History Headscratchers / PuellaMagiMadokaMagica

* Why must it be ''pubescent girls''? Like, plenty of people have emotional conflicts to be farmed. People of all genders and ages. If it's just for [[IncrediblyLamePun pun's]] sake, Kyubey's species is pretty cringe-worthy on doing so. I bet if he asked for, let's say, a bunch of nerds to contract with him, they not only would ask the details of the contract, but accept it anyways, by knowing that they'd basically become liches (it'd actually be really cool to many) and fight with awesome powers (not to mention they'd probably become kinda powerful witches, since most nerds tend to [[FlameWar rage]] and despair a lot). And one of them would probably wish to reverse entropy, considering they're nerds. Then again, such a wish could put the whole Universe at risk (not to mention that quite a few nerds would just wish for animu waifus or to know how to speak Klingon)... Or, I dunno, just ask to emokids. Falling to Despair is what they're good at.

* So maybe this is the wrong place to ask but if there's a right place I couldn't find it. What was that thing about Urobuchi saying the show was about girls being punished for their hubris? The part about terrorists was a mistranslation I think but did he say the first part? I have a few more on-topic questions but I need to get this sorted out first and foremost.

*** The thing about Madoka's [[spoiler:potential and Homura's time traveling enhancing is unrelated to the discussion. The thing is, Walpurgis being ''absent'' from the "Madoka dies," "Madoka becomes a witch," and "Madoka and Homura together" scenes doesn't MEAN she's been defeated. The thing flies wherever it wants, it could have just moved on to wreak havoc elsewhere after defeating the local resistance. That's why the only EXPLICIT confirmation that Walpurgis really IS defeated comes from the "Madoka oneshots Walpurgis and THEN becomes a witch," when Kyubey actually says it. Madoka's Soul Gem also being absent doesn't say anything on its own. It could've just shattered after a fatal attack without Madoka accomplishing anything. A SuicideAttack can be ''inferred'', but one can also ''infer'' a complete failure from the exact same scenes.]]

*** You are overthinking things. [[spoiler:That confirmation also came from someone who didn't know Madoka's power was growing because of Homura's timeline hopping. Also, you have to make the distinction of between Madoka doing a SuicideAttack and Curbstomping WPN. It is heavily implied that WPN was defeated in the first timeline after Madoka's SuicideAttack. I don't think they would let WPN roam around without saying nothing or at least implied that they did. WPN was powerful enough to destroy the World even though it would take much longer than Madoka's Krimhild Gretchen. Also consider that Gretchen always more powerful than WPN BEFORE that One-Shot Madoka did.]]

*** [[spoiler:a) Homura CAN'T use any magical attack, her only magics are time stop and moving stuff around (like the truck or the missile launcher) so far, before the Retcon she never had the bow and she balanced this with timestop, and Genre Savy.]]
*** [[spoiler: Not true. Homura fires purple energy bolts the first time we see her chasing Kyubey, presumably so as not to give him any clues about what her magic really does, and to conserve her Soul Gem as much as possible.]]
*** [[spoiler:b) Madoka is kinda like Nanoha, a mid-long ranged fighter with very very strong magic attacks. Mami also qualifies on this category. Kyoko one hit ko'ed witch-Sakaya with her suicide attack. And Sakaya can heavily increase her strength and speed using magic. So any of the girls with the exception of Homura can use strong magic attacks.]]
*** [[spoiler:c)Walpurgis has an weird eye/magic circle aura around it. IMO walpurgis is simply immune to non-magic attacks, regardless the Overkill, unless it aura is broken with a very powerful magic attack. Thats why Madoka always defeat it, and why having at least one magical girl with a magic attack would greatly increase Humura's possibilities to defeat WP.]]
*** For that matter, [[spoiler:Walpugisnacht]]'s nature is helplessness. Maybe it's simply impossible to do with only one person, because that person is "helpless" - Homura can't win, but Homura + mouse that noms on [[spoiler:Walpurgisnacht]]'s ear can. Madoka breaks this by being [[GameBreaker Madoka]].
*** A witch's nature is like her personality [[spoiler:(she just laughs and floats upside down 95% of the time, and the rare photo(s) showing her right side up also show the city in flames). Homura's firepower hardly singed her dress, and considering all that magical witch-fire spewed, she seems to be magically-heat-resistant enough to laugh off "mere explosives". Ironic, as she is the 'stage-constructing witch'.]]

** Probably because "back to life" is a very vague phrasing. Kyubey does grant wishes that create clones or restore witches, but since he doesn't seem to define death the same way humans do (his views on Soul Gems illustrate that nicely), bringing someone back from the dead may be beyond his capability just because he can't grant a wish he can't understand. "I want my friend back" isn't necessarily the same thing as "I want my friend's soul to be restored to a functioning body identical to the one she used to have when she was alive." Case in point: Mami was dying and wished to live, and Kyubey granted that wish by [[spoiler: making her ''undead''.]] There's nothing to say he isn't physically capable, but he has to be able to wrap his head around the wish in order to grant it.

* [[spoiler:Okay, I understand that all of the different time loops converging on Madoka is what caused her to be so insanely powerful by the time the show takes place, but what I don't get is why this didn't also affect Homura, Mami, Sayaka, and Kyoko. Episode 10 shows that Homura, Mami, and Sayaka were in all of the time loops, and that Kyoko was also there for a couple. Why didn't they have just as much potential as Madoka? Likewise, since Sayaka is fated to become a witch no matter what, why wasn't Sayaka's witch form just as powerful as Madoka's witch form, if not more since Madoka doesn't witch out in every time loop?]]
** [[spoiler: I really wish we had a better word for Homura's ability than "time loop", because that's not really what she's doing, it just looks that way from her perspective. When Homura activates her sand timer and goes back to the first day, all of the energy ''becomes'' Madoka's magical potential/karmic destiny (in other words, how big a role she plays in the fate of the world) because Homura uses Madoka's condition (alive and fully human) as the criteria for whether or not she negates that timeline. Each "different timeline" is actually a ''potential future'' that can only exist as part of Madoka's magic because Homura has prevented it from becoming reality. The other girls have nothing to do with it. When Homura goes back to the start, all of the other timelines become potential futures that are hinged ''solely'' on Madoka. It doesn't increase anyone else's magical potential because it doesn't affect how big a role they play in the world, only the circumstances of the role they play.]]

* So Madoka, being a little weirded out [[spoiler:by Homura's pleas]] at the end of episode 8, decides to go look for Sayaka, whose current status she knows nothing about. So where do we find her walking around in the beginning of episode 9? On train tracks closed off by barbed wired fences. Makes sense.

** Wait, if there was a tragedy near a train... and [[spoiler:[[FridgeHorror Sayaka became a witch while on a train]]]]...

* So we've seen that Homura [[spoiler:can stop time, apparently long enough to break into Yakuza headquarters and nick some serious damaging weapons]]. We also know that firearms and explosives deal enough damage to witches to kill them. So why doesn't [[spoiler:Homura just stop time and bombs Walpurgisnight into oblivion? She might be the strongest witch, but she could eventually die of a thousand cuts.]] It seems weird she doesn't even try to abuse that more.
** I just assumed that [[spoiler:Homura couldn't plant enough explosives to stop it without pushing her power too far and going all witchy herself. And since in that timeline all the other nearby Magical Girls are dead, that wouldn't really improve Madoka's situation a lot.]]
** Answered in episode 11. [[spoiler:She did. In the final battle, she used hundreds of RPG's, dozens of artillery units, an improvised fuel tanker bomb, a battleship, and a huge pit filled with explosives. It all did jack shit anyway.]]
*** Which leads us to how could she [[spoiler:transport and operate a battleship by herself.]]

*** She laughed off Homura's [[spoiler: explosion jamboree like it was an elevator fart; what makes you think there's a sword sharp enough to even scratch Walpurgis? Even if Homura did somehow manage to find one, she'd still have to touch Walpurgis to attack her with it, negating the time-stop effect. Theoretically there are a few ways to apply that in a helpful way, but it'd deplete her magic; she'd be winning the battle only to lose the war because defeating Walpurgis doesn't mean Madoka will never make a contract.]]
*** Actually, that would be the one thing Homura ''couldn't'' do. It's established that anyone that Homura touches while her time-stop ability is in effect becomes able to move in time. That's why [[spoiler: Mami goes after her first when she's driven mad by the truth about magical girls, and ties her up with her ribbons: as long as they're connected, Homura can't use her time-stop ability on her because they'll both be moving within the stopped moment.]] As soon as Homura touched her with the sword, Walpurgis would be able to move normally again.

* At which point in time[[spoiler:(s)]] did [[FanNickname Homerun]] find out Kyuubey's real name was [[spoiler:Incubator]]? I really can't put in my head that Kyuubey just went ahead and told her for the hell of it. So either she is a very smart girl and figured it out herself, or she has indeed [[spoiler:gone through more timelines]] than the ones shown. Is there any other convincing way it could have happened?
** Same goes for how she found out Soul Gems are [[spoiler:[[SoulJar Soul Jars]]]]. She says she knew it when questioned in Episode 7, and her response hints that she knew it in [[spoiler:the third timeline, where Mami killed Kyouko]], but the only thing we ever see her discover is that [[spoiler:magical girls become witches]].
** It was probably revealed [[spoiler: in the time loop that she finds out that they are Immature Witches. It's very likely Kyubey revealed how the system worked as his full name off-screen]]. However, [[spoiler: it doesn't nix the possibility that Homura may have experienced more timelines than what we saw]].
** In Episode 11, [[spoiler: Kyubey mentions that Homura has gone through countless time loops to prevent Madoka from being a witch which would indicate that she indeed has gone through more time loops than the five shown in ep. 10]]

*** Homura did seem to mention that her cold personality came from how the people she saw die were too many to count. [[spoiler: As in too many Madokas in too many timelines]].

* When Sayaka started ranting about how Homura supposedly [[spoiler: let Mami die]], why the hell didn't Madoka just tell her that that wasn't the case? It's not like there was anything stopping her?

* Post-episode 3, [[spoiler: Mami's dead.]] She's not around to snap and kill everyone. Homura could have tried to tell the truth about magical girls to Madoka and Sayaka. Sure, it may not have worked, but it would be worth a try. Even better, she could have done it in front of Kyubey; they'd ask him, and he wouldn't deny it. Is Homura that dedicated to being secretive?

** As for telling the AwfulTruth in front of [[ManipulativeBastard Kyubey]], it probably wouldnt work since he'd likely turn it to his advantage. Note, while he cannot lie or tell any false statements, [[MetaphoricallyTrue it doesnt stop him from twisting statements or withholding information in order to achieve a desired result]]. [[spoiler: In ep 9, he manipulates Kyouko into performing a HeroicSacrifice even after she stated she wouldnt listen to him.]] If Madoka and Sayaka were to ask him, he could answer that Homura would say or do anything to prevent Madoka from contracting out of fear of her power which ''would be the truth.'' They'd think that Homura was the one lying and wouldnt listen to her then.

** Homura's goal was [[spoiler: to prevent Madoka from ever making a contract with Kyubey. Following Mami's death,]] being callous and blunt served that goal. She wanted to put the idea in both Madoka and Sayaka's heads that [[spoiler: "If you make a contract with Kyubey, you will die a horrible and pointless death just like Mami did." Saying, "Oh, by the way, being a Magical Girl makes you really hard to kill," would have been actively counterproductive to this end. Would Sayaka have been unwilling to make her contract if she knew she'd become a lich? That's hard to say. It didn't stop Madoka when she almost made hers on the park bench]].

* When Mami tied Homura up before going off to face Charlotte, why couldnt she tell her ''why'' fighting the witch would be a bad idea, namely [[spoiler: namely that the witch has 2 forms, a doll form and a giant worm that can spring up to devour people like what eventually happened with Mami.]] If she had, Mami would have likely lived due to being more prepared. The spin-off Oriko Magica shows that Mami ''is'' capable of defeating Charlotte as long as she remains guarded. People criticize Mami for not listening to Homura, but really what did Homura warn her about? Homura only said that the witch was different, without going into details about its abilities and that Mami wasnt ready for it, which to Mami's point of view sounds like "You've too weak for this witch, now stand aside and let me take the grief seed that should essentially be yours since its your territory." It shouldnt have surprised Homura when the other Puella Magi tied her up. And when Mami and Madoka started walking away, why not warn them with telepathy? Better yet, why not offer to team up with Mami against the witch or at least hang back, follow Mami and Madoka and intervene when Mami's about to be killed which is what happened in the PSP Portable with better results?

** Except for the fact that Homura is in need of allies to fight against Walpurgisnacht. [[spoiler: The fourth timeline showed that Homura on her own isnt enough to beat it and if no one can stop Walpurgisnacht, then Madoka will contract to save the city, which leads to Madoka turning into Kriemhild Gretchen once the battle is over.]] While Homura might have been leaning on Kyoko, having two veteran fighters would have increased their chances since Mami has been at the MG business longer than any of them [[spoiler: Homura's timeloops withstanding]] and employs long range weaponry since is useful when Walpurgisnacht can chuck debris at you. And all Homura would have to say is that Walpurgisnacht is coming and Mami's heroic nature would drive her to fight the witch, without Homura having wrangle any deals than with a more self-serving girl.

* I thought Sayaka was Madoka's best friend, [[spoiler: Not Homura.]] That poor girl just can't get a break. [[spoiler:Homura seems equally fixed on Madoka as well, thinking of Madoka as her only friend. She and Mami were friends in the first three timelines, but after that...]]
** It could be that because in those [[spoiler:previous timelines]], Madoka [[spoiler:already was contracted by Kyubey and was probably felt separated from Sayaka due to the consequences of being a magical girl. She probably was close to Homura because she inadvertently stepped into their 'world' of sorts. Notice after Homura kills Kyubey before he gets Madoka, Madoka isn't as close to her, especially when Homura emotionally shuts herself away.]]
** Madoka only calls [[spoiler:Homura]] her best friend ''after'' she becomes [[spoiler:omniscient. People are allowed to change their minds when faced with new knowledge, especially when that knowledge is of somebody who loves you enough to repeat hell just for you.]]

** Don't forget, Mami, Kyouko, and Homura all knew about Walpurgis Night, and the scene where [[spoiler:Mami kills Kyouko]] indicates they had already talked about it. It's likely they had called her in to help against it; that would be in character for Mami, and Walpurgis was the one witch Kyouko had shown an interest in killing without mentioning a Grief Seed.

** Isn't A exactly what she wished for? And Kyubey said her wish was "treason against the wish itself" but he was forced to grant it anyway. The latter point would have also been granted as later in the episode [[spoiler: Madoka dissapeared from existence and her wish was still intact.]] so Kyubey would have likely been able to grant it, but Madoka isn't spiteful enough to make that wish. She knows the incubators have been a boon to human civilization and they are trying to do what they think is right. So she reworked their game rather than erasing them all.
** Kyubey is a telepath who has no problem with entering girls' minds, as revealed in episode 2 and further hammered in during episode 11. (It also can just outright edit contents of their brains, as there is no other possible explanation for Madoka's temporary loss of all memories of Homura in episode 8). We can safely bet that it mindscans all the girls regularly. Even if it has to grant a wish - which is ''not'' actually confirmed - it will know if a wish is going to be harmful to the Incubators, and simply won't be there to grant it. Particularly true in Madoka's case, as it visited her right before she went to save Homura, when Madoka almost certainly knew what she's going to wish for. The idea that the ending didn't go ExactlyAsPlanned by Kyubey is based on the assumption that Kyubey ''ever'' told the girls the true extent of its plans. This is far from a given, when we talk about a being notorious for omitting parts of the truth it isn't directly asked about. As about its motive for changing the system, even assuming that the Incubators have no ethics whatsoever, consider, that its race is supposed to think and plan forward on the scale of billions of years and most likely intends to exist for infinity. However, their current way of generating energy from nothing is inherently risky. Even if the risk of accidentally producing a witch capable of actually threatening the Incubators is infintesimal, it is not zero. It cannot be assumed to be zero, because they are playing with power they do not fully undestand. The main timeline Kyubey should be particularly aware of this, as he has an example of a magical girl capable of screwing with space-time on the universal scale right before him. In fact, had Madoka made ''any other wish'', the entire universe would have been in in peril. Of course her actual wish also meant that the main-timeline Kyubey is going to cease to exist and be recreated, so at the moment of wishmaking itself it is distressed (unless it just failed to pick the correct tone of voice, or wanted Madoka to think she won). Once the wish is done, it becomes calm and contemplative again, even as it witnesses literal end of the universe.

** Remember, back in the early part of the story, the girls along with some of viewers thought that they were in a regular MagicalGirl show with the Soul Gem as a TransformationTrinket and Kyubey as the helpful MentorMascot recruiting them to SavetheWorld from evil monsters. The girls most likely did think that the Soul Gem's brightness served as a mana meter and that they wouldnt be able to use magic once it got dark. If it was life-threatening, then surely Kyubey would warn them about it. [[spoiler: Of course, Kyubey couldn't care less about their lives and well-being except for the amount of energy they give him and his job is to turn them into monsters.]] Once the AwfulTruth about the [[SoulJar Soul Gems]] came out though, that ''definitely'' should have sent alarm bells ringing into the girls' heads, considering that it's their '''SOULS''' that has been dimming all this time, yet rather than further inquire into this they wait until [[spoiler: Sayaka turns into a witch to find out about dark Soul Gems turning into Grief Seeds.]]
** Well, if asked, Kyubey would probably answer something like "If your Soul Gem becomes too dirty, you are going to eventually die", which is technically true. Even if [[spoiler: turning into a witch]] doesn't qualify as dying, [[spoiler: this witch getting sooner or later killed by some another Puella Magi]] does. And such an answer would probably satisfy any curiosity.

* Sayaka[[spoiler:'s witch form is a mermaid]], Kyoko's magical weapon is a [[strike:harpoon]] spear, make of that what you might. Also, in the episode [[spoiler:Kyoko took Sayaka down with her]], the episode-end guest-image is a CatGirl Kyoko.\\

* I don't even know how to categorize this, but: there's this scene in episode 5 with Madoka and Sayaka walking over a highway. Two lines of cars, ''perfectly horizontally aligned'' as if their doors were welded together, pass by in opposite directions. [[RuleOfThree Then the same thing happens two more times.]] What in the world was going on there? A perpendicular funeral procession? All the other times traffic makes an appearance, like in Sakaya and Kyoko's confrontation on a bridge, the cars are arranged realistically.

** It's just supposed to be a [[RuleOfCool composition choice]]. See also: the surreal Kaname family clock, as well as some architecture, like the minamalist interior of the school.

* After she's brought back to life with no memory of the old universe, why does Mami still talk about being a Puella Magi like it's a bad thing? A) Madogod more than likely talked with her, which means she'd have had the chance to change her wish and save her parents; if the car crash is an unavoidable point in her life regardless of the time line, I can understand her still being a little resentful, but talking about how it's "best for them to disappear" is a tad overboard. B) In the timeline that scene was from, Mami knows about the Puella Magi system (Homura had told them that Puella Magi become witches, even if she didn't believe her until she saw it personally). Now their hope ''doesn't'' bring despair to the world and they're all going to die happily for their wishes in the end. Given how the circumstances regarding their wishes, fighting, and [[spoiler: Sayaka's death]] changed, why is she so cynical?
** I got the feeling that [[spoiler:the revived Mami hadn't spoken to Madogod, since Madoka was retconned out of existance. So Mami doesn't know about the alternate past of being a Magical Girl.]] However ignoring that, she probably [[spoiler: felt that disappearing was better than being a Witch or something similar, if she ''did'' remember speaking with Madogod.]] However, remember that she was still really lonely as a magical girl, and it was still probably a rather depressing job that doesn't allow much for human relationships. . . .
** Also while Puella Magi dont become witches, they're still liches (i.e. undead magic users whose bodies are basically meat puppets controlled by their consciousness which now reside in their [[SoulJar Soul Gem]]. With their bodies no longer alive, this would idicate that they can no longer age preventing the Puella Magi from being able to form close social ties with normal humans since they would outlive anyone they know. Like the Cullens in Twilight, a Puella Magi would have no choice but to [[WalkTheEarth wander around endlessly]] since staying in one place for too long would mean drawing the attention of people who'd notice this girl wasn't aging.
** Why are so many people convinced that Madoka actually [[spoiler:spoke to all of the girls to give them a chance to undo their contracts or change their wishes]]? It wasn't even implied in the anime. [[spoiler:I don't think Sayaka was ever even given a choice, either; she was just reflecting her sentiments on what happened.]]

* [[spoiler:If Madoka's wish prevented all Puella Magi from their original deaths and transformations, doesn't this make a significant change to the course of human history? Did Joan of Arc never get burned, Cleopatra never suicide-by-cobra, and so on?]]
** [[spoiler:And given Kyubey's comment that "without Magical Girls, (humans) would still be naked and living in trees", one could expect some even sweeping changes.]]
** [[spoiler:Madoka only prevented that the girls transformed into witches, not their deaths they simply vanished instead of transforming. It's likely that the demons that manifested then prevented history to change much.]]

* Madoka made the most stupidest wish.She could have easily wished to be a god or wish to have the power of omnipotence and to make a world where magical girls,magic,incubators don't exist. As well as to make a world that has an unlimited source of energy and that mankind could develop without the need of incubators,so in other words create a world like ours and also create a world where she existed.Then after that erase her omnipotence if she did not want to be omnipotent. Problem solved. But no,they just have to make Madoka make a stupid wish so that that there would be a second season. For those that say that incubators will not grant this wish to be omnipotent is wrong as there is nothing in the anime that states that incubators will not grant this wish. In conclusion Madoka is not a God, if so why was she called a God?

*** ''Did'' Madoka [[spoiler:defeat Walpurgis in the first timeline? I thought they only showed Madoka herself dead or dying, but I don't remember Homura mentioning Walpy's defeat. IIRC, the only decisive mention of having successfully defeated her happened in the "Madoka oneshots Walpy and becomes a witch immediately afterward" timeline]].
*** She did... [[spoiler:through a SuicideAttack that took out Walpurgisnacht. Notice that her Soul Gem was nowhere to be seen and Walpurgisnacht was gone? And consider the next few timelines that Madoka manages to defeat WPN without having to resort to a SuicideAttack and eventually into Witchdom? Madoka already had potential to be a great magical girl. Homura's time-traveling just multiplied to the point that Madoka could make a wish to recreate the universe!]]

** The necessity of the HeroicSacrifice itself is very debatable. It looked less like something she had to do, and more like something she wanted to do, especially based on her words to Sayaka as she performed it. The idea was that Kyoko killed herself with Sayaka so that Sayaka wouldn't have to die alone; [[spoiler: a small-scale form of Madoka's wish]]. Asking Homura to help her kill Sayaka would certainly have prevented Kyoko from dying, but that would be counterintuitive to what Kyoko was trying to accomplish after her attempt to save Sayaka failed.

* Here's something I don't quite get: The general consensus seems to be that Homura can't use magical attacks ([[spoiler: which is why she has to use firearms]]), yet the very first episode has her firing pink balls of energy at QB ([[spoiler: and I don't think Homura can travel into the future to steal a plasma rifle]]). There's also this scene in Episode 9 [[spoiler: where Homura tried to kill Sayaka before she could become a witch. She didn't pull out a gun, she was more likely trying to blast Sayaka's head off with another pink energy ball, after which she would've most likely destroyed her Soul Gem.]]
** My theory: [[spoiler: She doesn't use firearms ''because'' she can't use magical attacks, she uses them ''instead'' of her magical attacks. From what I can see in episode 1, her magical attacks seem to be pretty weak (one direct hit didn't blow a hole through QB like a bullet did later), and she doesn't seem to be able to stop time ''and'' fire her energy balls at the same time. The latter is probably the reason why she only uses her magical attacks as to not reveal her true powers to QB: Her "timestop followed by massive firepower"-combo is so powerful that she never bothered using anything else. Too bad Walpurgis seems to have massive damage reduction...]]
** Another theory: [[spoiler: She used her time-magic to advance the explosives to a point in time in the future when they're either in the midst of exploding or so far in the past that they're pure energy. Her using her powers like this also explains how she could control the truck in Episode 11- restore the engine to a time it's running, the wheel to a time when it's turning this way or that... The truck even glows the same color as the energy pellets. As for Sayaka's soul gem, she might have been planning on crushing it in her hand or something.]]
** My theory: [[spoiler: The writer couldn't think of a better way to keep her powers a secret and still have her actually DO SOMETHING. Episode 10 seemed to make it pretty clear that she can only stop time and store bombs and guns in her sand timer/disc thing, and WordOfGod states that he didn't think the mechanics of her disc all the way through.]]
** Another possibility: [[spoiler: Homura does have magic attacks, though possibly weak ones, but she chooses to use firearms instead for efficiency. Given how powerful they have turned out, how using magic depletes the Soul Gem more quickly than just the background power draw to stay alive, and how Homura wants to last as long as possible in case she needs to reset the loop again, keeping magic use to a minimum would be wisest. There is no indication that she comes back with a full Soul Gem, and given that she is a magical girl from the first timeline in the second, it's quite possible that her Soul Gem is what actually gets sent back to the beginning of the loop, meaning draining it would make the next timeline that much harder.]]

* Where on earth are Sayaka's parents? They supposedly let Sayaka skip school, are always missing whenever we see her at home, and don't even get one mention or appearance until [[spoiler:Sayaka's funeral!]]

* Kyubey says [[spoiler: that he needs teenage girls to become witches because they are the most emotional beings and thus produce the most energy when they go beyond DespairEventHorizon. So after Godoka undoes the existence of witches altogether and the Incubators harvest the grief cubes from the wraiths, can't they leave the teenage girls alone and employ adult Magical Warriors instead? Letting teenage girls do the job seems pretty unnecessary now.]]

** Not really an answer to your question, but healing seems to be a power all Magial Girls have in common [[spoiler: (Mami heals Kyubey, Homura heals her eyes, Kyouko keeps Sayaka's body fresh)]]; Sayaka is just ESPECIALLY good at it. So maybe Madoka is ESPECIALLY good at something that all Magical Girls can do to some extent.
** In the Drama CD 1, [[spoiler: she seems to be able to enhance Homura's physical performance during PE class, but it gets out of control.]] But what does it have to do with her [[spoiler: wish to save the life of the black cat from the opening]]?
** Magical girls seems to have the ability to [[spoiler:enhance everything they want (Kyouko's telescope, Mami's spell on Sayaka's bat)]], but if we're to ask about Madoka's wish magic, we don't really have a clue. Though Madoka has a knack to make a wish that has something to do with happiness of others (in PSP game [[spoiler:Madoka's wish in the second timeline is for her family to be always happy]]), so maybe she's an empath?

* Why doesn't Homura use her [[spoiler: time-stopping powers]] to help her defeat witches as well as to move really fast? [[spoiler: She could pause time and that would give her all the time in the world to find more weapons, recruit more magical girls, or even just keep firing away until the witch dies without having to take any hits herself.]] Hell, she could probably have defeated Walpurgisnacht this way without needing [[spoiler: Madoka]] to contract.

*** I just came back from watching TheMovie; that image has been removed from it. Also when [[spoiler: Godoka and Homura hug in Godoka's realm, the two are clothed, while they're nekkid in the TV show]]. Probably safe to assume that the creators want to tone down the yuriness. The new opening sequence looks pretty [[PseudoRomanticFriendship roma]][[LesYay ntic]], though.

* If Madoka became [[spoiler: a witch, she would become the most powerful one in the world, and would destroy the earth (and probably her whole universe), but that also means she is undefeatable, so what's supposed to happen if she does destroy the world? Would she just spend eternity as this unkillable witch?]]

* So, if the [[spoiler: Incubators just leave planets to their fate when their quota is reached, what do they if a witch starts getting too powerful that it might pose a huge danger to the rest of the universe like Madoka became in some of the cycles? For a species of aliens that are trying to prevent the death of the universe eons in the future, they seem more like they'll end up causing the death of all life in it far sooner.]]

*** [[spoiler: He can not only read human minds, but also manipulate them, at least to the point of hijacking sensory input. This is his observed, factually confirmed abilities. See: Episode 2 walk-in-the-park scene (specifically around 7:35-7:45) where Madoka and Sayaka find themselves able to telepathically communicate with each other through him, and, of course, Episode 11 mind screw. What on Earth makes you think he didn't know that Homura was a time traveller from the start? He didn't even stated so. No, rewatch the fountain scene and note his ExactWords, not meanings that can normally be implied from them. And remember, that in said scene he wants to ''drive Homura into despair'' by pointing how her actions only play into his hand - unless you think he lied through his teeth the entire series, he is very likely to be literally incapable of gloating, being angry, being shocked or even wasting time on idle chatting, and therefore every single one of his conversations and actions has a specific underlying goal. There is a caveat that he ''might'' need a physical contact with a Soul Gem to do his stuff on magical girls, like he did when torturing Sayaka. This, of course, leaves Madoka's dream at the beginning of the series without any rational explanation, as the only being capable of projecting it into her head was QB, and barring having awareness of different timelines on his own, QB could only extract the exact replay of a past timeline's battle with Walpurgisnacht from Homura's mind (then probably edit his own dialogue in). But whether he can read magical girls' minds, is not even relevant. Because we're talking about Madoka, a normal human, whose mind he outright invaded briefly before her final decision. That's not even touching upon the fact that QB repeatedly hammered the bit about "you'll get the power of God" into Madoka.]]
*** [[spoiler: He does not really demonstrate an ability to read minds beyond surface latent thought reading, just as any other magical girl can do when in proximity to him. He shows no sign that he knows what Homura is up to up until she shows her hand in episode 8. Had he known about Homura's plans, he most certainly would have tricked the others into killing her. Furthermore, his manipulation of the soul gem looked like nothing more than giving her body the full sensation of pain from her injuries, whereas they normally feels very little (or nothing at all, depending on their state of mind.) ]]
*** [[spoiler:For someone who acts like they can remember the entire series in detail, you neglect to remember how Kyubey, in multiple timelines, has rhetorically asked the trail-off question "Akemi Homura... Are you..?", with the instance in the current timeline in a situation where she could not feasibly hear the question. Kyubey may have had his suspicions, but, at least in the current timeline, even when he had worked out that she was a time traveller, he still felt the need to gauge her reaction to being asked the question in Episode 8 in order to verify it. Additionally, due to the revision made in the BD version to make the scene in the prologue identical to the last shown Walpurgis fight in Episode 10, it's incredibly likely that the dream was more along the lines of "remembering something she shouldn't" than Kyubey's interference. In fact, if it were Kyubey's interference, that raises several other plotholes, such as him being a being that has such clairvoyance as to be able to see alternative futures, why he made contact in such a manner when, in previous timelines, he had already formed a contract with her prior to that day (which Homura prevented; likely the other time she killed him he indirectly mentions in Episode 8), why he never gave Homura the speech that caused her to almost fall into despair in any other timeline... Need I go on? Reading the minds of Magical Girls is likely beyond him, and if the dream was his work, it would be an absolutely massive plothole.]]

*** There's also the fact that Kyubey is a consummate liar who never tells anyone anything unless he means for it to destroy them, but he makes excuses for it by using ExactWords and claiming it was the truth and saying that, since it serves the long-term goal of healing entropy, it's fine. Take Kyoko's last moments: she specifically asks if it's possible for Sayaka to be saved, and Kyubey deliberately says he "wouldn't be surprised", but later straight-out says he knew all along that it was impossible, but he needed Kyoko dead. And all that, is after Kyubey tells Madoka that his species tries to deal fairly with humans. And ''then'' you have Rebellion, where [[spoiler: Kyubey, despite knowing that the wraith-universe is the product of a magical girl's wish and according to his own policy of dealing fairly and non-interference with wishes as part of that fairness, tries to control the Law of Cycles in order to bring back the witch system]]. The bottom line is that Kyubey, for all his claiming not to understand emotions and his adherence to BlueAndOrangeMorality, proves himself to be a lying, cheating, outright selfish little turd. He tells Madoka that when humans someday become advanced enough to join the cosmic community, it would be sad if there were no one left in it, but he's fully willing to completely destroy the population of Earth and in fact, spends the entire series ''planning to do that'' by turning Madoka into Kriemhild Gretchen, in order to preserve the universe ''for no one but himself''. Any other species who benefits from this process is just a happy accident that he doesn't, and possibly can't, care about. His being a psychopath does not make him beyond human understanding, it makes him a psychopath. We have those on Earth.

*** Considering he was caught off-guard by [[spoilers:her actually making a wish that would result in her apotheosis]], it is very likely that this is the case.

*** Sayaka [[spoiler:refused to come back to life because it meant undoing her wish. Puella Magi can only really die in two surefire ways - having the Soul Gem broken or becoming a witch. Since Sayaka's Soul Gem was never shattered, Madoka retconned her fate into preforming a HeroicSacrifice.]]

* Last episode: [[spoiler:Magical girls vanish instead of becoming witches.]] If Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion taught me anything, it's "as long as you are alive, you can be happy." Those pour souls don't even get a second chance... when [[spoiler: Madogod saves them.]][[spoiler: They might go to where Madoka is, cause I can't think of Madoka being that cruel, but what about the dead magical girls?]]

** You'e misunderstanding what exactly [[spoiler:Madoka wished for: To ''stop them from becoming Witches with her hands'', not completely change their fates. Madoka's wish was probably the only ''truly selfless wish'' on the show because it was pretty fair all around, it fulfilled: 1) a life of a Magical Girl is still full of sorrow, but that sorrow is necessary to mankind's progress, and 2) there is still a need of energy resources so Kyubey's kind can slow down the heat death of the universe, while saving the Magical Girl from a FateWorseThanDeath. Madoka's wish at least allowed them to pass on peacefully and fulfilled and go to a sorta Valhalla with her (and the Magical Girls know that before contracting instead it being revealed from as an AwfulTruth). It was a best outcome for everyone, really.]]

** Even in the original timeline, they don't age. Their body just "stops" once their Soul Gem is extracted, becoming more of a puppet than a self-sustaining organism. The reason the girls in the main cast all died young was because they were thrust into the responsibility with little emotional preparation and they made mistakes while in the frontlines --Homura, OTOH, survived lots and lots of battles without corrupting because she was eased into the role by Madoka and Mami (both in combat, and psychologically.) And in the end, [[spoiler:it's evident Homura's been at this for a VERY long time, with her [[GroundhogDayLoop endless recursion of time]] and the desolate landscape implying an AfterTheEnd situation]], so yes, it's possible for a Magical Girl to essentially live forever if she takes care of her body and her Soul Gem's regular purification. For all we know, the girls that [[spoiler:Madoka came to to save from corruption]] had already lived for hundreds of years, but they had the same appearance as when their bodies stopped growing.\\

*** I see it like this, as a law, the Hope and Dispair created by a wish has to be zero sum. Normally, this manifests as the girl's Witch. However, madoka's wish also stopped her own witch. The demons were created by the "dispair equivilent to the end of the universe" QB mentioned.

* What happens to the Soul Gem after the [[CosmicRetcon retcon]]? Does it still function as a SoulJar? It does still require the corruption to be drained by Grief Seed afterall.

* [[spoiler: After she's brought back to life with no memory of the old universe]], why does Mami still talk about being a Puella Magi like it's a bad thing? A) [[spoiler: Madogod]] more than likely talked with her, which means she'd have had the chance to change her wish and save her parents; if the car crash is an unavoidable point in her life regardless of the time line, I can understand her still being a little resentful, but talking about how it's "best for them to disappear" is a tad overboard. B) In the timeline that scene was from, Mami knows about the Puella Magi system (Homura had told them that [[spoiler: Puella Magi become witches]], even if she didn't believe her until she saw it personally). Now their hope ''doesn't'' bring despair to the world and they're all going to die happily for their wishes in the end. Given how the circumstances regarding their wishes, fighting, and [[spoiler: Sayaka's death]] changed, why is she so cynical?

** Also while Puella Magi dont become witches, they're still liches (i.e. undead magic users whose bodies are basically meat puppets controlled by their consciousness which now reside in their [[SoulJar Soul Gem]]. With their bodies no longer alive, this would idicate that they can no longer age preventing the Puella Magi from being able to form close social ties with normal humans since they would outlive anyone they know. Like the Cullens in Twilight, a Puella Magi would have no choice but to [[WalkTheEarth wander around endlessly]] since staying in one place for too long would mean drawing the attention of people who'd notice this girl wasnt aging.

*** Actually, Madoka says something along the lines of [[spoiler: "To save you, I had to erase this future", and Sayaka replies that she doesn't mind how things turned out as long as Kyosuke was healed in the end. That's when they fade out. And given that Madoka had some sort of talk with Mami and Kyoko's spirits when she made her wish, it's not the craziest assumption ever.]]
*** I thought it was pretty clear that [[spoiler:there ''was'' a choice, but it was Madoka's. Madoka explained that preventing the contract would come at the cost of Kyosuke's healing. This would have been necessary information if Sayaka had chosen off-camera; Madoka wouldn't wait until after she had already chosen to tell her.]]
*** Well, at that point, [[spoiler:linear time no longer applied to Madoka, as her new form technically exists at every possible time at once. She could have easily retconned Sayaka's wish if she wanted.]] I also think that she really did talk to [[spoiler:the girls' spirits. They simply forgot about it when they were resurrected in the new timeline.]]
*** Keep in mind, that scene with Sayaka happens ''after'' [[spoiler: she dies.]] The way the scene is set up, it's basically [[spoiler: Madokami had the option to prevent Sayaka from becoming a magical girl because Sayaka initially wanted to become a magical girl for the sake of becoming a hero of justice and protecting people; without witches in the new universe, Sayaka didn't ''have'' to become a magical girl.. but then she wouldn't wish to heal Kyousuke.]] That's really what she's talking about. Other magical girls probably didn't have that much wiggle room.

** Given Rebellion, they're [[spoiler: still in Mitakihara; they haven't been drawn into Homura's barrier yet.]]

* [[spoiler:If Cleopatra was a Magical Girl and all the Magical Girls are liches, then, why Cleopatra died for the bite of a snake?]]
** [[spoiler:Maybe she later on broke her Soul Gem, and the whole snake thing was part of an act to give her death a plausible cause and not rise suspicion.]]
** [[spoiler:Cleopatra committed suicide so that she wouldn't face the Romans. It's possible that the despair of having lost to them transformed her into a witch, explaining why they thought that she died; hell, it's possible another magical girl killed her and then returned telling stories about a snake.]]
** [[spoiler:Could have happened like this: having reached the edge of despair, Cleopatra ''tries'' to commit suicide via snake bite. But since her body, like all other magical girls', is a soulless shell and unable to die from that, she realizes the truth of the Soul Gems and THEN becomes a witch, leaving her body behind with a convenient bite mark for someone else to find. Then some other random magical girl simply found her witch form and defeated her. Joan of Arc could have likely gone through a similar thing: a snake bite wouldn't destroy a body beyond usability, but having it ''burned to ashes'' would. Whether Joan despaired enough to become a witch or not, her body could still be destroyed (and Kyubey could've just picked up the Soul Gem from the pyre at his convenience.)]]
*** [[spoiler:Regarding Joan of Arc, it's possible her Soul Gem was burned up. Nobody ever said they were fireproof. In fact, they actually look rather weak to me...]]

* [[spoiler:So if Cleopatra, Queen Himiko, Joan of Arc and Anne Frank were Magical Girls, what were their wishes and what cause them to go into their Despair Horizon?]]

*** Actually, normal people ''can'' see Witches. [[spoiler: Jeanne manages to destroy a labyrinth]] in Tart Magica, and [[spoiler: people do see the Witch herself before she defeats her]].

** Labyrinths don't seem to be a conscious decision on the Witch's part. [[spoiler: Kyuubey implies in ''Rebellion'' that the formation of a barrier is the natural outcome of a blackened Soul Gem, not something designed or chosen.]] This somewhat matches what we saw of Oktavia: the barrier was much more fleshed-out on its second appearance, full of allusions to Sayaka's life as a human, than on the first, where it was just a distorted version of the train station where she transformed. This implies that the barrier formed pretty much automatically, so until she had time to 'decorate', it basically went super off-the-cuff with her immediate surroundings.

** Considering Madoka had come within seconds of making a DealWithTheDevil, she may had been in shock and dropped the gun without knowing or didnt want to scare Madoka away by approaching her with a weapon in hand. She probably picked the gun up afterward and they just didnt show it.

* The whole ''plot'' just bugs me. I know [[spoiler:Madoka's the most important person in the universe because of Homura's wish]], but magical girls have been around for ''centuries''. Are we really supposed to believe no one else has made the same wish? Secondly, why has no one else wished to put an end to the witches?

* Forgive me if this has already been asked and I just missed it, but does ''nobody'' in this series have parents? Okay, so Madoka's appear on screen multiple times, Kyoko's are dead, and Sayaka's appear at [[spoiler: her funeral.]] What about Mami and Homura? I read somewhere that Homura's parents died whilst she was in the hospital and that Mami's parents were killed in the accident she made the contract in, but this wasn't mentioned in the series that I can remember and I haven't found any definitive proof of this being canon.

* So hope and dispair balance to zero right? This means that for equal amount of hope there is the same amount of dispair... and the opposite should be true too. What happens when your wish initially is more like a curse (like wishing your stepmother to be dead because you don't like her) and brings dispair to the world? To balance this out, somehow your wish should bring hope too? How?

* A meta example, but why are PMMM and Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion compared so often? GenreDeconstruction aside, they have no similarities. While Eva's Kaworu says that mankind is fundamentally alone, Madoka preaches TrueCompanions. Eva's EsotericHappyEnding contrasts PMMM's BittersweetEnding and even the methods for breaking their cuties are different - Eva's version of DerangedAnimation has bright, contrasting colors, even in [[spoiler:Instrumentality]], the reds, oranges and whites were bright. But PMMM's witch barriers are often muddy and grey and much more dull in comparison. And the finale for each series has Eva's protagonist choosing to exist of his own will, while PMMM has Madoka [[spoiler:wishing herself out of existence.]] They're the total antithesis of each other at best.

** I think the comparison is mainly in the GenreDeconstruction, but I think your comparisons there are too narrow. Shinji and Madoka are both hesitant heroes who are constantly having to face the ugly realities of the world they live in, and would be completely justified in abandoning the conflict altogether, but they pull through in the end because they can't stand by while others suffer. They're also both betrayed by a mentor they're supposed to have been able to trust. They both have a singular relationship with someone of their own sex who openly cares for them [[spoiler: but becomes one of the monsters they've been fighting the whole time.]] The thing that provides the means to participate in the plot (EVAs for the Children, Soul Gems for the Magical Girls) is presented right away and described accurately, but later events show that there's more to it than initially explained: [[spoiler: The EVAs aren't ''just'' super robots made of meat, they're actually living things, and Soul Gems are literally a soul formed into a glass egg. They're also invested with a person's soul.]] Oh, and they both begin the end of their respective series by being asked what they wish for.
** At their cores, both stories are about the hell that is growing up. Madoka goes with the more fairytale-style motif where the young, pure-hearted, virtuous (and implicitly virginal) girl is the embodiment of all good in the world (the Princess archetype), but time marches on. As the girls mature, they lose their innocence, until they reach their "adult" forms as witches, consumed by the despair that comes with the pain of realizing what they had to give up in order to grow. Evangelion does the same thing, but having a boy protagonist changes the context a bit: [[spoiler: Instrumentality is the same concept filtered through a male perspective, where instead of a loss of childish hope to adult cynicism, it's a loss of self to absolute intimacy; in other words, fear of sex as a rite of passage. Shinji's major conflict is that he wants to be loved without feeling vulnerable, but without taking on that vulnerability, he's doomed to isolation. That's why the barriers between human minds to maintain their own individuality are called ''Absolute Terror'' fields.]] Asuka's issues fall more in line with the Puella Magi approach: one of her earliest sources of suffering is her period, the physical signal that she's become a woman. She fights as hard as she can to reject childhood, but adulthood (and more specifically, womanhood) comes with terrifying risks: what is and isn't acceptable behavior for a woman works against her horribly, and she eventually falls into a HeroicBSOD afterward. It's no coincidence that she's constantly compared (unfavorably) to Rei, who is more or less the feminine ideal epitomized: quiet, pretty, and passive, but always ready at a moment's notice to destroy herself for the benefit of others because she views herself as having no value. Asuka rejects the preconceived notion of what a woman should be, but the story shows her being brutally punished for it, particularly through a MindRape that serves as a metaphor for an actual rape (and later, an overtly sexualized dogpile that bears more than slight resemblance to a gang rape), and her either rejecting or being rejected by the men in her life she wants to be close to. Her downfall as a character isn't all that different from Sayaka's, except that in the end, one lives and the other doesn't. Sort of.
* Why is the comparison between Mami and [[Series/KamenRiderRyuki Kamen Rider Scissors]]? I can think of a lot comparisons that can be made between Madoka and Ryuki's cast, but this one makes the least sense since all they have in common is [[spoiler: getting by a MonsterOfTheWeek]] and wearing yellow. Aside from that, they're completely different. Mami was set to look like she was major character, Scissors was a villain that had pretty well shown himself to be an irredeemable asshole with his [[MoralEventHorizon actions]], [[spoiler: his death is nowhere nearly as a much of a shock because he was villain and the circumstances were completely different]], and his fate, while NightmareFuel, came off as his him getting what he deserved rather than a tragedy brought his recklessness.

** Kyubey wouldn't make a contract with a girl who would make such a useless wish, but if he did, she'd either become a StepfordSmiler (being forced to appear happy whether they really are or not), a sociopath (all empathy for others removed so she'll be happy in a vacuum, and eventually be overcome by loneliness or other negative emotions that don't conflict with happiness), or Kyubey would prevent her from learning how to use Grief Seeds so that she'd deplete her magic and witch out. In the witch world's magical girl system, you don't get any option that doesn't end in either death or witching out, no matter how [[RulesLawyer clever you think your wish is]]. Even Madoka eventually becomes a witch, and in the movie, [[spoiler: so does Homura, despite her infinite mulligans]].

*** Kyubey isn't infallible, but Madoka's wish still resulted in her becoming a witch. Even Madoka's wish doesn't eliminate witches, it only prevents them from manifesting in the physical world (which is why in ''Rebellion'' [[spoiler: Nagisa and Sayaka can transform into and summon Charlotte and Oktavia, respectively]]). Homura's wish gave her infinite hope by giving her infinite retries to get it right, but as soon as she realizes she's only making it worse, her Soul Gem goes from clean to near-black in a heartbeat. That's because despair is not sadness and happiness is not the opposite of despair: despair is the opposite of ''hope''. So a magical girl who wishes to always be happy is not wishing for anything that will stop her from becoming a witch the way ''every single'' magical girl is ''inevitably'' destined to do, if she doesn't die before that happens.

* It's probably just a case of 'the writer hadn't decided on this at the time', but the fact that [[spoiler: Maddy is back in the real world]] in Rebellion kind of flies in the face of the [[spoiler: retgone]] she is supposed to have experienced at the end of the series proper. She can clearly do it, so why didn't she do it from the start and save herself and Homu a mountain of trouble?
** Because she never actually left it, that's the point. At the end of the series, [[spoiler: Madoka erased her human life from existing in the new world she created, but she still exists as Ultimate Madoka. That's what she tells Homura: that she'll always be there, even if she can't be seen or sensed.]] In Rebellion: [[spoiler: Madoka is the Law of Cycles, the principle that defeats witches before they're born by shattering the soul gem first. The only time she physically appears in the real world is after Homura has destroyed and re-made it the way Madoka did, undoing the retgone in order to have Madoka by her side again.]]

** Actually, what kind of wish can screw up the system as [[spoiler:Madoka wish?]]

*** In all seriousness, though, the point of the contract is that a magical girl wishes for something to introduce happiness into the world at the cost of taking the reciprocating unhappiness onto herself, which [[spoiler: consumes her soul gem and turns it into a grief seed, which erases the girl (and her unhappiness) from the world when her grief seed is consumed, but the happiness her wish brought is left in the world she leaves behind, thus being an energy that overcomes entropy.]] Based purely on the science (in as much as the show gives us science, anyway), if you had a magical girl who wished for her own happiness, and the wish actually worked, her magic would be extremely weak and Kyubey wouldn't have any incentive to tell her that Grief Seeds can cleanse her Soul Gem, so she'd quickly use up her magic and [[spoiler: become a witch.]]
*** There's a simpler answer, if a girl wishes for a long and happy life. She gets a charmed existence. She's not happy every moment, but the down times never really stick to her. If you ask her at pretty much any point she'd say she was happy and had a good life, even with the killing of witches. Her friends and family all live a long time too. She teams up with other magical girls and they all prove just as resistant to despair as she is. She almost never looses a team member. And then one day she realizes that she's lived a long time. Not really a big deal, just an, "oh" kind of thing. All of her wish is now fulfilled, because she asked for both at the same time. All that time her wish has just been pumping happiness into the system. Friends, family, other magical girls all massively benefited from her wish. And that's rippled out into the world. Then one day Kyuubey explains the magical girl circle of life to her. She kind of blows it off. It's not really a problem right now, now is it? Then one friend dies, and another, it's just a domino-fest of awful. The minute she realizes she's no longer happy is the minute she understands that everyone she loves is going to die in agony and horror and it's all her fault. Boom. Super witch.

* Who thought it would be a good idea to put a Magical Girl's Soul Gem in a place where it could be so easily destroyed? As we saw in episode 10 [[spoiler:in the alternate timeline, Kyouko's soul gem was shattered in one simple shot by Mami, who's gem in turn was sniped by Madoka]].
** Well, most of the Magical Girls don't know that the Soul Gem [[spoiler:is a SoulJar.]]
*** And I guess it's not like the force of magic that creates their costumes let's them decide where to put the Soul Gem. If Kyubey could decide that you'd think he'd at least put it somewhere where they can't be so easily hit, [[spoiler:thus depriving him of the energy they make when they eventually turn into witches. Same goes for the aforementioned suicide.]]
** Well, [[spoiler:Mami is [[FriendlySniper an ally who used guns for quite a long time.]]]]
** FridgeBrilliance: Apart from the fact that it would be easy to drop or lose it in ring or egg form (it's safer just to have it in its own setting that's apparently fused to the girl's body, [[spoiler: that's why no one figures it out. Of all the ones we see, only Homura and one of the girls that Madoka saves at the end have their gem situated somewhere that ''isn't'' on a vital point: most of the ones we do see are either on the head (Mami, the Viking girl, the Teddy Bear girl), the chest/neck (Kyoko, Madoka, the Purple girl, the Green girl) or the stomach (Sayaka). If a magical girl is killed in battle, any onlooker who happens to see it would assume they died of the injury the same way Madoka and Sayaka assumed Mami died of having her head bitten off; she ''could'' have survived it, but her Soul Gem was on her hat.]]
** One other question that remains is how exactly Magical Girls fight with their bodies being virtually destroyed, as Kyubey claims. Even if [[spoiler:Mami]] had kept her Soul Gem somewhere other her head, with her head bitten off, she would be blind and deaf, possibly paralyzed (with the loss of her eyes, ears and brain) even if she could use the Gem to control the rest of her body, and Charlotte would only have taken a few more seconds to devour the rest of her body (including the arms to use her [[spoiler: magical guns]] and the hat she stores them in), regardless of whether she had already eaten Mami's Soul Gem.

** Homura's various attempts on Kyubey's life shows that he can resurrect himself by creating a new body to inhabit if his own one is destroyed. That said, it's not a stretch to think that he can easily create a new body for a MagicalGirl if her old one is destroyed or damaged beyond repair especially since [[spoiler:bodiless {{Magical Girl}}s are a wasted resource due to being unable to become witches and providing the Incubators with the energy they need. The Incubators are CrazyPrepared as shown by their millenia-old system for countering the heat death of the universe which isn't due for a trillion years.]] They'd come up with ways to keep the girls up and running for as a possible.

* Why does Sayaka, and all the other girls, for that matter, freak out when they learn that their Soul Gems [[spoiler: contain their souls in lieu of having them in their bodies?]] There is never any clear downside to this given (aside from the danger of [[spoiler: turning into a witch if the gem becomes too impure]], but that hadn’t been revealed yet), and while the concept of [[spoiler: having one's soul removed from your body]] must be disturbing to say the least, it’s something you could easily come to terms with since the [[spoiler: soul]] in question it hasn’t gone very far, it has only changed form. Furthermore, magical girls’ bodies don’t seem to change due to this. All of the magical girls, Sayaka included, should have spent enough time as magical girls to realize something is wrong if there was something wrong, but they don’t notice the change until [[spoiler: Kyubey]] reveals it to them. If that is the case, then, that means they still experience their lives through their bodies; they still eat, sleep, sense, and have their consciousnesses centered in their bodies [[spoiler: you could liken it to having a “wi-fi soul”, everything is basically the same, the “router” has just moved outside their bodies]]. There is also nothing to hint that in order to become a magical girl one must [[spoiler: give up their soul, and be condemned to hell, never being able to reach the afterlife, or something like that in order to complete the contract]]. They are still THEIRS, so why does it bother them so much?

* So, who knows how many loops ago, [[spoiler:Homura began her contract on the wish that she could redo her meeting with Madoka. Question 1: why does the wish kick in every time she reaches the same point in the new timeline? The wish didn't state "redo AND save" so the first reset should've been enough to fulfill it. Two: the Kyubey from our "true" timeline takes a very long time to realize that Homura comes from an alternate timeline. Where ''did'' he think she came from, when he's the one who creates Magical Girls in the first place? Didn't he think it was weird when all of a sudden there's this magical girl he's never even met and she's trying to kill him? As far as we know, he's the only one assigned to Earth, and his line about "completing his quota and leaving" makes it even more likely that he's alone here.]]
** [[spoiler:Here are the answers. 1)You forgot the second half of her wish : it's not the "I want to meet Madoka again" that causes the time loop, it's "as someone who can protect her instead of being protected" that resets time every time Madoka is killed/turns into a witch. And 2)we're talking about magic here. QB himself said that magic has the power to bypass logic. The irregularity could have been pretty much anything ; he narrowed it down to time travel after getting to know her more.]]
** [[spoiler:As it turns out, Homura actually has ''control'' over when she resets the loop; it's part of her time traveling powers and related to her time-stopping (the sand timer in her shield). As long as she keeps her sand timer with her, she can reset after a month has passed.]]
** As for why he's not shocked at Homura's appearance. [[spoiler:Kyubey admits that there are more of his kind on earth making contracts. ''Manga/PuellaMagiKazumiMagica'', a prequel or interquel to the ''Madoka'' introduces us to Jyubey, another Incubator. Kyubey probably assumed that Homura was a MagicalGirl who was contracted to a different Incubator and only caught on to who she was after making careful observation of her ability.]]
** Kyubey ''is'' surprised at Homura's presence... at least, [[spoiler:as surprised as someone lacking emotions can be]]. He admits to Kyoko that Homura is "irregular", and he isn't sure where she got her powers. However, [[spoiler:Homura really isn't doing anything that hinders his plans in any great way, so... why bother worrying about it?]]

[[folder: Wait, Homura's [[spoiler:loop is messing things up again.]]]]
* Another question: the first time Homura [[spoiler:looped back, it was to her first day at school. By that point, Madoka already was in a contract, just like in the original timeline. The rest of the loops we see hint at this always being the case, so how come the Madoka of the latest timeline ''hasn't'' gone into a contract, or even met Mami yet, by the time Homura is transferred?]]
** [[spoiler:By the fourth timeline, we see that it isn't totally immediate. She returns to the day she gets ''discharged from the hospital'', and presumably only returns to school a couple days later. The fourth time around, we manage to see Homura holding a dead Kyuubey corpse, with the implication that she killed the Kyuubey that Madoka would have contracted with in the past timelines, thus staving off the contract.]]
*** [[spoiler:You've got it. Homura's calendar shows she's being discharged on the 16th, and returning to school on the 25th. Madoka rescues her after her first day of school and remarks that she only made the contract with Kyuubey a week ago. Presumably he was en route to her house when Homura killed him.]]

* The fandom's treament of Hitomi, Kamijou, and Kyubey. Just because Sayaka is a main character does not mean that Kamijou is obligated to love her, even if she visited him a lot. Yes, it was rude not to let her know he was leaving the hospital, but how do we know that he knows her phone number? Plus, teenage boys aren't known for their tact anyway. On that note, Hitomi is not a man-stealing whore. She told Sayaka of her feelings for Kamijou beforehand, which is pretty damn courteous all things considered. If Sayaka had told her the truth about why she wouldn't confess, I think she'd hold off a bit. The fact that she's getting bashed for taking the initiative in pursuing Kamijou is rife with UnfortunateImplications. The fandom reviles Kyubey while ignoring the fact that his morality is more than a little different from ours. His kind has no emotions and is only concerned with staving off entropy. It shouldn't have been ''that'' surprising that he [[spoiler:wasn't concerned when the Madoka of the fourth timeline turned into a world-destroying witch, since he doesn't have emotions]].
** On that note, not-OP would like to add in the fandom's reaction to the idea that Hitomi was confessing Sayaka's feelings for Sayaka, rather than Hitomi's feelings for Hitomi, as if this is any less [[UnfortunateImplications unfortunate]] than claiming Kamijo belongs to Sayaka. Basically all this is is a show-don't-tell version of the same thing, so why do people act like it's necessary to justify Hitomi's confession? Especially when the in universe reasons given rarely make much sense. . . .

*** Episode 11 confirms that [[spoiler:Incubators have been making contracts with humans since the beginning of time. Who's to say that the heat death of the universe wouldn't have happened a lot sooner if they hadn't?]] I'm not saying he's not an antagonist. I'm just saying he's not pure evil.
*** The big problem with the fandom treatment of Kyubey is that loving to hate him obscures the fact [[spoiler: that either his manipulations were aimed at creating a better world through Madoka from the very beginning, or the series have a plot hole the size of a moon and the creators were stupid by very explicitly giving telepathy of "can constantly scan minds of at least two humans at once without his targets noticing his presence in their brains" level to a character which the main heroine is supposed to '''deceive'''. And as there are no indication that the creators are stupid enough to turn a mere, seemingly throwaway, piece of a dialogue, into such such a gigantic plot hole...]]
*** [[spoiler:Except that he ''can't'' read minds that comprehensively; if he could, he would have known that Homura was a time traveler from the start.]]

** In the movie, [[spoiler:Madoka exists not as a person but as a part of the Law of Cycles. However, because Homura's wish had not yet been fulfilled at that point and her attempt at stopping Madoka had to succeed, but at the same time Madoka's wish wouldn't be fulfilled if Homura succeeded, Madoka split into two and now exists both as the Law of Cycles and as her own avatar inside of Homura's barrier. It's literally an "unstoppable force meets immovable force" situation, with the universe taking the third option because doing anything else would stop one of their wishes (either Homura's or Madoka's) from being fulfilled and that simply could not happen.]]

* Charlotte's Grief Seed is found at the hospital, just about to hatch, but... why? Why did it need to hatch? If it had been defeated and needed to recharge with grief to become a full Witch again, where's the magical girl who beat her? If not, why isn't it a full-fledged Witch from the start [[spoiler: since the magical girl who became Charlotte probably witched out ''at'' that hospital, possibly only minutes or hours prior.]]

** The differences between [[spoiler: Sayaka and Madoka's witch sequences]] would point to the last option. Alternatively, maybe [[spoiler: younger magical girls's souls take longer to witch? Nagisa isn't a teenager so she's not actually, as Kyuubey put it, a "girl in her second growth phase," so perhaps her soul gem needed more time to finish maturing into a grief seed.]]

* Why is Sayaka a Magical Girl in the third timeline? Im just asking b/c in the first two timelines she didnt appear to have contracted and her not contracting in Oriko Magica could be due to Homura preventing it. Her contracting in the fifth timeline and '''[[Manga/PuellaMagiMadokaMagicaTheDifferentStory The Different Story]]'' could be due to Kyubey trying to pressure Madoka to contract to aid her friend otherwise she could die to a witch or other magical girl or wish Sayaka back to normal as she tried to do in episode 8 before Homura interrupted. However, Madoka was already a magical girl in the third timeline so what was Kyubey's reason for contracting Sayaka in that timeline?

* [[spoiler: If Madoka became the patron goddess of all magical girls, does this mean she ''also'' appears to alien magical girls (since she said "all"), or does she only appear to Earthling magical girls? I clarify because I've heard that once her witch form engulfed Earth, it was implied she'd stay wherever Earth was because it was now Paradise to her perspective.]]
** Kriemhild Gretchen only cares about Earth because that's her thing. Witches don't seem to be overly concerned with, or aware of, the world outside their labyrinths, so she probably doesn't have much reason to care about anything that's not on Earth. [[spoiler: Ultimate Madoka, on the other hand, specifically said she wanted to defeat ''all'' Witches before they were born, so unless there's an alien race out there that managed to give the Witch principle the slip altogether, she appears to them, too.]] Of course, being human (or at least ''looking'' human), seeing her would probably freak an alien out pretty good, so the impact of the [[spoiler: Law of the Cycle]] probably has a different cultural context for alien magical girls.

* This one is rather FlameBait heavy, so please try to answer this as neutrally as possible. What if the girl that is being offered a contract by Kyubey comes from a community wherein souls are not considered separate from their bodies (for example: the girl is a Jehovah's Witnesses)? [[spoiler:Will the rules regarding the Soul Gems apply to this particular girl?]]

* Is there any confirmation that the fate of '''all''' magical girls is [[spoiler: die in battle or turn into a witch/fade away (post-Ultimate Madoka)?]] We know Kyubey trusts this is the ''usual'' reaction, but could a hypothetical girl simply decide to [[spoiler: not use her magic, live a decent life without any major distress, and end up dying of old age? Or is grief strictly cumulative?]]
** It's never stated directly that it's ''impossible'' for a magical girl to live out her life and die of natural causes, but only because it's ''theoretically'' possible based on the way Soul Gems work. According to Kyubey, [[spoiler: a magical girl matures into a witch when her Soul Gem accumulates an amount of despair equal to the amount of hope generated by her wish.]] While it might be possible in theory, it's not possible in practice: no one can go through life completely untouched by despair, and the Soul Gems and Grief Seeds are basically just tiny condensers for ordinary human grief. What it all boils down to is that no, a magical girl cannot and will never simply live a peaceful, normal life, or die a peaceful, natural death.

* After reading extra material like ''The Different Story'' and ''Portable'', a question comes to mind: Did Kyoko literally lose the ability to create copies of herself [[spoiler: after her dad went mad]] or does she simply choose not to use that power anymore?

* I haven't seen this been asked/answered, but if it has or this is in the wrong place, I'm really sorry! Anyways, how has Kyouko been able to stay at her hotel? Based on how the timeline goes, she's in there for roughly 3-4 days. Unless I'm mistaken, she doesn't exactly have any money, and even if she did sneak in(doubtful with how you'd need a keycard or something), how would room service just never bother to check? Would they really leave a room unattended for 3-4 days? And to add on that, could that mean someone had checked out the room Kyouko was in and discovered [[spoiler: Sayaka's corpse]] that way?
** We don't have any way to know how long she was using the hotel room, or if she used it for anything besides having a place to [[spoiler: leave Sayaka's body]], but most hotel cleaning staff aren't required to clean unoccupied rooms every day. There's plenty of ways for her to break in without causing problems, since she's fine with stealing money (or else she wouldn't be able to play in a video arcade), but the simplest, least-assumptions explanation is that she used magic to alter or manipulate whatever locks were between her and the room she wanted. As to how Sayaka was discovered... Kyouko was deliberately keeping her fresh with magic, and we know that when a magical girl dies, her magic dies with her. Most likely, somebody either somebody checked into the room, or somebody came to investigate the stench.

[[folder: I'm in despair! I've been left in despair because of the fact that my despair [[spoiler:saves the universe!]]]]
* As of episode 9 we now know Kyubey's real goals (if he's actually being entirely truthful this time). However even if what he is saying is true, I really doubt that [[spoiler: the energy generated by the emotions of magical girls, will actually help save the universe. Due to the fact that the energy the whole universe is spending by entropy is much more higher than whatever energy they could generate and regain by using the girl’s emotions.]] For instance I doubt a witch could regenerate the used energy of a star in an hour. Much less the whole universe.

** But on a more serious note, we're not sure what the conversion rate between normal energy and [[spoiler: magical girl/witch]] energy is. Maybe one ''can'' effectively replace a star with enough emotion. And we know Kyuubey has enough contracts that there is active fighting for territory amongst the Magical Girls, not to mention that [[spoiler: each of them effectively has two "modes" to create energy from.]]
** Still, we're talking about [[spoiler:the ENTIRE FREAKING UNIVERSE HERE, with TRILLIONS OF STARS. Also, doesn't it take work and therefore energy to contain energy in the first place? Therefore, storing the energy of magical girls would simply cancel the benefit for reducing entropy. And the fact that he can seemingly create mass and energy out of nowhere, why do we have a problem with entropy again?]]

** I buy before the twelfth episode why it has to be pubescent girls. [[spoiler: How about after Madoka's ascension? What's the Incubator's reasoning of only teenage girls now?]]
*** More or less for the same reason, emotions power {{Magical Girl}}s... the stronger they are (emotionally), the more powerful they become. That and the system changed but some things still remain.[[spoiler: Madoka's own wish removed the witches from the equation... nothing more than that. What happens to the girls now is rather up in the air.]]
** Could it be a comment on gender politics? A major cause of the girls' descent into despair is realising that what they ''wished'' for wasn't exactly what they ''wanted.'' Traditionally, men are encouraged to be forthright in their goals: it's hard to imagine the star of a shounen show being embarassed about declaring outright "I want power" or "I want to marry Sally." In many cultures across time and place, women are "taught" (for want of a better word) to achieve their goals indirectly, usually through manipulating others and ideally without even admitting to ''themselves'' what they want in the first place. Instead of achieving academic excellence herself, the EducationMama lives vicariously through her son; instead of actually running a business, she might become TheManBehindTheMan for her husband and let him take the credit, all the while telling herself she's doing it for her child/husband's own good. Many cultures insist that women be "virtuous," and they should be above such things as ambition, or even a desire to ''be'' loved rather than to ''give'' love. Maybe Kyubey's race studied this, and realised that the shattering of this illusion of "selflessness" was a good way to throw the girl into despair - if males were more upfront about what they wanted, and wished for the "selfish" thing outright, they'd take longer to succumb. Sweeping generalisation, I know, but the fate of [[spoiler: Sayaka]] would fit this; [[spoiler: she told herself that she was making a true sacrifice for someone she loved, and getting to help others in the process. Instead, she's confronted with her own thirst for love and desire for recognition]]. Sad thing is, what she sees as proof of her own unworthiness and selfishness is a perfectly normal teenage desire -- but she's gotten it into her head that she's a bad person for wanting something of her own. As for age...Kyubey counts a lot on a recruit's inability to ask the right questions. Adults would be more cagey, and more likely to check the small print.

* Putting aside the AwfulTruth, why doesn't anyone consider wishing for something like, "I wish that no living creature would ever get cancer again"? They talk about money and power and luxury and saving individual lives, but never anything big, which seems like a bit of a waste of a wish that can literally do anything. If you're going to gamble your life [[spoiler:and/or soul]], it seems like you should try to get as much out of the deal as possible. Madoka does learn this in the final episode.

** There's a good reason for why many girls didn't wish for something like this. [[spoiler: Kyubey reveals that every wish must have a curse to counterbalance it and keep the universe in order. This is why so many girls' wishes end in despair; it's because their wish wasn't in the bounds of reality and a curse with just as big of an impact of the wish must be created to keep the universe in equilibrium. If a girl had wished to cure cancer, it would have cleared the way for a (potentially) even deadlier disease.]]

*** Maybe that's what happened. Say, a girl watched her loved one slowly die of cancer or was dying herself but still kept it somewhat together, so instead of wishing for only her cure or the cure of her loved one, she'd ask for research on cancer making a huge leap forward, enough to cure her? (would speak for the "She's dying herself" thing - even though the prospect of ones own death is terrifying as fuck, the death of your loved one is far, far worse - so yes, it's not impossible for her staying level-headed enough. After all, even though you might have made peace wth your apprroaching demise, the chance to live inspires IMMENSE hope). The witch Roberta established that Magical girls don't have to be around 13-15, so it might have been a slightly older girl with a bit more perspective?\\
.... however. The wish was a leap forward in cancer research. Wish granted, she proits from it and gets better. ... now what during the days of Sexual Liberation if a diease appears that nobody can explain, that seems to spread overnight in certain minorities at first but nobody quite understands why and nobody understands exactly how it kills... only that it kills slowly? ... hmmmm...

*** Kyubey confirms this in Episode 10 when [[spoiler:Homura wished to see Madoka again and protect her]] wouldn't work if she didn't have the resolve and visualization to make the wish. Also note that Kyubey tend to show up when the person is usually under emotional distress. Chances are, it would be difficult to make a wish clearly.

*** Eh, I think it actually all tracks. If he is not allowed to ''suggest'' a wish it's still a pretty basic prereqiusite for a wish-granting entity to be able to lay out the limitations of what ''can'' be wished for. Particularly as the magnitude of wishes appears to be in some way tied to the "potential" of a magical girl. So like, Sayaka or Homura could never be ''granted'' the wish of [[spoiler:becoming the god of this universe]], but Madoka can, and it's not a suggestion to make her aware of that fact. Anyway it's kinda a moot point because I believe the wording was that he can't ''decide for them'' or ''tell them what to wish for'' not that he cannot tell them the kinds of wishes that can be made. So he can tell a girl that she ''could'' wish for a cake, but he cannot tell her she ''should'' wish for a cake.

** No, Sayaka sacrificed herself because [[spoiler:she had a choice between dying and going with Godoka or become normal again but Kyousuke's crippled hand will return and lose his ability to play ever again and she could be at his side. Sayaka, being true to herself, chose Kyousuke's happiness over hers even if it meant she would never be in it. It seemed like they were in a place between Life and Death when they were watching over Kyousuke, who was really playing at a rectical at that moment. Hence he felt something odd.]]
** Right, but something happened [[spoiler:in the New World to make Sayaka die, and Kyouko very visibly saw her sacrifice herself for something related to Kyousuke.]]

** As for telling the AwfulTruth in front of [[ManipulativeBastard Kyubey]], it probably wouldnt work since he'd likely turn it to his advantage. Note, while he cannot lie or tell any false statements, [[JediTruth it doesnt stop him from twisting statements or withholding information in order to achieve a desired result]]. [[spoiler: In ep 9, he manipulates Kyouko into performing a HeroicSacrifice even after she stated she wouldnt listen to him.]] If Madoka and Sayaka were to ask him, he could answer that Homura would say or do anything to prevent Madoka from contracting out of fear of her power which ''would be the truth.'' They'd think that Homura was the one lying and wouldnt listen to her then.

** We don't have any way to know how long she was using the hotel room, or if she used it for anything besides having a place to [[spoiler: leave Sayaka's body]], but most hotel cleaning staff aren't required to clean unoccupied rooms every day. There's plenty of ways for her to break in without causing problems, since she's fine with stealing money (or else she wouldn't be able to play in a video arcade), but the simplest, least-assumptions explanation is that she used magic to alter or manipulate whatever locks were between her and the room she wanted. [[spoiler: As to how Sayaka was discovered... Kyouko was deliberately keeping her fresh with magic, and we know that when a magical girl dies, her magic dies with her. Most likely, somebody either somebody checked into the room, or somebody came to investigate the stench.]]

** I thought that Madoka was saying that she could have undone Sayaka's wish, and have her stay a normal girl. But she didn't think that Sayaka would want that, because it would put Kyousuke back into his painful existance of not being able to use his arm or do what he loves with music anymore, which Sayaka agreed with. In the end, she was happy hearing him play again [something she had desperately wanted] and letting him and Hitomi be happy. It's nothing to do with Madoka not being able to undo the other girls wishes or not and everything to do with her understanding and respecting what Sayaka had wanted. Also, side note, what if she did change Mami and Kyoko's wishes? Because if she could change Sayaka's, there is no reason she couldn't change theirs. Where would that leave them? Mami would have died in a car crash, and Kyoko would be left stuck to starve with a disgraced father, with no guarentee that some other horribleness involving a disgraced priest wouldn't have killed them all. In a way, letting them make their ways in the new universe, hopefully find themselves a happier life when they're not doomed to fall to dispair, and ultimately be able to find peace and happiness with her in the Law of Cycles is much kinder than leaving them in certain and near-certain doom respectively.

*** That. Also, Homura is officially an IllGirl who just got discharged from hospital and has no access to any sort of firearms and probably wouldn't be able to fire it that many times without first harming herself with the recoil and having to stop before that point (as far as the authorities know), so nobody would suspect her of anything regardless of the fingerprints.

*** Homura's parents are dead, she's been living (before she moves out after making the contract) in a Christian orphanage, and wasn't exactly well-liked there as their resident IllGirl, thus why Madoka was her first actual friend (though Madoka did it at least somewhat out of pity, in the first timeline), and why Homura went to such lengths to do something for her.

** The World 1.0 had Mahou Shoujo that would die in battle, or due Witch-ification. This new world has negated the second clause, and if Wiki/TVTropes taught us something (And the show was indeed Troperrific) was the Law of Conservation of Ninjutsu: Witches are one, and powerful, Demons are hordes, so they are bound to be weaker. Yes, Mahou Shoujo still risk their lives and just like everybody, they will eventually fight their end. Madoka made a world a bit less of a Crapshack.

* This might be a bit too meta, but '''why in the ever loving blue fuck are there so many goddamn instances''' on Wiki/ThisVeryWiki of people claiming that Kyubey can't bring back the dead? Seriously, at what point in the franchise did someone reach into their own ass an come out with the assumption that the immortal magic weasel that can turn back time an fix medically incurable/terminal ailments was powerless against mortality? Doesn't that go against a lot of the spoken and shown extent of his abilities to claim that? That's not even getting into the fact that in multiple ExpandedUniverse works he explicitly shows that creating and recreating life is well within his powers. KazumiMagica sees him create a doppelgänger of one of the Saints that has all of the original ones memories (except for the childhood accident) and a lifeforce of her own, and if that isn't good enough, the alternate timeline of ''[[Manga/PuellaMagiMadokaMagicaTheDifferentStory The Different Story]]'' has Madoka make a contract when Walpurgisnatch comes to revive Sayaka after she had become a witch and been slated by Kyoko (though she doesn't remember being a witch and thinks Madoka instead saved her from being eaten by one.) So what gives, why is everyone claiming that he can't do it? He can rewrite the laws of the universe if the correct girl thinks to try. The only reason that he doesn't do it in the anime is because either A) the heat of the moment keeps the thought from occurring (like Mami) they become convinced that karmic recompense will screw over whoever they wish back into an even worse grave (Madoka) or they have wider intentions that won't be met by ''merely'' bringing a person back to life (Homura).

*** [[spoiler: He does not really demonstrate an ability to read minds beyond surface latent thought reading, just as any other magical girl can do when in proximity to him. He shows no sign that he knows what Homura is up to up until she shows her hand in episode 8. Had he known about Homura's plans, he most certainly would have tricked the others into killing her.
Furthermore, his manipulation of the soul gem looked like nothing more than giving her body the full sensation of pain from her injuries, whereas they normally feels very little (or nothing at all, depending on their state of mind.) ]]

** Homura's various attempts on Kyubey's life shows that he can resurrect himself by creating a new body to inhabit if his own one is destroyed. That said, it's not a stretch to think that he can easily create a new body for a MagicalGirl if her old one is destroyed or damaged beyond repair especially since [[spoiler: bodiless MagicalGirls are a wasted resource due to being unable to become witches and providing the Incubators with the energy they need. The Incubators are CrazyPrepared as shown by their millenia old system for countering the heat death of the universe which isnt due for a trillion years.]] They'd come up with ways to keep the girls up and running for as a possible.

** You're missing the point. Walpurgis is ''part of the universe''. If Madoka were getting the entire universe's energy, then that would ''include'' all of the power Walpurgis had in the old timeline. ''That'', among a million other reasons, is why this interpretation is illogical, because it requires that (Madoka + Walpurgis + the rest of the universe) < (Walpurgis). It's mathematically impossible.