Magical Girl Madoka is indeed worthy of the best animation in the 4 months so far in 2011. Although I really hate the 4:3 style of this animation, I have to say that the script is really well done. It mainly tells the story of five magical girls, Madoka, Xiaomeiyan, Sayaka, Kyoko and Ba Mami.
(The following three paragraphs are intermediaries and can be ignored. The analysis starts from the tenth episode.)
The first two episodes try to give people a kind of misleading of a warm little drama. The girl signed a contract with a creature named Q Bei, who fulfilled one of the girl's wishes, and the girl became a magical girl and fought against an evil force called the Witch. It seems to be a simple battle between a magical girl representing hope and love and a witch representing despair. But as the third episode came out, each episode started a shady scene. The first magical girl, Ba Mami, was decapitated and died. And all fulfilled wishes eventually lead to despair. Sayaka made a wish to heal the broken hand of Kamijou whom he admired, but Kamijou, whose arm was restored, became lovers with Sayaka's best friend. Kyoko makes a wish to let people listen to the unacceptable teachings spread by her father, but the father who knows the truth thinks that Kyoko is a witch. In the last sentence of Q Bei, "The women who grow up in this country are called girls, so you who will become witches one day should be called magical girls." The magical girls born of hope will eventually degenerate into witches and die in despair.
The world view set by Magical Girl is that the energy of the universe is constantly decreasing, and creatures will release a lot of energy from hope to despair, and Q Bei is the rule of Magical Girl formulated to collect this energy.
The tenth episode is the most important episode of this animation. After watching this episode, the details that are easily overlooked in the previous episodes are actually very deep foreshadowing. This story is not a simple straight line, but an endless loop. Xiaomeiyan saw her most important friend, the magical girl Madoka, died after fighting the witch's night, so she made a wish to "return to the moment when she met Madoka," and then she became a magical girl and returned to the first time she met with Xiaomei. The point in time when the circles meet. But no matter how he changed the time, he could only watch Madoka die tragically. Knowing that the magical girl is destined to become a witch, Xiaomeiyan keeps going back to the past to prevent Madoka from becoming a magical girl, but she still can only watch Madoka sign a contract with Q Bei and die or become a witch in the Night of the Witch. When the first episode begins, the story is already the fifth cycle of events in this time period.
The understanding about this (Episode 10) is:
No matter how Xiaomeiyan changes the time, the ending of Madoka becoming a magical girl will not change. What Xiao Meiyan's wish can change is only time, but not cause and effect. Xiaomeiyan signed a contract to become a magical girl because Madoka became a magical girl and died in front of her, which means that Xiaomeiyan was already a magical girl, so the reason why Madoka became a magical girl must exist. Madoka's becoming a magical girl caused Xiaomeiyan to become a magical girl, so since this result (Xiaomeiyan herself is a magical girl) exists, then the cause (Madoka is a magical girl must also exist). Xiaomeiyan changed the time, but she couldn't change the fact that she was a magical girl, and she couldn't change the cause and effect, so no matter how long it took, Madoka would always become a magical girl. Just like the endless summer of Showa 58 when the cicadas were crying, even though the ancient hand pear flower has gone through a hundred years of Showa 58, it can only face the absolute ending of tragic death. Ewha is also able to change time, but cannot change the absolute law that the absolute witch Lambda Deluta (Sanshi Takano) made that she will definitely die at that time.
Understanding of Episode 11:
Q Bei explained that their race has always interfered with human history in human history. From the past to the future, countless girls signed with Q Bei, and the girls who signed the contract realized their wishes and then committed themselves to despair. And these aspirations have driven the entire history of mankind.
Cassandra, Joan of Arc, Himiko and Cleopatra appear in the picture. These people begin with a prayer and end with a curse.
Historical figures in the picture:
According to historical assumptions, if Kassandra, the great prophet of Greece, predicts all future mistakes, betrayals and disasters is her hope, then no one has ever believed that her predictions are hers. despair. Kassandra, the princess of Troy in the mythology, once predicted that Troy would be destroyed, but no one believed it. In the end, she could only watch the day when the city was broken, and the Greek army killed all her parents and brothers.
For the goddess Joan of Arc, if it was disappointing to lead the French people to retake their homeland, then she was finally betrayed by the French King, and was sentenced to death at the stake as a witch is her despair.
Similarly, if the establishment of the Yamatai Kingdom is the wish of Himiko (for Japan, it is equivalent to the status of China's Yanhuang), then it is her despair that Yamatai is in the raging fire in the end.
Q Bei or incubator has always given people's wishes to fulfill and then give them despair, repeating this process over and over again. But it has also driven the whole of human history.
Therefore, at this time, Madoka can no longer deny the magical girl herself, because denying this existence means denying the past history of mankind, and even denying the wishes of tens of thousands of magical girls in history. This is no longer just a simple matter of the five girls in the story, but a question of the process of human history. Q Bei believes that without its promotion, human beings may still be in a prehistoric society. Because she cannot deny the magical girl herself, Madoka can only deny the witching, so Madoka's ultimate wish is to keep the magical girl (that is, the wish made by people in the past) and prevent the magical girl from becoming a witch.
Ending understanding:
About Madoka traveling through all time:
Madoka finally made a wish that ended it. Madoka's wish "I want to destroy all witches before they are born, and all witches in the past and future of the universe will be destroyed by me." For Q Bei, it is no longer interfering with the time level, but has changed the cause and effect. In this wish, whether in the past or in the future, or even in different universes, all witches will be eliminated by Madoka before they are born, so they will no longer simply repeat a certain period of time, but travel through all time periods.
At this time, the real time stops for a moment, and Madoka travels through the past and the future to hunt down all the witches from the past to the future. Just like in fate stay night, time stops at the moment of Saber's death, and Saber travels through time to find the Holy Grail. After making a wish, Madoka has actually turned into a new rule, and the time in the real world is actually still, at the moment Madoka made a wish, and as a rule, Madoka began to travel at different points in time. At the time when reality was still, Madoka appeared at the same time at all the times when magical girls existed from the past to the future. It seems that for Shirou Emiya, King Arthur had already died under a tree in the Middle Ages, but this did not prevent him from meeting Saber in the 20th century.
About the ultimate fate of magical girls:
The picture came to the moment when the first magical girl in history was about to become a witch. Madoka came to this point in time to absorb all the filth on the spiritual core, and then the magical girl was finally able to die peacefully. Then at another point in time, a girl in Arabian costume was about to become a witch. After Madoka sucked the filth on her spiritual core, she also got rid of despair, stopped crying, and died smiling in hope.
In fact, it is already clear here that Madoka has not changed the final fate and outcome of the magical girls, and they will still usher in their own end when the spiritual core becomes filthy. But Madoka killed the witch before the witch was born, so when the magical girl's spiritual core becomes dirty, it will not become a witch again, but will directly lead to the end of her life, and the dirty will be borne by Madoka. The fate of the end of life will not change, but the rule that magical girls born of hope must become witches in despair has changed. Magical girls can carry out their philosophy of fighting for hope and love until the end, and will no longer become a witch who is cursed and represents despair. And Madoka took away all the despair of magical girls and gave them the end of their lives.
So in the following pictures we saw Joan of Arc's redemption face when she was burned at the stake, Anne Frank praying in a Nazi concentration camp, and even a future girl smiling at the end of her life.
About Madoka's own destiny:
Madoka travels through all time and space to give spiritual redemption to all the magical girls who died in despair in history and in the future, and then bears all the despair by herself. And this despair that surpassed everything finally made Madoka the biggest witch, but at the same time Madoka wished that all the witches would be destroyed by themselves before they were born, so there was the witch Madoka transformed into and the magical girl Madoka appeared. There is a magical girl Madoka who destroyed the witch herself.
At the same time, this also creates a paradox, because the witch that magical girl Madoka transformed into was eventually destroyed by the magical girl Madoka in the "past" (the point in time when she wished to become a magical girl). When Madoka made a wish, she traveled through all time points, naturally including the time when she became a witch, and killed her future. The emergence of the paradox caused Madoka's own existence to be obliterated. She was neither born nor died, and disappeared in everyone's memory, and no one will remember that there was this person. The small circle becomes the new law itself, which can see all time and space, all worlds, but can never interfere with the world any more.
About Xiaomeiyan (Hei Changzhi) encountering Madoka again:
Many people think that after Madoka does not exist, the time when Xiaomeiyan made a wish to return to Madoka does not exist, so she cannot be a magical girl and change for ordinary people. In fact, this is not necessarily true, because when Madoka travels all the time, it means that all magical girls are purified by her when they become witches, so in the future, when Xiaomeiyan's spiritual core is full of filth, it must also be small. When Yuan gave Xiaomeiyan the end, it was the so-called moment when the two met again. So Madoka, who completed the time travel, told Xiaomeiyan that they would meet in the future when she was about to disappear completely. In fact, Madoka had already met Xiaomeiyan in the future. For Madoka, disappearing this time is indeed equivalent to saying goodbye to Xiao Meiyan, but for Xiao Meiyan, the two will meet in the future. Of course, Xiao Meiyan and Madoka would probably be at the same spatial level in the time period after they met, and they were probably really together.
Yellow, blue and red hair in the present world:
After the birth of the new rules, returning to the present world, Kyoko (red hair) and Mami (yellow hair) were resurrected, but Sayaka (blue hair) disappeared because of the exhaustion of spiritual core energy. On another world level, Madoka said to Sayaka that she couldn't save Sayaka, because if she saved her, this future would not exist. Madoka's wish was to destroy the witch before she was born, so the witch no longer exists. Then Kyoko and Mami who died because of witches should not die, but Sayaka died by becoming witches, then according to the new law, Sayaka's spiritual core filth is sucked away by Madoka before becoming a witch, and then directly Died at that moment, so Sayaka can't be saved no matter what. But Sayaka finally saw Kamijou recover and play the violin, and finally he could accept it calmly and give Kamijou and Hitomi his blessing, so Sayaka changed the fate of ending in despair. Madoka leaving with Sayaka may mean that after the magical girl disappears, she will be in the same high-level world as Madoka.
New rules:
In reality, Mami explained that in such a world without witches, after the magical girl exhausted all the energy of the spiritual core in the battle, she would disappear directly from this world without leaving a trace, and called it a ring. Theory (in fact, it should be called the round face theory or the 4:3 theory). The new rules did not change the ending of magical girls dying after the energy of the spiritual core was used up, but it gave a hopeful process. Magical girls can always represent hope and justice and fight to the last moment, and will no longer become a witch of despair. Therefore, the magical girl in this animation is a pitiful existence from the beginning to the end, but in the 12th episode, it can finally return to the nature of the orthodox magical girl.
New enemies and new ways to collect energy:
The screen near the end: Xiaomeiyan and Q Bei's dialogue. ,
First of all, even Q Bei, who fulfilled Madoka's wish, has long since forgotten the existence of Madoka. As Q Bei said before, Xiaoyuan disappeared in everyone's memory (except Hei Changzhi).
The witch of despair no longer appears, but the twisted mind and despair of human beings have not disappeared, so a new enemy named Warcraft (Arthas expresses anger) appears.
Collecting energy no longer relies on the energy released by the magical girl's change from hope to despair, but the magical girl hunts down the demon beasts that represent despair, and obtains a new seed of sadness as the source of Q Bei's energy collection. However, according to Q Bei, the efficiency of this energy collection is far lower than the original method.
And the energy of the magical girl's spiritual core is also supplemented by the new Q shell with the new seed of sadness. If the energy of the spiritual core is used up and there is no seed of sorrow to replenish, Madoka will take you away.
So far, the magical girl in this animation is finally consistent with the magical girl in the normal Japanese magical girl animation: the magical girl representing justice takes the pet (Q shell) signed with her to fight against the forces of evil. In the first 11 episodes, Magical Girl is really a pitiful existence.
Regarding Q Bei's concept:
how disgusting this non-cat and non-dog animal is, everyone who has watched the animation knows it, but there is a reason for standing in its position.
Put aside the author's failed physics explanation of entropy, and just look at this worldview. The energy of the universe is constantly decreasing, and changes in emotions can release a lot of energy to supplement the loss of this universe. The Q-beet race itself has no emotions and cannot sacrifice itself to replenish energy, so they find humans.
From their point of view, they have no feelings and cannot understand the feelings of individuals, and everything is based on the collective interests. Therefore, in their view, the entire human being can be regarded as a living body. And each person as an individual is regarded as a cell that constitutes this living body. So from a macro perspective, this living body has 6 billion to 7 billion cells, and ten new cells are born every second. Now you have to sacrifice one or even 5 cells to feed the entire living body and even feed other living bodies. You Would you like to? Usually it's worth it.
But human beings are not cells without emotions, but individuals with emotions. So to put it another way, if a person were to sacrifice himself to save 10,000 people, no one would know the sacrifice of this person and that this person had saved them, and no one would even know what he had ever done. What this person can get by sacrificing himself can only be the sadness of the people around him, so would he still be willing to sacrifice himself to save others?
At the same time, humans give protection to livestock production, and kill livestock as food at will. And Q Bei believes that he has promoted human civilization and only needs to sacrifice a few girls.
Understanding of the final picture:
Facing a group of monsters, only Xiao Meiyan continues to fight. My understanding is that all magical girls in the world have ushered in their own end, and Xiao Meiyan is the last magical girl alive. Probably because Q Bei is not around, its task of collecting energy has been completed, so Xiao Meiyan can no longer get energy supplements from Q Bei.
Finally, Xiaomeiyan heard Madoka's voice, which means that Xiaomeiyan (Hei Changzhi) herself is about to come to an end, which is the moment when Madoka promised to meet again. Probably in the end, Madoka will take away the filth of Xiaomei's Yanling Core, and then give her the end of her life. This is also the picture that Madoka will see in the future when she travels through time and space. It better explains why Madoka promised to meet Xiaomeiyan again: Madoka must have seen the end of the last magical girl Hei Changzhi when she traveled through time and space to the future. As for where the magical girl disappears, according to Sayaka's situation, she might be at a higher level with Madoka. So Xiao Meiyan ushered in her own end and at the same time fulfilled her wish.
Also for Hei Changzhi, realizing his wish to meet Fanyuan again can only be at the last moment of the battle until Fanyuan greets him.
As for the final picture, does the barren land on the ground with only demon beasts mean that human beings have perished? This information is too little to figure out, maybe it's extinction, maybe it's migration to other parts of the universe (Q Bei once promised that humans would also come to their world), maybe this battlefield happens to be a desert and no one is there. In short, Xiao Meiyan kept her promise to protect this world until the end.
As for the ending, my understanding is this. As for whether the ending is depressing or healing, it depends on everyone's understanding. The author of this animation has always liked to write the ending of the characters in the works, but this time is different from the past in trying to heal with complete destruction. In any case, the ending means that the five magical girls are still completely wiped out, and it is even possible that all humans will be wiped out. But as this author always does, the protagonist dies but the protagonist's wish is fulfilled.
Reference story:
This animation is based on Faust, The Ring of the Nibelung, etc. Sayaka's story is actually another form of mermaid story. The mermaid fell in love with the prince and rescued him, but the rescued prince did not know that it was the mermaid who rescued him, and married another woman. The mermaid was unwilling to betray the prince until the end, so it turned into a bubble. The story of Sayaka, Kamijou and Hitomi is roughly the same. In episode 12, Sayaka disappeared, and Hitomi and Kamijou walked together, which can be insinuated that Sayaka turned into a bubble like a mermaid.
And Madoka witch's name is Margaret, Faust's lover. QB is Mephisto, a demon who longs for human souls, Xiaomeiyan is an insinuation of Faust, and Madoka is Margaret. At the end of Faust, Faust, who signed a contract with the demon Mephisto, was taken to heaven by Margaret. Xiao Meiyan finally carried the huge black wings of despair. At the last moment, she heard the voice of Madoka (Margaret). When Madoka gave her the end, it alluded to the story of Faust and Margaret.
Attachment: The personal guess of the historical mythological characters that appeared was
Cassandra: the great Greek prophet, the princess of Troy, who could predict all disasters, but no one believed her predictions. He once predicted the destruction of Troy, but he could only watch his parents and brothers slaughtered by Greek soldiers when the city of Troy was destroyed.
Joan of Arc: The hero who led the French people to regain lost territory, and was eventually burned to death for the crime of witches.
Himiko: The founder of Japan's earliest country, the Yamatai Kingdom, whose status is equivalent to China's Yanhuang. There are many theories about her ending, one of which is that she was killed by the rebels.
Cleopatra: Cleopatra, who ended up killing herself with a viper
Anne Frank: a Jewish teenage girl whose diary became evidence of Nazi crimes and died in a Nazi concentration camp.
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