I don't get how going through ten years of time loops to try and beat something you have not beaten in ten years worth of time to save somebody you barely knew at the start of the loops is reasonable at all.

Because she's ultimately trying to get a bunch of dumb [radio edit]ing teenage girls to stop being emo and work together. If Mami and (an unkarmafied) Madoka can kill WPN themselves, it's pretty reasonable to think Mami, Kyouko, Sayaka, and Homura can do it.

It's like putting a card tower together - any slip up knocks everything down. That doesn't mean there isn't a good solution in there that she can still find.

Also she doesn't seem very smart about these sorts of things, obviously.

Meanwhile Kiritsugu is literally trying to erase the concept of conflict from the world. Because that even makes sense.

started out as nice little children that got broken at a young age by a horrific series of events. They both killed people they loved (though yeah, once again, for different reasons), they rely entirely on one person for emotional support, and they both have to put up working with people with whom their ideals clash (Mami in the timelines where Homura doesn't just avoid her). They're also broken down even further by everything they go through. The main difference there is that Homura just resets time, while Kiritsugu actually gets older. Like Homura would be a well adjusted adult, but I doubt you'd stop liking her if she became one and kept the same attitude and issues. The last main difference is that Kiritsugu is set up to fail since he stars in a prequel, while Homura did not and thus does not. Oh and Kiritsugu failing and whatnot was perfectly reasonable from a story perspective, while what happens in Rebellion was completely :nigel:.

he had no reason to believe the Grail would be tainted; if it wasn't, it probably really could have done what he wanted. Also I'd hardly call "[radio edit] I failed this dozens of times, maybe next time I won't" reasonable.

The way it plays out in the end, it's really not. Thinking of it from her perspective at the beginning, it could be seen that way (as being reasonable). "Oh crap, gonna become a magical girl (the downsides of which I don't know, aside from that you have to fight bad things) to save the only person who's ever shown me any kindness, and I get awesome powers so I'm not such a loser. I am gonna redo this, save her, and then we live happily ever after." Things kind of spiral out of control, and it definitely becomes "really, Homura?" later on, but at first it's pretty obvious she's only thinking in terms of doing the month over once rather than going all Groundhog Day.

I think Kyle was more talking along the lines of saving one person is a smaller goal than saving the entire world or whatever. Looking at it without all the timey-wimey shenanigans, anyway.

Hameru is totally radio edited up, I don't deny that. I just find her more sympathetic (and kind of pathetic) than Kiritsugu. /2cents

I really don't see any way the Grail could grant that wish without shit turning dystopic. How do you stop all conflict ever without severely hindering free will or mental capacities? The very concept of trying to create such a world seems like a stupid idea to me because of that.

Also dumb quote that gets thrown around a lot, but Edison did actually create thousands of light bulb prototypes before settling on his final design. Another dumb quote, idk who, but something about "Insanity is trying the same thing and expecting different results."

Homura changes her strategies every time. When you can see a way to achieve something, even if you fail a shitton on the attempts, that doesn't make it unreasonable. Look at any difficult video game. So long as you're learning from the attempts, and changing your plan as you learn, the attempts aren't wasted and no, it's not unreasonable to expect success eventually. That's...pretty much how anything difficult works - a lot of failure followed by a single success.

Except how do you know she sees a way? What makes you think Homura's smart enough that she keeps thinking up new strategies to try? Sure, she learns some things (Mami's a lost cause, Kyouko's reliable, keep Sayaka from contracting, etc), but there's no indication that she actually sees a way out. She's just continuing because she HAS to save Madoka. There's nothing reasonable about it. After almost 100 loops, do you really think she didn't run out of ideas at some point? She's trudging on because she loves Madoka that much, so she WILL not give up, she WILL do it somehow. She doesn't know how, though.

Kiritsugu flailed around in his goal just doing random mercenary jobs in the same way, but the chance of winning the Grail was the big "this might actually work." There's nothing that says Homura ever had such a moment. And, you know, the whole thing finally ended when MADOKA stopped it. Homura NEVER figured it out, she NEVER succeeded. It was hopeless.

Also once again, the narrative difference. Even if you haven't read or watched Fate/Stay Night first, the fact that it exists, and that you are most likely aware that it does, means that Kiritsugu cannot succeed. We're not supposed to be watching him with the hopes of success, like we are with Homura. Kiritsugu's story is about the tragedy of it all and how he deals with it in the end.

Now, if that last point is what ruins him for you (that is, that you're just watching this guy with all of these problems fail of course he's going to fail), then that's something, since Homura doesn't fail and make it all pointless.

She just makes it all pointless by becoming Akuma Homura instead.

Well obviously she doesn't know how to do it - if she did, she would have done that. The same idea is played with in Groundhog Day: "I don't know how to make this happen, but I can keep trying and figure out what does and doesn't work."

(except he never figures out how to sleep with whats-her-face in that loop, either, lol)

The possibility of success (and all the variables that tie into it) is one of the points of the PSP game, after all (even if not canon) - which does have an ending in which Homura completely succeeds. So, yes, I would definitely call it possible. The fact that all the other girls are so twitchy about things adds in a lot of those variables, though, and a shitton of experimentation would follow, like how we see her plans changing across the five timelines shown in the anime (and in alternate timelines from other stuff, like lol extra route).

Your point about a tragedy is probably a good one, though. I don't like stories that just end with failure, and can't think of a single exception to that, actually. I'm infatuated with bittersweet success, but straight up bad ends suck to me.

it's not entirely a bad end, since he does refuse the Grail (the whole scene with the Grail and then rejecting it is most of why I like his character, it's a great sequence and, imo, Homura doesn't have anything nearly as good), he stops Kirei from obtaining it, and he saved the boy that would actually succeed and end everything for good 10 years later. The fact that Kirei and Gilgamesh survive with little inconvenience does kind of push it more towards bad end than bittersweet if you don't take F/SN into account though.

At least Waver's still alive.

I haven't finished the series yet. Does Waver manage to find all the Horcruxes and defeat Voldemort?

His wand gets borked by Gringotts so he's unable to continue his quest.

imo, Kiritsugu > Homura, even before Rebellion, yes hes an angsty man, but I can totally understand why and where he's coming from.