Gekijou-ban Mahou Shoujo Madoka*Magica: [Zenpen] Hajimari no monogatari
Tags: psychedelic

Plot synopsis:
In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, there are certain creatures that can grant a chosen girl any wish they may desire. In exchange for that wish, however, that girl must become a magical girl who must fight against witches, creatures born from despair that are responsible for accidents, disease, and suicide. In the city of Mitakihara, a girl named Madoka Kaname is approached by a creature named Kyubey with the offer of becoming a magical girl. Meanwhile, another magical girl named Homura Akemi seeks to do everything in her power to stop Madoka from becoming one. Madoka soon learns that the life of a magical girl is not the dreamlike fantasy she imagined and is instead filled with tragedy and despair.
=== Beginnings ===
In the city of Mitakihara, a girl named Madoka Kaname, along with her friend, Sayaka Miki, encounter a creature named Kyubey and are saved from witches by a magical girl named Mami Tomoe. Kyubey offers Madoka and Sayaka the chance to have any one wish granted in exchange for becoming a magical girl and fighting witches, whilst Homura Akemi, another magical girl who recently transferred into Madoka's class, is strongly against Madoka becoming one. Before Madoka can make a decision, however, Mami is killed by a witch, leaving Madoka too afraid to become a magical girl. Sayaka, however, decides to become a magical girl herself in order to heal the hand of her childhood friend, Kyosuke Kamijo. As Sayaka soon comes into conflict with another magical girl named Kyoko Sakura, they, along with Madoka, learn the shocking truth that their Soul Gems, the source of their magical powers, literally contain their souls. After learning that her classmate, Hitomi Shizuki, plans to confess her own love to Kyosuke, Sayaka falls deeper into despair and ends up darkening her Soul Gem, which turns into a Grief Seed, transforming her into a witch.
=== Eternal ===
Madoka learns from Kyubey, whose real identity is "Incubator", that his species makes contracts to make girls into magical girls in order to use the energy that spawns from their inevitable transformations into witches to counter entropy in the universe. Kyoko, hoping for a chance that Sayaka can be made human again, takes Madoka with her to try and reach her humanity. This ultimately fails, with Kyoko choosing to sacrifice herself to destroy Sayaka with her. Meanwhile, it is revealed that Homura comes from another timeline, having relived the same month several times in the hope of saving Madoka from a grim fate at the hands of the ultimate witch, Walpurgisnacht. Homura attempts to face Walpurgisnacht, but is ultimately defeated and draws close to despair, feeling her efforts have become pointless. Just then, Madoka appears and uses the built up energy from several timelines to become a powerful magical girl with the wish to stop all witches in the past, present, and future before they are created. The scope of this wish rewrites history and the laws of the universe, and her existence as a human girl is erased from time. Instead, she transcends into a cosmic phenomenon called "The Law of Cycles", which appears to all magical girls at the moment before they become witches and rescues them by taking them away to a heavenly paradise. In the new reality that is formed, Homura is the only one who remembers Madoka.
=== Rebellion ===
Madoka and the other magical girls reappear at Mitakihara fighting some new creatures born from humans' negative feelings known as "Nightmares" (ナイトメア, Naitomea), having no recollection about what previously happened. However, Homura realizes something is amiss and after some investigation recovers her lost memories and realizes that she, Madoka, the other girls and several of their friends are trapped in an alternate world inside a witch's barrier. As Homura realizes that the witch is none other than herself, Kyubey appears and reveals that she had fallen into despair and when she was about to become a witch, he isolated her Soul Gem to set a trap for Madoka, hoping to take control of the confounding Law of Cycles. However, when Madoka appeared to retrieve Homura, she had forgotten about her duty as the Law of Cycles and her powers, thus Kyubey kept observing her until that point. Having recovered her memories, Homura forces herself to complete the witch transformation at the cost of having her soul destroyed, to protect Madoka from the Incubators. At that moment Sayaka and a new girl named Nagisa Momoe, whose witch form is actually Charlotte—the witch that killed Mami—lead Madoka and the others in breaking the barrier to reach Homura's real body. Madoka recovers her memories and power as the Law of Cycles and reaches for Homura, but the latter releases the curse in her Soul Gem which she reveals is not one of despair, but love. With this power, retaining her human form, Homura suppresses Madoka's powers while transcending into what she considers to be a demon. Afterwards, Homura captures Kyubey and rewrites reality so he and his kind take Madoka's place in taking the misery of magical girls in history while she can return to a normal life. But Homura realizes that Madoka will eventually remember the truth and regain her divinity, accepting that they might become enemies should that time come. A post-credits scene shows Homura seated in a chair while watching over Mitakihara City and a badly-beaten Kyubey in the vicinity. After staring into the horizon, Homura leans over and falls off a cliff.

Review: Mesmerizing, even to a noob. I was dragged into seeing the premiere of this movie by one of my friends without having ever heard of the TV series and without having seen a whole lot of anime, and no anime with English subtitles. I went into the movie with a skeptical attitude, but what I saw over the course of the following five hours was one of the most fascinating and enthralling cinematic experiences I have ever witnessed. Since I don't really have much anime experience to which I can compare this movie, I can't really comment on the specific details. But as a movie buff, I can say that this movie is a spectacle, a monumental achievement in animation which should not be missed.