Rebellion Ruins The Madoka Name

tjf588 says:

I’m coming into this having seen the series wholly once, the first movie once, and Rebellion about a time and a half. Read this OP, but only a handful of the later comments, which did get me reconsidering how I take this flick.

So, I wanna play Akuma’s Advocate:

That first half of the movie? Pure fanservice. Everything we never got and always guiltily hoped for was realized, and for once Madoka Magica was sort’f a “normal” magical girl anime.
…Which all felt wrong. All during it, despite enjoying the happy fun times, I couldn’t be comfortable with it. It was a little disturbing (and disorienting), because that’s just not how this world’s worked. I’m alright with that feeling.

But Charlotte? After reading about how that line from the first movie, how just maintaining their bodies consumes a magical girl’s energy, was in at least one early draft for the series, I give the benefit of the doubt whether there’s an unspoken logic to things. In-universe, I would suppose it’s Nagisa’s regrets for, through multiple timelines, being the death of Mami. I can accept her presence from that standpoint, and for providing companionship to Mami, which is lost on the temp-reset Madoka and Kyouko-focused Sayaka. For being “Bebe”, that’s her only form that Homura would recognize. “Bebe”‘s antics, I’ll leave up to taste.

Homura’s mulling over what’s the cause of this audience-disorienting world is sort’f drawn out, since we as movie-goers wouldn’t accept Charlotte or Oktavia as the source, so we’ve already ruled out what the character’s just then contemplating. But, maybe this portion was for, aside from fillers (battles & bus rides!), seeing Homura snapping back into form.

But then there’s Homura’s condition. As said, I’ven’t watched the second movie quite yet, but from the series, I was under an impression that Homura outlasted the others, and if her setup for Madoka at the end’s to go by, then Homura only lasted a few years before cracking. This was my most immediate disgruntlement with Rebellion, since Homura had not only been fortified from having to keep it together for who knows how many resets, but had assurance from Ultimate Madoka herself. That kind of connection (read: naked space hugs?) would surely give you a peace of mind, even if you’re living in a world apart from your memories. I won’t say it can’t be made to work, but I haven’t been sold yet, and haven’t the drive yet to rationalize it.

However she got to the breaking point, we then have teh Coobiez. My immediate reactions included knowing that Homura’s breakdown of the world of witches set this whole thing up. It’s from here that I’d defend how Kyubey’s handled in Rebellion.

Kyubey has, for thousands of years, regarded dealing with humans as a give and take, balancing how much detail is divulged with past experiences of human reactions. You say Kyubey’s not evil, at most inconsiderate, but I’d say it’s definitely manipulative. While it doesn’t force a girl into a contract, it still understands enough that humans freak out, so it (eh, I’ll use “he” for clarisity, here out), so plays off of the girls thinking they have a good enough bead on the conditions of the contract, so they will accept it as their own choice when facing the consequences. How many would still agree, if they knew death by witch, either to or as, is the only result, sooner or later? Kyubey needed to maintain his cycle, and that included underhanded tactics.

Imprisoning Homura immediately seems a violation of Kyubey’s methods (convince by any means necessary, both pre- and post-contract), I’m assuming Homura was imprisoned on the very cusp of her Grief Seed’s birth. Since witches are hunted as if non-persons, I could accept Kyubey intervening at the very end to maintain her Soul Gem. But, I’ve just realized while typing I’ve skipped a strong point: Kyubey only knows of witches as Homura told him. So, imprisoning her right before the Law of Cycles kicked in looks even worse for Kyubey’s characterization.

So the scene is: Homura’s almost at her end, Kyubey was told this is when grief would replace hope and a “witch” is born, the “Law of Cycles” is set to cause Homura’s disappearance, and Kyubey knows Homura refers to it as “Madoka”.

In Kyubey’s grand exposition, he says that the witch scenario would be better than the wraith one, so calculation was put into this pursuit. Obviously, there’s interest in getting the highest yield, and Kyubey’s known to see a hierarchy of priorities, regarding humans as humans regard livestock. Above all else, humans are a means to an end, and if that end is better served by the witch scenario, then measures will be taken to achieve it. Of all magical girls, Homura is the only one to regard the Law of Cycles differently, and personally.

The conditions are right for Kyubey: The magical girl who proposes a definition to the Law of Cycles is ready to be taken by it. Kyubey admits later that the end-goal was controlling the Law, optimizing their gains, but the initial intent was observation, to understand what the Law is. Madoka, however, was absolutely nothing special, and in observing personally, Kyubey was as unassuming as possible. I would rationalize this as, if nothing else, an attempt to maintain expectations (his presence) without directing events for Homura’s labyrinth (note that even Homura, while recovering her memories, addressed Charlotte and Sayaka/Oktavia before considering Kyubey).

I will agree that Kyubey’s desperation during Homulilly’s self-destruction can feel off, since he could just seal the next girl, but I doubt it would’ve worked as well for observing the Law/Madoka. No one else alive remembers her, so she wouldn’t have a place in their labyrinths. And as much as Kyubey was caught off-guard by Sayaka and Nagisa’s memory-hold gambit (which, c’mon, how could he not’ve been more suspicious of those two, considering they must’ve been known to’ve died and weren’t like the labyrinth natives?), both sides would know better if Kyubey lost his hold here.

So, just as he’s learned to appeal to human logic/fallacies, he scrambled to appease Homura, to allow the Law to go into effect. Failing that, he broke guise to get Madoka back into gear. That failed, his seal got broken, and a whole lotta his bodies got arrow’d. All in all, I think the weakest element of Kyubey’s role was being present as a typical mascot. But, heck, if he hadn’t gone in, would the children have just taken one in themselves?

But now, it’s Homura’s turn. There’s one rationalization I’m compelled to make for her: If she hadn’t displaced Madoka from the Law of Cycles, Kyubey could have attempted imprisonment again. The way the movie plays things off, it’s a combination of Homura wanting a life with Madoka in the real world and reset-Madoka admitting she wouldn’t want to have given up such a life, so my rationalization looks to mean little, but I’d say it all compounds with the “this is for the best” vibe. Even though Madoka was fulfilled by her wish, that flower field scene reinforces the “unfair” nature of things, so Homura literally took matters into her own hands to be sure that, for her and for Madoka, the world would play nice. Too bad she doesn’t have the firmest grip.

As for getting to that level, I’d think that, like the timelines resets piling up a karmic focus around Madoka, Homura’s bewitched Soul Gem piled up, too. While Madoka was a focus of hope, Homura’s “Grief Gem” was more downer. Homura was prepared to wreck herself up just to make sure the seal wouldn’t get Madoka, bringing her self-sacrificial mentality to the breaking point her Gem’s been at for the whole movie. That much grief and despair, fueled by obsessive love… I could see that being reality-cracking. Love resulted in Madoka’s potential, and love resulted in Homura’s.

So the last loose end to cap off this wall-o’-text, something that now I see as a plot hole: Ultimate Madoka’s oblivion of Homura’s rebellion. Madoka herself said she’d seen everything that has, shall, and could have been. What I’ll run with for now, if at all, is that her omniscience only applies to the universe. If, as the Law of Cycles, she’s beyond the universe, then perhaps she doesn’t know how things will play out for herself (does she even experience “time” in her self-realm?). But then, Akuma Homura’s labyrinth-verse IS a part of the universe, but then I could toss out that since it stemmed from an out-of-universe event, it wasn’t accounted for, or Madoka’s separation from the Law disrupts that awareness (which then might be countered with foreknowing that something’s amiss, like how you know you’re forgotten something). This one’s sprung on me just tonight, but (“but, but, but”…) since Rebellion obviously sets itself for a follow-up, this could be rectified, or at least addressed, satisfactorily or not.

As said at the start of the blog, Rebellion’s a decent movie on its own, and if nothing else, I’ve had fun seeing fan reactions to it, playing with the new elements, just as much as the elements from the original series and movies. There’s be a certain irony if Rebellion’s follow-up is as pandering to Rebellion fans as Rebellion was to the series/movies, but since the series is its own contained manifestation technically separate from the movies’ continuity, I’m fine with its existence by itself. Better than shoehorning the Star Wars prequels into the original trilogy more and more with each release, at least.

tl;dr – I can enjoy Rebellion because, technically, it only ruins the Madoka Movies, and I can consider them separately from the twelve-episode series that started this whole craze.

(I’m welcome to rebuttal and criticism, if anyone’s here to care to. This is, at its most basic, “just” an anime, and I’m not so devout as to avoid the entertainment of seeing it all in different ways. Hell, I’m likely to groan at myself here down the road.)