Last evening there was a showing of the first two movies of Puella Magi Madoka Magica at The Music Box Theater. I’m not really a person to stay up late, so I’m currently exhausted because it didn’t end until 1:30ish in the morning. The films were really just a compilation of the entire series in movie form, which with anime usually annoys me, but because I hadn’t seen Madoka past maybe the first two episodes it was a nice quick way to watch the entire thing in one go.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a magical girl anime with an interesting art style that pops up during fights. The basic plot is girls can become magical in exchange for a wish to be answered by this somewhat cute somewhat creepy creature. However this anime isn’t a traditional magical girl anime. They fight ‘witches’ in a different sort of plane where the art style changes for the background and strange looking but really amazing looking monsters pop up.
It reminded me a lot of reading a Darren Shan series, if you haven’t read his books I suggest Cirque Du Freak and once you finish it and Madoka you’ll notice what I mean, or it could just be me. (Note: the series is gruesome and in the horror section so maybe not for the faint of heart) Some of the characters and little parts also reminded me of Sailor Moon.
The Music Box was where it was shown, I’ve only been there one other time, for a movie I greatly disliked, but I find the theater beautiful, it has a creepy old beauty to it and I love that they play movies that are not shown practically anywhere else.
For Madoka the Music Box sold tickets and were basically sold out. The line was huge and a couple of young men had been waiting in line since 3 in the afternoon. The line turned itself around several times and I felt like I was going in circles and at some strange point I got spat out near the front of the line. There were several people in cosplay (dressed up as the characters). There was a man playing an organ like piano by the stage and one of the managers/owners stood up front to welcome everyone, explain that there would be a break, to see how long people had been waiting (the 3 in the afternoon men were given posters) and have the people in cosplay come up to the front. We cheered for our favorites and the best/loudest cheered received posters. They were split up by groups and those in individual, they didn’t have a lot of posters but it was nice of them to do that. When the movie started the crowed cheered during the opening when their favorite characters were shown and it was fun. I haven’t been to very many anime movie events, just one in high school for the first bleach movie, but it was not that busy, the theater was practically empty in comparison. There were a couple seats empty around where we were sitting, I can only assume they sold out online and then people didn’t show up. (It was upsetting because we had one person in our group leave because he hadn’t bought a ticket online, figuring he’d pick it up at the door and then heard through the people in the line they were sold out so he left, if he’d waited till the line was gone he could have gotten in, even sat with us)
Another downfall to the night are rather personal opinions/ pet peeves, I don’t like hearing people dissing other people’s cosplay because they are not ‘dressed up enough, didn’t put enough effort into it, ect’ especially by people who are not dressed up. They’re having a good time, let them be. If you’re going to complain wait till you’re at home, till you’re away from the event. It also annoys me when people complain about a group of people when they’re by the group of people, one of the people in the group I was with, when it was over started to say how much he hated being around nerds. I asked him to stop and he seemed confused until I asked him again to at least wait until we’re away from everyone, if he had to absolutely complain. (Which he didn’t later, I think he forgot)
Overall I did enjoy myself, almost fell asleep on the drive back (friends from out of town drove up and drove us home on their way back home)