Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Blu-ray Standard Version

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Price: $138.98 $90.00   

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• The movie version of the madoka tv series on bluray

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BLU-RAY

Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Blu-ray Standard Version Review

Milking is a very prevalent problem in entertainment industries, and anime is certainly no exception. These movies--"Beginnings" and "Eternal"--are just a re-skin of the original 12-episode TV series that aired during the Winter 2011 anime season. They took the series, chopped it up to fit the reduced timeframe of 2 movies, polished the animation a little, and rereleased it. And then sold it for 90+ dollars. (A lot more if you live in Japan.) That's over $45 per movie, which is about three times what a movie normally goes for in the United States.

We meet again, Aniplex. I wasn't expecting to have to criticize my favorite series TWICE, but you leave me no choice.

Here's an accurate metaphor for you: This release is like trying to polish a trophy (the trophy being the great accomplishment that was Madoka Magica TV), but while doing so, you chip the thing. The movie release brings nice little improvements to the visual production, but cuts out many important scenes from the TV anime, thus ultimately hurting the quality of the overall work more than improving it.

Madoka Magica is a series where every scene contributes something substantial to the narrative. This makes it so that it's impossible to cut anything without actively detracting from the overall work.

Let's look at Beginnings. For example, the omission of a certain sequence that was initially at the beginning of the first episode completely threw off the mood. It's actually amazing how much of a difference its omission made. Without it, the opening scenes make Madoka look like an INCREDIBLY generic anime. It makes the darker toned and foreboding soundtracks sound incredibly out of place. Then, Madoka starts talking about what she saw in her dream the night before just like she did in the TV series, and it makes so much less sense because we didn't actually see that scene. It took a LONG TIME to get into what was happening due to this huge disconnect.

Most of the things that were cut are concentrated around the first half of the movie, and it really wasn't until things settled down that I could get immersed in the events that were transpiring on the screen, but once it hit its stride, it was about as engaging as the TV series was. But that took way too long.

The touch ups to the art are mostly pretty nice, though almost all of them are completely trivial. They added more detail to the scenery around them, and more intermediary shots of the cityscape and whatnot. They kind of make the city feel a bit less abstract and more lived in. But sometimes it goes overboard, like one room, where they just shoved a whole ton of pointless crap on the screen that just clutters up the scene. There's a lot of general busyness. Also, the random shots of the cityscape they toss in are sometimes timed poorly. In the TV series, they were used for silent transitions, but here, they're shoved in while dialog's going on.

They pointlessly increased the length of the transformation scenes by like, 5 times. I liked how brief they were in the TV series, but now they're pointlessly long. The music placement is pretty bizarre, and sometimes creates instances of soundtrack dissonance. Sayaka sounds more moe before (as well as some other characters). What's the point in rerecording lines that were good enough as it was? Simple: pandering. Their voices didn't sound moe enough, so Shaft decided to fix it. Good guy Shaft always worrying about what matters most.

Now for Eternal. It doesn't cut as much content as Beginnings did at least, but the ways it padded the runtime were mostly trivial. Again, there's no change to the plot or dialog, but the imagery during one particular conversation is intense. However, the transition into it is far too long, and the exit from the scene is just the same thing as the transition into it, but reversed. And then, there's a scene immediately afterwards that's utterly pointless. It feels like they're just trying to pretend that they actually spent money on producing these movies. Actually, in hindsight, regardless of how visually impressive these two scenes are, they're INCREDIBLY out of place in context of the settings of the rest of the movies. They look like they were ones that were supposed to be in a supernatural horror movie or something, but somehow got lost and found their way here. Especially that second one.

Ultimately, these movies are pointless. They don't change anything IMPORTANT for the better or add content to the story--in fact, the changes are wholly worse due to squishing 176 minutes worth of content into a 120 minute movie (in the case of Beginnings). Some of the aesthetic changes are nice though. One of the only flaws I had with the animation in the show was how there were a couple scenes where characters were walking toward the screen, but looked like they were walking in place. They fixed that, but some changes are also for the worse, needlessly cluttering scenes with crap. The music is a mixed bag just as the visuals are: Some of the added tracks are good and fit their scenes, while some are wholly bad and totally derail the mood. Madoka Magica's OST was already a masterpiece whose only flaw was the overplaying of the song Sis Puella Magica. The song definitely isn't bad by any means and always fit the scene in which it was used, but it was simply used too often. The only REAL improvement to the soundtrack was rectifying this repetition; however, the soundtrack dissonance elsewhere sure as **** is more than enough to destroy this improvement. All in all, the improvements are cancelled out by negatives.

The best thing I can say about these movies is that the visual improvements make them more conducive to AMVs. That's about it.

Let me draw a comparison with Rebuild of Evangelion. The Rebuild at least had significant improvements to offer in the visual department for Neon Genesis Evangelion. NGE is coming up on its 20 year anniversary, so a revamp of the visuals was really warranted. Madoka, however, wasn't even 2 years old by the time they shat these recap movies out. And as a result, there's like, NOTHING significant to contribute in the visual department. Some of the changes are nice, sure, but they're still ultimately shallow and superficial.

Also, the Rebuilds pushed the story in a different direction--albeit very badly, but at least it wasn't just the EXACT SAME THING copy and pasted verbatim. I was hoping these movies would be doing something like that: Start out the same way the TV show did, but then somehow change the direction it took. These movies aren't doing that: With Rebellion, they're just tacking something onto the end of a story that's already as closed as closed can be.

Urobuchi didn't even intend for there to be a sequel when he was writing the show. The way he wrapped it up was nice and clean and Rebellion couldn't ever hope to beat it. Which begs the question: What can Rebellion POSSIBLY hope to add? I think the answer is pretty obvious: NOTHING. These movies are only being made to milk the franchise. There was already closure on every front.

Rebellion will undoubtedly crap on the characters and everything they accomplished more than anything. Going into why goes into spoiler territory for those who haven't seen the TV series, so for more on that, see my video review, which I have linked to in the comments of this review. It gives more specific examples, but also contains spoilers, so only watch it if you've already seen the TV series.

These movies are a very shameless and particularly lazy cash grab, courtesy of Aniplex and Shaft, cashing in on Madoka Magica's overwhelming success and popularity. The minor technical changes are there just to hide this fact and make it look like they're actually doing something. You're better off just watching the TV show, as the pacing is better, the writing is better, and these movies aren't strictly better on the technical side of things. Some of the changes are for the better, while many (and the most important) are for the worse. I feel sorry for anyone who was not only suckered into buying the ridiculously overpriced R1 release of the TV series, but also the total robbery that is this movie bundle.

You may remember from my review of Madoka Magica Volume 1 how I pointed out its huge popularity. Well, now that popularity is working against it, and I fear that the franchise may become like countless others that have been wrung dry of every penny until only a lifeless and unrecognizable corpse remains.

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