"Has a loving family and best friends, laughs and cries from time to time..." Madoka Kaname, an eighth grader at Mitakihara middle school, lives such a life. One day, she has a very magical encounter. She doesn't know if it's by chance or by fate yet, but this meeting will change her destiny. This is the beginning of a new story of magical girls...
I know the show was brought up a couple of times in the request thread, so with the rules being adjusted I thought I should go ahead and start a topic for the series.
If you're interested in the series but haven't watched it yet, Crunchyroll is streaming the TV series. Go watch that right now; the fandom is terrible about spoiling everything.
If you liked the series, there's also a movie trilogy (The Beginning Story, The Eternal Story, and The Rebellion Story). The first two (Beginning and Eternal) are a recap of the TV series; they're reanimated and the seiyuu re-recorded their dialogue for it, but it is ultimately going to be the story you're already familiar with from the TV series. Those movies got a subtitled import release in the US earlier this year. Rebellion is new material set after the TV series; it's getting a limited US screening at the moment, and will probably get a physical release sometime next year.
A note for anyone posting: I'm fine with discussions of either the TV series, the movie trilogy, or any of the manga spinoffs. However, use spoiler tags, especially for discussion of the third movie since that only just came out and is getting a pretty limited screening.
