kind of like a conflict of goals almost between the art direction and the plotting and character development.

Here's an analogy to try to clear up what I'm getting at here. It's like when you have CGI in a movie with live actors (say Star Wars Episode 1) and you see them trying to make the real interact with the artificial, but a part of your brain knows when something is not real and it takes you out of what's going on cause it registers as not real or hard to accept. That's the feeling that everything that goes on in the Witches world gives me because of the severe contrast in art style.

I still like Madoka as a character (some would probably think of her as a Mary Sue, but I don't know, her personality is pretty endearing) in this which is why I'm going to continue to follow it, but I'm not sure I'm liking the this abrupt turn for the overly violent yet. Not so much the turn itself, but how it was handled and how some of the elements clash with each other in the leadup to the climax with Mami's apparent death. I know that's weird to say for someone who enjoyed Higurashi and how that went from being sugary to a violent horror series (not that this was ever really overly sugary, but it did get really violent this episode when before it had just been cartoonish of the kind that is more the norm for magical girl fare), but that was more of a gradual change in tone whereas this feels like the tone of the show and overall goal got changed up right in the middle of production or something and they didn't have enough time to up the style of the dialogue to suit the change in tone so they just worked in some catty barbs between Mami and Akemi. Am I expecting too much in the dialogue here for a more dramatic take on the magical girl tone? I can't really answer that myself which is why I'm moving onto the next episode right away.

As for now, I like the characters and their storylines so far (even if Mami and Sayaka's wish storylines are a little tropeish in featuring the oft seen tragic storylines the car crash and the sick kid, not that I can consider it a detriment, but I am keenly aware of it), but there's just a lot of conflictings elements in this show for me to really get into any of it right now and I hope that clears up soon cause I've got about another 9 episodes of Madoka Magica to get through.