- Last OnlineSep 16, 2024 7:48 PM
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- Birthday1989
- LocationSouth America
- JoinedJun 20, 2014
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Aug 4, 2024
Simoun is, without a doubt, the best anime I have ever watched, and I have seen about a thousand. You might wonder why this is the case. It's simple: Simoun takes all the familiar tropes of anime—cute girls, warfare, science fiction/fantasy world building, ludicrous costumes, pastel-colored backgrounds, lesbian romance, intensely dramatic dialogue, and dramatic operatic music—and presents them with a rather unique execution: I don't know anything else that is quite like Simoun.
From reading other reviews, I noticed that many recent critics don't fully grasp what makes this show special. To appreciate Simoun, you need an open mind. Yes, it doesn't look like a show
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from 2024 because it's from 2006! Most anime from 2006 now appear dated (the visual quality of anime began significantly improving around 2008-2009 with shows like Clannad: After Story and K-On!, which set higher standards for the industry). However, despite its dated visuals, Simoun excels in delivering its narrative in a way that few other titles have managed.
If I were to compare Simoun to other shows, I'd liken it to Evangelion: a 26-episode dramatic sci-fi anime featuring warfare and teenagers piloting war machines, but with a much better-structured plot. Simoun has a clear beginning, development, and ending, with an excellent and consistently executed narrative structure that surpasses 95% of anime produced today. This is quite unlike Evangelion, which struggles with plot structure throughout the series. Additionally, Simoun shares similarities with Madoka, but with more character development. Madoka was my favorite anime before I watched Simoun. Both are "pseudo-yuri" with intense drama between the two main characters. However, Madoka feels a bit rushed in comparison, so I now rate Simoun slightly higher.
Highly recommended, but only for those who can watch anime made differently from the latest shows.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Aug 27, 2014
Madoka is my favorite anime. Anime title managed to equal the intensity of the emotional experience I had when I first watched Madoka. I will try to explain why I felt this way using my relatively poorly writing skills.
Overall, I could say Madoka is an example of an anime that succeeds on all levels: it's writing is excellent (10/10 in character development), it's direction is excellent (also 10/10 in art), has a very memorable spooky soundtrack (10/10 in sound), it is very entertaining and enjoyable to watch (10/10 in enjoyment). It also contains many artistic elements, such as the fact it is a deconstruction of
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the magical girl genre and a lot of visual experimentation is done with the witch labyrinths.
After well over a year after I first watched this and after seven re-watches, and a bit of more knowledge of the work of each of the artists involved in it I think I have a well informed perspective to explain why it is my favorite piece of audiovisual media. Madoka is essentially the work of a combination of two artists: the director Shinbo and the writer Urobuchi. To understand Madoka one has to understand the artistic elements of the works of these two artists.
Shinbo is currently one of the most significant anime directors. Working with his distinctive style which emerged in the mid 2000's and is crystallized in works such as Hidamari Sketch (2007) and Bakemonogatari (2009).
It is characterized by extremely fast shoots on average of 2-3 seconds each, his cuts are called irrational cuts because they violate the standard in hollywood directing (which is also followed by most anime) where each shoot follows a logical order, instead, for example, he violently cuts from the head to the feet to abstract figures and plays around with all sorts of symbolism (as very apparent in Hidamari Sketch), where the fever of Yuno, the main character is represented in the water counter of her apartment and compared to the normal temperatures of her neighboring houses). Before that his directing was more conventional but still quite distinctive, such as his work no Nanoha (2004), the first strictly adult work in the genre of magical girl.
Like Hidamari Sketch, Madoka is extremely aggressive on a visual level. I like the level of aggression achieved in animation that one cannot achieve (easily at least) in live action film. Featuring extremely high level of visual contrast
Madoka borrows heavily from earlier Shinbo works such as Hidamari Sketch and Nanoha. Urobuchi said that his main inspiration for writing Madoka were these two titles and Le portrait de petite cossette, a horror direct to video animation. So essentially, Madoka is the exciting mix of several radically different genres that managed to work really well on all levels.
Urobuchi is a writer of tragedy, horror, action and psychological thrillers anime series. His nickname among western fans is "Urobutcher" and some jockingly call him "agonize them all Urobutcher", because he likes to write plots where he makes the main characters suffer in agony for the pleasure of the viewers. Madoka is among his most sadistic works, indeed, I was greatly impressed by how evil and twisted it was and it made it so much cool and exciting. It's like Saw in being a form of torture pornography but it does not suffer from the dumbness factor of that movie.
I wouldn't consider his minimalistic writing anything like a sophisticated form of writing comparable to authors such as Tolstoy (as some people compared it to the great works of classical European literature). His writing is very simple and focused, very concise and does not waste lines in transmitting information about the plot, characterization and thematic points. I have watched 6 of his works already and they are all very concisely written and I notice that he appears to be a very smart guy as well (he shows that he has a good knowledge of many things, such as here in PMMM the knowledge of the science fiction concept of heat death of the universe). Though he doesn't know how to write good less violent stuff, he tried to write a lighter series for a younger audience of teenagers who just turned into adults, Gargantia, where nobody dies or suffers in agony for extended periods of time but he failed to do anything really good with the concept and it became just another plain mediocre work of fiction like many others (and the ending was as bad as the ending of the dumbest Hollywood movies like Avatar). Madoka is by far his best work, because differently from his other works it has a certain sense of aesthetic elegance and balance: after finishing watching it I was in awe of how well written and executed it was. How exceptionally entertaining and at the same time an extremely powerful and affecting work of art.
Madoka is very aggressive both on a visual level and on the level of writing. Perhaps one could say it's the equivalent of heavy metal in terms of animation (I wouldn't say that applies for almost anything else in Japanese animation). It's more visually daring than almost any live action film as well and overall an extremely impressive work of postmodern popular art.
While it is similar to EVA in some ways it is not exactly comparable: It's sensibilities are very different from Evangelion: while Madoka reflects adult sensibilities, EVA reflects adolescent sensibilities. So while similar to EVA in many levels it is a more mature work which allows this mature anime fan greater level of identification.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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