Why Madoka Magica feels so real

[@a__auowis4816]

bro just described the entire kpop industry in 15 minutes

[@WeebJail]

it's honestly astounding to me that they put this shit on tv

[@fuckua3424]

​@@WeebJailkorea is like mysogyny capital so ofc they would allow this

[@owowhatsbliss]

I have to say, you just getting straight to the point instead of waffling around explaining what madoka is for the first few minutes was a breath of fresh air

[@mlgproplayer2915]

being Meguca is suffering...

[@WeebJail]

protect meduka

[@kylimantrhamdreemurr1838]

​@@WeebJail True words from hameru.

[@NotTheDude]

I really like your point about how becoming a magical girl rips them away from their idyllic life. It seems like people want to climb the corporate ladder and make more money so they can have a nice house, nice yard, nice cars, but then they never get to ENJOY those things because they need even more money to pay for the next thing society tells them they need and will make them happy. So often we buy into this idea simply because it’s what we’re supposed to do. It reminds me of a story from the Chuang Tzu: Chuang Tzu with his bamboo pole was fishing in the Pu river. The prince of Chu sent two vice-chancellors with a formal document: “We hereby appoint you prime minister.” Chuang Tzu held his bamboo pole still. Watching the Pu river he said, “I am told there is a sacred tortoise offered and canonized three thousand years ago, venerated by the prince, wrapped in silk, in a precious shrine on an altar in the temple. What do you think? Is it better to give up one’s life and leave a sacred shell as an object of cult in a cloud of incense for three thousand years, or to live as a plain turtle dragging its tail in the mud?” “For the turtle”, said the vice-chancellor, “better to live and drag its tail in the mud!” “Go home!” said Chuang Tzu. “Leave me here to drag my tail in the mud.” Veneration and exhaltation don’t bring us happiness if we’re not alive ourselves to enjoy it. Chilling by the river and dragging our tails in the mud does. Maybe that’s the way we beat the system. Refuse to participate. Find ways to be self sufficient. Refuse to buy their cars. Refuse to help them earn a profit. Find ways to be content with what you have if you have enough to live on. I dunno. 🤷‍♂️ Maybe I’m rambling. Either way, good video!

[@WeebJail]

i think that's a good comparison, it has basically the same message ah to be a turtle in the mud, or as saya says, happy, ignorant, idiots

[@cottoncandydaydream]

What's even more sad is that the witch who killed Mami wished for cheesecake. Yes, CHEESECAKE. It just shows the innocence and naïvity of these prepuberscent girls and how easy it is to manipulate them. When we are young we often make serious decisions without much thought of the consequences. Its why the Kpop industry or the sales industry in whole preys primarily on the young. The whole "teen" concept was created by America as a marketing ploy. I recently watched Madoka Magica for the first time and a lot of the parallels between capitalism and this world were quite evident. That cute little rabbit cat is just a salesperson 😂 And more often than not we sign our life away to mortgages and car payments. Crazy stuff indeed.

[@amielmendoza9580]

bro cooked and gave us food poisoning

[@anonymocha]

Such an intensely powerful yet fresh takeaway on Madoka Magica and I absolutely adore it. This video made me feel incomprehensible despair, but also hope. Thank you for sharing this!

[@GenghisConnThr333]

Meds, NOW!

[@wiresdonttalk]

As someone who had no idea what this video was going to be about, this was a WILD ride!

[@WeebJail]

i told you you gotta watch it!!!

[@s0ulcode]

Wasn’t Madoka’s transformation in the mobile game based on K-Pop? It probably wasn’t intentional but the parallels are surprisingly strong.

[@WeebJail]

was it? i just spoke about kpop since im more familiar with it but i cant imagine the japanese idol industry didn't have any influence on this

[@s0ulcode]

@@WeebJail I confused it for the Rebellion transformation, but yeah, it’s speculated that Madoka’s style of dance in her sequence is based on k-pop like Homura is ballet etc. I don’t have anything more solid than that but I know there was a video essay like 2 years ago that mentioned it. I can’t find it rn but I might

[@WeebJail]

oh interesting that would make sense, i actually still have to watch that lol

[@honestlyboringperson]

@@WeebJailif you are wondering Mami does ice skating, Kyoko does some kind of tribal dance, Sayaka does breakdancing, Homura does interpretative dance while Madoka performs a J-Pop/K-Pop dance

[@jq5249]

This is your brain on community college.

[@OfficerShinki]

Came here from Twitter. Person who made the post complaining about your video has no idea what they're talking about. This video is pretty well done and while there's a few jokes I found a little silly the point IS a good one to make. If people actually WATCHED the video they'd see that... Pretty ironic for them to claim you lack media literacy when they can't even watch 3 minutes to see they're completely missing the point.

[@WeebJail]

about a third of the comments were wait a sec this is only 15 minutes??? ah they were SO close lol that said, i did change the title 2 days before that post was made because i had a suspicion that title was a little too smart, which is also why i suspect they never actually linked to the video, they realized id changed it lol

[@phossu8499]

One of the worst “Video Essay” I've ever watched. And the worst madoka magica reading ever, and trust me, there are a lot of bad ones. The person who wrote the script clearly never consumed any form of magical girls media in their life, let alone understood the history and what it meant for madoka magica as a whole. The fact that you compare magical girls to k-pop idols and capitalism but not one mention that in rebellion madoka holy quintet transformation is literally her becoming and acting as a japanese idol. And what Japanese otaku purity culture symbolize for homura and the audience is criminal. Not to mention, this reading dismissed the most important thing in madoka involving society view on women, and femininity. Madoka herself as the Das Ewig Weibliche. There are some genuinely dumb things here, like the glass classroom symbolizing the objectification of the girls, even though the classroom is already glass before the girls know anything about magical girls. And the fact that there are normal boys and girls in the class. The girls being a spectacle and kyubey being a representation of the idol industry doesn't make any sense since the idol industry wants these girls to be seen as showpieces but in the show for anyone that doesn't interact with the system, everything is unperceivable, even for the witches victims. This reading so superficial it's insulting to the creators and madoka fans. This sounds like what chatPGT would dish out if I asked for an essay linking madoka to capitalism. There are so many things that are incorrect here, it's insane.

[@flygonkerel781]

thank you! i couldnt voice my disdain any better. i feel like this person has barely even seen madoka magica

[@WeebJail]

hi reddit

[@obsessiveduck0911]

Loved every second of this video ! Straight to the point and explained many things i missed while watching madoka magica

[@sakurayuki5301]

Now that one flash back of homura, in which she told Madoka she became a Magical girl makes sense. I thought why would she tell madoka that loudly in class? If i think of it as becoming a Idol it's not nonsensical. Thanks a bunch

[@william.9210]

when the media literacy hits so you know its true

[@1qesem371]

great video as always man! its crazy how i consider myself a mega fan for some of these franchises and yet you always seem to have grasped things that i missed, or have a different take all together on the overall meaning behind the work

[@WeebJail]

they don't call me king of weeaboos for nothing

[@noahalcantar2431]

@1qesem371 you do realize that the Megaman franchise is dead and forgotten right?

[@BlueBerryPrinceStuff]

I loved your take on madoka's mom!

[@WeebJail]

oh you know i have only good things to say about anime milfs

[@masteryoba359]

@@WeebJail Wait, doesn't she say that adults are also constantly suffering? She only seems "successfull" within the given system's framework. And partly because of how much she works, she was not able to notice initially how her daughter almost joined the death cult that the magical girls would look like to the rest of the world.

[@WeebJail]

@@masteryoba359 she suffers, but she chooses to suffer every day, the magical girls are mislead into suffering and it's not so much that she can't see it, rather, she trusts madoka to be mature enough already to choose the right thing. we see this at the end where she stops her from wandering out into walpurgis, and then lets her go when madoka tells her there's something she needs to do

[@angeldude101]

I mean, she _is_ Best Girl Junko "Actual Mother of God" Kaname.

[@AlmostAzun]

good video, it didnt take two hours of summarizing the entirety of madoka magica to get to the point

[@TheRealSkulldozer]

LOOOOOL

[@isauldron4337]

This video is a neurone melter

[@asterlofts1565]

In reality, Puella Magi Madoka Magica is socialism/communism: the "good" Kyubeys and Magical Girls at the beginning, especially those who do not know the truth of being Magical Girls and Witches, as well as the politicians of that socialist/communist banfo , they show you the mural (the fantasy, the dreams and the escape from reality and things like that) but NOT the wall (which is the harsh reality)... they show you that EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE PERFECT AND OUT OF A BOOK FAIRY, NOTHING IS GOING TO GO WRONG... and that's how they get followers or idiots who swallow that story, that story and well... they get screwed, because they realize, very late of course, that they were deceived. and that they fell into the trap by falling so easily into that... capitalism, even with all its defects, its own lies and problems, shows you the wall, the harsh reality from the beginning, a reality that is also undeniable, that you cannot escape, but you must face it, even though you don't like it because reality doesn't care, either you mold yourself to it or you die. And therefore, this saying that "being a Magical Girl and making contracts with Kyubey is capitalist" is not true, in any case, it is Communism with a mixture of utilitarianism.

[@Kakaragi]

Might you give 'Puella Magi Tart★Magica: The Legend of "Jeanne d'Arc"' a read? I say it gives a unique perspective in the Madoka Magica series with a setting of a real life war with magical girls fighting on boths sides of it over just having it be magical girls vs witches. Also we get to see normal people be involved in the story too and how magical girl attacks can easily kill them.

[@simonrazer8303]

ok i have to watch Madoka

[@WeebJail]

it's a must watch for every weeb

[@spike-uesugi]

This comparison works if viewed in a meta sense, as Madoka Magica is clearly a money-making machine for real world fans who put money into the franchise. Working purely in-world, it falls apart. Few people in-world know about the magical girls. They can’t be consumed as a commodity by the world they live in. Also, entropy is a natural state of energy loss outweighing energy gain, and it’s referred to as such within the series. I prefer to analyze Madoka Magica from an in-world perspective, so this capitalism comparison doesn’t click with me. Tiger & Bunny’s Blue Rose would be a better analogy for this, and even MHA says more about using people up to better society and maintain the status quo than Madoka Magica does. Kyubey and the Incubators represent utilitarianism more than anything imo. They choose to sacrifice the few for the good of the many (remember, they are referencing the entire universe, not just Earth). Capitalists sacrifice the many for the good of the few - i.e., the top of the corporate ladder.

[@WeebJail]

it's a metaphor they aren't literally capitalism in world lol

[@spike-uesugi]

@@WeebJail Right, which is why I said it works if it’s viewed in a meta sense-meta as in from the outside looking in, in the context of the real world fans demanding more of these fictional girls. Then it works great as a representation of capitalism. I didn’t get that impression from the video is all. I understand the comparison to the K-pop show, but they’re real people who suffer real consequences. Fictional characters don’t suffer those consequences. The consequences they suffer are in-world, where the magical girls are not consumed as a commodity. Just saying that other shows would have worked better for this comparison, where characters do get consumed by their societies as commodities.

[@1qesem371]

@@spike-uesugi the characters *do* suffer real world consequences though, gen urobuchi is infamous for writing psychological trauma in a way that is super empathetic to the audience. i related most strongly to sayaka’s desire to bring “justice” to the world that wronged her, only to find out the world functions in moral greys and even she is a hypocrite masquerading as an ally of justice. also emotional disociation is something ive struggled with after getting rejected by my crush for the like, hundredth time, much like how she exemplified it in the elsa marie fight with what is *obviously* incredibly forced laughter and a fake strong front. also about the entropy comment you made, im pretty sure kyubey said that the emotions of teenage girls existed as an outlier to the rules of entropy, and thats why they chose to use it as a source of energy in the first place

[@jgv6323]

Capitalism is when some random immortal demon destroys the world lmao

[@zzasdfwas]

I doubt Gen had any of this in mind, but people see their own meaning in fiction and it's better for it.

[@clgr1323]

I am an almost 30, 1,84 m man, with good Intimidation and agility stats. The kind of man no one would ever think is a weeb. I also Have a Madokami tattooed on my torso, below my armpit, close to my heart. Madoka, is love. Madoka is life. Madoka is Hope. As long as I remember her I am not alone. Madoka for me is like Jesus. She sacrificed, not her life, but HER VERY EXISTENCE, becoming a Goddess only magical girls on their last breath will ever know about. An endless, lonely existence, devoted to save these teenage girls of the despair, suffering and evil of becoming a witch. Most people choose Jesus as their guardian fictional character. I choose Madoka

[@karthikbalamurugan7390]

The World Health Organization (WHO), in its ICD-10, defines mental retardation as a “condition of arrested or incomplete development of the mind, which is especially characterized by impairment of skills manifested during the developmental period, which contribute to the overall level of intelligence, i.e., cognitive, language, motor, and social abilities.”

[@mokahless]

*claps* ... Seel! Seel! Seel! Great job! Only thing is, I personally think a (spoilers) should be in the title. It's not like Madoka is new or anything, but the twists and turns are part of the first watching experience and that doesn't really change with time. Or maybe even a note like "go watch this first" as part of the opening paragraphs (too late for that though). I also felt the sexualization comments regarding the girls in Madoka were a bit of a stretch, but it becomes clear as to why you tried anyway to include the comments later, as a way to further try to bridge Madoka and Sixteen. 0:23

[@WeebJail]

idk have you seen the transformation animations

[@emmarywarner16]

​@@WeebJail I mean yeah there are brief moments of nudity during transformations in the series, but they are not done in a sexual way. The series itself is mostly associated with magical girl transformations, where nudity has a history within the genre and how other magical girl transformations had some type of symbolic meaning behind it, like Sailor Moon transformations. With the traditional symbolism usually being about innocence and/or purity.

[@WeebJail]

@@emmarywarner16 you can't actually watch all these close ups of their legs and chest and tell me it's not supposed to be sexualized at all lol yes, it's about innocence and purity, which is the exact problem i'm getting at here

[@ItzGachaWolf]

In the intro there is a clip of Madoka naked and in her underwear

[@emmarywarner16]

She never in her underwear. Once again they’re only nude in the transformation scene and there not sexual at all unlike some other shows magical girl or not that are way more upfront in there sexual nature.

[@ponikoTV]

I find it ironic that you say that because madoka has its own gacha game.

[@bbfox188]

Wow, Madoka Magica never stops to impress me So many different interpretations, but this one must be one of my favourite Madoka is a freaking masterpiece, that should be remembered for centuries

[@symon1033]

don't even want to know what was the other options for the video.

[@WeebJail]

other options?

[@BirdieBear]

the way u pronounce magica kills me inside

[@WeebJail]

this is the correct pronunciation, it's how it's read in japanese i believe this comes from the latin originally

[@starpeep5769]

​@@WeebJailyeah but latin

[@angeldude101]

The way they pronounced "magica" gave me relief after hearing it pronounced the other way so often. It is how I've come to personally say it after all.

[@sac7404]

Steins Gate mention! hell yeahh

[@WeebJail]

even when im not talking about steins;gate i cant shut up about steins;gate

[@stonks3507]

Genuinely such a good video. Subbed!

[@shifty6532]

Why do you lowkey sound like Lumpy Space Princess

[@WeebJail]

i actually am lumpy space princess

[@sakurayuki5301]

That's a really good perspective, that is resonating with me more than I want to. I think I just didn't want to think exactly this x.x, now I can't unthink it T.T Thanks for making the Oshi no ko crossover though, you rock ❤

[@ProPinkist]

God damn, this isn’t merely an analysis video but a work of art all on its own; your passionate and intense prose made me FEEL things. God I love Madoka, and somehow I never thought of all this but it makes perfect sense, and now I have yet another reason to love it even more. Fantastic video 😭👌💜

[@GyaruRespecter]

Close, but not quite. While you are certainly Media Literate™, the REAL point of Madoka is that she and Homura are an obvious satire of fascism, and you're missing the point by rooting for them to win against Kyubey.

[@Okay-zm8jw]

Another goated video 💯. Yeah magical girl are truly metaphor for capitalism. Same can be said about superheros, as it also shown the boys (tv series) , starlight is the perfect example in that show.

[@WeebJail]

oh that's a good one too i still need to watch s2

[@XEvilFoxX]

Just wanted to add some icing to the cake, I remember near the end of the anime that it’s confirmed that the incubators target young girls that specifically have potential to become something great and they specifically take this away from them. :)

[@kafuuchinon]

This is so well executed. I never thought of it that way but when you mention it, Madoka’s world everything is.. so advanced. There’s almost no natural resources anymore. It’s look industrialize which does look cool, but in reality why people are trap in perfection and display. The Kpop idol is also a great example. Also, not only in idol world, I think in many culture these day they make it feels like woman needs to wear makeup when goes out or else you are not normal. Girls need to be slim or else you are ugly. Man needs to be muscular or else you are not real man. It pressure us to drive away from becoming our real self while worshipping idolatry perfection. Not only physical, but mentally idol needs to always act compose, and professional even in their own time when they go out they can’t taint their reputation. Beautiful video.

[@sanbiki_no_kaeru]

Great video

[@elizathepainter8604]

Incredible insight and parallels. Disturbing yet you still brought some humor in as well. Great video!

[@lalad0]

Not this anime again oh god oh no

[@WeebJail]

oh no oh shit fuck no

[@compuguy123]

The Demon Core is really just what's our soul, after we lose our innocence. This goes for everyone - the soul with temptation and verily lucifer in the dead centre - the enemy at the gates, is truly inside our own heartland.

[@fishcakess9]

Ok but actually why did this make me cry tho

[@Duran13XIII]

You are easily to manipulate on an emotional level.

[@fishcakess9]

@@Duran13XIII I wouldn't say manipulate but for some reason I understood it deeply

[@SirQuickenn]

was I late? he's back

[@WeebJail]

yes

[@SirQuickenn]

how unfortunate

[@leventeszucs5048]

Okay but who asked for the K-pop part?

[@WeebJail]

the whole idol comparison...?

[@homuyii]

🤮