Puella Magi Madoka Magica

First of all, I was never interested in underaged magical school girls prancing around in some colourful parade of girly-ness. Ahem, Sailor Moon.

I only decided to check out this anime after constant urging by other anime-obsessed friends who persistently claim that it's not at all about how friendship is the best thing ever and lovey dovey.

So basically it's about an average school girl called Madoka (she's 14 mind you) that one day sees a strange dream about a black-haired girl fighting some sort of monster. She goes to school the next day to find out that the girl transfered to her school! Surprise! (not really...)

After a series of events, Madoka is then given a choice to become a Puella Magi which literally translate to girl of the sorcerer (or as I like to call it, magic girl), in exchange for any wish in the world! Yep anything! However she soon realises that there's a lot more to being a Puella Magi.

The first episode begins with a scene from a dream (how cliche) about some girl running through what appears to be a mess of weird meaningless symbols and other random objects.

What on earth is going on?!

Where are the colours?!

If you can't see, there's a little school girl running through the checkered floor. I've seen this technique used in other animes where there are just a bunch of circles to represent some sort of "other dimension", perhaps? I've never really understood the concept of random explosions of circles to represent another dimension but quite frankly I don't care.

There's some good soundtrack going on in this anime I've got to admit, but I have no idea what is going on at all. In the next scene she appears to be at a battlescene where some other girl is getting hammered by... uh...

Is that a flying castle?!

And if you can't see, there's a black-haired girl flying towards the castle. She then engages in a battle with said castle and there's just a lot of flying projectiles being thrown at her. Okay, I've got to hand some credit to the animation team, the fighting scene was pretty well done, lots of movements, camera shots, etc. But why a talking cat?!

Captain Obvious to the rescue

Oh god. I'm not going to spoil anything in case some of you guys like to watch animes about underaged magical school girls and talking cat-like creatures but don't expect logic in this anime. Maybe the producer was high while he was working on Puella Magi Madoka Magica but I can't stand animes with a crappy first episode. The first episode is supposed to pull the viewer in for more! Not make them pull their hair out in frustration. =_=

Madoka, our protagonist! Isn't she cute? =3=

Japanese designs... Why can't our houses be like that?

All in all, good voice actors, fitting soundtracks and an impressive display of animation but where these aspects excel, the plot fails. There's a lot of cliche going on in this anime, I mean seriously... a talking cat? That's already been done by Card Captors for god's sakes!

Oh wait, it's a flying teddy bear...

The opening is pretty cool, check it out! Although I have no idea why someone would upload it mirrored.

I would give Puella Magi Madoka Magica a 4/10. I will be reviewing this anime again after I finish the whole series (first episodes are always usually quite deceptive). Tell me what you guys think!