Puella. The creepiest anime about magical girls I've ever seen.

So, on an earlier post of anime, I thought I'd step in and talk about an anime I've recently finished watching, that could BLOW YOUR MIND...maybe.

Oh, pardon my manners, I haven't introduced myself. Howell here, and yes, I could be all cute and talk about Howl's Moving Castle, but no. (But seriously, you should totally watch that too if you haven't.)

Anyway, creepy anime. Whereas in Gaf's post, he mentioned the creepy side of anime in Dance of the Vampire Bund's lolicon style, fear not, there's nary a tentacle nor underage scantily clad scene to see here. Except some of the transformation sequences, but that's more of a flash of light clothes change thing that most people have seen before. I mean, Sailor Moon got away with about as much.

Right, distractions. I should probably tell you what anime I'm even talking about. It's called 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica', also known as 'Mahou Shojo Madoka Magica'. Sounds innocent? And, looking here, it looks innocent. ((It's at this point that I mention, there will likely be spoilers of some description in here, but I'll try to refrain from character names (or descriptions) for the most part.))

Perfectly happy, colour coordinated magical girl anime, they're great for kids. Or not. Please don't show this to young children. They may have nightmares. As joky as I'm being, really, it scared me on occasion. And I laugh through most horror. So, what makes this anime so creepy? Oh, I'll get into that, but for now, I'll just show you an image from the first episode. Apologies if I'm putting a lot of pictures up, but in some cases, they're needed to give this anime justice.

Yes, that's right, thorns with scissors, and the most terrifying version of the Pringles guy I've ever seen. That's the thing with this anime, it lulls you in with cute characters, and magic, and then takes you to a horrible place, and breaks it all apart. It takes most of the usual tropes of Magical Girl Anime, and spits out pure terror. I should have seen it all coming of course. I mean, the opening theme begins as usual with a water droplet landing in the water, creating glowing ripples we've seen a million times in these anime, before the 'camera' shows that it's actually the main character crying. But aside from that, don't think of trusting that opening. It shows everyone happy (aside from the initial crying). And more importantly, it shows everyone alive. Yes, that's right, the first little spoiler. The anime is only 12 episodes long, I'll point out. So, you'd expect a death, if it were to happen, around episode 9 or 10 at the earliest. I'll keep you in suspense for a little bit, but I'll tell you the first death is in the first 5 episode. Oh yes, I said first death. And while I'm refraining from divulging the identities of the deceased, they are main characters. As in, one of the girls in the pictures seen in this post. And this isn't a namby pamby "they get better" death. They don't come back to life at the end of the episode.

I suppose much of the creepiness is justified. You see, the magical girls chase after witches, and the witches hide from the real world in these special dimensions. That's where all the creepy Pringles men, scissors, needles, body parts in jars, random cupcakes, and the monstrous witches are seen. Indeed, the witches aren't your pointy hat wearing warty women. Nor are they just carbon copies of the girls in darker colours (though they are linked). They are monsters that, in some cases, make the above Pringles men look normal. Apologies if this is putting you crisps for life.

So the girls become magical girls by making a contract with Kyubey. Everyone say hi to Kyubey!

Daww, ain't he cute? The little git. You see, everything seems nice. He even gives the girls a wish, and he'll grant it, in exchange for making the girls magical. Wait, isn't making them magical a good thing?

No. Not only does this mean they can hunt the Witches. It means they have to. They are given a Soul Gem, which contains their magic. They use it, and it get darker. If they kill Witches, they drop Grief Seeds, which can cleanse the darkness from their Soul Gem. If they don't cleanse them, the girls become Witches. I could go into more detail about the Soul Gem, but I shan't spoil that. Oh, and apparently, every good deed a ranger does, when they become Witches, an equal amount of bad happens. So there's that to worry about.

Next, I'll talk about one of the characters. Homura, for reference, is the black/grey ranger seen in the picture. Yes, I compared tis to Power Rangers, I really don't care. I might even just call them Homura Black and Madoka, the main character, Pink, to avoid confusion with Japanese names.

I should probably talk about the main character, but it's MY blog post, and I'll do what I want! I'll probaly just mix it up anyway. On that note, it's getting long, so I'll summarise. It might help avoid too much description in spoilers, so that's a plus.

Homura. First seen in a dream, then a transfer student in Pink's class. Then seen chasing Kyubey around to kill him. But he's all cute, and asks for help from Pink, who obliges. Kyubey is convinced Pink will be the strongest ranger ever. Black knows Kyubey's evil, tries to stop Pink from listening to him. So, she's seen as the series anti-hero. Later, you find out why she's trying to stop it. TIME TRAVEL. It's her power. Turns out, there's a big bad Witch coming, Walpurgis Night, who doesn't need to hide in the creepy dimensions, and is gonna destroy the world. And in every timeline, it wins. So Black Quantum Leaps back, and tries to stop her, fais, people die, leap.

Oh Boy...

And that's the basic tip of the iceberg. I won't spoil more. Go watch it. Enjoy. Be scared, feel sad, and all in all, feel more emotion than any anime has made me feel, even if the main one is 'creeped out'.

((NOTE: I've not watched Grave of the Fireflies.))