I want to talk about an experience I've had a couple times. I think this experience is as much a part of my own temperament as it is a response to the work of art that provokes it. In other words, I expect that someone reading this essay will not have a similar reaction to the art works I'm going to discuss now. Nevertheless, I think it is an interesting experience (at least to me) and since it is so etherial I want to put it into words before it is lost in the depths of my memory.
The first time I recall having this experience was over ten years ago. Sometime before I moved out to Boston, likely in the mid to late 2000s. A friend who was into classic rock loaned me her entire CD collection. At some point I got to The Byrds greatest hits, including their cover of Dylan's "All I Really Want to Do." I wasn't aware at the time that it was a cover. Listening to the song now I can appreciate what The Byrds bring to it and I like the song in a different way than I did after my first listening. When I first listened to it I felt that there was a significant falling off from the opening melody and the rest of the song. What was interesting is how this falling off made the song better; the opening suggested another and greater song to my imagination. This feeling that a good or even great work of art can be more interesting when it is a window to something even greater that is only dimly perceived is what I found so very powerful and moving. I suspect I've had this experience before, if only in more subtle ways, that I cannot now recall.
The only other time I remember experiencing this was while watching Madoka Magica. I never finished the series. Or rather, after having watched the first 3 or 4 episodes and been blown away I took a long hiatus of over a year from the show and subsequently forced myself through the series, watching an episode or two before I going to bed, often times half-asleep. So I barely remember most of the series. It may sound strange to write about a show that has left such a strong impression by saying I was unable to watch it. I should add that I'm giving the series a second viewing now and may write another post after completing my second attempt.
The reason I struggled to finish the show the first time around wasn't because I didn't like it enough, but rather because my first impression was so overwhelmingly powerful that I felt a necessary disappointment in every direction the story took. I could not appreciate the story for what it was because of the strong suggestions it made on my imagination.
I'll try to say something about those suggestions now.
First, the story has layers. It is most obviously a kind of commentary on the magical girl genre of anime. It is entirely sincere, however dark, and not satire. Unlike Sailor Moon, it lacks the manic comedic energy typical of the genre. The warmth and humor Madoka Magica does have is always surface thin. From the first episode it is clear that innocence of this world will not last, that the good humor of the protagonist will be dispelled. Writing this I feel that the story is beginning to sound very bleak. It is bleak. But that isn't quite the impression I had from the first few episodes. Rather, the warmth of your average anime is there alongside the menacing fear that this innocence is an illusion. In those first few episodes we easily recognize that the red eyed cat creature has, at the very least, impure intentions. The "contract" to become a magical girl is never presented as something benign. And yet, the protagonist and her friends want to convince themselves it is.
I'm circling around, trying however unsuccessfully to describe my experience. The impression of the world was the first moods that I was aware of watching it. The even more powerful mood was the battles with the witches. The art style for these battles is effective, but I wouldn't say it's optimal. What really makes these scenes compelling is the music and battle art direction. I would describe the music as having a redemptive tone. It is uplifting with a choral and orchestral sound. It is the song of a person who had been defeated but is returning to fight again. It is the perfect music for the series, but I can't describe why, especially in the context of how bleak the show is and what we come to learn about who the magical girls *are* and why they are fighting the witches. I want to go on and continue watching the show, but I really want to pause on my feelings and figure out why I respond so powerfully to this combination of a world that has a thin innocent surface with a deep darkness underneath. A world, and now I mean the show as itself a world, that revolves around these battles with witches and that has the seemingly disjunctive redemptive music.
I said before that the show was a commentary on the magical girl genre of anime. That may not be entirely true. I have also read that the show is a critique of the destructive culture around Japan's real-life pop idols. In one of the battles with the witches (episode 3) the labyrinth is made of cakes and candies. It may be referring to temptations idols face while adhering to strict diet regiments. These considerations though pull me away from the experience I was having in the same way a moving pop song seems less so when you realize it's just about someone having broken up with a boyfriend or girlfriend. As in Hamlet, there seems an excess of emotion. The mood is greater than its subject, however important that subject might be.
It is the discontinuities in the themes that make the anime powerful. The disjunction of a thinly innocent world and the labyrinths with a redemptive musical theme with characters performing combat as a dance pulling rifles and guns from their clothing. A hair ribbon becomes a giant revolver for example. In episode three the character comments on how she is performing for the two girls she hopes to recruit. She is showing them that this game is fun and glamorous. They are persuaded, we are not.
Writing this essay, oddly enough, I'm beginning to see why the scenes are powerful within the context of the shows own themes. Who knows, the show may supplant in my memory the imagination of that other show I merely glimpsed.
My imagined show would be of a world with another world under the surface. The characters would be presented to it in a way that would make it seem less threatening and slightly glamorous. The musical theme and battle sequence would challenge our ability to decide how to respond. If we thought that this thin innocence over a dark experience is bad the music would suggest that it is neither good nor bad, but something else. That there is merely existence and that this existence is very difficult and fraught. One acts in this world with grace and at times violence to get survive, trying not to betray how difficult it is.
I'm not sure if that is exactly what my feeling was. I feel like this too is a reduction. What is most interesting to me is having a world setting as a type of thing and having the musical scene as something (an agent) set against that theme. There seems to be an aesthetic dynamic between the location and the agent. How the agent affects how the location is perceived and vice versa.
