AamuVircku
32244
612
29
I ain't even seen either of thee shows and I am still empathising
Jun 25, 2026 12:28 PM
AamuVircku
32244
612
29
I ain't even seen either of thee shows and I am still empathising
reineseele
That show shifted the genre so much & i loved it. That was a real mindf*ck.
JohnEdwa
being meguka is suffering
reineseele
Time Powers are a Curse of suffering. :)
keyblader1985
weilong
Badgerbadgerson3
That FUCKASS CAT!
FoamingToad
Excellent.
machmach
TheBluntSoldier
I mean she did basically become god sooo...
tsmckay
Becoming a god is no use if you've been traumatized into oblivion, and 99.99999%
of magical girls in Madoka do not get even that much, just traumatized into
insanity and monsterhood, then killed by other magical girls, your soul gem taken
by them so their trauma can be pushed off into it to delay their own insanity,
and when you're full, handed over to the local QB to be used as spaceship fuel.
ducksstaringatyou
I guess this comment section could be a good place to ask magical girl manga recomendations. Anyone have any? I have card captor sakura, sailor moon and madoka on my shelf :D
RibbonDye
Nanoha and Symphogear are some of my favorites. Nanoha is basically what if you gave Gundam style mega laser beams to a magical girl and she used it to beat the crap out of people and turn them into friends. The series progresses as she grows up and then eventually follows her kid.
RibbonDye
And Symphogear is basically what if Magical Girls were also forced to sing for their power. Every fight is a musical and usually relevant towards their personal struggles or ideals.
RibbonDye
..I almost forgot to mention Nanoha and Symphogear have animes. Not sure if Symphogear has a manga, but regardless cause its a musical probably best experienced as a anime.
MuffinProof
Zalure17
Should’ve asked about Nanoha instead.
Leonon
But if you're a Nanoha style magical girl you have to learn MATH!
tsmckay
But they get to use calculators! Building-shatteringly zappy quasi-intelligent calculators.
It's only the really psycho ones like Nanoha who learn to do all of the math in their head, and just use their calculator as a spare battery.
m4a2000
Bunnycat is a dick.
rowzdowr
If you haven't seen Madoka, it's a legit masterpiece, and definitely earned it's reputation as Evangelion for Magical Girls. Might just be personal preference, but I think the best way to watch is by far the movies.
normalizebeingalone
Id settle for Tokyo Mew Mew
Redshadow09
Or Magical DoReMi
TheRealFireFrenzy
i'm holding out for Lyrical Nanoha
buddbilly
* Madoka Magica: Magic is transactional—you gain incredible power, but there’s an unavoidable price.
* Sailor Moon: Magic is heroic—it’s a gift and a responsibility, with the focus on teamwork and hope rather than sacrifice.
keyblader1985
If it's like Minky Momo, it's better to be IN that universe than outside of it
regions200
I was thinking more along the lines of Mahou Shoujo Elena.....
johnathanrossshoulddie
Just go into Madoka blind you will love it if you have ever seen any kind of teenage superhero show and gone "I wish they would change up the formula"
hotaru251
Kyuubey did nothing wrong.
Girls fault for not asking questions first.
SirSage
I say this in a joking friendly banter way
raknor88
Amazing anime that I will always recommend to anyone that's never seen it before. But I'll never watch that again.
MrKNRJ
That show had the most cop-out ending I've ever seen in a show, "I wish everything was alright everywhere forever," that's it, that's how they solve the problem.
Tardis1217
Not forever. Watch Rebellion.
And like, they were building to it the entire time. Kubey kept mentioning how Madoka had a curious amount of power. And the REASON she did is because of all the time travel shenanigans that Homura got up to. Homura's obsession gave Madoka the power. And because Madoka was pure of heart, when she finally had the power to pull off a wish of that magnitude, she used the power granted to her to fix everything. At the cost of her own existence. It was heroic and sad.
Yakeshinu
Yeah, but that "fix" had its own problems, and by the end the friggin cats had figured out that this wasn't the original system and were looking into what had changed.
WoTLert
Yeah so, that didn't last. At all.
2graves
You didn't pay enough attention
tsmckay
The fake 'good end' was only possible because the bad guys discovered that the main character was the ultimate infinite suffering sponge, and that 'good end' was technically only in her imagination. Unfortunately for them, the Yandere Time Traveller they'd already created ensured that subsequent seasons/movies/books/games would all be about how the latest good end went to hell without even a handbasket.
Z0op
Meh, they “fixed” Evangelion the same way with the fourth movie. The-most copout ending? Maybe, if it wasnt so damn common, theres gradations to how it can get
AtmaDarkwolf
its far from over. Is a few future planned seasons and multiple spin off movies ./ alternate realities have been released(which honestly had no better endings lol.. all just as horrific)
Mikeiller
I don't know... I've seen a few shows that ended with "oh, and everything you were watching over the past several seasons? None of that ever actually happened."
MrKNRJ
I guess I have 't seen those
thewiggins
ah, the dream season, when writers cease to give a crap
KsuviKhor
Not a show, but the ending to the old PS game Granstream Saga pissed me off sooooo bad for doing this. I sunk countless hours in to this game trying to save the world, but the world I was saving doesn’t really exist??? Fuck anyone who thinks this is a good storytelling trope.
ahorseelbowdeepinme
IYKYK
2graves
?
ahorseelbowdeepinme
Girl is superfan of magic girl trio. Magic cat asks girl if she wants to be magic girl too. Girl says yes. Cat makes her evil magic girl whose powers are bdsm based. Comedy and horny ensues
shadowmaster004
It's amazing how often those two things overlap.
Madalchemist2018
Another reaction
Zalure17
Halfwise
My wife and I love that show.
MuffinProof
Depends on which side you're on
ahorseelbowdeepinme
Mmm, you dont know what I'm into
MuffinProof
AutobotPrincess
Seconding this. One side is :D but the other is kinda D:
mrollings53
There are worse magical girl universes to be in.
FiveHeadedSnakeGod
Like what? Like, I'm not hugely familiar with magical girl shows, but it seems like it'd be hard to get much worse than Madoka Magica.
Zalure17
I certainly wouldn’t want to be in Yuki Yuna is a Hero
Radix865
If you exclude hentai there's Mahou Shoujo Site, I only read the very beginning but it starts with the mc trying to off herself because she was bullied and abused by her brother, and then accidentally murders her bullies with magic. It did kinda feel like it was trying too hard to be dark though, not my cup of tea so I didn't read past the first chapters...
LupusLilium
Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka would also be a pretty terrible MG universe to be in. Not sure if I'd say it's overall worse. Maybe as a human MGSO would be a worse place to live in compared to Madoka.
kahooki
Puni Puni Poemi maybe?
TrueLegateDamar
Magical Girl & Narco Wars where traumatized magical girls started a drug cartel and flooding the streets with their hyper destructive and addictive product in anger over being ignored by the public after saving the world at high cost.
FINNSTAR7
The only other ones that I would probably consider worse is Magical Girl Site. Wouldn't really recommend though, it's kinda just shock value and edgy for the sake of being edgy.
chaoskingzero
Madoka is definitely one of the worst
But there are plenty of others that push the envelope that have been mentioned
The Nanoha series can get quite brutal at times, Vivid Strike in particular shows how bad things can be for kids on super advanced magical worlds
MySushi
Maho shoujo is an entire sub-genre of anime, so there must be several. As someone who has never watched a single Madoka Magica episode, I don't know just how bad it is, but there are definitely worse things than popular streaming platform anime and some no longer permitted to be distributed publicly anywhere
Myoron
Watch Madoka, then try again.
tsmckay
No, there really aren't. Freakin' Magical Girl Ai is not as bad as Madoka from the perspective of the magical girls, and it's like, 90% tentacle porn and over half of the protagonists die horribly or are mindless wrecks at the end. Or rather, _ONLY_ half of the protagonists die horribly and/or are mindless wrecks. Still better than Madoka.
YooSirNaim
"Magical girl raising project" comes to mind. People, mostly kids, dragged into a killing game just because they wanted to make the world a better place. Being in that universe, even as a non-magical girl, would suck.
chaoskingzero
Beat me to it...
GoldenSun3DS
That's Gushing Over Magical Girls (although I haven't seen it).
IMPICKLERICK
https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1Nmw3Zm9ueWVicGZwZHM1c3YwY2F1aXNjbHZ4Z2I3N3o3NWEzOG1kNCZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/qAxycFUG0RdKg/200w.webp
Kugartun
Lol magical girl Elena comes to mind
keyblader1985
They said worse
IMPICKLERICK
https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1YWo0a2luNzU0ajU4amhsejN0MnJ1MnhkOHh2Zm0wOXlxbXB3NTdibyZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/ew3JMeLr9uAa4/200w.webp
SqueezitTheClown
They said worse
qtRaven
kritz0
LordOfDog
Nevermore
qtRaven
Glad you got it.
maskedrabbit
Nice.
zigbigidorlu
poppinfresh1988
Nice.
Kotarisu
How about like Magical Girl Pretty Sami?
Oatmealman1
Og tenchi muyo was better than all the lame spinoffs
FoamingToad
Does Nurse Witch Komugi (2002) or Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokura-chan count?
Oatmealman1
No, only og tenchi muyo
RalphH
More a fan of the ova (and directly connected series) but yes.
MarisaTomei
Isekai No Seikishi is probably my favorite of all time.
RalphH
i only knew the english name until recently and was first surprised and then not surprised at it being an isekai ;)
FoamingToad
Think I have it but bookmarked just in case.
kahooki
Boy do I miss the Tenchi Universe...
kubi
I hate how little the LNs have been translated officially, 3.
Squaba13
I had a major crush on Kiyone, no clue why.
Illithidbane
Ryoko is the OG waifu. Accept no substitutes.
Sturdycrotch
1000%. Her and Mihoshi
Wasnbo
I remember crushing hard on Washu when I was a kid. Brilliant and sassy, and more mature than the others in Tenchi's harem.
XuncuTheTiger
Sasami for me, as I was about the age I thought she was supposed to be (ignoring the alien biology of some thousand years or whatever). Ayeka was just a complete bitch, Mihoshi was tittylicious (but too stupid for my tastes), n Ryoko just never quite clicked for me, probably because she could be too mean sometimes.
samwyze
Kinda hard to when she keeps staring at me while shaking her fist.
TheFastpaws
My brother brought Tenchi into the house before it hit Cartoon Network by way of the dvd. It was a joy to watch. It is odd though despite it being so big back then? I next to never see any of it get brought up today.
katzohki
My first exposure was the Tenchi movie (Tenchi Muyo in Love iirc) out of context on the SciFi channel
kingersgambit
El Hazard was even better
WeirdoIIC
"He looks even more like the Princess with the cat on him."
Woogyface
my stupid friend doesn't get it. what a weirdo
BlueDsc
A non spoilery explanation.
Madoka Magica is a Magical Girl series that takes many of those "Hmm, this would be kinda fucked up IRL" thoughts about Magical Girls and absolutely runs with them.
EverNotRelevant
Sailor Moon is a story of romance and friendship. Madoka Magica is horror.
tsmckay
Major spoilers for the actual problems of being a Madoka-style magical girl:
They are all undead abominations, whose phylacteries are steadily corrupting, and who can only stave off insanity and turning into a monster by killing other magical girls who've already fallen, stealing their phylacteries, and pushing their corruption into those stolen gems. Eventually, they WILL fall to corruption, turn into a monster, and be killed by a subsequent magical girl.
SoftKleenex
Getting bokurano vibes from that
tsmckay
Part 2, because that wasn't suffering enough:
They get a "wish" in exchange for their soul and (temporary) service, and the wish is always granted in a monkey paw style. No, you can't get around that by clever wording, they do it deliberately. The wish-granters/animal mascots do it that way on purpose to maximise suffering, because they use it as fuel. They WANT you to suffer. They WANT you to fall to corruption and become a monster for their next victim to kill.
whereismymind86
that's intense
shano510
https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1MGMzYjd5M3dkc2gzamRubjM4M2JwZHJ2dmRxb2pmc2xxZnN4ejVnYSZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/PS0FoQiBZFNHs5PleY/200w.webp
ButtscratchMcPherson
Wouldn't it be easier to stop making magical girls?
tsmckay
No, the magical girl suffering is the power source for the actual bad guys (who pretend to be cute animal mascots), and they wouldn't be able to fuel their spaceships without it. the suffering is the point.
ButtscratchMcPherson
I can't help but feel that mining dilithium crystals or traveling through the Warp would be easier.
yugioh2004714365
I dont think they were powering spaceships, but trying to keep the heatvdeath of the universe at bay. Something something when the magical girl becomes corrupted they give more energy then they spend.
CyberHexx
I don't have a stupid friend. But I don't get it. Explain please.
zekybomb
So you know how Animorphs took the whole "wouldn't it be cool to transform into an animal" tope and then heaped on PTSD and the horrors of galactic war. Its that, but magical girls
CyberHexx
Sounds like a good watch...
Tardis1217
It's genuinely one of the best Animes I've ever watched. Especially if you have a soft spot for the Magical Girl trope. It totally subverts it in the most tragic way.
FoamingToad
As a 50+ year old guy with 200+ amime on my vid server, it's in the top 10. Gloriously put together, has a subversive ending and it well worth the 4-5 hours of anyone's time to give the anime a viewing. That the last episode was put back a coupe of weeks due to the fukushima disaster was the icing on the cake.
waifusouls
So, spoilers for the show, obviously.
Madoka Magica is sort of a subversion of the usual magical girl tropes. It's a psychological horror where kids get duped by an apathetic alien using human emotion as a power source and get fucked up in the process. So the character in the comic realizes that instead of meeting cool people and fighting monsters to save the world, she's going to either die horribly or burn out and turn into a monster.
DrBlackJack
Well, it's been a while, but if I remember correctly
SPOILERS
The magical girls are fighting monsters bent on world destruction like usual. Of corse some of the girls die, so you think that's where the series is dark, but then it's revealed that the monsters they're fighting are previous magical girls that fell after pushing themselves to greater extremes than they could handle. This has created a vicious cycle where the harder they fight, the more powerful the monster they create is, forcing
FoamingToad
Yeah, it's sort of an anti-Faust where no-one gets out unchanged. Not difficult to decipher, but it's a rollercoaster.
AtmaDarkwolf
the point was/is that ALL magical girls eventually become witches or they die. (Also they give up their actual bodies to fight/become magical girls) - so there is no way they could ever hope to win, and just eventual down-spiral into apocalypse was the 'best result' (At least till events of the series) cuz eventually there would ONLY be witches bent on total world destruction.
TalkingSnake
Don't the kids kinda sell their soul for the power too?
DrBlackJack
Only in the sense that they'll inevitably die horrible or become monsters, but they don't know that going in because
MORE SPOILERS
The cute little cat advisors are hiding those facts from the girls they "chose" because they're really the bad guys, sacrificing rhe girl's lives and souls to create the ultimate world ending monster. Though I forgot their reason for doing so... it's been like a decade or more since I watched it, so my memory is fuzzy.
Woogyface
thanks for the explaination. that really dark D: i'll, uh, forwad it to my friend
ModestButtstallion
They feed off the anguish. The energy they release as their hope turns to despair right before they change. The monsters are just a convenient dead battery to them.
weilong
The beings that harness the emotional energy of the girls when they transform to witches are using it fight the heat death of the universe.
GlowingAntlers
Sounds very similar to Claymore.
abc987
I can ensure you the animation style is very different. Madoka has very cutesy pastel colour world to make the story even more effed up
FoamingToad
Animation/art style was an absolute gut punch. Very well done.
DrBlackJack
the next girl to fight even harder and thus create and even more powerful monster when they fall. The implication being that eventually this will result in a monster so powerful no magical girl can defeat it, and it will succeed in destroying the world.
I forgot how it ended. Maybe I should give it another watch...
2graves
The ending is pretty solid. Think there's a movie coming out this year?
Yakeshinu
Yup. The 4th one should be released at the end of August.
bridgebrain
It ends with the reveal that the most powerful monster has already been created, and as it was ending the world one of the other girls wished to redo everything, so she became a time looper, and we're watching a hundred or so loops in. The world ends every time, except this time where the most powerful monster and the most powerful wish cancel each other out and just straight up rewrite the universe. And then theres a movie which recontextualizes everything again. Madoka was a WILD series
GamiCross
...OH. So magical girl Pacific Rim!
JustSomePersonThere
Thx for spoiling smashy robots movie! (Jk)
BackToTheOriginalUsername
lostinthoughts
Thank you for your explanation, that made me really interested in the series. I heard about it, but never looked into it
LenneSamunai
Be warned tho. It's not just fighting. It's also alot about character development, story and a TON of emotions. https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1eGlmbWpsbWV3b3RtNWJ1anc5a3ljY2ptY3NoMnQzZW9ubmh3cWp1dCZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/26gR1p0Ip6YbzcwFy/200w.webp
TheFastpaws
I kinda want to watch it now.
Valatros
I'd say go in with plans to watch three episodes. If the climax on the third doesn't have ya hooked, then the rest won't either. I went into it completely blind wondering wtf my friend was making me watch magical girl stuff for and it was definitely a ride.
AnonsAndMinions
Appreciate the type up, and, obviously What the Fuck. That super sucks. Like, interesting premise, but damn.
bridgebrain
Yeah, it was so good but also grimdark that it straight up broke the entire genre. Before, it was cute girls in cute outfits doing cute fighty things to save the world with the power of friendship, and there hasn't been another of those worthwhile since, while the following dark replacements are just trauma porn.
Madalchemist2018
The other details are the "monsters" they're fighting are called witches. When the cute animal (alien intelligence) that gives them their powers reveals that's what witches are it just casually says something along the lines of you're called magical girls cause you're young witches.
The aliens are trying to prevent the heat death of the universe & have discovered that adolescent human girls emotions, especially suffering, produce more energy then they consume. So it's also f'd up matrix
AnonsAndMinions
Woooooow. Even more fucked, haha.
Freakscar
Not just the premise. The whole presentation is basically a false flag operation - because as fucked up as Madoks actually is, it still LOOKS the part of a regular run-of-the-mill "cute magical girls do cute magical girl stuff" - from the outside looking in.
It's basically Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (see below: Cute Slice of Life packaging, containing gruesome torture horror), but Magical Girls.
DJTrickyM
I need a list of top tier horror/gory anime, something I keep intending to get to and never end up doing
delahunt
You forgot the part where this is done intentionally because the emotional energy being released by the magic girls as they fight, despair, and then fall into becoming witches is an energy source being harvested by whomever sent the cat.
So all the pain and suffering is literally because some eldritch beings decided to make earth into a power plant for themselves.
Tardis1217
THAT'S JUST SLAVERY WITH EXTRA STEPS!
But yeah, delightfully effed up premise. And how Kubey is just like "we don't understand why you're mad. We gave you exactly what you asked for". Soooo deeply sinister
LupusLilium
Magical Girl Raising Project was also pretty fucked up.
LiminallyInsane
Yup. And since we're already in spoiler town...
The final solution is a wish to prevent Magical Girls from ever becoming Witches, which creates a new universe where she functions as a god and saves them from their own grief.