Puella Magi Madoka Magica - Magical Girls / Characters

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/PuellaMagiMadokaMagicaMagicalGirls

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Character-Specific Pages

Homura Akemi
Sayaka Miki (Unmarked Spoilers)

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In General

Achilles' Heel: The girls' soul gems. As long as the gem isn't damaged, the girls' human bodies can take all kinds of punishment and they would still recover. But, should the soul gem be destroyed, the girl herself drops dead right there. And they also lose control of their bodies if they get too far away from the gem.
Badass Adorable: They're all just as cute as they are badass, thanks to Ume Aoki's character designs.
Being Good Sucks: By becoming a Magical Girl, you dedicate your life to protecting the world from Witches. Don't let the glamorous costumes and promise of having any wish you want granted fool you: it is a thankless and dangerous job. And the magical girls eventually transform into the monsters they fight against.
Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Mami (Blonde), Homura (Brunette), Kyoko (Redhead), who coincidentally form a squad of three at the end of the series.
Break the Cutie: The world of magical girls is not kind to them. This is the point of the magical girl system, to create magical girls whose suffering will give birth to witches. The energy created by the release of their emotions is used by the Incubators to stave off the heat death of the universe.
- Madoka watches Mami get eaten by Charlotte and fight/unsuccessfully plead with her best friend after she turns into a witch, and in a previous timeline, kills Mami herself to stop her from killing Homura.
- Homura watches Madoka sacrifice herself for her, becomes a time traveling magical girl in an attempt to save her, and goes though dozens of time loops and subsequently relives the deaths of Madoka and the other magical girls over and over again.
- Sayaka learns the true nature of magical girls, and sinks into despair, believing herself unworthy of Kyosuke's love. And then she loses Kyosuke to Hitomi.
- Mami's parents died in the same car accident that prompted her to make a contract with Kyubey. In a previous timeline, learning that magical girls are destined to become witches also does this to her.
- Kyoko's father went crazy after learning that his religious sect was only gaining followers because of her wish and subsequently killed her entire family and then himself.
Color-Coded Characters: Madoka - Pink, Homura - Purple, Sayaka - Blue, Mami - Yellow, Kyoko - Red.
Curtains Match the Window: With the exception of Homura, all the girls have eye colors that match their hair colors.
Deconstructed Character Archetype: The five magical girls are realistic examples of what happens when naive and impulsive pre-teen girls discover a world of magic, trust a foreign creature claiming it needs help and constantly battle for their lives:
- Madoka deconstructs the I Just Want to Be Special and Chronic Hero Syndrome tropes. Madoka spends the entire show wondering if she should become a magical girl despite learning just how destructive it is and without a wish in mind, just so she can feel useful in some way. As Kyoko points out, Madoka has a happy, stable life and a family who loves her, while most magical girls only become what they are out of desperation. Madoka would be pointlessly throwing that safety away by getting mixed up with something she doesn't need to be a part of just to feel she's doing something meaningful, which wouldn't last long since she'll simply die or witch out in the end. Her trying to help the others when she doesn't have any powers only puts her in more danger that requires them to constantly rescue her, and repeatedly sacrificing herself only drives Sayaka and Homura to further extremes to protect her. This only aggravates those who have to keep saving her and as Rebellion shows, her constant selflessness causes a very dangerous long-term problem via Homura and Kyubey.
- Sayaka deconstructs the Heroic Wannabe, Wide-Eyed Idealist and Patient Childhood Love Interest. Sayaka is so inspired by Mami's selfless image as a magical girl that she contracts with Kyubey to heal Kyosuke's hand. She believes she'll be okay despite being a rookie and will thrive above all others as the epitome of magical girls. Kyoko and Homura kicking her ass proves that she's not an Instant Expert, her ideals are just childish fantasies, and Kyubey breaks her completely when he reveals she's a walking corpse dependent on her soul gem to keep living. Meanwhile she refuses to admit that she made her wish and wanted to be a hero for selfish reasons: Kyosuke's love and admiration. Her learning the Awful Truth only destroys her confidence further, and refusing to explain herself or her sacrifice to Kyosuke leaves him oblivious to her love. This allows Hitomi to ask Kyosuke to be her boyfriend instead, rendering everything Sayaka sacrificed moot and leads to her becoming a witch out of despair.
- Mami deconstructs the Cool Big Sis and The Paragon. One one hand, Mami is a genuinely friendly person who is caring towards her magical girl wards and a near-flawless fighter when showing off on their trial run. Except Mami is also purposely invoking that image because she wants them to contract and fight alongside her. In reality, Mami is a Broken Ace with selfish motivations and a seriously dangerous Mask of Sanity problem that stems from survivors guilt and the trauma of constantly battling witches without end. Her putting on the appearance of a perfect and selfless magical girl leads to the others believing they have to match those standards, especially Sayaka, and her dying without being honest about her faults leads everything beyond Episode 3 to spiral into a complete catastrophe. The protective aspect of sisterly mentorship reaches a lethal conclusion when in one timeline, she tries to kill her teammates and herself to spare them the fate of witching out.
- Kyoko deconstructs The Social Darwinist and Jerk with a Heart of Gold. Kyoko learned firsthand that there is no gratitude for helping people when her father commits familicide to spite her when she used her wish to try and help him. This Cynicism Catalyst lead her to stop caring about others; indulging in nihilistic hedonism and letting innocents die so she can get more grief seeds or drive off competing magical girls. While this attitude helped her survive, it had also kept her in a state of suppressed misery and loneliness because people are put off by her selfish philosophy. Whenever Kyoko tries to bring up a solid point or her good nature surfaces, people don't listen or take it seriously because most of her advice stems from self-preservation. Her abrasive attitude contributes to Sayaka becoming a witch, something that Kyoko takes personally and blames herself for. In the video game, all it took was Sayaka witching out and dying for Kyoko to become a witch herself, proving that her pent-up negativity would have caught up to her sooner or later with one extremely stressful moment.
- Homura deconstructs the I Work Alone, Cassandra Truth, Undying Loyalty and The Determinator tropes. Homura has learned first hand from multiple timelines that the other girls never believe her claims about the truth behind what being a magical girl encompasses, especially about Kyubey and the Witches. As such, she works alone and acts cold towards the others to get the work done without distractions. Except this aloofness does the exact opposite by making people suspicious of her and refusing to take simple advice that could save their lives. Meanwhile, her devotion to protect Madoka and failure to do so causes her stress to build up, leaving her teetering on the edge of the Despair Event Horizon. Her refusal to give up traps all five of the girls in a constant time loop of suffering that causes them to die, witch out or fall to Walpurgisnacht, and puts Madoka in more danger because the accumulated energy makes Kyubey even more determined to get her to contract.
Despair Event Horizon: When a magical girl crosses this line, she transforms into a witch, with her Soul Gem becoming a Grief Seed.
Doing in the Scientist: The existence of Magical Girls is said to defy established logic. It's even in the name.
Eldritch Abomination: As magical girls, each of them has a corresponding Witch form, although Mami's and Kyoko's do not appear in the main anime. In order, they are Kriemhild Gretchen (Madoka), Homulilly (Homura), Oktavia von Seckendorff (Sayaka), Candeloro (Mami) and Ophelia (Kyoko).
Failure-to-Save Murder: Mami, Homura, and Sayaka fill the roles of Child, Hero, and Fool respectively. Homura is bound by Mami's magic until it fails due to her death. She only arrives in time to save Sayaka and Madoka; however, as Sayaka wasn't there to see it, she thinks that Homura consciously allowed Mami to die, fueling her later resentment for Homura and other magical girls in general.
Fantasy Character Classes: Subtle, but present. Each of the five main characters slot into a role of an archetypical adventuring party.
- Mami is the Warrior, the frontline fighter who can deal lots of damage but is lacking in more specified field. Mami is one of the strongest magical girls in the franchise, but she lacks any specialized magic beyond lots of guns.
- Sayaka is the Paladin, a righteous warrior dedicated to a cause who serves the role of tank. Sayaka is an idealist and fully dedicated to the cause of justice, and her Healing Factor means that she can take more punishment than any other magical girl.
- Kyoko is the Rogue, the morally ambiguous stealthy one. While there isn't much room for stealth when fighting witches, Kyoko's magic (though she doesn't have it in the anime) is creating illusions of herself as distractions, which serve a similar purpose. She's also the one who's most out for herself with little care for heroism.
- Homura is the Mage, the spellcaster with access to magic that can either devastate the battlefield, or help the party in non-violent ways. The final battle against Walpurgisnacht shows that Homura can draw on a truly staggering arsenal of weapons, and her timeloop magic is a kind of utility magic with no offensive applications.
- Madoka is the Cleric, the priest who supports the party with healing. At the end of the series, she becomes a god who saves the souls of magical girls.
Four-Philosophy Ensemble:
- Kyoko is the Cynic, with her belief that magic should be used selfishly, and thinking otherwise puts you on the fast track to getting killed.
- Sayaka is the Optimistic. She enters her career as a Magical Girl far too brashly and easily, playing The Cape to contrast Kyoko's Social Darwinist. Not that this helps her at all.
- Mami is the Realist. She is easily the most cautious magical girl, who several times warns her juniors that entering this life with an idealist view can be dangerous, while also encouraging them to make up their own minds about contracting. Her careful, precise combat style also reflects this. Hence why the second she gets reckless, it kills her.
- Homura is the Apathetic, being entirely focused on one thing, and one thing only - saving Madoka, no matter what. Her motivations leave her detached from the rest of the group.
- Madoka is the Conflicted. She spends the whole series wavering over whether to contract or not, because she's not sure that she's worth anything otherwise. She becomes an Optimist when she is a magical girl.
Four-Temperament Ensemble: Madoka is phlegmatic (kind, shy, and insecure), Homura is melancholic (intelligent, aloof, and very goal-oriented), Sayaka is sanguine (idealistic, courageous, and compassionate), Kyoko is choleric (passionate, callous, and stubborn) and Mami is eclectic (a balanced mentor to the other girls).
Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: Downplayed. Madoka and Sayaka have Tareme Eyes, and they are both very naive at first about the true nature of being a magical girl. In contrast to Madoka and Sayaka's Tareme Eyes, Mami, Homura and Kyoko all have Tsurime Eyes, and they are all veteran magical girls who have a more cynical view on being one.
Healing Factor: All Magical girls can use their magic to heal themselves. According to Kyubey, this allows them to fight even when their hearts have exploded and every drop of blood has been drained from their bodies. Sayaka heals especially fast even by Magical Girl standards. Of course, all this is only possible because their only vital components, their souls, have been removed.
Human Resources: Magical Girls are created by the incubators to harvest the raw power of their souls, which they intend to use to help stave off the heat death of the universe.
Hysterical Woman: Kyubey explains that the reason his species make contracts with girls, and specifically teenage girls, is that they're the most emotional kind of human. Specifically, they have the most dramatic reversals between hope and despair, which provide the emotional energy that Kyubey is collecting.
Little Miss Badass: None of them are older than 15 when they start killing witches.
Logical Weakness: Since the Soul Gem is a Soul Jar, the destruction of it instantly ends the Magical Girl's life. During her Freak Out, Mami kills Kyoko by targeting her Soul Gem and would've done the same to Homura and Madoka had the latter not shot Mami's Soul Gem, killing her.
Magical Girl: They make a contract with Kyubey to gain magical girl power, outfits, and duty.
One-Winged Angel: When they turn into Witches, they gain a massive power boost. Sayaka who was the weakest among them suddenly became a legitimate threat once she becomes Oktavia. They are killed shortly afterwards however.
Our Liches Are Different: Becoming a Magical Girl means having your soul ripped out and transformed into a gem, while your body becomes an Empty Shell that's remotely operated. While this does give them a Healing Factor and the ability to block out otherwise crippling pain, separating a Magical Girl from their gem causes them to lose consciousness. If they stay separate for too long, their bodies begin to rot.
Remote Body: Their original bodies become this once they become a Magical Girl, controlled by the soul gem (their new body) from a distance of up to 100 meters.
Sanity Meter: The outward appearance of a magical girl's Soul Gem is a measure of how much sanity she has left. When it fills up with too much darkness, it becomes a Grief Seed.
School Uniforms are the New Black: Everyone except Kyoko wears their school uniforms most of the time when not transformed (since Kyoko is never a student outside of Rebellion storylines).
Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Insofar as the rules of reality can apply to a universe with magic, but the magical girl system turns out to be uglier than it looks.
- Magical girls are effectively Child Soldiers who have no choice but to fight witches to stay alive, as Soul Gems can't be cleansed without a Grief Seed. Fighting for their lives on a daily basis means that magical girls can also get hurt, die, or witch out.
- Getting something for nothing almost never happens in real life, and someone who offers you what appears to be a wonderful gift with no downsides usually has some ulterior motive in mind, especially if you don't know them well. Becoming a magical girl seems like it has no negatives, until you find out about having to kill witches and endanger your life on the regular. Your friendly neighborhood Mentor Mascot? Yes, he wants you to become a magical girl...and eventually a witch, as the emotional energy released by your fall to despair is going to help him stave off the universe's heat death.
- Acting selflessly for another person sometimes comes at your own expense, and shouldn't come with the expectation of a reward or even gratitude. When Sayaka wishes for Kyousuke's hand to be healed (without his knowledge), he ends up falling in love with Hitomi after Sayaka can't bring herself to confess her feelings. When Kyoko wished for people to listen to her father's teachings, he was horrified when he found out, calling her an evil witch who was corrupting his flock.
Theme Naming: The names of the girls make them all seem as though they have Two First Names. However, Homura is the only one who has an actual first name as a last name (the spelling of Akemi used for her name is exclusive to first names only); the rest all have names that are valid last names, but are more commonly used as first names.
Tomato in the Mirror: Those witches fought by magical girls were once magical girls themselves...so if you're a magical girl? Congratulations, you're fated to become a witch (assuming you don't die in battle).
Town Girls:
- Mami (Femme) and her two apprentices Kyoko (Butch) and Sayaka (Neither). Mami is the most feminine of the three, playing the gentle Team Mom. Sayaka is brash and a bit tomboyish, but she's also an idealist who yearns for justice and romance. Kyoko is more aggressive and tomboyish than Mami and Sayaka.
- At the end of the series, there's Homura, Mami and Kyoko, the three Magical Girls who are left alive. Homura is The Stoic Neither, Mami is the Femme older sempai-type who fights with elegance, and Kyoko as the Butch rough-talking street rat who eats a lot.
True Companions:
- Subverted. Along with other traditional Magical Girl tropes, this one gets hurled straight out the window. They have proven themselves of getting along on occasion. Kyoko and Mami were friends before the series started, Sayaka idolized Mami and eventually grew to sympathize somewhat with Kyoko, and Homura was once like Madoka. However, due to factors like their individual reactions to discovering the truth, mental trauma, and Homura's lonerism, as well as Kyubey's machinations, their relationships end abruptly, either when someone dies, or when two individuals simply can't trust each other.
- However, Rebellion, the game, and The Different Story show that it is possible for them to get along. Mami had good relations with everyone except Homura (and side material reveals that Kyoko, despite their fight, still considered Mami to be a sister). Sayaka was warming up to Kyoko. Kyoko was warming up to Sayaka. Everyone was friendly to Madoka. The one Magical Girl that everyone either did not trust or straight-up disliked was Homura, as a consequence of her growing cynicism, simply not caring about non-Madokas, and her overall lonerism.
Unstable Powered Woman: The crux of this show's plot, as well as the Magical Girl system in general. Kyubey intentionally targets teenage girls because, according to him, teenage girls are Hysterical Women who will break under the strain of magic power and inevitably fall into despair, becoming uncontrollable Eldritch Abominations who can only be dealt with by another Magical Girl putting them out of their misery. And the wishes they made to gain that magic power are always ultimately shown to make their lives worse off, despite how much worse many of their lives were before contracting. Apparently, teenage boys would've kept their heads on straight.

Madoka Kaname

Voiced by: Aoi Yūki (Japanese), Christine Marie Cabanos (English)^{Foreign VAs}

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/madoka_magical_girl.png

"It's still really hard to figure out what I'd wish for. It's not something I could put my finger on that easily..."

^{Click here to see Madoka in her normal attire.}

"If someone ever tells me it's a mistake to have hope, well then, I'll just tell them they're wrong and I'll keep telling them until they believe; no matter how many times it takes."

A well-behaved girl who doesn't consider herself to have any particular athletic or academic prowess. This lack of confidence feeds into a strong sense of selflessness that on some occasions is a positive thing but a negative one on others. After saving Kyubey from Homura, she considers forming a contract and becoming a Magical Girl, which she believes will finally enable her to help other people.

Kyubey is determined on contracting her, but Homura intends to stop this from happening.

Abstract Apotheosis: The former Trope Namer, "Becoming Hope", because she Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence and became the incarnation of hope for magical girls by the end of the show.
Action Girl: Played With. In the timelines where she's a magical girl, she is a force to be reckoned with. In the main show, however, she's strictly reduced to a Non-Action Guy for most of the series because Homura is desperately trying to stop her from contracting, as that would bring the end of the world should she become a witch.
Adaptational Modesty: In the original version of Episode 12, Madoka and Homura have an Out-of-Clothes Experience when they meet for the last time in the aether before the universe is rewritten. In the Compilation Movie, they are instead wearing white lace dresses.
All-Loving Heroine: The poor girl just wants everyone to be happy. This is why she makes a wish to relieve the suffering of every magical girl that ever lived or ever will live.
Always with You: When Madoka ascends to godhood she reminds Homura one last time that she will always be with her. In this case it's literal because she exists in every point in time.
And Then John Was a Zombie: In some of the alternate timelines, Madoka becomes a witch. In another one, she is about to become one, and requests Homura to Mercy Kill her.
Apocalypse Maiden: In ways that run both good and bad: In the bad way, she's a massive Witch that can eat the world in the span of a week; in the good way, she becomes a god and rewrites reality to make a Magical Girl's existence better.
Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: She becomes a law of physics (or a goddess in the metaphysical sense) as the result of her wish. After learning about all the suffering Magical Girls went through, she made it clear with her wish that she doesn't care what she becomes as long as her wish ultimately saves the world.
Badass Adorable: Anytime where she's a magical girl she is both powerful and friendly and huggably cute.
Bait-and-Switch Boss: She's the only one who can defeat Walpurgisnacht but doing this will inevitably cause her to turn into a Witch strong enough to destroy Earth. This is a Hopeless Boss Fight for Homura and forces her to use the New Game Plus feature of her power.
Beam Spam: As Ultimate Madoka, she fires an enormous storm of energy arrows to attack.
Beware the Nice Ones: She's one of the sweetest, most passive characters in the whole series. However, she still fought countless witches in previous timelines. In the current timeline, once she learns the truth about all magical girls eventually becoming witches, she quickly gets fed up with Kyubey's machinations and makes a wish that rewrites reality just to make it stop, regardless of what Kyubey wants.
Beyond the Impossible: Madoka's innate potential as a Magical Girl is so great thanks to Homura's "Groundhog Day" Loop constantly increasing it as a consequence that Kyubey essentially admits she could have any wish granted with no limits. In addition to her Reality-Breaking Paradox wish in the main story, in Puella Magi Madoka Magica: The Different Story she's able to bring Sayaka Back from the Dead despite her having become a Witch, being destroyed, and her Grief Seed used up. Note that when Homura asked Kyubey in the anime if it were possible to bring Sayaka back as a Magical Girl, if not a human, from her Witch state, Kyubey bluntly stated it was impossible after having deceived Kyoko otherwise.
Big Damn Heroes: Her wish allows her to do this on a universal scale. Traveling to the countless individual points in time where all magical girls in existence eventually became witches, she appears before them and absorbs the darkness from their Soul Gems, allowing them to die peacefully and preventing their witches from ever being born.
Big Eater: You wouldn't know it, but according to her 100 Questions, she thinks about food a LOT.
Big Fancy House: Madoka's home. It was designed and built by friends of her parents.
Big Good: Her Retcon made her the patron goddess of magical girls, but only Homura knows she exists.
Body Horror: When she steps into H.N. Elly's witch barrier and said witch has her familiars stretch her body to her limit as she pulls her inside.
Break the Cutie: She provides the image on the trope's main page. As the series goes on she endures more and more trauma until she's a miserable wreck curled up in her bed. Ultimately she doesn't break and instead uses her wish to mend every broken magical girl cutie in all of time.
But Now I Must Go: She has to leave Homura to serve her purpose as the abstract embodiment of hope to magical girls.
Celestial Body: After she becomes a god/force of nature/whatever in the final episode she gains a new body which evokes this kind of imagery.
Cherry Blossom Girl: Pink eyes, pink hair, kind, surrounded by themes of death and rebirth, and has a cherry blossom motif on her Magical Girl dress.
Childhood Friends: With Sayaka. They walk to school together and her death hits Madoka like a punch to the gut.
The Chosen One: Kyubey spends the series trying to make her a Magical Girl because of her potential, which can make her an all powerful deity if she so desired. Mami theorizes that Homura is actively trying to prevent her from becoming a Magical Girl because of jealousy. Mami couldn't be more wrong, Homura's real motivation is to protect Madoka from a terrible fate should she make a contract to become a magical girl, something Madoka herself requested in a previous timeline.
Chronic Hero Syndrome: She commits a Heroic Sacrifice in every timeline we see. Homura actually blames this on her low sense of self-worth, and points how annoying it is in someone you keep time-traveling to try and rescue.
Classical Anti-Hero: Madoka spends most of the story struggling to cope with the horrifying things that happen to her friends, while being too scared to actually do much of anything. But she slowly overcomes her fears, and eventually summons the courage to become a magical girl in order to fix most of the tragedy.
Cowardly Lion: She's constantly berating herself for her cowardice and indecision, though in reality she is far braver than she gives herself credit for. More than once we see her get into situations where she tries to help in whatever way she can when the sensible thing to do would be be to run and get help instead.
Crucified Hero Shot: Madoka gets one in the beginning of Episode 11, following Sayaka's funeral, while Kyubey lectures her about the role of magical girls in history. Fitting, considering that she sacrifices herself to save the world. She gets another while saying goodbye to Homura before she disappears.
Curb-Stomp Battle: Though we never get to see it, in the last timeline shown before the current story, Madoka kills Walpurgisnacht in one shot. After which, she becomes a world-destroying witch.
Curtains Match the Window: Pink hair and eyes. Gets subverted once she becomes a goddess, where she gets Supernatural Gold Eyes.
Cuteness Proximity: 100 Questions: (link has some spoilers)
Question 8: "Favorite animal?"
Madoka: "I love anything that's small and fluffy!"
Dark Messiah: As Kriemhild Gretchen. All There in the Manual describes her as the Witch of Salvation. Her idea of salvation is either the Lotus-Eater Machine or an Assimilation Plot because it involves drawing people into her barrier.
Decoy Protagonist: Despite being the titular character and the focus for much of the plot, Madoka mostly takes a back seat in terms of actually doing anything first to Sayaka, and then to Homura. It's only in the last few episodes that Madoka steps up and takes the role as main character.
Defeating the Undefeatable: In all timelines, Madoka is the only magical girl known to have killed Walpurgisnacht, the most powerful witch in existence. However, she either dies afterwards or turns into an even more powerful witch. She finally beats it for good by wishing it out of existence in the current timeline.
Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Although not as severe as that other magical girl, Madoka considers becoming a magical girl simply to give purpose to her life. This irritates Mami. See also Heroic Self-Deprecation.
Determinator: For all the misery she endures throughout the series, she never loses hope for a happy ending.
Devoted to You: Homura is so desperately devoted to her that she willingly trapped herself in a hellish "Groundhog Day" Loop so she could find a way to save Madoka from her tragic fate as a Magical Girl.
Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: She makes a contract with Kyubey in the final episode but her wish rewrites reality to favor magical girls instead of the Incubators. For most of the series, it's more like Did Cthulhu Just Scam You?
Disappears into Light: What happens to her body while she's saying goodbye to a crying Homura. She's gone to a higher plane of existence.
The Ditherer: Spends many an episode wondering if she can truly be helpful to anyone.
Don't Fear the Reaper: She's really nice. When she appears to dying magical girls she is a soothing presence in their traumatic final moments, then she takes them to magical girl heaven.
Dreaming of Things to Come: Madoka has a dream of Homura fighting Walpurgisnacht and Kyubey trying to convince her to make a contract before she actually meets either of them. Turns out her dream was actually a memory from a previous timeline.
Energy Bow: Her weapon is a bow that fires pink energy arrows.
Expy: Urobuchi has compared Madoka to Hidamari Sketch's Yuno. Urobuchi remarked that every time he made Madoka cry, the Yuno fans hated him more.
Eye Color Change: After becoming a goddess, her eyes change from pink to gold.
Faustian Rebellion: Madoka's wish is to erase every witch that had ever existed, or would exist in the future, or could possibly exist in another world, before they were born with her own hands. Reality gets a bit unstable. And in the end Kyubey has to adapt to her new system which is less convenient to his goals.
The Fettered: Madoka believes in hope so much its one of her main defining traits. This eventually became the basis for her wish, to give other Magical Girls hope by erasing the despair that would eventually turn them into witches. She eventually became the very embodiment of this virtue.
Final Speech: Done every time she attempts a Heroic Sacrifice.
First Friend: Madoka is revealed to be this to Homura in the timeline where the latter first became a Magical Girl. Madoka was the first person to get to know Homura as a person and her kindness towards the girl helped Homura to open up a little. Protecting Madoka is the reason Homura becomes a Magical Girl in the first place, and even after her Cynicism Catalyst, saving Madoka from her fate becomes Homura's primary motivation.
Forever War: According to Mami, as a consequence of her wish to erase all witches from existence, Madoka will be fighting and defeating witches for all of eternity.
Friendly Sniper: She's a very skilled sniper, as is shown when she defeats her own witch form in one shot. She's also probably one of the nicest characters in the entire cast. This is noted in the official design notes:
Even her bow-wielding magical girl form projects an air of kind friendliness.
Girlish Pigtails: She has her hair done up in pigtails which emphasises her innocence and naivety.
Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Her room is filled with various stuffed animals.
Girly Bruiser: She's very girly, with her pink hair done in pigtails tied by red ribbons, a lot of stuffed animals, and a pink Pimped-Out Dress as a Magical Girl. Her favorite colors are also, of course, pink and white. In the alternate timelines she was a badass Action Girl whose force inspired Homura to better herself, and is the only one capable of saving the entire world from Walpurgisnacht with nothing but frilly pink gloves.
Girly Run: Shown in the OP sequence and the first episode.
Gold and White Are Divine: Her Ultimate form gives her Supernatural Gold Eyes and an Ethereal White Dress.
Good Is Not Soft: She loves Homura deeply (after regaining her memories, if not before), but she doesn't let Homura's obsession with preserving her life stop her from accomplishing something great. Their last interaction before Madoka ascends is Homura screaming, thrashing, pleading for her to stop- and her basically saying, "No, this has to happen."
The Heart: She's the kindest, compared to the other characters who have signed the deal.
Heavenly Concentric Circles: In Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion, when the Law of Cycles is preparing herself to purify Homura's soul gem, she appears in the sky surrounded by concentric circles of geometrical motifs. A literal, pink path to heaven sprouts from the center.
Heroic BSoD:
- Mami's death hits her HARD. She spends a good half of episode 4 crying.
- Again when she inadvertently kills Sayaka. While Sayaka has gotten better thanks to Homura, the Angst will remain.
- Yet again when she sees Sayaka's lifeless body and hears that her best friend has become a witch.
- In another timeline, having to kill Mami (who had just killed Kyoko) so she wouldn't kill Homura (who had just killed Witch Sayaka) reduces her to a sobbing wreck.
- Kyubey goes for the kill when he telepathically shows her the suffering of every magical girl throughout history. This may have been a mistake as it inspired her wish.
Heroic Bystander: She prevents the forced suicide of Hitomi and Kirsten's other victims. Also, she tries to be this when she throws Sayaka's soul gem over the bridge, with nasty results.
Heroic Sacrifice: In the original timeline, it was hinted that she launched a one-shot Suicide Attack against Walpurgisnacht and it worked because Homura survived. In an alternate past, she saved Homura from despair using Sayaka's grief seed, in the hope of Homura's ability to rewrite history to a better end; she then asks Homura for a Mercy Kill, since turning into a witch was against her life-time goal. She does it again in the final episode, where she wishes for the whole Magical Girl system to change, allowing her to destroy Walpurgis and stop any magical girls from becoming a witch (by causing them to vanish first), at the cost of Madoka herself vanishing from existence forever.
Heroic Self-Deprecation: Subtly, but still present. At one point Madoka says the following about herself: "I thought I had nothing good going for me. I thought I would continue on living until I died, never helping anyone, never being useful. That made me frustrated, and it made me feel alone. But I thought I couldn't do anything about it." Yet her actions over the series often contradict this self-characterization. This extends to the people around her who question why she would want to become a Magical Girl. She has everything she would ever want, and yet she still becomes a Magical Girl.
The Heroine: Of previous timelines and the Grand Finale. She's the one that ultimately saves the day. She's also the namesake of her team.
Hidden Depths: Before Episode 10, she appears to be an average girl caught in awful circumstances who at times behaves in a supposedly "stupid" or "cowardly" manner. Episode 10 reveals that Madoka is not only able to fight, but is willing to sacrifice herself because of her love for her friends.
Hope Bringer: This is her final wish in a nutshell: deliver hope to all magical girls.
I Cannot Self-Terminate: In a previous timeline, she asks Homura to Mercy Kill her before she turns into a witch.
"I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: She tries to do this for Sayaka in two different timelines. It failed in both cases.
Incorruptible Pure Pureness: The only way Kyubey can convince her to make a contract is by appealing to her heroism. In timelines where she became a witch it's implied that it was always over-use of magic rather than despair.
The Ingenue: Soft-spoken, innocent, etc. Interestingly for this trope, Junko says she's remarkably mature for her age because she bypassed the teenage-rebellion typical of girls her age.
Instant Runes: A rune array pops out in front of her bow before she fires off a barrage of energy arrows as Ultimate Madoka.
Irony: Homura's motivation to prevent Madoka from becoming a witch meant that she had to be Locked Out of the Loop. Madoka is able to save everyone once she gets in the loop and sees with fresh eyes the suffering of the other magical girls and learns how the Incubators have been doing this for a very long time.
Kill the Cutie: Multiple times in previous timelines. Then, even though she actually does live, all traces of her existence vanish in the final timeline.
Kind Hearted Cat Lover: The intro shows Madoka holding a cat whilst sobbing and smiling. Supplemental material reveals that the initial contract she made to become a magical girl before Homura started looping time was to resurrect the cat after she saw it die.
Kung-Fu Jesus: She's an archer who saves the universe with KINDNESS. It rewrites the entire laws of time, space and REALITY itself to make the entire universe a kinder and gentler place.
Lady and Knight: With Homura. Madoka is a perfect example of the Bright Lady (cute, innocent and kind) while Homura is her strong and determined knight sworn to protect her, although she's more of a Black Knight.
Leitmotif: "Clementia". As Ultimate Madoka, "Sagitta luminis".
Let Them Die Happy: The effect of her wish, across all of time and space to every magical girl. When a magical girl is about to die, Madoka appears to her and absorbs the darkness from her Soul Gem, allowing her to die peacefully without grief weighing on her heart and smile until the very end.
Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: The light to Homura's dark; dresses in light or pastel colors, open and friendly, a Nice Girl.
Like Parent, Like Spouse: According to ancillary material, Madoka's idea of an ideal husband is someone cool like her mother.
Little Miss Almighty: She's only fourteen, and in the finale she becomes the goddess of hope. Interestingly, her goddess form "Ultimate Madoka" is taller and looks somewhat older than her physical form.
Living Emotional Crutch:
- She props up Sayaka when her soul gem corrupts.
- Madoka's death will always shatter Homura, before she resets time all over again to try preventing it from happening.
The Load: Zig-Zagged. She's the only girl who doesn't become a Magical Girl but still tags along. It is later revealed that she did become a Magical Girl, but in other timelines. Since Homura tries to prevent her from turning into a Magical Girl via time travel; her transformation was always retconned. In the last episode, she forms a contract with Kyubey and wishes that all witches from the past, present and future cease to exist, turning her into a being akin to a god.
MacGuffin Super-Person: Her potential power is so massive, Homura's (silent) fight against Kyubey over her drives the story. Said power is also what makes her the Apocalypse Maiden.
Magical Girl: She spends many episodes considering whether or not accept Kyubey's contract and obtain the outfit and powers. Defying this trope for her is Homura's purpose at Madoka's own request in previous timelines.
Magic Skirt: The pink and white tutu she wears as a magical girl incorporates one. Considering how many layers of ruffled tulle must've gone into that skirt, it's not surprising.
Martyr Without a Cause: One reason she doesn't make a contract is that she doesn't know what to wish for. At one point she decided to 'wish to become a magical girl'. Once one learns the true nature of Magical Girls, 'martyr' becomes appropriate.
Meaningful Name: Her full name can be taken to mean "tranquil keystone." This fits her role as The Heart, her connection to countless threads of fate from previous timelines, and her eventual transformation into the embodiment of hope for all magical girls.
- The name Madoka can be written with the character for "circle" or "round" in kanji (円) reflecting the cyclical nature of the magical girl-witch incubator relationship as well as the circular repetition of timelines that revolve around her. It could also be written with the character for "wish" or "ambition"; the connotations of that should be obvious. Her last name, Kaname, can also be read as "pivot" or "vital point", which is apt to say the least due to Homura's time-meddling making Madoka's existence the pivotal point of every timeline she creates.
- Interestingly, the three syllables which form her name are homophone to those of "the one who follows the path of evil" Lampshade Hanging here.
- 'Kaname' is usually written as 'Deer eye'. A deer is the symbol of undermore love, peace and grace.
- Her name when written in traditional order, Kaname Madoka, begins and ends with the same syllable, symbolic of someone whose existence is tied to a repeating cycle.
Meaningful Rename:
- Her witch name is Kriemhild Gretchen. Interesting to note that this was not shown on the original broadcast. For the record, Kriemhild means "battle mask", likely referring to the ending animation.
- What fans call Madokami or Godoka, officially known as Ultimate Madoka, tends to go by the name Penitent Gretchen. The name Gretchen is self-explanatory even if you are familiar with the show. The title of Penitent isn't, which means "feeling or expressing humble or regretful pain or sorrow for sins or offenses". It explains Madoka's temperament at the time of her wish. Also, the full name is yet another reference to Faust...or more appropriately, how Gretchen saved him.
Mercy Kill: She's forced to quickly put down a manic Mami when she tries to kill the rest of the group and then herself. Madoka herself is on the receiving end of this trope from Homura at least once.
Messianic Archetype: She sacrifices herself to save all magical girls from despair. Having seen three friends die and learning about magical girls from Kyubey, she decides to make that sacrificial wish, which has her appear to magical girls throughout history.
Morality Chain: She's this to Homura. Despite all the trauma and foulness of all the timelines, Homura continues to help others because it would make Madoka happy.
Muggle Best Friend: Madoka initially seems like she'll be the typical magical girl hero, but when the series reached episode 9 (of 12) Madoka is still a muggle while her best friend has taken up the duty. This is because she was a magical girl in the original timeline and made Homura promise to save her from Kyubey's trickery. This is why Homura prevents her from making a contract.
Naïve Everygirl: This is one of the things she dislikes about herself; her average-lack-of-wordliness.
Naïve Newcomer: As an Ironic Echo to current Homura, Madoka contrasts Meganekko Homura. Where Meganekko Homura blurts out something randomly inappropriate, Madoka is a mostly calm and collected person in the same situation.
Nice Girl: She's the nicest of the girls and would do anything to help other people.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- She tried cheering Mami up with a You Are Not Alone speech. It results in Mami fighting more recklessly rather than methodical and calculating which leads to getting headchomped by Charlotte, in a battle she would've won if she never let her guard down.
- To prevent Sayaka from fighting Kyoko, she snatches Sayaka's soul gem and throws it off the bridge they're on. This killed Sayaka because the soul gem is literally a Soul Jar. Cue Big Damn Heroes from Homura.
- She makes a contract to save Homura in one timeline, and becomes a magical girl so powerful she destroys a witch in one shot... then becomes an even worse witch who will destroy the entire planet.
Not-So-Imaginary Friend: To her brother in the final timeline; he's one of two people who remember her but his/their mom believes 'Madoka' is an imaginary friend.
Only Friend: To Homura. She had no friends before joining Madoka's school and afterwards isolates herself to prevent herself from suffering more pain from the time loops.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business: You know things have gotten really bad when kind-hearted and timid Madoka of all people doesn't even hesitate to kill Mami when she is about to kill Homura in one of the previous timelines.
Ordinary High-School Student: Junior high but whatever; there's nothing remarkable about her. You know, other than her tremendous magical girl potential, and all.
Pimped-Out Dress:
- Her Magical Girl outfit is pink, very frilly and overall standard issue for a magical girl, which emphasizes her kindness, idealism and will to be the bringer of hope.
- Her ultimate form dress, as well. It has a freaking star scape in it.
Pink Heroine: Madoka is the leading lady of a Magical Girl show and has pink as her signature color. Although she isn't an actual Magical Girl for much of the show's run.
Pink Means Feminine: Madoka is likely the most girlish of the main girls and has pink as her theme colour.
Plot-Triggering Death: Homura makes the wish that kicks off the series in order to save Madoka's life.
Power Gives You Wings: She gains angelic, transparent wings when she ascends to godhood.
Power Makes Your Hair Grow: Ultimate Madoka gains long hair before she kills Kriemhild Gretchen.
Practically Different Generations: She's 14 at the start of the series and has a three-year-old younger brother.
Protectorate: Homura's wish was for Madoka to become this for her. "I want to protect Madoka instead of her protecting me."
Psychopomp: As a Goddess, she appears to dying magical girls and takes them away to heaven. She's just the sort of companion one would want on such a journey. For instance, she allowed Sayaka to see Kyosuke play the violin one last time.
Reality-Breaking Paradox: When she makes her paradoxical wish, reality collapses in on itself by trying to figure how the wish would work.
Reality Warper: Kyubey claims she has this sort of potential if she were to become a Magical Girl, as her potential is so great it would make her capable of just about any wish. Turns out, he was right. Her wish was all that was needed to reconstruct the whole universe into a more merciful place.
Recursive Ammo: Those pink arrows she spams as Ultimate Madoka can turn into more of her.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: To Sayaka; more cautious, less passionate. Madoka's color motif is Pink, which is a combination Red and White. You should have a good guess where the White motif comes into play.
Ret-Gone: The price of ending the Vicious Cycle is her removal from physical existence and all memory of her being erased, with Homura being the only one to remember that she ever was there.
Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Or rather, Ripple Effect-Proof Power. Because she is the subject of Homura's wish, Madoka's powers, as a magical girl or inherent, are carried over to the next timeline every time Homura goes back in time. This is the reason why she has enough power to defeat Walpurgisnacht and destroy the world as a witch.
Rose-Haired Sweetie: Sweet-tempered subtype.
Self-Duplication: Her wish allows her to create countless copies of herself throughout time and space, which fly to every dying magical girl in existence and absorb the darkness from their Soul Gems, allowing them to die in peace without ever becoming witches.
Selfless Wish: When she learns that her wish has the potential of her becoming a god, she later makes it clear that she doesn't care what she becomes as long as her wish ultimately saves the world from destruction, either at the hands of Walpurgisnacht or Kriemhild Gretchen, and ensures that magical girls do not experience sadness anymore, and orders Kyubey to fulfill her wish anyway.
She Cleans Up Nicely: Supernatural example: Normal girl Madoka falls right into Generic Cuteness and in-universe is considered plain. Ultimate◊ Madoka, on the other hand, is achingly beautiful.
Shout-Out:
- Madoka has some similarities to Sakura Kinomoto, as shown here. They're both blood type A girls who eat breakfasts made by their fathers "who can cook anything," play the recorder "a bit," are afraid of ghosts, and list their favorite colors as white and pink.
- As part of the many references to Goethe's Faust, she's Gretchen, the woman who saves and redeems Faust with her love. This is made most explicit with the name of the witch she becomes in several timelines, Kriemhild Gretchen.
Shrinking Violet: Madoka is sometimes shy and timid regardless.
Signature Laugh: A little giggle that sounds like "wehihihihi".
Silly Rabbit, Cynicism Is for Losers!: Invoked in the final episode as she becomes the very embodiment of hope for all Magical Girls through her wish.
Ultimate Madoka: "If someone says it's wrong to hope, I will tell them that they're wrong every time. I could tell them that countless times."
The Soulsaver: The fate of magical girls is either to become a witch or die and face the Cessation of Existence. Ultimate Madoka rescues them from both and brings them to a higher plane of existence.
Spiritual Antithesis: Although the series is often considered to be the Magical Girl equivalent of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Madoka is very different from Shinji Ikari. Madoka was an ordinary girl until Kyubey and Homura came along, while Shinji's life was always bad, and being thrown into Unit-01 just made it worse. Both of them get heavily traumatized, but Shinji keeps getting forced into even worse situations, while Madoka becomes too scared to fight. They both have low opinions of themselves, and this translates into self-pity in Shinji's case and a desire to help others in Madoka's. Finally, both of them Restart the World, but Shinji does so as a result of crossing the Despair Event Horizon, while Madoka does so because she doesn't want anyone to suffer the Despair Event Horizon anymore.
Split-Personality Merge: Kind of; after her apotheosis she gains knowledge of all other timelines. She sees the countless times Homura fought and got hurt for her sake, trying to keep her from being a witch, and says that Homura really is her very best friend.
Stepford Smiler: Hinted in her Image Song "See You Tomorrow" that despite her cheerful, optimistic demeanor she feels lonely inside even saying she forces herself to smile.
Stock Shoujo Heroine: She has many of this trope's associated traits despite the series not being in the shoujo demographic, being a fourteen year old Ordinary Middle School Student, Pink Heroine, and Magical Girl. She has confidence issues but is a very Nice Girl towards others. She is The Heart of the main girls and has Incorruptible Pure Pureness attributes. Unfortunately for Madoka, the series she's in is particularly harmful for this character type. In the end, she doesn't let any of it break her and she becomes embodiment of hope itself.
Story-Breaker Power: As Homura's quest goes on, Madoka as a magical girl becomes more and more powerful. The Different Story is presumably one of the later resets, since Madoka demonstrates the ability to bring Sayaka back to life after she had died in her Witch state, the latter alone Kyubey claimed to Homura was impossible to reverse as far as he was aware.
Supernatural Gold Eyes: As Ultimate Madoka, the Goddess of Hope.
Supporting Protagonist:
- Gen Urobuchi stated that Sayaka is The Protagonist of his story, although Madoka is the main character originally planned by Ume Aoki. However, this may have been a bait-and-switch statement to make Sayaka's fate more surprising, as Homura turns out to be the main heroic catalyst in the series.
- Rather than focusing on the actions of Madoka herself, the story focuses on Homura's actions to protect and nurture Madoka, and unintentionally set her up to become powerful enough to become a goddess.
- Played With by Urobichi. The primary character arc is the lead up to Sayaka's transformation, but the plot itself revolves around Homura's attempt to stop Madoka from dying or becoming a magical girl.
- Finally the series could really be about Madoka learning about the true nature of magical girls in order to learn how to reform the system after her ultimate ascension to goddesshood.
- However, she fits this trope for the most part in The Different Story.
Survivor Guilt: After Mami dies right in front of her, Madoka goes to her house and says "I'm sorry for being so weak."
Take a Third Option: If she doesn't become a Magical Girl, Walpurgisnacht will happen and the Earth will die. If she does, then she'll become Kriemhild Gretchen and the Earth will still die. What does she do? She becomes a Magical Girl and uses her wish to erase all Witches from existence thus safeguarding her own eventual transformation.
Tareme Eyes: As the gentle Nice Girl she is, she has rounded eyes.
Tender Tears: Usually accompanied by Tears of Remorse.
Time Travel: After wishing to have the power to defeat witches before their births, she travels throughout all of time—past, present and future—to appear to every dying magical girl who has ever existed and cleanse the darkness from their Soul Gems.
Tomboy and Girly Girl: Girly Girl to Sayaka's Tomboy. It's not especially because she's so girly but because Sayaka is more boyish.
Took a Level in Badass: Zigzagged. She spends most of the series as a Muggle, before it was revealed that in previous timelines, she became a magical girl. In fact, she becomes stronger and stronger as a magical girl with each press of the Reset Button. At the end of the series she becomes a goddess-like figure.
Totalitarian Utilitarian: As Kriemhild Gretchen she helps as many people as possible by enclosing them in her barrier.
Trademark Favorite Food: She has several favorite foods in each seasons, According to her 100 questions.
- Her favorite food in every season is cream stew.
- Her favorite food in spring is sakura-mochi.
- Her favorite food in summer is shaved ice.
- Her favorite food in fall is sweet potatoes.
- Her favorite food in winter is apple pie.
Tragic Bromance: A female example with Homura. They develop the closest relationship of the main group but are separated at the end. In the manga, this is averted because they are reunited in Ultimate Madoka's Heaven.
True Final Boss: The final witch encountered in the series is not Walpurgisnacht, but Madoka's own, planet-eating, scary-as-hell witch form. It could also qualify as a Post-Final Boss due to being destroyed by Madoka's wish rather than being fought beforehand.
The Unreveal: The only looks we get of her witch form are a black, thundercloud-like entity mid-transformation in one timeline and a colossal grey silhouette in another timeline. The witch's name, Kriemhild Gretchen, was originally this but was shown in a subsequent broadcast. Her witch card shows what Gretchen looks like here.
Useless Protagonist: In a series where the only way to be useful is to throw your entire life away, few can blame her for being hesitant to do just that. Even so she desperately tries to be of any help towards the other magical girls, and is perfectly willing to throw her life away for their sake. It's just that one of said magical girls is actively trying to prevent her from sacrificing herself, and even calls her a naive fool for being so self-sacrificing.
Unwitting Instigator of Doom: A past variant of Madoka asked Homura to go back in time and stop her from contracting, unaware of just how difficult this would be.
Walking Spoiler: If you've made it this far down the page, this should already be obvious.
Weapon-Based Characterization: Madoka's bow helps her to pinpoint problems and take them out without collateral damage, which is more or less what she does with her final wish. It also indicates that her solution to things is going to upset Homura, a shield-user who isn't okay with her loved one dying for any reason, ever.
Wide-Eyed Idealist: She just wants people to be happy in this world. What's wrong with that?! Combined with sufficient knowledge, she uses her wish to restructure the whole universe into a more idealistic place.
World's Strongest Man: As pointed out by Kyubey, Madoka's potential is so great that any wish she might have, even including becoming a god can be fulfilled. As a Magical Girl, her magical power is so great that she can kill the strongest witch in existence. Unfortunately, unless she dies after the battle, she replaces Walpurgisnacht as the most powerful witch in existence. In the final timeline, she kills that witch too and becomes a goddess.
Kyubey: It was bound to happen sooner or later, the strongest magical girl turning into the most fearsome witch.
You Are Not Alone:
- Madoka says this to Mami to cheer her up. It distracts her enough to make a critical error in her fight. Mami usually fights coldly and calculatedly, but in that particular fight she was reckless and was showing-off... and then HEADCHOMP.
- Madoka also tells this to Homura after Mami's death. Homura seems a little receptive, but is soon back to warning Madoka about what could happen.
- In the final episode, she tells this to every magical girl that ever lived and ever will live. Then she gathers them all on the same plane of existence so they never will be alone again.

Mami Tomoe

Voiced by: Kaori Mizuhashi (Japanese), Carrie Keranen (English)^{Foreign VAs}

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mami_magical_girl.png

"This isn't supposed to be fun. What we're doing is very dangerous. Don't forget that, okay?"

^{Click here to see Mami in her normal attire.}

"Oh, look at this. It isn't the sort of behavior you'd expect from a role model, is it? I'm not very good at this sort of thing, am I?"

A nurturing upperclassman at Madoka's school and a veteran magical girl. She wields an infinite number of magical flintlock rifles along with various ribbon-based binding spells. Her parents died in a car accident, and she lives alone.

Abnormal Ammo: She uses her magic ribbons as ammo for her muskets.
Achilles' Heel: As a magazine interview notes, her focus on ribbons means she would be at a very serious disadvantage against a enemy that can't be restrained. Like Charlotte, as noted by the same interview.
Action Girl: Her introduction is saving Madoka and Sayaka from witches. She's a veteran Magical Girl with years of experience and knows how to use it.
Ascended Extra: Mami was just a secondary character killed off early in the anime. She becomes the protagonist of The Different Story, which focuses on Mami's past with Kyoko and follows her story in a timeline where she survives the battle against Charlotte.
Back from the Dead: In the Grand Finale, Madoka's wish means that the witch who killed Mami never existed, meaning that Mami is still alive and well.
Badass Adorable: She pulls magic rifles out of her hat or with a curtsy!
Badass Bookworm: Mami's sole magical power is the ability to create ribbons. In order to create her guns, she taught herself the engineering talents required to create a flintlock rifle capable of firing multiple types of ammunition out of ribbons and at the age of thirteen.
Be Careful What You Wish For: Her wish to Kyubey was "to continue living" after being mortally wounded in a car accident. However, this backfires on her because she didn't specify saving her parents as well, leaving her to survive the car accident while both her parents died.
Beware the Nice Ones: She's one of the nicest characters in the franchise, but in Gertrud's barrier, she is able to slaughter the vast majority of the familiars and the witch quite easily.
Big Fancy House: Its exact size varies across the franchise, but Mami's penthouse apartment is certainly large for someone who lives alone, let alone a teenager whose parents died in a car crash.
Big Sister Mentor: To Madoka and Sayaka; she taught them about magical girl life and gave them a 'trial version' so they could understand what they were getting into. Also to Kyoko in the past and possibly to Homura in other timelines as well.
BFG: Tiro/Filo Finale, her finisher. It's a massive matchlock which can vary in size or form.
Boom, Headshot!: During her Freak Out in the fourth timeline, Madoka mercy kills her to save Homura's life by shooting the gem off of her hat, killing her instantly.
Brick Joke:
- Her teacup is broken in episode 3 to symbolize her death.
- The second episode shows her sitting at the glass table in her room as she explains how Witches are responsible for many otherwise-unexplainable murders and suicides. Her own, for instance. Then there's a closeup of her hands resting gracefully on her lap in the proper sitting position. Sure, it shows how mature she is but pay attention to her reflection in the tabletop. She's holding her upside-down head in her hands.
Broken Ace: She is an elegant, skilled fighter who acts kind and gentle and appears as a role model, but her ideal magical girl image is just a facade to hide how broken she is from constantly fighting witches on her own.
Broken Bird: Does what she can to smile, but is pretty screwed up inside. To put it into perspective, in one timeline, upon finding out that Magical Girls turn into witches, she gets so broken that she very quickly resolves to commit triple-murder-suicide. In another timeline (The Different Story Manga), she commits suicide by destroying her own soul gem, albeit so that Madoka wouldn't have to wish her to have a normal life back, so it overlaps somewhat with Heroic Sacrifice — Madoka resurrected Sayaka, instead.
Broken Hero: She is seen as the ideal magical girl by Madoka and Sayaka, but confesses that she cries a lot when alone and says her smiles are all false.
Broken Pedestal: In The Different Story, both her apprentices Sayaka and Kyoko view Mami as the perfect magical girl and they come to feel their selfishness makes them undeserving of having Mami as a mentor. Eventually, Mami reveals her own hidden weakness and selfishness to them, admitting that she's nothing but a sad, lonely girl who pretends to be perfect to impress others. Sayaka is so appalled by learning that the hero she looked up to was a farce that she completely snaps and turns into a witch. Kyoko, on the other hand, is shocked to discover that Mami is so mentally fragile as to fall into despair after learning the Awful Truth about magical girls turning into witches, but she still cherishes her as her former Big Sister Mentor.
Bullet Hell: Creates these with the many rifles she summons.
But Not Too Foreign: Creators have said that she's not fully Japanese. Her name is a Spanish word and her final shot is in Italian, and Ume Aoki says that she designed Mami after the image of a western gunner, but her true ethnicity has yet to be revealed.
Calling Your Attack: "Tiro Finale!" (Italian: "Final Shot!")
- The third drama CD has Mami insisting Kyoko call her attack too—and she even picks out a name for it.
Cool Big Sis: She is the mature center that the other girls orbit around. It's carried over to meta level; the staffs, the voice actresses, and the fans usually call her Mami-san because of this very reason.
Critical Hesitation Blunder: She goes into Charlotte's barrier thinking the witch will be an easy kill, but then the witch suddenly shifts into her second form, a giant worm with a mouthful of sharp teeth. Mami is too shocked to move when she sees Charlotte flying right at her mouth-first, and gets her head bitten off.
Cruel and Unusual Death: Being decapitated and then eaten by a creepy clown-faced caterpillar-like witch DEFINITELY counts. You can see her decapitated body fall to the ground and hear the crunching.
Curb-Stomp Battle: Her fight against Gertrud and her familiars. They never stood a chance.
Dance Battler: She shoots, swirls, and bashes with her rifles all while her strings swirls about prettily too.
Dead Star Walking: First magical girl and features in the opening but dies in the third out of 12 episodes.
Deer in the Headlights: During her fight with Charlotte in episode 3. It does not end well.
Despair Event Horizon: In a previous timeline, after learning the Awful Truth about witches, she loses all hope and kills Kyoko. She plans on going for Homura and Madoka before offing herself as well, but is instead killed by Madoka.
- In The Different Story she puts up with a lot of awful, traumatic things before the death of Kyoko, her surrogate sister and former student, right after their reconciliation finally pushes her over the edge. Unlike other timelines, she just quietly commits suicide by crushing her Soul Gem.
Died Happily Ever After: Implied to be her eventual fate, following Madoka's wish.
Doppelgänger Attack: Rebellion reveals that she can use her ribbons to create duplicates of herself.
Drink-Based Characterization: Being a Proper Lady and Lady of War, Mami pulls a tea cup from somewhere and sips from it right after a battle.
Driven to Suicide: The Different Story manga ends with Mami shattering her own soul gem to join her parents and her sister figure Kyoko in death. Homura remarks due to Mami's personality, she is guaranteed to succumb to this if she ever finds out the truth about witches and uses the events of Episode 10 of the anime as reference.
Eaten Alive: Is devoured by Charlotte, in front of Madoka and Sayaka.
Every Proper Lady Should Curtsy: Then guns start to fall from under her skirt...
Expy: Ume Aoki has said she shares many traits with Hiro from Hidamari Sketch. Physically she strongly resembles Miyako, who also shares the same voice actress.
Family-Unfriendly Death: Decapitated, eaten alive, then having your remains chewed on even more in front of two innocent, 14 year old girls. You can see a shadow of what remains of her body land near Homura after Charlotte explodes.
Feminine Women Can Cook: The third drama CD reveals that she's a Supreme Chef.
Finishing Move: Tiro/Filo Finale, a massive matchlock rifle.
Foil: To Homura. They're both veteran Magical Girls, but while Mami is warm and inviting, Homura is cold and aloof. Mami wants to believe in the traditional magical girl show - even using Calling Your Attacks where no-one else does, whereas Homura knows the truth. Mami appears kind and selfless despite having some questionable motives for recruiting Madoka and Sayaka, whereas Homura appears harsh and to be a magical girl similar to Kyoko but is actually time travelling solely for Madoka's benefit and not her own. Even their uniform colors are opposites. Mami's color yellow is the opposite to Homura's purple.
Fond Memories That Could Have Been: At the end of The Different Story manga, Mami commits suicide and dreams of a normal life in a world where she could stay friends with Kyoko and Sayaka and her parents never died.
Freak Out: After Oktavia's death in another timeline, she kills Kyoko and would have shot Homura, Madoka, and herself too if Madoka hadn't killed her (Mami) first.
Friendly Sniper: She's pleasant toward Madoka and Sayaka, but admits that she has no real friends.
Gender-Blender Name: Her witch form, Candeloro, has a name that's technically masculine.
Girly Bruiser: She's quite the talented magical girl, and hosts tea parties after gunfights with witches.
Go Mad from the Revelation: Episode 10 reveals that this happened to her in at least one timeline after being forced to fight and kill witch Sayaka (from her point of view) and discovering that everything she believed in was a lie, to the point where she starts killing her friends to save them from a Fate Worse than Death.
Mami: (sobbing as she aims her gun at Homura) If Soul Gems give birth to witches...then we have no choice but to die, don't we!? Both me...AND YOU!
Good Is Not Soft: She's extremely kind, helpful, and motherly to her friends, and utterly ruthless when slaughtering witches, even going out of her way to hunt down familiars that don't have grief seeds to save as many innocents as possible. She's willing to kill her own friends when she discovers they'll eventually turn into witches and do evil things.
Gratuitous Italian: Tiro Finale!
Gun Kata: The musket variant. She clobbers Charlotte with them.
Guns Akimbo: One musket in each hand; one to shoot with and the other to club witches with.
The Gunslinger: With all those muskets she's a terrific shot. She's had plenty of time to practice.
Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Kindhearted and feminine but she's also very lonely and depressed, angsty over the accident that killed her parents and she takes Good Is Not Soft to high levels.
Hates Being Alone: She took on so many students because she can't stand loneliness, having been alone ever since she contracted due to the death of her parents. When Madoka decides to become a magical girl so she won't be alone, she becomes deliriously happy.
Healing Hands: She can heal the injuries of others, patching up Kyubey's body after he's injured by Homura in the first episode. This is presumably connected to her wish, which was to survive a car crash that killed her parents and left Mami herself critically injured.
Heart Is an Awesome Power: Her only power is to create ribbons. She learned to make bridges out of her ribbons and even locks that can trap Homura.
Heroic BSoD:
- In at least one of the alternate timelines. She doesn't cope with learning what magical girls become witches. This unfortunately causes her to kill Kyoko and die at the hands of Madoka because she thought this would be the best way to prevent becoming a witch.
- She had one in the 3rd drama CD when Kyoko left her embittered due to their ideals becoming wholly different, lamenting that she's left alone again.
- In The Different Story manga, which centers around her, she breaks down so badly that she takes her own life.
Hero of Another Story: By the time she meets Madoka and Sayaka, she's been a magical girl for years and won a turf war or two.
Hyperspace Arsenal: She can pull those muskets from her skirts and her hat. When she finishes off an enemy, she can also pull out a cup of tea from nowhere.
Idiot Ball: She catches it in Episode 3, with fatal results. If she survived as a magical girl for years, then why did she just sit there while Charlotte was about to eat her?
- This is given a nod in Oriko Magica, a timeline in which she fights Charlotte and lives; after the fight, she comments that she could have been killed if she'd let her guard down. The implication seems to be that Madoka's power of friendship speech in the main timeline distracted her to the point that she wasn't giving her whole attention to the fight with Charlotte, and that was why she got killed.
I Just Want to Have Friends: Her greatest wish is to have a friend.
Implausible Hair Color: She's a Japanese girl with blonde hair.
Improbable Hair Style: Her cone-like curls are highly improbable to pull off in real life, much less maintain orderliness after all the fighting she does. Rebellion reveals that she curls them with magic.
Interclass Friendship: While it's unknown if she is rich, she is more well off then Kyoko Sakura who comes from a poor Christian family. She became both a friend and mentor to Kyoko.
It's All About Me: Her motivation is basically to encourage other girls to form a contract so she can have friends, despite knowing how dangerous it is and being a magical girl as long as Homura had, so she had probably seen her fair share of other magical girls get killed. She's not nearly as bad as most examples as she does thoroughly warn Madoka and Sayaka against wasteful, selfish wishes and motivations, but when Madoka insists that she wants to be a magical girl to help Mami so she won't have to fight alone anymore, she immediately concedes.
Just Desserts: Not because she was ever evil, but because she was unusually reckless.
Killed Offscreen: In the first and second timeline, her death wasn't shown. The first timeline however did indicate that she was killed by Walpurgisnacht.
Kill the Cutie: Mami is well-mannered, maternal, and sweet, she becomes a beloved mentor to both Sayaka and Madoka, naturally she's the first out of the girls to die, and the way she does is horrific, heavily traumatizing her protégés. It's undone as a result of Madoka's wish though.
Lady of War: She uses her guns with a heavy emphasis on precision, grace and high calculation instead of brute force. She also finishes her battles with a curtsy and sipping tea.
"I can't let myself look uncool in front of my magical girl trainees!" A meal, on the other hand...
Last-Name Basis: Typically calls the other girls by their last name and the "-san" honorific. The dub changes it to First-Name Basis.
The Leader: Of Madoka's team because she's the mature veteran.
Lethal Harmless Powers: Urobuchi has stated that her only power is to create ribbons. Ergo, the matchlock rifles she conjures, as well as the bullets they fire, are actually constructed using her ribbons.
Leeroy Jenkins: This is the very trope that turns her into an item on Charlotte's menu; instead of her usual precision and caution she fought with reckless abandon.
Leitmotif: "Credens justitiam".
Leonine Contract: She could either take up Kyubey's offer to become a Magical Girl or die alongside her parents, which is the first hint that Kyubey is far more sinister than he seems.
Macross Missile Massacre: Her choice of attack when she first shows up involves summoning and shooting hundreds upon hundreds of gigantic matchlocks. She can fire them fast enough to match actual machine-gun fire, and can use them to fire any type of bullet she wants, though they can only fire one each.
Mage Marksman: She uses her magic powers to conjure single-shot muskets, bombards and cannons out of thin air. Sometimes in massive amounts, only to have them fire a shot each and disappear.
Magical Girl: The closest thing this show has to a traditional one; a friendly girl who transforms into an elaborate outfit to fight monsters For Great Justice. According to the 3rd Drama CD, this is an Invoked Trope.
Magic Skirt: Her magic holds her skirt up while she is dangling upside down.
Mask of Sanity: Her elegant and nurturing personality hides a dangerous instability; according to Homura, the Awful Truth knocks her mask off every time. Averted in Oriko and The Different Story — the former has her regain her hope thanks to Yuma, while the latter has her calm down, accept her fate, and commit suicide quietly.
Master of Threads: Mami can create ribbons which she can use in various ways such as binding enemies or creating a bridge.
Meaningful Name: "Mami" means "Mommy" in Spanish, emphasizing her gentle, nurturing character and her role as Team Mom, and Tomoe Gozen was perhaps the most famous female samurai, renowned for her valor and combat prowess.
- Tomoe is a rare female Japanese name that means "friend and blessing". She sure was.
Mentor Archetype: She acts as a mentor to Sayaka and Madoka, and persuades them not to waste their lives and talent on a stupid wish, and to join her as a Puella Magi to fight witches.
Mentor Occupational Hazard: While mentoring two magical girl candidates, poor Mami is eaten by the witch Charlotte.
Mercy Kill: In at least one of the alternate timelines, she learns that magical girls turn into witches and decides that it is better for them to die right there than to become witches and start killing humans. The order she picked in mercy killing her allies makes a lot more sense when you know that she and Kyoko used to be good friends before the death of Kyoko's family. Mami knew Kyoko had been living on the edge of despair since said incident, and knowing what would happen if she'd truly go over the edge and her attachment to Sayaka, it would be easy for her to see that she would turn into a witch next, something she really did not want to see, especially after what happened to Sayaka. There's also the fact that as a hardened veteran Kyoko would've reacted alot quicker to Mami's Murder-Suicide attempt and put up a decent fight which is why Mami didn't finish Homura off right after tying her up but shot Kyoko dead next while probably not expecting Madoka to try to kill her.
Minor Living Alone: Mami's parents died in an accident. As it turned out, she also had no relatives, and thus had no choice but to live on her own.
Ms. Fanservice: Has easily the most attractive figure of the principle cast; a fact the cinematic adaptations love to emphasize.
My Greatest Failure:
- Using her wish to live, but not to revive her parents as well. She doesn't openly regret making her wish since it saved her life, but she asks Madoka to think carefully of hers and lectures Sayaka when she learns that she wants to heal Kyosuke, implying that she feels guilty anyway.
- In the PSP game, Mami openly expresses that she resents herself for failing to save her parents. She states that she made "a selfish, cowardly wish" and that she was only ever thinking about herself. The despair of this realization (as well as the pain she experienced when she saw the despair of the mother of a boy she had failed to save from a witch) eventually pushes her over the edge, and she becomes the witch Candeloro.
Mundane Utility: As shown in Rebellion, she uses magic to curl her hair into their iconic corkscrew shape.
Nice Girl: She's a very polite and kind girl.
No Body Left Behind: Implied to be her ultimate fate due to Madoka's wish.
No Ontological Inertia: On the way to confronting Charlotte, she turns down Homura’s offer to fight in her stead out of distrust and restrains with ribbons, promising to release her when she comes back. Just as Charlotte sinks its fangs down on her head, the ribbons binding Homura unravel on their own. Homura quickly figures out why she’s free even though Mami hasn’t come back, and runs off to defeat Charlotte herself before Madoka and Sayaka become its next meal.
Not So Stoic: When she has an Heroic BSoD and confesses to Madoka that she's far more frail than she lets her see. Also the revelation that magical girls can transform into witches, which in an alternate timeline, makes her flip out and in Puella Magi Oriko Magica almost makes her fall into catatonic despair.
Of Corsets Sexy: She wears a corset in her magical girl outfit.
An Offer You Can't Refuse: How Mami became a Magical Girl. It was either make a contract with Kyubey or die in a car crash.
Off with Her Head!: Initially in Episode 3 by Charlotte. Thanks to that, the Japanese fans now associate her name as a verb of the trope.
Ojou Ringlets: She has a pair of large corkscrew curls that start behind her ears and frame her face. She's the Ojou because of her deceased family's wealth and her own class and uses a more graceful style of Gun Kata.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business: If OOC equals happiness-induced recklessness, you're going to end up on a witch's menu.
The Paragon: A paragon of Magical Girl-hood... for all that it entails. Sayaka, and even Kyubey, consider her to be the exception to most magical girls because she's the only one who is fully devoted in keeping Mitakihara safe from both witches and familiars while others will simply hunt witches for the grief seeds, and managing to do it by herself for years without dying or transforming.
Please, Don't Leave Me: Two cases of this in The Different Story:
- When Kyoko broke off their partnership, Mami desperately tried to stop her both because she didn't want to lose the only magical girl who was her friend and leave Kyoko all alone after the Sakura Pater Familicide incident had happened recently.
- Later on, Sayaka also wants to stop teaming up with Mami because deliberately abandoned her love rival to die at hands of a witch. Mami begs her to stay together with her because all she wants is to have a friend who is also a magical girl. Sayaka feels glad to hear that, but she ends up losing all respect for Mami because she's trying to stay friends with someone who tried to let an innocent die and this causes Sayaka to transform into a witch.
Poor Communication Kills: If she'd had all the facts, she probably wouldn't have mistrusted Homura enough to leave her tied up and try to fight Charlotte alone.
Proper Tights with a Skirt: In her normal attire because she is a Proper Lady.
Razor Wire: As demonstrated in The Different Story, she can sharpen her ribbons to act like these.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue to Kyoko's red in the past and in The Different Story. The mentor had the grace and cool head while the student was more hotblood and crude.
Replacement Goldfish: Her witch form, Candeloro, has minions named Du Polignac who are described as her precious friends. One has pink hair in pigtails like Madoka, while the other has red hair in a ponytail like Kyoko.
Sacrificial Lamb: Zigzagged.
- In alternate timelines, she wavers between this and a Sacrificial Lion. While she survives much longer in Homura's previous loops, until just before Madoka's battle with Walpurgisnacht, her screentime is often scarce and, with the exception of her Freak Out, her death is merely a background event.
- Averted in Oriko Magica, where she's much more careful against Charlotte. She even makes a remark about how she could have easily died.
Secretly Selfish: Mami gives the impression of being the only completely altruistic and virtuous magical girl there is in the Crapsaccharine World, to the point Sayaka and Kyoko think that she's a unique epitome of selflessness. The truth is Mami never wanted to be a hero of justice, but tries to save as many people as she can as a way to alleviate her Survivor Guilt over using her wish to only save herself instead of saving her parents in the traffic accident too. Her saintly image is just a mask she puts on to impress her apprentices in hopes they will like her and stay with her if she looks perfect to them.
Shout-Out: She's not the first magical girl to be named Mami.
Signature Headgear: A feathered hat which acts as Hyperspace Arsenal in the other world.
Skilled, but Naive: Ultimately while Mami is quite the experienced magical girl in combat with a wider variety of hard learned skills and talent, her greatest weakness is a lack of awareness of the darker side of her job. She is well aware that being a magical girl is lonely, dangerous, and you will regret a bad wish, but she is completely unaware of the origin of witches and the nature of Soul Gems. As a result she does have a lot of, and gives, Madoka and Sayaka genuine, hard learned advice, but there is simply parts of the job she can't give them advice or warnings on because she doesn't know about it.
Small Girl, Big Gun: She's a teenage girl and her Tiro Finale is as big as a tank.
Social Services Does Not Exist: Her parents are gone because they were killed in the same accident that Kyubey used to get her to become a magical girl, leaving her completely alone in their penthouse.
Stepford Smiler: By her own admission, her smiles are nothing more than an act.
The Stoic: Of the "say something horrific without any emotions" variety.
Storm of Blades: Of many rifles pointed at the enemy. Unlimited Musket Works, indeed.
Strike Me Down: In The Different Story, after Sayaka turns into a witch, Mami and Kyoko get into a fight, after which a suicidal Mami begs Kyoko to kill her. Kyoko refuses and instead uses her illusion magic to make Mami think her soul gem is clean, in order to prevent her from becoming a witch. It succeeds in stalling the matter out, buying time for Kyoko to gather grief seeds... but Kyoko herself dies fighting a witch, and Mami ends up shattering her own soul gem.
Supreme Chef: According to Kyoko in the third drama CD, she's a fantastic cook.
Survivor Guilt: When Kyubey contracted with her after the car accident, she only wished for herself to be saved and didn't wish for her parents to come back to life. She has felt guilty about it since.
Swiss-Army Superpower: Everything Mami can do comes from a simple starting power, the creation of ribbons.
Tea Is Classy: She serves tea when her friends visit her penthouse.
Team Mom: She plays the role of a caring, gentle and nurturing mentor to Madoka and Sayaka.
Theme Music Power-Up: This pretty much plays anytime she's transforming into her magical girl outfit, or when she's pulling a Big Damn Heroes moment but it doesn't save her in Episode 3...
A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: After Madoka gives her a "You Are Not Alone" speech, Mami goes into her next fight guns akimbo. Unfortunately, her recklessness costs her her head and, naturally, her life.
Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Mami can be considered one of the people responsible for Sayaka's eventual breakdown and transformation into a witch right after Kyosuke and Hitomi. Mami's pretense at being the ideal magical girl when her true self is far from it ended up creating an unrealistic image of a perfect hero of justice in Sayaka's mind that no one could ever truly live up to. Sayaka becomes a magical girl to try to be just like Mami, but she soon realizes it's impossible and this is what kickstarts her depression. Taken further in the The Different Story, where Mami confesses her hidden selfishness and weakness in hopes that will convince Sayaka to stay friends with her. Instead, Sayaka completely snaps at realizing not even her idol Mami was perfect and turns into a witch.
Walking Spoiler: Because of her gruesome death a quarter of the way in the series, it's hard to discuss Mami in a spoiler-free way without bringing it up.
We Hardly Knew Ye: In the anime, she dies in the third episode and otherwise has little screentime in alternate timelines. Spin-offs do expand more on her character.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: Post-Heroic BSoD, she kills Kyoko because she thought she was saving them from becoming monsters.
We Used to Be Friends: The third drama CD shows that she knew Kyoko when they were younger and were friends and partners in fighting witches, until the Pater Familicide happened and Kyoko decided to be selfish with her magic.
Worf Had the Flu: It's implied that her Broken Bird status is holding her back a lot, and the "Rebellion" movie confirms it by having her in a far better mental status and capable of an attack that could have one-shot Walpurgisnacht.
The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): A veteran magical girl and the first casualty.
Yamato Nadeshiko: She's feminine, polite, good at cooking, acts like a mother figure towards the other girls, and has a graceful fighting style. In one scene, she calmly sips tea immediately after a battle. Discussed in The Different Story when Mami mentions during an internal monologue that she exaggerates this part of her personality in order to be a perfect role-model Magical Girl for her pupils. However, she doesn't have any of the yamato nadeshiko's typical looks; she has blonde hair that she wears in Ojou Ringlets, is noticeably well-endowed, and the creators have also stated that she isn't fully Japanese.
Yandere: Her witch form, Candeloro, hates being lonely and has an inviting nature, inviting visitors to her tea party and tying them up when they try to leave.
Yank the Dog's Chain: After making a contract with Kyubey, Mami finds herself experiencing loneliness as her parents are dead and is prevented from having a social life due to her Magical Girl lifestyle. She finds Kyoko, another Magical Girl, whom she takes under her wing and becomes friends with and putting an end to her isolation until Kyoko grows bitter from her Pater Familicide, breaking up her partnership with Mami and leaving her all alone again. Some time later, she saves two girls Madoka and Sayaka who are discovered to have magical potential and Madoka tells Mami she intends to become a Magical Girl and find alongside her which fills Mami with glee. Then she is killed gruesomely moments later.

Kyoko Sakura

Voiced by: Ai Nonaka (Japanese), Lauren Landa (English)^{Foreign VAs}

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kyouko_magical_girl.png

"Hey, God. If you're there, my life sucked. So for once, please, let me have a happy dream."

^{Click here to see Kyoko in her normal attire.}

"You thinking about becoming a magical girl on some stupid whim? I'd never allow that to happen. Hell, I'd kick your ass before you could. If you do this, then you're putting your life in danger. The only people who should do this are the ones who've got no other choice. Anybody else who sticks their nose in it is just messing around. And that's dumb."

A veteran magical girl. Introduced as morally ambiguous and selfish, she first appears as a foe to Madoka and Sayaka, serving as a "pseudo-villain" for a few episodes. Her view of a magical girl's duties is ruthlessly utilitarian; for example, on her first encounter with Sayaka, she suggests allowing a familiar to feed on humans and mature into a witch so as to ultimately gain a grief seed from slaying it. She wields a halberd with a segmented, chained shaft, giving her weapon dangerous flexibility and reach. However, in the end she reveals she's not at all the bad person she seemed to be...

If you want to read about her from her perspective, click here.

Accidental Truth: After her father found out that she was the reason that people started to listen to his religious teachings, he was horrified and called her a witch. Although neither of them were aware of it, by becoming a magical girl, Kyoko had also become a witch — just not a fully grown one.
Ambiguously Gay: Kyouko never shows any interest in boys, but becomes very friendly with Sayaka once her initial antagonism passes. She shares food with her, tells her her Dark and Troubled Past, tries to give her advice to got over her hero complex, and sacrifices herself to be Together in Death. Their relationship has all the hallmarks of a tragic romance.
Anti-Hero: After her Heel–Face Turn, she becomes mainly a Knight in Sour Armor.
Anti-Villain: Initially appears as a dangerous antagonist and a cynical Social Darwinist who lets people die just to harvest more Grief Seeds for herself. However, it turns out that she isn't outright malicious, and is merely a broken girl: her selfishness is a result of her selfless wish backfiring spectacularly, and she later warms up to Sayaka and others after realizing the truth about magical girls, to the point that she isn't antagonistic at all in Rebellion.
Arc Villain: Serves as the main villainous focus for a few episodes until her Heel–Face Turn, but mostly as the catalyst to demonstrate The Plan and intention of the real villain, Kyubey.
Ascended Extra: Like Mami, Kyoko is given a bigger role in the spin-off The Different Story, which explores more of Kyoko's backstory and relationship with Mami.
Back from the Dead: In the Grand Finale. Since she died fighting a witch, Madoka is able to revive her with her wish.
Badass Adorable: An interesting example of this considering she's a Dark Action Girl who starts out as very violent and aggressive, but she's also a very lively and cheerful person who is constantly eating cutesy-looking sweets and can often be found gleefully dancing at the arcade, she's rarely seen without a mischievous looking smile. Her cuteness doesn't make her any less deadly nor ruthless though. This trope becomes more clear After her Heel–Face Turn, when she's a lot more friendly and endearing.
Berserk Button: Wasting food. When Sayaka deliberately drops the apple Kyoko tosses to her, she grabs her by the throat and threatens to kill her before collecting herself and picking the apple back up. Justified, since her tragic backstory involved her family enduring starvation after her father was excommunicated.
Better to Die than Be Killed: After finding out the whole Awful Truth and unable to save Sayaka, Kyoko felt she had two choices: destroy her soul gem in a final attack to put Sayaka out of her misery and die together, or win the fight the usual way and still become a witch sooner or later, be killed by a magical girl and die alone. Considering her past, guess which one she picked?
Big Damn Heroes: Gen Urobuchi loves to play with this trope. In Kyoko's case, Homura saves Sayaka from her and then she saves Sayaka from Elsa Maria. Then she saves Sayaka when she thinks Homura is about to attack her. She tops it off by protecting Madoka and Homura's escape from Oktavia... by going out with a bang.
Big Eater: She's always eating something and it's not Played for Laughs, as there is a Freudian Excuse for it.
Bifauxnen and Lad-ette: The Lad-ette to Sayaka's Bifauxnen. Kyoko has her hair tied a Tomboyish Ponytail and has a aggressive and rude personality, while Sayaka has boyish short hair and a personality of Knight in Shining Armor.
Blood Knight: Unlike the other girls she enjoys hunting witches mainly for her own selfish purposes.
Broken Bird: She used to be a lot like Sayaka, a "hero of justice" but then her dad freaked out and killed their family. Is there any surprise she is now so cynical and selfish?
Bystander Syndrome: In the manga Homura's Revenge, she has no interest in helping Homura save Madoka since Homura can't offer her anything to reverse with her time magic in return.
Byronic Heroine: A good person with a dark past and a lot of angst who engages in hedonistic behavior; yep.
Calling Your Attacks: She never does this in the anime, but in the third drama CD, Mami insists on calling her Doppelgänger Attack "Rossa Fantasma" - literally "Red Phantom". Kyoko says it once during battle, but then breaks out laughing afterwards because she can't take it seriously.
Challenge Seeker: Tell her she can't do something. Anything at all. She will do exactly what you say she can't do, or die trying!
Character Catchphrase: "You want some?"
Chaste Hero: The second Drama CD has her as this. When the girls are trying to stop a panties thief, Kyoko doesn't understand why someone would steal used panties. Demonstrated by this illustration◊. All in all, it would be rather logical for someone raised in a church.
Chekhov's Gunman: Appears in the title and credits sequences before appearing in the series. It's also implied that she's the magical girl that Kyubey and Mami talk about in Episode 3, who made a wish for someone else. This is confirmed in the third drama CD.
Clingy Jealous Girl: Becomes this to Mami in The Different Story. After their separation, Kyoko tried to bait Mami to fight her twice and got frustrated both times by her refusal. The irony is that this jealousy is the result of Mami taking Sayaka as her partner.
Clothing Reflects Personality: She's a rough Action Girl and The Lad-ette. In contrast with the girlier female characters, Kyoko's civilian garb is a green hoodie and short shorts instead of a school uniform.
Confusion Fu: It is stated that Kyouko's innate magic is geared towards confusion and illusion, likely born out of her wish to 'sway people's hearts'. An example is summoning clones of herself, which a very easy way to confuse the hell out of your opponent.
Curtains Match the Window: Red hair and eyes.
Cute Little Fangs: She has one and it makes her look like the predator she talks about. (Also cute).
Cynicism Catalyst: She made a shortsighted wish to bring followers to her father's congregation. When he realized what was going on, he killed his family. After this, she decided to work for herself and only herself.
Dark Action Girl: She's selfish, brutal, and not at all heroic. This changes some after her Heel–Face Turn.
Dark and Troubled Past: Her father was a priest, but he was excommunicated for "heresy" and the Sakura family fell in poverty as he couldn't support them anymore. Kyoko used her wish to get more followers for him...but when he found out it was just magic and not his ideas and words, he went crazy and killed himself and his entire family, leaving Kyoko as the only survivor.
Darker and Edgier: Than the other main characters who think of themselves as traditional 'love and justice' magical girls.
Dark Magical Girl: Her time in the show is all about pitting herself and her beliefs against Sayaka, who sees herself and her beliefs as a traditional magical girl. As per the trope, she has a Heel–Face Turn and develops a soft spot for Sayaka, who reminds her of her ideals.
Death Equals Redemption: Part of the reason of her Heel–Face Turn is the realization that magical girls are essentially ~~zombies~~ liches, and that she might as well do something to remedy this situation. Culminating in her Heroic Sacrifice to give the bewitched Sayaka a Mercy Kill. She even gets her final moment of clarity, where she realizes that she has always wanted to protect someone.
Defrosting Ice Queen: Introduced as cold and selfish, but reveals a slightly warmer personality later as she grows fond of Sayaka.
Depending on the Artist: Depending on the artist drawing her, Kyoko's chest size varies from being fairly flat to being one of the largest in the core cast.
Depower: The third drama CD reveals that Kyoko could originally create illusory copies of herself, but she lost this power when her family died.
Despair Event Horizon:
- Played with. As the sole survivor of a Pater Familicide committed by her father she became bitter and jaded, but her soul gem did not completely corrupt, so she did not become a witch. When Kyubey lets slip the Awful Truth, she shows more and more humanity.
- Potentially played straight in the PSP game if Homura defeats Oktavia before she has a chance to save what is left of Sayaka, thus removing the very last trace of hope and idealism she had left, and triggering her transformation into Ophelia.
Died Happily Ever After: Implied in the anime to be her eventual fate, following Madoka's wish.
Dies Wide Open: In one of the timelines after Mami find out that magic girls turn into witches she went crazy and destroys Kyoko soul gem Kyoko falls lifeless with eyes open.
Doppelgänger Attack: The third drama CD reveals that Kyoko's original power was to create decoys of herself. She lost this power when her family died.
Dying Moment of Awesome: She kills Octavia in a Heroic Sacrifice which is also a Together in Death attempt.
Edible Theme Naming: Her first name means "apricot," while her last name means "cherry blossom." Both can be used as food, which makes sense for a girl who eats so much.
Elemental Motifs: Fire. Not only does her theme color tie into fire, but she's also a Fiery Redhead. Her backstory is told in the form of a shadow play, and one needs light (such as fire) to enact it. She dies in a fiery explosion that kills both herself and Sayaka's witch, and her own witch has a burning candle for a head. Also, fire is associated with indiscriminate consumption.
Elemental Personalities: She's the most short-tempered and threatening of the main magical girls. Her elemental motif is fire and it includes her Witch form having a burning candle for a head.
Evil Redhead: Initially, she is an antagonist and her hair color is much darker than pink-haired Madoka.
Face Death with Dignity: Her last moment is her praying to her God.
Fallen Heroine: She was sort of a Church Militant and she acknowledged how stupid heroism is but not even she can help feeling a little sympathy for Sayaka's broken state, leading her to a Heel–Face Turn.
Fiery Redhead: As her red hair indicates, she's abrasive and hotheaded.
Foil:
- To Homura:
  - Homura is a gunslinging Long-Range Fighter, while Kyoko is the best melee fighter out of the main cast.
  - Homura fights for the greater good, but is ultimately driven by a selfish and personal interest. Kyoko is content with killing witches just to survive, but her selfishness also acts a way to prevent others from suffering the same fate as her.
  - Homura is cold and callous because of hostile experiences with them in past timelines and their neverending deaths instilled a sense of indifference towards them in her; Kyoko initially acts hostile towards Madoka and Sayaka, but later warms up to them.
  - Kyoko's growing interest in Sayaka causes her to act like a good person again, a case of Love Redeems. Homura's longstanding dedication to Madoka is what put her through heaps of tragedy in the first place, leading to her becoming the cold person she is now.
- Also to Mami. Mami uses her magic for other people's benefits and fights familiars as well as witches. Kyoko uses her magic for herself and fights only witches. Under the surface, though, Mami is pretending to be a cool and collected mentor, and is trying to get Sayaka or Madoka to contract so she doesn't have to be lonely anymore. Kyoko, meanwhile, is initially hostile to Sayaka but often does the reverse of what she claims - she says she won't use magic for others but helps Sayaka out and tries to let her have a share of the Grief Seeds.
Freudian Excuse: Her love of food comes from her family constantly starving after her father was excommunicated for "heresy" and barely having enough to eat; a scene in the manga shows Kyoko getting punished by her mother for wasting food. Her selfish and Jerkass nature comes from the fact that her wish led to her maddened dad killing the whole Sakura family except for her.
Heel–Face Revolving Door: From a rookie magical girl to an amoral Psycho for Hire to a defrosted Knight in Sour Armor.
Go Out with a Smile: Right before her explosive Heroic Sacrifice, Kyoko gently smiles as she talks to Sayaka and explains the reasons why she wants to die alongside Sayaka so that she doesn't have to be alone anymore, it's a sharp contrast from her usual over the top smirk, and shows how at ease she was in her final moments as she prepared to go to a better place with the person she cares most about.
Good Is Not Nice: Becomes this after her Heel–Face Turn, she's still very snarky and cynical but she really does try to genuinely help out Sayaka and do the right thing, and on the day of her death she's genuinely very sweet and considerate to Madoka.
Heel–Face Turn: Cements this with a near-Precision Bitch Strike as soon as Kyubey lets slip the Awful Truth. She then dedicates herself to preventing her friends from suffering Sayaka's fate.
Heroes Gone Fishing: Homura once meets up with Kyoko while she's playing a dancing game in an arcade.
Heroic Sacrifice:
- She does a Mercy Kill on Sayaka so she won't have to die alone.
- In The Different Story, she uses Oktavia's grief seed to cleanse Mami's soul gem, but this leaves her without another one to use on herself, and she dies while fighting another witch later.
Hero of Another Story: She was a magical girl for a long time. Her start up until meeting Madoka could be its own story.
Hidden Buxom: She has a case of this in the Madoka Magica Slot Machine: Smashing Watermelons mini-game ending◊, where in the full image she's almost on par with Mami. Who knew?
Hidden Depths: She reveals to Madoka in Episode 9 she used to love stories where love would triumph. This is hinted at when Kyoko tells Sayaka about her Dark and Troubled Past; losing her family left her jaded, but she didn't fall into the Despair Event Horizon and she kept on fighting.
Hypocrite: She scolds Homura for coolly explaining the true nature of Magical Girls and Witches to Madoka who is crying over Sayaka's lifeless body, saying that Sayaka was once Madoka's friend and asks if she's even human, but the reason Kyoko came to the city in the first place was to kill Sayaka and take her place as Mitakihara's resident Magical Girl when she heard about her and she likely wasn't thinking about the friends who would mourn Sayaka. Not to mention she was totally fine with letting Witch familiars devour innocent humans so they could become Witches and produce Grief Seeds when killed.
"I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: She tries to do this alongside Madoka in a desperate attempt to save Sayaka after she turns into a Witch. It fails and Kyoko has to kill Sayaka along with herself.
Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: In the manga, during her fight with Oktavia von Seckendorff.
Inconsistent Spelling: "Kyoko" versus "Kyouko". Both are officially endorsed, with the anime materials using Kyoko and manga materials using Kyouko.
Innocently Insensitive: Back when she was Mami's apprentice, Kyoko once mentioned that she didn't exactly think of Mami as her friend. Mami thought this meant Kyoko only saw her as a means to become a stronger magical girl and would eventually abandon her when she learned enough from her. Kyoko was simply too embarrassed to tell Mami that she was like a sister to her.
Interclass Friendship: Came from a poor family and ended up being friends with Mami Tomoe who was more financially well off.
Ironic Echo: When she first encountered Oktavia (Sayaka's witch form), she was rescued by Homura because she was carrying Sayaka's lifeless corpse and had no way to defend herself. When she refused to drop Sayaka's corpse, Homura calls her a hindrance. During their futile attempt to bring Sayaka back from being a witch, a very injured Kyoko leaves an unconscious Madoka to Homura, before stating that they should leave because Homura would not be able to fight with a hindrance like herself, before making her Heroic Sacrifice.
Irony: The daughter of a religious man, who battled witches in the dark, is labeled as a witch by her own father. To make it worse, instead of her father burning her at the stake, he burns himself, Kyoko's mother and younger sister together with their church, leaving Kyoko the last of her family.
It's All About Me: This is what she claims to be her philosophy; that a magical girl should only use her powers to benefit herself. However, she says this to Sayaka because she thinks she would benefit from that philosophy, and then she tries to help Sayaka against a witch.
Jade-Colored Glasses: There was a time she was actually a lot like Sayaka and she wished to be a "hero of justice", but had her optimistic worldview shattered when her father killed her whole family and then himself after finding out people only listened to his preachings because of the wish she'd made.
Japanese Delinquents: She skips school, picks fights with those who enter her territory, wears somewhat inappropriate clothing for her age, and lives off of stolen food. And true to the major character archetype of this trope, she turns out to be nicer than she acts.
Jerkass Has a Point: As cruel as her Social Darwinist outlook may seem, her belief that helping others would only lead to trouble is accurate in light of the series' universe. Both her and Sayaka's contracts came back to bite them horribly, Madoka's attempt to cheer Mami up by promising to fight alongside her distracted the latter in a fight, leading to her death, and finally the whole dark series began from Homura making a wish to prevent Madoka's death resulting in a progressively worse "Groundhog Day" Loop.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Initially, she cares about nothing more than killing her foes and leaving people to die in order to benefit herself. Her backstory doesn't justify her horrible treatment of Sayaka before the Awful Truth happened. However, her later interactions with Sayaka and Madoka show that, Jerkass as she is, Kyoko is still somewhat redeemable, and ultimately a good person. The spin-off manga The Different Story shows more of Kyoko's better side through her interactions with her former Big Sister Mentor Mami who Kyoko cares about like a true sister.
Killed Offscreen: In The Different Story, Kyoko disappears after killing Oktavia and cleansing Mami's soul gem. Kyubey later informs Mami and Homura that Kyoko tried to defeat another witch to get a Grief Seed for herself, but she ran out of magic energy and was killed by the witch.
Kleptomaniac Hero: Implied that she stole most, if not all, of the food she was eating.
Knight in Sour Armor: After being reminded of her ideals by Sayaka she became this; renewed idealism but still bitter.
Knight of Cerebus: There's a reason why they waited until after Mami's death scene to introduce her and why she originally didn't appear with the other core four in promotional materials.
Know When to Fold 'Em: Confrontational as she is, she’d rather not pick a fight with Homura when she doesn’t understand the latter’s powers.
The Lad-ette: She is the poster child for this in a Magical Girl Warrior series. She eats food without manners and at a fast rate, curses constantly, and loves to start fights. This is in contrast with the other tomboy of the series, Sayaka Miki, who has her moments of girlishness.
Lady in Red: Her magical girl outfit is red and she has hedonistic tendencies.
The Lady's Favour: Inverted in The Different Story. Kyoko goes off to fight Oktavia and leaves her ribbon with Mami, promising her to return to get it back.
Lady Swears-a-Lot: By Japanese-standards, her vocabulary is filthy and at best is inappropriately masculine.
Laughably Evil: There are no comic relief characters in Madoka, and definitely not Kyoko, but try not to chuckle a bit as she nonchalantly stuffs her face with food or plays a Bland-Name Product DanceDanceRevolution clone as the events of the series unfold.
Leitmotif: "Anima mala" ("Evil soul").
Letting Her Hair Down: Does this just before sacrificing herself for Sayaka.
Lost Food Grievance: Do not waste food in Kyoko's presence if you value your life. She threatens to kill Sayaka for wasting food. That attitude results most likely from either her religious upbringing, her life in poverty or both.
Magic Knight: Mainly a melee fighter, but her main element is "enchantment" and she can occasionally use illusionary powers.
Master of Illusion: Used to be capable of illusions as her magical girl power before the Pater Familicide incident.
Meaningful Name: 'Kyouko' means 'apricot' (this ties in to Momo, the name of her sister, meaning 'peach'), which symbolizes strength achieved through struggles with adversity. 'Sakura' is the cherry blossom, which represents the transcience of life.
Mercy Kill: Gives one to Sayaka that doubles as a Taking You with Me.
Minor Living Alone: Kyoko lives in her apartment complex alone with no parental supervision due to her father murdering her mother, younger sister, and then himself in a murder-suicide.
My God, What Have I Done?: It's extremely subtle but after nearly strangling Sayaka, her face goes from anger to an expression of shock and she briefly gasps as she lets go of Sayaka, while she never explicitly says it, it is implied she does feel bad for attacking her as at this point she's starting to genuinely like Sayaka deep down. A big contrast from their first meeting where Kyoko almost gleefully tried to kill Sayaka.
Navel Window: Her jacket is opened at the bottom just enough to expose her navel. A lot of art work — both official and fan — implies she's wearing a belly shirt underneath her jacket.
Neck Lift: Performs one on Sayaka when she throws her apple to the ground without eating it.
Nice Girl: The Different Story and the PSP game show that she used to be this back when she first started out as a magical girl, being a very nice and polite girl who wanted to save the world from Witches and had undying respect for Mami, just like Sayaka did. But her father's increasingly abusive behavior after he found out the Awful Truth and eventual Pater Familicide left her jaded and resulted in her becoming far more cynical and selfish to the point where her and Mami's friendship ended because her philosophy developed into the complete opposite of Mami's (at least in a first moment, but she's still a good person deep down).
No Body Left Behind: Implied to be her ultimate fate eventually, due to Madoka's wish.
Nominal Hero: At the start, while she's a magical girl who fights witches and may be loyal to both her teammates and the mission, she cares far more about killing witches, gaining grief seeds, and letting familiars kill people so they can become witches with grief seeds, than she does about protecting civilians. However, she reveals to be ultimately kind-hearted.
Not Your Problem: Kyoko tries to convince Sayaka that she shouldn't bother with trying to save people and should prioritize herself with her power as a magical girl. This only serves to upset Sayaka and drive her away from Kyoko.
Oral Fixation: Always has something in her mouth.
Pater Familicide: In her backstory, her father killed her entire family save her before killing himself.
Pimped-Out Dress: Her magical girl outfit is bloodred to symbolize her aggressive nature and the blood that was spilled as a consequence of her wish, as well. It is also adorned with the symbol of her father's church.
Post-Stress Overeating: She's shown to absolutely scarf down food when upset. After her argument with Sayaka, she practically inhales the apple she's holding out of anger. And when she's desperately trying to figure out if Sayaka can be recovered after witching out, she rapidly pigs out on a huge variety of food.
Power Loss Makes You Strong: Kyoko lost her illusion magic as a result of her believing her family died because of her wish. Kyubey didn't think Kyoko would last with such a drawback, but Kyoko found ways to keep fighting while just relying on her weapon and combat skills. In The Different Story, she's able to go toe-to-toe with a serious Mami and hold out better than she ever did during their training sessions.
Preacher's Kid: Her father was a priest in an unspecified Protestant denomination ^note although it's also mentioned that he practiced an unorthodox version of the faith which alienated his parishioners and even caused him to be excommunicated. Kyoko, unsurprisingly, doesn't seem to retain any trace of her religion after the death of her family.
Psycho for Hire: Initially, she kills witches for their grief seeds and Kyubey has her on call.
Psychosomatic Superpower Outage: She's been unable to use her Master of Illusion powers ever since the Pater Familicide incident. It's implied this was because of the trauma she experienced. As shown in side materials, in a few of the alternate timelines she eventually gets them back.
A Pupil of Mine Until She Turned to Evil: She used to be Mami's apprentice just like Madoka and Sayaka, until the Pater Familicide happened and Kyoko decided to be selfish with her magic.
Red and Black and Evil All Over: Initially she is a (sort of) villain and her magical girl outfit is red with a bit of black. Subverted when she becomes more heroic towards the end.
Redemption Equals Death: Sayaka's influence on Kyoko leads her to perform a Mercy Kill that takes both of of them out.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her eyes are red and she is the first indication that some magical girls are outright evil.
Red Is Heroic: Averted, at least for most of the original anime since she lets familiars turn into witches, so she can collect grief seeds. Eventually, though, she does join the gang and tries to uncorrupt Sayaka, despite it never having been done before. When she can't, she commits a Heroic Sacrifice and makes sure that Sayaka doesn't have to die alone by killing them both with her Soul Gem.
Red Is Violent: Her color theme is red and one of the first things she tries to do on screen is kill Sayaka.
Red Oni, Blue Oni:
- The red to Sayaka's blue. She's more feral and hedonistic and they are color coded. Although ironically as the show goes on, Sayaka becomes more aggressive and emotionally unstable whereas Kyoko becomes far more level headed.
- Also the red to Mami's blue in the past and in The Different Story because she was more reckless and less precise than her mentor.
Say My Name: She yells "SAYAKAAAA!!!" when Sayaka becomes a witch.
Selective Obliviousness: A common theme is how Kyouko says many things... while not actually doing them.
- She says she's going to kill Sayaka... but is content (at first) to only beat her up before walking away.
- She talks trash about Mami and her beliefs... but as other content showed, she at first came back to Mitakihara to try to reconcile with her, before learning about her death. She even made a grave for her.
- She comments on how normal people are essentially just food... but never hurts Madoka and doesn't stop her from going to Sayaka. She even encourages Madoka that she's done nothing wrong and that being a magical girl isn't something to envy.
- She talks about how magic is only meant to be used for herself... but her wish was used for someone else, and even after that she uses magic for Sayaka and Madoka's sake, repeatedly.
Self-Duplication: This used to be what her ability Rosso Fantasma was all about.
Senseless Sacrifice: In The Different Story, she uses Oktavia's grief seed to cleanse Mami's soul gem, but this leaves her without another one to use on herself, and she dies while fighting another witch later. Sadly, Mami is driven to despair by losing Kyoko right after they reconciled and commits suicide.
Serious Business: Nearly strangles Sayaka because she threw an apple on the ground. Played for Drama; see Freudian Excuse above.
Ship Tease: Implied to have a one-sided crush on Sayaka.
Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: Didn't appear in early promotional materials, likely because of her darker nature.
Sour Outside, Sad Inside: At first, she seems to be a mean, selfish girl who believes that magical girls should use their powers for their own purposes. As the series progresses, it's revealed why she acts this way: Her family fell into destitution after her preacher father was excommunicated and when he found out that his followers increased and came back was due to Kyoko's magical girl wish and not from people actually believing in him, he killed his family and himself and only she survived. It is only when she learns about the Awful Truths of being a magical girl and when she saves Sayaka from Homura (who was trying to intimidate her into using a Grief Seed) that she starts to get over her sourness, which culminates in her performing a Mercy Kill to witch Sayaka and sacrificing herself so Sayaka wouldn't be alone.
The Social Darwinist: She compares the fight against witches to the food chain: Witches and their familiars prey on weak humans, while Magical Girls are the apex predators and prey on Witches. Familiars don't drop grief seeds, so she sees no point in killing them before they kill enough people to become a witch themselves. She also applies this to Magical Girls themselves: weaker ones should yield their territory over to the stronger ones or die. She seems to have abandoned this philosophy after learning the true nature of Magical Girls.
Stepford Snarker: Although she's abrasive, Kyoko comes across as very cheery, confident and sarcastic most of the time, however in reality she's a deeply traumatized and sad young girl who is dealing with the guilt of her wish backfiring to the point of it killing her family, and hides it behind a brash yet cheerful facade, even after Sayaka transforms into a witch she doesn't openly show her sadness and becomes more of a Stepford Smiler on the day of her death as she's genuinely nice to Madoka but clearly still heartbroken about Sayaka.
Stopped Caring: She was very idealistic when she started out, wanting to be a hero and save people from witches. After the Pater Familicide, she's now perfectly fine with letting people get killed by Familiars if it means more Grief Seeds. Meeting Sayaka reminds her of her old ideals and eventually gets her to start caring again.
Stupid Sacrifice: The only thing Kyoko accomplished by throwing her soul gem to Oktavia was forcing Homura to fight Walpurgisnacht all by herself.
Suicide Attack: She kills Oktavia with one.
Super Drowning Skills: According to the 4th drama CD, she can't swim.
Super Supremacist: She believes that humans are lower on the food chain because they get eaten by familiars, which evolve into witches, which get killed by magical girls for their Grief Seeds.
Sweet Polly Oliver: In a gag image Kyoko decides to disguise herself as a boy in order to become closer to Sayaka.
Sweet Tooth: She's constantly munching on sweets, even during battle.
Tastes Like Friendship: Kyoko isn't the nicest person, but if she's willing to open up to you, the first thing she'll probably do is hand you a candy bar and say, "You want some?"
Together in Death: To put witch-turned Sayaka out of her misery, Kyoko kills her via Suicide Attack so Sayaka doesn't have to die alone.
Token Evil Teammate: Not really evil, but initially, prior to her Heel–Face Turn, she was a nasty magical girl. Kind of like a mercenary.
Tomboyish Ponytail: She wears her hair in a unkempt high ponytail, fitting her aggressive personality and masculine manner of speaking.
Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Downplayed; aside from using the feminine pronoun "atashi", her speech patterns are very rough and masculine, and when it comes down to it she's not very girly at all. In comparison, Sayaka is quite a bit more feminine than she is.
Took a Level in Jerkass: Let's just say the results of her wish changed her drastically. Before her father killed her family, Kyoko's interactions with Mami are of a naive girl who wants the best for everyone. After the fact, Kyoko cruelly leaves Mami behind and thinks only of her own survival.
Took a Level in Kindness: After starting as a bitch, Sayaka's and Madoka's suffering soften her up little by little, and she genuinely warms towards Sayaka. This culminates in Episode 9 with her bonding with Madoka, then sacrificing herself to save Madoka from a bewitched Sayaka, and putting Sayaka out of her misery.
Troubled, but Cute: Kyoko is the very definition of a bad girl with a troubled past, but still cute.
Tsundere: She comes off as aggressive and bitchy, but there's a warmer personality buried under. These tendencies are more prevalent towards Sayaka and Mami in The Different Story, since she obviously cares about them but refuses to express it openly.
Tsurime Eyes: Her eyes end in a distinct sharp point, befitting her harsh and confident nature.
Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Had Kyoko not picked fights needlessly with Sayaka, Madoka wouldn't have snapped and thrown Sayaka's soul gem away, thus The Reveal would have happened later, or not and all — and thus, Sayaka wouldn't've begun her Start of Darkness either.
Used to Be a Sweet Kid: A Daddy's Girl who made a Selfless Wish and heroically fought witches, who later became a Nominal Hero and Blood Knight.
Variable-Length Chain: Her spear can segment into parts separated by chains. Her spear's shaft length also changes between scenes.
We Used to Be Friends: The third drama CD shows that she and Mami knew each other when they were younger and were friends and partners in fighting witches, until the Pater Familicide happened and Kyoko decided to be more selfish with her magic.
What Have I Become?: Not even she could stay indifferent to the Awful Truth but she takes becoming a lich better than Sayaka.
Whip Sword: Her spear is capable of splitting into chains, but it also appears to be able to curve in a whip-like fashion.
Wide-Eyed Idealist: Implied by her line to Madoka about originally believing in stories about love and courage triumphing over evil. After her father's Pater Familicide, she takes a good level in cynic.
Wrong Genre Savvy: Tries to start an "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight to transform Sayaka back from her witch state. Explicitly lampshades it ("It'd be like one of those stories where love and courage triumph over all"). Considering the tone of the series, it's not surprising that it doesn't work.

Characters / Puella Magi Madoka Magica - Magical Girls

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Voiced by: Aoi Yūki (Japanese), Christine Marie Cabanos (English)^{Foreign VAs}

Voiced by: Kaori Mizuhashi (Japanese), Carrie Keranen (English)^{Foreign VAs}

Voiced by: Ai Nonaka (Japanese), Lauren Landa (English)^{Foreign VAs}

Alternative Title(s): Puella Magi Madoka Magica 2, Puella Magi Madoka Magica Madoka Kaname

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Characters / Puella Magi Madoka Magica - Magical Girls

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Character-Specific Pages

Voiced by: Aoi Yūki (Japanese), Christine Marie Cabanos (English) Foreign VAs Carmen Ambrós (Spanish), Joy Saltarelli (Italian), Caroline Combes (French), Lydia Morgenstern (German)

Voiced by: Kaori Mizuhashi (Japanese), Carrie Keranen (English) Foreign VAs Violeta Bibiloni (Spanish), Letizia Scifoni (Italian), Julia Meynen (German)

Voiced by: Ai Nonaka (Japanese), Lauren Landa (English) Foreign VAsMarga López (Spanish), Veronica Puccio (Italian), Ilona Brokowski (German)

Alternative Title(s): Puella Magi Madoka Magica 2, Puella Magi Madoka Magica Madoka Kaname

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Voiced by: Aoi Yūki (Japanese), Christine Marie Cabanos (English)^{Foreign VAs}

Voiced by: Kaori Mizuhashi (Japanese), Carrie Keranen (English)^{Foreign VAs}

Voiced by: Ai Nonaka (Japanese), Lauren Landa (English)^{Foreign VAs}