Continuing a conversation from here
...I really have to question that one. They do a lot of comedies, but they tend towards the cynical side, and the serious works tend to be pretty dark
The statement is based on the nuance I place on "gratuity", I guess? A "gratuitous" thing is something capable of rotting your mind... positive or negative gratuity, either way it's gonna detach you from reality. So, many of SHAFT's comedies are cynical, yes, but that doesn't stop them from being funny -- it's not the presence of sad/absurd/self-deprecating things which is positive gratuity, it's making me laugh at (actually, with) it.
(The other thing SHAFT is great at doing aside from absurd comedy is smothering things under a distracting layer of sexuality. It's hard to feel down when you're turned on, lol. Rebellion is kinda a hilarious example of this; I'm being a bit facetious in saying this, but I can't really care about any of the bad shit Homura did if it got her a step closer to gettin' it down with Madoka.)
I can't think of many SHAFT 'serious' works to be honest, Madoka S1 aside. It's actually kind of an anomaly in that regard. (Although I did skip out on this year's Nisekoi and Mekakucity Actors?)
Madoka's ending is really fairly bittersweet, even before Rebellion. Witches don't happen anymore, but people still die just as often and Homura kind of got screwed
The point of Madoka's ending was not about making the world 'ideal' per se, but rather restating + reestablishing the importance of hope (and man, how brilliantly). The real inescapable reality that the world can't be perfect was the origin of the story's conflict in the first place. I couldn't really care about how heavy/brutal a burden Homura was left with because of the strength and power of Madoka's message. (That's positive gratuity for you, lol.) The exact same superbness of staging and craftmanship which made me not give a damn at all about the universe as Homura became a Devil.
Uh, I don't think we have enough Madoka clones to make a blanket statement like that. Particular when the other one made it's form of systemic cruelty clear in the second episode
lol, I recognize it's still a big stretch at this point to draw any of these conclusions. But Genei was such a turd, I wasn't actually talking about the part you're referring to. We found out in episode 2 how shit their magical girl system was for victims. It wasn't until episode 8? or something that they started picking off the magical girls themselves. Incidentally, I dropped the show around that point, but it was actually the victim shit which left me sick, I just stuck with the show for a while to see if they'd fix it.
last edited at Dec 7, 2014 7:32AM