This deconstruction of its subgenre serves as a brutal indictment of value extraction. Madoka Magica is a story of naïve protagonists coerced into reinforcing an exploitative system, while themselves being exploited as both workers and as products. This system, which mirrors real-life relationships between the working class and those we work for, creates the underclass it must oppress. In exploitative structures isolation and dehumanization is a motivating feature, not a bug, and compassion is revolutionary. To quote Karl Marx, who may as well have written this show’s script: “The proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies.”

The animations of the Magical Girls’ quarries and their nightmare-sanctuaries are surreal as fuck, and fans of the Magical Girl genre will be repeatedly hit with fun and clever inversions of genre staples. I recommend you watch the series, then the third movie. The first two movies just summarize the series, and the series is only twelve episodes.