MAHOU SHOUJO MADOKA☆MAGICA: HANGYAKU NO MONOGATARI
MOVIE
Dubbed
SOURCE
ORIGINAL
RELEASE
October 26, 2013
LENGTH
118 min
DESCRIPTION
Were all the magical girls truly saved from despair? Now, the great "Law of Cycles" leads the magical girls to their new fate. Madoka Kaname, a girl who once led an ordinary life, sacrificed her very existence to set every magical girl free from their cruel destiny. Homura Akemi, another magical girl who was unable to keep her promise with Madoka, continues to fight in the world in which Madoka left her behind.
"I dream of the day when I can finally see your dear smile again."
Madoka Kaname has changed the world. In this new world, is what the magical girls see a world of hope... or despair?
(Source: Madman)
CAST
Homura Akemi
Chiwa Saitou
Madoka Kaname
Aoi Yuuki
Kyouko Sakura
Ai Nonaka
Sayaka Miki
Eri Kitamura
Mami Tomoe
Kaori Mizuhashi
Kyuubey
Emiri Katou
Nagisa Momoe
Kana Asumi
Charlotte
Junko Kaname
Yuuko Gotou
Tatsuya Kaname
Kaori Mizuhashi
Hitomi Shizuki
Ryouko Shintani
Kazuko Saotome
Junko Iwao
Tomohisa Kaname
Tetsuya Iwanaga
Nakazawa
Yoshitsugu Matsuoka
Kyousuke Kamijou
Seiko Yoshida
RELATED TO MAHOU SHOUJO MADOKA☆MAGICA: HANGYAKU NO MONOGATARI
REVIEWS
fulgur
The other side of the *Madoka* coinContinue on AniListWARNING -- THIS REVIEW CONTAINS UNMARKED SPOILERS FOR MAHOU SHOUJO MADOKA MAGICA. DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED THE SERIES OR THE TWO MOVIES THAT SUMMARIZE IT.
"In this irredeemable world, forever repeating its tragedies and hatred, I dreamt that I encountered that familiar smile once again..."
--Homura Akemi The sequel to the acclaimed TV anime Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica (English title: Puella Magi Madoka★Magica), Mahou Shoujo Madoka☆Magica Movie 3: Hangyaku no Monogatari (let's just call it by it's shortened English title of Rebellion for simplicity) takes place an unidentified amount of time after the end of the TV anime. Rebellion takes more or less the same characters, premise, and zany SHAFT animation and tells a new story from the perspective of one of my favorite characters, Homura.
Art and Animation
It's SHAFT. Weird as hell animation and set design, but very high quality. This movie had a big budget, and it shows, particularly in a fight scene between Homura and Mami (see images below, or the linked youtube video if you don't mind spoilers). There are a couple points where things were a bit odd that were probably not intended to be so, such as the soul gem in the opening sequence (stands out a little too well). It also uses the same "cardboard cutout" style that it's predecessor used on a few scenes, which I don't care for but feel is a personal preference. Art is more or less consistent (for a SHAFT production anyway), detailed, and animation is smooth.
Art and Animation grade: 97%
Sound
It's not every day a soundtrack makes me stop and go "now this is what a film soundtrack is supposed to be." The fact that Rebellion's OST managed to make me do that means you can probably make a decent guess at how I am going to score it. Notable tracks include: 『Aboslute Configuration』, 『Flame of Despair』, 『I was Waiting for This Moment』, 『You are Here』, and 『This is my Despair』. Here is a video containing the entire OST. Be warned however, it's about an hour and 15 minutes long.
SFX could be better on a couple thing like gunfire, but at least there's nothing like "CLANG" going on here.
Sound grade: perfect 100%Major Characters
In no particular order
Homura Akemi -- The Protagonist of Rebellion. What does leaping through time watching your friends die over and over again for twelve years do to your mental state?
Wish Type: Time-manipulation
Weapon: Shield
Madoka Kaname -- Homura's "best friend" (I'll leave the interpretation of potential yuri moments up to the viewers). Should have become a physical god / living concept at the end of the series, but seems normal?
Wish Type: Unknown
Weapon: Bow
Kyoko Sakura -- Another one of the five magical girls that work together to fight "Nightmares". A rebellious girl, with a big appetite, especially for apples. Seems to be attending school and crashing at Sayaka's place for some reason?
WishType: Strengthening / Enhancement
Weapon: Spear
Sayaka Miki -- Also part of the magical girl quintet. A girl that wished for the healing of a boy's irrecoverable injury. Should have been taken by the Law of Cycles, but exists here...
Wish Type: Healing
Weapon: Sword
Mami Tomoe -- The oldest (at least physically) of the quintet. A veteran with a big heart who tends to cover up her sadness and stress by acting motherly. Without that stress, just how strong will she become?
Magic Type: Binding
Weapon: MusketOverall Comments on Characters
The TV anime suffered from an overly heavy cast of characters for how much the plot focused on inner thoughts and emotions. I was kind of hoping that the movie would fix this, but I guess it's too much to expect a sequel to axe a character. Due primarily to this, but also due to focusing even more on a single character, pretty much every character aside from Homura feels very flat, with some ( Kyuubey, Madoka, Sayaka ) being reduced to mere plot devices.
Although I still wish they had cut some of the characters, the decision to focus on a single character was probably the thing that saved the movie. At the expense of everyone else becoming flat, the true depth of Homura's character was revealed. Despite being one of my favorite characters in the series, she had virtually no development aside from the sob story that was episode 10. If you didn't like that way that was handled, or if you thought she seemed a little too strong considering some statements about her from the creators, (she apparently watched her friends die in front of her or turn to witches "almost 100 times", leaping through time for about 12 years,) Rebellion patches that right up. I still think things could have been handled much better, but the fact the creators cared enough to make an entire movie to fix certain flaws of the previous season earns points for me. Character grade: 52%
Plot
People in communities tend to divide the movie into two parts when discussing it. However, I didn't notice a sudden change as much as a sliding gradient, more akin to the 5 stages of grief. Although some may disagree with me, I'd say the plot quality starts off poor and gets gradually better as the movie progresses. It also proceeds in a more or less logical fashion, not requiring characters to be suddenly smarter or dumber for the plot (with a single possible exception, which can be forgiven due to lack of knowledge). It kept me riveted with its twists and turns, without having me get lost or stunned by obvious deus ex machina / diablos ex machina. Even the most shocking twist of the film is very well foreshadowed, just like the shocking events in the original series.
I won't go into detail about why to keep the review more or less spoiler free, but Rebellion 's plot was rather base-breaking for the Madoka community, dividing the community into those who thought the movie was a logical continuation to the series and those who thought the movie was to set the franchise up to be a cash cow. I personally am in the former camp, but at least for a while the split was very real. I wonder if the lack of a sequel has stilled those fears somewhat, but I think the true reason for the fans dismay is due to (1) the fan-trolling that happens in the earlier 45 minutes or so of the movie and (2) an image of a character or characters was irrevocably changed by the movie. When you change a character's image, especially in the case of a popular character, you invite backlash. If you make a major change to a character's image, even if it's arguably logical, you almost guarantee backlash from that character's fans.
Plot grade: 85%
Closing Thoughts
All in all, I would say Rebellion is a worthy addition to the MSMM franchise, similar to the TV anime as the tail of a coin is to its head. If you ever wanted more of the Madoka world but were disappointed by the subpar manga spinoffs, consider giving this film a watch.
Overall quality grade (four star scale): ★★★
Overall quality grade (Percentage scale): 84%
GiantR
A fitting continuation of the series, Rebelion is a well put together character analysis of Homura.Continue on AniListMadoka Magica – Rebellion a short review. Madoka Magica as story was more or less done in the series, most of the conflict was “resolved”, in a way where nothing ultimately changed, but everything was still better. Better for everyone, but one person Homura.
While the original show wasn’t about Madoka, Rebellion is distinctly about Homura, her choices, her personality and her relation with everyone she knows.
The show starts with probably the most ideal situation, everyone is friends with one another, they fight together, they live together and they overall have a lot of fun clearing the world from Nightmares. This illusionary world of Homura’s own making is more or less perfect, and it’s a perfect mirror of her abilities, time has more or less stopped there, but it’s too sweet for Homura to take for too long. She seems where the seams are, she knows that it’s too good to be true and as she always does, she goes to fix everything herself.
Her first instinct as always is to try and shoulder the burden of everyone, and with pure power of will persevere, because she is the most competent, powerful and reasonable of all. But that fails time and time again, both here and in the show. Homura just isn’t as strong as she thinks she is. Or rather she isn’t as strong as she believes she should be. She does everything for “Madoka”, but the Madoka in her Labyrinth is the naïve, girl she first met, she’s regressed to what she was before she knew what the world actually is, and that she could make it better.
Homura doesn’t really care about Madoka as a person, she cares about her as an object of desire. She thinks of her as someone that didn’t really understand what she was getting into. She doesn’t respect the choices Madoka makes, and is forcefully trying to change everything to fulfill her selfish needs. Her arrogance will in time be her undoing, because even though she puts a strong front, she is still a weak girl that just wants friends, and wants to be useful.
Homura is an agent of stagnation. As Sayaka said, every time something new comes to light her first instinct is to escape in her world of frozen time, where she alone can operate. And yet she would break any norms, rules and conditions if she could do things her way because she knows best. Who else has suffered as much as she? Who else knows what it’s like to fail and fail and fail, without having the goal nowhere near her sight?
She believes herself unique, her suffering unending and that no one could ever understand her, no one but "Madoka". Everything we started to know about Homura’s character culminates in the movie. The ending is tragic, but in the end it was something Homura, would always do given the chance. Break the rules one last time, and put things together in her own way.
The issue being that Homura is not a good person, nor is she that competent all things considered, she underestimated the situation again, and we see the cracks showing even at the start, she can’t control Madoka, she can’t save the universe alone, her treatment of Kyubei shows that she doesn’t really care about the Universe in the first place, as long as she can keep Madoka content for as long as possible the universe might as well crumble for all she cares. And the Rebelion will end like most do, in disaster having accomplished nothing in the end.
Some side notes, the Mami vs Homura fight was wonderful, the music is as always great, Other than Homura pretty much everyone goes to the wayside and we don’t really understand anything new about them, but that’s fine after all, the Movie is all about Homura.
Overall great movie and a fitting continuation of the story 9.5/10, can’t wait for the movie
planetJane
Crawl low on your belly, salamander.Continue on AniListAll of my reviews contain __spoilers __for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.
I told myself when I watched it that I wouldn’t review Rebellion. It’s a dense, dark, intimidating thing from any critical perspective. Both a tweak and coda of the series that spawned it, a look into the minds of its creators, sure, but something that somehow feels bigger than any of that. This is a film that gets compared to End of Evangelion a lot for a reason; they don’t just fulfill similar roles in their respective franchises, they’re about as hard to come up with anything new to say about.
Yet, here’s a thought. What if I simply didn’t?
Call this a thought-knot. Observations and musings and stray ideas. Critique as poem or the other way around. Call it half-coherent rambling. Call it pretense, if you’re so inclined. Writing a core thesis about Rebellion is an impossibility, at least it is for yours truly.
Yet the form demands structure. Let us begin.
It feels pedestrian to talk about Rebellion’s plot. Parallels to Paradise Lost and its knotty worlds-within-worlds setup have been discussed to death. Thematically, trying to untangle the twine ball that is whatever the hell this film is trying to say feels like a lost cause. Many, many, many factors went into Rebellion’s writing, from the deliberate to the incidental, from the deeply profound to the shamelessly practicalist. Allegedly, the film’s big twist in its final act came about at least in part simply because there were aspirations to make another film after it, and well, you can’t rightly have something end in a happily ever after if you’re going to follow it up, can you?
To talk about Rebellion is to destroy it. This is what “deconstruction” used to mean, in another time. Or at least close to it, the man who coined the term was clear that it was “not an analysis or a technique”. Yet, here we are.
Here ever we are ever.
It has been about a week since I finished Rebellion. The day I saw it, I thought the film might be good except for its finale. The day after, I thought maybe the finale was one of the most genuinely shocking I’d ever seen. Today, I think the entire thing might be brilliant, but not the sort of auteur brilliance that is generally associated with the sort of admittedly “lowbrow” anime criticism I usually traffic in. There is something sort of wickedly sublime about Rebellion. The way its paper-shapes are arranged all wrong, the light that leaks from every source that emits it.
It’s well documented that the film’s first third is a pastiche (some might say parody, others, less inclined to give Urobuchi and company the benefit of a doubt, may say skewering) of a magical warrior-style mahou shoujo series. The symbolism even in this part of the film has been analyzed front-to-back for most of the last decade. Even taken on a base level, it gives us some of the downright coolest henshin sequences the genre’s ever seen. A thought I certainly have about the film is that an entire series done in this style would be absolutely flooring. The currently-airing Magia Record is great in part because it occasionally is that.
Forever is a long time.
In part I think what Rebellion unintentionally reflects is the difficulty of grappling with Madoka Magica’s own legacy. The series itself has grown, witchlike, into a long and crooked shadow. Every magical girl anime after Madoka has that shadow cast upon it. I’ve made this point before, but it’s worth reiterating here because Rebellion in some ways feels like one of the first “post-Madoka” entries into the genre. Despite being a part of that same franchise in terms of characters and the like, it’s not unreasonable to read the entire film as a thesis on what you even do when you’ve made something like Madoka.
Rejecting it all and burning it to the ground is certainly one option. It’s the option many of Madoka’s absolute worst imitators have taken, but if we take what happens here to be that, it’s put to different ends. Spare a thought and a tear for the character of Homura, a personage so skewered by the tragic narrative she finds herself in that her self-destructive tendencies bring the whole universe down around her. Spare two prayers too for Madoka herself, probably the least interesting character in the main series, here, her character is given a subtle glow that actually does make her feel like the ur-mahou that the original series’ finale tried to paint her as. It’s a subtle, subtle difference, but it’s there.
Cure.
Of course, what even is a magical girl?
That’s a shockingly tough question. People both far more and far less qualified than myself have weighed in, and there is no consensus. The history of the genre (beginning with Himetsu no Akko-chan, it’s generally agreed) is well-documented, but as for what a magical girl herself should be. What qualities she should have, what kind of femininity she should embody--if “she” even needs to be a girl at all--what abilities, what demographic is the work she’s in aimed at, all of this is the subject of ongoing, sometimes fierce, debate, in all forums of art discussion among people who care about anime as an artform.
Rebellion feels like an earnest engagement with the genre--moreso I’d argue than its parent series--by virtue of offering no definitive single statement on the subject.
”If an answer is given, offer no question. Let no one else define who you are.”
Madoka, the omnibenevolent goddess, is as much a magical girl as her counterpart Homura, the selfish devil. They act with the abilities they have to their own goals--diametrically opposed as they are. Certainly so are the other Puella Magi (this movie marks the first time the term is used in-universe). The mahou-ness is a hard quality to quantify, as hard to hold as water. Magical Girls are known when they are recognized. This is what sets Madoka Magica apart its least imitators; series that create no earnest engagement with the archetype, instead content to simply play dress-up.
What else is there to say?
Well, on a pure craft level, the film is basically untouchable. Gekidan Inu Curry and Akiyubi Shinbou are masters of their medium(s) and Rebellion is an arguable peak of all their powers. The film is bowl-you-over gorgeous.
Specific sequences need no mention beyond brief descriptors. There’s the gunfight. Sayaka summoning Oktavia. Homura breaking out of her prison. All of this a haunted choir.
One thing to be said in the concrete: Rebellion is a film whose reputation has changed over time. It will not, I think, ever truly settle. That long crooked shadow has only recently begun to be broken up by new lights. By series who have taken this film’s tone, one of the least ambiguous things about it, as something of a challenge. By series also, who seek to build on what it has accomplished. Art begets art. Influence begets influence. Madoka has a thousand and one daughters, some of whom have daughters of their own. I call it like I see it, and I see brilliance.
Who, really, is dreaming?
And if you liked this review, why not check out some of my others here on Anilist?
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SCORE
- (4.2/5)
TRAILER
MORE INFO
Ended inOctober 26, 2013
Main Studio Shaft
Favorited by 5,266 Users
Hashtag #魔法少女まどかマギカ