Non-Spoiler Preamble
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Madoka Magica ranks among the only recent anime to really capture my imagination (its only counterpart being the much fluffier 'Good Luck Girl), so I was excited to see the films as well. 'Course, you have to wonder... with a show so perfectly concluded, should they have continued the story in the first place? I mean, the TV series had one of the best, most gorgeously executed finales. Madoka Magica overall would merely rank as a great TV series, but those last few episodes would surely rank among the best TV episodes of all-time. So by giving us a movie that continues past the show's ending, you're really playing with fire.
Is the potential gain from more Madoka material necessarily worth the risk of ruining one of TV's best climaxes? I can think of at least one unnecessary coda: Gundam Wing Endless Waltz. I found that movie extremely mediocre and it robbed us of the logical stopping point from the series.
So that's the kind of fear I came in with to Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion. I very seriously debated not watching the film at all, and letting the TV ending be the only ending I know. But... how could I resist. I had to see more.
Having now seen the film, I can say that while it was not necessary, neither was it a failure. In fact, it managed to recapture the soul of the series in certain ways I was not expecting.
Stylistically the movie is extremely bizarre. But often beautifully so, with gorgeous renderings of the archetypical magical girl content (the transformation scene is freaking amazing!) You could say they're even more beholden to Evangelion now, doubling down on the psychedelic antics and giving up huge swaths of the film for pure exposition and pure metaphysical dialogue -- material you probably could have worked more seamlessly into the narrative if this had been a 12 episode TV season instead of a 2 hour film.
But I honestly didn't feel like they were piggybacking on Evangelion as much here because Madoka has built up its own mythology now, and all the content in this film is connected very strongly to what has been previously established. I certainly wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone who is unfamiliar with the content of the TV series/films, because they make zero attempts to refresh your memory about anything. Instead they throw a dozen new things at you and expect you to keep up. It's a pretty confusing film, and I'm not 100% sure of everything that happened, myself. But unlike the first time I watched The End of Evangelion (granted, I was 12, and I've since come to understand the film intimately), it's pretty clear that everything in Madoka Magica: The Rebellion makes relatively good sense. And a second viewing should clear up any slight loose ends.
All in all, I don't think I can say that The Rebellion is as good as the original Madoka Magica. But what it did give me was that incredible rush, that incalculable feeling of being completely absorbed into a story -- and really being invested in how it turns out. And that's probably the thing I least expected from the film -- having been so roundly satisfied by the story's original conclusion already. The Rebellion captures some of that magic, which is something you can't put a price on.
The longer I live, the harder it is to invest on that extra, almost preternatural level. And while the film may not quite match the original, it does a good job at trying and it's a worthy successor to an instantly-classic show. So to those on the fence about whether or not they want to watch this -- I heartily recommend a view.
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Okay, from this point on it will be necessary to delve into hefty spoilers. So if you haven't seen the film, stop fuckin' readin' bro! No reason to spoil yourself, that's what grandparents are for.
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They've ruined Madoka Magica.
The series I knew and loved, it's dead and buried.
But I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way.
The best thing about these type of shows is that they can throw you for a genuine loop. And Madoka Magica: The Rebellion does that at least a few times. In the first ten or fifteen minutes everything seems hunky dory and I thought they were tailoring the film for an audience that hadn't seen the rest of the story, and that we'd get a big disillusionment moment like we've had before. But that didn't exactly happen, not until the last 10 minutes of the film.
The mystery 'city in a bottle' plot seemed pretty standard for an anime or psychological thriller, certainly not strange compared to what we've already seen from the franchise. It definitely kept me guessing, and it was very cleverly executed, but it didn't blow my mind.
Everything ramped up to a tearful, bittersweet conclusion. My biggest fear was that the new film would undo Madoka's sacrifice. But they didn't, it seemed. They added Sayaka and Nagisa ("Bebe") to Madoka's journey, which was kinda cool. I came into the film wondering if it would ruin what the series had accomplished, and it didn't (it seemed). The film seemed to be a beautiful little Coda, a long and satisfying journey to bring Homura home after her terrible ordeal, almost like the ending to Return of the King.
I was ready for a perfect, tidy coda. To make everything extra neat and extra sentimental, they even played up this kind of destiny love angle where everyone had their perfect companion: Homura had Madoka, Sayaka had Kyoko, and they even introduced this new Magical Girl character for Mami, named Bebe (Mami and Bebe -- aka "mommy" and "baby.")
And right in the final throes, right before our big cathartic release, snap! Crack! The darkness creeps in, as it is wont to do. Here I had gone through the whole film thinking "This is fucking awesome as Hell. But is there any deconstruction going on? I don't really know the Magical Girl genre well enough to know if they're subverting any tropes here or not. It kind of just seems like a regular -- albeit superior and spectacular -- Magical Girl story."
Well, there comes the trope-subversion. You expected a happy ending, but our story's heroine just turned into a demon and trapped Madoka into some sort of... limbo? Alternative state? "Maybe I'll destroy the universe," she says. Well, that's reassuring. At least there's an implied "maybe I won't."
Dark Homura
I, just a few days ago, identified Homura as one of the coolest characters of all-time. Does that still hold true with these latest revelations? I'm not sure. The sympathetic badguys tend to be my favorite characters, like Magneto and Walter White. So Homura would seem to fit, but I'm not sure I like her as a villain.
I liked her as a tragic hero. I liked her as an alternative archetype. We're not allowed to root for the single-minded obsessives anymore, because in real life those people are insane and often dangerous. But I enjoyed the old world mentality of Homura; that someone would show you just a moment of kindness and that was justification enough to dedicate the rest of your life -- in fact, dozens of your lives -- to rewriting the universe in their favor. I liked it because it was different, she was someone who made it look good, when I've been shitting on those type of characters for years (see: Aang's crush on Katara from Airbender).
Can I reconcile my reverence for the character with a now-evil Homura? Well, originally I loved Madoka Magica's conclusion for its idyllic sheen, its endearing and iconic optimism. As a child I found that same optimism from Sailor Moon but as an adult it's hard to get that feeling from it. Yet when something like Madoka Magica runs it through the ringer, brings you to the light through a detour in the dark, intuitively that feels a lot more real to an adult, because we know life isn't just hunkydory all the time.
And I'm sad to lose that. Take away Homura's purity and you're negating her whole quest, and even Madoka's sacrifice, which was resultant from that quest. But now I can try... at least try, to appreciate it in a different way. The dark side of being single-minded, the dark side of being obsessive, now manifests itself in Homura. If she would give up the world for her, wouldn't she grab her when she has the chance? This is the more true to life version, and how can I blame them for going that route? This is, after all, a show about deconstruction, a show that takes the tropes and makes them more realistic.
It'll be a process. I'll have to wait and see if I can end up liking Homura as much now that I see the full extent of her. But I'm starting to warm up to it, a little. Like I said, the villains are usually my favorites. I can relate to her in this form as well. If you gave me godlike powers over time and space? Can I say that I wouldn't do as Homura has done? No, of course not. That's exactly what I would have done in her place. That's exactly what I would have done from the start -- if Kyubey offered me a wish. Something neither sinister, nor altruistic. Something grey like Homura is doing.
I don't really need any new villains to relate to, I already have that covered. I preferred Homura as something different, and now she's kind of the same. But at least it lets this new movie stay true to the original series -- by fucking over the original series. I would have preferred the cutesy coda I was expecting before the ball dropped. But I can never, in good conscience, fault a story for taking extreme chances and daring to cross lines. By ruining the original series, the new films have stayed true to the deconstructive heart of that series, and that's something impressive; something that's still rare.
Carousel
Of course, the story isn't over yet. There's obviously going to be another Madoka film, and possibly more after that. By the end of it all, we're more than likely to get a happy ending again.
But that opens up a whole new bag of worms. Is that really a journey worth going on again, if we end up just going in a circle? The original Madoka Magica series did an utterly flawless job on that cycle, from despair to triumph. For the films to be a worthy addition to the mythos, the least they're going to have to do is add a further element onto the theme. Perhaps the idea is that the circle is inevitable, that you can keep correcting the path with Madoka's Law of the Cycle and whatever course correction they inevitably use to save and/or defeat Homura, but because grief and despair are inherent counterparts to joy, a new form of witches/wraiths/nightmares will always arise and no magical law of physics has the power to cleanse the world permanently.
I guess we'll have to wait and see. Just cross your fingers these movies keep coming out stateside, unlike the Neon Genesis Evangelion films which seem to have been stopped at the border like a shipment of drugs.
I finally got around to watching these three movies, and I have to say, I was dragging my feet the whole way. Which is shameful, because the original series was so amazing (I even re-watched it once!). But two full hours is a significant time commitment, and you have to commit to it twice just to watch a story you've already seen. It's not even a recap, like Evangelion:Death, but a full, scene-for-scene re-telling. I can't say if the animation was better, or if they cut any extraneous scenes out, but the story wasn't any better than the first time they told it. And it wasn't even divided into digestible segments, like the first series was. Granted, this is a serial drama, and not an episodic series, but I felt that the flow of the narrative was separated into beats that were perfectly divided into different episodes. I still felt that in the movie version, so I don't see what the point was.
ReplyDeleteAnd then you have to invest another two full hours for the third movie. I had mixed feelings about Rebellion. The first quarter established itself as what appeared to be a reboot, rather than a continuation, of Madoka Magica, re-imagined as a traditional magical girl series, which is to say that it disregards everything that made the first series so original and compelling. I'm glad they didn't stick with that format, although I guess it was interesting to see them all working together as a team, and it definitely had the sheen of, "this is Magical Girl Series: The Movie!" (Although, wasn't "Bebe" the witch that devoured - killed - Mami in the original series? That it was her beloved pet really disturbed me).
But I liked the Twilight Zone-y feel of the second quarter, and the explanation given in the third quarter that tied it back to the original series. I don't know how I feel about turning Homura into a demon, though, The ending was kind of anti-climactic, and I can't say I have good feelings about the desire to continue the story even further beyond this. I like the idea that some pieces of art reach a point when they're finished, and any extra brush strokes threaten to detract from, rather than improve, the painting. It's often hard to know when that occurs, except in hindsight, but the original Madoka series definitely had that feeling. Yet we live in a capitalist, consumer culture, where if anything becomes popular or critically-acclaimed, the desire for profit overcomes any and all artistic integrity.
I think I would have liked the movie better if it had built on what was revealed in the middle section, and had been a bit of a time loop, where Kyuubey's experiment with isolating Homura from the "Law of the Cycle" led their alien race to discover the energy efficiency of witches, and figure out some way to eliminate Madoka, and thus preserve the original magical girl principle. I would have argued that this was impossible at the end of the series, but I felt that they took some liberties in this movie, and I think it would have been a more satisfying turn of events for me, personally. Kyuubey - my favorite character - didn't come off very well in this movie. (Read in a mocking voice:) "We should never have messed with human emotions, they're too irrational!" Kyuubey's basically admitting defeat, and I'd rather see him win in the end, even at the expense of the human race. After all, why let them and their petty emotions destroy the universe for the rest of us?
In any case, the original series still stands on its own. If somebody wants to see the movie, that's cool, but I probably wouldn't push them to do it. I would definitely tell them to skip to the third one, though, unless they haven't seen the series before - although I would just as soon have them watch the series instead of the movies for that. If another movie, or another series, comes out in the future, I can't imagine I'll be terribly excited, which, again, is a shame.
"Kyuubey's basically admitting defeat, and I'd rather see him win in the end, even at the expense of the human race." Welcome to my world, and exactly how I feel every time I watch X-Men. But that's simply not plausible, 99.99999% of the audience is still rooting for the "heroes," sadly.
ReplyDeleteI honestly rewatched Rebellion recently and I loved it a lot more than my first viewing. Much like End of Evangelion, the pieces really fell into place and it all made a whole lot of sense. It was very cleverly crafted, that's for sure. Especially how Homura's conversation with Madoka, where Madoka admits that being cut off from existence would be the most tragic fate imaginable to her, and the fact that Madoka did actually choose that fate -- that's what drives Homura to do what she does, at least partially, it wasn't a purely selfish choice.
I don't necessarily like what they did to Homura but I do appreciate it. I think it's a lot more realistic that if you have this obsessive character who is willing to go through basically dozens of deaths, and rewrite all of history, just to make life better for some girl who was moderately nice to them -- this is not a happy, stable person, this is an obsessive person and if you give Homura the option to pull a part of Madoka back into the real world, of course she's going to take it. I don't like her as much but I relate to her more. If Kyubey had offered me a wish I would have done something similar, something neither altruistic nor sinister but simply selfish. It's very fitting and very legitimate for Rebellion to take Homura in a more realistic direction since that was the premise in the first place, to bring the genre down to a more realistic place.
As for a fourth film, sadly (for me), doesn't seem as though there are plans for it at the moment, even though they were obviously planning for one.
And I just have to say, god the animation is so gorgeous in this film. I don't know if they do it with CGI, hand-drawn, some kind of mix I assume but god is it beautiful. Puts to shame everything that's come before, and makes me lament the fact that animation in the US has devolved into that Pixar 3D crap. I mean, heck, Pixar movies themselves are great but 2D-styled animation will always reign supreme. 3D still looks like a bad video game -- like when the sprites in Final Fantasy went from 2D to 3D.
That's true, you rarely get an ending where the villain wins, but at least Kyuubey maintained his integrity in the ending to the original series, even if he didn't exactly win. He didn't admit defeat, there was simply nothing he could do to stop Madoka. And even if it was his giving Madoka the chance to make a wish that spelled his own semi-demise, he had no idea that would be the outcome. He simply thought she was an unparalleled goldmine. That she put the whammy on him isn't to the detriment of his character.
ReplyDeleteOne thing you can't say about the movies is that they don't look fantastic. But re: Japanese vs. American animation - we're rehashing old arguments from the '90s that are just as relevant today. ;-)
Don't know if you remember this bit of hilarity: "The problem with Japanese cartoons is that they're not squishy enough."