Reviews

Oct 12, 2017
This movie could've been a 10/10 if it weren't for the ending. As it stands, no movie, animated or otherwise, has ever incited such intense feelings of rage, betrayal, and disappointment in me quite like this movie did. Even though the first 95% of the movie was absolutely amazing, I legitimately wish I had never seen it solely because of this ending, which is why I have no choice but to give it a subpar score.

The original Madoka Magica series is quite possibly my favorite anime of all time. As such, when I realized there was a movie, I was absolutely ecstatic. This ecstatic feeling lasted through almost the entire movie, and I was certain that the movie was going to trump even the series itself in terms of quality. Which it almost did, until the ending, but I'll shut up about that for a little bit to talk about the rest of the show.

The plot in Rebellion, sans ending, is gripping, intense, and well-paced. Without spoiling anything: for the first ten minutes or so, the movie completely ignores the massive elephant in the room, and the viewer is led to just accept it and move on. Then, when the elephant is addressed, it's amazingly well-executed; the audience is in constant suspense, wanting to know what's going on, but it never gets too tense or vague. The plot twists, none of which I will spoil, are all executed equally well, except for the ending, which I'll address later.

Rebellion has all the same characters as the show before it, but I think they're far stronger here than they were in the show. Don't get me wrong; the characters were great in the show, but the biggest issue was Madoka herself, who didn't get a lot of characterization or development -- and what she did get was very basic "self-sacrificial kind to a fault martyr" stuff. This show allows Madoka, as well as all the other characters, room to breathe and show their personality in a way that the original show just didn't have the time or patience for. All of the characters feel natural, and their actions make sense (up until the ending at least).

The movie, even more show than the show, is absolutely gorgeous, and the soundtrack is amazing. There's not much else to say. I would happily buy the soundtrack to this movie if I had more money.

But here's the thing. The ending absolutely destroys all of those aspects, save for the art and music.

I won't spoil any of the plot details, but here's a little analogy: picture if you watched an entire movie in which a character suffered immensely striving towards a goal, and, at the end, they finally get to rest and are given what they've wanted all this time. Sounds great, right? Now imagine if that character did something that they, as a character, would never do, and that action resulted in not only the prolonged suffering of all the characters but also the complete reversal of all the good things that happened in the movie and the series preceding it. Sounds absolutely awful, right? Well, that's the gist of what happens at the end of this movie.

Which is why, in the end, I have to give this movie a relatively low score. The ending, which essentially retconned the entire series and turned my favorite character into the almost literal antichrist, made me so upset that I couldn't stand to even think of the franchise for weeks afterwards, because all I could think about was this awful, awful ending. This movie almost ruined my favorite show of all time for me, and, for that, I can never forgive it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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