majestic

At the risk of answering yet another rhetorical question - yes, indeed, that is the most commonly accepted "rule" for the Clark Kenting of the Sailor Moon 90ies anime. The spell is only truly broken once you see the actual transformation. Some muggles (lol) are implied to figure it out based on behaviour or names at times, but that's about it.

No, not really, I got excited for a bit. Look at that. 12 episodes in and I'm already overanalyzing. That took Sailor Moon almost a full season (in all fairness, the original set of episodes weren't at all designed to be analyzed except for a somewhat perfunctory criticism of the commercialization and superficiality of teenage girls in a modern capitalist society - that was definitely there, but not really the focus... I think).

Watched Steven Universe up until (and including) E01S12 - Giant Woman. Question for @Bartimaeus

I see, then I might look into some more of this work. And yes, it is only 12 episodes, has a weird Gainax ending (the anime version of a David Lynch ending, from Neon Genesis Evangelion in case you don't know, which was made by Studio Gainax), so you don't lose a lot of time. Not going to lie, there's every chance you're not going to like it, but it was also not really meant to be liked, I think. I also don't think I will ever watch it again. Much like Grave of the Fireflies (not meant as a comparison, the two obviously have nothing in common except evoking a similar sense of despair). Caveat: Haven't seen Berserk (any of it). The animation in this show is going to do all sorts of things to you, and all of them intentional. The characters didn't leave me with the same feeling of watching reality bending, shape shifting Reapers that want consume my face like the ones in Crystal did though. They, on the other hand, were mostly designed to be properly cute for maximum contrast. Take a look at Homura Akemi: If that doesn't give you any vibes, then the characters at least will not. Some sequences do defenitely come across as simply wrong (parts of the opening sequence of the first episode, a dream by Madoka, does very much give you uncanny valley vibes in the way everything is moving in just the slightliest of wrong ways), but that's intentional. It's hard to describe. The dreamlike, surrealist hellscapes the battles take place in are all sorts of wrong. Most of all because they're in super flat 2D that still looks like 3D. Like a horror version of Yoshi's Island 2 on the SNES. The other question is... less hard to describe, but harder to answer. The scope of this series is different, and so is the aim. The one thing a lot of it is based on, the friendship between Sayaka and Madoka, is properly shown on screen. It takes up a lot of screentime, and the examination of the themes and topics of the anime happen directly from the point of view of that friendship. The motivations of Homura are a different beast, but they do get enough development time. It could have been more, but that would perhaps have distraced from the impact they have (this also works with a lot of hindsight after the reveal episode near the end happend, which casts a different light on what happens in the earlier episodes). This doesn't tell an epic tale of good vs. evil. It is a minor motivation for some of the characters at best. This is even reflected in the picture of the "main" cast, beacuse Kyoko and Mami are side characters at best in terms of the screen time they get. But even those get more motivation and character development than say a first season Minako in Sailor Moon Crystal. There are a few other characters I haven't talked about. Madoka's family, the third friend that always hangs out with Madoka and Sayaka, and the teacher of the class. It's not that those don't matter, but they're also really not necessary (Madoka's mother takes the typical male role though, in an inversion - her dad seems to stay at home and cook while it's her mother that goes to work and comes home drunk to cope with the realities of modern worklife). The short run time isn't problematic in this one precisely because the scope is limited. Events don't proceed at a breakneck pace. It takes Sayaka and Madoka, arguably the actual main cast outside of Kyubey half and almost the entire run respectively to decide what they want to do. Events don't simply ask you to care for them, you do by the time they happen, and none of the girls simply randomly claim their strong bonds of friendship will prevail over whatever threat there is even though you've seen nothing of it on the screen. See? Satisfied? Probably not. Hard to answer, as I said. I would argue that 12 episodes are enough for the story it does tell. They were very much not for Crystal (or the manga). @KaineParker, @Bartimaeus, @InsaneCommander lookie, a new thread!

Final thoughts on Puella Magi Madoka Magica the anime (haven't seen any of the films yet). Quick note: I think it is worth watching if you enjoyed at least one other magical girl anime. Kawaii! From left to right, Sayaka, Homura, Madoka (with Kyubey), Mami, Kyoko Well, doesn't the cast look cute? Things to keep in mind. I'll mark spoilers. The show itself consists of only 12 episodes, many of which have interesting moments and some that have plot twists. Look up the spoilers at your own peril if you maybe want to watch it. Should be available on Netflix in the US from what I've read. To quote myself, from earlier: [Madoka Magica] follows the tale of Madoka and Sayaka, two best friends from school. Having a successful carreer mother but no special talents of her own, Madoka is plagued by feelings of inadequacy, while Sayaka is secretly in love with a hopeful young musician who suffered a tragic accident that will, so the doctors say, render him forever unable to perform. Their luck seems to change when a disturbingly cute little creature offers them the deal of a lifetime: He will grant them a wish, in exchange for signing a pact, becoming mahō shōjo (literally magical girls) who fight witches secretly threatening the world. Animation Is a mixture of 2D and 3D CGI, sometimes used to extremely disturbing ends. As cute as the characters are, outside of the fighting sequences, the world, the artstyle and the atmosphere of this show are extremely somber and... heavy. There is a weight to this world that is absolutely at odds with how adorable everything else looks. This stark contrast is very much deliberate. Soundtrack Is actually fantastic. Granted, you might not enjoy the music based on its genre, but it fits and underscores the scenes it is in perfectly - which is the point of a soundtrack anyway, no? Unlike say in Sailor Moon Crystal, where the music isn't so bad as much as it is overused and extremely distracting when it happens. Plot Oh boy. Where to start. You have a really cute little animal that offers two girls a wish in exchange for their help in fighting evil. At roughly the same time, a transfer student named Homura shows up in Madoka's and Sayaka's class. Dark haired and a ominous, she immediately warns Madoka to stay the way she is, if she truly loves her friends and family. And that is really all we can talk about without going into spoiler territory. TL;DR, or: I don't want to be spoiled: It's worth a watch for the meta commentary on the genre alone. To close up, when watching, keep Homura's words in mind:

Hm. I've seen most of his TV animes (Heidi, Perrine, Dog of Flanders) and Grave of the Fireflies. He seems to have a faible for depressing entertainment. Is his other work any different? That's mostly because it is. You're probably missing the five seasons of Ranma 1/2 that came before the film (plus the original 18 episodes of the first attempt to make an anime adaptation). To use trope parlance, Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a Magical Girl genre Deconstructor Fleet. Spoiler alert:

Fair word of warning [spoiler redacted] - suffice it to say you have expressed a certain dislike for a plot point that comes up. Still, it's just 12 episodes anyway. And it's really... good. The ending would also make Studio Gainax proud. But that's a whole different deal.

Why? Times like these I hate my job. That feeling will pass and in a couple of weeks I will look back at this fondly, but for now it's the software engineers version of the thousand yard stare for me.

Image from the first episode: Compared to Pegasus this thing plays fair though. Maybe not with the girls, but with us viewers.

Am I still asleep and this is some feverish dream, or is this thread becoming even dumbererer than usual? It has to be satire at this point. Looks like Dr. Horrible's right:

Well, there is a PSP game, so it is possible you maye have come across something official, not a mod. Anyway, I stumbled upon this while I was looking for something quick to watch, a movie or a really short series that fits in between what I fear will be an upcoming hellish workload after an interesting launch tomorrow. The original anime has 12 episode, and it often comes up as anime that would not exist had Sailor Moon not been a success, so I got curious and kind of cheated on JoJo's and Steven Universe. It follows the tale of Madoka and Sayaka, two best friends from school. Having a successful carreer mother but no special talents of her own, Madoka is plagued by feelings of inadequacy, while Sayaka is secretly in love with a hopeful young musician who suffered a tragic accident that will, so the doctors say, render him forever unable to perform. Their luck seems to change when a disturbingly cute little creature offers them the deal of a lifetime: He will grant them a wish, in exchange for signing a pact, becoming mahō shōjo (literally magical girls) who fight witches secretly threatening the world. It does have an issue with explaining a plot element that needed no real explanation, and it is ridiculous enough to be immersion breaking for a moment, but otherwise it's great (it might not even bother you too much). The animation would be better without CGI, but that's almost always the case for modern anime, at least it is used to good effect here. The witches live and work their magic in colorful surrealist hellscapes that could have come straight from Joel Veitch's earlier work (see Frightend Boy, for instance). Overall it looks great and the soundtrack is fantastic. The spoiler is just added for effect. It doesn't spoil anything you wouldn't see immediately.

Has anyone of you seen (or read) Puella Magi Madoka Magica?

Fixed that for you in the spirit of the thread!

This is worse than I thought. The testing was supposed to last until CW 11. We'll be launching production early this week, or so I've been told. In other words, I'm off to take a nap and prepare for an all nighter. It's not like I pulled one yesterday, what could possibly go wrong?

Managed to get Jojo's Bizarre Adventure up to episode 7. I'm beginning to like this. Still not sure about Speedwagon's constant monologuing, but it seems to have picked up some pace now. By the looks of it the Phantom Blood part should be over soon. At least the little blurbs I accidentially looked because Netflix has them in the episode overview suggest that episode 10 is set some 70 years into the future (of the setting, anyway). The muscle dude look I don't really care about, one way or the other. The show's art direction did take some getting used to at first, I'll admit. I kind of had to force myself to watch the second episode. Still, not going to say it's growing on me, but it's okay now.

It might really be better to not take things in strides here. Time did dull the edge of SuperS for me when I first saw it. It might for you too. Have to admit that I'm curious what you think of Sailor Stars. I really hope SuperS isn't going to stop your from watching the final season. edit: look at that, we made the anime topic the only "hot" topic on the WOT board. Not bad. Huh, that might make you plow through Sailor Moon S even faster. It's practically the only season where the plot actually does become... if not interesting, then at least mildly making you want to see more of it.

Yeah, okay. There is a minor chance that the other two people (Lexx and Maedhros) who have posted in here might go an check Sailor Moon out. I stand corrected.

It indeed is. I have the nagging feeling that it was done so conveniently only for the shock value of Chibi-Usa making Mamoru her, ahem, let's call it lover, in the Black Moon arc, rather than to try and make something meaningful out of it (and Usagi proves that she's a complete numbwit when she accuses Mamoru of wanting Chibi-Usa because he cares about her and she's a girl, Jesus Sailor Moon Crystal Usagi, Jesus H. Christ...). The 90ies show tried by taking the really creepy parts out and making an insecure, emotionally destabilized Usagi have some conflict with her over Mamoru's affection. It worked some of the time, but they eventually found their footing - only to throw it all away in SuperS, but I refuse to see SuperS as canon. So there. At any rate, I now have a little more understanding or respect* if you will for that breakup between them in R. It feels forced, has a really silly reason, but it's also there to make the conflicts between Chibi-Usa and Usagi look less like a one-sided crapfest on Usagi's part that makes her really unlikable. *In a detached, more rational way. Emotionally that scene just wrecked me the first time, forced or not. It still hurt the second time around. Can't help it. From what the wikis tell me that might have been an issue with Sailor Moon Crystal. It was apparently a single writer that came up with the episodes. While that really can lead to a more connected feeling between the episodes, you're right that a complete lack of collaboration can indeed have negative effects as well. Especially when you're adapting sub-par source material with the intention of staying mostly true to it. The Dream arc movie adaptation apparently has a new writer at the helm. That might help. I'm being too optimistic here again, I guess. Good day, sir! Good day! No, in all seriousness, I can't sit here and tell you that seasons two or three will change your experience. The show becomes really, really good in the second to the fourth season, but it never really stops having these drops in quality every now and then, especially with the conspiracy storyline becoming a complete Kudzu plot. Season three is probably where it is really at. This is X-Files at the top of its game. The question is though, without the development of the earlier episodes, how much would someone be invested in watching the two characters go about their normal spiel? Hmmm.

Whelp, you're blowing through episodes at a record pace here. And yes, it gets worse. Usagi isn't going to be just hilarious and a loveable dum-dum after S, but really annoyingly childish. It's infuriating. Oh, and we've all seen S here, so you can kind of stop talking about it in spoilers. That was mostly done because Bartimaeus was ahead of KP, and KP was ahead of you. You're good until you hit SuperS. If you keep up that pace it'll be a photo finish between you and KP. Heh.

40 minutes to midnight, and I'm sitting here pushing some code for an unplanned quick release necessitated by one of our branches and a customer simply starting with a new business process that we discussed where I asked them for a week's notice to set everything up. I mean technically they gave me a week. Like "hey we started last week and this doesn't really work, what's the deal?"

Little bobby tables, we call him. hehe.

I don't know if you've read the very engaging stories we've swapped about school time in this thread, but I have a little anecdote to share. A friend of mine who I met at the school I went to repeated a year twice, which means he was in the course for 7 years instead of 5. This is also the maximum amount of retries you get, more than twice and you're failed out of school altogether. For the rest of this keep in mind that the school I was in, at the time, rejected 90% of the applicants, and 85% to 90% of those wash out. That friend was, for all intents and purposes, an Usagi (a really nice guy but not the brightest bulb, and we to this day have no idea how he managed to pass the applicaiton SAT), but at the same time he was an ingenious con artist. So where I got by simply because attending half the classes and putting in zero effort was enough for me to get passing grades, he got by on pure nerves, a hell of lot of effort put into cheating and simply talking teachers into giving him passing grades with some sob story he just cooked up, or flat out engaging them in conversation about anything but the question he was just asked so that they forgot about the topic and just gave him a passing grade. He was really charming and funny about it too. I remember he once gave a presentation in our history class. His topic was supposed to be the reasons for the mid 19th century unrests in Europe. He casually walked out, put on a single slide full of text and started reading the first paragraph out loud. Our history professor looked at him and went: "Did you even read the presentation you've copied? That paragraph was complete garbage." He just smiled confidently, and said: "Well then let's see if the next paragraph is any better, shall we?" That was such a funny situation it had the entire class in stiches, and the professor too, so she just said that he should go and look for a real presentation to copy and then redo it next time. For all intents and purposes he should have failed history, but he didn't. He put a little more effort into copying a presentation that was actually on topic later and got a passing grade out of it. Our school also runs a practice firm and a practice bank. We were supposed to spend two hours a week there, in years two and three (I think the current curriculum is either four hours a week in the second or third grade, not sure which one, but we were definitely the last class to do two hours for two years). Most of the time I just made sure to sit in the practice bank where I did all sorts of hilarious things (like making transactions disappear), and my teachers were happy enough to get me out of the regular practice firm because I kept being ridiculous. All the schools, including the one I went to, take this stuff really seriously. It's like serious business, you know, so nobody else really was into receiving bills that read payable in unmarked, non-sequential small denomination bank notes upon serviced rendered. I sure found it funny. To be honest, while it's admittedly a little childish, I still do. The guy that ran the practice bank, a real life banker with a side job as teacher, was more than happy to always have me sitting there because I easily got the workload done on my own and he could do whatever he did. Most of the time he was just gone. Guess he cooked up some money earning scheme or other, whatever bankers really do when they have free time, like getting high and posting confusing pro-fascist nonsense on the Obsidian forum. At least until the second semester of the third grade where the other teachers decided that other students also need to spend time doing practice banking. So, first time in the semester I showed up. We sabotaged the network before the class started so we couldn't really get any work done. For the rest of the semester, the guy I'm talking about, another friend of mine from my school days and myself went to practice field sales at the McDonalds next to the school for two hours. Every week. EVERY week. Wait, I need to mention some other detail now. Our student groups (called "class" here, which makes this a little confusing to talk about) at the time - this were the mid 90ies after all - had what was called a class registry. A small book where each teacher would note missing students, special circumstances or events and the topics of the classes prior to the lessons beginning. For the entire semester, the class registry would interestingly enough go missing for the two hours that we were supposed to be in the practice firm. Should the registry be unavailable, a provisional replacement must be used. In other words, just a piece of paper that the administrator of our "class" is supposed to copy into the proper registry. Since the practice firm offce rooms were on the other end of the school, and it took a couple of minutes to walk from one end to the other, nobody went back to look for the registry. It was always presumed to be forgotten in the classroom. It happens. The book usually stays in the classroom that you get assigned in the beginning of the year, unless your upcoming classes are taking place somewhere else (programming lessons always were in computer rooms, obviously, and the practice firm had its own offices). As luck would have it, the provisional register also had a tendency to disappear, right around the time when the real one was brought back from the McD's. Fast forward to the end of the year, we get our grades. The field sales force actually gets a passing grade, but just barely. Why? Well because we apparently always were present in the classes, but never stood out, neither negatively nor positively. Having never drawn attention in some way, the teachers presumed we did what was asked of us, but without applying ourselves or giving it any effort. The very definition of "passing" you see. Yep. Oh boy, some of the other guys in class who had received a failing grade but were always around and even spent some effort (but just couldn't hack it for some reason) were really mad. They went to complain, but nothing came of it. Heck, our administrative teacher, who was... nothing else but the P.E. guy (and someone who always skipped classes whenver he could, as he told us), even told them that they've just learned a valuable life lesson: Sometimes it is just better to cruise under the radar. Anyway, back to the story. I've told this one before, in a more compressed form, on the Interplay forum. The posters there took a somewhat dim view on cheaters and asked me how I can be okay with the guy having the same diploma that I have. The answer is really simple: He deserves it. Honestly, if you can fake it well enough to make it through a school that washes out what amounts to 99% of people that apply, then... dammit, that is some impressive bullsh*tting skill and should be properly honored. TL;DR: There's no reason Usagi couldn't have BS'ed her way through school. I've seen it happen in a much more competitive setting than a regular public junior high school. @KaineParker I sure will, but I'm not entirely certain how much free time I'll have in the upcoming weeks to sneak an episode or two of either JoJo's or Steven Universe in. I'm currently stuck in a business acceptance test that is about to finish, and unless the other parties involved find something that went wrong on their end it's going to be release time soon, and this one is not going to be pretty. In the show maybe. Manga Usagi becomes pregnant with Chibi-Usa at the age of 22, right around the time when the Crystal Palace is being built and she finally marries Mamoru. So that's some six years after the events of Stars.

Yes, that's pretty much what apparently happened. I've read that Toei wanted the show re-tooled/soft rebooted to recapture the tone of its earlier/earliest episodes, to stay relevant for new kids tuning in mostly. The show ran for three years at the time, so the old target audience that started watching became older and Toei thought it would be better to drop them and go back to find an entirely new audience. That worked so well that the last of the old writers and directors left over SuperS. Reading that they left over creative differences really just all but confirms the theory of studio interference. A strange juxtaposition to the manga, where the crazy in the earlier arcs and chapters was reined in by editors and Toei gave the showrunners more leeway to do their own thing (like the girls dying heroically in battle, rather than just keel over to transfer their energy to Usagi like they do in the manga), and the more time passed the crazier the source material was allowed to become and the tighter controlled the anime got. I put potentially spoilery things into the spoiler. It doesn't contain much, but anyway. Final question for today guys, did you think we'd be sitting here discussing the finer points of Usagi's character growth and how SuperS regresses her character in favor of having more childlike humor (childish at times even) when you saw her getting stuck in a giant tennis ball in episode 14?

Thanks, that validates my feeling about SuperS and that episode in particular perfectly. It's what I mean by shapeshifting aliens replaced all the characters, and/or the writers, because the writer of that episode had been on board since season one. It's even worse because earlier in the season, in the episode with the giant beach ball monster, Usagi isn't at all worried about the things she's going nuts over in the ninja one, even though she has much more reason to. Alternate dimensions don't bother me too much though. I guess I don't see it as invalidation of the "prime" universe. SG-1 had a version like that where a device called a quantum mirror was used to travel between alternate universes, and most of the episodes were either goofy fun or touching character explorations (and a way for otherwise dead characters to rake some of that sweet guest star cash in). It does have the bad aftertaste of being used as a deus ex machina-ish way to warn the prime universe that a major threat is incoming, but it's not like season one was really great anyway. Time travel, while I like it, is something best left out in your setting, unless it's a movie and is the only point. When it is good it's a nice exploration of whatever issue you want to highlight, when it's bad you get Star Trek: Enterprise's temporal cold war situation. So either use it lightly, or just go all out goofy with it, like in Doctor Who. It's okay in Sailor Moon, but not really good. And lastly, @Bartimaeus, that's some tough crap, but I'm glad that you found a way to make it somewhat workable. While I can't even begin to imagine losing control of my hands, I can see first hand how frightening that is. I mentioned it in one of the other threads before, my mother has Parkinson's, and it mostly affects her right hand. It's heartbreaking enough to see, can't imagine how terrible that must be to experience when things that used to be a matter of course in your life suddenly start to become problematic or impossible. Not that it helps you any, but I can relate to the problems with falling asleep. They're not caused by physical pain in my case, but they've always been there. My focus on entertainment waves back and forth. There are times like now where almost all my free time is spent on watching TV or films, then there are times where all I do is play games, and times where all I do is read books. It's never really a mix though, and a focus period can go for years at a time. Interestingly enough reading fiction for entertainment is the newest of these. It wasn't until I was in my late teens and early 20ies that I started to do that (did read a lot of non-fiction though).