Honestly, I like it a lot! Yes - it’s “the dark magical girl show”, but it doesn’t even feel as dark as I was personally bracing for. Like I would not say that it is edgy just for edginess sake. I also just really adore the creative, mixed-media approach to the presentation of the witches and their labyrinths.

Yeah, Madoka itself knew just exactly where to draw the line on the dark/horror aspects. There were a couple of other series that tried to piggyback on its success (Magical Girl Raising Project, I think, and at least one other) that were not so careful and ended up getting pretty gory.

Next I have queued up: Serial Experiments Lain. This one doesn’t seem to be readily available on any streaming sites but I found a copy on the Internet Archive. The quality seems kind of dodgy but otherwise it’s probably fine?

It’s possible that no one has the license for Lain right now. It’s an old series—I have it on Pioneer-branded VHS tapes (from before their anime division rebranded as Geneon), which means my copy is more than 20 years old and I’m not sure if it ever made it to DVD. I think we may actually have overrun the “near future” time period in which it’s supposed to take place.