Chucke reviews Madoka Magica

[Zor]

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Apparently he is going to review the entire series over the next few months.

Zor

[Darksider]

Um. Why?

This is so far removed from the topics he normally covers as to make it pointless. Why do people keep requesting for him to do anime? I mean he outright said during the Eva reviews that he has no experience with or significant interest in it.

[Stark]

Dollar signs, the same reason we do everything. Guy's gotta pay the mortgage, and if people will pay to have his not very interested and poorly informed opinion power to him.

[Formless]

Um. Why?

This is so far removed from the topics he normally covers as to make it pointless. Why do people keep requesting for him to do anime? I mean he outright said during the Eva reviews that he has no experience with or significant interest in it.

When he originally posted the Eva reviews, I randomly decided to revisit an Evangelion fan-forum I used to frequent just to see if there was a thread about it. Of course there was. The thing you will find interesting in this anecdote was that someone there said they were going to request a review of Digimon Tamers, and their reasoning was that he wasn't an insider to anime culture, nor had he grown up with the show. All other reviews the poster had seen of it had been glowing, but he couldn't shake the feeling that they were either effected by nostalgia or by the insular, hype driven nature of anime fandom. Whereas Chuck had demonstrated that he was... well, obviously not un-biased, but at least not influenced by these particular factors. What he likes and dislikes in a science fiction or fantasy show are well known, or else he will spell them out.

Besides which, this isn't outside his purview. Its still science fiction and fantasy. You aren't going to see Chuck tackle any harem or slice of life anime, unless they contain aliens and take place in space.

Also, what Stark said is true enough. Chuck broadened the show from Star Trek a long time ago; allowing anime was just another logical step so that he didn't run out of material too quickly.

[Stark]

It's just a bit sad that I think Connor could review this sort of thing in a more meaningful way than poor old Chuck.

Yes, that Connor.

[Ahriman238]

Um. Why?

This is so far removed from the topics he normally covers as to make it pointless. Why do people keep requesting for him to do anime? I mean he outright said during the Eva reviews that he has no experience with or significant interest in it.

When he originally posted the Eva reviews, I randomly decided to revisit an Evangelion fan-forum I used to frequent just to see if there was a thread about it. Of course there was. The thing you will find interesting in this anecdote was that someone there said they were going to request a review of Digimon Tamers, and their reasoning was that he wasn't an insider to anime culture, nor had he grown up with the show. All other reviews the poster had seen of it had been glowing, but he couldn't shake the feeling that they were either effected by nostalgia or by the insular, hype driven nature of anime fandom. Whereas Chuck had demonstrated that he was... well, obviously not un-biased, but at least not influenced by these particular factors. What he likes and dislikes in a science fiction or fantasy show are well known, or else he will spell them out.

Besides which, this isn't outside his purview. Its still science fiction and fantasy. You aren't going to see Chuck tackle any harem or slice of life anime, unless they contain aliens and take place in space.

Also, what Stark said is true enough. Chuck broadened the show from Star Trek a long time ago; allowing anime was just another logical step so that he didn't run out of material too quickly.

Pretty much, Chuck talks about his thoughts on why people requested this were given in the first one, and said most of the things Formless just did. To provide an outsiders perspective.

I've never seen Madoka Magica, and only enjoy a handful of manga/anime anyway, but I'm just curious enough to check out Chuck's reviews.

Speaking of, reviews #4, # 5, and # 6 are up. So I guess he's half done now.

[Grumman]

The first episode was on ABC3 tonight, so if any Australians are interested in watching the series you can still see it on the ABC website here.

I personally appreciate Chuck's reviews - if not for them, I would have seen the opening credits sequence and passed it by.

[Ahriman238]

Also:

Episode 7
Episode 8
Episode 9
Episode 10
Episode 11

That's the whole series, except the last episode which according to his schedule will be up tomorrow in spite of the holiday.

[Ahriman238]

Series Finale.

Well, that was different.

[Sinewmire]

Pretty much, Chuck talks about his thoughts on why people requested this were given in the first one, and said most of the things Formless just did. To provide an outsiders perspective.

I've never seen Madoka Magica, and only enjoy a handful of manga/anime anyway, but I'm just curious enough to check out Chuck's reviews.

It's the same for me - I would never, ever have watched something like this, but knowing Chuck's reviews are generally intelligent, insightful and entertaining regardless of the quality of the show itself, I'll watch that. I'm not usre I'd have ever watched Avatar The Last Airbender without watching Doug's reviews.

I'm not sure I'll watch Madoka Magica now, but I won't actively flay alive people who talk about it either.

[Serafina]

Gotta say, this is definetly one of his best works. It does the series justice, touches all the important plot points, points out some of the non-obvious things and is generally pretty funny too.

[Formless]

Gotta be honest, I'm not sure why I defended him before. This was basically a glorified synopsis, and I honestly couldn't keep watching after about the third or fourth video. If this show was as "tightly plotted" as he said in the first part, then frankly there is no way to watch this AND appreciate the show afterwards because of all the shit he was going to spoil.

A good reviewer shouldn't have this problem, because they should know what to talk about and what to leave out; Chuck has done that in the past when he thought something was really good so he knows. To be blunt Chuck's normal style really works better when he's working with more episodic shows than this kind of tightly scripted story. That's why no one gave a damn about his B5 reviews, I suspect. That or the horrible choice to use B5's own shitty theme song in his intro.

I hope he does fewer videos in this style in the future, and more of them in the way he did Avatar The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra. That gave him the ability to keep spoilers to himself where appropriate, and let him focus on the interesting themes and other aspects without getting bogged down in any one episode when there just wasn't much to talk about in it. This would just be tedious even if it wasn't a show I potentially want to see myself sometime in the future.

[Mr. G]

To be fair I think it's hard to review that series with great detail without spoiling anything since it's such extremely tightly plotted series. One could talk more about it's awesome soundtrack and visual diversity and use of symbolism. This is more of an interpretation than a synopsis since there are somethings that the series leave ambiguous but that he chooses to interpret in some way. I think it was worth watching those videos because I discovered another interesting interpretation of this great series.