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Madoka: Otaku.

And Romeo and Juliet is moe type b otaku shit because it's about a cute young woman suffering, right?

Romeo and Juliet is emotional engaging while PMMM certainly is not.

Romeo and Juliet is emotional engaging while PMMM certainly is not.

Tragedy is one of the oldest forms of storytelling. It grew in ancient Athens most famously in the work of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. In the millennia since playwrites in nearly every culture have taken up stories of suffering and downfall caused by a nobel hero's flaw, iron laws of fate, or the implacable power of circumstance or gods or both. Aristotle, the first and greatest theorist of tragedy, argued in his Poetics that "tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of certain magnitude," specifically of events "inspiring fear or pity." The central element in a tragedy is the plot or action: tragedy, for Aristotle, is primarily a sequence of events portrayed in action that lead inexorably downward. Tragedy is not, fundamentally, feelings or soliloquies. A monologue inspiring fear or pity would simply be a poem, not an "imitation of action," and therefore not a tragedy.

A tragic plot is especially effective if it incorporates four elements: necessity, surprise, reversal, and recognition. [Madoka contains all of these things in the context of its story as a tragedy, for Homura, Kyoko, and Sayaka in particular (Homura especially)... less so for Madoka, but those three are representative of the majority of the magical girls in the story's setting/universe.]

Aristotle argues that the plot must proceed along a necessary chain of cause and effect, not by chance or randomness. [Nothing in Madoka's plot happens without reason.] "The effect is heightened when, at the same time, [the outcome] follows as cause and effect," because the tragic conclusion could not have been otherwise. A terrible but random event--say, an earthquake--inspires pity but also detachment [tragic], while a terrible event resulting from human choices and happenings that followed necessarily from them are terrifying because we can see how it could happen to us [tragedy].

Second, more obviously, surprising events have a greater emotional impact. [Though many of Madoka's twists were speculated, the reveals still had great impact.]

Third, complex tragedy involves a sudden reversal of the situation (peripeteia). A "reversal of the situation is a change by which the action veers round to its opposite." This happens when a character takes an action intending to achieve one outcome (to save another's life, for example) and instead achieves its opposite (in this case, the other's death). [Madoka's story doesn't put an emphasis on these in a sense (because the girls' wishes are all granted), but what happens with Kyoko's family is a great example of a reversal, as is how Homura's wish to save Madoka results in Homra witnessing Madoka and the others actually die countless times, as a result of "iron laws of fate."]

Finally, complex tragedy includes recognition--"a change from ignorance to knowledge"--typically when a character comes to realize a terrible new reality or is made suddenly aware of the reversal. [For the audience, the QB reveal and episode 10 pull things together. For the characters themselves, if the opening conversation in episode 11, where Homura finally understands the terrible truth of how what she's doing is only making things worse, isn't a perfect example of this, then nothing is.]

The best plots contain these elements in conjunction. "Recognition, combined with Reversal, will produce either pity or fear; and actions producing these effects are those which, by our definition, Tragedy represents." Tragedy is a story of events that follow human choices and actions, culminating in a surprising change of fortune and recognition of a terrible new reality in a way that inspires fear and pity in the audience.

[...]

Most films depict cardboard caricatures, not human beings, and take place in a fantasy world where good always triumphs. [...] Specifically, they [the viewers] sense the truth of tragedy. Tragic art is witness to the truth that there is unavoidable evil in the world. Bad things happen, bad things that we sometimes bring on ourselves, bad things that sometimes do not resolve into a happy ending. In this life, tragedy is sometimes not just a very real possibility, but a daily reality. Romantic comedies, action and adventure films, family [...] films--any film with a happy ending--avoid this truth because in those films the good guys always win.

Tragedy presents the opposite view. [...] Sometimes there are no good guys. Sometimes evil triumphs. In the end, we're all dead. [...] Tragedy reflects true things about the corruption of [the world].

[...]

And it is flatly wicked to love tragedy for the sake of the cathartic pleasure we get from our compassionate response: the truly compassionate man desires that no tragedy occur in the first place.

Most films depict cardboard caricatures, not human beings, (...)

Quote:

Most films depict cardboard caricatures, not human beings, (...)

That's exactly the problem that PMMM has.

Quote:

Most films depict cardboard caricatures, not human beings, (...)

That's exactly the problem that PMMM has.

You people are arguing over nothing. We're all nerds, so frankly arguing over this shit only reeks of trying to make yourself out to be better than some other nerds. We're all nerds! All anime is "otaku anime"!

Pointless, too, is this arguing over "Type A" and Type B" bullshit. All these shows fall into their respective genres. The only way to divide anime up into only two categories is: "anime I like" and "anime I don't like."

So some people don't like Madoka Magica; big [expletive] deal.

The only way to divide anime up into only two categories is: "anime I like" and "anime I don't like."

That's another useless division. All anime is made to make money and the other part is you just putting an anime onto a pedestal.