After a series of delays, Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Walpurgisnacht Rising has finally premiered on August 28 in Japan. Coming to theaters after an almost 13-year-long gap, the film is a direct sequel to 2013’s Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Part III: Rebellion.
To commemorate the long-awaited premiere, Japanese media outlet Anime Freaks interviewed Gen Urobuchi of Nitroplus, the main writer behind the original Puella Magi Madoka Magica series, who also returned to write the script for the new movie.
Looking back at the original Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which premiered over a decade ago, Urobuchi says he was only able to write it because, at the time, he empathized with the magical girls’ inner struggles and was deeply concerned about their issues. “I earnestly don’t think I would be able to write it now. And it’s not just because I’ve grown older, but because the times have also changed.”
“Back then, I could imagine what young people were afraid of and what they were looking for. However, I’ve now found myself unable to understand what brings joy or suffering to the newer generations that have grown up with smartphones and social media,” Urobuchi comments.
Interestingly, Madoka Magica was Urobuchi’s first time writing an original anime, but also his first time writing a work in the magical girl genre. Coming from a visual novel background, he says that he didn’t really know how to go about the theme, but a part of why he was so on board with it was his “adventurous spirit.” “I was just happy to be given the opportunity to try out something I’d never done before, and the fact that I thought being confused about it is also a part of the experience proves how young I was at the time.”
As a fun side note, as references for “how to write a magical girl story,” Urobuchi says he was shown Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and Le Portrait de Petit Cossette.
Regarding Madoka being Urobuchi’s first time writing an original anime: This isn’t quite true. He contributed to Blassreiter as the credited lead writer. Although this was much more of a “just doing whatever the director told him to write” case, and he wasn’t the sole writer, and he didn’t write the first nine episodes, and the ending was written entirely by Itano on his own.
Expelled From Paradise was also written before Madoka, even though it came out later.
Honestly the struggles of my generation Z and alpha, our struggles are definitely deeply rooted into social media and the Internet. Following things like cyber bullying, the loss of individual agency (Internet mobs), following trends and egoism problem when hiding behind anonymity. A lot of us have trouble socializing in the real world as well because of the shift to voluntary isolation.
A lot of east asian countries are facing a crisis where there are fewer and fewer children. It makes building social relationships in real like extremely hard for us as we can’t even find each other, we resort to online friendships.
Honestly a good anime that covers Internet struggles was needy streamer overload, and I enjoyed that show very much, I appreciate how it deviated from the game and covered topics in more detail.
All’s said, I would love and greatly enjoy any future media that would cover all these topics! Honestly I do agree that these struggles are a bit more difficult for outsiders to understand! <3
Just no man. Cyber bullying isn’t real.
When I almost killed myself when I was 7 due to “not real” stuff
Cyber bullying is in fact very real
Just turn off the screen.
No. Just turn off the screen.
The tragedy here is that the wants really haven’t changed enough to warrant this concern
While I think that Madoka is a good anime, I don’t consider Urobuchi’s writing of Madoka masterful.
He did a good job at taking premises and concepts that had already been used in some old animes and traditional visual novels, but he doesn’t have deep experience with writing brand new, up-to-date content.
He would definitely have a hard time trying to write for the new generations. I’m certain that he can deliver interesting content for them, but he would run a higher risk of failing (commercially speaking).
Dude we literally live in a time were random people can make Ai porn of you, your teachers, and your classmates, that they can just put online in order to let randos make fun of you. Where people will dox you and call swat teams to your house who might kill or paralyze you because they just don’t like you or you beat them in a video. There’s no amount of “just block them” or the “‘X’ button is over there” that can get rid of that.
He couldn’t make madoka today because of what the globalists socialists demands.