Yeah, like Madoka was the first magical girl show to have shock character deaths or whatever. Uh, hello? PGSM? Mermaid Melody?

I think what bugs me the most about Madoka being upheld as the standard of grim dark magical girls is that in some ways the original Sailor Moon manga was much darker. Just compare the time travel plots. Homura time looped to prevent her one friend from dying and to save her own city from destruction, whereas Sailor Cosmos time looped in order to prevent her past self from saving the entire universe (and bringing her dead friends back to life) because the future outcome of having Sailor Senshi merely continue to exist was so awful that she would rather have had the entire universe destroyed than allow the mass suffering that she saw in the future to occur. You tell me which plot line is more grim dark.