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Puella Magi Madoka☆Magica managed to do what I thought was impossible - took over the position of my favorite TV anime series from the first Suzumiya Haruhi series, while still airing. And my rating of was only rising with every subsequent episode.

Even though the story starts like any typical magical girl anime, you can clearly see it is going to be different from the very beginning - it is the girls' choice, not fate, to go on the path of magic. Being a magical girl is rather a cold business deal rather than a divine blessing. And magic is not a perfect cure for everything ... - using it can cause a strong and hard-to-predict backlash. All that is there as early as in the first two episodes. And then episode 3 happens, and while trying not to spoil the story, I must say that all hope of this series being a normal magical girl show is lost since then. Beginning with episode 3, Madoka★Magica follows the Hitchcockian principles of storytelling - with every following episode there is some unpleasant surprise, we can't wait to see what happens next - oh, how convenient it will be for all those watching Madoka after the whole series' original airing...

I can't really decide if I should call the story predictable or not. As you may know, the show has spawned an enormous amount of speculation and discussion on 2ch, 4chan and throughout the anime fandom in general. As the story went on, many of these speculations turned out to be true. When following the discussions on the Web, it's hard to tell if the story would be predictable to a lone viewer or not. But one thing is certain - Urobuchi and Shinbou managed to tell the story in such a way that even when you know what's going to happen, everything is still exciting and makes a huge emotional impact.

All of us fans were anticipating the finale, with much speculation about the ending going on. Since the actual last episode aired, opinion about the ending varies greatly between the fans - but my personal opinion is that the ending is as great as the whole show. Of course I won't go as far as to explain the ending, but what actually makes the ending good is its... well, I'd say ambiguity, but it's on a meta-level. There are ongoing discussions even whether the ending is ambiguous or not! It makes you think, interpret it your own way, and no thought is better than any other - but at the same time, it is not an open ending, the story is completely concluded. It is truly a sign of very good writing by Urobuchi Gen. It's often said that Madoka is the same to the magical girls genre what Evangelion was to the mecha genre years ago. And I won't be surprised if it'll end up becoming a cult classic of comparable caliber.

The story is heavily character-driven, with many events happening because of the characters revealing their feelings to each other. Even though many characters are quite clear from the beginning, nothing is certain, as the world - and other characters - constantly turn out to be different than we all thought. There is no white and black, characters are deep and believable, which is certainly one of the key factors of this show's enjoyability.

This show is quite unusual for Shaft, because it is very serious in atmosphere. There is not much comedy, and when there is, it's very subtle and natural in tone. This also means we won't be seeing Shaft's signature walls of flashing text and pushy creative typography (it's still there, though, in much less obtrusive form of runes). The art still manages to be very "Shafty" in tone, however. Slightly futuristic backgrounds, heavily inspired by recent architecture of the real world, look quite similar to what we've seen in Bakemonogatari - but are usually less symbolic and significantly more polished. The characters were designed by Aoki Ume of Hidamari Sketch fame, and bear significant resemblance to that series. Such bright and happy character designs may feel out of place for a series so dark in tone, but it's aiming for an effect much similar to what Higurashi did few years ago - and it actually works here, too. Unusual proportions of Aoki's drawings feel a bit strange at the beginning, but it's easy to get used to it after an episode or two, and then both background and foreground art blend well together.

The closed worlds where witches reside, deserve a separate paragraph. Shaft employed Gekidan Inu Curry for this part, and their creative potential truly shines there. The art is very abstract, animated with stop-motion and similar techniques, feeling considerably out of place, while still working out well. These visuals are often compared to opening animations of Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei seasons by fans, and Shaft's fans should recall this kind of art in other works of this studio, too.

Talking about voice acting is not really much necessary - there are many well-known and popular names in the cast, which alone gives some degree of warranty for the quality. The voices match respective characters' personalities well, too. There's nothing much more I can say about that. The music, on the other hand - it really adds up to the overall feel. The opening theme by ClariS (known for OreImo OP) builds up a nice innocent atmosphere... soon to be brutally broken by the plot and BGM, composed by Kajiura Yuki, best known as the founder of Kalafina - who also performs the outstanding ending theme - and for Kara no Kyoukai's soundtrack. Her instantly recognizable style fits astonishingly well with Madoka's atmosphere, and builds both a considerable tension and atmosphere of mystery.

The BGMs, though well-fitting, didn't stand out much for me at first. But with the progress of the story, with the mood getting darker and story more absorbing, the music also started to make more impact and I can even say that it has become catchy. The style of the soudtrack also shifts significantly during the finale, which makes it feel even more epic. Overall, I don't know if the whole OST will be worth owning, but there are few tunes which I'd really like to have is my music collection.

To sum up, Puella Magi Madoka☆Magica has got everything a good visual entertainment should have. I can only deplore that anime is somewhat looked down on outside the otaku community, because I truly believe that anime non-fans would also enjoy it. And the title sounds somewhat embarassing, too - but it's a perfect proof for that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover.

Edits:
March 12th - updated after episode 10.
March 14th - reworded some fragments according to a reader's notes.
April 23rd - updated after the final episodes.

I've enjoyed the first season of Haruhi very much. The original 14 episodes have a cult status for me, and the story of Haruhi had a huge influence on me... no, I should even say that it changed my life. The story by Nagaru Tanigawa, which KyoAni decided to animate, had everything which a good story should have - a very original, very well thought-up story, well defined personalities of the main characters, and an epic climax. To all this, KyoAni added good art, well done voice acting, great soundtrack (I think that "Bouken Desho Desho?", "Hare Hare Yukai", "Koi no Mikuru Densetsu", "God knows..." ... and "Lost my music" are among the most recognizable and remembered anime tunes today)... and an interesting ordering of the episodes, with the main story from the first book going after the "what the hell?!" first (or zeroth) episode of The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina, and being intertwined with short stories adapted from later books. It all made the series epic for me.

After watching the anime, I've read all the light novels, save for the last, tenth installment which simply isn't around yet. There are better and worse stories among them, but overall, the books are great, too.

During the three years of waiting for the new episodes, we were promised the anime version of Disappearance/Vanishment (Shoushitsu - the English translations of the title vary), another great installment of the series (second best behind the Melancholy, I would say), but in the end...

In the end we got trolled. First, we were told that a new season is going out, then we were all disappointed hearing that it's just a rerun (this time in chronological order), then, finally, we were happy to see the not animated before gaps in the original timeline of the books are being filled with new episodes.

The first new episode was "Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody", a short story from the third book, and a pivotal turn in the timeline. When I was reading it in the book, it was really shocking and entertaining to me. I already knew what's going to happen when I was watching the anime version, so maybe it's because of that, but I had the impression that it's too static and affected, and I didn't really enjoy it much.

Then, after few already-seen episodes, we got "Endless Eight", another short story from the fifth book. A short story - yet, with respect to its title, turned into eight episodes. Eight episodes for a short story... it sounds frightening - and it sure was. It's very difficult to explain what it means without giving a huge spoiler... When the first episode of Endless Eight aired, those who haven't read the book probably thought about it as a unimportant filler episode, or as a kind of introduction, similarly to the first episode of Remote Island Syndrome - while those familiar with the story smiled to the clever idea which the makers thought up. Second episode shocked everyone as it did not conclude the story, and with every another more and more fans were getting upset as the story was not progressing even a little bit, even though the mood varied slightly between the episodes. The finale of this story arc was certainly worth seeing, and it was probably the best scene in the whole second season - but it should have happened in the third episode, fourth at most - but not the eighth.

Sure, the way KyoAni did Endless Eight is one and only, and it may turn into an anime legend one day. But it was certainly boring to wait for several episodes to see a progress of the story - that's not a soap opera!

Finally, as a supposed ending of the season, KyoAni animated the second book, "The Sighs of Haruhi Suzumiya". It's about the filming of The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Episode 00, which we've seen in the first season already. For this reason, and for this story arc being one of the least interesting portions of the book series, I doubted the very point of bringing it to the screen, but KyoAni apparently wants to have the entire Haruhi universe timeline animated. Well... it isn't bad, but nowhere near the first season, either. And the feeling of staticness and affectionateness which the Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody episode had, and which gone during the Endless Eight arc - returned, though at least with not as huge strength as in Bamboo Leaf.

I assume that this is the end - some suggested that The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Episode 00 might get re-animated - we even get a hint of that in the last episode of Sighs, where the ending credits in the screening we see, differ slightly from the actual ending credits seen in the original episode. But even if so - there's not much that can be done differently in that episode. Others suggest that after the remaining four episodes of the original series, there might be something more (Disappearance?) - but if so, I would consider it the third season then.

To sum everything up... the new episodes in the 2009 airing of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya are merely a shadows of their three-year-older siblings. The art is still good - though I hoped for real HD, not upscales. The voice actors are doing their bests - though they cannot do much about such static scenes. The opening and ending themes are great once again - though the BGM seems "glued-on" and doesn't really flow well with other aspects of the show. There are too many "thoughs" for this show to repeat the success of its predecessor. Maybe the fact that I've read the books before made me receive this show as I did. Maybe if the anime version had been the first for me to know, my rating would be better. But I find this show just mediocre.

I admit - Endless Eight and The Sighs are not the best moments of the storyline - I would even say that they are the worst, so the animators couldn't do much. But Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody could be done better, Endless Eight could be two times shorter, and The Sighs could also be more condensed and shortened by an episode or two - then we could have Disappearance animated in this run, and the overall impression of the show would be much better.