Apparently it’s a tradition among anime blogs to share your favorite moments from the past year’s anime over twelve days, from December 14th to December 25th. As everyone knows, I am a firm upholder of long-held, sacred traditions such as this. But I also believe in an even more ancient tradition, known as the “calendar.” So I’m going with a slightly different title than everyone else. But the spirit is the same. So let’s begin.
We’ll start with a rather obvious choice: Mami’s death from Madoka.
In a show full of twists and turns, it was hard to pick a single moment which was the most memorable. But this was the series’ turning point. It brought the budding, dark undercurrents onto the surface in plain view.
The setup was what allowed Mami’s death to be so powerful. The previous episodes had their darker moments, but all in all, it hadn’t sunk it yet how dangerous it was to be a magical girl. Recall that Madoka and Sayaka wanted to be magical girls at this point.
The start of episode three continues to make being a magical girl seem like a nice job. Mami finishes off a witch at the start of the episode. She makes it look easy, like a dance. She’s graceful and beautiful, which leads Madoka to look up to her upperclassman.
“I want to be a magical girl just like you, Mami!” she thinks.
They get married.
“I’ll protect you, Madoka!”
Mami pulverizes some more underlings. Hey, this is easy!
With the power of friendship, we can do anything!
See? That was easy! She killed the witch already!
Wait a second.
And in a span of a few seconds, Mami is dead. It took years and years for her to get where she is today. The audience and Madoka befriended her over the course of three episodes. And in a split second, she’s gone forever. No chance to say goodbye. No corpse to bury.
Usually in anime they draw deaths out. The wounded character sits around on his or her deathbed, giving farewells. Everyone cries. This tends to mitigate the emotional impact. But for magical girls, death can come at any time, when you least expect it. No one will mourn your death. No one will remember you.
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Calendars are meant to be broken 😀
I’ve browsed through so many Madoka posts this year there are simply no surprises left for me if I ever decide to watch the show!
I had a similar outlook but ended up watching the show recently anyway, and one of the things that struck me was how unfazed I felt after this episode. I guess spoilers really did have their effect… Even so, the show still has other artistic merits, even if it doesn’t pack as much of a punch to latecomers as it did for its contemporary viewers.
Good to know.
Yeah, as seer said, half the fun is not knowing what’s going to happen next. :/ But it would still probably be fun to watch even knowing what’s going to happen.
Ooooh yes! The death of Mami one of the most shocking moments in the Madoka series, well aside from kyubei eating himself <3 that creepy thing. But ya Mami was set up as a great character one that Madoka got attached to after meeting her, really sad to see her die so easily.
Then again I don't mind a character death as long as they do not magically come back from the dead! DBZ uses that to often xDD
Great choice <3
Kyuubey eating himself was one of the runner-ups. 🙂 Man, that was great too!
And I agree, character deaths can be quite powerful if they actually stay dead. Another runner-up moment, that I ended up deciding not to include, was Yuki’s death from Moshidora.