Reviews

May 22, 2015
I’ve pinned down why I hate this series. It’s depraved and horrible. That doesn’t mean I don’t fucking love it, but watching this second film in the trilogy, I realized that I never wanted to watch it again because it’s just too much. It is mature and dark, but the focus is the death of young girls and the hopelessness they are cast into. And because of the fact it spends so much time delving into the minds of characters who are barely pubescent and are basically being murdered off by a race that finds emotions to be a birth defect, it makes the series feel like some kind of young girl holocaust. I’ve watched it twice now and I don’t know if I want to watch it again because of the fact it isn’t easy to watch. The first film doesn’t get as dark and depressing as this second film, but it still contained some very uneasy elements. It was a fun film to watch, but was also really hard to watch. Gen Urobuchi is one of my favorite anime writers ever, but he’s also one I absolutely hate because of how depraved he is. What the fuck happened to this guy as a child?

That being said, the second film in the Madoka Magica trilogy, Eternal, is another great retelling of the series, this one more faithful to the original material and not cutting as much out. The first half hour drags out to a sad conclusion, and then it spends a lot of time giving us Homura’s past, followed by the deus ex machine ending. In the middle is the opening to the series…for some reason. This is a film with a lot more padding than it needs. The graveyard sequence was long and unneeded; the music video broke things up and was out of place. But otherwise, the film was paced nicely and wrapped things up in a satisfying conclusion.

That being said, the character department shines completely with Homura, one of my favorite female characters of anything ever. Starting as a moe, scared girl, her continual reliving of the same month turns her into what you think is a heartless bitch with her own agenda, but is really a deeply scarred and loving friend.

Madoka also develops beautifully, giving up her bystander role and becoming the center of everything, just as she has always been.

And then there’s Kyubey, that motherfucking sack of shit white fuzzy thingy that I really want to pet but also want to shoot over and over…he’s one of anime’s most asshole villains. He doesn’t understand human emotions or the existence of souls, but he still manipulates young girls because….why not? He doesn’t know better and doesn’t understand, but at the same time, it’s such a hard concept to accept, a creature with no emotions, that it’s hard to give him any remorse for the terrible things he does.

His “entropy” explanation for his actions is flimsy and I’ve always thought it could be better explained, but whatever. Human emotions can be used to give off energy to the universe. Sure, whatever.

Once again, beautiful animation and music. The characters look like the marshmallow characters of your average magical girl anime while the backgrounds are starkly different from the happy, light environments found in Precure or Cardcaptor Sakura. The music is captivating, lots of classical compositions lending an eerie air.

Despite all the pluses, there are still the minuses. The entropy thing, the random music video, Homura having all those missiles and weapons at the end that she’d obviously stolen from someone, somewhere. But how the hell do you set up an arena full of missiles with no one asking what the hell is going on. Even if you stopped time, the ability only works for a limited time apparently. Also, how come she stops time for the first RPG, time remains stopped, but she can still get the second and third RPG at the same spot as the first?

Small complaints for an otherwise exceptional experience.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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