I don't have the spoons to comment on everything, but I enjoyed your analysis, and let me tell you, I'm happy to find someone else who finds the ending's tone as weird as me xD
Like, yeah, the anime does treat it like it's bittersweet, but like you said, it seems to say "this is more sweet than bitter" and I always found that weird, cause to me the ending is tragic. Madoka gave up a normal human life to spend the rest of fucking forever saving every magic girl in existence. That sounds more like a punishment than anything else. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.
It's my understanding that the anime was rushed because of the tsunami tragedy that happened around the finale, so they had to cut corners, and they always intended to make a movie to end the series the way they wanted. And I genuinely liked the movie! A lot of people complained that it twisted/betrayed Homura's character arc, but I honestly disagree. I think the movie's ending is a natural progression to her arc, and I'm curious to see what you're gonna say about it xD Apparently there's one more movie after Rebellion, but to be honest, even though I'll watch it out of curiosity, I'm very much okay with Rebellion being the end, and the rest being left to the fandom's imagination.
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Like, yeah, the anime does treat it like it's bittersweet, but like you said, it seems to say "this is more sweet than bitter" and I always found that weird, cause to me the ending is tragic. Madoka gave up a normal human life to spend the rest of fucking forever saving every magic girl in existence. That sounds more like a punishment than anything else. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.
It's my understanding that the anime was rushed because of the tsunami tragedy that happened around the finale, so they had to cut corners, and they always intended to make a movie to end the series the way they wanted. And I genuinely liked the movie! A lot of people complained that it twisted/betrayed Homura's character arc, but I honestly disagree. I think the movie's ending is a natural progression to her arc, and I'm curious to see what you're gonna say about it xD Apparently there's one more movie after Rebellion, but to be honest, even though I'll watch it out of curiosity, I'm very much okay with Rebellion being the end, and the rest being left to the fandom's imagination.