Puella Magi Madoka Magica / Tropes G to M

This page covers tropes in Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

Tropes A to F | Tropes G to M | Tropes N to S | Tropes T to Z

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• Gecko Ending: A mild example: the anime ends with Homura walking towards a Bolivian Army Ending while manifesting a pair of Lovecraftian butterfly-like wings, which the game dubs the Black Wings of Corrosion. The manga ends on a far more bittersweet note with Madokami taking her into the afterlife.
• Genre Deconstruction: In Real Life, a Magical Girl is a soldier fighting in an urban environment without infrastructure supporting her and whose enemies may or may not be innocent-looking civilians. The magical animal friend is deliberately giving these powers to children who may not have the emotional strength and experience to handle them.
• George Lucas Altered Version: The Blu-Ray release (which is used on streaming services) made a number of alterations. Some of them were corrections to animation errors and such, but some things were plain changed. Mami's apartment, for instance, is changed from a very stark place with hardly any furniture to a cozy one filled with plush toys and pretty decorations. The Compilation Movie version features new scenes and redone voices.
• German Expressionism: Borrows a lot from it, especially the witches' barrier. Even during real-world sequence, the atmosphere feels dark and surreal. Have we mentioned that Faustian motifs and Gratuitous German are abundant?
• Ghost in the Machine: What happens during a contract is that Kyubey takes the 'little girl inside the head' (i.e. soul) out of his contractee and turns it into a soul gem. Thus, a magical girl's body is a magical meat-puppet controlled and powered by this gem.
• Girly Run:
  • Madoka runs in this fashion in the opening to emphasize the "girl" aspect of "magical girl", and to set the tone for the episode.
  • Meganekko!Homura does a very shaky, unsure version of this, but it's possibly justified by the fact that It's before her power-leveling, and she's still recovering from that heart condition.
• The Glasses Come Off: Just before the last "iteration" of past, Homura takes off her glasses and uses her powers to restore her eyesight. This marks the transition between "Moemura" and the Homura that is introduced in Episode 1.
• Gory Discretion Shot:
  • Zigzagged when Charlotte eats Mami in Episode 3 we don't see the bite but afterward we see it dive down and tear the corpse apart like a wild animal. It pans away again, to the disbelieving and horrified Sayaka and Madoka watching on, but the sounds continue—this just makes it worse.
  • Averted in the manga, where we get to see the entirety of Mami's demise.
• Gratuitous French: The themed cafe that will appear in Matsudo, Chiba is called Cafe du Madoka Magica (Cafe of the Madoka Magica). "Du" (de + le) is masculine; it should be Cafe de la Madoka Magica.
• Gratuitous German:
  • The language of choice for the bizarre creatures at the end of the first episode. They speak in a highly disturbing, screechy, and childlike voice, which is even scarier if you can understand bits of what they're saying. Those flying scissors aren't just for show... ^note  For those who really want to know...: They're saying that they've never seen flowers like them before. This would be creepy enough as it is, but then they say things like "Let's just cut them off." and "We present the roses to our queen."
  • In Episode 2, there is some German scribbled on the wall. It is a quote from Faust about a destroyed world being rebuilt...
  • Translating the runes scattered around yields more Faust quotes.
• Gratuitous Latin:
  • "Puella Magi" almost, but not quite, translates to "Magical Girl". "Puella magi" literally means "Girl of the Sorcerer". This becomes a plot point when it's revealed that witches are fallen magical girls.
  • Almost all of the OST's track titles are in Latin and uses the correct translation for Magical Girl: "puella magica".
• The Greatest Story Never Told: In the end, Homura is the only living witness to everything that has happened, and the new version of Kyubey says he'll have to take her word for it since no proof of it remains.
• Grilling the Newbie: The girls in Homura's new class grill her about her past, which she replies with as dispassionate 'I was hospitalized for a long time' as humanly possible. Because she has experienced this routine countless times.
• Grotesque Cute: The third episode's witch, Charlotte. While she looks like a character from a happy children's show, she bites Mami's head off, then messily eats her corpse, much to Madoka's (and probably some of the audience's) horror. When it tries to eat Homura, it manages to seem almost comical.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Homura's wish was to 'start over her relationship with Madoka' and 'protect her instead of her protecting me'. Thus she gained power over time and can reset the month between Madoka's debut as a Magical Girl and her death/corruption because of Walpurgisnacht. As for Save Scumming, her repeated resets are comparable to a player attempting to save a certain NPC by resetting after every failure and trying a different strategy next time, picking up out-of-character knowledge of the enemies and events of that chapter in the process.
• Guest Strip: PMMM continues the trend of inviting talented semi-pro and Pixiv artists to draw eye catches and end-of-episode preview art, something that has been traditionally done at the last few pages of Doujinshi for decades. The full list of ending cards can be found on the trivia page.
• Guns Akimbo/Gun Kata: Mami shows off her veteran skills by wielding dual flintlocks like gunblades.◊
• Gut Punch: Mami's death in Episode 3 is a shock to the system. Every episode after that is arguably more of a Gut Punch.
  • If Episode 3 is when the kid gloves come off, then the reveal in Episode 8 that all magical girls are eventually doomed to become witches, and that the whole system only exists because of Kyubey's actions is when the brass knuckles come on.
• Hammerspace:
  • One of Homura's abilities. It's shown that she's got an entire armory hidden literally up her sleeve.
  • Mami has the ability to summon muskets from under her hat and skirt.
  • Sayaka once summons swords from her cape.
  • It's not entirely apparent where Kyoko stores her spear because it sometimes vanishes between shots with no evidence of her dispersing it (Episode 8).
• Hard Truth Aesop: everything has a cost, there's no such thing as true selflessness, it's better to admit ones selfishness than deny it until it's too late to get what you want, and truly selfless acts requires sacrificing oneself in order to pull it off.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Like most things in this show, ruthlessly played for drama. No matter how hard or how many times Homura tries, she can never overcome Madoka's destiny because her effort is exponentially making Madoka's magical potential (and thus her desirability to Kyubey) stronger. Likewise, Walpurgis is utterly unaffected by her attacks, possibly for the same reason; Madoka is the only one with the chops to challenge her, no matter what Homura does.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power:
  • Mami's power is to create ribbons. Sounds pretty lame on the surface, but after some research into engineering and practice, she learned to harness it to create rifled muskets◊, a BFG called Tiro Finale◊ and, by The Movie, a fully-functional copy of herself.
  • Mami also notes that Homura's power to stop time counts too, as it has very little offensive capability, but with some work and creativity, it could be extremely powerful.
• The Heartless: Without a Witch's Grief Seeds to infect, the grief of mankind becomes Wraiths that Magical Girls have to fight; the Wraith's output can be consumed by Kyubey.
• Held Gaze: Hitomi mistakes the staring between Madoka and Sayaka for this at the beginning of Episode 2, while they were in fact communicating telepathically via Kyubey. This leads her to draw conclusions...
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Played with.
  • Sayaka is the only one to use a sword as her weapon. Although her outlook and motivations fit the classic hero mold, she is far and away the weakest of the magical girls and eventually turns into a witch.
  • Homura steals a katana from the Yakuza but she's an anti-hero and she never uses it.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Kyoko kills Oktavia (aka Sayaka) with an explosion that kills her as well so neither will die alone.
  • If what Kyubey told Madoka in Episode 9 is true, becoming a magical girl can be viewed as such, with delayed consequences. A magical girl's sacrifice extends the life of the universe.
  • In another timeline, after both of them suffered mortal wounds from failing to defeat Walpurgisnacht, Madoka brightens Homura's soul gem with her only remaining grief seed, thus giving the latter the chance to go back again and try to save everyone but at the cost of dooming her self to become a witch. Cue the request for and subsequent Mercy Kill.
  • Madoka pulls this again in the end by using her wish as a Reset Button that prevents witches from being born (and gives the already witchified magical girls peaceful send-offs) ... but while doing so, erases herself from physical existence because she has risen above physical existence. Bonus, the finale aired on Good Friday. Significant? With her last words to Kyubey ordering him to fulfill her wish, it's made clear that she doesn't care what she becomes as long as the world is saved.
  • Kyoko in The Different Story uses Oktavia's Grief Seed to cleanse Mami's Soul Gem, but doesn't have another one left to use on herself and runs out of magical energy before she has a chance to cleanse her Soul Gem.
  • It was shown in Episode 10 that in the first timeline, Madoka sacrificed herself to defeat Walpurgisnacht. This is Homura's reason to make a contract with Kyubey.
• Heroism Motive Speech: When Madoka finally makes her wish to become a magical girl. The whole series up to this point lays out why she should never, ever do this, first because her naive selflessness would put her in danger, and later because this would literally cause a planet-scale apocalypse due to her uncontrollable power turning her into an unstoppable witch. But she realizes that there's a way around the latter problem, allowing her to use her immense power for good, and fulfilling her desire to sacrifice herself to save others:
  Madoka: I wish to erase all witches before they are born. All the witches in all the universes, both past and future. With my own hands! ^note This includes her own witch form, preventing the normally-inevitable negative karmic backlash.
  Kyubey: If a prayer like that were granted, it could unravel the fabric of time itself! It would go against the very force of karmic destiny! Do you truly intend to become a god?
  Madoka: I don't care what I become. All those who have fought against witches, who believed in hope as magical girls... I don't want to see them cry. I want them to be smiling to the very end. If any rule or law stands in the way of that, I will destroy it. I will rewrite it. That is my prayer... my wish. Now, grant my wish, Incubator!
• He Who Fights Monsters: Witches are magical girls who let their soul gems become too corrupted- either out of sheer despair or simply running out of magic. Sayaka is a more specific example.
• Hidden Eyes: When Sayaka eventually goes Laughing Mad, you can see a Slasher Smile, but not much else...
• Hive Mind: Kyubey, according to an interview with Urobuchi.
  There are many bodies, but only one consciousness. Therefore, even if you kill the body, there isn't any sort of damage. Killing one is just like pulling out a single strand of hair. The scene where Kyubey eats his corpse was a scene that came in after the early stages of the script; I was trying to write Kyubey as something that humans can't relate to. Imagine what your response would be if one of your compatriots had just died.
• Honor Before Reason: Sayaka refuses help from any magical girl who does not meet her ideal of justice, which makes everything unnecessarily hard for her. She gives Kyoko a grief seed from a witch just because Kyoko briefly helped her in the fight. She also refuses a grief seed from Homura despite knowing that her soul gem was too tainted for her to go on that way.
• Hope Spot:
  • In-universe example in Episode 9. The main characters ask Kyubey if it's possible to restore Sayaka to human form. He replies that it's never been done before. Not only does it fail, but he was counting on it failing and only presented the hope as a trap.
  • The anime timeline — as opposed to the timeline in the epilogue / the previous timelines is a Hope Spot. Everything seems to be going well from Homura's perspective: Madoka hasn't contracted and that's all that matters. Then it turns out that even with enough military hardware to be an One-Man Army she can't stop Walpurgisnacht, Kyubey knows about her time traveling, she's the cause of all Madoka's problems in the newer timelines, and her resets are making things worse. It takes the events of Episode 12 to pull everything out of the tailspin.
• Humanity Is Insane: Never outright stated, but the Incubators consider emotion to be a mental disorder.
• Humans Are Cthulhu:
  • Kyubey uses this as an analogy to explain his relationship with humans. He may seem strange to them but humans are just as strange to their non-human livestock.
  • More literally, humans' magical potential can reach these levels, as Madoka is able to reorder the entire universe, and her witch form had the power to destroy another universe.
• Humans Are Flawed: One of the main themes is that selfless wishes are not entirely selfless and despite noble intentions, humans can screws things up without meaning to.
• Humans Need Aliens: Kyubey tells Madoka human society came about as the result of the Incubators granting wishes.
• Humorless Aliens: Human humor is as strange to Kyubey as the rest of human emotions.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Many magical girls can generate a multitude of weapons to fight witches. Homura has a literal one of these; she stole rocket launchers from the Yakuza and the Defense Force and pulls them all out when needed.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each episode title is a line of dialogue from the said episode.
• If We Get Through This…: At the start of a certain witch battle, they declare that afterward "...we're all going out for cake!" The cake is unfulfillable.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Madoka starts off like this. When the call of 'one wish in exchange for service in battling monsters' comes, she admits to not being interested in the wish as much as helping others in a cool outfit - in her own estimation, she's not especially smart or talented, and she wants to accomplish things. It doesn't last. Homura tries to disabuse her of the notion at one point, saying that even if she isn't unique, she's still loved and needed by others, and shouldn't think of herself as useless.
• "I Know You Are in There Somewhere" Fight: Kyoko and Madoka try talking down Witch!Sayaka, and it fails.
• Imagination-Based Superpower: Generally, a magical girl's abilities and signature attack will remain the same, but they seem to be able to use it for minor things on the fly; this generally adheres to New Powers as the Plot Demands meets Mundane Utility. For example,
  • Mami mostly sticks to summoning enchanted muskets, but can enchant a bat to harm familiars and can create a barrier using a length of chain as a boundary and conduit.
  • Kyoko creates a pair of binoculars so she could spy on Sayaka.
  • Homura once used her powers to fix her eyesight despite the fact that her power has nothing to do with healing. This one could double as fridge brilliance when you think Homura could be using her powers to time-travel her eyes back to a time when she didn't have bad eyesight.
• Immortality:
  • Magical girls have a Healing Factor from their Soul gem. It's an Immortality Inducer that makes them The Undead. Most girls turn into witches long before it becomes noticeable.
  • Kyubey has a variant of Resurrective Immortality. Homura pumped one of his bodies full of lead and one second later an identical Kyubey jumped out of nowhere and ate it. He claims to have an endless supply of bodies.
  • In The Stinger of the anime. Homura might be proving that you can theoretically live forever as a magical girl as long as you don't exhaust your magic and never give up hope. The manga goes a bit further in the timeline by showing that eventually Homura stops fighting and joins Madoka beyond existence. It is not shown when or how this happens.
  • At the end of the anime, Madoka gains Complete Immortality becomes she's now an abstract concept/goddess.
• In Medias Res: Playing with a Trope. Episode 10 explains the alternate timelines, but every timeline has technically the same start, due to being parallels of each other. However, the chronological start of the anime is explained in Episode 10, which explains the hitherto unexplained intentions of Homura. In other words, the anime starts at the how many times is it now parallel timeline, but we learn of the beginning in Episode 10.
• In Spite of a Nail: YMMV, but it could be argued this trope was brought to the extreme.
  • Homura has used her power to reset time to approach the series a countless number of ways, but the outcome is always Madoka becoming a magical girl and either dying or turning into a witch.
  • When Madoka makes her final wish, despite having radically changed the course of human history (namely, those killed by witches no longer died that way), Mitakihara still exists more-or-less the same, along with every character other than Madoka herself.
  • Sayaka always becomes a witch, and always does so at the exact same train station (post-Godoka, she disappears there instead).
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet: Earth is just one of many planets the Incubators draw energy from, and as a result, they do not consider it important at all in the greater scheme of things. When first Walpurgisnacht and then Kriemhild threatens to destroy Earth, Kyubey refuses to lift a finger to save it, pointing out that the energy quota from Earth has been filled, making it an acceptable loss.
• Interface Spoiler: On Netflix, this show is categorized under Dark TV Shows.
• Ironic Echo:
  • Madoka's mother tells her to make mistakes when she's young because the older you get, and the more responsibilities you have, the more important it is to not make mistakes, and recover quickly when you do. When Madoka observes that it'll hurt, her mother tells her adults are always in pain, and that's why adults can drink alcohol: when you're an adult, it's only as fun as it hurts! Later on, we find out that Kyubey's contract demands that Magical Girls experience despair equal to the happiness gained by their wishes, and, drawing from most magical girl show tropes, it ties in Madoka's mother's words to a coming-of-age theme.
  • In the hospital Kyosuke says he can't feel the pain anymore after smashing the CD Sayaka gave him in a fit of rage. After Sayaka becomes Ax-Crazy and Laughing Mad in her fight with Elsa Maria she repeats this.
  • The phrase "with my own hands" ("kono te de"). Homura says it when declaring that she will kill all the witches and Walpurgis herself, and when she is about to kill Sayaka to prevent her from becoming a witch. But she does not successfully do either of these things. Madoka uses the phrase at the end while announcing her intent to erase literally all the witches to have ever existed, including Walpurgis. Which she does. She also "kills" Sayaka and takes her to Warrior Heaven so she won't become a witch. The English dub has no such echo.
  • One of Kyubey's sales pitches to Madoka is that she can wish herself to become a god if she so desires because of her enormous magical potential. In Episode 12, Madoka's wish breaks the laws of causality, prompting Kyubey to ask if Madoka really wishes to become a god. Madoka simply states that he can call her whatever he wants, so long as her wish is fulfilled.
• It Always Rains at Funerals: When Sayaka's body is recovered and she is given a proper funeral in Episode 11, it immediately starts raining.
• It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: Magical Girl life is, at best, lonely and plagued by combat fear. At worst, it involves watching teammates die or cross the Despair Event Horizon and becomes witches thus forcing those remaining to kill them and know that this could happen to them at any time.
• I Was Told There Would Be Cake:
  • In Episode 3, Mami suggests that Madoka use her wish to ask Kyubey for a cake feast to celebrate their partnership. In Soviet Russia, cake eats you.
  • The cake shows up in Episode 12...Except everybody enjoying the cake is either dead, or, in Madoka's case, about to ascend to a higher plane of existence.
• Jerkass Genie: Kyubey. Even though he isn't as much of a Literal Genie as some, and will fulfill wishes according to what potential contractees are actually asking for, it ultimately doesn't matter. He usually chooses people who either won't ask for what they actually want or who are in mortal danger, and in any case doesn't reveal the Equivalent Exchange that makes any wish a bad deal. If the target isn't already in danger for their life, his actions to force Madoka's decision reveal that he's not above putting them there.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Both Homura and Kyoko tried to snap Sayaka out of her Sanity Slippage—Homura violently so—in Episode 8. They failed.
  • Later on in the series, Kyubey gives a justification for his seemingly heinous actions: He's trying to avert the heat-death of the universe.
• Jerk Justifications: Kyoko is Type 1 ("Kindness is weakness").
• Killed Off for Real: Playing with a Trope.
  • It is normally impossible to revive someone. Which is why Mami's death is so crushing to Madoka and Sayaka.
  • Homura has a temporary solution (time travel) and attempts to defy this trope for Madoka's sake.
  • Due to Time Travel and Madoka's Cosmic Retcon, no one stays dead but she herself Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence and technically no longer exists. Mami and Kyoko come back to life, thanks to never having died in the first place because the witches that killed them never existed. However, Sayaka dies in the new timeline "using up her power" fighting Wraiths, though she may have also Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence with Madoka.
• Killer Rabbit:
  • The witch Charlotte starts off looking like an adorable little stuffed doll.
  • Kyubey himself is far more dangerous than he appears.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Madoka and Homura both exemplify this, but especially Madoka. She sacrifices all semblance of her own identity to change the magical girl system. She creates a new world where suffering runs just as rampant as ever, acknowledging good cannot exist without evil. And why? Because, by god, magical girls deserve to die happily, and she's willing to become the embodiment of hope itself in a despair-filled world.
• Knight Templar: Kyubey comes off as this due to his Blue-and-Orange Morality.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • Mami's Character Death due to fan-reactions, blogs, and 4chan mentioning it everywhere.
  • Sayaka's transformation into a witch is the quickest one ever!
  • The reason why the headline at the top exists. If you did not know that Episode 3 was a Wham Episode and did not decide to look at the spoilers you've seen the series properly. Otherwise, good luck.
  • Ultimate Madoka is one the covers of the Blu-Rays of the Movies, and reversable on some of the normal DVD covers!.
  • Meganekko Shrinking Violet!Homura is the artwork for the second disc of the series' Blu-Ray release. This is a full disc before this all comes out.
• Laughing Mad:
  • Sayaka, at the end of Episode 7 and the beginning of Episode 8.
  • Walpurgisnacht gets in on this too when it finally appears.
• The Law of Conservation of Detail:
  • This trope was one reason why the storyline was predicted ahead of time, due to the numerous Faust references. Lists are on the wiki, the Trivia page, and the Fridge page. There is, however, one notable one that is very easy to pass off: Homura, near the end of the anime, is shown with only one of Madoka's hair ribbons. Madoka gave Homura both. It may be justified in that she keeps the other one somewhere safe, and is why she's willing to give Madoka's mother the other one.
  • In the manga, Homura wears her hair in pigtails in the new universe by using both ribbons.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Dog Drug Reinforcement makes its debut! Supports up to three players!
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • In the first episode, Madoka explains that she remembered seeing Homura in a dream before actually meeting her and Sayaka tells her that she's acting like an anime character.
  • In Episode 12, when Homura seems to recognize Tatsuya's "imaginary friend" (Madoka), Madoka's mother asks, "Is she some kind of anime character or something?"
• Leitmotif: Each of the six main characters has one. Madoka has "Sagitta Luminis" (Arrow of Light), Sayaka has "Conturbatio" (Disorder) and later "Decretum" (Decision) (same motif, different arrangements), Mami has Credens Justitiam (Believing in Justice), Homura has "Puella in Somnio" (The Girl in the Dream), Kyoko has "Anima Mala" (Evil Soul), and Kyubey has Sis "Puella Magica" (You should be a Magical Girl).
• Leonine Contract: In at least one case, Kyubey has forced a wish out of someone because they have no other options. Mami, for instance, says she didn't have a choice because she was dying from a car crash.
• Level Ate: Charlotte's labyrinth is this while also having a hospital theme.
• Lighter and Softer: The second drama CD (appropriately named "Sunny Day Life") is probably the closest we will get to a canon depiction of the show as a conventionally cute Magical Girl series.
• The Lightfooted: Mami never loses her grace even while using ridiculous numbers of guns, and she curtsies at the start of a battle.
• Light Is Not Good: Invoked with the Wraiths, according to a concept art sheet◊.
• Light Liege, Dark Defender: Madoka is a kind, clumsy everygirl with a pink color scheme. Homura is a sullen, quiet time-traveling magical girl who seems hellbent on preventing Madoka from becoming one herself, at times violently stepping in to protect her.
• Limited Wardrobe: Almost every girl is shown with two outfits each: her school uniform (Homura, Sayaka, Mami)/one casual outfit (Kyoko) and her magical girl costume. Madoka is slightly better; in her PJs on occasion as well as when Ultimate Madoka is seen with a more complex uniform. The manga avoids this.
• Literal Genie: A case of Zig-Zagging Trope. Kyubey gives exactly what is asked for without twisting the intentions of the wish in any way, but the unfolding plot reveals that most girls wish for something that won't necessarily make them happy in the long run.
• The Little Detecto: Soul gems, in addition to everything else they do, also function as handy witch detectors.
• Live-Action Adaptation: There's going to be a comedic one, courtesy of Nico Nico Douga.
• Lock-and-Load Montage: Homura does this after she loots tons and tons of firearms from the local Yakuza.
• Loners Will Stay Alone: Loneliness is a serious problem for magical girls, one of which, Mami, is implied to specifically wish to avoid Dying Alone. Homura was this before Madoka became her first friend, but because of certain circumstances by the start of the series, she is alone again. Kyouko has lost her family and lives alone in the ruins of her father's church. Estrangement from loved ones and the inability to reach out to them is a common theme in the series.
• Loophole Abuse: Madoka uses this at the end of the series to make a wish to erase all witches from existence, past, present, and future. Kyubey hopes that the massive soulgem created from her wish would create an even more powerful witch, but Madoka's power has become so immense that she prevented her own witch from ever coming into existence, in doing so becoming the concept of hope.
• Love Makes You Evil: Played with in regards to Sayaka. Since she became a Magical Girl in order to heal Kyosuke, it fills out one of the main aspects of the trope. Kyoko later suggests she go a step farther and add a dose of If I Can't Have You… by breaking his arms and legs so Sayaka can be the only one he can depend on. Once Hitomi tells Sayaka she has her own feelings for Kyosuke and says she intends to act on them, it essentially leads to Sayaka's My God, What Have I Done? moment, which then leads to her Despair Event Horizon /witch transformation.
• Love Triangle: Hitomi reveals to Sayaka that she also likes Kyosuke and plans on confessing to him. She gives Sayaka 24 hours to do something about it ... and since she doesn't, she acts on her own word and confesses. See also the above trope.
• Lucky Charms Title: 魔法少女まどか☆マギカ, Mahō Shōjo Madoka ☆ Magika.
• Lyrical Dissonance: The opening may have an irritatingly cute demeanor, but the lyrics are very sad. This is because it's actually about Homura's endless, hopeless struggle to save Madoka.
  • The ending for the first two episodes, added for the disc release, sounds even more painfully cute (and it's performed by Madoka's voice actress!) in spite of its lyrics about loneliness and depression.
• MacGuffin Super-Person: Madoka Kaname has a huge potential to become a powerful Magical Girl. This drives a lot of the conflict, as Team Pet Kyubey wants her to take up the role, but Dark Magical Girl Homura wants to stop her from doing so, going as far as shooting and killing Kyubey right when she decides to make a contract. Eventually we learn that in this setting, being a holy child goes hand in hand with being an Apocalypse Maiden.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Homura pulls one off in Episode 11 with stolen hardware.
• Made of Evil: The Witches are born from despair and curses. It is their very nature to kill people.
• Made of Iron: Justified. Magical girls have their souls separated from their bodies which allows them to take hits that would severely injure or kill any normal human being. Any damage can be repaired by magic later as long as the soul gem stays safe.
• Made from Real Girl Scouts: A soul gem contains its owner's soul.
• Madonna-Whore Complex: If you can defeat witches, replenish your soul gem and stay upbeat just like you're supposed to, congratulations, you're a magical girl! If not you're a witch. Funnily enough, it's quite similar to a point made in Revolutionary Girl Utena, where two girls telling a fairy tale note that a girl in such a story has no choice but to be either a princess or a witch.
• Magical Accessory: Many of the Soul Gems take the form of jewelry.
• Magical Girl: It's half of the title, but it's also heavily zig-zagged. The first few episodes appear to be playing the trope straight, but the series as a whole was intended to examine aspects of the genre which were "overlooked or troublesome" and it soon deconstructs the genre quite savagely, turning adorable mascots into evil scheming villains and heroes into monsters, culminating in the use of the term "magical girl" itself to mean "young witch". But even if turns out everything you ever loved is a lie, it's okay, because Episode 12 will build a new truth and will play the trope straight again.
• Magical Girl Genre Deconstruction: The Trope Codifier. It was the success of Madoka that lead to the formation of the subgenre. All Wish-Fulfillment is taken out of being a Magical Girl, with girls more likely to regret becoming magical girls than anything else. They slowly end up distancing themselves from their friends and family until they either die or inevitably become a witch.
• Magical Girl Warrior: The job of a Magical Girl is to hunt and slay witches. There are archers, gunners, swordswoman, etc.
• Magic Is Evil: Magic is a bit like Darkspawn taint — a few people can and do use a seemingly benign version to fight against greater threats, and for quite a while they can even stay relatively sane, but Heroic Willpower doesn't last forever, and it's only a matter of time before they fall and become the very monsters they once fought against.
• Magic Is Feminine: Justified according to the series' lore. Kyubey's species only forms contracts with teenage girls (turning them into Magical Girls) because teenage girls are the most emotional of humans, and when they inevitably break down and turn into powerful witches, this emotion is channeled into causing entropy and destruction.
• Magic Skirt: Madoka's magical girl skirt is justified since there are a lot of frills underneath. The other skirts are rather short and the show has a tendency to show a lot of leg, but never more. This especially apparent when Kyoko is carrying Sayaka in her arms in Episode 9. There is a side shot with Sayaka's leg conveniently in the way.
• Magitek: Kyubey's race because they're Sufficiently Advanced Starfish Aliens.
• Make a Wish: Everyone who wants to become a magical girl is granted one wish and each magical girl will gain different abilities depending on the nature of her wish. It sounds great until the characters learn that each wish has a price which will get higher with each person that will be affected by it.
• Manipulative Bastard: Kyubey's MO is to appear to MG candidates when they are emotionally vulnerable and thereby unable to refuse a Miracle Contract.
  • In Mami's backstory he appeared when she was dying from a car crash.
  • In Kyoko's backstory she was homeless and starving.
  • In Episode 9 he convinces Kyoko to try (and fail) to save Sayaka as it would lead to her death and force Homura to fight Walpurgisnacht by herself, thus requiring Madoka to become a magical girl.
• Mascot Villain: Kuybey looks like a Ridiculously Cute Critter at a glance, but his goal is to turn children into monsters and use the energy to stave off entropy. The "Villain" part is a lot more blatant in Rebellion.
• Mask of Sanity: Mami's actions at the end of the third timeline make it clear that she's wearing a very easily broken one of these. It's significant enough that Homura even outright discusses it during Rebellion.
• The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: Being a magical girl is a lonely job.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Homura's apartment is a bit of a mystery. It's a White Void Room full of floating video screens that can display images directly from Homura's memories. It seems like it must be magical, since the rest of the world is only marginally more high-tech than ours and she must be recreating the whole thing after every time reset. But Homura has very specialized powers that don't really lend themselves to building a hyper-futuristic room.
• Meaningful Name:
  • There is a good reason they are called magical girls. It's Japanese wordplay: In written Japanese "magical girl" contains the characters for "young girl" and "witch" — "magical girl" can then be read as "young witch".
  • Kyubey's full name is Incubator, which hints at his actual purpose—and coincidentally is formed from the same root as incubus.
  • The name Madoka can be written with the character for "circle" or "round" in Japanese 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.
  • The final and most powerful witch seen in the series is Walpurgisnacht. This is the name of spring festival in Central and Northern Europe, and tradition dictates that it is a time that witches would gather together. Walpurgisnacht is a fusion of many different witches.
  • "Sayaka" can mean "bright" or "fresh". "Miki" could be written as "tree trunk" or as "sake offered to the gods". Trees are generally associated with witches in the series, especially Walpurgisnacht, and an offering to the gods is a sacrifice. So Sayaka Miki is a "fresh sacrifice" whose very name foreshadows her becoming a witch.
  • Kyoko's first name contains the character for "apricot," a symbol of strength achieved through struggles with adversity. Her surname, Sakura, means "cherry blossom", which, according to Buddhist tradition, symbolizes the transience of life.
  • "Mami" means "Mommy" in a few languages, befitting her role as Team Mom. Lending credence to this idea is how she is the only character whose first name is written in katakana (contrasting with the other girls, whose names are written in hiragana). This could imply that "Mami" has foreign origins, in line with the "Western flavor" Ume Aoki gave to Mami's magical girl outfit (and to her attacks Italian naming). Her name could also be a Shout-Out to Creamy Mami, an early magical girl.
• Memento MacGuffin: In the last episode, Homura's weapon of choice changes to a bow that looks identical to Madoka's, but in Homura's purple-and-black color scheme instead of Madoka's pink-and-white.
• Mental Monster: Witches are bizarre Eldritch Abominations that magical girls must slay to collect the Soul Jar they drop, each with their own familiars and unique Fisher Kingdom-like pocket dimensions called "Barriers" which reflect their broken psyche. However, these creatures are revealed to be former, tortured magical girls who went beyond the Despair Event Horizon, and the Witches are the true expression of a girl's soul and powers. Here are some notable examples:
  • Charlotte the Witch, as her title implies, can create all kinds of sweets and delicacies imaginable, but is cursed with a culinary version of Everything but the Girl in that she cannot create cheese, the food she just so happens to adore the most. Preliminary material released in several guides and The Stinger of the final episode suggests she became this shortly after her wish to eat one last cheesecake with her dying mother was granted, realizing she could have wished to save her instead.
  • Oktavia is an armored, mermaid-like Knight in Shining Armor armed with a BFS who shows Attention Whore tendencies, and several of her lines are some variant of "LOOK AT ME". She is the Witch form of Sakaya, one of the main characters of the series, and Oktavia's demeanor stems from the former's desperate need to get Kyosuke to love her. Her knight's armor is also symbolic of Sakaya's ideal vision of herself as a "hero of justice".
  • Patricia is a spider-like Witch who, were it not for her many arms and lack of a head, would pass off as an ordinary schoolgirl in a surprisingly mundane-looking barrier. Her bio states she and her former self just wanted to be completely normal, acting out ordinary school days just like she did during her former life, with her familiars acting as her classmates.
• Mental Time Travel: The mechanics behind the fulfillment of Homura's wish involve her consciousness traveling back one month so she can 'redo her meeting' with Madoka.
• Mercy Kill:
  • Sayaka receives one from Kyoko because she has become a witch.
  • Madoka asks this of Homura in one timeline because she doesn't want to become a witch.
  • At the end of the anime, Madoka performs a Cosmic Retcon that basically does this to every magical girl that is about to become a witch (including ones that existed in the past) by taking them someplace else.
• Metaphorically True: Kyubey's multiple truth statements can be easily misread by those not adept at picking out logical fallacies. When asked if there is any way to turn a witch back into a magical girl he says, "The existence of magical girls defies logic." followed by "So I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out you were capable of doing all kinds of amazing things.". An emotionally distraught fourteen year old isn't likely to realize that these two statements are unrelated (just because the existence of one thing defies logic does not mean you can do all kinds of amazing things) until it is far too late.
• Meta Twist: When it was revealed that Gen Urobuchi was working on the series, many fans immediately suspected that the show would be a lot darker than it at first seemed. And they were right... mostly. The ending, while still bittersweet, was much happier than he is normally known for. Also a possible subversion of Lying Creator—when he claimed he wanted to write a heartwarming anime, few believed him. This gets twisted again in Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion, where the ending is even happier and even more bittersweet at the same time.
• Million to One Chance: What Kyubey says about Kyoko's desperation move — it's never happened before, it's completely illogical, and even he doesn't think it'll work — raises all the flags for this trope. It doesn't work. It's completely illogical, so of course it doesn't work.
• A Million Is a Statistic: Kyubeys have energy quotas per planet. As long as they fulfill their quotas, they don't care if a whole civilization, along with their planet, perishes.
• Mind Rape:
  • This happens to Madoka, when she was caught in the witch Kirsten's barrier. The witch then uses her powers to torture Madoka by re-playing Mami's death over and over while subjecting her to Body Horror.
  • Kyubey does this when he shows Madoka how the world has been affected by his contracts, and how if it wasn't for the Incubators humanity would still be in caves.
• Mini Dress Of Power: All the girls' Magical Girl Warrior outfits have short skirts.
• Mirror Character: Episode 7 implies this between Sayaka and Kyoko; both of them made selfless wishes for the sake of a higher ideal and were eventually broken by their wish backfiring. The only difference is that Kyoko became jaded instead of a monster.
• Mistaken for Gay: Madoka and Sayaka in the second episode by Hitomi, since Sayaka spent time flirting with Madoka in Episode 1.
• Monster of the Week: The witches. They're not harmless mooks and fighting them is an emotionally scarring experience. It is even more scarring when the witches themselves were once magical girls like the protagonists.
• Mood Whiplash: Episodes 1 and 2 were fairly tame, although ominous. Then came Episode 3, complete with a new ending.
  • In the manga, Mami's horrible death is proceeded by a cute doodle of Charlotte eating candies.
  • The Eternal Story begins with Sayaka’s transformation into Oktavia, followed by Kyoko and Homura escaping with Sayaka’s dead body from Oktvia’s Witch Barrier. Following this harrowing sequence, the film plays its very cheerful opening credits sequence, set to Clari S’ Luminous and featuring such imagery as Madoka as a toddler with her parents, Madoka, Hitomi and Sayaka hanging out and Homura and Madoka glomping each other on a grass field.
• More Dakka:
  • In one scene, Mami achieves this trope using only an unlikely number of single-shot rifles.
  • Episode 10 shows Homura discovering this. Nothing says 'magical girl' like a squad automatic weapon.
  • In Episode 11 when Homura attempts to take on Walpurgisnacht alone, there is a long one-sided battle consisting of Homura expending a small army's worth of weaponry against Walpurgisnacht, including rockets, mortars, and a naval barrage. Unfortunately, it's nothing but The Worf Barrage.
• More Hero than Thou: Every magical girl or magical girl candidate is adamant about being the only one who will have to throw herself on the blade for the sake of somebody else. As they all get in each other's way doing this, it causes an amount of conflict that would be downright ridiculous if it weren't so depressing.
  • Mami is seen as the exception by Sayaka, Madoka, and even Kyubey, as she was willing to go out of her way to save them and show them the ropes before they decide to become magical girls, and has been hunting down witches to protect people.
• Morning Routine: After the Action Prologue, Madoka brushes her teeth and gets ready for school with her mother.
• Morton's Fork: On Walpurgisnacht, Homura's choices are:
  • Lose to Walpurgis alone and see it destroy the city (possibly killing Madoka), or
  • Defeat Walpurgis alongside Madoka and see Madoka eventually destroy the world, or
  • Rewind time again, thus making Madoka (and the witch she eventually becomes) more powerful and able to destroy even more.
  • On top of all that, if she accepts that her situation is hopeless, the despair will turn her into a witch as well.
• The Movie: Three - a two-part compilation followed by an entirely new story picking up where we left off.
• Multistage Teleport: Played with; Homura can't actually teleport, but she has the ability to stop time around herself. Since she can only stop "outside" time for a brief period of her subjective time, to an outside observer, she often appears to be covering a lot of ground in a series of short-distance teleportation jumps.
• Mundane Made Awesome: In Episode 7, after having her advice rejected by Sayaka, Kyoko is shown furiously taking bites out of an apple.
• Mundane Wish:
  • In Episode 3, Madoka can't decide on a magical wish but wants to help Mami in her fight. Mami suggests that she use her wish to ask Kyubey for a cake feast to celebrate their partnership.
  • Deconstructed with Charlotte, judging from the All There in the Manual material. Apparently, she didn't really think her wish through (justified by the implication that she was just a young grief-stricken child), wishing just to share one last cheesecake with her terminally-ill mother, and well, that was exactly what she got. It is suggested that she almost immediately afterwards came to the realization that she could have used her wish to cure her mother instead, leading her to succumb to despair and turn into a Witch in record time.
• Murder-Suicide
  • In one of the alternate timelines, Mami snaps when she finds out that magical girls eventually become witches. She succeeds in killing Kyoko, but is killed by Madoka before she could kill anyone else or herself.
  • Kyoko's father murdered her family before killing himself as a result of her wish
• Musicalis Interruptus: In Episode 8, Kyubey finally manages to convince Madoka to make her wish while the overly optimistic music is building up in the background. However, Homura puts a stop to not only the proceedings, but the music as well.
• Musical Spoiler:
  • Averted with the closing theme, to great effect. The first couple of episodes are cute and happy like most magical girl shows, and the first closing theme, "See You Tomorrow", is likewise adorable. After Mami dies, the closing changes to "Magia", which is much darker and more in tune with the actual tone of the show, and is used as a battle theme.
  • Played straight when Sayaka becomes a witch. Even before what's happening is confirmed, viewers who haven't figured it out yet will be clued in when Venari Strigas, the theme played for a witch's labyrinth, starts to play as the world distorts.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Several examples:
  • Sayaka after her Despair Event Horizon. She eventually loses her humanity/sanity as a result.
  • Kyoko felt this way due to her telling Sayaka her backstory, and why she's such a Jerkass who only cared about herself. It helps explain why Sayaka began to care less and less about the reason why she became a magical girl in the first place. As well as finding out more about their roles and the gems. This may be one reason why she seemed to be trying so hard to help Madoka save her later on.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Homura has gotten many second chances to undo her greatest failure. Four of those were seen in episode 10, and it's strongly implied there were more. Unfortunately, Failure Is the Only Option.
• Mythical Motifs: When Kyoko and Madoka discuss the mission to confront the witch Oktavia (aka Sayaka), a pair of windchimes can be seen in silhouette: a diving mermaid and a unicorn rallying itself to charge. Oktavia's motif is the mermaid. The unicorn is likely to represent Kyoko, who wants to "purify" the witch (as unicorns did water). She is ultimately forced to kill her using her spear, hence the unicorn rearing up and lowering its horn for the attack. It's also revealed in the PSP game that Kyoko's witch form rides a unicorn.
• Mythology Gag: That black cat that keeps on popping up in the opening? The one that Madoka used her initial wish to return to life, in the first iteration of events? A black cat is normally associated with witches (you know, the one on a broomstick, casting spells, wearing a pointy hat, and so on). Now think about this for a moment: what was one of the biggest Wham Lines that Kyubey mentioned?
  • Wasn't there a black cat in another popular magical girl series?