General Anime/Manga Discussion 14: Second Cour

[Closet_Skeleton]

My question is, are there any other 'magical girl' deconstructions on par with PMMM?

No.

That's the literal answer to your question, but I doubt its helpful.

Ground Defence Force Mao-chan is a better deconstruction than Madoka, but comparing those series would be silly.

S3 is more of a military fiction, really. Military fiction for kids, granted, but still.

Nanoha was never for kids. Neither was Madoka Magica either of course, but Nanoha is insidious in how its not that obvious.

This is not the most precise representation of Nanoha. As a die-hard fan I feel compelled to provide more detail.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha (the original series) was the first magical girl show targeted entirely at adults, and can be considered the precursor to all serious magical girl anime

Not at all. Uta-Kata came out at exactly the same time and was much more adult themed (same audience though). It was only an OVA (the tv series had a younger demographic) but at least Pretty Sammy preceded them.

Sailor Moon is more serious than Nanoha. It doesn't have military organisations, but it has far more mature themes and plot details despite the younger demographic.

From what I've heard of it: Yuki Yuna is a Hero.

Some, myself included, feel like that took away from the story because of how they did it.

Yuki Yuna's ending destroyed the whole thing completely. Though from my opinion, there wasn't much of value in the rest of it either. Sadly I can't say why I hate it on this forum because it involves a certain 19th century US quack doctor.

Its also clumsy, melodramatic and has an idiot plot, so I can say that at least.

There were serious and introspective mecha shows before Evangelion.

Eva is serious and introspective on the topic of growing up, which is kind of what all mainline genre compliant mecha shows are about anyway.

While much of PMMM is playing with magical girl genre in general, in some parts, it's spoofing Nanoha specifically.

I doubt it. Nanoha is very generic.

Spoiler: if you mean

Show

that the inability to save Sayaka is the opposite of the 'beat em up to befriend them' in Nanoha then that's really a very standard thing in both Tokusatsu and the sub genre of magical girl we're talking about (which is really just gender swapped Tokusatsu). If you're a similar age to me and saw the original Power Rangers, the Green Ranger was basically that story line.

The witches in Madoka are really more a play on the 'civilian turned into monster' trope common in magical girl series and Tokusatsu which is barely present in Nanoha.

Having to convince an evil friend to change sides is very common and comes in two forms. Villains who start as villains and change sides and heroes who have a brief time as a villain. Sayaka is the latter subverted and Fate is the former played straight so while they're the same trope they're different versions of it.

The biggest similarity between Madoka and Nanoha within the genre is that they both have wish twisting, but the jewel seeds doing that in Nanoha is quickly minimised while its a major theme in Madoka.

The thing about magical girl shows is that ironic self-awareness is in itself a magical girl cliche, so its hard to actually spot at time when something is being a spoof or just toeing the line.

I've seen magical girl parodies where all the jokes were shared with legitimate magical girl series, but less funny.