Madoka Magica Rebellion Explained
Channel: Colby normILL Clipston
Date: 2022-08-28

Dedicated to my fellow weebs at Trash Taste. Keep being awesome!

5 minute version to share here: https://youtu.be/3EkRePjvGjs

------------------

Are you an anime fan? Then you probably like Madoka Magica. The series that brought together fans of Sailor Moon and Fate/Zero, and spawned its own take on a classic genre that's now gone as far as Magical Girl Site and Dead End Aegis. Heralded as an instant classic by both casual and hardcore fans, it seemed this series could do no wrong. But have you ever heard anyone talk about the Madoka Magica movie sequel? Even prolific anitubers like Gigguk and TheAnimeMan have said, this year, that they still don't understand Rebellion. Dislike I wouldn't mind, everyone has their opinion, but hearing any fan of Madoka missed out on the beauty of Rebellion because of some of the differences in how the plot was explained saddens me, and those two were far from the first time I'd heard that. In fact, my impression from the anime community is that their confusion is actually the majority's reaction to Rebellion, so that's why today I'm going to explain what exactly happened in Madoka Magica Rebellion.

I remember when Rebellion first came out ten years ago, everyone had this negative reaction to it that when explained always came back to "I don't understand it's confusing plot." Now at that time, we weren't far from when Inception was released, and boy I remembered how everyone who watched that movie told me they had to watch it multiple times to understand it. Back then, as someone who had only watched it once, I thought this was ridiculous. Sure, you'd get more out of a second viewing, but it was pretty clear about what happened in the plot by the end, minus the final cliffhanger. So my reaction to everyone else's reaction to Rebellion was, I'm sure they'll watch it again when they have time, and they'll get it when they do. And looking at MAL's ratings and rankings, I thought that's exactly what had happened. Sure there's a lot going on in the story, but especially on a second viewing you'd be able to follow it. This isn't like an Eva or Lain where you're doomed without help from online wikis, and hell, if I could figure out Rebellion I know you can to. So to those who never gave it another go, now's your chance to go revisit it, since another installment officially coming. But to those of you who did and still didn't get it, or just want to take this trip down memory lane with me, lets break the story of how after Madoka became a God, Homura became a Demon.

To understand Madoka Magica Rebellion, especially if you haven't watched the series in the last ten years, I'm going to first explain how the story of the original 12 episode series told its story. Since that one came out to universal acclaim just two years prior, I'm hoping that highlighting the dialogue for how and when things get revealed there will both refresh us on how we understood the TV run and help us clear up the movie confusion. So lets get into it!

Episode 1 of Madoka Magica opens up with two minutes of the final fight of the timeline we're about to leave to begin our story. (cut to zoom) Yeah, this is the one people understood. (Unzoom) Madoka races through the witch layer stylized domain of Walpurgisnacht (pronunciation?) and comes to find Homura busy losing that battle again for the countless time. As Homura falls through the air, she sees Madoka giving in to Kyubey's offer to become a magical girl. Then, the timeline resets, and we see Madoka in bed who thinks some lingering memory of it was a dream. This confusing of an opening seems to be no problem, even though anyone watching this for the first time would have none of the context I just gave you, because all of this gets flushed out in a retelling of this event in later episodes. Because the movie doesn't have as much time as a 12 episode series, retelling is not really employed in Rebellion. This isn't the main reason for confusion though, cause we'll see in this TV series that diegetic narration is the main tool that's used to explain the plot, (zoom cut) which definitely makes it to Rebellion. (zoom out) Both the TV series and movie try to always put concrete spoken answers to the questions they raise, which is why the next installment won't be a Hideaki Anno retelling.