Madoka Magica - "Rebellion" - Series Review C

(NOTE: Major Spoiler Warning Applies)


The third Madoka film, known as "Rebellion," was rather phenomenal.

For those who aren't aware, the two prior Madoka Magica movies were simply series reboots but the third... the third was another kettle of fish entirely. Set in a timeline where all of the major characters are together, it appeared to have taken place prior to the making of Madoka's wish. However, a variety of inconsistencies soon showed up.

• Witches did not exist, but then again, neither did Wraiths. The magical girls were fighting Nightmares instead.
• The witch Charlotte appeared to be alive, and even stranger, was Mami Tomoe's assistant. Remember, Charlotte was the witch who killed Mami Tomoe in one of the timelines. She seemed to be going under the alias "Bebe."
• Any attempts to leave the city failed.

It soon became apparent that this wasn't an old timeline or even a timeline at all. It was actually a world created in the mind of one of the girls. This magical girl goes on to become a witch (the first witch, in a sense), and her overwhelming despair eventually turns her into a Demon. As a demon, she is able to launch a Third-Impact-like rewrite of the universe, which she does to great effect.

Once the dust settles, all of the magical girls return to this new timeline. While the "heroes" vow to end the dystopia brought on by their demon friend, the new - perhaps true - villain claims that such an endeavor is pointless, and that the universe shall remain this way until the end of time. This is how the Madoka Magica "Rebellion" film ends.

This film has been incredibly controversial from a continuity perspective. Critics argue that the ending may have been an improper resolution to the Madoka series. It hints at a possible fourth movie, but if a fourth movie never materializes, then this is all we've got left to work with. The question then becomes, "Can this ending be satisfying enough?"

The answer depends on how you look at it, and in order to look at things objectively, we need to look at another series which pulled this type of gambit: Neon Genesis Evangelion. Now, we haven't completely finished the series in-blog, so spoiler warnings ahead.

In the twenty-fifth episode, Human Instrumentality begins, and we're informed that the events leading up to this point were all influenced by Shinji's declining emotional perspective. When the power to rewrite humanity is given to Shinji, the others remark how he wished for a world where everyone would disappear (the End of Evangelion film had a similar course of events, though it was a lot more graphic in nature).

Shinji argues that the world which exists, the dystopia to which humanity was subjected to, was simply "the world that is" and could not be altered from its eventual forward path. This is an identical premise to the one presented in "Rebellion." What's interesting is that in Evangelion, this notion was refuted in the main series, but affirmed in the End of Evangelion movie.

Based on the above example, we can conclude that the events which take place in the Rebellion film indeed have high plausibility and inspiration (even if the aspiration leaves something to be desired). The next question we need to ask is, "How does this impact the Madoka series as a whole?"

Recall in my review of the anime finale how there was a massive genre shift from cyberpunk to post-cyberpunk, and how Madoka's wish was able to promote a certain cohesiveness among magical girls, humans and the incubators. It wasn't perfect, but it prevented the eventual destruction of all parties.

All of that was invalidated with the release of this film. Every last morsel.

This film was a literal descent into the moral Dark Ages. All of the progress and cohesiveness between these three groups was completely fragmented, and it is assumed that the incubators were driven to extinction. What remains is a totalitarian world built upon the whims of an insecure, obsessive teenage girl. This can be visualized as a sort of plateau for the two remaining species.

"So is this a bad thing?"

Not in the slightest. In reality, we look at the realm of post-cyberpunk as being our eventual savior, that there can be no backward march of progress. Doing such a thing could be our eventual undoing, and this movie serves as a prime example to that fact.

This movie is a sort of exceptions to the rule, kind of like how "Captivated" (the nineteenth episode of Ghost in the Shell) serves as exceptions to the rule for the Criminal MO. It takes away our idealism and replaces it with a gritty realism that maybe we needed.