You can just skip Movies 1 and 2 (recaps with scenes cut out and some things animated differently) and go straight to 3, Rebellion. I watched that way and felt that I didn't miss anything.

The only new scene in Movie 2 is pretty minor (but still sweet?), from what I've read:



Did you also catch the that both Madoka and Utena have?

I look forward to reading your view of Rebellion, Reichu, as opinions of it are very sharply polarised, even among those who like the series.

Reichu wrote:[*]I don't know anything about the movies yet (I'll be watching them later)

I think you will be disappointed.

Sailor Star Dust wrote:You can just skip Movies 1 and 2 (recaps with scenes cut out and some things animated differently) and go straight to 3, Rebellion. I watched that way and felt that I didn't miss anything.

There was one more big change



I did find it weird that Movie 1 cut out Madoka's dream from Episode 1, since that was pretty important and references to it appeared in the movie but it wasn't actually shown.

Other than that, most of the changes in the movies are purely visual or musical upgrades.

Jeez, spooky change!

Cutting out the dream is pretty weird, since it was a pretty big tip-off that some bad stuff was foreshadowed to go down from the get-go.

The movies suck so hard. I keep trying to tell you guys not to watch them, but you don't listen to me. Why do I even try?

Yeah well, that's just, like, your opinion man.

BobBQ wrote:Yeah well, that's just, like, your opinion man.

I do agree about movies 1 and 2 because those are recap films and the only good recap film is a Gurren Lagann recap film.

Though if you never watched the series before I think the pacing in the movies works well enough as an introductory to the madoka universe, which is a rare thing with condensed films since the pacing in those is usually terrible. But even then I would still reccomend the series over the films since it goes into more detail.

I don't consider the recap movies at all essential, though it was interesting to go through them and count the changes made.

The transformations and some of the fight scenes look much better, if memory serves.

Visual and music both got revamped. At the same time, some scenes were cut which undermined dramatic impact in the TV version.

I have been trying to show one of my freinds Madoka, I'll probably just show him the movie trilogy because I don't think I'll get the opportunity to show him the whole series.

Yeah, I'd consider the series a better watch than the recap movies, but they're not bad.

The series format was used really well in the original show I think (for one thing, end-credits stuff in certain episodes), which of course gets lost or muddled in the movie repackaging.

Rebellion is fantastic, though.

Rebellion is terrible because it undoes the ending from the TV series, which was beautiful and wrapped up the series perfectly. It was just another case of wanting to milk the cash cow and ruining everything along with it.

I give a much longer and far more coherent analysis here: https://awesomelyshitty.wordpress.com/2015/05/03/madoka-magica-mega-review/

I liked Rebellion's ending better.

BrikHaus wrote:Rebellion is terrible because it undoes the ending from the TV series, which was beautiful and wrapped up the series perfectly. It was just another case of wanting to milk the cash cow and ruining everything along with it.

I give a much longer and far more coherent analysis here: [url]https://awesomelyshitty.wordpress.com/2015/05/03/madoka-magica-mega-review/[/url]

I enjoyed Rebellion's aesthetic and some of its music. That said, plot-wise it seems to take a long time hawking up phelgm before spitting it back at all that came before it. I guess it also does depend on whether one takes an optimistic or pessimistic view of the ending of the main series.

I watched Rebellion probably about a month ago now. It was a good watch at first, with laudable aesthetics and a sense of intrigue that seemed like it was building up to something interesting. That something, of course, turned out to be even more "lol anime" than the show's ending, by light-years. I would have been satisfied enough with Madoka taking Homura away and leaving the others behind in the experiment's dusky ruins. Instead, "HURRR DURRR, BECAUSE LOVE IS DESTRUCTIVE I'M SUDDENLY THE DEVIL AND MORE POWERFUL THAN GOD! ENJOY MY RETOOLED REALITY AND A POINTLESS AND SUPER-DERIVATIVE RESET ENDING, SUCKERS!". The stupid was so overwhelming that an otherwise positive anime experience was soured.

I made a token attempt to revisit the series and maybe see if Movie 3 actually could make sense, as some have claimed, but quickly dropped the idea and moved on to other things. Rebellion's entire existence depends on final hour "tell, don't show" gobbledygook so violently voluminous it could choke a blue whale. The mechanics of the world serviced the original show well enough, but in the service of Rebellion's ultimately pointless reality fuck and poorly executed last minute Akuma Homura TWEEST they're far more tedious than interesting and not worth my mental effort.

Time will tell whether I end up just forgetting about the whole enterprise or not. Current verdict is that it was worth watching, but ultimately a disappointment that is far less transcendent than its reputation suggests.

Reichu wrote:I watched Rebellion probably about a month ago now. It was a good watch at first, with laudable aesthetics and a sense of intrigue that seemed like it was building up to something interesting. That something, of course, turned out to be even more "lol anime" than the show's ending, by light-years. I would have been satisfied enough with Madoka taking Homura away and leaving the others behind in the experiment's dusky ruins. Instead, "HURRR DURRR, BECAUSE LOVE IS DESTRUCTIVE I'M SUDDENLY THE DEVIL AND MORE POWERFUL THAN GOD! ENJOY MY RETOOLED REALITY AND A POINTLESS AND SUPER-DERIVATIVE RESET ENDING, SUCKERS!". The stupid was so overwhelming that an otherwise positive anime experience was soured. I made a token attempt to revisit the series and maybe see if Movie 3 actually could make sense, as some have claimed, but quickly dropped the idea and moved on to other things. The mechanics of the Madoka universe are simply not interesting enough to me to warrant the effort.

Arguably there are two main reasons behind Homura stealing Madoka back and resetting the world at the end.

First, there's the practical reason: the entire setup of the movie hinges on the Incubators having created an isolation chamber where they'd be able to observe the Law of Cycles (i.e. Madoka) to be able to understand and control it. If Homura lets Madoka take her away to Magical Girl Heaven, the Incubators win. They've seen the Law of Cycles in action, and they then expect to be able to control it and return to the original system, thus nullifying Madoka's wish.

The second reason (and this might be more theoretical on my part) is that Homura is continuing to act out her wish, which was "to protect Madoka". In the series, her wish meant that she would have to continue protecting Madoka, with no possible respite, even if she had wanted to give up, because the aftereffects of trying to protect her made the threat grow larger and larger. Magical girls aren't just bound to a life of fighting, they're also bound to the wish they made and whatever comes of it. Homura wants to save Madoka from herself, from her self-sacrificing nature that led her to become the Law of Cycles. Countless timelines after she made her wish and her promise, Madoka has changed due to her well-meaning interference, but she's still trying desperately to save the original Madoka who no longer exists.

Homura becomes a demon not because love is bad and makes you a bad person. It's because she hates herself, and sees herself in that light. From an outsider's perspective, she's finally managed to save all of her friends from their fates, Madoka included, and gave them a happier ending than they got the first time around. But she's not the same person she was before, she's basically given up on trying yet again to get close with her former friends, and she's carrying around the weight of countless timelines' worth of failures and all the self-loathing and guilt that comes with it.

Plus, the series' ending really didn't wrap up the main story. Madoka is the title character, because the show is crafty like that, but throughout everything it's really Homura's story, and her story didn't get a proper resolution in the series.

Rebellion doesn't undo anything. Also it's not confusing.

Let's first determine who the protagonist of Madoka actually is. It's not Madoka. She's by far the least developed character. What is her character? That she's a decent normal person, that's it. Her character is as shallow and as simple as "I want to have fun" in the beginning and "I don't want to be sad/I don't want my friends to be sad" in the middle and end. Most of her interactions with the events of the story are passively watching the action and saying, "Stop it!". Madoka is a vessel through which other people's stories can be told. The main character is Homura. It's her journey, not Madoka's. She's who essentially created the entire plot and she's the person whose story we get a "resolution" to at the end. Both in the series and in the movie.

Moving on. Homura is not out of character in Rebellion. That is her character. This is a woman who spent all of Madoka Groundhog Day-ing herself through time countless times to save her friend. Then finally fails to save that friend and has to live in an existence where that friend doesn't exist and she's the only one who remembers her. It makes sense for her to not just suddenly give up on "saving" Madoka. It'd make less sense if after the nth time of constantly repeating the same shit over and over to prevent her from dying, she just said "yeah oh well I guess she can stay gone this time". She's just finally doing what she set out to do a long time ago. Her "I'll become a demon" shit was already decided the second she threw off those glasses and committed to endlessly saving Madoka. It's not some sudden reveal. Did she take a huge shit on Madoka's wish? Yeah, but she was doing that way before the movie.

So we've addressed why the movie is not out of character or out of place, let's address why it's not confusing. This is the plot. Kyubey sticks Homura in a fake world, she discovers it's fake, Madoka helps her escape, she seizes this opportunity to pull Madoka from the Heavens, undoing her wish and creating a new world. All of these things happen in a coherent order, all of these things make sense from character motivation standpoints and all of these things and shown on screen so you can see them happening. That's pretty cut and dry.

So what is confusing? How Homura pulled Madoka from the Heavens? She just did. It doesn't need to be explained. How does an Eva absorb an S2 engine? It just does. (If you give me some complicated answer that involves references to outside the show supplementary material you're part of the problem and are ruining fiction, go sit in the corner and think about your life because you're the reason why the horn guy from the cantina scene in Star Wars has a 10,000 word wiki article about his backstory as The Butcher of Whatever).

Rebellion also has the Cake Song, which honestly invalidates any complaints anyone could possibly have. We could've really just ended the whole conversation there, but I suppose you horrible, horrible people expect things like plot and character motivations to be discussed...