Introduction

It’s finally time to discuss my favorite character from Madoka Magica, Kyouko Sakura. In case you aren’t aware, this is the third part of a five-part series on the characters of Madoka Magica. The first part was about Homura Akemi and the second was about Madoka Kaname.

Why do I love Kyouko so much? Well, besides the fact that she has a ponytail, she’s vastly different from the other girls in the series as I’ll be illustrating throughout this post. It’s fair to say that Kyouko is actually the opposite of the other girls, specifically Mami Tomoe.

A New Challenger Approaches

Kyouko is the final magical girl to make an appearance in the series. The other girls, those being Madoka, Sayaka, and Homura, have been around since episode one, and Mami is already dead by the time Kyouko makes her entrance (spoiler).

She enters the series as a new antagonist for the girls to go up against. After Mami’s death we learn that Homura isn’t actually the enemy we thought she was, so we need a new antagonist to show up for the girls to face off against besides the witches: Kyouko.

But what makes her such a good antagonist? Exactly what makes her stand apart from the rest of the magical girls, her experience. Some of you may not know this, but Kyouko is actually the oldest of the girls. Homura is 13, Madoka and Sayaka are 14, Mami is 15, and Kyouko is estimated to be between 14-17, meaning she’s likely around 16.

So not only is she the oldest, but she also has the most experience as a magical girl (other than Mami, but she’s dead). There’s actually a manga that goes into Kyouko and Mami’s history (which I haven’t yet read) that tells of how the two of them used to work together before splitting up.

As I’ll go into more when I get to the part about Mami, she serves as the mentor for the other girls and as such believes that magical girls should work together in order to safely bring down witches. However, Kyouko believes the opposite, which is why I consider her to be Mami’s rival (hence the title).

Unlike Mami, Kyouko is a loner by choice. Mami was alone because there weren’t other magical girls around for her to work with, but Kyouko chooses to be alone because she understands the harsh reality of being a magical girl: only one grief seed drops from each defeated witch.

But, not only does she think about her job as a magical girl differently than Mami, she also thinks about magic itself differently. Kyouko’s wish was for everyone to listen to her father’s sermons, but in the end it backfired and she was branded a witch by her father who then killed himself and the rest of his family, leaving Kyouko alone.

Because of this experience, Kyouko believes that magic should only be used for oneself and not for others. If she happens to save other people by defeating witches, so be it, but that’s not her primary motivation. She defeats witches simply because she needs to in order to survive.

This is what truly makes her an antagonist, although not the primary antagonist. Her philosophy is that magical girls shouldn’t be working together, but should instead be competing against each other for the limited resource known as grief seeds, even if it means killing each other.

We also have to remember that the reason Kyouko enters the story in the first place is because she came to claim the territory that was once controlled by Mami. She doesn’t do this in order to save people, Sayaka is already there for that, she does it in order to collect more grief seeds.

Redemption

But, despite how I’ve been saying that Kyouko is the enemy of the other magical girls and has an opposing ideology, she does “redeem” herself in the end. I use the word “redeem,” but in reality she never did anything wrong to begin with, just something contrary to what the others were doing.

It’s actually Sayaka who causes this change in Kyouko, and no, not because she loves her, although she definitely does later on. Kyouko sees Sayaka as her younger self and wants to prevent her from going down the same path she once did which ends with isolation.

They both started out wanting to save others, but learned the harsh reality that saving others only hurts themselves. The difference between the two is that Kyouko chose herself over others in the end, while Sayaka chose saving others over herself.

Kyouko choosing to save Sayaka is essentially her choosing to save her former self, and so still makes sense within the context of Kyouko’s selfish personality. However, Kyouko doesn’t end up saving Sayaka, she fails, which is the real turning point in her character.

By failing to save Sayaka, Kyouko sees what could have happened to her if she had completely fallen into despair. This is why even after Sayaka becomes a witch, Kyouko is so determined to bring her back; she doesn’t want to accept the reality that this could happen to her too some day.

This is when she finally realizes how important it is to have friends to help her. She saw Mami’s death as inevitable because she relied on others, but when Sayaka, someone who tried to take everything on herself, becomes a witch, Kyouko understands that being alone leads to a worse fate than death.

Conclusion

At this point I’d like to pose and discuss some questions regarding Madoka‘s new universe after she becomes the Law of Cycles. The main question I have is, “to what extent did this affect Kyouko’s background, personality, and motivations?”

We might never get an exact answer to this question, but I think that’s what makes it such an interesting one to ask (maybe it’s answered in the Wraith Arc manga). In the new universe, Kyouko fights wraiths alongside the other girls as if she had always been a part of their group, so was she ever a loner in this universe?

If not, does that mean she no longer has her tragic backstory? The fact that witches no longer exist shouldn’t have anything to do with how Kyouko’s wish backfired, so her family should still all be dead, which was the primary reason for her beliefs about magic and how it should be used.

I’d really like to know what exactly caused the change in Kyouko’s ideals in the new universe because as it stands, it appears that Madoka changed Kyouko’s personality completely. I’d argue that even at the point of her death in the original universe, Kyouko still wasn’t really a team player, she just didn’t want Sayaka to be alone anymore.

What are your thoughts on this subject? Does Kyouko’s sudden teamwork seem out of character in the new world to you as well? Let me know in the comments and leave a like down below if you enjoyed this post.

I know this entry into my Madoka Magica characters series was shorter than the previous two, and I feel like I’m forgetting something I wanted to say in the “New Challenger Approaches” section, but I think I’m going to end it here anyway. Feel free to bring up anything I left out in the comments.

As always, follow me on Twitter or Tumblr, or subscribe to my blog via email if you want to be notified every time a new post goes live. This series goes live every Monday (for the next two weeks), but I’m not sure whether next week I’ll be writing about Sayaka or Mami next. They both pair well with Kyouko for different reasons.

I also have a post on my Kyouko Sakura Nendoroid if you’re interested in more Kyouko content.

Introduction

Last week I talked extensively about how Homura Akemi is actually the cause of everyone’s misfortune in Madoka Magica, and how the “Homura did nothing wrong” viewpoint is incorrect. This week, however, Madoka Kaname is the featured character.

I mentioned briefly in my Homura Akemi post that I was going to write about how Madoka could be viewed as the antagonist, but that’s not what today’s topic is about. Instead, today I want to focus specifically on Madoka’s wish and how it affected the world of the magical girls.

Before I begin, however, it’s important to know how exactly magical girls work in the Madoka universe. Preteen girls are selected by beings known as incubators, or Kyubey, to become magical girls because they’re the ones who have the most extreme emotions.

The incubators need those emotions because their civilization uses them as a source of power. However, in return for becoming a magical girl, the incubators grant the girls one wish each. The contents of their wish are reflected in the type of magic they receive as a magical girl.

This may seem like a win-win for the magical girls, the girls will die prematurely. Magical girls fight against witches, and by defeating witches they’re able to prolong their life. But, after they die, they themselves become witches.

It’s this transition from magical girl to witch that releases an extraordinary amount of energy which the incubators then collect. The more powerful the magical girl, the more powerful the witch, and the more powerful the energy released during the transformation is.

Now, due to Homura’s mistake, which I previously wrote about, Madoka has the potential to become the most powerful magical girl the universe has ever seen and therefore has the potential to be the most powerful witch, as well as the most powerful energy source.

We learn that the amount of potential energy a magical girl has is directly related to the scope of the wish they can have granted. In Madoka’s case, she has so much potential energy that she can essentially wish for anything, and so she does.

Madoka wishes for all of the magical girls, past, present, and future, to be saved from becoming witches and being used as an energy source for the incubators. This causes the laws of the universe to change and Madoka herself becomes an ethereal being known as the Law of Cycles.

So let’s now take a look at the outcome of Madoka’s wish for which she gave up her existence.

The Pros

There are a variety of good things to come from Madoka’s wish, and the most immediately clear to the viewer is the revival of her friends who died. Mami, Sayaka, and Kyouko are all resurrected in the new world which Madoka creates, despite this not actually having anything to do with the rest of her wish.

We also see Madoka, in the form of the Law of Cycles, going to all of the magical girls throughout time and space and retrieving their souls just before they die and become witches. This is the primary goal of her wish and the part which truly alters the universe.

Because the souls of the magical girls are collected by the Law of Cycles before they can become witches, this means that witches don’t exist in this new universe, and so the magical girls have no need to risk their lives fighting them.

The final pro is that by removing herself from existence and becoming the Law of Cycles, Madoka effectively saved the Earth from being destroyed by herself when she becomes a witch. Remember, as the most powerful magical girl, she would have become the most powerful witch.

So the four pros are that Madoka’s friends are alive once again, magical girls don’t become witches when they die, magical girls don’t need to risk their lives fighting witches, and Madoka’s witch form doesn’t destroy the Earth. Those are some pretty good outcomes, but just how do they stack up against the cons?

The Cons

While the resurrection of Madoka’s friends was the most immediately clear pro of her wish, the removal of Madoka herself from existence is the most immediately clear con. Sure, her friends are alive (for now), but Madoka technically isn’t, and nobody other than Homura remembers she existed at all.

Mami, Sayaka, Kyouko, Madoka’s family (with the potential exception of her younger brother), and even Kyubey all have no memory of a girl named Madoka Kaname ever existing. And, for Homura, the memory of Madoka is both a blessing and a curse. It’s what drives her to become the “devil” in Rebellion.

But let’s pretend that Madoka is okay with erasing herself from existence. Let’s pretend for just a little bit that her being gone doesn’t count as a con. What else could possibly be bad about the new universe her wish created?

A lot, actually.

You see, Madoka didn’t fully understand how the universe worked when she made her wish. By wishing for all magical girls to be saved before they become witches, Madoka didn’t really solve the problem, much like Homura with her creation of a fake universe as the devil.

The Law of Cycles is great and all because it saves the souls of magical girls, but they still become magical girls, to begin with. And, if they become magical girls, then they have a soul gem that needs to be purified somehow or else they’ll die prematurely.

Remember, there are no witches in this new universe, but witches are needed in order to purify soul gems to keep magical girls alive. Since their bodies are being preserved by a small amount of their magic, even if they don’t actively use magic ever, they’re still dying at a faster rate than a normal girl.

But this brings me to one of the biggest issues with the new universe Madoka created. Wraiths. The Wraith arc takes place between the anime series and the Rebellion movie, so we only get to see a small piece of it towards the end of episode 12.

However, the Wraith arc is covered in the manga (which I need to actually read sometime) if you’re interested in learning more about it. But, since I’m focusing on the anime today, I’ll just stick to talking about what we know about the wraiths from that medium.

Witches no longer exist in the new universe, but they’ve been replaced by another entity known as wraiths. These wraiths seem to serve the same basic purpose as witches and become the new enemies of the magical girls. It’s assumed that defeating wraiths does the same thing as defeating witches, which is to say they can be used to purify soul gems.

This means that while the magical girls aren’t risking their lives fighting witches, they are risking their lives fighting wraiths. Further, although Madoka resurrected Mami, Sayaka, and Kyouko, Sayaka dies once again, but this time at the hands of a wraith.

Sayaka sacrifices herself in order to save the others, and it’s this death that Kyouko is referring to when she reunites with Sayaka in the Rebellion movie.

The final con of Madoka’s wish comes directly from the Rebellion movie. As I mentioned, witches no longer exist in this new universe, but Homura was able to become a witch and create a witch’s labyrinth within her own mind which she then lured her friends into.

What this means is that witches technically do still exist in this universe as long as the magical girl they correspond with actively tries to stop the Law of Cycles from doing “her” job. The fact that this is even possible is a weakness of the Law of Cycles, but luckily only Homura should be capable of doing this since she’s the only one who knows the Law of Cycles even exists.

So, the major cons of Madoka’s wish are that she was erased from existence, magical girls are still being created and have to fight, wraiths replaced witches, and the Law of Cycles has a loophole with which Homura was able to still transform into a witch. Four cons to match the four pros.

Conclusion

So, in the end, was Madoka’s wish worth it? You can let me know your conclusion in the comments, but I’d have to say that Madoka’s wish was certainly not worth it for one simple reason: she could have made a different wish.

If the choice was either for Madoka to make the wish that she did or no wish at all, then the wish she made is the clear choice solely because it prevents her from destroying the Earth in her witch form. However, seeing as she could have wished for anything, there are clearly better wishes she could have made.

Instead of wishing for all magical girls to be saved before they become witches, perhaps she could have wished for there to never have been the concept of magical girls, to begin with. Perhaps she could have wished for the incubators to get their power source some other way that didn’t involve Earth.

That said, nothing is guaranteed. Even if Madoka had made a different wish, we need to remember the wise words of Kyouko:

“Miracles aren’t free, ya know. If you wish for something good to happen, a whole lot of bad stuff’s gonna happen too.” – Kyouko Sakura

If Madoka had wished for magical girls to never exist, maybe it would have been magical boys. If she had wished for the incubators to stay away from Earth, maybe another civilization would have come instead. It’s the same as the witches being replaced by the wraiths.

Speaking of Kyouko though, next week’s entry into my Madoka Magica character series is going to be about my personal favorite character, Kyouko Sakura: The Rival. But before then, if you enjoyed this post be sure to leave a like so I know if I should make more series like this in the future.

If you don’t want to miss out on any of my new posts, be sure to follow me on Twitter or Tumblr.

Introduction

I’ve wanted to write about one of my favorite anime, Madoka Magica, again for a few weeks now, but could never come up with a good topic. That is, until now.

Homura Akemi: The Mistake is the first in a five-part series I’m going to be doing about the five main characters from Madoka Magica. New posts in this series will be uploaded every Monday all through September, so you know what that means, #MadokaMondays!

Homura Did Nothing Wrong

It’s the popular belief in the Madoka Magica community that Homura Akemi “did nothing wrong,” but I’m here to tell you that’s a complete lie. That’s right, Homura is actually the cause of everyone else’s misfortune (sort of).

I’d even go so far as to say that Homura is the antagonist of the series, not Kyubey. While neither of them are objectively “evil,” Homura actively works against the protagonist, Madoka, while Kyubey is little more than an observer.

Now, while I say that Homura is the antagonist, I also believe that she’s the true protagonist of the series. So maybe it’s better to say that Homura is the protagonist and Madoka is the antagonist? That seems like a topic of discussion for a future time, so I’ll leave it at that for now.

Back to the topic at hand, before I can really explain why Homura did everything wrong, I first need to explain the philosophy behind “Homura did nothing wrong.”

You see, Homura makes a pact with Kyubey and becomes a magical girl for one reason, to save Madoka. As she lay dying in Homura’s arms, Madoka asks Homura to stop her from ever becoming a magical girl in the first place.

So therefore, the argument is that Homura isn’t to blame for anything that transpires afterwards because she was simply fulfilling Madoka’s dying wish.

But before I even get to explaining how Homura messed up, we should already see a key issue here. Just because you do something at the request of someone else doesn’t mean you’re able to wash your hands of the consequences of your actions.

Here’s an analogy: if you punch someone in the face, but then use the defense that someone else told you to do it, you’re still going to get arrested for assault. Just because Madoka asked Homura to save her from her past self, doesn’t mean Homura isn’t to blame for what happened due to her actions.

So what exactly did Homura do and why was it so bad? Well, you see, when a girl makes a pact with Kyubey, the type of magic they acquire is directly related to what they wished for in return for their soul. In Homura’s case, she wished to go back in time to stop Madoka, so she was granted time magic.

Sure, the ability to freeze time is just fine, but as we should all know by now, the ability to travel back in time or simply alter the past in any way is a dangerous power to have. Seriously, has altering the past ever worked out even once in any anime or other medium?

Now, I know what you’re thinking, “but Homura saved Madoka from dying so it all worked out in the end.” Technically that’s correct, but in actuality the only thing that changed was that Homura erased Madoka from existence instead of having her die. She also got herself a healthy dose of depression in the process.

I’d go into more detail about Madoka’s role in all of this, but I’m saving that for the second part of this series, so if you want to read more about that, you’ll have to wait until next week.

However, by constantly resetting time in order to try to save Madoka, Homura unintentionally makes Madoka’s fate more important than anything else in the universe. Because time was reset so many times for a single person, that person must be pretty important.

Incidentally, fate is also how the power of a magical girl is valued. The more important a girl is to the universe, the more powerful she’ll be.

“But isn’t it good if Madoka is powerful?” No. The final form of a magical girl is a witch, the thing magical girls fight against. Since Madoka becomes the most powerful magical girl, that in turn means she’ll become the most powerful witch. When this happens, the world will be destroyed.

Hopefully by this point you’re starting to see the issue. Madoka could have died, and been remembered by her friends and family, but instead she was put in a situation with only one way out (that she could see) due to Homura’s actions.

In order to fix the problem Homura made, which is that Madoka will destroy the world when she becomes a witch, Madoka has to make a pact with Kyubey anyway, despite Homura’s best efforts, in order to nullify Homura’s mistake by erasing herself from existence with her own wish.

So let’s do a quick recap of what could have happened, and what actually happened. Madoka could have died, and Homura could have gone on living life as a normal girl. Instead, Madoka now never existed in the first place, and Homura is going to have severe mental disorders until she dies prematurely as a magical girl.

Homura The Hero

Now that we’ve established that at the end of the Madoka Magica series the score is Fate 1, Homura 0, we need to take a look at the movie, Rebellion. For those who aren’t aware, Rebellion is the movie which serves as a sequel to the series. This time around, Homura is actually the protagonist.

However, despite her being the actual protagonist this time, she functions much more like an antagonist, which is the opposite of what I said about her in the series. Again, I’ll have to write an entirely separate post dissecting the relationship between the protagonist and antagonist of Madoka Magica in the future.

Even if they concede to my point that Homura is to blame for the events of the series, many will likely try to argue that she fixes her mistake in Rebellion, but did she really? Let’s first look at the plot of Rebellion itself.

Homura has descended from a magical girl to a witch; the second of our main cast to do so. As a witch, she creates a labyrinth, like any witch worth her salt, but then she goes one step further and pulls her friends, who aren’t witches, into the labyrinth with her, thus inconveniencing them.

By doing this, it’s fair to say that although Homura is indeed the protagonist of Rebellion, she’s also the cause of everyone’s misfortune throughout the movie.

“But it’s alright because she saves everyone in the end.” Wrong. In the end, when Madoka descends from her ethereal realm to collect Homura’s soul, Homura instead collects a portion of Madoka’s soul (because she can’t collect the entire soul of a divine being).

Then, presumably by using the magical power of that portion of Madoka’s soul, Homura is able to “recreate” the world into one in which she and her friends can live happy, normal, middle school girl lives. But is this really a solution?

There are a couple of issues I have with the world Homura “creates” at the end of Rebellion. The first issue is that this isn’t a real world, it’s all just an illusion that herself and the other girls are trapped in temporarily. Since Sayaka still has her memories, it shows that she technically still exists outside of this world, which she wouldn’t if it weren’t merely an illusion.

The second issue is that “temporarily” part. While it’s great and all that Madoka doesn’t have to be alone forever now, and that the five girls can all be together again, it can’t last. If they’re lucky, it will last until they all die of natural causes, but the illusion will likely break down before that point.

Evidence for this can be found when Sayaka, I believe, mentions that eventually Madoka will remember that she’s a god now and will return to her position as the Law of Cycles. We also see Madoka almost remember this, but Homura is able to stop her in time.

By this logic, once her “natural” life span ends, Madoka will simply return to being the Law of Cycles once again and be alone for eternity once more. So really, Homura’s “fix” is little more than temporary patchwork.

The final issue I have with this “fix” is that Homura is forcing everyone to live inside her illusory world. It’s essentially the same concept as the Infinite Tsukuyomi from Naruto: Shippūden, if you’re more familiar with that. Will the girls simply be middle schoolers until the world ends?

At best, Homura’s way of fixing the problems she herself created can’t possibly last, and yet she’s still smug about it when Sayaka presses her. Let’s also not forget that this illusory world of hers is interfering with Madoka’s role as the Law of Cycles, meaning she can’t save other magical girls while she’s trapped there by Homura.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Homura did everything wrong in Madoka Magica, but if you’d like to try to convince me otherwise, I’ll gladly hear out your arguments in the comment section down below. However, if you liked this explanation of how Homura did everything wrong, you can let me know simply by clicking the heart button under this post.

Remember, this is only the first part of this five-part series, so if you don’t want to miss out on the upcoming parts, I suggest following me on Twitter or Tumblr, or subscribing to my blog via email.

Part 2, Madoka Kaname: The Wish, will be uploaded on September 3rd.