These Precious Things: Part Two

THESE PRECIOUS THINGS

A Feminist Critique of the Magical Girl Archetype as Seen in 

Puella Magi Madoka Magica 

 This is an analysis of the first season of the anime series, based on subtitles. I understand that this means it is being translated and some word meanings may change, so it is best to view this as a critique from my understanding of the story. That should go without saying, but sometimes people need to be reminded. Also, spoilers. If you don't like spoilers, do not continue reading.

PART ONE: Stock Girls with Vast Potential

"Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as "nymphets." ~ Nobokov, Lolita

The story begins with Madoka Kaname, a 14 yr old girl who looks quite a bit younger than this. She has pink hair and pink eyes, but this seems to be normal for this world. She is having a deeply distorted nightmare where another girl is being attacked. A cute little white creature with big ears and pink eyes tells her she can save the girl and alter all reality if she just makes a contract with it (the creature) and becomes a magical girl. Madoka wakes up and assumes this is just a dream.

We meet her family, a toddler brother, a stay-at-home dad, and a mother who is a beautiful and successful career woman with a drinking problem. Drunk mamas are   a common motif in anime, but in this case, while Madoka's mother has issues with alcohol and occasionally gives crap advice, more often than not, she gives decent advice and seems truly concerned about her children.

Madoka goes to school and we begin to get what we believe will be the core of the color-coded Magical girl gang. Hitomi Shizuki is a shy girl with green hair and green eyes. Sayaka Miki is loud and has blue hair and eyes. This is all very typical of Magical Girl stories. Most of the time, the girls will have rather stock personalities (Shy Girl, Sweet Girl, Loud Girl, Brooding/Mysterious Girl, Nurturing Girl, and Aggressive Girl. Sometimes, we also get Hungry Girl or Horny Girl. Occasionally, these last two are combined with other traits, as they happen to be in this case).

Once they are at school, they meet Homura Akemi, a transfer student who looks just like the girl from Madoka's dreams. Homura has long black hair and dark purplish/blueish eyes. She is mysterious and brooding.  She seems angry when she sees Madoka, who seems to remember her from more than just the dream.  Later, aspects of the dream become more clear when Madoka and Sayaka find the cute little creature that spoke to her in the dream and meet another girl named Mami. Mami defeats a witch and confirms to them that yes, Magical Girls are real. The little creature, Kyubey, tells the two girls that they should join the ranks of the Magical Girls. They have vast potential for it.

It is in this concept of "vast potential" that we see our first metaphor for the lives of many young girls.  When a girl is born, she has potential, but for many years, this related only to herself. As girls age, however, their selves and their potential becomes less about them and more about how it can become a social asset. As girls begin to mature, their sense of objectification grows. People look at them in terms of what can be gained from them.

One of the side themes of Madoka is the fashion of the Lolita subculture.  All of our magical girls transform into Loli warriors, Madoka herself being the most definitive of this. And yes, Loli very much is in fashion right now and that shapes how the anime will look. But on the other hand, the style of dress and other elements of how the girls look (pigtails and ribbons, knee socks, and various very little girl elements combined with the clear signs of secondary sexual characteristics) blurs the girls out of reality and more into what Nobokov says in the above quote.  Not human.

What Nobokov is actually saying, when you strip out all the pseudo defiance and poetic license, is that between the ages of nine and fourteen, some girls begin to sexually mature, but retain the innocence of being children. I don't mean virginity here . . .though that is certainly part of it.  I refer more to their belief that life can be good, that romance can be pure and perfect.  They're not jaded. They're not demanding.

In short, they're beautiful, ignorant, and pliable . . . with vast potential to be used.  Kyubey wishes for the girls to make a contract with it. The contract will be devastating to them, but that isn't as important Kyubey, who sees the girls only as a means to an end. They are tools, supplies. It knows they will suffer, but their suffering is an important aspect in what it needs.

In the lives of many teenaged girls, this same kind of message is driven home. "You have vast potential . . . to be the status symbol for someone." "You have vast potential . .  . to tend to someone else's sexual needs." "You have vast potential . .. . to be a wife/mother/caretaker."  The message that girls often receive is about how they can use their talents, gifts, intelligence, and beauty to tend to others. Quite often when they seem determined to use their potential for themselves, they are sent the message that this is selfish and wrong. Vast potential . . . for the sake of everyone else.

These Precious Things: Part One

THESE PRECIOUS THINGS

A Feminist Critique of the Magical Girl Archetype as Seen in 

Puella Magi Madoka Magica 

He said you're really an ugly girl

But I like the way you play

And I died

But I thanked him.
Can you believe that?

~Tori Amos, These Precious Things

If you wish to watch the series, it can be found here on Crunchyroll.  Secondly, this is an analysis of the first season of the anime series, based on subtitles. I understand that this means it is being translated and some word meanings may change, so it is best to view this as a critique from my understanding of the story. That should go without saying, but sometimes people need to be reminded. Also, spoilers. If you don't like spoilers, do not continue reading.


Introduction

When I first read about the magical girl series Puella Magi Madoka Magica, the author talked about how horrible it was. Not in terms of it being a bad series, but because it was so violent and emotionally horrible to the girls involved. It sounded ghastly. But as I read through the comments from others, I noticed a lot of them were defending the series and saying it was the best magical girl anime they had ever watched. It transcended the genre and brought a deeper perspective to it. I was curious, so I watched.

Understand, this is kind of rare for me. I usually avoid anything in the Magical Girl genre.  More often than not, I found the story lines to be predictable, overly emotional, and all the big transformation scenes got on my nerves.  There was only so many times you could handle watching Usagi turn into Sailor Moon.  I was also usually kind of offended because these stories were aimed at girls, but lacked a lot of substance. Of course, I knew there were exceptions to this. I just never found any to be to my taste.

Part of the problem is that Magical Girl has its roots in the American series Bewitched.  If I don't think about it too much, I love the show.  However, Bewitched is about a stunningly beautiful immortal with practically infinite magical powers . . . who willingly submits to an ugly, mediocre human male so she can be married and live a "normal life."  Which, yeah, that kind of sucks.

In most Magical Girl stories, the heroine and her usually color coded friends have  a lot of power that they use to serve and protect the world. More often than not, they also have a fiction of a normal human life, usually as a student in some marginally fetished uniform.  Their voices are very high pitched, they tend to be dramatic and emotional, and everything has a slightly dreamy quality to it. There is also quite often some cute animal that will make a really kickass plushy when sold.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica has all of these characteristics. Every single one of them. However, in the same way that a character can be a Mary Sue but still deeply readable and wonderful, a Magical Girl show can have all of the typical and annoying qualities of the genre and still be magnificent. This show is one of those rare exceptions that IS magnificent.

In twelve half hour episodes, the show takes Magical Girl, establishes it, turns it on its head, and begins to ask profound existential questions. It touches on the nature of heroism, of sacrifice, and on the idea of how these relate to the greater good and advancement of the universe. Kyubey, who serves as both plushy and Mephistopheles, at one point tells Madoka, "All the tears shed throughout history have laid the foundation for the life you have now."  The central themes of the story are both the need for pain and suffering, for sacrifice, in order for reality to continue . . . and also the pointlessness of it.


What strikes me as most profound about Madoka is how, in many ways, it is an apt metaphor for the lives of most girls. The cycle of potential, temptation, seduction, transformation, duty, destruction, and breakdown that is experienced in the cycle of the Madoka mode of magical girl is very much what many girls go through during their teen years. It is a conversation about how young females often    end up destroyed in an attempt to both save and be accepted by a world that is both culpable and insistent on their destruction.

The Bridge

Above is the opening theme to Ginger Snaps.  It's one of my favorite movie themes,  for various reasons.

The intro does so many things.  Of course, you get your practical elements. You know the title, who stars, all the other credit bits.  They happen as we slide through the various vignettes the girls create.

But that is just the practical bit.  There is a whole level of art happening as well. For instance, to use the writer cliche, it shows you a story without having to come out and tell you the story.  Through just this intro, you gain so much background on the girls. You know that Ginger and Bridget are creative, morbid, the best of friends, and rather frightening.

More importantly, the theme lures you into the story, altering your mindset to accept what is to follow.  Theme songs are transitions for the mind.  Bridges. They're like little ferry men that transport you from one idea of reality to the next.

One of the things they can do is drug the hell out of you. Or at least it feels that way.  When I was in high school, one show's opening song was as seductive and captivating as they come. David Lynch, who maybe should have never been allowed to expose his special brand of weird to the general public, clearly found some incubus with a talent for music and hired them to set this thing up.  I think just watching the opening to Twin Peaks sucks in a little of your soul. Certainly, however, it's a case of being sucked in a good way.

Another theme that feels very druglike to me is the theme to House.  What I love about this theme is that it isn't right at the beginning.  The show always starts out with the patient in question, moving from that point in their lives where they think they are okay to the sudden BAM! of puzzling illness. Then the theme song starts.

The House theme is sampled from the song "Teardrop" by Massive Attack. Elizabeth Fraser, of aforementioned Cocteau Twins fame, does vocals on it.  Not that you hear those on the House theme, but it's just a nice tidbit to know for trivia at some point. I think what gets to me the most about this song is the stark piano that shines through in the midst of everything else.  It's a beautiful contrast because so much of the rest of the music is fairly heavily electric in sound.  The piano grounds the piece, as in some odd way, despite his general insanity, House's brilliance grounds the show.

I watch a lot of anime and have discovered over the years that intro songs can either break the story or truly enhance it.  There is even more of a bridge happening with anime.  You're going from your world into whatever weird culture the creator has made for you. One that has always stood out to me was the theme for my favorite anime Record of Lodoss War.  This is the opening for the second series. I love it muchly.

There are days when I'll just play this clip over and over again, falling back into the whole feel of the anime.  I love the part when she turns her head and the petals blow. Perfection. 

As I said, anime themes can either be wonderful or just completely awful and of no relevance whatsoever. Naruto runs the gambit when it comes to themes.  Sometimes they are purely awful. However, one of them stands out in my mind as completely setting the tone for what the show is about.

Naruto switches theme songs with every story arc, often with success, sometimes, without.  The one I love the most is the one below. This was the first theme to the second series.  The storyline had been put on hold while the writer was producing more of the manga. For a long, long time, the cartoon had been filler episodes. Everyone was sick of them. We needed the series to restart in a big way. It did.

Oh yes. Very, very successful.

So tell me, what are some of your favorite opening themes for shows? And why?