Cold open! I kinda have to wonder whether that lends itself more readily to some series than others --
Evangelion begins each episode with the OP,
Princess Tutu has fairy-tale segments before its, some shows do a "previously on..." segment, and some shows aren't consistent at all. But this episode has a cold open. First shot and already I'm seeing some
SZS comparisons with the silent-film visual filter and cranking projector sounds. Don't recall stop-motion photographed curtains rising on the screen in that series, though.
After the film-studio-logo style still frame, the film cuts to a...
something. As far as I can tell, it's an upside-down shot of a mountain with a magic circle rotating behind it. That's all we get before the filmstrip ends. OK, I'll call this the show's first mystery. Not bad for the first ten seconds.
Cut to what might be a tunnel or a spiral staircase or neither; there's not enough perspective to say for sure and the black-and-white-checkers-and-solid-white-spiraling pattern is too abstract. (I'm going with "staircase.") Then comes a girl running down a checkered corridor, with lots of magic circles in the background at one point. And other stuff at other points -- there's a different background in like
every shot. A few shows show her to have pink hair, which leads me to conclude that this is
Madoka Kaname, wearing what looks like a school uniform. Of course.
A long shot shows Madoka, or a CGI rendition of her, running into an enormous hall that continues the checker motif, where she finds a green "EXIT" sign (the first color we've seen in this place other than Madoka herself) at the top of one of several staircases. The shots of her walking up are amusing -- the first shows the CGI Madoka stepping on both black and white areas; the second, closer-in one shows that the black ones are just the vertical faces of the white-topped stairs.
Brief exterior shot of what looks like a skyscraper (with floating structures reflected) before Madoka opens a door, and
yikes. Whatever she just stepped out of is embedded in the top of a dead tree under a dark sky hundreds of feet tall, with skyscrapers
floating in the air around it and a bunch more embedded in the ground around it at angles they probably weren't built for. The whole place is a wasteland; most of the buildings are falling apart. There are gears turning somewhere -- very Unlimited Blade Works -- and... an island? ...floating in front of that circle from the first 10 seconds. The place isn't 100% broken -- there are lights blinking on and off -- but it's not a place where you'd want to live.
Oh, and there's a battle. A girl with long black hair flies toward the floating island, only slightly impeded by having a skyscraper
thrown at her. Huge energy blasts are being shot at her from the island, which she manages to deflect with a shield thing on her arm.
And now, we get our first dialogue:
Madoka: "How awful!"
The fight? The ruined city? Both?
???, in response: "It can't be helped. It was too much for her to handle alone. But she knew that this might happen."
And what was "it," exactly? And what is "this"?
A wide shot shows us that there's nobody near Madoka... except a small critter with a shape I instantly recognize from uncountable pictures. Uh-oh.
Our
sentō bishōjo takes a critical hit and is sent flying into one of the giant tree's branches! She struggles to move and seems to be looking at Madoka, who's quite some distance away -- though the structure she exited a minute ago is nowhere to be seen; she's standing on an incomplete metal structure of some sort.
A white light engulfs the screen during a shot zooming out from the girl. Meaning... something? Nothing? The camera then focuses on the critter, providing our first proper shot of it: white fur, red eyes, a squirrel's tail, cat ears with ringed wing-things, and a :3 facial expression. Yep, looks like this is the infamous
Kyubey.
Kyubey: "If you give up, it'll be the end of everything. But you have the capacity to change fate."
And what
is "fate," exactly? That's one thing that's often left unexplained. Does it mean something that was preordained? Does it simply mean "the outcome(s)"?
Kyubey: "This unavoidable destruction, this sorrow--you can change it all. That's why you have this power."
A) What power? B) How can it be "unavoidable" if she can change it?
The girl with the black hair falls from the tree, beaten.
Madoka: "Can someone like me really do something to stop this? Can I really prevent everything from turning out this way?"
Kyubey: "Of course you can! Form a contract with me and become a magical girl!"
Madoka seems to come to a decision... and wakes up in her bed, at home.
Well.
That was a hell of a first three minutes. Sakura Kinomoto, eat your heart out. This was pretty clearly a glimpse of the future, but Madoka's last lines imply that she was at least partly aware of this even in the dream. And moreover, that unlike Sakura's "just FYI, here's a preview" prophetic dreams, this one had a purpose: pushing her to make the contract by saying "
This is what'll happen if you don't." There's a good chance that this exact scene won't actually happen.
And now that this sequence has concluded...
Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Opening
We begin with Madoka, in the frilly pink magical girl outfit all the promo art shows her in. She's sobbing and trying to hold her tears in. Always a good sign, that.
Next, we have uniform!Madoka sitting at a desk with Kyubey off to the side, with various comical freeze-frames of magic!Madoka in the background -- being chased by a dog, showing some people a pink afro (?), flying on a broomstick into a utility pole, finding the magical girl outfit and afro replaced with what looks like a
dominatrix outfit and pigtails, summoning a monster, finding herself surrounded by spiders, being held in the air by crows holding her skirt, inflated like a blueberry in front of the same audience as the afro and dominatrix outfit (one girl with short blue hair and another with curly blonde hair), flying away into the air like she's been punctured... and all the while, the Madoka and Kyubey in the foreground are looking more and more discouraged.
And now, Madoka in bed trying to sleep, with either rain or LCL streaming down the windows. Kyubey's there, too.
A naked, floating Madoka is embraced from behind by another pink-haired girl, also naked, with much longer hair -- possibly an older Madoka. She makes Madoka's MG outfit appear on Madoka, who's not crying now -- she's smiling.
Bunch of quick shots of Madoka with what look like her family and friends, and some pictures of the latter on their own, including the curly-blonde-hair girl snuggling with Kyubey. Back to magic!Madoka, now looking determined.
She runs desperately through a rainy city until she finds herself sitting on a hedge, with no rain (but yes wind), holding a black cat. She smiles and cries at the same time.
A few more determined shots; an episode title card (you don't see those worked into the OP every day); a shot of magic!Madoka sitting on a tower with Kyubey, the "audience" girls, and the black cat... and the OP ends.
The lyrics:
I will never forget the promise we made.
I'll close my eyes and make sure of that.
I'll cast off this darkness that has descended upon me and move forward.
If
Negima! has taught me anything, it's the necessity of just that -- moving forward. Think about what you're doing, but don't paralyze yourself.
When will I be able to see the future
that I had lost?
I'll continue walking upon this Earth,
cutting away these overflowing shadows of unease as many times as necessary.
Hmm... regret, but resolve?
The clock that's endlessly ticked away now tells of the beginning.
Let's open the once-closed door,
carring these unchanging feelings.
Yeah, sounds like resolve, but to do what?
My heart awoke and started racing to paint the future.
Even if I get stuck in a maze,
you'll be waiting for me against the backdrop of the beautiful blue sky, so I won't be afraid.
No matter what happens, I won't give in.
"Me" is presumably Madoka, assuming this all has any thematic relevance, so who is "you"? "
Tatoe futari hanarebanare ni natte mo..."
And that title card?
Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Episode 1
"It was like I met her in a dream....."
This file was made from a TV recording, so it's got the usual "brought to you by..." still frame. I only mention this because the fansubbers added something to it: "Because no one can translate anymore... Especially
you, gg." Very professional. Yeah, I went with yesy because they reportedly had the best translations, but that's not an excuse to be obnoxious.
Morning! Here's what we learn from this scene:
- Madoka has a mom, a dad, and a brother, Tatsuya, maybe kindergarten-aged. That's not an age you see often for a protagonist's sole sibling; usually they're in elementary school at least.
- Dad tends to tomato plants. Mom, the white-collar breadwinner, isn't a morning person.
- The house is huge (How much does Mom make?) and bizarrely designed. Especially the absurdly large bathroom that seems to have glass walls and lots of mirrors. And the patchwork-style clock we see at 7:45 or so, though that probably exists IRL.
- Madoka has a friend named Hitomi who gets love letters on a fairly frequent basis. (While brushing her teeth with Madoka -- is that a thing? -- Mom says, "Guys who don't have enough guts to tell a girl they like her in person are worthless." Interesting sentiment. Not often voiced. Especially curious given the show's target market.)
- Madoka's teacher appears to be unlucky in love -- her current relationship is about three months old, which Madoka claims is a record.
- Mom favors the "flashier" ribbon for Madoka, saying it's important for a girl to draw attention. Maybe, though I dunno about it just applying to girls. She also says confidence is attractive -- I'd give that a definite yes, though given the number of unconfident characters with large fandoms, others may disagree. Then again, stories work differently.
- Madoka was, in fact, wearing her school uniform in the dream. With the "flashy" ribbon. And if you type the word "flashy" often enough, it stops looking like a real word.
Off to school! On the way, Madoka defies the stereotype by finishing her toast before meeting anyone. Heh. She joins two of her friends (who like her ribbons) on a very pretty riverside path. Great environments so far, but there are a couple of shots in this scene where the girls are off-model -- I hope that was one of the things changed for the BD release. One of the girls has wavy hair (this appears to be Hitomi, seen for a split second in the OP), the other has short blue hair -- in fact, she appears to be the blue-haired audience girl from the OP. The conversation reveals that Madoka doesn't get love letters at all. This eventually leads to blue-haired girl tickling her and saying:
"You're cute, but I won't let you become popular with the guys. You're going to be my wife!
"
(Not sure if important: Madoka's friends' stockings are dark blue knee highs, but hers are white and go to her thigh -- the popular-among-
otaku zettai ryouiki look.)
The school's design is weird, too -- each classroom has glass walls (again?) and is bordered on all four sides by hallways, making a grid pattern. Chairs and desks have a weird, kinda-sorta futuristic design. (No bookbags are in sight, for some reason, despite the last scene showing them.) The whole thing, like Madoka's house, is way bigger than it has any right to be -- maybe this Japan's population (and therefore population density) is a fraction of what it is in the real world. Or maybe someone wished it had more habitable land once, hell, I dunno.
Madoka's teacher has broken up with the boyfriend Madoka mentioned, which she complains about to the class. Yukari, anyone? After she's done, she abruptly shifts moods and cheerfully introduces a new student.
And it's the girl from Madoka's prophetic dream:
Homura Akemi, described (according to the subtitles) as both "cute" and "cool." Aren't
kawaii and
kakkoii usually mutually exclusive to the extent that either can be judged from a first look? Anyhoo, she has a gloomy, tired look on her face, and after writing her name on the whiteboard, she looks straight at Madoka. Oh yeah, she knows her. That or she can detect magical potential.
(The board, by the way, is actually a huge touchscreen. Man, the most impressive I've ever seen was a system that recorded whatever was written/drawn on the otherwise-normal whiteboard and saved it to a computer. Is this show set in the near future? Don't answer that.)
During a break in which we see some other parts of the school for a few seconds (and
man there had to have been a lot of money spent building this place), several girls crowd around Homura and fire questions excitedly, Hitomi noting from the sidelines her "mysterious aura." She claims to have gone to "a Christian school in Tokyo" -- does she mean a Catholic school? I don't know of any other kinds -- that she never joined any clubs (probably true), and she doesn't give any answer to the question of her shampoo. Which is a good question -- she's one of those way-more-common-in-anime-than-real-life characters with hair down to her rear. To be honest, though, the way it splits in two partway down her back reminds me more of Chii from
Chobits than anything.
Homura dodges further questions by claiming illness. One of the girls around her offers to take her to the nurse's office, but...
Homura: "No, don't worry about me. I'll ask the person in charge." /walks to Madoka
Madoka: ?!
Homura, ominously shadowed: "Kaname Madoka-san, you're the health officer for this class, right?"
Madoka: "I, uh..."
Homura: "Could you take me to the nurse's office?"
And now I'm leaning toward her actually knowing Madoka personally. She's acting rather like the protagonist of a "Peggy Sue" fan fiction -- she knows the way to the nurse already, for instance, well enough to
lead Madoka on the way there. She
knows this school. And in response to Madoka calling her "Akemi-san," she... bites her lip? ...before giving her permission to use her first name. And more angry, hidden-eyes shots when Madoka nervously babbles about the name "Homura" being unusual, but not in the sense that it's weird or anything, she didn't mean that, she meant it's, uh...
kakkoii! Yeah, that's the ticket.
Homura stops and dramatically turns to face Madoka in a walkway connecting two parts of the building.
Homura, with dramatic full animation: "Kaname Madoka, do you value your current way of life? Your family, your friends--do you think dearly of them?"
Madoka: "I, uh... do. My family, my friends--I love them. They really mean a lot to me."
Homura: "Is that true?"
Madoka: "It is. Why wouldn't it be?"
Homura: "I see. If that's true, then you mustn't ever think of trying to become someone else. If you do, you'll lose everything."
Madoka: ...
Homura: "You just need to stay Kaname Madoka, just like you have so far. /walks away."
I'm guessing she knows what she's talking about. Is this going to become a conflict of fighting for big abstract concept vs. fighting for those close to you?
Homura turns out to be fantastic at both math -- I don't recall doing modular arithmetic in middle school -- and athletics, setting a prefecture record in the high jump, not that she's happy about it. (I think I spot a multiplication error in one problem, and she skips some steps on another. Maybe she's done these same problems before?) I get the sense that some girls are starting to wish they were her... maybe that's what she was warning about?
During PE, a familiar-looking critter watches from the shadows. Uh-oh.
In a cafe after school (that I thought at first
might be the cafeteria at lunch -- hey, who can tell with that school?), Madoka tells her friends about her encounter. Blue's reaction:
"I thought she was one of those smart and beautiful girls who are well-read and athletic, but instead she's one hell of a nut. Just how big of an impression do you have to make on people?! Is that moe? Is that what moe is?!" /collapses
Uh, what? Is she talking about the impression Madoka may have made on Homura? (And just how common are "those" girls?)
Madoka mentions her dream, making her friends laugh. (Come to think of it, how do characters remember facial features so well after these dreams?) Blue declares it to be karma, reuniting people who were friends in a past life. (I'm not ruling it out!) Oh, and aside from Homura, the main thing Madoka remembers about the dream is that it was "really strange." No kidding?
Hitomi has to leave for tea ceremony practice, and she also takes lessons in piano and "Japanese dance." How about sleeping, does she do that too? Guess her parents are big on the "proper young lady" thing. She also mentions entrance exams, which tells us that they're somewhere in the middle of their third year. (Blue refers to herself by contrast as something yesy translates as "petit-bourgeois" -- kind of an odd term for a middle-schooler to be using.) The remaining two of the trio head off to a CD store. Wow, those still exist? (That's a joke, son.)
Cut to Kyubey, running for his life in a dark place with bicycles, energy blasts being thrown at him, breaking concrete when they miss. The pursuer seems to be Homura, in the outfit we saw her in during the dream. And -- big surprise -- she's not happy.
Madoka and her friend are listening to music in the CD store, when she hears an echoing voice from nowhere: "Save me, Madoka!" Bewildered, she walks out of the store, listening for the voice, which keeps repeating "Save me." Her exit does not escape the notice of her friend (who didn't seem to hear the voice).
Madoka follows it... somewhere under reconstruction. With a staircase leading up to a door -- and checkered walls and floor, much like the building in her dream. Ooh. The door seems to take her to a storage area, lit only by the little sunlight that comes through the windows. She hears "Save me" one more time, coming from
above her...
...And enter a badly wounded Kyubey, falling through the gap left by a ceiling tile dropping out from under him. Madoka cradles him in her arms, frightened, and here's where I realized that this was riffing on the first episode of
Nanoha. (Hmm, how do you emphasize a name that'd be italicized anyway?) Unfortunately, Kyubey isn't Yuuno, and this isn't likely to end with Homura's wicked stepmother offing herself with no other named-character deaths and Homura herself becoming Madoka's "best friend" with whom she shares a bed and helps raise kids. Not everything can be solved by befriending the right people in the face.
Enter Homura, recognized immediately by Madoka. No disguise spells here -- likely not even alter egos. This is the first time Madoka's seen Homura in this outfit, but it's not clear whether she recognizes it from her dream. This is the best look of it we've gotten so far; it includes what looks like a black-white-and-gray uniform from some other school, combined with high-heeled boots that go up to her skirt. Not especially fancy as magical girl outfits go.
Homura: "Move away from him."
Madoka: "B-But he's hurt."
Kyubey: /breathes heavily
Madoka: "N-No, don't hurt him!"
Homura: "This has nothing to do with you."
Madoka: "But he called for me! I heard him telling me to save him!"
Homura: "I see."
The camera alternates between Madoka looking at Homura, Homura looking at Madoka, and for some reason, shots of some chains hanging nearby. Symbolic? Is Homura figuratively chained?
Thankfully, we don't have to find out whether Homura will be willing to attack Madoka, because the standoff is broken by Homura being sprayed from offscreen by a fire extinguisher -- wielded, as it turns out, by Madoka's blue-haired friend, who followed her there! Very resourceful. Not only that, but Madoka names her for us as
Sayaka! When she depletes the extinguisher (or maybe just stops spraying?), she
throws it at Homura and runs off with Madoka. Uh, was she trying to connect with that? As far as she knows, Homura isn't any more durable than a normal human.
The gas from the extinguisher doesn't slow Homura down for long, as she summons a gust of wind to sweep it away. But just when she's about to go after them... the background starts doing
things. Things involving concentric circles made of butterflies.
And then come shots of so many other random things and combinations of things that there's no
way I'd be able to keep track of them all. Homura finds herself in... well, all that comes to mind is a quote from Texts From Last Night: "Phease come get me i thought i was in a place i don't even understand." There's barbed wire, playing cards, mustaches, some bizarre form of writing, and more butterflies, if that helps.
Homura: "Out of all the times..."
Whatever it is, it soon catches up to Madoka and Sayaka, despite them running for their lives. They can't make heads or tails out of how everything keeps changing, and even their hair seems to be going
Gankutsuou. There's even a point or two where things are walking together in a line, making me think of the parade from
Paprika. Our Heroes are shortly surrounded by chanting Things, each of which has a butterfly for legs -- not butterflies,
a butterfly -- and a cotton ball with a black mustache for a head.
Quite naturally, Sayaka frantically tries to convince herself it's a bad dream. Sorry, not this time.
Then there's a shot of chains
snapping, and chains fall all around them, and then things change again -- but this time to something even
more different from the various environments we've just seen than
they are from each other. And while this place is no less bizarre -- I've given up on even trying to describe -- it's not constantly changing.
???: "That was pretty close, but it's all okay now."
Enter the blonde girl from the OP, wearing a uniform from their school and carrying a lantern and a chain (!). She gives us Kyubey's name (finally), thanking them for saving him and calling him "an important friend." Hmmmm. She's also apparently from another class in their school (which she
also identifies, as "Mitakihara").
And now we get our first magical girl transformation sequence as the girl prepares to do battle! The whole thing gives a strong "light in the darkness" impression with her spinning, cartoon flowers flickering at her feet, and streams of light coming out from the lantern. She smiles during the whole thing as her clothes change from the feet up, with soft singing in the background that seems strangely uplifting. The end result bears only a loose resemblance to Homura's outfit, even discounting the yellow in the color scheme. (Funnily enough, it includes a hat.)
Her attack, with which she beats off the regrouping crowd of cotton-ball things, has what looks like an array of a hundred
floating flintlock rifles -- I think -- firing energy blasts at them. Impressive. The result: a huge amount of smoke, followed by the weirdness gradually fading back to the storage room... with Homura standing nearby.
???: "The witch ran away. If you want to take it down, you'll need to chase after it quickly. I'll give the witch to you this time."
Homura: "The witch isn't what I'm interested in."
???: "You don't seem to understand what's going on here. I'm saying I'll let you go."
Homura: /fumes
???: "I think we both would like to avoid any unnecessary trouble."
And Homura departs, to Madoka and Sayaka's relief.
So that's a witch. I notice Madoka's nightmare wasn't much like this, implying that whatever Homura was fighting then
wasn't a witch, or at least not one like this. Iiinteresting.
The blonde girl appears to have healing magic, which she uses to patch Kyubey up. Kyubey thanks her, calling her
Mami, and Our Heroes, calling them by their full names (Sayaka's is
Sayaka Miki).
Sayaka: "W-Why do you know our names?"
Kyubey: "I came here to ask you two to help!"
Madoka: "To... help?"
Kyubey: "I want you to form a contract with me and become magical girls!" ^ω^
No ED, surprising me -- I didn't notice until the second viewing that the credits had been shown over the last minute or two. Don't think I've seen that in an anime before, 'least outside finales. So we go straight to the episode preview, which has a still image of Madoka, Sayaka, Kyubey, Mami, and Homura with a voiceover: Kyubey promises to grant "each of you" (presumably Madoka and Sayaka) one wish: "I can make any miracle you want happen." Ah, but there must be rules, yes? What exactly is your domain of "miracles"? Surely you wouldn't permit a wish for more wishes? Even if not, it would be trivial to embed multiple predefined wishes in one, even without resulting to clever wish compression like the blind, poor, and childless man who wished to be able to see his children eat off gold plates. Or if typeless wishes are permitted, then in the spirit of Douglas Hofstadter... "I wish my wish would not be granted!"
Episode 1 complete! Man, where to begin...
OK, thoughts on characters. Mami appears to have pretty much bought in to the whole magical girl thing -- she's enjoying all this, or at least she believes in the cause. And her calling Kyubey a friend seems genuine. Sayaka's pretty cool; I know Madoka won't make the contract yet, so she probably will. Unfortunately, I presume. I don't think she was being serious about the "wife" thing -- it seems more like a running joke between friends that they've had for a while. Hitomi could be the token normal friend, a hapless bystander, or maybe someday a magical girl herself. Madoka herself? Mostly a blank, aside from ordinary discomfort with sticking out. That dream of hers probably indicates either that information in this universe can travel backwards in time or that Kyubey's got a knack for the nightmare equivalent of Photoshop. Homura... I have
no idea what she could've gone through. The future theory seems pretty solid, but we don't have nearly enough information to determine her agenda or her exact beef with Kyubey.
Hell, maybe she's Archer.
Kyubey, likewise, is pretty much a blank at this point. I'm not even sure he actually knows Homura, and it's anyone's guess how he knew Madoka and Sayaka's names, why he wants them for the job, or why he specifically called Madoka. But one thing that interests me is his use of the term "magical girl." As far as I know, that term was pretty much conceived as a label for the genre started back in the '60s, or for the combat-oriented branch of it that
Sailor Moon later established -- the branch that what Kyubey's talking about most suggests. I've never heard of any other entry in the genre actually using its
name in-story -- they might be referred to as witches, mages, soldiers, Cures, or any number of other things, but never "magical girls." (I also know of only one other franchise that actually uses the term in its title -- again,
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.) Why is he using that particular name? Does the genre exist within the
Madoka universe? Is he playing on that to attract candidates? And why are
girls, specifically, needed for the contract? (More nitpicky, what's the exact scope of their powers? Homura could fly in the dream, but she hasn't done so outside it, Madoka couldn't in the OP, and Mami only did a jump-and-maybe-hover trick as part of her attack. Maybe it's connected with the environment?)
And all this is assuming you go by the translation "magical girl," as yesy does, and not "Puella Magi," as in the official English title. That opens up its own questions.
