"Puella Magi Madoka Magica" (Anime)

[pkristen]

12 episode series

Summary: Madoka is in middle school, a timid cry-baby, who becomes fascinated with a cool, mysterious female transfer student. Next thing she knows, she becomes wrapped up in a war involving magical girls and witches with the lure of a single wish in exchange for phenomenal power.

Review: This was a very weird anime to watch after having just watched "Frida".

That being said, I bought the first volume of the DVD release on the hunch of yuri-ness, which was a double-gamble because it was released by a Japanese company trying to cut out U.S. licensor and therefore more expensive than regular DVDs. Well, that first set of episodes did NOT make me want to pay even the regular price to watch the rest of the series. Luckily, I discovered the series was available for commercial supported viewing on Crunchyroll.

If you are a person who has issues with depression and thoughts of suicide because the world is just such an awful place to exist in, this is not the series for you. It will make you want to pick up whatever weapon is handy.

I also had the added issue that I've seen too much yuri anime and I kept thinking of six or seven other series that this show kept reminding me of -- series which were more enjoyable and interesting to watch from my perspective.

As for an anime in and of itself, watch it if you want. It does have some story-telling thought process behind the arc from beginning to end. But easily forgettable in my mind.

And does it have yuri? Back in the days when I did a lot of analysis from the perspective of studying people's motives and behavior, it measures to that standard. But it's yuri with angst instead of romance. In my mind of the simple of formula "make the characters an opposite gender pairing and would you think they were romantic?" and the answer would be "yes".