Back in January 2014, I reviewed the first volume of Puella Magi Madoka☆Magica Homura Revenge!, in which we meet Akemi Homura, cycling once again through another version of the story in which she meets Madoka, and desperately tries to keep her from becoming a magical girl. In Volume 2, we pick up as Sayaka and Kyouko face off about which one of them will protect the town.
After Mami’s death, things spiral quickly downward, with Kyouko, Sayaka and Homura in direct competition with one another, despite Madoka’s repeated pleas for them to work together. Sayaka falls first, the victim of over-reaching her limits, Kyouko falls on Walpurgisnacht, leaving Homura alone again to fight…only she finds herself not alone, as Madoka breaks her promise to not become a magical girl.
Madoka and Homura face Walpurgisnacht together (and for once, my timing worked out as I finished this book on Walpurgisnacht, in between dancing with the devil and flying about on my broom) and embrace, as Homura says farewell to Madoka and resets time one more time, to try again and keep Madoka from her fate.
The title is a bit misleading, Homura neither takes revenge, nor has revenge taken on her. This is, more or less, her story, one she has lived over and over again in hopes that she can stop it completely. And, like so many other iterations of her story, it has no resolution. But for a moment, she and Madoka were able to be together and their hearts were as one.
Ratings:
Art – 6
Story – 7 I was hoping for a stronger ending, but the climax was good.
Characters – Is it just me, or Kyouko gaining prominence with every version?
Yuri – 1 It’s love because the two of them have such strong akashic ties by this point, but I would not say they are “in love”
Service – 1 Almost non-existent, which was kind of nice, especially as I saw some bits of the movie this week at a Japanese bookstore and in less than 5 minutes watched all their breasts bounce at least once and saw a lot of thighs.
Overall – Melancholy, but not bad. 7
Rebellion is the most egregiously male-gazey of all the series/movies/manga that I’ve seen. There is quite a bit of service at the beginning to set the otaku hook, I guess. Especially Bouncing Mami(tm). It’s not as annoyingly bad after that. Well, it’s not Sakura Trick-level annoying like the first 15-ish minutes.
As far as Kyouko… she’s the main character in the first volume of PMMM: Oriko. And she’s all over The Different Story and Rebellion as well. I have no problem with this. ;-)
I had hope for the Homura Revenge series. Is it a later kick-ass version of Homura? We know how all of these alternate timelines are going to end. Oriko managed a surprise ending in spite of that. Homura was pretty cool in that one. Homura after she loses the glasses and braids is practically an action hero. At the end of Rebellion she’s become one of my favorite anime characters ever.
It’s possible I’ve been thinking about this series way too much. ^_^
It’s a version of Homura who is not as bitter and jaded as the one we saw in the TV series. I still haven’t watched the movies…and what I saw did not fill me with desire to do so, I have to admit.
If you’ve seen the series then you’ve seen the first two movies. I’d say watch Rebellion once because there are some cool parts. Or try to, you may not make it through – I’d definitely borrow a copy. Because, yeah, it’s very fan-service-y (some of it made me say “ugh” out loud) and a couple of parts are painfully idiotic… I still love the story underneath. Even if the surface is overly otaku-pandering for my tastes. (Which I understand from a business perspective, but still, yuk.) Not exactly a ringing endorsement, I know. My feelings toward Rebellion and mixed and complicated. Different people can put up with different amounts of BS to see an amazing magical girl fight sequence and extremely cool plot twists. This just made it under the wire for me to be.
Hrmmm. I feel like the more anime I watch the lower my standards get. I need to cut back.
I stood at the Japanese bookstore, watching it for about 10 minutes, and the service put me off. I think I’ll pass, courteously.
I don’t really feel there is any reason to watch the first two movies — I think they cut out some critical seconds of development while otherwise being a reproduction of the anime series, minus opening and closing titles every 24 minutes.
The third movie, on the other hand, has new material, but I’m not sure it adds anything to the original work. It might be a nice fan-fic-like exploration of the characters and their world.
Pretty much the same, but different as Homura Revenge.
I’ve been playing Battle Pentagram on VITA, which is only OK as a game, but interesting in presenting a somewhat upbeat version of the story in which you try to strengthen the bonds between all five girls to face Walpurgisnacht as a team.
Of course you have to play through multiple times to make that work, because Homura’s idiom is an unusually strong justification for New Game+