Puella Magi Madoka Magica Review (No Spoilers)

Puella Magi Madoka Magica or otherwise known as Magical Girl Madoka Magica is a magical girl anime that will make you feel as if you are about to see a silly show about a happy go lucky girl’s life… and you would be wrong. The look of the main character Madoka is different to most of the other characters in the show. She looks innocent and happy and to top it all off she finds a creature that looks like an adorable cat, and the cat talks! If you want a cute show then you cannot go wrong, right? WRONG!

This show is dark and full of twists. Characters are not what they seem and though friendship is important to the main plot of the show, it is not the way you would think. There are characters that you think you can trust or that you should hate that turn out not to be what they seemed to be at the start. The idea is that a girl has to become a magical girl to fight witches and save those tortured by them. They get their powers by asking the cat for a wish which most of the time is granted but then they cannot go back to their previous lives.

There is of course a lot more to the show and the plot, but telling you more than that would risk going into massive spoilers. We will not be going into those because we want you to be as surprised as we were. What we can tell you is that despite the look this is not a show that you want to watch with your kids as it deals with scary situations, death and suicides.

The main characters include Madoka, her best friend Sayaka, the mysterious Magical girl Homura, two other magical girls Mami and Kyoko and the “cat” Kyubey. I say “cat” because if something talks it is not a cat. All characters are explored in the series, some more than others, but you never feel as if you are missing something. Everything in the show happens for a reason.

The animation for the show is one of the better ones in the magical girl genre. The witches are very artistic representations and though it is confusing at first you get used to it pretty quickly. The stakes for the characters in the show are very high and that is something I appreciate in any movie or show that I watch. So we are giving Magical Girl Madoka Magica a 4.3 out of a possible 5 stars.

Yuki Yuna Is A Hero Review (No Spoilers)

We decided that we will expand our horizons and talk about things other than movies and the first thing that we are expanding to is anime. Yuki Yuna is a hero is an anime series that is available on Netflix as of right now and it is the story of 5 girls granted powers to defend the earth from “vertexes” which sound like demons.

The premise seems a bit normal and not that exciting, but the reality is that there is a lot more to it than that. The girls start their journey loving the idea of being heroes, but they do not realize that there is a price that must be paid for sing their new powers.

Although Yuna Yuki is clearly the main character of the show, the other characters receive a lot of attention and you love all characters by the end of the show. Fu is the leader of the group and one that seems to have a lot to lose because not only is she putting herself at risk, she is also the one that got her younger sister Itsuki involved in the “Hero Club”. Togo is Yuna’s best friend and a character that we learn a lot about and Karin who does not appear until episode 3 is the one with the biggest character development and my favorite of the series.

The series is 12 episodes long, but binge watching it is not difficult as the episodes go by really fast. The show manages to keep watchers entertained and intrigued with a bit of a slow-down taking place around the half-season mark. Some things do go unexplained and that is why the series does not get the highest marks. It is still something that you should watch though, and that also goes to those that are not into anime (I was not into it until I saw it).

I would say that the show is not for kids and it deals with some mature subjects such as suicide. The animation is beautiful and the story is actually very good.

We are giving Yuna Yuki is a Hero 4 ½ stars out of a possible 5