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According to a source on this forum [1], the article is actually from top national newspaper in Japan the Mainichi Shimbun.
Translation seems to be similar: Besides the introduction of what PMMM is about, the author (who was billed as an anime critic) presented the following insights:
- PMMM saw quite a lot of influence from gal game and he believes an "orthodox" interpretation of the anime should be taken from the perspectives of gal game and sci-fi.
- One important ingredient of enjoying the anime, in his view, is the undercurrent of the character development of the protagonist Madoka. And he believes the key to it is Madoka's mother who left a strong impression even though she made only infrequent appearances.
He compared the Madoka in Ep.11 when she would reply to a worrying mother's words with a determination about thing that she had to do and wanted to do, and the Madoka in Ep.1 when she would meekly (but happily) accepted her mother's advice of wearing a ribbon to school.
He then picked up Madoka's mother words in Ep.3 "living life not to make your dream the goal but to turn this way of living life into your dream", and commented that this was clearly understood by Madoka then. This led to the actions she managed to do in Ep.12.
- He believes PMMM could be viewed as an orthodox coming-of-age story. Here Madoka got to understand how her beloved mother lived her life and at the end through this Madoka made the decision of how she wanted to live her life. He also saw similarity of PMMM to the 1985 mahou shoujo anime "Magical Emi, the Magic Star" in its theme of dealing with growing up.
Additional commentary on it about the critic: He did not say PMMM must be appreciated from viewpoint of gal game [2] and science fiction, but he believed that this would be the proper (orthodox) way to understand it, particularly the central idea of the world view and the relationship between mahou shoujo / witch / mascot. One example he quoted is the climax of the final episode when the scale went all the way up to the law of the whole universe. --randomanon 18:02, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
