As I embark on my third year of #MadokaMagica posting, I've been rereading older posts and reflecting on how my approach has and hasn't changed over time. When I initially started, I had no idea I was going to write so much; things started small and simply and escalated from there, as these things tend to do. Writing is both the way I discover what I believe, and the way I communicate it to others—my formal essays are usually longer and more involved, but it turns out the easiest way to eat certain elephants is one bite/post at a time.
Originally, my primary focus was the text itself ("text" being the anime + Rebellion in this context). Then I discovered that pinning down the "text" was more complicated than I'd assumed, with the recap movies offering variations and changes from the version I was familiar with. Furthermore, due to the nature of its construction, there are certain questions in Rebellion that cannot be answered via the text alone, and so I've expanded outward into interviews and production notes. But my initial focus on the text wasn't wasted; I wouldn't have gotten so much out of these other sources without it.
I am not an authorial intentionalist by inclination or training, which is useful because Madoka Magica is a collaborative work created by a large number of people to the point where there isn't a clearly defined "sole author". Many people consider scriptwriter Gen Urobuchi to be the primary author, but interviews and production notes reveal that there were many areas in which he was not involved (particularly regarding visuals), so his understanding is limited in certain respects and therefore cannot possibly be the be-all end-all for the work as a whole. Movie critics typically treat a film's director as the primary author, but this, too, is problematic when we consider how various animators and storyboarders, particularly Inu Curry, shaped the series, especially Rebellion. The situation is further complicated in that in many cases the creatives involved have wildly different and contradictory opinions which are reflected in the film itself… so how is the audience supposed to choose between them?
Some resolve the issue by going with whatever creator's interpretation conveniently matches their own. I have opted for a different route, in which the creators' views are one of several lenses to examine the text rather than the ultimate authority on it. I find authorial intentions interesting and useful in answering certain questions, but they are only one of many elements that shape my own interpretation and analysis. When it comes to media analysis, I think of myself as a carpenter with a well stocked toolbox who uses the appropriate tool for the job instead of exclusively relying on a hammer for everything.
Studying other works by individual Madoka Magica creators also helped to clarify both their overall philosophies and their specific contributions to the series. As someone whose academic training emphasizes the original text over all else, it pains me to admit that sometimes the best way to understand the text is to engage with a completely different work, but I've gradually come to accept it.
As with every long-running fandom, there is a lot of conventional wisdom about the series that has accumulated over the years, but it's important to me not to take anything for granted—even if it's true, I want to know where it comes from and why so I can make an informed decision about whether or not I agree with it. To this end, I do my best to cite sources where appropriate (whether that be direct quotes, screenshots, links, or other evidence) so that readers can more easily follow my reasoning. In the end, all I can do is explain what I believe and why; readers will have to decide for themselves whether my arguments are credible and persuasive.
Just as a variety of tension exists within the text of Madoka Magica, there is also tension within myself. I enjoy research and digging through minutiae or else I wouldn't be doing this, but analyzing and cross-referencing screenshots is a completely different experience from experiencing them in situ. As an object of study, Rebellion is fascinating, but it frequently fails as a film when it comes to easily and coherently conveying information to its audience (by design, as it turns out). The production notes help to close the gap with a level of detail that is missing within the film itself, but it's a double-edged sword—as much as I appreciate the external resources, if these points were really that important, they ought to have been included in the film!
As useful as these other resources are to understanding the series, they cannot dictate its ultimate meaning, simply because they are not a part of the viewing experience for the vast majority of fans. For better or worse, the text must be judged as what it actually is, not what it was intended to be or could have been. Not everyone is going to devote themselves to this level of analysis, nor should they reasonably be expected to!
The longer I spend in fandom, the more convinced I become that most perennial fandom arguments/topics of perpetual discourse are the result of disjuncts between how the author interprets their work and how fans interpret it and/or contradictory directions within the story itself, so that both sides of the argument have valid evidence for their views. People also have wildly different tastes and backgrounds, which influence their perception and preferences, and there are also many questions which the creators are not interested in exploring or addressing (or if they do, it only complicates matters even further). As a result, there are many fandom debates that likely will not and may not ever be fully resolved…and that's okay, actually.
My interpretation is also shaped by my own interests, which include metaphors, symbols, and themes, as well as art, architecture, psychology, and literature. I'm fascinated by how landscapes and spaces are portrayed (and what this suggests about the story and characters), as well as the underlying structure of the main story and larger Madoka Magica media mix with its various spinoffs and merchandise.
Meanwhile, the specter of Walpurgis no Kaiten looms over everything; no matter what I end up writing, speculation inevitably creeps in, aided and abetted by tantalizing glimpses from various trailers. I'm looking forward to when the movie is finally released and I can pivot away from predictions into analysis with all the new material in store for us. But as with everything else, my speculations weren't wasted; even if every single one of my theories and predictions is proven incorrect, they were still useful to me as exercises in thinking deeply about the text, I had fun writing them, and I learned something in the process.
Some things haven't changed, even after all this time. In spite of thinking so deeply about this story, its characters, and its themes for so long, it compels me even when it frustrates me, and I'm always discovering more to see. No matter what degree of knowledge I may have acquired in the process, I think of myself as an amateur in the sense of its original meaning as "someone who loves deeply". As long as I can remain curious and keep asking questions as I continue my fandom journey, there's no telling where I'll end up.
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