Madoka Magica Lives On

Madoka Magica came out 12 years ago, but this winter is especially important for me, because it’s my 10th anniversary with the series.

Surprisingly, I haven’t posted about Madoka Magica much on this blog. I’ve never written an article about it in these 4 years, only a couple mentions such as here and here. Mostly offhand.

But that’s probably because the sheer pressure of it all. Madoka Magica is my favorite TV show. A series that changed my life in extreme and positive ways. A fandom that unlocked so many hidden depths and so much fun stuff.

Twelve years after release, Madoka Magica remains a revered part of anime culture. Its characters have become icons, its visual style has inspired plenty of other work, and its dark themes have led to countless egregious ripoffs. It almost always ranks at the top of the list for “animes you gotta watch as soon as you get into the medium” shows. Cowboy Bebop, Fullmetal Alchemist, Death Note One-Punch Man… All a bunch of action-packed shows that are very dude focused, and then Madoka Magica’s there too for some reason. It had an incredibly popular movie that’s still debated to this day, and a popular but much more divisive mobile game spinoff that took the series into waifu collecting territory.

Madoka Magica is one of the most popular anime series of the 2010s, and possibly the most influential overall. Even without a new mainline entry in almost a decade, it’s still one of the greats. But up until now, I haven’t covered the series at all in my 2010s Retrospectives Series.

But, soon, that’s going to change.

I’ve gotten ready an entire subseries of Madoka Magica essays and reflections and dumb listicles, 15,000 words of it. It’s coming out in April or May; I haven’t decided the date yet.

But, it’ll actually be coming first as an ebook on Amazon. I’m going to post it to Kindle Unlimited as an experiment, for at least 3 months (the shortest period allowed). This blog so far hasn’t had any sort of “monetization,” and most ways to do that with a blog are scummy and don’t fit the ethos at all. (Nobody took me up on this stupid idea yet, either)

So, in lieu of sponsored blogs or Patreons or whatnot, I want to see: How much support can a nonfiction book of media essays get these days? For $2.99, or for free with Kindle Unlimited. I’ll see if it’s worth it to package up a whole miniseries of blogs into book form, and then eventually the blogs will come out here for free.

I’m pretty proud of some of my Madoka Magica writing. Since it’s one of my very favorite media franchises, I wanted to start with it. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

More information to come once a date is settled on. Until then, enjoy remembering Episode 10 and crying a lot!

EDIT: Here’s that book–The Anime That Changed Everything: Reflections on Madoka Magica.