All of my reviews contain spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning. 880https://i.ur.com/Z8xgJMv.png I told myself when I watched it that I wouldnt review Rebellion. Its a dense dark intimidating thing from any critical perspective. Both a tweak and coda of the series that spawned it a look into the minds of its creators sure but something that somehow feels bigger than any of that. This is a film that gets compared to End of Evangelion a lot for a reason they dont just fulfill similar roles in their respective franchises theyre about as hard to come up with anything new to say about. Yet heres a thought. What if I simply didnt? 880https://i.ur.com/8wHMIUv.png Call this a thoughtknot. Observations and musings and stray ideas. Critique as poem or the other way around. Call it halfcoherent rambling. Call it pretense if youre so inclined. Writing a core thesis about Rebellion is an impossibility at least it is for yours truly. Yet the form demands structure. Let us begin. It feels pedestrian to talk about Rebellions plot. Parallels to Paradise Lost and its knotty worldswithinworlds setup have been discussed to death. Thematically trying to untangle the twine ball that is whatever the hell this film is trying to say feels like a lost cause. Many many many factors went into Rebellions writing from the deliberate to the incidental from the deeply profound to the shamelessly practicalist. Allegedly the films big twist in its final act came about at least in part simply because there were aspirations to make another film after it and well you cant rightly have something end in a happily ever after if youre going to follow it up can you? To talk about Rebellion is to destroy it. This is what deconstruction used to mean in another time. Or at least close to it the man who coined the term was clear that it was not an analysis or a technique. Yet here we are. 880https://i.ur.com/2Ch4AXe.png Here ever we are ever. It has been about a week since I finished Rebellion. The day I saw it I thought the film might be good except for its finale. The day after I thought maybe the finale was one of the most genuinely shocking Id ever seen. Today I think the entire thing might be brilliant but not the sort of auteur brilliance that is generally associated with the sort of admittedly lowbrow anime criticism I usually traffic in. There is something sort of wickedly sublime about Rebellion. The way its papershapes are arranged all wrong the light that leaks from every source that emits it. Its well documented that the films first third is a pastiche some might say parody others less inclined to give Urobuchi and company the benefit of a doubt may say skewering of a magical warriorstyle mahou shoujo series. The symbolism even in this part of the film has been analyzed fronttoback for most of the last decade. Even taken on a base level it gives us some of the downright coolest henshin sequences the genres ever seen. A thought I certainly have about the film is that an entire series done in this style would be absolutely flooring. The currentlyairing Magia Record is great in part because it occasionally is that. 880https://i.ur.com/Kf62fVc.png Forever is a long time. In part I think what Rebellion unintentionally reflects is the difficulty of grappling with Madoka Magicas own legacy. The series itself has grown witchlike into a long and crooked shadow. Every magical girl anime after Madoka has that shadow cast upon it. Ive made this point before but its worth reiterating here because Rebellion in some ways feels like one of the first postMadoka entries into the genre. Despite being a part of that same franchise in terms of characters and the like its not unreasonable to read the entire film as a thesis on what you even do when youve made something like Madoka. Rejecting it all and burning it to the ground is certainly one option. Its the option many of Madokas absolute worst imitators have taken but if we take what happens here to be that its put to different ends. Spare a thought and a tear for the character of Homura a personage so skewered by the tragic narrative she finds herself in that her selfdestructive tendencies bring the whole universe down around her. Spare two prayers too for Madoka herself probably the least interesting character in the main series here her character is given a subtle glow that actually does make her feel like the urmahou that the original series finale tried to paint her as. Its a subtle subtle difference but its there. 880https://i.ur.com/1tn5H48.png Cure. Of course what even is a magical girl? Thats a shockingly tough question. People both far more and far less qualified than myself have weighed in and there is no consensus. The history of the genre beginning with Himetsu no Akkochan its generally agreed is welldocumented but as for what a magical girl herself should be. What qualities she should have what kind of femininity she should embodyif she even needs to be a girl at allwhat abilities what demographic is the work shes in aimed at all of this is the subject of ongoing sometimes fierce debate in all forums of art discussion among people who care about anime as an artform. Rebellion feels like an earnest engagement with the genremoreso Id argue than its parent seriesby virtue of offering no definitive single statement on the subject. 880https://i.ur.com/EGahVbB.png If an answer is given offer no question. Let no one else define who you are. Madoka the omnibenevolent goddess is as much a magical girl as her counterpart Homura the selfish devil. They act with the abilities they have to their own goalsdiametrically opposed as they are. Certainly so are the other Puella Magi this movie marks the first time the term is used inuniverse. The mahouness is a hard quality to quantify as hard to hold as water. Magical Girls are known when they are recognized. This is what sets Madoka Magica apart its least imitators series that create no earnest engagement with the archetype instead content to simply play dressup. What else is there to say? Well on a pure craft level the film is basically untouchable. Gekidan Inu Curry and Akiyubi Shinbou are masters of their mediums and Rebellion is an arguable peak of all their powers. The film is bowlyouover gorgeous. 880https://i.ur.com/0xgNXkn.png 880https://i.ur.com/8oFvSLr.png 880https://i.ur.com/YpIBFNf.png Specific sequences need no mention beyond brief descriptors. Theres the gunfight. Sayaka summoning Oktavia. Homura breaking out of her prison. All of this a haunted choir. One thing to be said in the concrete: Rebellion is a film whose reputation has changed over time. It will not I think ever truly settle. That long crooked shadow has only recently begun to be broken up by new lights. By series who have taken this films tone one of the least ambiguous things about it as something of a challenge. By series also who seek to build on what it has accomplished. Art begets art. Influence begets influence. Madoka has a thousand and one daughters some of whomhttps://anilist.co/review/5208 have daughters of their own. I call it like I see it and I see brilliance. Who really is dreaming? And if you liked this review why not check out some of my others here on Anilist?https://anilist.co/user/planetJane/reviews