Has it really been a year since I last saw Rebellion in theaters? Man, I feel old.
Still one of the best anime movies I've ever seen, and is up there with The Matrix, Dark City, Inception, and Total Recall in terms of films about false realities and the Platonic Cave.
How about you guys?
Not sure I would put Rebellion as my top anime movie. The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time make for strong competition from what I've seen. But it's definitely up there, if only for its sheer boldness and animation quirks.
edited 6th Dec '14 10:38:40 PM by Sterok
If I were in charge of Aniplex, I'd get Ozzy Osbourne to voice Homura in the Rebellion dub.
I seriously don't know what's your issue with her, but unless the voice acting is ear-gratingly annoying overall or the script is massively censored I always go dub over sub. I'll watch subs if there's no other option but it's not the same as listening to the story in your native language.
The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.In a way I feel she had too energetic of a voice for Homura. I agree with the dubs, though. I usually watch them in English, too. Steins;Gate for example, I enjoyed. But not Madoka, for some reason. Mami, I felt fit well. Madoka, a little less, but I didn't mind her. Kyūbey? Yeah, it was okay, but not great.
Then again, this is all my opinion.
So how do you think the series has fared over the years? Some on My Anime List seem to feel that it hasn't aged as well, and also point perceived flaws out with Urobuchi's writing. Such as:
"Madoka does have interesting setting, characters and visual, but that's about it. Throughout the anime I can't help but feeling it's all Urobuchi pulling the string whenever the plot needs it. Like Mami's untimely death and Kyouko's sudden change of heart for Sayaka, not to mention QB is just the impersonation of Urobuchi to spill out information when needed, sometimes he's just trying too hard and you can feel it from the way the character is acting and how the story progresses. SHAFT obviously knew this and they gambled on it, and it worked."
Or:
" Madoka is a sweet girl who worries about her friend and wants to help them. That’s is all there is to her. Throughout the course of the series she doesn’t change. Does Madoka gain some kind of insight into herself? Nope. At the end she is the same person she was at the beginning. She only can do something useful, because Homura stopped her from making a mistake and becoming a magical girl early and wasting her wish on something stupid like in previous timelins. It was not Madoka’s conscious effort to find out about the situation, which is bad, because if Madoka was trying to figure out what is going on herself, she would not be such a boring and good for nothing character. Madoka was just lucky that Homura stopped her.
The problem Madoka obviously has is that she is reckless. She tries to do something, but doesn’t think about consequences. If Madoka had to face dire consequences of her action and learnt from it, we could talk about character development. If she realized that her actions had been reckless and that she was too impulsive when trying to solve the problem, If she realized that she should have gathered information, analyzed the situation, in other words think before doing, it would have been a good character development, but nothing like that ever happens. So we have a heroine who solves the problem with the power of luck. She was simply lucky that Homur’s action allowed her to do something useful for a change. This is a bad writing. Not only doesn’t Madoka do anything interesting throughout most of the series, remaining passive and useless, but also she doesn’t undergo any internal change, which is present in better works like Princess Tutu and especially Utena. Utena is a different person by the end of her story. Hers is truly coming of age story. Whenever Madoka and Utena are compared, it feels to me like someone is comparing a gaunt hackney to a purebred Arabian horse. Also, Madoka cannot be compared to character from literature like, for example, Gwendolen Harleth who has fantastic characterization and undergoes significant character development. Urobuchi was unable to make a decent coming of age story, even though coming of age stories are present in our world for more than hundred years. The director of Utena, on the other hand, clearly knew what he was doing and was drawing from literature that deals with the problem of coming of age, as there are obvious allusions to Herman Hesse's work in Utena.
Let’s go to Homura. She cannot be completely credited for Madoka’s success , because it was not Homura’s intention to make Madoka gain insight of the situation and do something sensible about it, she only wanted her to stop from becoming a magical girl. That’s all. As a character Homura is not interesting for most part of the story. In the first 2/3 of the series her role comes down to stopping Madoka from becoming a magical girl and saying something like “Madoka, if you value your life, don’t become a magical girl”, which was only mildly interesting the first time around. That she was trying to protect Madoka was obvious long before it was revealed. So much crap was happening to magical girls that one had to be half-witted not to figure out that Homura is trying to protect Madoka, hence the big revelation is not surprising, one could easily foresee it after third episode.
Madoka and Homura are not well-written by any stretch of imagination. You can find characters done better in anime and there are plenty of well-written characters in literature."
edited 16th Dec '14 3:25:35 AM by LDragon2
Any rumors about a new animation project? I really am crossing my fingers that something gets announced in 2015. Does Shinbo have any big commitments in 2015? I doubt Urobuchi would need to be free much to work on it.
These are the words that shall come from my mouth. I shall be known for speaking them.

The series. The films cut out a couple of scenes which round out the characters (especially Mami) a lot more.