Madoka Magica

No matter what happens next, I won't give in.

      The opening to Madoka Magica, Connect, is pretty great, but not exactly what I would want out of a fully realized show from beginning to end. It’s pretty clear having watched the series a few times that this opening almost solely exists to try to subvert the viewer’s expectations, and was most likely storyboarded in the early development of the show. I think the opening to the first movie, Beginnings, does a much better job of abridging the themes and characterization of the protagonists, but also definitely treads the line of showing too much to the viewer, especially with Ultimate Madoka being shown in the opening, along with a seemingly well established relationship between Madoka and Homura in the beginning scene and the Luminous cheek rub near the end.

       I do appreciate the few frames flashing between different characters before the chorus of the song, with Hitomi, Mami, Kyoko and Homura at the end. Those handful of frames tell a fair bit about their personalities, while keeping a very powerful air of mystery around them all.

       The first episode also gives me the vibe that a lot of remnants of the early concept ended up leaking into the script. In the scope of the overall story, Madoka having a dream about the final day in the timelines of Homura fighting Walpurgisnacht just seems a bit weird? It’s such a one off thing, but I do like that it enforces very early on that Madoka and Homura’s relationship is going to become something special and important as the story progresses.

       The scene where Madoka wanders into some very abstract back room near the music store because of the call of Kyubey starts a trend of Homura doing something very important in almost every episode that ultimately ends up distorting the timeline in a way that is beneficial for Homura. Up until episode 9, there’s one of these “Homura events” in every single episode that affects something important to the flow of time by the end of the show. Here we see her try to kill Kyubey, a very straightforward method of Homura getting her way. These little interventions also give the viewer a much more broad view into the lengths that Homura is going through to craft the best possible flow of events that realizes her wish and vision to protect Madoka from Walpurgisnacht, Kyubey, and herself.

       Episode 2 very quickly picks up the slack of what episode 1 lacked in by beginning showing off the worldbuilding, and also builds a fair bit of Mami’s character and starts hinting at her weaknesses that inevitably lead to her downfall.

       One thing from this episode that I don’t think gets talked about enough is the scene where Madoka and Sayaka are talking telepathically in class about how Sayaka would stop Homura from stepping out of line, and Homura is very clearly able to hear in on this conversation as well. This is another strength of the execution of this anime. This could’ve so easily been played for a small chuckle, like “oh silly Sayaka, you need to be careful about who’s listening!” but instead the show lets the viewer take it in and either realize it immediately or think about the implications later. Essentially showing and not telling.

       This could also be me being stupid. The limitations of the powers of Kyubey to act as an intermediate of the exchange is not really explained, and for all I know, Kyubey and Mami could have been “choosing” to not have Homura listen in. But the fact that Homura looks and never says anything makes me think that she knows something.

       This episode also has another intervention by Homura, but this time it has less implications on the anime’s timeline. Here she reinforces her warning to Madoka to never become something she’s not. I think this interaction is a minor fuck up on Homura’s part. This reveals to Madoka a little too much about her intentions, especially how she discretely mentions Madoka by name in why she wanted to kill Kyubey, so that she could stop her from meeting him.

       This episode segways directly into the events of Episode 3. Episode 3 is single handedly what gives Madoka Magica the reputation that it has.

       I love the buildup to Mami’s death. It’s obviously a key component of the overarching story of Madoka, so it has to be good. Everyone’s reactions to Mami’s death and how her death impacts the other character’s arcs later on are great, but the best part about this to me is the buildup. I love how Mami’s exterior as a role model not only starts being deconstructed, but she admits it in the scenes leading up to it. I don’t think this show has a central “message,” but perhaps this is just a theme; the idea of weakness and selflessness (or I guess in this case, Mami’s tendency towards prioritizing others and her relationship with them) ends up leading to all the main characters’ demises (Mami, Sayaka, and Kyoko by extension of Sayaka), or towards a path that tears them up from the inside out. This is the bare minimum for all magical girls, but Homura is our central one here, and also Madoka to some degree. Ultimately she loses the materialistic form of herself in the world, which is overall a good thing for the state of the world and universe in this canon, but awful for Homura and her selfish desires (she’s a selfish person who committed/is committing a selfless act), and maybe awful for Madoka herself. In Rebellion, we do only see her smiling in her god form as she descends upon Homura “resting,” but is this really a good thing? A life of eternal servitude to something that does not entertain you and your desires seems awfully boring to me. Supposedly in heaven, we will come and “share our master’s happiness” for all of eternity. Sure the master is happy, but what about us? For all eternity? This gets further touched on by Homura near the end of the anime, and way more directly in the dub, interestingly enough.

       The last 8-ish minutes of this episode are just all around great. The dessert witch environment is also just gorgeous. All of the witch labyrinth environments are straight eye candy. The environments alone cement this as my favorite art style in an anime. It clearly takes inspiration from many other works. Mixed medium is nothing new, but something about the way Madoka blends the cutesy art style with hints of despair and very contrasting and somewhat “itchy,” repetitive animation scratches my brain the right way. It kind of reminds me of the isaac menu and opening cutscene animation style that Edmund McMillen loves to use in his works. Rebellion spams this art style and does it even better with the nightmare that the quintet deals with in the first act, but I am getting way ahead of myself so I’ll stop talking about that here. I have so many great feelings about the labyrinth art style that I cannot put into words, but just know it’s one of my favorite things about this franchise.

       I also love how much is left up in the air as Charlotte bites Mami’s head off. I felt this as I was watching it for the first time, but on a recent rewatch with friends in voice chat, hearing their live reaction trying to put the pieces together as Homura breaks free from Mami’s ribbons and using a line of reasoning that magical girls have way more power and strength than this, to just be able to be defeated in one fell swoop. It seems impossible.

       Also, for this episode’s “Homura event,” we see Homura selflessly attempt to stop Mami from going against the dessert witch. Her presence purely serves to attempt to protect Madoka from the outcome of the fight and to clean up after Mami is killed. I think the latter also has some implications for Homura as a character. Her firsthand witnessing and dull reaction of Mami’s death is almost heartless, and I think is either fueled by Homura potentially seeing many Mami deaths in different timelines (we see two in episode 10, and I guess a few other implied ones with how many times Homura and Madoka are lying in dirt alone at the scene of Walpurgisnacht’s attack), or by an almost sociopathic desire for no emotion but the (shared?) feeling of having Madoka be safe.

       I had a lot more to say about this episode than I thought I would. One last thing, it never really got old when this episode was the first one that had the alternate ending that gets used for every subsequent episode besides the Sayaka/Kyoko episode and episode 10. I mean obviously this is more playing into the “subvert expectations” idea, and reinforcing to the viewers that “this isn’t your average anime!!!” but it really does play into your emotions a fair bit. I’d talk about the ending like I did about this opening and will for the Rebellion opening, but it’s not all that. It’s a credits theme. Endings in anime to me haven’t really been something to celebrate until the last decade or so. Chainsaw Man and Jujutsu Kaisen have spoiled me.

       Episode 4 is kind of the end of the setup for this show, and we start actually entering plotlines for characters that aren’t just plot devices (I’m talking in plurals, but I am purely talking about Mami). The cold open is pretty meaningless on a first watch here, but I actually got chills on my most recent rewatch. I love the Sayaka and Kyosuke/Hitomi plotline. This kind of conflicts with me as a person though, because how can a fujoshi yuri/yaoi enjoyer like a cishet relationship??? I really don’t care for the relationship, I just love how destroyed Sayaka ends up being and how Hitomi eventually confessing her love to him leads to the end of Sayaka as a character. I suppose I am once again getting ahead of myself though.

       Madoka’s reaction to Mami’s death is pretty realistic I’d say. It’s difficult to imagine yourself in her shoes here. Having to hide from others your feelings about having befriended and then subsequently seeing someone get killed is very difficult to imagine. One of the most despair-inducing things about this show is how there is no one to confide in as a magical girl (or in Madoka’s case, just knowing of the world of magical girls). Mami alludes to this right before her death too, about how she is “not alone anymore.” The scene of Madoka breaking into tears in the dining room while eating eggs is the manifestation of exactly this.

      I don’t really understand what’s going on with Sayaka in this episode to be honest. She’s obviously doing some sort of coping when walking to school with Madoka and Hitomi over what happened the day before, but she doesn’t even acknowledge Madoka’s concerns immediately when she asks to talk about it later. She’s just all smiles for some reason. I appreciate how she mourns with Madoka on the roof and lets Madoka confide in her for some time though. It just seems like such a sudden tone shift. Nothing really points to why Sayaka was able to act so hardened in the face of Mami’s death, but maybe some people just work differently.

      This episode’s Homura event really makes me lean in. Any character exposition of Homura is fascinating to me on every watch, and it’s even better when Madoka helps it all get spelled out for the viewer. This is also another early moment of Homura attempting to scare Madoka out of ever becoming a magical girl, and letting herself get caught up in her own selfishness again. Madoka even indirectly says that she would be there for Homura if she needed her, but she reinforces her cold demeanor and doesn’t let her in.

       Is Homura projecting or genuinely trying to warn Madoka here? Either way, it all works towards her selfish goal of seeing Madoka safe.

       The scene where Sayaka first shows off herself as a magical girl is SOOO underrated. Maybe in more tapped-in circles it’s a bit more celebrated, but I didn’t even have a recollection of the scene inside of the labyrinth until my most recent rewatch. The buildup with all the background characters and Hitomi attempting to ritualistically kill themselves is okay. It was a bit more striking on my first watch, but I really only see it as purely worldbuilding as to what witches are capable of more than anything now. The artstyle change that happens to Madoka as she’s swirled around in the labyrinth is so delicious to my eyes.

       Once again, I am struggling to put into words what I like so much about the visuals. Just know I like them I guess.

       And then we get to the outro with Kyoko, which leads to the 5th episode. There’s a fair bit going on in this episode that I should not bother with analyzing/reviewing because of the sake of time. It’s all great character building though, and continuing the story arc of seeing Kyosuke heal, but then ultimately it not leading to Sayaka’s selfish desires is pretty great in retrospect.

       We also get our first sight of the choice of cinematography to paint a picture that isn’t actually there to the characters, only for the viewer. A bunch of chairs are littered in a room that itself appears bigger than usual. What do the chairs mean? I have some feelings about it, and there is a direct explanation by the creators, but now isn’t the time. I will bring this up again later when this motif comes back up.

       Editor's note: The intro scene in episode 1 where Madoka wakes up Junko also has a TON of chairs in it, so this is not actually the first scene. I noticed this 3 days after writing this section.

       This episode has a major Homura scene in the middle that isn’t really necessarily her doing one of her classic “show up and distort the timeline” things I have been mentioning throughout this analysis. Madoka initiates this, and I like to imagine that Homura was secretly super ecstatic to have Madoka ask her out, but this happens off screen, and logic tells me that she most likely wants nothing to do with Madoka until after Walpurgisnacht is defeated and Madoka is still herself and not a magical girl. This is how she acts in every scene with Madoka until episode 11 and she breaks and tells Madoka everything in her residence: cold and undistracted.

       This scene is GREAT and also sets up for Homura in the future using what happens in this timeline to her advantage to fearmonger Madoka more and herd her in the “correct” (by Homura’s standards) direction. Madoka’s request to Homura also poses a lot of questions about Homura as a character. Madoka asks Homura to become friends with Sayaka so that everyone and each other are safer. There’s a pretty straightforward retroactive understanding that the viewer has of this scene that Homura wants Madoka to “give up on Sayaka,” so that Madoka does not make any rash decisions to become a magical girl for Sayaka’s sake, or to avenge her role as the protector of Mitakihara city, as Sayaka proclaims in the beginning of the episode. There could be more nuance to this though. I think that, to some degree, Homura could have been saying this because Homura genuinely does not care about Sayaka. Madoka is asking to give Homura a responsibility that does not align with her goals. Then again, Homura does say she doesn't like to lie in this scene before telling Madoka to give up on Sayaka.

       Ultimately, I like what the show is directly trying to imply, that Sayaka’s inevitable death (downfall? When considering Rebellion) is going to drop Madoka into an even deeper despair if she remains as close as she is now to her, and it may lead her to ultimately making a wish with Kyubey. Both things are antithetical to Homura’s desires.

       One more thing to mention about this scene, it’s a bit edgy, but oh my god. The fucking pan to Homura’s hands and her messing with the lid of her cup and then quickly tearing it off as she talks about Mami being beheaded is absolutely fantastic. It reminds me what is so great about this show; how deliberate and directional Homura is with her choices, and how the show is so easily able to make me feel what the characters are feeling. Watching her tear the lid off the cup makes me want to cry and makes me hate Homura just a little tiny bit.

       The scene that ends the episode with Kyoko interrupting Sayaka and Madoka’s exploration of a familiar’s labyrinth is absolutely iconic, and a true testament to what Madoka is actually about. The politics and complexities of such a concept as magical girls and incubators, as well as what it means to have a selfish desire all come together here.

       At the end, we see Homura’s intervention for this episode, and we don’t get to fully digest why she intervenes until the next episode, where Homura reveals that she was “saving Madoka.” I love how this is kind of all we get from Homura here, and it leaves Madoka and the viewer with more questions. What exactly is Homura saving Madoka from, and why does Homura want to save Madoka so badly? The latter obviously gets explained later, but I feel like, with this episode being the middle point too, it’s really the first time where the viewer is posed this question. It seemed like Homura was doing it out of some sort of convenience maybe, and it was never really pertinent to the story until now. But here, whether Homura was indirectly saving Madoka from being consumed by grief of Sayaka potentially dying and Madoka choosing to become a magical girl, or or directly saving her by getting her away from Kyoko, an extremely unpredictable adversary, Homura clearly did save exclusively Madoka by choice, and Sayaka by extension.

       This scene is followed up with some excellent worldbuilding. It’s such menial storyflow and visuals, but I am obsessed over this type of exposition. There’s obviously a lot of “tell,” going on here, but it’s a follow up to days and days of things being shown to the viewer and letting them make up their own ideas about it. Also, the choices of the rules of this world by the creators are just splendid, which really alleviates the strategy of telling the viewer exactly (or at least most of) how the system of magical girls work.

       We also get more worldbuilding with a somewhat formal, somewhat informal introduction of Walpurgisnacht by Homura. It’s equally fascinating as the Kyubey and Sayaka scene before, and also gives the viewer even more questions about Homura’s intentions. It’s difficult to remember how it was on the first watch, but Homura really was a mystery as the story progressed, and it is actually boggling that she claims that she is going to “deal with” Sayaka, so that Kyoko gains control of the grief seeds in Mitakihara and does not have to violently alleviate the situation between her and Sayaka. I might be stupid, but the only idea that I can come to is that this indirectly helps Madoka not stray down the wrong path. Sayaka (hypothetically) lives because of this exchange, and because she does, Madoka is never (again, hypothetically) filled with grief of losing another friend.

Madoka, that isn't Sayaka

It's just an empty shell.

      In 2021, when I first watched this show, this was the first moment that really hit me as hard as anything like it, and it really stuck with me long after finishing the show and being too afraid to rewatch it until 2024. And it’s such great worldbuilding too. I mean, of course the soul gem being 100 meters away causing “you,” the magical girl, to disassociate from the body is completely arbitrary, but oh my god, the implications this has on the concept of a magical girl are so creative and unique. And scary. The body just being the vessel of the magical girl is an amazing concept, and gets pushed to its limits with the peak of Sayaka’s story as she ruthlessly slices through a witch, proclaiming that she feels nothing. I’m obviously once again getting way ahead of myself, but I just love this so much. It’s another one of those things that’s just difficult to imagine as a viewer. I can see myself, my arms, my torso, and my whole body in the mirror, but imagining that the person seeing this in this point of view is not the same person inside is awful.

      Homura’s intervention in this episode takes place here. She does something that, immediately, only positively affects the wellbeing of Sayaka, but ultimately as viewers at this point, or at least retroactively, have realized that it is indirectly for Madoka. Kind of more of the stuff we are getting used to, but the execution of this one is really cool. I don’t think it’s the best visualization of Homura’s powers, as she jumps between traffic and disappears the second she realizes what is at stake, but it still looks cool and builds a fair bit of tension, but also the fact that it’s Homura doing it kind of takes the stakes out of it a little bit to be honest. She’s too overpowered, even to a new viewer at this point.

In truth, the value of a miracle

is far greater than that of an entire human life.

And it is that which that creature sells

       Episode 7. This is where the show really starts pulling at your emotions. Just thinking about it makes me feel things. The cold open is a foreshadowing of what happens at the end of the episode, where Sayaka detaches herself completely from her human limitations to let out her emotions. It’s hard to watch, but it is one of the greatest scenes in the entire anime. For Sayaka being not Homura or Madoka, essentially the protagonist and deuteragonist, she has one of the greatest impacts emotionally on me.

       This final scene in the episode is just fantastic. Once again, me struggling to verbalize what I like about the visuals, but like just look at them. Black and white and red is such a great color palette, and utilizing the characters visual motifs to add additional highlights of color serves a functional purpose and an artistic one.

       Sayaka letting out her feelings here is incredibly difficult to watch. There’s a lot of things going on at once. It’s hard to watch a middle school girl go through these immature emotions of having a crush on someone, while also letting her let out the feelings in the most destructive way possible. It’s dangerous. The scene is also, to be fair, a tiny bit cathartic for the viewer. Disregarding the emotional charge this scene has, Sayaka had been getting the short end of the stick for a while, and just letting her actually have what she wants for once, while not a great outcome for the characters, feels a tiny bit good.

       The rest of the meat of the episode is also not to be forgotten. Kyoko’s backstory is awesome, and I’m all for the ambiguity of if her father was actually in the right about some things, and if Kyoko did the right thing wishing for what she did. I mean obviously all wishes end up leaving magical girls a shell of their former self, or literally/metaphorically. I also like the dynamic that begins brewing after Kyoko finds out the truth about magical girls and their bodies as vessels. They have a bonding experience that leads to them learning about each other, and it goes even further when Kyoko attempts to reach out to her. Obviously Sayaka is not exactly in the mood, but I feel like this is something that needed to happen sooner or later. Kyoko is a bit of a tough-body, and kind of says things how they are sometimes, but Sayaka really needed this. Madoka is really nothing but a shoulder to lean on right now. She’s not useless, but she’s not exactly helpful either.

       The art style choice in this scene is also great. The puppet-stick figures are a phenomenal design choice that ends up getting reused later in Rebellion, and I also really like the emphasis on some of the character designs for how simple they are here. Her father, for example, really reflects on Kyoko as a person. Her, like Homura, have her outfit design rooted in some sort of religious garb. For Homura, it is that of a nun, but for Kyoko, it’s an incredibly frilly and fun take and synthesis of what her father wore and represented.

       Kyoko’s perspective on food as something not to be wasted is an incredibly simple character trait, but I think it plays into the helplessness and extensibility of what the concept of a magical girl is in this canon. Like Mami, Kyoko really has nobody, but Kyoko ended up on the other extreme end of the spectrum, as she lives homeless and steals just to survive. It’s a really good perspective on how people’s goals and motives change when their core goal is to survive. I am kind of sad this doesn’t get built on much outside of this episode, but it really doesn’t need to. It leaves enough flavor in the viewer’s heads to put the pieces together and realize what the reality of some situations of magical girls is.

      Homura does not traditionally change the timeline in this episode. I consider her appearance at the end of the episode before Kyoko starts to intervene on Sayaka’s emotional release to be this episode’s way of letting Homura do something that changes the outcome of the story. She doesn’t even interact with Madoka to do so in this one. Kyoko simply gets pushed in the right direction by Homura.

      Homura also has some dialogue with Madoka in the beginning of the episode, but it is most likely prompted by Madoka. This is just about the last time we see Madoka and Homura interact and Homura is not in shambles.

       Homura shows off the true extent of her heartlessness here. I mean ultimately it ends up being a “by any means necessary” attitude that this spawns at all, but Homura says something that could or could not be a lie here. She says to Madoka that she is no longer human in response to asking Madoka why she is so cold. We know that Homura does act so cold for the sake of Madoka, but I don’t think Homura’s answer here is not necessarily a lie, it’s just not the answer we are used to. Like I mentioned, this is the last moment that Homura is able to stay emotionally stable around Madoka, so she’s nearing a breaking point, and with how many repetitions of what she’s gone through, it’s not outside of the realm of possibility for Homura to be so dejected because she’s been beaten and bruised emotionally and physically because of her magical girl status.

Bizarre bedroom setup

More chairs in a huge room

       Episode 8 has some really good scenes, but I feel like I don’t need to spend the time analyzing them.Homura’s house is first shown here, so I think now is a good time to talk about it. I think there’s a few ways to think about the room that everything goes down in. The first is that it is just some magical effect that Homura put in place to make the room more functional for her goals. This is incredibly boring to me, along with the proposed “correct” interpretation, which comes from a magazine world guide book that explains it’s a “holographic projection,” which is so dumb because the pictures show things that the characters should not be able to see through the means of just a holographic projection, such as Walpurgis and the time loop scenes when Homura breaks down in front of Madoka in episode 11. My interpretation is that this is something purely meta. Just like the rooms that suddenly double in square footage and have over ten chairs in them, I think this is something that only the viewer sees. I’m very adamant about this, but I really have not done much research outside of the wiki on this. It seems like the most straightforward explanation. In episode 8, though, this idea doesn’t serve much of a purpose, besides showing the viewer what Walpurgis is. I like to believe (hope), though, that this idea was made after they conceptualized the scene in episode 11 with Madoka and Homura, as the background changing as she hugs Madoka is absolutely fantastic.

       Anyways, with this episode comes the turning point moment of the show, where the show’s balance of characters vs storytelling starts to shift. In the scene where Homura kills Kyubey right before Madoka makes her wish, we learn so much stuff about the story. The exposition dump is once again a bit dull when explained in text like this, but once again, the telling and not showing gets saved by the fact that the viewer has had so much time to digest and make up their own ideas about how and why things are working how they do.

       Homura’s emotional outburst here makes me break down. She’s so direct here and it makes me feel so much shared frustration with her. Like Sayaka and Mami, they both struggled with the concern that no one was there for them as magical girls. They can’t share their pains with anyone without sounding insane or causing too much trouble, and they are self reliant in order to survive by collecting grief seeds. Homura goes through the same thing but on another level. She has no one but herself to achieve her goal, but she also has no one to blame but herself for being in this situation.

       I suppose I should talk about the Sayaka bus scene. It’s incredibly fucked up. I think it’s good, and visually and sonically striking, but I honestly have no clue what the scene is trying to say. It’s very clear that Sayaka is and has been complicit in self destructive behavior for the past episode, so it’s not out of line for her character to step in and risk her wellbeing just to indulge in catharsis by essentially telling these two characters to shut up. The whole concept of the scene just seems so out of place in the context of the entire anime though. I am all for a message about the horrors of toxic masculinity and how rape culture is so commonplace and needs to be ended, but it really seems out of nowhere. I think overall though, it’s not a problem that the writers are finding a way to mix in a character moment that further builds her arc, while also trying to send a message. The whole thing is just really salient and kind of just sticks out when thinking about noteworthy scenes in the show.

       More Sayaka and Kyoko moments in this episode!! I love how much of Kyoko’s exterior has been broken down because she wants to save Sayaka and cherish their relationship of a codependency that would save them, save for their immaturity and Homura tampering too much with the line of events that take place over the course of the show.

       Oh yeah, this episode has another Homura moment. When Sayaka is killing familiars to drain herself of her magic. She tries leading Sayaka away from feeding into her own emotions. I really shouldn’t have to document that these exist anymore with how important a character Homura is at this point, but I think it’s just fascinating. It’s just interesting to me how she has a noteworthy scene in all 12 episodes that severely change the outcome of this timeline.

       Episode 9 immediately follows up with Homura trying to save Kyoko, kill the witch form of Sayaka Miki, and by extension of all of this, mayyyybe try to hide the body of Sayaka? Her heartlessness really shows in that line where she tells Kyoko to drop the body. I can’t really tell if this is a hint that Homura just wants to hide all of what happened to Sayaka from Madoka or not. If that line was not implying that it was to save Madoka from the truth, then her motives seem a bit unclear for killing Oktavia, besides obtaining a grief seed.

       I really enjoy Kyoko’s attempt with Madoka to try to get Sayaka back to her normal self. Of course it’s all fruitless, but it’s such a great utilization and exploration of her character. Also, the visual storytelling is great here. The scene panning out to show the windchimes of a mermaid and unicorn are (very direct) symbolism at Sayaka and Kyoko. Sayaka’s magical girl outfit very loosely resembles a mermaid, and Oktavia has a mermaid’s tail. There’s a lot of things they probably had planned while making this show but couldn’t fit into the twelve episodes, and the representation of a horse for Kyoko is probably one of them. Her witch form in extended media (Record, Portable, etc) depict a (alternative timeline for the sake of video games or books or whatever) witch form for Kyoko where she rides a horse. Pretty cool stuff, but this is honestly a pretty shallow visual all things considered.

       Kyoko’s sacrifice is fucking awesome. It’s another really heartbreaking moment though. The final moment where she can tear down her walls and express how she really feels for Sayaka is the same in which Sayaka can feel nothing in return, and they both come to their end.

       The ending credits are adorable, and honestly the only one I sit through in full every time. I wish I had more to say about Kyoko and Sayaka as individual characters here, but I think I’ve said enough.

       Now we get into my favorite episode of Madoka Magica, and maybe my favorite episode of television next to Nippy and Bagman from Better Call Saul. This episode has me sobbing in tears every single time I watch this show. I can’t even skip through the episode to get screenshots without nearly breaking down. There’s so many striking visuals, especially in the midpoint of the episode that hit my core.

       The concept for this episode is great, and I think the placement is perfect. Sandwiched right between the finale for the two remaining characters that aren’t Madoka and Homura, and right before the climax of the story. It’s a literal perfect twist in my opinion that Homura has been going through a time loop the entire time, and I love how it’s been hinted at SO MUCH throughout the entire show. It explains so much without making you feel like “well that was stupid, it would’ve made sense to tell me earlier.”

       I love Homura so much in this episode. One of my friends said on our group watch, my 3rd rewatch, “She’s a square.” Pathetic wet sopping cat Homura is so peak. What I really love about this sudden appearance of almost this entirely different conceptual character is just how stark of a difference she is at the start of the episode compared to what we are used to. She can’t do anything right, and she is so weak. It’s everything that main branch Homura is not.

       Homura essentially becomes the protagonist past episode 9, and they really hone in on this concept. I feel so much for Homura in these twenty something minutes. Every single doomed time loop, where they show what happens right before Walpurgis wins, gets me more and more emotional. The first is a great explanation of the environment that caused the current timeline to be how it is, and Homura’s wish is very fascinating. It’s not necessarily a selfish thing at the time, but her actualization of it changes the concept more and more into a personal goal for Homura. “Being strong enough to protect Madoka” becomes something more like “protect Madoka by any means necessary, so ultimately I can see her happy again.”

       The next two time loops destroy me. Madoka suffering while she is turned into a witch is one of the most awful things they make us witness. And then finally, the last time loop before Homura locks in, where she is gifted a grief seed by Madoka to keep going and then asked by Madoka to shoot her soul gem so she doesn’t have to become a witch. It’s very similar to Shinji being forced to crush Kaworu in episode 24 of Evangelion. It breaks my heart. All I can do is watch. I feel like that scene alone is enough to make anyone, not necessarily fully understand Homura’s intentions, but at least sympathize with what she is going through and make them like the character.

       The events in the final time loop before Homura locks in are also incredible too. The one sided conversation Homura has with Madoka to just become witches and destroy the world is great. I feel like I, as a viewer, kind of empathize with Homura at this moment, because of how crushing the surrounding events are. She is kind of saying what we (may or may not be) are thinking. Maybe not directly, but the idea of “just giving up” as long as it is close enough to your idealized reality.

       I love the scene before this too, where after they win against Oktavia, Mami breaks down and shoots Kyoko and then points at Homura, and then Madoka shoots Mami. Everyone is acting so irrationally and based on emotions. It’s such a surprising scene. My only gripe with this episode, though, is how seemingly convincing Homura is to get Madoka back on her feet. Madoka just shot and killed one of her closest friends, and had to witness two of her other friends get killed in different ways, and Homura is just like “it’s okay, we’ll defeat Walpurgisnacht as just us two,” and Madoka just kind of nods her head. It’s a fair bit unrealistic.

       I hate leaving this section off on a bad note since it’s my favorite episode, so I’m gonna find one more bit of fluff to talk about before I talk about the climax of the story. I love how the ending transitions into the current main branch timeline, and we see some behind the scenes looks as to what Homura is up to right before Madoka leaves the music store. And then Homura narrates saying “she will find the one road that will save [Madoka] from a destiny of despair.” If the viewer hasn’t figured out what’s going on by now, it’s been completely pieced together, and I love that this line alone kind of just ties up basically every loose end in the story besides what Madoka is capable of as a potential magical girl, and the immediate worldbuilding Kyubey gives to Madoka about the incubators, their goals, and the history of magical girls/witches in the beginning of the next episode.

       For the final two episodes, I think it may just be easier for me to pick and choose what I like the most about them. It’s great, but it’s hard to pinpoint.

       Madoka inviting herself to Homura’s house is so great, and I love seeing Homura letting her actual emotions out for once. Seeing her give up and just hug Madoka without asking after admitting she’s from a different timeline is so satisfying after what the hell we just went through in episode 10. It’s obviously a sad, dismal context, but it makes me feel a little warm. And then the background of Homura’s house changes to her memories of episode 10 as I mentioned earlier. It’s all so great emotionally and visually with the representations and colors.

       I love the dialogue between Madoka and (eventually) all the other magical girls at Mami’s house. It’s so surreal, but a tiny bit more grounded than something like episodes 25 and 26, or just The End of Evangelion for the Eva series. Something something “their souls are talking,” or it’s just a vision that Madoka gets or something. It doesn’t really need to make sense in a continuity, it’s just a great coming together moment of everything.

       Finally, a similar scene to the thing I mentioned prior to this, Madoka letting Sayaka finish out her final moments before being taken away as a magical girl/witch via Madoka’s wish. I love how Sayaka lets go of everything, but still there’s this theme of selfishness that Madoka lets Sayaka indulge in, because it’s really not so bad.

       What a great ending to this story. I think the ending hit so much harder when I first watched it compared to rewatches. On those subsequent rewatches, I found myself enjoying the buildup to everything and then episode 10 far more than the ending, though. It’s not a bad thing though. It’s part of what makes the show so great. If you enjoy the ending as it is, and then come back to it and find even more things to enjoy on the way there, I would consider that a good piece of media.

       With the existence of Rebellion, I think it is fun to sometimes conceptualize the 12 episodes of the anime as its own thing. It ends so perfectly, and obviously there’s some room for continuing the story at the end as Homura still knows about Madoka, and the remaining girls have to fight wraiths. Discounting this, it’s capped off perfectly. It doesn’t need anything else to “finish” this story. There are more possibilities of stories to tell with these characters, though, and the extent of Kyubey’s powers and goals is something that’s left mostly up to the viewers interpretation, and the way Rebellion deals with that is something that makes the movie inevitably worth it, among other things.

      I’m gonna start this off by saying three things I don’t really love about the movie, so that I can get the negativity out of the way and I don’t repeat the formatting of the last section. 1) Not a big fan of Nagisa. She has some funny moments, but she should’ve just been stuck as Bebe. She clearly just exists to make money, and leaving her human form up in the air is something I think would contribute more to the ambiguity of some of the world. It is fun though, at the same time, to be able to visualize how the witches were before they succumbed. 2) The ending is not the most satisfying thing in the world. Especially knowing that there is a fourth movie coming out, it leaves SO much to be desired. However, I am starting to appreciate Rebellion as it’s own thing as of late. It’s not exactly a cathartic ending, but it is a complete ending. Since the viewer is maybe more 50/50 on feeling sympathy for Homura, and the ending being inherently one of (as described by Homura), evil or “devilish” intentions, it feels very subversive, and not in a good way. 3) The mixed medium backgrounds and visuals in general in this movie are soooo sick, but I despise the real life footage/rotoscoping of the arms doing things. It’s really visually unsatisfying to me for some reason. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I don’t know the exact timestamps but there’s some in Sayaka’s magical girl transformation before they fight the Hitomi nightmare thing. There’s also one in the giant Homulilly sequence in the 2nd half of the movie.

      Anyways…

       Like the final two episodes, I’m going to find it a lot easier to try to just drop my favorite moments and things I like about the movie.

       Personally, I knew enough about the movie to know that Charlotte was coming back in some way, and that all of the magical girls were going to be there before watching the movie, but watching the movie with friends who were blind made me appreciate Madoka being the first person you see in the movie, and as a magical girl, and then the inevitable return of Mami near the beginning too in the same scene. I heard so many “what is going on,” as this was happening, especially when Bebe showed up. It’s really such an interesting opening. I’ve also heard some people being dropped into the experience and thinking it’s some sort of remake/reboot of the series (which doesn’t really make sense contextually, since it’s only 2 years after the show coming out, but I digress), which is also a fascinating thought to me as a hypothetical new viewer.

       The soundtrack and visuals you are dropped into are phenomenal, it’s so insane. I love the patchwork theme of the first witch (witches? This kind of extends into Hitomi’s labyrinth-nightmare thing too, so I can’t really tell the order of operations), and the first few songs they use as the four characters are just showing off is great. ONCE AGAIN I am struggling to put into words what I like about the background things.

       I am an absolute sucker for the bebe cake scene. It just makes me smile, and I love how extra the movie is just to be more deceptive to the viewers. I can excuse so much of this movie’s use of subverting viewer’s expectations, because they are going in knowing this is Madoka Magica, and then being more surprised than they could ever imagine is great. It’s not doing it for the shock factor of the genre this time. The scene is so funny too, and I love how so many of the characters are framed in this scene. There’s so many closeups that seemingly don’t show enough of the character, such as a half of their torso and up, or just their legs, but it’s really all you need, as it’s just showing off their character traits.

       There’s this 2 or 3 minute long, almost completely silent scene that happens that shows the characters eating beside each other and sharing food behind some sort of lattice structure. This absolutely flies over viewers’ heads on their first watch, because it did with me last year when I first watched it, and with my friends this year. If you just focus on Homura, you can tell something is up here, and how she is beginning to suspect Bebe is behind the theory she is crafting. It’s very clear when the scene pans to behind them and you can see her looking directly at Bebe. I love how simple this scene is.

       The scenes where Kyoko, Sayaka and Mami all get a turn having a scene with Homura feels a tad bit western conceptually, but they are all great scenes. Especially Kyoko’s. Oh my god I have so many good feelings about the scenes with Homura and Kyoko. I didn’t care much for Kyoko on my first two watches of the anime, but when I watched this movie, it made me like her so much, which probably led to my appreciation for her in my 3rd watch of the anime. She gets to just be herself here, without any influence of Sayaka, which isn’t necessarily a bad concept. I also like how they utilized her for the plot, to prove one of Homura’s theories that the city is fake. The bus scene is one of the most memorable moments from the entire movie. The colors, and insanely abstract visuals are so spectacular. It’s kind of like how abstract Homura’s house is in the anime, but taken to another level. I can’t even begin to understand the visual metaphors at play here, I just know they are there.

       The crown jewel moment of this movie is by far the Homura and Mami fight scene. Holy shit it’s SOOO good. I’m definitely super biased since this is my favorite anime, so me saying “I don’t really like action, but…” is pretty meaningless, but like I am half convinced that this is the best action scene in the moving picture format. I have to give some fair respect to Chainsaw Man, though, which is why I’m not saying of any piece of media. There’s almost no talking the entire time, and it’s just the two characters using their powers to the fullest and just absolutely insane visuals and choreography. I love how Homura stopping time contributes to the fight so much, and how at the climax of it ALL of the bullets that they were shooting go off at once and just destroy the environment around them. I’m kind of just repeating verbatim what happens but I just love it so much.

       Homura shooting part of her head to hit Mami’s ribbon touching her was such an insane way to cap off the fight too. I was shocked just when she put her gun to her head, and then even more shocked when it didn’t kill her because of Mami, and then even MORE shocked when it was revealed to be a very deliberate choice to shoot Mami’s ribbon actually… It’s so much going on in such little time and it's so great.

       Sayaka’s analog of the Kyoko scene(s) that happens after the Mami scene is also pretty great. Her witch form showing up in the puddle is a bit on the nose, but at the very least visually a good moment, and I love how quickly the tension is built in the scene just from that. The flower petals falling to allude to the fact that she is still, in some form, a witch, before the puddle thing happens is really cool too. I also think they just did an overall great job portraying Sayaka here. She’s being a bit self destructive again (albeit in a much different context), but still a bit playful, yet cynical.

       Madoka consoling Homura and her concerns about the world she’s realized she is in is a very touching scene. There’s not much analysis I can do for this scene. Homura is clearly talking in metaphors here, but we know what she is talking about so everything is pretty spelled out. The visuals are great, and there’s more visual metaphors here that I don’t fully understand, but if I was in an English class still I could probably crank out some bullshit about how the flowers represent Homura’s “death” and rebirth as a witch or something. Or maybe it’s about her time loops. I don’t know. It’s striking enough for me to not really care what it means.

       I feel like now is a good time to mention two visual storytelling components here. The first and one that is related to this scene I just talked about is the blimps. They seem so random and out of place. They also kind of fit into the grand overdramatized cityscape that is built in Homura’s psyche, perhaps as an immature view of the place she lives in. The blimps could mean two different things, though. The first, literally explanation that I subscribe to is that it’s a manifestation of the surveillance the incubators are doing around Homura’s body in the weird temple egg thing, but I think another interesting exploration of this is the blimps as a representation of Homura’s cynicism of the world around her, as she understands more and more of what is at play. As we get further into the anime, there are more and more blimps in the world, and then when we get to the scene with Homura confiding in Madoka, the blimps are all over the place, and one even points directly at them as they cry and hug.

       The other visual storytelling thing I want to talk about is how the features of “background characters,” or simply characters that Homura doesn’t care about, get turned into either cardboard cutouts, or have their faces either replaced, removed, or covered with abstract shapes and colors to represent simple facial features. This concept is first present in the classroom after Homura joins the quintet, as all the classmates but the girls, Hitomi, and Kyosuke get their faces blurred. A funny thing I found about this though is how the boy in the front of the classroom doesn’t get his face blurred. It seems so freaking random, but it’s actually a boy named Nakazawa, who constantly gets picked on by the teacher in Homura’s class. It’s really hilarious to me that, out of all of the people in her class, Homura chooses to have him appear in her world, probably just because she thought their antics were funny enough.

       I’m also a very big fan of the cardboard cutouts a lot more compared to this weird blurring, because it gives such an interesting aspect to the camera work in the show. It’s not always, but most of the time the cardboard cutouts are pointed at or around Homura and where she is standing, but then the camera shows this at a different angle to show the viewer that they are in fact, not real. It seems kind of simple when I am just speaking out loud exactly what is happening, but I like it a lot.

       I really shouldn’t have to talk at all about the Homulily scene, or scenes? I don’t really know. This semi-action sequence goes on for like 20 or 30 minutes. It’s freaking great though. There’s so many good “final” character moments. My favorite among these is Kyoko and Sayaka though, as Kyoko lets her guard down and says that she is sad that she’s living in the dream, instead of the reality where Sayaka is dead. And they hold hands, and it’s just so great and heartwarming. Nagisa coming in is kind of funny too, and Sayaka even says she’s ruining the mood.

       The music and visuals in this section are just astonishing. There’s so many visual and auditory themes going on, and the motifs used are just great.

       My favorite moment in this entire section of the movie though, and actually the movie as a whole is the grass-chair scene. It’s a direct visual allegory to the opening, Luminous, in the first recap movie, in the scene where Homura and Madoka are just being cute and enjoying each other’s company. Once again, this scene uses chairs for some sort of effect, and I will talk about this more later in this. To be entirely honest, for like the tenth or something time,I have no clue what the scene is trying to say. Everything that happens just makes me feel something though. Homura jumping out of her own skin, how she is forced to constantly replay Madoka’s demise, how she doesn’t feel she is in control of her own life, how she is playing a character, and how she is only destroying herself. There’s soooo many things going on, and it just gets me so emotional in like only 30 seconds. This kind of encapsulates what I like about Rebellion, and kind of by association, The End of Evangelion and the rebuild sequels. There’s probably some end goal by the creators of the films, but maybe it’s not necessary to get to the bottom of it. Distinct enough visuals and storytelling by showing things and just letting the characters react to things is enough to get me immersed, either in their shoes or as someone who can sympathize/empathize. Basically, what I’m trying to say is, I don’t need to fully understand everything. I can fill in the blanks with things, potentially from my life, that make the most sense, and it will probably still work in some sort of analogy.

       The redo at the end of this section of the movie of the breaking point scene for Homura of her and Madoka lying in the dirt, defeated by Walpurgisnacht is surprisingly tasteful. It had the potential to just be stupid and dumb and reiterate the frames for emotional impact, but it’s redrawn from scratch, and it visually transitions into a scene about Homura being the one to stop herself, and how themes of self destruction are ultimately worthless, as Madoka tears her away from this idea and assists her in stopping her self destructing fantasy.

       As I said earlier, the movie ending is not perfect to me, but it is still good. It’s a great finale, and playing devil's advocate, it’s an amazing ending for Homura discounting the scare of Madoka saying she doesn’t belong in this form at the end, and that Homura admits that one day she will become her enemy. For the short term, it’s pretty great for her. I hope whatever happens in the fourth movie leads to them not fighting though.

       Also, the opening to this movie, Colorful is absolutely fantastic. I honestly paid no mind to it on my first watch, but oh my god on a rewatch it had me bawling. My friends were a bit more attentive to the details, though, and they were more confused than anything. I think whether or not you know the spoiler though, Homura feeling pained by whatever it is in this opening is still able to get viewers of the original anime feel for her as well. We know what Homura has gone through and is still going through in this chronology.

       I’ve been kind of beating around the bush this entire time about something. Something that I haven’t acknowledged directly yet. I think any viewer of the anime, or at least any viewer of the anime and Rebellion understand, is that there are some very, sometimes completely direct, queer undertones or themes in this story. I’m of course talking about the one-sided relationship between Homura and Madoka, as well as Kyoko and Sayaka. It’s really no secret. Homura’s entire wish revolved around another human being and saving her, and at the final twist of Rebellion, she credits her motivations to the emotion of love. There’s definitely a million 4chan scholars out there that will debate the true translation of the scene, though, just like Shinji and Kaworu in the bathhouse. But either way, there’s no denying that Homura and Kyoko’s motivations in their respective stories are at least partially motivated by something stronger than just friendship.

       I feel like now would be the time I gather evidence and whatever, but I really don’t fucking need to. If you watched the show, it’s painfully obvious that Homura has harbored feelings for Madoka. She remains stoic throughout most of the anime, but in episode 11, she breaks down completely in front of Madoka. There’s a lot of things at play in this scene, such as the fact that Homura has gone through so much up until this point. Pain, suffering, and witnessing her friends and Madoka die so many times. But also, I think a big factor in her emotional outburst is that she’s essentially living through a nonstop, repeating cycle of unrequited love. Homura lives and breathes just to see Madoka happy, and she can’t feel the joys of having the one closest to her ever smile or be mutually thankful for each other’s existence.

       In the end of the anime, Madoka finally gives Homura what she needs, but not exactly what she wants. Homura is gifted with knowing that Madoka is safe, and her work is complete, but also that she is relieved of her duties as a magical girl. Homura is still broken, though, because she’s never able to indulge in having them just being together. It’s all Homura wants. She can have friends that help her when she needs them, and can bounce off of each other, such as Mami and Kyoko at the end of the anime, but she will never have Madoka as she wants her.

       This kind of plays into why the end of Rebellion is kind of cathartic in a weird, twisted way. Homura finally gets what she wants, and after declaring that her motivations were all rooted in love, she rewrites the entire universe just so she can be with Madoka, how she wanted things to be. Instead of her being the transfer student that shows up too late, Madoka is. She’s in the same class as her, exactly in the form that she wants her to be, and she stops Madoka at the moment she scares her into becoming a concept that provides Homura and her friends direct safety in life. Love conquers all I guess.

      There’s also the, sometimes equally as direct, relationship between Kyoko and Sayaka that is a bit difficult to digest, especially since Sayaka has a crush on a boy, and it never goes away even at the final episode of the show. It’s a bit easier to understand it as completely unreciprocated feelings though. Kyoko obviously is ready to toy with Sayaka’s life as a more senior magical girl interested in self preservation, but in episode 6, they have a shared experience as Sayaka’s soul gem get separated too far from her body, and they start learning the truth that there is something more to this magical girl thing. This scene kind of forced Kyoko to realize her humanity, and seeing firsthand how someone inexperienced as Sayaka is suffering I think leads her closer to a direction that tells her that she can’t be alone anymore. Human dependency is valuable, both to survival and happiness. From this point on, Kyoko becomes very attentive to Sayaka's actions, and starts to feel scared for her. And then at the end, when Sayaka turns into Oktavia, she is in full on protection mode. She keeps her body safe and protected after it dissociates from her magical girl/witch form, and also begins taking drastic, unknown measures to try to get her back to how she liked Sayaka. It’s obviously not for Madoka’s sake, as she uses Madoka to try to get what she wants, and very clearly not for Homura’s sake because there’s no positive relationship between the two characters.

      The finale of Sayaka and Kyoko is something I only think contextually to the buildup and aftermath makes sense as something Kyoko does out of love. There’s so much embellishment going on in the scene where Kyoko sacrifices herself to simultaneously end her life with Sayaka, or the closest thing to it, and to stop herself and everyone else in Mitakihara from succumbing to Oktavia. It’s all so doomed, and a tad bit beautiful.

      Also, at the end of episode 9, Kyoko and Sayaka get their own character song together and the background is just an image of them holding hands?? Like this is just so gay.

      There’s also something to be said with the limited interaction they have in Rebellion as Magical Girls. There’s a bit of teasing going on between them as classmates in the beginning of the movie, but it’s a little meaningless in the grand scheme of things. As I mentioned earlier, though, the two get a fair bit of screen time together as magical girls when fighting (?) Homulilly, and they get a scene together standing on something, where Kyoko describes how she is sad that she is in the dream, and that the reality is that Sayaka is dead. This hits so hard, and I love how much it reinforces that Kyoko’s motivations for stopping Oktavia were rooted in her affection for Sayaka. And then they hold hands on screen for a few seconds before Nagisa interrupts. It’s a brilliant, touching scene until that.

      So how can I tell that the writers were trying to write something so queer coded, and not just to appeal to an audience with some cutesy characters that are so close to each other? In a way, I kind of can’t be, but at the same time, I am sure of it. Especially with things that released before the past decade or so, you really can never tell what exactly a Japanese story writer is trying to say with characters and stories that inhibit these kinds of things.

      In episode 24 of Neon Genesis Evangelion, I mentioned earlier the bathhouse scene, where Kaworu infamously says something along the lines of that he feels a deep empathy for Shinji, and that he loves/likes him. And this released in 1996, far before any kind of widespread acceptance of queer culture in this medium. I have to be true to myself with this, though. I have no proof that this one sided dialogue is anything more than Kaworu saying he feels a deep affection towards Shinji, something akin to a blood bond of sorts. It honestly feels more in line to say that it is a, not necessarily romantic, codependency between two people, because it fits more with the themes of the show, and how the characters all represent some kind of relationship with Shinji. Rei is a sort of familial love, Misato is a kind of sexual love (I hate talking about this, but it makes sense), and Asuka being some kind of romantic love. And then finally, we have Kaworu. It makes the most sense to say, out of these characters, that he represents some kind of platonic love.

      This is all to say, though, that there is still something to take out of this analysis and translation for queer people. It’s not often you get to hear a character say something so deep and resounding as what Kaworu shares with Shinji over the course of the episode, and re-representing it as something that a queer person wishes they could say is not at all inappropriate.

      In the release of the third rebuild, Thrice Upon a Time, the writers did some light speculation on their own work, hinting that Kaworu perhaps has a bit of a crush on Shinji, which further explains his motivations of his actions throughout the course of the final two movies. I’m treading on massive spoilers here, so I suppose I should stop.

      This is all to say though, that Madoka Magica could hypothetically be some sort of unfortunate situation like Evangelion, where a very queer character(s) is not exactly what the author intended, but in the end there’s still a lot to take out of it in the context of living under the LGBT+ spectrum. The stories are supposed to resonate with people, after all.

      This leaves me with the final question, that I think synthesizes all of these things. Why, potentially, did the writers want to create something that resonates so deeply with the queer community, and what exactly is the message behind all of it? Is there any further narrative at play beyond just the characters being gay?

      I think there are a lot of things going on at play, even discarding character interactions. Every major plot point has some kind of message about the shared experiences of people under the spectra.

      For example, while not exactly unique to Madoka Magica, there’s something to be said about the concept of magical girls. It all bears a resemblance to the experience of coming out. There’s also something to be said about how the protagonists’ designs all are a reflection of their inner selves, or a defiance of the expectations that society weighed on them. Homura, especially, as her outfit is vaguely representative to that of a catholic nun, reflecting her background before the events of the story. It's kind of a message of reclaiming yourself from an experience that attempted to bury who you really are.

      Madoka suffers through multiple timelines, and ultimately in the final timeline, where she witnessed first hand her friends get killed off one by one, and then have the one remaining one tell her that she isn’t even from the same time as her, and claim she isn’t human. The world around her is actively trying to kill her, but because Madoka being true to herself and taking the next step proves itself necessary in the story as Walpurgisnacht always wins against Homura, and it takes her into a literal and metaphorical higher plane of existence.

      Homura’s story is also a bit of a testament to the struggles of being a queer person in the civilized world. The lengths that Homura has to go through in order to be in a relationship that just makes her happy are kind of analogous to what it takes to get acceptance as a gay or trans person. The main branch timeline in the anime is kind of Homura taking matters into her own hands, as she is complicit in behavior that is at times destructive to finally get her way (which is not a bad thing overall). Her immediate correcting of Madoka in the first episode to simply call her “Homura,” reads more as a parallel to exhibiting your trans identity under this lens. She is clearly most determined in this timeline.

      Finally, another interpretation of the elements of worldbuilding is the magical girls and witches as an expectation of queer people in society. In my experience, even some of the most seemingly left leaning people I know are guilty of saying things like “no homo,” or “as long as it’s not around me.” These sentiments, to treat queer people as your equals, as long as you can tell them what to do, is very obstructive, and even worse as we are taken as jokes. A way to look at magical girls is as a view of society of the “perfect,” idealized queer person. The gay uncle you are proud to say he’s a part of the family because he’s not too flamboyant, or the trans daughter you haven’t disowned because she lets you call her your son around your coworkers, or the lesbian cousin who you keep close to you all because she grows her hair out and doesn’t bring her girlfriend to parties. Despite the gold star some of society may put on these people, it doesn’t discount the fact that these people are still suffering, and fighting their own battles behind the scenes, and maybe not living the life they want to to the fullest.

      Then, we come to witches. The final form of the magical girl, what people fear the most. Society fears people stepping “out of line,” which almost always simply comes down to people being who they fucking want to be. But still, they get painted as something that is out to get their friends and family. With Homulilly, despite her catastrophes she weighs down on false Mitakihara, there’s still someone deep inside there that just wants to be accepted for who they are. Not to live up to some expectations of a god that tells them they are perfect the way they were born, or to value a tradition that makes no sense when deconstructed and only gets repeated because of expectations.

      All of this to say, the magical girl is society’s idealized queer folk.

      I find this comparison very interesting, taking in the context of episode 10, where in the final timeline before Homura gains her agency, she suggests to Madoka that they should just give up and become witches and destroy everything around them. Honestly, why not. What is so bad about everyone being witches? Witches don’t kill witches. Maybe a society of people who don’t care what people think about their identity isn’t so bad.

       I don’t have an easy way to wrap this section up, but what I can say is that I feel very strongly about these things, and you should too. Some media is pointless, to me, without these kinds of analyses. There’s never any harm in trying to take something that exists, and feeling an emotional, powerful connection with it because it almost responds directly to your concerns as a human on Earth.

       For the last section of all of this, I want to keep it a bit more lighthearted, and maybe actually find the words I’m trying to say about what I like so much about the animation and design choices in the show.

       As I mentioned earlier in the review, there is a weird fascination the show has with showing either chairs in weird places, or chairs that shouldn’t be there, or chairs that serve no functional purpose, or simply just an abundance of chairs. The most popular, fan accepted answer to why there are so many chairs is a direct visual reference to a manga called Bokurano. In the story, which I don’t mind spoiling because the premise seems SOOO boring to me, chairs get used as a visual storytelling component to represent people who have died/will die piloting mecha robots.

       This kind of manifests as an analog to magical girls fighting and inevitably falling to despair. In the scene where Kyubey talks about the history of Magical girls to Madoka in episode 9, we see, and the camera pans to, an excess of chairs, which all seem to corroborate this, in that so many of the worlds greatest sacrifices are attributed to magical girls, and the chairs are shown to represent their sacrifice.

       The explanation that gets explored in the storyboard notes, and probably the explanation that should be most accepted, is that the chairs represent all of the civilizations that the incubators have visited to find this limitless source of energy. It’s really that simple, and not that deep.

       What do I think about the chairs, though? I honestly don’t fucking know. I think the one that makes the most sense to me, though, because chairs get used in abundance outside of just the episode 9 scene I mentioned, where the incubator explanation makes contextual sense, is that chairs are just a visual motif that represent something different everywhere. Most commonly, I think chairs are used to represent an audience. I don’t think this is the most fun theory, though, because it’s a bit too meta for my tastes, and also chairs should show up in more scenes than we are if this is the case. I guess there is the argument though, that chairs show up predominantly in scenes where the writers most likely figured that audiences would traditionally have some sort of engagement with. This kind of feeds into the idea of Madoka Magica as a subversion of the traditional cutesy anime girl/magical girl genre, as there are chairs in the intro cutscene pointing at Junko’s room, which overall is a pretty cute scene. Also, not to mention, a non-functional 5th chair at the dining room table (not pictured or counted in this analysis due to it sitting at the dining room table) that may contribute to this concept. There’s also chairs in some frames of Kyosuke’s room, where the traditional love story of the shoujo anime starts being portrayed.

       Or the chairs could represent timelines that Homura has visited, or how she is almost omnipresent in every possibility resetting the timeline has to offer.

       In Rebellion, in the scene where Kyoko and square Homura talk vaguely about Homura’s theory, they sit in this weird tea party boat thing. Not to mention, there’s a bunch of incredibly tall tables and chairs behind them. Since these chairs are seated at a table, I’m not counting them once again, but maybe you should consider them in your own analysis.

      Anyways, in this scene, they start off with four cups at the table.

      And then five cups

      And then six cups

      And then FOURTEEN CUPS???

       I noticed this in my English dub rewatch, and it blew my MIND. This is exactly another chair-core thing I was expecting out of the movie. But actually what the fuck does it mean? I have no clue, but I thought this belonged in this kind of section. It’s obviously a very deliberate choice, but actually why does this happen, and since the cups don’t follow some kind of choice artstyle, why do the two seated at the table not acknowledge it?

       Maybe there’s some obvious metaphor, like how everyone is too afraid to admit that they know something about this world and that they shouldn’t like, Sayaka knowing about Madoka, or how Homura knows she is living in a false city. I dunno, this is probably surface level too for all I know.

      Lastly, we have some notable functional (?) chairs.

       Once again, I don’t know for sure what the hell is going on, but the fact that there are otherwise pointless chairs populated by these characters leads me to believe the choice is once again deliberate. These scenes notably take place in Rebellion, outside of the original context of what chairs may have been originally meant to mean. There’s no more dying magical girls, Kyubey I guess is still looking for some “limitless power,” but found the one civilization that harbors it already, and yada yada.

       Like I said, I don’t really know what to make of it all, but here’s an idea: chairs in Rebellion, and by extension the opening Luminous to the first recap movie, represent a menial, monotonous life. In contrast to the selfish desires of Homura wanting to be with Madoka in her physical form, when she does finally have her way, maybe it’s a way of saying that maybe it’s not what Homura really needs in life. Madoka’s eternal sacrifice should be enough, but as we know in Rebellion, Homura never comes to accept this reality.

       In the post credits scene, Homura gets exactly what she wants, but is it truly the happiness she wished for? Maybe now, she is experiencing exactly what she thought she was experiencing without Madoka in her life. As a new god of this realm, she lives a pointless, repetitive lifestyle constantly appealing to her most indulgent desires.

       There also exist two other instances of chairs that maybe shouldn’t be there in Rebellion. In the opening cutscene where Madoka wakes up Junko, the scene is redrawn one to one from the original anime, besides all of the chairs are new designs. Also, in false Mitakihara, there exist two sofas that are incredibly out of place.

       I don’t want to talk about these, because I think they probably don’t mean anything. The first is maybe just a callback to the original anime, and the second is most likely just a design choice. There’s a lot of pointless amenities scattered across false Mitakihara, and they get panned to quite frequently in the Homulilly sequence.

       Oh, and I almost forgot, there are some empty sofas that get dropped down as the lured inhabitants of false Mitakihara get freed. It seems deliberate as they are so detailed, but this is mostly beyond me. Maybe they exist to remind Homura before she makes her move on Madokami the weight of her actions.

       Lastly, two honorable mentions for chairs that don’t belong in this!!!. First, the chair that is wayyyy too close to the wall in Mami’s house in Rebellion

      And second, the massive chairs and other household objects rising from the ground as false Mitakihara burns.

      I don’t really have anything to say about these. I just felt like mentioning them. Oh also Charlotte’s high chair!!! Yippee!!!

      Below are all the UNIQUE, ORIGINALLY DRAWN frames, in which non functional chairs appear in the original anime that I could find.

      That is all. Thank you for reading, and hopefully being okay with letting me be open about my feelings towards this show.

      Goodbye. Leave the webpage now unless you want to look at the pictures or something.