Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Part 1: Beginnings

劇場版魔法少女まどか☆マギカ始まりの物語 (Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica Movie 1: Hajimari no Monogatari)

8.2(109,507)

MAL Score

Ranked #416

Popularity #1309

Drama
Suspense
Mahou Shoujo
Psychological

Episodes: 1
Duration: 2 hr 11 min
Aired: Oct 6, 2012
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Madoka Kaname and her closest friend, Sayaka Miki, live an unremarkable middle school life in Mitakihara—until a chance encounter with Kyuubey, a peculiar, catlike creature offering to grant a single wish. The price is steep: they must become magical girls and battle witches. Local veteran Mami Tomoe takes them along to witness what that duty entails, while the enigmatic transfer student Homura Akemi urges Madoka to refuse Kyuubey’s contract, withholding her reasons.

What begins as an enticing promise quickly reveals a far darker reality, pushing Madoka and Sayaka to reconsider the bargain. Yet the situation grows more complicated with the arrival of another magical girl, and Sayaka’s decision to wish for someone she cares about draws them deeper into a conflict where every miracle comes with a cost.

Otaku Consensus

Beginnings succeeds as a concentrated theatrical cut because Shaft and Yukihiro Miyamoto preserve the series’ moral unease while sharpening the pacing around Mami’s isolation and Sayaka’s early idealism. Critics and fans consistently credit the film’s adaptation choices, Gen Urobuchi’s character writing, and Yuki Kajiura’s emotional scoring for making a recap feel compelling; the recurring complaints are a slow opening stretch and occasional craft distractions, especially sound effects and action animation that some viewers find merely serviceable.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Beginnings if you want magical-girl iconography filtered through psychological suspense, ethical dread, and tightly staged character collapse rather than comfort-food transformation fantasy. As a film version, it is especially useful for viewers who want the first major movement of Madoka Magica without committing to the TV-series rhythm, and for rewatchers who want the emotional pressure points selected and compressed. It scratches a similar itch to Neon Genesis Evangelion’s adolescent burden and Revolutionary Girl Utena’s symbolic genre subversion, but with Shaft’s sterile urban spaces, witch imagery, and Yuki Kajiura’s choral melancholy giving it a colder, more fatalistic texture. The appeal is not novelty alone; it is how cleanly the movie turns cute design language into a philosophical trap.

Key Characters

H
Homura Akemi(VA: Chiwa Saitou)
Homura is compelling because her kuudere restraint reads less like cool detachment than a locked box of urgency, making every warning feel heavier than she is willing to explain.
M
Madoka Kaname(VA: Aoi Yuuki)
Madoka stands out as a protagonist whose hesitation is not weakness but the film’s central moral instrument, forcing every promise of heroism to be measured against fear and responsibility.
S
Sayaka Miki(VA: Eri Kitamura)
Sayaka gives the movie its sharpest idealist streak, with fans often drawn to how her sincerity makes the magical-girl contract feel emotionally personal rather than abstract.
K
Kyuubey(VA: Emiri Katou)
Kyuubey is memorable because Emiri Katou’s bright, even delivery turns a mascot role into something unnervingly transactional without changing the character’s cute surface.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
The film is a theatrical condensation of the TV anime’s opening movement, and its most praised adaptation choice is selective pacing: it preserves the major character turns while reducing the stop-start feel of weekly episodes.
2
Shaft’s production pairs Ume Aoki’s soft original character designs with Takahiro Kishida’s animation designs, creating a deliberate contrast between rounded mahou shoujo iconography and the story’s psychological pressure.
3
Yuki Kajiura’s score is one of the film’s major identity markers, using solemn, ritual-like musical textures to make conversations and battles feel closer to tragedy than adventure.
4
The creative chain is unusually tight for a compilation film: Gen Urobuchi is credited for both series composition and script, while Akiyuki Shinbou serves as chief director and Yukihiro Miyamoto directs.
5
Mami Tomoe’s loneliness is a frequently singled-out element in rewatch discussion, because the movie’s compressed format makes her eagerness for companionship register quickly and painfully.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: The original creator is credited as Magica Quartet, the collective name associated with the Madoka Magica project, rather than a single manga author or light-novel source.
Fun fact 2: Beginnings opened in Japan on October 6, 2012 as the first movie in the theatrical retelling, with the database format listing it as a single finished episode.
Fun fact 3: The film’s reception sits in a strong but not untouchable tier: MAL lists it at 8.23 from 109,248 votes, ranked #415, while AniList records an 80/100 score and 562 favourites.
Fun fact 4: ClariS performs the theme song, linking the movie version back to the franchise’s polished pop identity while Kajiura’s score handles the darker dramatic atmosphere.
Fun fact 5: User and critic responses repeatedly frame the movie as more than a simple rehash: one mixed 7/10 review specifically praised how it picked and chose scenes, while other reviews called it a better feature-film experience despite reservations about animation or sound.