Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie: Rebellion

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Everything's broken here without a trace. You can never go back to the past.

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All spoilers from the original Puella Magi Madoka Magica will be unmarked on this page. Spoilers specific to the film will be marked. Please do not read ahead if you haven't seen the show. It is very easy to spoil the show, as almost every episode reveals a crucial piece of new information.

WARNING! There are unmarked Spoilers ahead. Beware.

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Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie: Rebellion is Shaft's 2013 movie sequel to Puella Magi Madoka Magica. It follows Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie: Beginnings and Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Eternal, two compilation films that re-edit the events of the series into feature films. Rebellion tells an original story, directly continuing after the original series. It was nominated for the Japan Academy Film Prize for Animation of the Year in 2014, but faced tough competition from Studio Ghibli, ultimately losing to The Wind Rises--the exact opposite film to Rebellion.

Fourteen year old Madoka Kaname was an Ordinary High School Student. Now she's a Magical Girl, attending school, hanging out with her other magical girl friends. When the night comes, she and her friends--Homura Akemi, Sayaka Miki, Mami Tomoe, and Kyoko Sakura-- team up to fight Nightmares, creatures born from, well, nightmares. Things are seemingly idyllic in this existence.

Except, wait a minute. Didn't the magical girls fight witches, not nightmares? Even after Madoka Ascended to A Higher Plane of Existence, the magical girls fought wraiths, not nightmares. Didn't half of them die in the original series? Why is Mami back? What is going on?

Well, things are far more than they look on the surface, for Homura quickly discovers she cannot leave the city of Mitakihara, and that it hides a far more sinister secret than it lets on. For you see, there's a lot going on in this "Mitakihara" the girls just don't know about.

Tropes used in Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie: Rebellion include:

• Affectionate Parody: The way the group dispatches the Nightmare on the movie's prologue, with heavy use of Calling Your Attacks and silly terms, it is very reminiscent of Super Sentai. It helps that most of the main cast was already color-coded like heroes of that series.
• Art Shift: During the bus sequence as Homura and Kyoto tries to get out of Mitakihara, the art style shifts massively. Backgrounds become much emptier, with less detail. Scenes are generally darker. This helps contribute to a feeling that something is wrong.
• Back from the Dead: The original series killed off pretty much every magical girl in Mitakihara. Here, they're all back fighting--the first sign that something is wrong in the city.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Kyubey and Homura want Madoka to stop being a god, for different reasons. It isn't made clear if Homura could have done that without Kyubey imprisoning her inside a controlled environment to try to capture Madoka however.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The first 30 minutes are pretty slow paced and revolve around simple magical girls who wake up, go to school, and save the world. Then, the revelation that their "Mitakihara" city isn't what it seems sends the movie promptly back to the territory of episode 8 from the original show.
• De-Power: In the ending, this happens to Madoka as the laws of reality gets rewritten. Again.
• Gainax Ending: The barrier trapping Homura's Soul Gem is seemingly shattered, and she's about to be taken away by Madoka, who Ascended to A Higher Plane of Existence in the series. However, Homura wants to be with Madoka more than anything, and Madoka residing on another plane of existence, as you might imagine, does not make it easy for them to be together. A normal person will let themselves get pulled away, but we're talking about the girl who relived existence several times to save Madoka. Thus, Homura straight up pulls Law of Cycles Madoka out of the sky, enslaves the entire Incubator species, and rewrites the laws of existence to ensure she and Madoka will be together. She says she's neither a Magical Girl or Witch, instead calling herself a "demon". Several questions are left unanswered, the biggest being whether the Law of Cycles will continue or not. The scene after the credits don't help either, depicting Homura falling off a cliff with a beaten up Kyubey.
  • Things make a bit of sense if you think about it for a bit. Homura's motivation from the original series is to save Madoka. In the penultimate timeline, she was never able to do it. Even though Madoka isn't a witch, her sacrifice means Madoka cannot be with Homura. Thus, when given a chance to save Madoka again and give the Quintet another chance, Homura took it. This is why Homura pulled Madoka out of the sky and rewrote the laws of reality so they will all be transfer students. A proportion of the happy ending from the series is kept; no new magical girls can be formed as the Incubators are under Homura's control, so over time no new witches can be formed. Homura never did anything to alter Madoka's ability to prevent the transformation of witches with her "own hands" (subtitled version). If a magical girl is transforming into a witch, Madoka can touch them to stop the transformation and let them disappear. The difference is she must do it from the physical world, instead from another plane of existence.
• Jump Off the Slippery Slope: Kyuubey was always very ambiguously cruel, at least in the original anime; his intentions seemed noble, his methods cruel, but he never seemed to take any pleasure on it or wanting more than necessary, getting off Earth as his quota is filled when Madoka becomes an Earth-destroying witch. In this one he drops all pretense of being good by indulging in greed and wanting more energy for his energy harvesting plan for seemingly no reason other than efficiency, even indulging on a sinister laugh as he reveals his plan to enslave Madoka as his energy generator.
• Masquerade: One is put up to conceal the true nature of Mitakihara city. This isn't the same Mitakihara city as the series.
• Mind Screw: The movie is already feels very fever-dream like in his initial minutes thanks to weird colors and environments, but if you have watched previous installments of the series is outright confusing: those girls never worked together all the five at the same time in no timeline the audience have seen, they never fought enemies called Nightmares, and Bebe is an entirely new character that everyone acts as she was always there. It isn't until Homura begins to figure out in-universe something is wrong that the mind screw un-screws itself slowly.
• More Dakka: The entire fight between Homura and Mami is this, being two characters who fight prominently with guns, you would expect that the two would take it to the next level. Ten guns would appear out of thin air, fire once, and disappear, and the bullets keep hitting other bullets.
• The Movie: This is the last part of a trilogy. The first two films were a retelling of the original series, and this one is a continuation of the story.
• New Transfer Student: In the original series, Homura is one. In the end of the movie, Madoka is one.
• Opening Monologue: Homura gives one about magical girls and how their end will inevitably be claimed by the Law of Cycles.
• Post Modernism: Some sequences blur the line between Clip Art Animation and Anime animation. Hard. And there's many of them.
• Produce Pelting: The clara dolls pelt Homura after she steals Madoka's powers.
• Secondary Character Title: Just like in the anime, Madoka Kaname is not the main character.
• Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains: Homura's dress as a "demon"(much more likely is that she became a deity-like magical girl like Madoka) is much more provocative than Madoka's own as a "god".
• Sexy Backless Outfit: Homura's devil outfit. While in general her outfit is stripperific, the no back is practical considering the wings (which themselves look impractical). Although the fact she is biologically likely to be 13-14 probably (and hopefully) undermines any fan service appeal. Having gone through many time lines and the amount of struggle she was put through might give a case she is mentally older than her biological age would suggest.
• Shoot the Bullet: Mami and Homura, can't hit each other during their fight just before halfway into the film. The reason for this is quite simple: their bullets kept hitting other bullets.
• Trilogy Creep: Originally, we only have Beginnings, Eternal, and Rebellion. Now we're getting Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie -Walpurgisnacht: Rising- to clear up that Gainax Ending.
• Token Loli: Bebe is the only child between a cast of teenagers.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Homura thinks she is a normal magical girl. Wrong. She's a witch. Madoka thinks she is a normal magical girl. Wrong. She's a god trapped in a labyrinth.
• Weird Moon: At the very end of the film, after the credits, the moon shown is sliced cleanly in half.
• Yandere: Most yandere characters stop at murder. The entire Madoka Magica franchise has proven it has no difficulties taking every trope to the next level, and thus the yandere is also taken Up To Eleven. Homura is a special kind of yandere. Murder isn't enough. Reworking the entire universe to undo a big part of the ending from the series, and pulling God out of the sky, just to be with Madoka again, is more like it.