Magica Quintet are trash (I say this with so much affection) for the new opening of The Beginning Story and the SKU parallels make me twitch still. Have I mentioned lately that I love these people far too much because of how they're willing to dance all over my emotions?
Sayaka perfectly strikes at the smaller gear of Homura's shield to stop it from connecting with the larger. It's a tiny detail that probably isn't all that important in the long run but I love it for the typical attention to detail. The fight also might happen in the same alley she fought Kyouko in the series, so tables turned.That scene in general is just amazing. Not only for the Shaft headtilt but because it so nicely shows off how Sayaka has grown. The Oktavia image in the water is also amazing. The Mami fight is so good too because we never properly got to see her in true form in the series and now we have a much better idea of what the veteran girl of the group is truly capable of. I really do love the scene before the fight kicks off proper, where Homura is hanging and the images on the screen flash about from different timelines. I've always loved when the series does that, hence the love for the scene in 11 in her apartment where she attempts to tell Madoka of her feelings while bits from different timelines hop about. I was expecting for her to show Mami what happened between her and Charlotte in the series in those flashes but from what I remember, it didn't quite happen.
To answer Isi's question about Godoka not seeing the split coming- TVTropes runs with the idea that the Incubators' seal was blocking her power for being able to perceive it but you'd think that if she could see all possibilities right after becoming a god, that wouldn't exactly make sense. I mean I think would be a pretty big red flag. The previously mentioned conversation between Sayaka and Homura after the duel with Mami opens some interesting possibilities because in the way Sayaka speaks, her tone makes it sound like she already knows that Homura created this barrier. Of course it could just be her letting on that she's well aware of the past with witches being responsible for the barriers. It was just that her tone was a bit too... telling for me. In saying that as well, I'm still pondering what the actual split will mean. Visually there is still a Godoka in the scene after Homura pulls the 'human' Madoka down to her, and near the end we get the flash in her eyes and almost the rememberance of her role. Does this mean that the link between 'human' Madoka and Godoka is merely stretched instead of frayed?
The relief of Godoka that is assumedly /somewhere/ in Homura's barrier makes sense. Separation anxiety is a very difficult thing to deal with and considering all she's been through for Madoka, having that image counts as a quasi-tangible reminder of her, even if for a good portion of the movie, the proper memories aren't there.
The TVTropes page suggests that a lot of the opening sequence is a take that against the fanbase that tries to write things into a happier place. I have to admit that I love it. Don't get me wrong, the beginning did make me happy as I said before in that I could see the characters I love so much again but you can't shrug off how wrong it feels. Sometimes I do wonder about a portion of the fandom because the series is absolutely loaded with bittersweet things, so expecting it to go to a pure happy place just seems like setting one up for a massive let down. Assumedly that's where the angst over Rebellion comes in. Negative character growth is still character growth and sometimes in the case with the real world, it's needed in order to achieve positive character growth. It's probably obvious that I have a ton of fondness for the colder, driven Homura than I do her so called Moemura original state. That was one of the things that first made my brain start flitting over the opening and telling me something was massively wrong. Characters present that shouldn't be and funky new dance transformations aside, Homura was not the same girl we saw at the end of the series. If it truly was Gen being a sneaky bastard and calling out a chunk of the fanbase, Kyouko flatout saying that the meek Homura is not what she remembers was a perfect way to highlight it. Considering in every other timeline that we saw, Kyouko has never seen Homura in her original state, it questions why a lot of fanfictions potentially (I say that because I don't personally read fanfiction so I have nothing to base this off of) bring her back to the original state instead of sticking with the driven version we see more often. It's not that keeping her in that state leaves out the ability for tenderness. We see her breakdown in episodes 8, 10, 11 and 12 all because of the bottled feelings she has for Madoka.
I'll take a moment here to fawn over voice acting yet again. It really is a case where I honestly can't go with the dub at all and Homura pretty much is the main reason for it. My ears are super sensitive to tone changes and such in manner of speech and in Rebellion we have the three distinct changes: Moemura, current timeline Homura and lastly Homucifer. No I haven't heard anything Cristina Vee has done but my ears pretty much already called that she can't touch the perfection of Chiwa Saitou's work. *_* It's the very same with SKU though. My ears refuse to listen to the dub because Anthy's original voice actor is perfect for the role.
The series has always been about balance, between hope and despair. That makes Homura's choice to be the devil to Madoka's god just feel natural. In saying that, she still doesn't feel like an actual antagonist but the series for me has always treaded a very grey line as far as actual antagonists are concerned. Yes, in her own words she undermined god but does that make her an antagonist? Not in my book. One could say it was the witches in the majority of the timelines but taking the time to ponder the fact that it was their own breaking points that caused the shift either makes them so called sympathetic villains or just downright grey. Sayaka highlights this in the aforementioned alley scene by asking if the person that created a barrier where everyone is around and seemingly happy is a bad thing. It could of course be said that the Incubators are the villain but at the same time, they are grey enough for me to just view them as having motivations outside of what humans deem acceptable. In Godoka's new world, it made the Incubators almost docile because it broke the way the system normally works. Kind of akin to (temporarily as we see in Rebellion) caging a beast instead of outwardly defeating it. In Homucifer's world, it's become a proper revenge act against the Incubators. They're now the ones shouldering all the despair they at one point pushed on girls for so many centuries. A bit of the old 'Do unto others what has been done to you'. If there's one way to make even an entity that doesn't outright understand human emotion rethink its choices, it's to push its former actions back around on it. Yes they have spare bodies but the fuzzed out eyes of the Incubator we see at the very end suggests that there's some proper mental damage being done to them now too.
I do hope this made even a bit of sense. Bullet points and lack of sleep make my brain screwy.
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). Secondly, can you refer to me a specific monologue that you thought went on for too long? I never really felt that some things got really dragged out so I'm interested to see which points you thought were dragged on 
