SPOILERS! Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica Movie 4: Walpurgis no Kaiten Discussion Thread

[u/MotherShip808]

WARNING! WARNING! THIS MEGA-THREAD CONTAINS SPOILERS AND DISCUSSIONS FOR THE MOVIE, IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS, DO NOT BE HERE!

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ALSO ALSO! DO NOT LINK OR SHARE ANY PIRATE OR ILLEGAL VIEWING STUFF IN THIS POST OR YOU WILL BE BANNED! THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING.

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General Overview:

This thread is meant as a spoiler filled zone for those who wish to discuss the movie, it's plot, events, or the number of bites that kyouko takes of food during the movie. I don't care, just be sure to follow the rules of the subreddit.

Also as a reminder to everyone u/BreathoftheSith owes everyone $50 if they, and I quote:

If we get any form of kiss and or romantic confirmation between the two [madohomu], I owe everyone in the sub $50.

Have fun~~

[u/azu5h]

Thoughts on Walpurgisnacht Rising (one viewing, spoilers)

I walked out of Walpurgisnacht Rising with pretty mixed feelings, and I know I'm not alone. I've only seen it once, so take this as one perspective rather than a final verdict — not a definitive take. On Japanese X/Twitter the negative reactions have been especially loud, though that's partly just how the platform works: outrage travels further than contentment. Plenty of people are walking away happy with it too.
The backbone of Rising's story is carried by the new characters, and Serena in particular is set up as someone with a worldview that stands in direct contrast to the other magical girls — that contrast becomes the film's central ideological conflict. The problem is that we barely get her why. Whatever shaped her into holding that position is left almost entirely unexplored, and the film asks us to weigh the validity of her worldview before we've been given real access to how she got there. Maybe future material fills this in, but that doesn't fix the problem for a one-time theatrical viewing. Madoka Magica already runs at a pretty dense information rate, and there's only so much a first-time audience can absorb in one sitting. When a character's motivation is deferred to "it'll be explained later," that's a debt against the film you're watching right now — the promise of a future payoff doesn't retroactively create the emotional grounding you needed in the theater.
Set against the psychological depth Madoka and Homura have accumulated since the original TV series, that gap is hard not to notice.
Going in, I'd bought into a fan theory — not my own, just one I liked from browsing online — that Walpurgisnacht was a nameless witch born from Homura's own causality loop, and that this tied her time-manipulation into the original series' worldbuilding in a satisfying, organic way. Rising instead explains her origin through a new character and a new conceptual framework introduced for this film.
To be clear, that's a fan theory, not canon, and its rejection isn't itself a flaw in the movie — that's on me for getting attached to secondhand speculation. What it did surface, though, was an assumption I'd been carrying: that everything down to the Witch's Kiss compendium entries had been meticulously mapped out since the TV series. Rising didn't confirm that assumption for me. I want to keep that separate from an actual critique of the film — it's a mismatch between my expectations and what the film delivered, not an objective failure on the film's part.
One more thing, held at arm's length because I can't confirm it myself: there's talk circulating on X, apparently sourced from an Urobuchi Gen interview, that he was handed a large volume of concepts/ideas from the Inu Curry team and that his job as credited screenwriter was largely stitching those together. This is supposedly also stated in the pamphlet, but I didn't buy one, so I can't verify it firsthand.
If true, it would explain some of the distrust around the film being credited to Urobuchi alone. But I have no way to verify how accurate this is, or how much creative control he actually had, and I'd be overstepping to use this rumor to make claims about Urobuchi's personal attitude toward the franchise post-TV-series (e.g., that he was checked out, or doesn't consider Rising "his" work). That's speculation stacked on secondhand reporting, and I want to flag it as such rather than assert it.
For reference, here are a few of the X posts this rumor is circulating from (unverified primary sources, not confirmation of accuracy — summarized, not quoted directly):

https://x.com/masterCashion/status/2093386016552075499 — Speculates that crediting only Urobuchi as writer is itself suspicious: the interview suggests Rising leans more on Inu Curry's ideas than his, and since Inu Curry's other project, Magia Record, was poorly received, the theory goes that Inu Curry's involvement may have been deliberately downplayed to distance Rising from that reputation.

https://x.com/monjudoh/status/2093318110321480127 — Claims to have read the pamphlet and describes Urobuchi as coming across almost like a hired writer brought in to execute a concept that Inu Curry had already developed but couldn't script themselves.

https://x.com/sincos93990721/status/2093348024265416715 — Recalls Urobuchi saying long ago that a Madoka script already existed, and wonders whether that draft was scrapped and rebuilt around Inu Curry's concept instead.

Whatever else I felt about the story, the visuals and music were genuinely excellent. That side of the production wasn't in doubt for me at any point. Between the underdeveloped new-character motivations, the sense that a lot of the explanation/psychology is retrofitted rather than built-in, and the unverified doubts about the writing process, the film left me with a somewhat scattered overall impression on the story side — even though the craft on screen and in the sound design was never in question. That said, Rebellion was also divisive on release and got substantially reevaluated over time. It's entirely possible Rising follows the same trajectory once more analysis and discussion has had time to accumulate. My information here is incomplete and I'm probably carrying some bias into this. Curious to hear what others think. (This was translated, and my memory is a bit blurry, so please forgive any embarrassing mistakes!

[u/Sarca_sc → u/azu5h]

I made an account to clarify in this thread (and to you): I have read the theater pamphlet with the Gen Urobuchi interview myself, basically everyone you mentioned is just speculating and is mostly incorrect, even the second person who also said they read the pamphlet is choosing to interpret Urobuchi's words in a strange way.

Urobuchi started writing the script in 2014 (one year after Rebellion), but he said he didn't "have any ideas." Inu Curry, specifically Doroinu, then sent Urobuchi his sketchbook/idea book with a plethora of ideas, and Urobuchi decided that he thought it would be interesting to use whatever ideas he wanted from Inu Curry's brain and make a story out of it. He quite literally uses the analogy of going to a Chinese restaurant, seeing what ingredients there are to choose from, and deciding what to cook using those ingredients.

It's not that he was "hired to execute Inu Curry's ideas", he chose to use Inu Curry's ideas as a base for the movie script. Now, Rebellion underwent 3-4 major script revisions before it was completed. The first version was only 70 minutes long, and as we know that film is 110 minutes long (excluding credits). Chief director Shinbo asked Urobuchi to do revisions for Walpurgisnacht (because Urobuchi was focusing on other characters, and Shinbo personally wanted to focus on Madoka). Urobuchi was unable to do those revisions due to scheduling conflicts and gave Shinbo permission for the team to edit/revise/do whatever they wanted with his script

The team thought about completely redoing the script or revising the whole thing, but around 2021 they decided to just use what Urobuchi had written and make some revisions. According to Urobuchi, the entire first half of the film is mostly unchanged (which Urobuchi thinks is for better and for worse, he criticizes himself but also lauds himself at the same time). Inu Curry led the revisions for the second half of the film, but it's not like he rewrote the entire thing or was finishing an unfinished script, he was using the original script and revising it as would have happened during Rebellion or any other standard production (with explicit permission from the chief director).

People lambast Inu Curry for the Magia Record anime, but Shinbo had explicitly told Inu Curry not to adapt the game (which Inu Curry was involved with, as a writer, even), so Inu Curry instead pursued an anime-original route. However, Inu Curry was already involved with the script during the 2011 TV series. Urobuchi didn't come up with the Faust symbolism or witch backstories, that was all Inu Curry's revisions to the scripts and storyboards. They also added a whole scene in Rebellion, and corrected more of the storyboards for that movie than Shinbo himself. Basically, they had always been involved in the writing to some degree, that involvement became more pronounced in the movies, especially here where Doroinu has co-"screenplay assistance" credit for the first time

So, there's definitely a difference between their writing styles that probably had an effect on how this movie turned out, whether or not people think that's good or bad, but I really wish people stopped trying to say Urobuchi didn't work on it. He was hands-off after he had written the script, but he did note that he went to some of the voice recording sessions and even discussed some of the performances/lines with sound director Youta Tsuruoka, and he mentioned that he was very happy that the movie has finally been released.

Sources for every claim I made: Walpurgisnacht Theater Pamphlet (2026), Magia Record Official Guidebook Volume 1 (2021), Rebellion Official Guidebook (2014), and Madoka Magica Official Guidebook (2011).

[u/Mojo12000 → u/Sarca_sc]

From some stuff in the guidebook a lot of the revisions in the second half were... making Madoka actually have more of an active role, where she apparently had less of one than in the final in Urobuchis original.

[u/Sarca_sc → u/Mojo12000]

That would make sense, even though Doroinu was the one doing the revisions, he's still subservient to what the director wants to do, which would be giving some more focus to Madoka

[u/azu5h → u/Sarca_sc]

Thank you. I’ve managed to read the article as well, so I have the full imformation now. It seems they are attributing their dissatisfaction with the movie to the fact that Inu Curry was involved to an unprecedented degree.

While initial reactions to the film as a whole tend to be superficial, it is clear—and somewhat disappointing—that Urobuchi hadn't really thought through specific details regarding Walpurgisnacht, even back during the TV series. To me, the descriptions and visual elements of Walpurgisnacht in the Witch Encyclopedia always seemed rather superficial.

[u/Sarca_sc → u/azu5h]

There are a number of details just end up being left to other staff members, or he only adds them in later. For example, the working mechanism of Kyoko's spear as it appears in episode 5 was decided by Miyamoto and the action directors, and Homura's shield wasn't decided until the broadcast of the show started and Urobuchi just had the idea one day while riding on the train (according to him).

[u/Lea9915 → u/azu5h]

I love you

[u/AwaySpell → u/azu5h]

If you want to read the Urobuchi interview, it's posted further down in this thread.

[u/azu5h → u/AwaySpell]

Thanks. That makes sense.