Roving Thoughts archives

My views on Madoka: Rebellion

(There are some spoilers here.)

I finally got around to seeing the third Madoka movie last year. This is the controversial one, the one with an all-new story and various other things. You can read a lot of commentary about it around the net and I'm late to the party, but I feel like saying something.

On the one hand, what pretty much everyone says about the movie is true. It is basically fanfiction, which makes it essentially indulgent fanservice of the 'not naked people' kind; it's giving the fans the easy, comfortable thing that they (we) all wanted. All of the major characters have been changed around, smoothed over, neatened up, and turned into the popular fan views (and desires) of them. The movie even invents a relatively absurd partner for Mami. Everyone works together to fight things, we get some nice set-piece fights, and so on and so forth. The character fanservice continues even as the movie reveals more and more things and reaches its climax.

And yes, the movie has somewhat of an explanation for all of this. It doesn't really matter; a creator can always find some way to justify this sort of stuff if they want to.

On the other hand, the movie is also about the only genuinely interesting resolution to Homura's story arc that we could have had. I won't say that it redeems the movie, but it does make it interesting; a version that took the easy and obvious way out at the climax of the movie would be clearly worse. It's also a resolution that makes sense if you interpret Homura as fundamentally selfish and unable to let go, which is actually a running theme in the TV series from some angles.

(It is Homura's cycle of decisions, trying over and over again to save Madoka instead of letting her go, that wind up creating so much power in Walpurgisnacht. But for the ending of the TV series this would have been an utter disaster.)

But being intellectually interesting (in part for the fan reaction to its ending) does not make Madoka: Rebellion particularly important to see. The movie contributes essentially nothing to the TV series and is not good enough on its own to be particularly compelling. I mean, it's a movie, it looks pretty. But it doesn't have an edge and it's lazy and indulgent, with only a few scant moments of genuine emotional impact. It's more interesting as an artifact than as a movie to watch. Regardless of Rebellion's underlying motives, it's a movie that is only really for fans of Madoka (and it will enrage some of them).

(Part of this is that it's impossible to detach Rebellion from the rest of Madoka and consider it as a stand alone work. Its story is inextricably tied to the series and it can neither be watched nor considered in isolation.)

Some people consider this in part a meta-commentary on Madoka fandom (eg). I suspect that they are right, partly because I don't think the first part of the movie could have been written without an awareness of fan memes. However this doesn't make the film any more engaging to me; it remains an interesting intellectual exercise, not an affecting one. But then I hiss at End of Evangelion, so you can take my opinion with some salt if you want.

(See also Bobduh on, in part, Rebellion as fanservice.)

Brief early impressions of the Winter 2016 anime season so far

As before it's time for another set of my early impressions, this time supplementing my first episode takes after I've watched some more of these shows. Somewhat surprisingly, I didn't try out anything this season that was an outright miss; I'm not sure if this is because I'm getting better at avoiding loser shows or that I'm getting less willing to try things.

Clear winners:

• ERASED aka Boku Dake ga Inai Machi: This is basically doing everything right as a suspense show. It's interesting, compelling, well put together, and has been at points both genuinely unpleasant and genuinely beautiful. At times it's so successful as a show that it's hard to watch due to the tension and power.

• Dimension W: So far this is a well done adventure/action show featuring adult characters for once, instead of the usual collection of teens. That puts it firmly in the axis of shows like Cowboy Bebop and Darker Than Black, although it's so far not as good as either of them. The show is moving along at a very good pace; we got a big reveal about the situation in the second episode, for example.

• Akagami no Shirayukihime: This is back and so far pretty much the same as before, except that this time we seem to have an ongoing multi-episode plot. I'm fine with that, since it adds some additional interest and involvement to the whole thing.

I'm enjoying:

• BBK/BRNK aka Bubuki Buranki: I'm quite enjoying this for what it is, which is a (so far) uncomplicated shonen action story. It's well put together and moving right along, although it could yet slow down. Your tolerance for this will depend both on your interest in its fundamental genre (since it's not doing anything special there) and in your tolerance for CG characters. They don't bother me at all, but some people really hate them.

• Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash: This is a realism-inclined take on the whole 'people wind up in a fantasy world', where our protagonists are low level spuds who are not exactly having a good time. They are (not) enjoying it about as much as you'd expect, and the second episode was fairly blunt about this. The show is beautiful and well put together, with generally interesting characters, but it's not perfect; there was an jarringly unpleasant bit of extended 'fanservice' in the first episode, for example.

  So far I'm enjoying Grimgar on the whole but I'm concerned about where it's going to go. I am probably not going to enjoy an entire season of grinding brutality, for example, however realistic a depiction it is of people operating under those stresses and how they deal (or don't deal) with them. At the same time I don't see where else Grimgar can go with the setup so far; it would be equally jarring if it turned into something pleasant where the protagonists went on pretty high fantasy adventures.

• Active Raid: This is so far a generally enjoyable action show with some interesting things, but it's also periodically slid into some less enjoyable bits that I would preferred to live without, some of which show rather questionable judgement (like the fanservice at the start of the second episode). It's also got a bit more than its share of not so much cliched as troped characters. To the extent that the show has staked out where it's going, it's deeply silly; it features crazy supervillain hackers of questionable taste. But I'm willing to keep watching for now.

  (I called the show not as smart as it thinks it is, and I stand by that.)

It's okay for now:

• Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo!: This is reasonably funny so far (which is rare for me), partly because it's willing to be subtle. I'm not sure if the show's premise can sustain enough humour and interest to keep me watching all season, though.

I'm still watching:

• Myriad Colors Phantom World aka Musaigen no Phantom World: Oh KyoAni, how you've come down in the world this time around. There are a few interesting things here but they are mostly drowned by the combined slather of your typical low-quality LN writing and KyoAni's inability to do good fight scenes (I wrote an entire rant about part of that).

• Koukaku no Pandora: This is written by Koshi Rikudo, the creator of Excel Saga, but unfortunately it lacks the latter's manic energy and thus much of its charm. It's okay and periodically funny, but it's not really 'good' as such.

  (The first episode actually did have that manic energy, but things slowed down after that.)

• Luck & Logic: It's yet another action shonen LN-based show and as a result it's going just as you expect and is just about as cliched as you'd expect, with periodic injections of stupid and annoying things. It has mostly not been actively bad so far, just bland. I think it managed to be funny once.

  (Watching this makes it clear just how much of a standout last season's Asterisk was.)

The only reason I'm still watching all three of these shows is that they're right there and I'm apparently kind of bored this season. If I was sensible I would drop them and use my time to watch better things from my copious backlog. In a stronger season they might all be misses on the grounds that they're too boring (as opposed to misses on the grounds that they're bad).

Not for me:

• Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu: Not my kind of show or setting and sadly its general excellence was unable to overcome that. Lots of people love this, for good reason.

• Dagashi Kashi: In practice, not sufficiently funny to overcome that it's a setting and setup that generally doesn't work for me.

Not considered for various reasons:

• Lupin III (2015): I bounced off the first episode after a few minutes and haven't tried it again, partly because I've heard that the actual content is not too compelling.

• Ajin: There was no way to watch this until very recently, and apparently it's a horror show anyways. Horror is not my thing.

• GATE second season: Apparently I can learn from experience, because I thought back to my generally unenthused reaction to the first season and decided not to continue it.

• Schwarzes Marken: Since this is part of the whole Muv-Luv Alternate setting, allow me to burst out in laughter. It's by all accounts terrible on top of that.

There's a bunch of LN-based action shows and romance shows and so on that I'm just skipping completely based on the premise and initial writeups alone. The ANN preview guide was very helpful, or to be more exact Nick Creamer's reviews specifically; he suffers so that we don't have to.

So far this is a reasonably solid season, although perhaps not a deep one; I can see situations where I wind up watching only four or five currently airing shows.

(Utawarerumono - Itsuwari no Kamen is still alternating between derping along and attempts at serious deep drama that it hasn't really earned; the latter come off as somewhat over the top and ridiculous.)