Madoka Magica as story was more or less done in the series, most of the conflict was “resolved”, in a way where nothing ultimately changed, but everything was still better. Better for everyone, but one person Homura.

While the original show wasn’t about Madoka, Rebellion is distinctly about Homura, her choices, her personality and her relation with everyone she knows.

The show starts with probably the most ideal situation, everyone is friends with one another, they fight together, they live together and they overall have a lot of fun clearing the world from Nightmares. This illusionary world of Homura’s own making is more or less perfect, and it’s a perfect mirror of her abilities, time has more or less stopped there, but it’s too sweet for Homura to take for too long. She seems where the seams are, she knows that it’s too good to be true and as she always does, she goes to fix everything herself.

Her first instinct as always is to try and shoulder the burden of everyone, and with pure power of will persevere, because she is the most competent, powerful and reasonable of all. But that fails time and time again, both here and in the show. Homura just isn’t as strong as she thinks she is. Or rather she isn’t as strong as she believes she should be. She does everything for “Madoka”, but the Madoka in her Labyrinth is the naïve, girl she first met, she’s regressed to what she was before she knew what the world actually is, and that she could make it better.

Homura doesn’t really care about Madoka as a person, she cares about her as an object of desire. She thinks of her as someone that didn’t really understand what she was getting into. She doesn’t respect the choices Madoka makes, and is forcefully trying to change everything to fulfill her selfish needs. Her arrogance will in time be her undoing, because even though she puts a strong front, she is still a weak girl that just wants friends, and wants to be useful.

Homura is an agent of stagnation. As Sayaka said, every time something new comes to light her first instinct is to escape in her world of frozen time, where she alone can operate. And yet she would break any norms, rules and conditions if she could do things her way because she knows best. Who else has suffered as much as she? Who else knows what it’s like to fail and fail and fail, without having the goal nowhere near her sight?

She believes herself unique, her suffering unending and that no one could ever understand her, no one but "Madoka". Everything we started to know about Homura’s character culminates in the movie. The ending is tragic, but in the end it was something Homura, would always do given the chance. Break the rules one last time, and put things together in her own way.

The issue being that Homura is not a good person, nor is she that competent all things considered, she underestimated the situation again, and we see the cracks showing even at the start, she can’t control Madoka, she can’t save the universe alone, her treatment of Kyubei shows that she doesn’t really care about the Universe in the first place, as long as she can keep Madoka content for as long as possible the universe might as well crumble for all she cares. And the Rebelion will end like most do, in disaster having accomplished nothing in the end.

Some side notes, the Mami vs Homura fight was wonderful, the music is as always great, Other than Homura pretty much everyone goes to the wayside and we don’t really understand anything new about them, but that’s fine after all, the Movie is all about Homura.

Overall great movie and a fitting continuation of the story 9.5/10, can’t wait for the movie