 Okay, so people who don't read manga or watch anime seem to have a skewed view of it. Like, they think it's just nothing but zany comedy and ludicrous, crazy over-the-top action and nonsensical storylines that are just weird, and they're not totally wrong, is the thing. Like, yes, a lot of anime are like that, but it is also just a broad medium. You know, you have everything from lighthearted comedies to super dark and serious series. You have action, you have romance, like, you have a lot of different stuff in there. So while, yeah, they're kind of correct, it's not a fair assessment of things, and Madaka Box is basically what people who don't read manga think manga is like. It's fun, but it's also just nuts, and really, really stupid sometimes. But mostly it's nuts. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. I have no idea what genre I would classify Madaka Box as, to be totally frank. Like, it starts off as more of a comedy and school life story with some action elements because it takes place at like a very strange school where people are just strong enough to break through concrete with their bare hands sometimes, and just things like that are a common occurrence here. But after a while, it turns into like a full-on shonen battle series, like in the vein of Dragon Ball Z or Naruto or Bleach or something like that. The series does not have much of an overarching plot, rather it's split into a bunch of smaller arcs which don't tie into each other all that much, to be totally honest, but it's basically like it falls into the Dragon Ball Z trap of just going, and then a stronger enemy appears, and then they defeat that one. And then a stronger enemy appears, and then they defeat that one, which is very unfortunate. However, it's a pretty short series overall. It's actually less than 200 chapters, so it manages to not get too annoying with that trap. Like if it had gone on longer, like something like Naruto is around 700 chapters, if it had gone on that long, then yeah, this would have gotten really stupid and I probably would not have finished it, but it manages to not outstay its welcome. And also considering how short it is, a lot happens in that short amount of time. Like again, they have a lot of different story arcs which aren't all super deep and complex, but, you know, they have a lot of them. They have a lot of different characters who, while they aren't necessarily the best, pretty much all of them do have some personality or at least some quirk about them that makes me remember who they are looking back on it, which is not very easy to do. And the world does expand continually up until the final arc. Like it just gets bigger and bigger, and I don't just mean like they discover new locations and new places. Like something like One Piece is very good at that, where they're just constantly going from one place to another and all these different islands they hop on are very different from one another, and that's great. Don't get me wrong, but it's also just very, very difficult to continually expand a world like that. Like, let's say Naruto for another example, by the time you're like a third of the way through that series, you've pretty much seen everything the world has to offer, and after that it's really just about the characters and the story and the action. You know, you don't really discover any new cultures or countries that are important that we need to know about, and you don't really discover anything new about like the magic system or anything like that. Whereas Madoka Box, even though they don't show off a whole bunch of the world, you do discover more about... Well, I guess calling it the magic system is like the closest thing for it. It's kind of like in Mistborn, if you've ever read that, where at first you learn about Alamancey, and you're like, okay, this is how the magic in this world works, that's really neat. But then later you also learn about Furukemi, which is a completely different type of magic, and they were like, oh, okay, that expands the world a little bit, makes it a little deeper, a little richer, and it adds different dimensions to a lot of different things, including society and warfare and all that. And then you also learn about Hemilurgy later on, and you're like, oh, wow, there's three different types of magic here, and Madoka Box does something kind of similar to that. Overall, I do want to reiterate that I do think Madoka Box is a good series, like it is, again, a shonen battle manga, so if you don't like those, this isn't going to change your mind, but if you do like it, I think it's fun. It's just really, really goddamn stupid, and from here on out there will be spoilers, so if you want to check out the series for yourself at all, then go ahead and check it out. Don't check out the anime, because the anime, one, only covers like the first two story arcs, and two, it's just not that good in general, but anyways, if you don't want spoilers, then leave now. It's just that the Book of Mormon says a lot of strange stuff, like that Adam and Eve lived in Jackson County, Missouri. So what is the story about? At the beginning, we're introduced to Madoka Kurakami, who is a girl who has elected her high school class president with 98% of the vote, and she makes a suggestion box, which is part of her platform while she was running, and she says, hey, if you have any problems or anything, put it in this box, and I will do my best to help you, and that's where the title of the series comes from. Now, Madoka is just perfect in every way. She's a star athlete. She's the best fighter ever. She's an amazing pupil who gets perfect grades and everything. She's a musician at one point, they show off. She's just the best at everything she ever tries. She's perfect. She's a genius in every way, and this is acknowledged by characters in the story, is the thing. Like, they acknowledge, yep, she is a perfect genius in every way, and some people envy her for that, some people are jealous of her, or want to take her down a peg, or anything like that, but it is acknowledged by characters in the story, and so at first, it seems almost like a deconstruction of this type of character, almost again specifically, like a shonen battle protagonist who is just the best fighter ever, and they may not be good at other things, but that doesn't really affect the story, so it doesn't matter, and they're just the best at everything they need to be the best at in order to win the day, and it seems kind of like a deconstruction of that, because it shows how it's isolating for Madoka, and how she basically only got this way because of eugenics, trust me, we're not going into that, but it seems like that, but then after a while they just kind of give up on it, and Madoka is just a perfect protagonist, or more accurately, I shouldn't refer to Madoka as the protagonist because the real protagonist is Zankichi, who is her friend, and he is a pretty normal dude for the most part, he just is also in love with Madoka, which the story again kind of abandons partway through, and they don't really do anything with that, but he becomes like a great fighter in everything because he just trained really hard, like he really wanted to be as good as Madoka, he wanted to keep up with her, and all that, which is kind of neat, but I don't know if they really go anywhere super unique, or super cool with that, he's just a more likable character because he has to suffer and struggle. Beyond that there's not a lot to him, you know, like there's just, his mom is introduced and actually plays a fairly big role in the story, which surprised me, but it doesn't mean that much, I mean when they first introduce his mom, she literally looks like a 10 or 12 year old girl, so people think that she's his sister, but then he says, oh hi mom and everyone's surprised, which, like yeah, this woman who's like 40 years old just looks 10 or 12 years old, and that probably says something about Zankichi's father, but let's just move on past that. So the early series is about Zankichi and Madoka just going around school fixing their problems, you know, and also like gaining more people to join up with the student council because no one else has voted in, it's just the president has voted, I don't know man, it doesn't make any sense and they actually run the school, but then there's also like this other group of people who function as kind of a balancing act for the student council. Look, it's dumb and we cannot get into everything, but the early series is just about them going around and solving problems, and then the second arc introduces these type of, yeah, these type of people called abnormals, which Madoka is an abnormal, and they're basically just mutants with superpowers, you know, they have crazy powers, like again, they're all like super strong and fast the same way as Madoka, and I mean, again, Zankichi is able to train up to that level just by lifting weights and stuff, so I don't know if they're that special for that regard, but whatever, and then they also have like super healing and then there's one guy who can send out electrical signals with his mind and he can use that to control people, and he can also use it to steal their powers for himself because anime logic, and basically Madoka and them discover that there's a secret class at their school called class 13. Again, this whole series takes place at a high school, I just I want to reiterate that, and class 13 is full of abnormals and it's like a hidden underground base at their school, which they have to infiltrate, and this is a pretty standard arc, you know, like the hidden base is full of bad guys, the heroes have to go through and fight them one at a time, and there are some pretty good fights in the series, I'll say that too, you know, it's not entirely just I punch the other guy harder than he can punch me, like there is some strategy to it, and well, that's about all I have to say, like there is some strategy to it and that elevates it beyond a lot of its contemporaries, and like I said, Madoka's friends are not abnormals, so they can mostly just fight through the power of hard work, and they also become really good partially because Madoka has an older brother who really wants to fuck her, and he's really good at training people, like he himself is not super good at fighting or anything because while he was undergoing some experimentations, because he's also an abnormal, he had a bunch of his organs removed and everything, but his mind is still sharp as a tack, and so he can use that to trains Enkichi and Madoka and them, and then they can like break through concrete without using magic or anything. So near the end of this arc, they get into the situation where they're about to go to the final room and confront the big bad guy of the whole arc, and they just open an elevator and oh shit, there's like six other dudes there, we're in trouble, how are we gonna fight past them, and then a bunch of their friends who they've made earlier on in the series come in and say, hey we'll fight them for you, you go on, and then they start you know fighting, and then we just don't cut back to them for quite a while, and Madoka goes and defeats the bad guy, and then when they finally go back up, they find everybody on both sides of that battle dead and crucified against the wall, and then a stronger enemy appears, like I said that's kind of all this series can do after a while, but in this case it works really well because when they introduce the new guy, Kumagawa, this is a hell of an entrance, you know, like there's this thing in wrestling it's called jobbing, and on TV tropes it's called the wharf effect, but basically it's this idea where in order to show off how powerful a new character is, usually a new villain, you show them defeat and a character who's already established as being super strong, and then you're immediately going oh wow how powerful is this guy, and in Kumagawa's case he is crazy fucking powerful, but he's also the best character in this series, now is he super deep and complex and not really like there's a bit to him certainly, like there's a little bit more beneath the surface, but mostly he's just great because he's so cool, you know, and even if even if after this moment he was a crappy villain and a crappy character and he didn't do all that much of note and he just wasn't that interesting to read about or anything like that, I would still think he was a great character just because of this entrance because that fucking sticks in my mind, I mean this series ended almost 10 years ago I think, like I was still in high school when it happened, so it was a while ago, but I still remember this moment clear as day in my mind because Kumagawa shows up, says oh hey I know you think I crucified all these guys, but I didn't really, and then they have a brief conversation and then he shoves a giant screw through his own head, but he survives and he's very nonchalant about it, and then he goes off and he's like oh by the way I have a bunch of minions and stuff and we're gonna fight you because I'm bad mohaha, now Kumagawa and his crew are what are called minuses and they are basically abnormals except they're like bad somehow, yeah they're not a lot different, like I said it's a different type of magic, like it's a whole different magic system essentially which is kind of interesting I guess, but it's not really different enough to distinguish itself that much, it's like okay abnormals have crazy powers, minuses have crazy powers, except minuses crazy powers tend to be related to how they are absolutely insane, like there's someone who just makes the whole, excuse me, she can make objects and people who come too close to her just rot away, like they're aging super fast, there's another girl who can reopen all your old wounds that you've had over the years, including mental wounds which is how Madaka's secret sister who erased her own memory because she ran away from home, relearns that she's Madaka's sister and then gives herself powers where she can control ice, again I can't explain everything that happens in this series, but it goes really off the rails in a lot of very small ways along the way, and Kumagawa even without using his powers is weirdly strong, you know like he refers to himself as the weakest person in the world but because of that he can instantly identify weaknesses in other people like blind spots and areas that are more sensitive to attacks and things like that and he's able to use that to take on crazy good fighters even like Madaka and I think well that's a really neat way of approaching it at least like practically speaking from a story standpoint it just means yeah he's a really good fighter just like everyone else but giving a different reasoning for it is still kind of neat and his actual power his minus that he has is referred to as all fiction and basically that just means he can erase anything from existence, like when he kills all those people and crucifies them against the wall he later erases the fact that he killed them and they all come back to life or he could erase objects and people from existence and so it's clear from the very beginning that if he wanted to he could just snap his fingers and make Madaka and everyone else just disappear and they they'd be gone and he would win but he doesn't want to just kill them he wants to break them down and beat them and bring them down to his level he's kind of like the Joker in the dark night where he wants to prove everyone is just as crazy as him and so he has like a weird sense of honor about it almost it's weird like the only real limitation to all fiction is that he cannot erase the fact that he erased something so if he erases someone from existence he can't erase the fact that he erased them and then bring them back like like once something's gone it's gone for good and then later on he also loses his power and then gets it back but it's a bit weaker so but that's because he later becomes a good guy after his arc is over and they can't just have a good guy that's that powerful running around and then there's a whole arc of fighting after this where they they fight kumagawa's minions they fight kumagawa himself and eventually he is defeated like he realizes he's wrong and okay some people are better than me but i'm also better than i thought i was this whole time so you know maybe i'm not a total loser and then he joins up with the student council because i guess they can just do that and he becomes one of the people to run the school and then a stronger enemy appears because uh you see years before this happened kumagawa actually had to seal a god away in another dimension so that she couldn't be an evil god on earth i guess and uh when he became a better person and finally just stopped being a minus i guess uh his powers like i said became weaker and so that evil god is able to break out and her name is like a jimu nejimijinemijinemijimu i don't actually care what her name is but she's what's referred to as a not equal and she's well like i said she's a god she's trillions of years old older than the universe itself uh she's watched all the planets get created and humanity come about and she also has like 14 quadrillion powers like it was seven trillion or yeah seven quadrillion and some change i have normalities and then six trillion and some change minuses and she can give those power to powers to people or take them away at will and at first i thought uh it was there was going to be some sort of reveal where she's the source of all these powers like when they're born she might decide to give you one but then uh after you die it returns to her or something like that and that winds up not being the case but i don't know it would have been kind of interesting she also breaks the fourth wall a lot and acknowledges that she's in a manga which is not really played for laughs or anything it's just her saying hey this manga's gone on too long it's kind of weird and then no other characters acknowledge that she's saying this and beyond that i just i just have no idea what not equals are even supposed to be like i get that it's another magic system just like abnormals and minuses but i i i don't know what they're supposed to be and we'd never get a proper explanation i don't think so i don't know do with that what you will and again they have a whole long battle with her because again she's a god who's kind of evil but not really and she was sealed away in another in another dimension but then she comes back and they defeat her and all of this takes place at one high school please remember that so then we have a brief arc about a bunch of suitors who want to get married to madaka and then that's just abandoned really quickly it's it's just it's over it's done and then we move on to like the real final arc where we introduce a final villain whose name is shishime and for whatever reason he looks like an ogre or like a kunari from dragon age i don't know why he looks this way no one else in the series looks this way or looks super inhuman in any other way he just he just looks like this i don't know why and he his main ability is that not only is he super strong and powerful and all that but whenever he breaks something it stays broken forever like if he injures someone then that injury will never heal no matter how minor it is if he breaks a plate or something then that plate you can't repair it no matter what you do like even kumagawa's all fiction power cannot erase it uh so like this dude's bad news and he's evil why is he evil because because he's evil just for the sake of it and you know they have a whole arc about that it's not a long one but him and madaka eventually fight and madaka wins and the way that she wins is really stupid basically she can't run towards him fast enough in order to hit him hard enough to destroy him so she like runs ahead of herself and then breaks the wind so that she can run faster which i i know that does not make any sense when i'm explaining it but it doesn't make any sense in the manga either i think the mangaka just fucking gave up at this stage like she she has to run fast so how does she run fast she runs faster it it's dumb man it's really dumb and then as his final act before he dies shishime sets the moon to crash into the earth i guess he can do that and then madaka tells all her friends hey run away i'll take care of this and they're like but madaka and she's like just go i'll take care of this and then shishime's ghost appears because ghosts are a thing in this series now they've never been mentioned up until now but like the ghosts are a thing uh ghosts appear and then madaka disappears for a couple of weeks and then all her friends are like yeah we don't know what happened to her but she's gone and then she just appears again she's like hey i destroyed the moon so it didn't crash into the earth tango preguntas how how did you destroy the moon madaka how does that work what did you do how exactly did that happen i don't know it's never answered or even insinuated that there may be an answer like none of the other characters even seem to wonder how she did it she just destroyed the moon and then they live happily ever after i guess that's just that's the end of things so um i madaka box what the fuck you know just what the fucking fuck this is a deeply flawed series uh but there's no lack of creativity here you know i'll give it that like both in like the art style character designs the types of personalities that they have the powers they have like all of that gets crazy creative and i will give all kinds of praise for that and hell it could really inspire other people in their own projects so that's great i hope that works out for them and uh like i said it is impressive how the world is able to continually expand and continually reveal new aspects to it that makes us look at this world in a different light like a couple months ago i did a video about star wars and how that franchise has kind of been run into the ground because it has failed to do that even though it's so much bigger and has run for so much longer than madaka box did but you know i really barely scratched the surface of all the weird shit that goes on in this series but like i said it is it is fun and i think you should check it out if anything i mentioned here sounds at all interesting anyways that's it see you later goodbye huge thank you to everyone who watched this far i'm sure everyone who's leaving a comment telling me to kill myself definitely made sure to watch the whole video so thanks to them as well and all the names you see on screen right now these are my patrons so thanks especially to my super ultra great patrons who are oppo savillainan olivia rayon brother santotes buffy valentine carolina clay dan and seljevich dark king dio echo evie flax great grebo carcat kitsune liza rudakova lord tiebreaker madison lewis benet matthew bodro microphone peep the toad return of car to mom robbie reviews sad martigan sillier the vixen tesla shark vavixus and wesley i'm not i'm not redoing that i don't even care uh if you want to get your name on here be sure to join my patreon page if you can't do that then please just write this video and comment on it subscribe all the things i'm supposed to say here um uh thank thank you goodbye