The Magical Girl Problem

Utena is a late 90s anime. The genre's seeds are in a few works from the 60s by most accounts, so Utena, while a decidedly influential work, is hardly formulative years no matter how you slice it.

It's easier to say that 90s era magical girls is the startling point that would form the greater genre then to list a group of manga and shows that would be the real actual start of the genre.

But yes you're correct in that the magical girl was being invented in the 60s and if one really was interested in exploring the history of the genre should view them.
 
Madoka Magica was incredibly popular. It made a lot of money and had broad appeal, with staff noting that when the show was airing it was being watched by a lot of people they didn't expect. A show that powerful is also going to be influential, and it absolutely has been. People will talk about how it wasn't the first show to do this, but honestly that doesn't matter, because it's the show that everyone has seen. It successfully took the aesthetics of a genre that everyone in Japan is basically familiar, if only by osmosis, and made the setting tense, sinister and harrowing. Madoka Magica was something familiar being taken in what felt like an unusual direction, with its dark atmosphere and themes of body horror and universal entropy. There were probably a bunch of riajuu JKs who got into this show pretty much just because the mascot animal wasn't trustworthy, and that wasn't like the shows they watched when they were kids.

And that's actually fine. And it's fine that people are following in Madoka Magica's footsteps. The issue is that a lot of people who are doing following along don't understand Madoka Magica in the first place. Specifically, they don't understand that Madoka Magica has a lot of respect for the magical girl genre.

A show like Mahou Shoujo Site, or Mahou Shoujo Tokushusen Asuka showing in early 2019, doesn't have any particular interest in the magical girl genre, its history or its themes. But Madoka Magica does. People call Madoka Magica subversive of the genre, but I don't think that's right. Rather than being a rejection of the genre (at least, the genre as redefined by Sailor Moon, seeing as Madoka Magica is firmly in the 'transforming warrior' mode), it is instead really tied into fundamental themes of the genre, albeit in a pretty heavy way.

At its heart Madoka Magica is a show about how society loves little girls but hates and fears adult women. It's hardly subtle at times - QB spells out the allegory in the big reveal and Sayaka's breaking point is first depicted as she listens to some chauvinistic shitheads on a train saying vile stuff about their girlfriends. Sometimes it's more subtle--the real significance of the witch's kiss is only really clear after the reveal. The use of transformation is particularly interested here. Magical girl transformation sequences, as framed by Takeuchi Naoko, are very literal coming of age devices. Whether it's Sailor Moon's nail polish and lipstick to Cure Miracle and Cure Magical growing up a few years, whether it's high heels or shorter skirts or phones or jewelry or whatever, a magical girl literally takes on the trappings of an older girl or a woman and metaphorically gains power through that. In Madoka Magica, that narrative device is muddled up by the soul gem gimmick and the true nature of witches, making the process of growing seem scary and inadvisable. Becoming a magical girl hardly seems all that empowering, and this reflective of the show's thesis about how society feels about girls and women.

That's what makes the resolution of the story so powerful. Madoka becoming God at the end of the series is basically just the ultimate extension of Usagi becoming an adult in Sailor Moon. Moreover, Madoka's transformation turns everything that has been established in the series on its head. Madoka is symbolic of what actually happens when a little girl grows up, no matter what society thinks about that.

A garbage show like Mahou Shoujo Site, or Mahou Shoujo of the End, tells us that magical girls are bad. That magical girls are or will become dangerous psychopaths if given a bit of power. It looked at Madoka Magica, didn't understand it and assumed it was the death and violence that made it work, just as comic books looked at Watchmen and did the same. Madoka Magica is a show that loves magical girls, a lot of these edgyshows just kind of hate them.

On that note, I actually think Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku goes beyond just being 'edgy.' It's very violent and the whole premise is basically just Battle Royale with magical girls with all that implies, but just as Battle Royale wasn't about how evil children were, I don't think that Ikusei Keikaku is about magical girls being bad. It's certainly gratuitous, but still a pretty elaborate look at the presentation of magical girls as aesthetic products and how that interfaces with the expectations of the audience. At least, as far as the TV anime went, I can't speak to the later novels.
 
Madoka Magica was incredibly popular. It made a lot of money and had broad appeal, with staff noting that when the show was airing it was being watched by a lot of people they didn't expect. A show that powerful is also going to be influential, and it absolutely has been. People will talk about how it wasn't the first show to do this, but honestly that doesn't matter, because it's the show that everyone has seen. It successfully took the aesthetics of a genre that everyone in Japan is basically familiar, if only by osmosis, and made the setting tense, sinister and harrowing. Madoka Magica was something familiar being taken in what felt like an unusual direction, with its dark atmosphere and themes of body horror and universal entropy. There were probably a bunch of riajuu JKs who got into this show pretty much just because the mascot animal wasn't trustworthy, and that wasn't like the shows they watched when they were kids.

And that's actually fine. And it's fine that people are following in Madoka Magica's footsteps. The issue is that a lot of people who are doing following along don't understand Madoka Magica in the first place. Specifically, they don't understand that Madoka Magica has a lot of respect for the magical girl genre.

A show like Mahou Shoujo Site, or Mahou Shoujo Tokushusen Asuka showing in early 2019, doesn't have any particular interest in the magical girl genre, its history or its themes. But Madoka Magica does. People call Madoka Magica subversive of the genre, but I don't think that's right. Rather than being a rejection of the genre (at least, the genre as redefined by Sailor Moon, seeing as Madoka Magica is firmly in the 'transforming warrior' mode), it is instead really tied into fundamental themes of the genre, albeit in a pretty heavy way.

At its heart Madoka Magica is a show about how society loves little girls but hates and fears adult women. It's hardly subtle at times - QB spells out the allegory in the big reveal and Sayaka's breaking point is first depicted as she listens to some chauvinistic shitheads on a train saying vile stuff about their girlfriends. Sometimes it's more subtle--the real significance of the witch's kiss is only really clear after the reveal. The use of transformation is particularly interested here. Magical girl transformation sequences, as framed by Takeuchi Naoko, are very literal coming of age devices. Whether it's Sailor Moon's nail polish and lipstick to Cure Miracle and Cure Magical growing up a few years, whether it's high heels or shorter skirts or phones or jewelry or whatever, a magical girl literally takes on the trappings of an older girl or a woman and metaphorically gains power through that. In Madoka Magica, that narrative device is muddled up by the soul gem gimmick and the true nature of witches, making the process of growing seem scary and inadvisable. Becoming a magical girl hardly seems all that empowering, and this reflective of the show's thesis about how society feels about girls and women.

That's what makes the resolution of the story so powerful. Madoka becoming God at the end of the series is basically just the ultimate extension of Usagi becoming an adult in Sailor Moon. Moreover, Madoka's transformation turns everything that has been established in the series on its head. Madoka is symbolic of what actually happens when a little girl grows up, no matter what society thinks about that.

A garbage show like Mahou Shoujo Site, or Mahou Shoujo of the End, tells us that magical girls are bad. That magical girls are or will become dangerous psychopaths if given a bit of power. It looked at Madoka Magica, didn't understand it and assumed it was the death and violence that made it work, just as comic books looked at Watchmen and did the same. Madoka Magica is a show that loves magical girls, a lot of these edgyshows just kind of hate them.

On that note, I actually think Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku goes beyond just being 'edgy.' It's very violent and the whole premise is basically just Battle Royale with magical girls with all that implies, but just as Battle Royale wasn't about how evil children were, I don't think that Ikusei Keikaku is about magical girls being bad. It's certainly gratuitous, but still a pretty elaborate look at the presentation of magical girls as aesthetic products and how that interfaces with the expectations of the audience. At least, as far as the TV anime went, I can't speak to the later novels.
I'm not sure I fully agree with you on the reading of Madoka being totally out of love. Certainly, some of the people working on the show thought of it that way, but Urobutchi himself has gone on record saying he had never consumed magical girl media before writing Madoka, and that the fundamental theme of the show is that the girls are being punished for the hubris of trying to cheat their way out of their problems. Because of this, I honestly feel like a lot of the feminist themes in Madoka weren't intentional. This is also present in Kyubey claiming that all women are inherently much more emotional than all men, in a way that's scientifically/cosmically provable(I hate this for the same reasons that I hate Thanos' abuse of Gamora being cosmically proven to be love in Infinity War). And let's not even get started on the reveal that most of history's most influential women were only influential because they were magical girls.

Basically, it's not so clear-cut. There's a lot of love in Madoka but there's also some genuine bile, and the copiers(and so many fans) only saw the bile.
 
Certainly, some of the people working on the show thought of it that way, but Urobutchi himself has gone on record saying he had never consumed magical girl media before writing Madoka, and that the fundamental theme of the show is that the girls are being punished for the hubris of trying to cheat their way out of their problems.

Luckily for us Roland Barthes killed the author in 1967 so we don't have to listen Urobuchi be wrong about the show he worked on :V
 
On that note, I actually think Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku goes beyond just being 'edgy.' It's very violent and the whole premise is basically just Battle Royale with magical girls with all that implies, but just as Battle Royale wasn't about how evil children were, I don't think that Ikusei Keikaku is about magical girls being bad. It's certainly gratuitous, but still a pretty elaborate look at the presentation of magical girls as aesthetic products and how that interfaces with the expectations of the audience. At least, as far as the TV anime went, I can't speak to the later novels.

I think that's fair- I tried to frame it more in terms of things I've heard and seen it framed, or just things like broad concept, I think I at least typically had that caveat, but if I failed to communicate that it's my error. I personally haven't engaged with the work that much- I think I saw 2 episodes of the anime before I leaned toward it just not being for me; I do have the first volume of the LN out of curiosity and it's certainly... dark, maybe not straight "edgy" yet, and it's good enough that I do intend to read more.
 
I think that's fair- I tried to frame it more in terms of things I've heard and seen it framed, or just things like broad concept, I think I at least typically had that caveat, but if I failed to communicate that it's my error. I personally haven't engaged with the work that much- I think I saw 2 episodes of the anime before I leaned toward it just not being for me; I do have the first volume of the LN out of curiosity and it's certainly... dark, maybe not straight "edgy" yet, and it's good enough that I do intend to read more.

I don't think it's a problem if you don't like it. Like, Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku isn't owed anything and including that type of violence means it's created an additional barrier to entry. Also, like, my friends watched it specifically so they could bet on who would die in the next episode, so it didn't exactly communicate itself clearly.
 
the fundamental theme of the show is that the girls are being punished for the hubris of trying to cheat their way out of their problems.
Except that kinda thinking seems to fall apart with how 1: Kyubey deliberately preys on girls at their weakest moments, when they have little resistance to the idea of becoming Megucas and no knowledge of consequence, and 2: Madoka's wish literally rewrites, if not breaks causality to erase the negative consequences of her wish.
Or is that what you're already implying by associating it with gaps in the author's understanding of the world?
 
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Except that kinda thinking seems to fall apart with how 1: Kyubey deliberately preys on girls at their weakest moments, when they have little resistance to the idea of becoming Megucas and no knowledge of consequence, and 2: Madoka's wish literally rewrites, if not breaks causality to erase the negative consequences of her wish.
Or is that what you're already implying by associating it with gaps in the author's understanding of the world?
Hey, don't ask me - the dipshit overrated hack writer is the one saying it.
 
Hey, don't ask me - the dipshit overrated hack writer is the one saying it.
I don't actually know jack about Urobuchi beyond how he made this, Fate Zero, Saya no Uta(!!!), I think Psycho Pass, and the outline for Aldnoah Zero (Of which only Meduka and Fate Zero I've watched), as well as his infamous "I have nothing for disdain for human empathy"-or-something quote. But I will say that it is certainly fun to interpret and reinterpret his stories. Heck, I've actually seen somebody claim how AZ's protagonist was basically his own ideological self-insert.
 
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Ultimately Urobuchi isn't solely responsible for Madoka Magica so his opinion on it amounts to trivia. It's a television show, its actual meaning arises from a confluence of different factors that are ultimately beyond his control. Like, when Miyamoto Yukihiro read the script, he didn't necessarily have the same impression, and he was the one who decided on the visual language of pretty much every shot. The overall story was something conceived of by Shinbo, who did have a lot of experience with the magical girl genre. And so on.
 
Oh right, this was a collaborative work between multiple instances of star power.
So what's Shinbou's experience with mahou shoujo?
 
Ultimately Urobuchi isn't solely responsible for Madoka Magica so his opinion on it amounts to trivia. It's a television show, its actual meaning arises from a confluence of different factors that are ultimately beyond his control. Like, when Miyamoto Yukihiro read the script, he didn't necessarily have the same impression, and he was the one who decided on the visual language of pretty much every shot. The overall story was something conceived of by Shinbo, who did have a lot of experience with the magical girl genre. And so on.

Beyond this, there's no way that an author can understand the full political through line of their work. It's just too complicated, there's too many moving parts. To many things put in just because you need to actually produce work.

When people talk about author intent, I, as an author, always smile.
 
So what's Shinbou's experience with mahou shoujo?

Shinbo's first big work, I'd say, was a little show called Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Arguably his other first big gig was working on the Negima franchise, which I feel kind of flirts with the Magical Girl genre at times, but never quite buys it a drink. There are also some little things- he also did some very minor work on the lesser known Magic User's Club, for one.

Allegedly the entire process for Madoka got started because while working on Bakemonogatari and Hidamari Sketch, Shinbo went up to a co-worker at SHAFT and basically went "I want to make a magical girl anime, can you help me with that?" And SHAFT basically went "Sure." and Gen was roped in after that point.
 
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Arguably his other first big gig was working on the Negima franchise, which I feel kind of flirts with the Magical Girl genre at times, but never quite buys it a drink.
Huh. I've actually read Negima a decade ago. Weird that a show with a big name like that involved would end up just floundering in both its attempts to get an adaptation going. I could definitely remember some of the cues it probably would've taken from Magical Girl works, but I still think that it's closer to just traditional shonen within the framework of a harem.

Anyways, speaking of the line between Magical Girl and shonen, there's this article, released only a day after Episode 3, that helped explain to me how varied in themes, formula and target audiences Magical Girl shows are. Might be an interesting read for the thread.
 
Yeah, even not having a lot of experience with magical girls as a genre, I'm seeing a lot of the same story with other fandoms and subcultures. Like how a lot of the time people who are preoccupied with the concept of subversion without really having a great familiarity or grasp with what they think is being subverted. People will just have this kinda stereotypical idea of what it is, and it often seems like they don't actually appreciate or take the genre seriously outside of subverting it. I see a lot of the same stuff play out between, like, the rational fiction subculture and fantasy for example.

Also, the Youtube Peter Coffin did a whole video on the concept of merit recently, I don't entirely buy all the arguments there. But I think I see a lot of it here. Where you have a larger dominant demographic for anime, that which drives most of the profits and produces a lot of the review/reaction materiel that helps drive the common ideas for what makes anime "good" or "done right". And maybe a lot of this demographic didn't really see magical girl stuff as deserving of attention until something like Madoka comes along that's more catered to them, and worthy of merit.
 
So I'm almost at the end of Starlight Revue but it has what must be the most magical girl thing ever.

An antagonist literally decides she was fundamentally wrong about what she was trying to do because the MC and the rest grew beyond her expectations so she decided on her own that they were right and she was wrong.

They are literally taking a play that is a tragedy and turning it into a happy ending by force of will.

Oh and there's a huge meta subtext given that the academy is based upon a theater troupe by asserting that its culture of putting people against eachother and burning them out in pursuit of being 'the top star' is wrong.

Edit: just finished
the Giraffe running the shine stealing revue even assesses the audience directly and implicitly that we are like him and desire to see them rise as far as they can and challenge their fate so that their fall is all the more tragic.

Of course everything from the themes to the music to how he isn't even given center stage underlines how wrong he is. (The audience isn't here to watch her suffer you overgrown ass, we're here because we want her to be saved by her childhoodfriendromancepartner)

So they literally change the play so that the protagonists earn their happy ending and the final shot lingers on position zero (center stage) being empty.

The cycle of tragedies is broken and the stage is ready for the next generation and their stories
 
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Huh. I've actually read Negima a decade ago. Weird that a show with a big name like that involved would end up just floundering in both its attempts to get an adaptation going. I could definitely remember some of the cues it probably would've taken from Magical Girl works, but I still think that it's closer to just traditional shonen within the framework of a harem.

Adaptation hell. From what I recall it was doing the grandest bits...with a quarter of the needed animation resources.
 
I'm not sure I fully agree with you on the reading of Madoka being totally out of love. Certainly, some of the people working on the show thought of it that way, but Urobutchi himself has gone on record saying he had never consumed magical girl media before writing Madoka, and that the fundamental theme of the show is that the girls are being punished for the hubris of trying to cheat their way out of their problems.

But I will say that it is certainly fun to interpret and reinterpret his stories.

I'll add to this. In one of the commentaries of the series BD, hosted by Yuki Aoi and Saito Chiwa, Urobuchi himself is the guest. The girls tell him they initially thought the script was written by a women because it got the characterisation of the girls so correct.

That you can think of so many ways to interpet his work that may or may not have been intended by him, the author, tells me something about him that you guys don't seem to give him credit for and you should respect. He grasps human nature extremely well. As a result character interactions and reactions are realistic, inevitable (which is a different thing from predictable), as well as open to interpetation. Just like the way people act in real life.

Like, when Miyamoto Yukihiro read the script, he didn't necessarily have the same impression, and he was the one who decided on the visual language of pretty much every shot. The overall story was something conceived of by Shinbo, who did have a lot of experience with the magical girl genre. And so on.

Often, people say this as if to give the impression that the various staff members go, "whatever!" when they get script and are instructed to produce their part of the show. I'll assume that isn't what you are trying to imply.

Although it was many years ago, the sources I have seen (or was it the commentaries too?) indicate Shinbo accepted the series script by Urobuchi without any major changes. Other staff like the character designer also said his descriptions were so good that design work was straightforward.

Rather than everyone going off and doing their own thing. Urobuchi delivered such a clear vision that everyone else could easily perform their part in it.

Also, Urobuchi was involved approving the visual designs. So that is the way he wanted the show to look.
 
I'll add to this. In one of the commentaries of the series BD, hosted by Yuki Aoi and Saito Chiwa, Urobuchi himself is the guest. The girls tell him they initially thought the script was written by a women because it got the characterisation of the girls so correct.

That you can think of so many ways to interpet his work that may or may not have been intended by him, the author, tells me something about him that you guys don't seem to give him credit for and you should respect. He grasps human nature extremely well. As a result character interactions and reactions are realistic, inevitable (which is a different thing from predictable), as well as open to interpetation. Just like the way people act in real life.



Often, people say this as if to give the impression that the various staff members go, "whatever!" when they get script and are instructed to produce their part of the show. I'll assume that isn't what you are trying to imply.

Although it was many years ago, the sources I have seen (or was it the commentaries too?) indicate Shinbo accepted the series script by Urobuchi without any major changes. Other staff like the character designer also said his descriptions were so good that design work was straightforward.

Rather than everyone going off and doing their own thing. Urobuchi delivered such a clear vision that everyone else could easily perform their part in it.

Also, Urobuchi was involved approving the visual designs. So that is the way he wanted the show to look.
Oh hey, the stans are here.

He's a hack writer who gets a couple of interesting ideas and then smashes the exact same characters and plot points into them over and over, and seems to have a fetish for women being told that they're wrong.

"Grasp of human nature"

Laughs in Mami instantly deciding to murder her friends because their consciousnesses are in rocks
 
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He's a hack writer who gets a couple of interesting ideas and then smashes the exact same characters and plot points into them over and over,

If it's that clear to you, I'm sure you can point out six times he's used the exact same characters and plot points, right?

Laughs in Mami instantly deciding to murder her friends because their consciousnesses are in rocks

Yes, yes. You know exactly what it feels like to think that you and the friends you've fought together with are better off dead. You would know why someone with Mami's background wouldn't crumble the way she did. After all, it's your assertion that Urobuchi is always wrong all the time, right?

Oh hey, the stans are here.

For the sake of politeness, I will give you one chance to withdraw that remark.
 
If it's that clear to you, I'm sure you can point out six times he's used the exact same characters and plot points, right?



Yes, yes. You know exactly what it feels like to think that you and the friends you've fought together with are better off dead. You would know why someone with Mami's background wouldn't crumble the way she did. After all, it's your assertion that Urobuchi is always wrong all the time, right?



For the sake of politeness, I will give you one chance to withdraw that remark.
Six is an odd number to go with, but I can give you five. Fate/Zero, Madoka, Thunderbolt Fantasy, Psycho Pass and Kamen Rider Gaim all feature an idealistic woman who has one or more scenes where she's told how wrong she is and how dark and gritty the world is. They also all have a very cynical male character(except Madoka where it's a girl) who is the one telling the woman this. They also all feature a depressed gunslinger/archer who thinks they're doing the right thing but who turn out to be wrong. All of them have a final boss that poses an immense threat but whom defeating will not actually fix the problems inherent with the system. They also all contain a traditionally heroic character, who may or may not be the same character as the idealistic woman, who suffers immensely because of their foolishness. Most of them also have a trickster archetype who leads the characters astray. All of them have either a dark ending with a small ray of hope or a happy ending in which a messianic figure fixes most of the problems. In the latter case, not everything will be fixed because "you can't truly get rid of the system" is also a theme in all of Urobuchi's works. Finally, most of them have a character who seems like they'll be a long-term member of the main cast but is killed off unexpectedly fairly early on. Finally, this one is less omnipresent, but many of them have a character whose role is to be wrong about everything and get owned constantly.

And I'm not saying the man's always wrong, just that he's a bad writer. Some of his works are mixed bags because despite the bad writing the interesting original ideas shine through. Others are just trash. I will not back down from my assertion that Mami instantly turning to murder in seconds is stupid to the point of hilarity.
 
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You do understand that there is a difference between giving additional details about the contributions of each creator to the creative process and yelling at people for not liking specific creators, right?

Also, finding patterns in stories written by the same creator/s isn't exactly criticism, that's more along the lines of formula. If it's applied in interesting ways, then there's really no reason to get up in arms about it.

And FFS, the rule of character behavior is that they should act consistent to their characterization and backstory, not be beings of emotionless or in-control logic. Mami had been living her life as a Meguca on borrowed time, clinging to her duty of killing Witches as the only thing keeping her going against loneliness and depression. Why wouldn't she snap when she realized it was a self-defeating task that she was perpetuating through her continued survival?
 
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Six is an odd number to go with, but I can give you five. Fate/Zero, Madoka, Thunderbolt Fantasy, Psycho Pass and Kamen Rider Gaim all feature an idealistic woman who has one or more scenes where she's told how wrong she is and how dark and gritty the world is. They also all have a very cynical male character(except Madoka where it's a girl) who is the one telling the woman this.

There is usually a cynical vs a more optimistic character in Urobuchi's work, but the cynical one is universally also wrong. In Thunderbolt Fantasy, Dan Fei is ultimately right to a large extent (in fact, the 3/6s of the party that initially seem incredibly unreliable all turn out to be on her side in the end, and the most unreliable looking party member turns out to be super-heroic, to the extent that his is at least his 36th time getting wrapped up in this kind of thing). Granted, this relationship plays out much more directly between Shou Yun Xiao (the cynical betrayer who dies awfully), and Juan Can Yun (the optimist who ends up getting married after finding out everyone else was worthy of his trust).

In Psycho Pass, the girl is, to a large extent, ultimately right. Madoka finds value in the magical girl system even without fixing it and finds worth in sacrificing herself for a larger cause, adapting a lot of Homura's worldview while also growing far beyond the later as a person. Akane learns a lot from Kogami, but manages to do this while retaining a fundamentally positive view of the world, and continuing to be emotionally stable, rather than becoming 'clouded' like Kogami did. And, in making her peace with the world around her, able to chart a third path between blind acceptance and despair. Saber isn't allowed to develop as a character, but that has more to do with the fact that the plot demands she be ready for a character arc in the sequel that personal enlightenment wouldn't enable. In Gargantia, the optimist deuteragonist is more or less entirely right.

Even more notably, none of these characters are very similar in the notion of their optimism, Saber is a defeated hero whose seen her ideals shattered, even as she still clings to them. Akane is a young professional who wants to do good in the world, and feels respect and trust for society that she has to negotiate with reality. Dan Fei is the heir to a tradition that's left her sheltered from the world, but also committed to a specific cause and tradition beyond her. Madoka is defined by her uncertainty for the entire work. She's not finding her belief system wrong, but trying to figure one out in the first place. All of these are optimistic in ways that conflict with reality, but every character's optimism is quite unique.

Similarly the cynical perspectives ranges from a rejection of nobility in conflict to an oppressive Gesellschaft that impersonally categorizes and presses down on the protagonists to literally just a few assholes that really like swords. These share a similarity, but are more different than they are alike. Gargantia reverses the protagonist role, with the cynical, initially 'obviously' wrong, character being the PoV character, and the optimist being largely the one who proves them wrong, but Gargantia is kinda shit, so whatever.

Since being wrong, in these cases, is mostly fodder to develop as a character, we get "basically good protagonists that are given the chance to develop and have agency in doing so" (Dan Fei being the exception where the narrative is just really shitty to her, and her character development goes in a really awful direction.)

The 'depressed archer' in TB Fantasy isn't thinking he's right, and isn't particularly depressed, he's just an amoral asshole. In Psycho Pass, everyone uses guns, so this is not a valid trait to pin to a character. Mami... doesn't really turn out to be wrong persay to any extent, and the entire cast ends up fairly depressed. Also, Urubuchi also didn't do the character designs there, so I'm not sure he had much input on her using guns specifically. So, we have 'characters who use a ranged weapon' left, which is fairly bland as a descriptor.

"Heroes suffering because of idealism" is one of the most generic imaginable descriptions of most fantasy with heroes, and probably applies to most every heroic character who has some degree of idealism and sometimes gets involved in conflicts. Similarly, what else would a trickster archetype do if not lead people astray? That's basically a tautology. "A character that is, in some respect, a trickster appearing in some role in the story" is not particularly limiting as a theme, so neither of this really holds water as a repetition. More broadly, character development is usually a good thing, and changing your worldview largely necessitates it be wrong at the start and that you overcome adversity. If we have a fairly optimistic character, that usually means something about their optimism has to change. Final bosses are definitionally immense threats or they wouldn't be a primary antagonist.

Death of characters on the protagonists side in very violent works isn't unique to Urobuchi, or particularly notable as a theme or singular concept. It cuts a genre off in terms of lighter shounen, but mostly just establishes stakes (and doesn't happen in Fate/Zero or a number of other Urobuchi works).

So out of the array, the only ones that really stick as repeating themes that aren't absolutely endemic and true of most every actionish work of fiction are a fairly dark clash between an optimistic (often female) character and a cynical character, neither of who ultimately turns out to be right in the presence of dramatic and complicated systemic forces that transcend the immediate interpersonal conflict. TB Fantasy doesn't really fit this form, except that one of the supporting cast members has a positive outlook on life that isn't really disproven and doesn't really come into direct conflict with cynicism. These don't read as "the exact same character and plot points"

More broadly, even if you're right, working through the same themes in multiple works, at a broader level with significant genre and character diversity, isn't actually a mark against an author. We don't say Poe was a hack because all his stuff was depressing, or Lovecraft was bad because everything he wrote just dealt with the humans being small in light of a vast, horrifyingly impersonal (and incredibly racist) cosmology. We don't call Arthur Conan Doyle a hack because he always writes mysteries. So many Greek tragedies playing around hubris doesn't mean the authors are hacks. Shakespeare's work ending in either death or marriage doesn't really disparage Shakespeare.

Writers are allowed to favor themes and ideas. The vast majority of actual great authors have pretty distinct styles and thematic concerns. Urobuchi obviously isn't among them, but 'repeating an clash between idealism and cynicism, neither of which can adequately answer to broader systemic \pressure without a synthesis" doesnn't actually feel like a bad thing to be stuck on.

Urobuchi's a mixed bag as an author, with a number of works that are fairly bad (Gargantia has some legitimately appalling moments for example, though it's unclear how much of the trans/gay panic episode was Urobuchi's fault (ed: he didn't write those episodes at all, only the first/last), and stuff that's had his brand on in more off-hand ways has been awful (Aldnoah), but your criticisms are pretty transparently quite exaggerated.
 
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So thanks to this thread I've just started Starlight Revue (as in, end of ep 3) and damn, I'm hooked. Like, there's this real sense of competition and camaraderie along with it; like yes they're all competing for the top spot... but they're actors and colleagues and still friends at the end of the day. Which also carries the distinct implication that they overact like hell during the fights for the fun of it, which I love. Like, for real, if this show turns out to have some dark twist somewhere I'm going to be genuinely disappointed.

Though why a giraffe...
 
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