Puella Magi Madoka Magica / Tropes N to S

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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N

• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Walpurgisnacht (famous for being a witch's night), Kriemhild Gretchen, Incubator, i.e. one who incubates young witches.
• Natural End of Time: This is what the Incubators are trying to stop, using the system of magical girls and witches to undo entropy and prevent the universe's heat death.
• Negated Moment of Awesome:
  • Episode 3. Mami blasts her way through hordes of familiars, has an internal monologue about The Power of Friendship, a Theme Music Powerup and even manages to render the Witch helpless within seconds of the battle's start. Then Tiro Finale fails to make the kill, the Witch unleashes its One-Winged Angel... And things take a sharp turn for the worse.
  • "The Only Thing I Have Left to Guide Me": Homura's battle against Walpurgisnacht. She unleashes a barrage of More Dakka and Macross Missile Massacre with military hardware, performing a Serial Escalation of There Is No Kill Like Overkill in an attempt to destroy the witch. Just when it seems Walpurgisnacht is defeated, the witch reveals all the attacks were a No-Sell and I Am Not Left-Handed as a Flunky Boss with Mind over Matter.
• Negative Space Wedgie: When you stop to think about it, a witch's maze is a big entropy sphere that houses an alternate dimension; something that wouldn't be too unfitting in a sci-fi series.
• Never a Self-Made Woman:
  • Averted with Madoka's mother who is implied to be a bigwig at some company.
  • Played with in regards to Kyubey's countless clients over the ages, which include Joan of Arc and Cleopatra. Kyubey claims that without his Miracle Contracts, humankind would still 'be naked in caves' which implies that the wishes were helpful for these women. However, Kyubey's gender is ambiguous, if the Incubators have genders at all. Second, considering how helpful Kyubey is after the contract is made, his clients still did everything themselves. Third, if Kyubey is right that humans would still be cavemen if he hadn't made contracts with certain girls and women, it implies that the male half of humanity did absolutely nothing.
• Never Found the Body:
  • As Homura explains to Madoka, a magical girl who dies in a witch's barrier does not leave a corpse in the real world. Thus, they will forever be "missing".
  • Defied in "The Only Thing I Have Left to Guide Me" with regards to Sayaka. Kyoko makes sure to take her body out of the witch's barrier and place it in a hotel for it to be found by a muggle.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The way the previews for the series were set up, the series looked to be a lighthearted Magical Girl series.
• New Transfer Student: Homura transfers at the start of the series. In the original timeline, this is the cause of her meeting with Madoka.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • In Episode 6, Madoka nearly kills Sayaka by throwing her soul gem away in order to prevent her from fighting Kyoko. She hoped that by throwing away the gem she could prevent one of them from dying.
  • Episode 10. The very first timeline was comparatively mild: Madoka and Mami defeat Walpurgisnacht and die in the process, without becoming witches. Homura wishes to redo it to save Madoka and with each attempt the endgames becomes worse and worse, down to Madoka becoming a super powerful witch and destroying the world. "The Only Thing I Have Left to Guide Me" drills it in: Homura was giving Madoka more power with each reset by creating alternate universes. Greater Magical Girl translates into greater Witch power. In Episode 12, Madoka has enough power to bring the whole universe to an end. However, Madoka turns this around into an inversion. Homura's time loops gave Madoka enough power to break the system and achieve a better conclusion than the original timeline.
  • Actually subverted by Mami in Episode 3. Although Mami's refusal to heed Homura's warnings and tying her up to prevent her from helping leads directly to Mami's death, said death actually brings home to Madoka and Sayaka some of the actual stakes of being a magical girl, giving them both (especially Madoka) serious second thoughts about their choice to do so.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Kyubey grants Homura's wish to redo her meeting with Madoka and protect her instead of being protected by her. This means granting her time travel magic that can be used to learn his secrets and warn other magical girls.
  • Kyubey sends an Exposition Beam / Mind Rape into Madoka (who is not a magical girl) in order to explain how much he's done to/for the human race. It's implied that this is inspiration behind her wish to retro-actively destroy every witch ever and thereby reshape the universe into one more in favor of magical girls.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: Three experienced magical girls that appear in the series can be split as such: Mami as nice, Kyouko as mean and Homura as the one in-between.
• No Body Left Behind: This can happen to a witch's victim if they get stuck in the witch's Pocket Dimension after the witch is destroyed. The final fate of all magical girls in the current timeline, including Sayaka, as Madoka takes them to Heaven, body and all, at the very moment they'd normally be slated to become witches.
• No Conservation of Energy: Played with! Conservation of energy totally applies... to everything EXCEPT magical girls. Kyubey is acutely aware of this and is exploiting it in the fight against entropy.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Double Subverted, Discussed, Exaggerated, and Defied.
  • Kyoko tells Sayaka that every wish or other use of magic brings despair into the world exactly equal to the hope that it brings, so the best course of action is for magical girls to live solely for themselves.
  • Sayaka disagrees and declares that she will continue to fight in her own way, set to the series' main theme, "You Should Become A Magical Girl".
  • A single episode later, Sayaka realises Kyoko was right when her own wish blows up in her face, she decides the world isn't worth saving, and becomes a witch herself.
  • Madoka is nauseated by this system and wishes to destroy all witches, removing this trope from the status of a physical law.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Sayaka goes into one of these against a witch to show how badly she's been broken.
• Non-Indicative First Episode: Be careful of these episodes, as they make the series billed as a Magical Girl series with Slice of Life. That's half-correct, as the second half of Episode 3 demonstrates.
• Noodle Incident: Several of them are found in the OP. The very existence of these noodle incidents is a plot point.
• No Ontological Inertia: Mami's bindings on Homura dissolve as soon as the former dies.
• Normally, I Would Be Dead Now: Playing with a Trope. The multiple bullets Kyubey takes kills that particular body, but he has spares.
• No-Sell: During Homura's fights with Walpurgisnacht in "The Only Thing I Have Left to Guide Me", she launches a massive attack against the witch, utilizing a variety of weapons such as rockets, mines, and missiles. It doesn't affect the witch, and Homura's attempts to stop or slow her down fail.

O

• Official Cosplay Gear: There are official soul gem necklaces. However, they aren't cosplay gear as such — they're smaller than the canon Soul Gems — and are more intended as jewelry.
• Official Couple: Hitomi confesses to Kyosuke and they are seen sitting and talking together later.
• Oh, Crap!: From Kyubey in Episode 12. When Madoka seriously planned to become a goddess and screw over his system, he freaked out for the first time in the series.
• Old-Timey Cinema Countdown: The show itself begins with a variation of this using runic symbols. This countdown also appears in the penultimate episode, before Homura's climactic battle with Walpurgisnacht.
• Omniscient Morality License:
  • Kyubey's plans to combat entropy.
  • One reason Homura is so callous is that every time she has been a friend and hero, she's failed to save anyone. This time, she's trying a different tack, doing whatever it takes to prevent Madoka from becoming a magical girl, no matter how much she gets hurt in the process.
• One Degree of Separation: The third drama CD reveals that Kyoko and Mami worked together before the events of the anime. This was subtly hinted at in the anime proper. Then it further reveals that Kyoko once helped Madoka and Sayaka escape from a witch. This was not hinted at the anime because Madoka and Sayaka never actually saw Kyoko.
• One-Woman Army:
  • Mami can summon a sky's worth of guns.
  • By combining her Time Stands Still ability with a sufficient number of guns, Homura can make herself a literal version of this trope. Stop time, fire the guns from different angles, start time, and an army's worth of bullets stream toward a witch.
• One-Winged Angel: Charlotte in Episode 3. Starts off as a shout-out of Pukka and becomes a supremely creepy Takashi Murakami-style thing that looks like what you'd get if you mated a clown with a Sandworm.
• Only Six Faces: The manga adaptation suffers from this.
• Origins Episode: Episode 10, for Homura. It doubles as a Whole Episode Flashback.
• Our Liches Are Different: You see, in this series, they're called "magical girls". The body is an empty shell operated by a soul jar, in this case their soul gem. However, they are even worse off than normal liches, as normal liches don't lose consciousness when their bodies are distanced from their phylactery.
  • But hey at least they get to be girly, sparkly Liches and not a gross undead one, right? Well sure, unless for some reason they're distanced from the Soul Gem for too long. In one route of the Madoka PSP game, Sayaka's soul gem is misplaced for a long time. By the time it's returned to her, her body has already begun to rot. This normally wouldn't be a problem due to her Healing Factor, but unfortunately she runs into Kyosuke, her crush, shortly after waking up... and the result isn't pretty. Poor girl.
• Our Souls Are Different: They take a physical form known as a 'soul gem'.
• Our Monsters Are Different: They are reality-warping Eldritch Abominations with specific powers that seem to be based on a combination of the location they were born at and whatever they were feeling at the time. They are "matured" magical girls whose soul gems became too corrupt.
• Out-of-Clothes Experience: Madoka and Homura in Episode 12 because they're somewhere between the physical plane and a higher plane.
• Out of the Inferno: Walpurgisnacht emerges from huge flames of Homura's making unharmed.

P

• Painful Persona: Akemi Homura is cold to the point of being insensitive to other's pain unless they are Madoka. She's reserved and The Stoic. Or so she pretends. As the plot progresses, it's slowly revealed that she represses her emotions so ruthlessly and never gives herself the opportunity to bond with anyone because of the sheer amount of trauma she has suffered as a Magical Girl in this Crapsack World. "I Won't Rely On You Anymore", in particular, shows us that she used to be the opposite of her current self — emotional, shy, and very trusting.
• Parental Abandonment
  • Mami's and Kyoko's are dead. The former by mundane causes and the latter's was killed as a side-effect of the wish.
  • Homura appears to live alone; the nameplate of her residence only has her name, much like Mami's. She is also conspicuously by herself when seen in the hospital, and seems to be the one filling out the forms to transfer to another school. The implication is that she's Conveniently an Orphan.
  • Averted with Madoka who has a nice happy family. Sayaka also has parents, but they never appear outside of a flashback in episode 3 and a quick mention in episode 8.
• Parody: Meduka Meguca.
• Peggy Sue: Homura Akemi has been resetting time over and over again to save Madoka. The prologue is one attempt of many.
• Phantom Zone: The nightmarish other world where Witches hide.
• Pietà Plagiarism: Episode 9. Kyoko as Mary and Sayaka as Jesus.
• Pimped-Out Dress: The magical girl outfits, as is standard for the genre. Also, look at Walpurgisnacht upside-down.
• Pin-Pulling Teeth: When Kyoko grabs Homura to keep her from Flash Stepping, Homura pulls a flashbang grenade out of her Bag of Holding and pulls out the pin with her teeth, forcing Kyoko back.
• Plot-Based Voice Cancellation: Homura yells some things to Madoka in the prologue scene in Episode 1, but we don't hear it - and neither does Madoka. We learn in Episode 10 that she was begging her not to make the contract again.
• Poor Communication Kills: The series. So, so much of the grief would've been averted if the girls had been willing to communicate thoroughly and objectively with one another. This is somewhat justified by some of the characters' past experiences, but not completely. Although it's also very easily justified when you recall that the characters are young teenagers, untrained in conflict resolution and also all dealing with severe trauma. In retrospect, it's incredible that they were as civil as they were.
• Postmodernism: The witch barriers include many references to both Faust with the runes and writing, and classical artwork. Meanwhile the plot bears many similarities and several Shout Outs to other anime such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Revolutionary Girl Utena, and Bokurano.
• Power Born of Madness: From the Incubators' perspective, this is what turning emotions into energy is because they view emotions as madness.
• Power Crystal: Soul gems are the source and focus of magical girl power.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: More or less. While the color doesn't change, the cast's hair colors become more vibrant in their Magical Girl forms (in Homura's case, it gets darker).
• Power Glows: Madoka, in Episode 12. In one particular shot you might be tempted to wonder "Why is the sun pink"?
• Power Source: Inverted with grief seeds: magical girls shove their corruption into it to prevent their soul gems from dimming.
• Power-Upgrading Deformation: Falling into a Despair Event Horizon can trigger a transformation into a witch.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: Kyubey's race decided they wanted to violate entropy and save the universe from heat death. The only way to do this was to find a source of energy that was not bound by the laws of thermodynamics. They settled on emotions and the greatest arc between hope and despair is in teenage human girls.
• The Power of Friendship: Episode 10. The reason Homura keeps repeating things is because she wants to save Madoka. She outright says so at the end of her Day in the Limelight episode.
  Homura: I'll do it over no matter how many times it takes. I'll relive it over and over again. I will find the way out. The one path that will save you from this destiny of despair. Madoka, my one and my only friend. I don't care. Because if it's for you, I'll stay trapped in this endless maze... forever.
  • Inverted in Episode 3. When Mami gets hyped up on the Power of Friendship during the battle with Charlotte, it leads to her fighting recklessly against the witch, as opposed to the cool, careful and methodical style of witch-killing she employed in the second episode, resulting in her freezing up when Charlotte goes One-Winged Angel, leading directly to her Cruel and Unusual Death.
• Premature Empowerment: The ultimate example of how this trope can go wrong for those empowered this way. Kyubey frequently makes contracts with girls without informing them of everything that being a Magical Girl entails — namely, being turned into Liches, getting broken by the use of their powers, becoming the very monsters they fight, and getting their souls eaten in the end so that Kyubey and his Incubators can try to avert the heat death of the universe.
• The Presents Were Never from Santa: Sayaka (and Mami) falsely believe that their Magical Girl powers are righteous in nature, and people like Homura and Kyoko are misusing their powers for selfish interests. They are wrong, their powers have nothing to do with morality.
• Pride Before a Fall:
  • In Episode 3, Mami blithely disregards Homura's warnings and even ties her up to prevent her from helping, treating her like a fractious child. She doesn't get the chance to regret it as she is eaten by Charlotte.
  • After the reveal of Episode 6, Sayaka refuses sincerely-offered help from Kyoko and Humura, concluding that they are evil because they don't share her views about what it means to be a magical girl. This contributes to her witching out at the end of Episode 8.
• The Promise:
  • In Episode 10, Homura gives a tearful one to Madoka, promising that she'll stop her from making a contract.
  Homura: I swear I'll save you! I'll do whatever it takes to keep you safe! I'll come back again and again and again! I'll save you, I swear!
  • In Episode 12, Madoka promises Homura that she will see her again someday. It's insinuated that all magical girls will be with Madoka after they run out of magic; she is shown collecting their grief and taking their soul gems.
• Protectorate: Madoka, for Homura.
• Psychological Horror: The city is cold and sterile. An unspeakable atmosphere of alienation and helplessness permeates it. The witches are completely incomprehensible. Something about the supposedly-helpful mascot is very, very off. Magical Girl meets The World of Darkness namely, Changeling: The Lost; indeed.
• Puni Plush: The characters are designed by Ume Aoki, the mangaka of Hidamari Sketch.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Any timeline where Walpurgisnacht is beaten ends up with Mitakihara in ruins and the combatants either dead or having used so much magic that they'll shortly become witches themselves.

R

• Rain Aura: In "The Only Thing I Have Left to Guide Me". Miki Sayaka's funeral is held under the rain, with an off-screen character narrating the details of her disappearance and death. As the camera pans out to a shot of the city, a white fog over the ground can be seen. It has to be noted, though, that there's no such thing when the camera is closing up in the characters and funeral scenery.
• Rain of Arrows: In the final episode, Madoka uses this twice, and both were awesome rains of arrows indeed!
  • First time — She fires a single arrow into the sky which instantly blows away the black storm clouds caused by Walpurgisnacht and reveals a brilliant blue sky. The arrow then bursts into an infinite number of arrows that shoot off in all directions. These arrows transcend space and time to save every single magical girl, past, present and future, from their Fate Worse than Death.
  • Second time — A galaxy-sized Madoka in what can only be described as her goddess form fires thousands of arrows at a planet-sized witch — the witch form of herself from the timeline that made the wish to save everyone, everywhere — that is threatening to end the universe. Everything is blown away.
• Read the Fine Print: Kyubey's contract has several unknown clauses such as: no wish warrantee, lichification, and inevitable witchifiation. He doesn't let them know there's a fine print in the first place but that's because You Didn't Ask.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: The conversation between the two misogynists on the train in Episode 8 was based on a conversation Urobuchi overheard while riding on a train.
• Real-Place Background: Madoka's town is basically a hodgepodge of famous architecture.

• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Kyubey. Played up in Episode 8 to Irisu Syndrome! levels. This is the point where it becomes unmistakably clear that he is sinister. Like this.◊
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • Later episodes have clearly made it Kyoko and Sayaka; the former is enjoying their battles and is hedonistic while the latter is serious and duty bound and selfless.
  • Madoka and Homura; friendly vs aloof and cheerful vs stoic.
• Red Right Hand: Magical Girls have unique marks on the fingernail of their left middle finger. It can most prominently be seen on Homura and Kyoko in episode 7.
• Red String of Fate: Implied. Madoka's giving her red ribbons to Homura while promising to meet again is the spirit of this trope.
• Refusal of the Call:
  • Madoka and Sayaka are at first hesitant to make a contract with Kyubey, which is only worsened after they witness Mami's death. Sayaka doesn't become a magical girl until Episode 4, and Madoka is a plain muggle until the final episode (which doesn't last long anyway).
  • In Episode 10, it turns out that what is going on is that Madoka would have Jumped at the Call if Homura had not stopped her or Kyubey every time.
• Regular Caller: In the form of Kyubey, who tries to get Sayaka and Madoka to make wishes every episode and in the most pushy and manipulative manner possible. He succeeds with Sayaka after waiting until the exact moment that her friend hit the Despair Event Horizon, to say nothing about what he did to get Mami to sign up. He finally succeeds in the latter in Episode 12, but he was too clever by half. By explaining to Madoka the true story of the history of magical girls, he inspires her to perform a Cosmic Retcon ... and she's powerful enough to force him to grant the wish, much to his surprise — this is the only time in the entire series that Kyubey expresses any emotion on more than a superficial level.
• Relationship Values: Crosses over with The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life. A very good premise of the plot is the questioning of why Madoka wants to become a Magical Girl, or why anyone would want to do so. Homura brings this topic up so much, it's almost her catchphrase whenever you see them together. Kyoko and Mami learned this the hard way, and suffered because of their misunderstanding.
• Rescue Equipment Attack: In the first episode, Sayaka uses a fire extinguisher on Homura Akemi when she seemingly threatens Madoka and Kyubey, before throwing the extinguisher itself in her direction.
• Resurrective Immortality: Kyubey can come back every time he's killed and devours his old body.
• Retconjuration: Madoka's wish causes Witches to cease to exist because she causes magical girls to vanish before becoming witches. This makes her Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence and erase every trace of her existence, except Homura's memories. It's insinuated that magical girls at the end of their lives also see her, and she can interact with them as a guardian angel.
• Rewatch Bonus: Watching the series knowing that Kyubey is the Big Bad makes a lot of their behavior a lot more sinister. In particular, he always suggests contracting whenever any of the girls are in danger or a situation where they have little choice in the matter (Mami being the perfect example, having been in a car crash and contracted out of desperation). Even beyond simply offering them to contract, he subtly pushes them to make the decision for themselves, appearing when they are emotionally vulnerable and likely to make rash decisions, and subtly guilt tripping them after Mami's death.
• The Right of a Superior Species: Kyubey plays with this trope. He turned vunerable teenage girls into magical girls in order to fight witches, but doesn't tell them that he does so by turning them into Liches. Then the girls find out that if they don't keep their soul gem pure, they become witches too, and it then it turns out he's doing all this to collect energy to fight the heat death of the universe. He justifies it by wanting to prevent said heat death, and by the fact that his kind has been assisting humanity since the stone age. All this while subtly implying that his race regards humanity the way humanity regards cattle. However, Kyubey doesn't have emotions, so he doesn't do this because he is thinks he superior to humanity (or at least that's not the most important reason). He does it because they need to prevent the universe ending, and this is the most efficient way to do it.
• Romanticism Versus Enlightenment:
  • In regards to the series as a whole: Some people have called Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Anti-Evangelion, as the philosophy is entirely different. Whereas in Evangelion, the main character transforms from a depressed boy who hates himself to a happy boy who appreciates his shitty life in the last episode, while preventing the Assimilation Plot, Madoka transforms from a girl who hates herself to…a happy girl who essentially kills herself and disembodies her spirit in order to create a new system where all magical girls are saved while the Energy system is not compromised. Madoka let the Kyubey exist to prevent entropy and give humanity civilization, only now the worst and unnecessary waste products of the Magical Girl system (witches) are gone.
  • In regards to characters themselves: The cold ruthless Totalitarian Utilitarian Enlightened scientific Incubators who will do anything to harvest energy and reverse entropy, versus Homura's equally ruthless Romanticist Anti-Hero-ism who will do anything for the sake of protecting her beloved Madoka. Madoka provides a decision buffer between the two conflicting philosophies; she is disgusted with both of them for their antiheroism, but also at the same time appreciates their intentions, knowing that Incubators try to prevent Heat Death and liberated mankind from the Stone Age, while Homura is doing her best to protect Madoka.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • Everything references Faust; everything. Thanks to the Gretchen symbolism with Madoka and Homura's desire to protect her, Homura may represent Faust. Since different interpretations of Faust include both redemption and doom, one could argue both Homura and Sayaka are Faust.
  • The dream in the beginning and Sayaka arc are also full of freemason symbolism. The chess boards symbolize the life of people who have not fully understood the truth and are therefore destroying themselves and being Unwitting Pawns. (Because of this, Sayaka in nearly all important plot points to her as well as in her death, stands on a checkered floor.) While the stairs Madoka climbs up before seeing the battle against Walpurgisnacht in her dream represent initiation/learning.

S

• Sacred Bow and Arrows: Madoka’s bow takes this role in aesthetics and divine function.
• Sailor Earth: Very common in fanfic; easiest is creating new magical girls; but also Kyubey variants with personalities named "Prefix"-bey are often villains or characters since Kyubey's personality is really tricky to do correctly.
• Sanity Meter: The amount of darkness in a magical girl's Soul Gem shows how close she is to crossing the Despair Event Horizon. When the Soul Gem turns completely black, its owner will turn into a witch.
• Sanity Slippage: Poor, poor Sayaka...She loses sanity points by the episode until she finally becomes a witch.
• Say My Name: In Episode 8. Sayakaaaaaa! This is notable for the fact that Homura showed a Not So Stoic moment and that Kyoko never calls anyone by name, then proceeds to spend a good deal of Episode 9 calling for Sayaka.
• Scenery Dissonance: Many of the witches' labyrinths look as if they came from Wonderland — they are collages of vibrant, bizarre, colorful elements. Some of the minions even go around singing and dancing. As a result, everything fits surreal and out of place (in a good sense) whenever an unsuspecting or mind-controlled civilian gets trapped or a magical girl goes hunting the witch and its minions down. It's made worse after The Reveal that the witches are the corrupted versions of magical girls that fell into despair or ran out of magic and that the labyrinths are depictions of their broken mindscapes and unfulfilled wishes.
• Scenery Gorn:
  • During Madoka's dream in Episode 1.
  • The majority of Episode 10 after the Walpurgisnacht wrecks Mitakihara in each timeline. It was hard to watch, because later on the very same day that episode aired, a catastrophic tsunami hit Japan following a severe earthquake, leaving many coastal areas resembling the destroyed city.
• Scenery Porn: Mitakihara is a gigantic skyscraper-laden futuristic city, and there are plenty of establishing shots dedicated to showing it off. Hell, with each time the series is remade and the budget is, as a result, increased, everything just gets increasingly fancier, until the roof of Mitakihara Junior High starts looking like a straight-up gothic cathedral◊ by the movie.
• School Uniforms are the New Black: The Mitakihara Junior High girls are rarely ever seen in something other than their uniforms and magical girl outfits. This averted in the manga, where Sayaka is shown in 'casual' outfits on several occasions.
• Science Fantasy: Kyubey reveals that he and the other Incubators are an alien race trying prevent (or stave off) the heat death of the universe. However, he also states explicitly that magical girls/witches really are magic and this is why the energy they produce is effective against entropy; it's not bound by the rules of science.
• Screening the Call: Homura is actively trying to prevent Madoka from becoming a magical girl. This is because the Madoka of a previous time line made her promise to save her from Kyubbey's trickery.
• Screw Destiny: Homura's primary goal is to save Madoka from dying horribly or becoming a witch, as it happened many times before in many different timelines.
• Screw Yourself: In the Bait-and-Switch Credits, we see a pair of naked Madokas doing a very touchy-feely Transformation Sequence together.
• Second Episode Morning: Madoka awakens to find out the first episode was not a dream.
• Seinen: It looks like a normal Shoujo but in reality, this is what happens when you place magical girls in a Cosmic Horror Story.
• Sekaikei Genre: The fact that magic is dependent on Emotional Powers is the perfect fuel for a world whose fate is ultimately dictated by a key relationship between two otherwise normal people. In this case, Madoka and Homura's status as either Star-Crossed Lovers or star-crossed close friends (depending on your perspective) eventually has cosmological implications. By the time of The Movie's conclusion, both characters have taken a stab at rewriting the laws of reality for the greater good, tragically pushing their partner away in the process.
• Senseless Sacrifice: From Kyubey's point of view, Kyoko's death was not this at all. It served a very important function for his plans. Due to her death, Homura must fight Walpurgisnacht by herself and both of them know she will fail. Thus, Madoka will be forced to make a contract to save Homura and the town from Walpurgisnacht.
• Sentai: Although they're never all together as a team, the girl's costumes do fit the formula: Pink Madoka, Black Homura, Blue Sayaka, Yellow Mami, and Red Kyouko.
• Sequel Hook:
  • The Bittersweet Ending leaves room for a possible sequel. Word of God admits that they would like to make a second season.
  • Specific ones from the last episode are: Madoka says (as she Ascends To a Higher Plane Of Existence) that she is going to meet "everyone", and will meet Homura again one day. Madoka's little brother still seems to remember her. The ending is And the Adventure Continues, and then there's a The Stinger showing in silhouette what are presumably the human forms of the witches.
  • The third movie of the film trilogy is a Continuation of the story. Word of God has stated that it began as a plot for the second season that simply wasn't long enough for a 12-Episode Anime. He also confirmed that the story will not end with the 3rd movie, but he cannot personally predict how the story will unfold. A trailer for the third film is The Stinger for the second movie.
• Serial Escalation: While the whole anime decides to do this from the get-go, a specific mention should go to the first Drama CD: The wiki's page on it (has spoilers) decides to explain that Episode 10 was light when comparing the versions of Homura's Dark and Troubled Past. This is extremely appalling after you have watched said episode and Lighter and Softer would be the last thing you would ever want to describe it, since it was one of the darkest ones in the entire series.
• Serious Business:
  • There are people running MATLAB simulations over this show.
  • There's a 224-page book!!!
  • Fans have gone deep and wide to discover every single symbolism in the show; from the Witches' back-stories, meaning of their name and its connection to said back-stories, astronomy connection of said names, philosophical and psychoanalysis of the characters, foreshadowings, deciphering the runes, thermodynamic, Homura's time travel mechanic, Mitakihara's architectures and their comparison to the real-life buildings, canon's evidences of those yuri undertones...
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The nature of Homura's powers and goal, as of Episode 8. (Later expanded on, in Episode 10.) Over and over again, Homura repeats the month of the series to save Madoka from Kyubey and death.
• Ship Sinking: In an interview, Gen Urobuchi sank fan-favorite ship Madoka x Homura, saying that Homura's feelings for Madoka were ultimately platonic rather than romantic.
• Ship Tease: Despite conflicting tropes throughout this very wiki, it's more or less accepted in the 2020's that Homura and Madoka are meant to have a ship teasing feel to them and are of course very shippable. Supplementary content such as games have elevated their ship tease on occasion. It could similarly be said for Sayaka and Kyoko, especially with their well-known end-card.
• Shoot the Dog: In Episode 10, in one of the previous timelines, Madoka asks Homura to kill her to prevent her from turning into a witch. She does it.
• Shown Their Work: In regards to Homura's weapons, which are not only real-life weapons but also are drawn properly to detail. They even made sure to give Homura's Beretta M9 exactly 15 shots, which is its capacity in real life.
• Signature Move: Mami's Tiro Finale is pretty iconic and there hasn't been one installment of the franchise where she hasn't launched it at least once. She merges a handful of her muskets to produce a gun that is as big as her and then fires a devastating energy beam. This also makes it the Super Special Move version of her normal musket attacks.
• Significant Anagram: Soul Gems are abbreviated SG, Grief Seeds are abbreviated GS. Fittingly, GS are created from SG of magical girls who crossed the Despair Event Horizon.
• Silent Conversation: Happens a couple times throughout the series. Mami's first encounter with Kyubey is shown without dialog, and Sayaka's reaction tells us she can hear what Hitomi and Kyosuke are talking about, but it's never revealed to the audience.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: Kyoko gets left out of a lot of early promo material and barely appears in the opening, likely to preserve the twist of her first appearance.
• Skyward Scream: When Homura sees Madoka next to Kyubey in the very first scene of the series. It's either a Big "NO!" or a Say My Name moment. It turns out to be a Big "NO!", since Madoka accepting the contract will end with her death and cause Homura to repeat the timeline again.
• Slasher Smile: Almost everyone except Madoka has one in the manga. Kyubey is no exception.
• Slice of Life: The anime is most certainly not this, but the second Drama CD is. On the other hand, some dialogue between Homura and Sayaka suggest the CD is not canon.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Pretty far on the cynical side; Kyoko gives a speech about how magical girls are best off when they live only for themselves and Sayaka, who takes the opposite viewpoint is broken by her false(?) selflessness and becomes a witch. The finale moves things a bit closer to the idealistic side. Madoka becomes a goddess and prevents any witches from ever existing or having existed... but now Wraiths exist, and the magical girls still have to fight them. Things are now less horrible and magical girls are more inclined to work together but most characters are dealing with roughly the same problems as they were before.
• Sole Survivor:
  • In all the previous timelines she has gone through, Homura has always been the only survivor.
  • The final scene implies that everybody but Homura has died and that she doesn't have much time left either.
• Soul Jar:
  • The soul gem of a magical girl is exactly what it is called.
  • On a smaller note, the grief seed of the witch is exactly the same thing.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: In Episode 9, we're treated to soft, relaxing violin music as the magical girls fight Sayaka's Witch form, Oktavia von Seckendorff. Justified as it's a Song Of Solace for Oktavia.
  • The movie loves doing this with the witch fights as the original music has been replaced for most of them.
• Spider Swarm: One piece of artwork in the opening shows Madoka surrounded by one.
• Spin-Off Babies: The novel features a kindergarten-aged Madoka and Sayaka meeting for the first time.

• Spoiler Opening: The cover art (as seen in the picture above), and the opening prominently feature Madoka as a magical girl. However, we don't see her as one until episode 10, as part of Homura's backstory, which makes sense as she was actively trying to dissuade Madoka from becoming one in the first place.
  • This is somewhat toyed with since this raises the audience's expectations that Madoka will be a magical girl for most of the show and so spend the entire time expecting her to be one and are then caught off guard when it only happens so late in the show.
  • Played straight with Sayaka though, who makes her wish a few episodes in.
• Standard Female Grab Area: Kyoko tries this on Homura, and it works! It's later revealed that this is because Homura's abilities are based on time travel. She can't escape a grab by freezing time. The trope is then defied when the 'victim' drops a live stun grenade on the floor and easily escapes in the panic.
• Starfish Aliens: Kyubey's race, are cat/weasel things that exist as a Hive Mind and place little value in individual physical bodies.
• Start of Darkness: Sayaka's starts around Episode 7, after she stops caring about fighting witches for justice as she originally believed, and relishes on the overkill towards the witch she's fighting.
• Stealth Pun:
  • Fans have noticed that the 魔法少女 (mahō shōjo, "magical girl") kanji in the title are stylized enough to make 廃怯少女 (haikyō shōjo, "faltering girl") a valid interpretation.
  • More important and lampshaded later: A young witch is a girl who uses magic, a "magical girl". What magical girls grow into was always inevitable.
  • This gets even more interesting and treads into Meaningful Name territory when you consider "廃怯少女": so a 魔法少女 eventually evolves into a 魔女, a witch, right? Going by that logic, a 廃怯少女 would mature into a 廃女, a haijo, or roughly a "girl who abolishes". Right, then: consider the ending.
  • Sayaka's witch is named Oktavia von Seckendorff and fights by summoning giant wheels. The German poet Karl von Seckendorff wrote The Wheel of Fate.
  • Octavia appears in episode eight.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Homura's modus operandi thanks to Time Stands Still.
• The Stinger:
  • Depending on how you interpret the ending, Homura appears to have lived for so long that she's developing witch-like powers. Despite this she never gives up hope.
  • There's also the silhouettes of what might be the human forms of the witches.
  • The second movie, Eternal, has a trailer for the third movie after the second set of credits.
• Stock Footage: A couple of Kyoko's moves in Episode 5 are repeated via this method. There are problems with them meshing with surrounding footage.
  • Fixed for the DVD version.
• Stock Sound Effects: Though not of the usual sort. If you've watched both series you'll notice this anime shares a lot of sound effects with Bakemonogatari.
  • One of the explosion sounds from Mami's final attack hitting Charlotte in Episode 3 is the same as the sound of a warship exploding in Freelancer.
• Stylistic Suck: An interview with some of the production staff indicates that Madoka's notebook sketches of herself as a magical girl were intentionally drawn somewhat badly in order to seem authentic. (The same interview also indicates that the first pass at those sketches were too far in the "suck" direction.)
• Suicide Pact: In episode 4, a witch trances a large group of people to gather in a warehouse and gas themselves to death.
• Super Special Move:
  • Madoka's magical girl weapon is a bow that fires pink energy arrows. When dealing with particularly resilient witches, she has an unnamed, stronger version of it. She charges an arrow for a while and then shoots it at the sky where it appears a pattern made of circles and lines, also pink. Finally, several big energy arrows rain from the pattern. She's launched this attack successfully against the Final Boss witch Walpurgisnatch on several occasions. It doubles as an Evolving Attack because it gets considerably stronger with each new timeline.
  • Mami's weapons are ribbon-made muskets that she often summons in batches. Her finisher attack consists of merging a bunch of them to create a giant gun that fires an equally big beam of yellow energy. She calls it "Tiro Finale", which is the Italian for "final shot". It's also Mami's Signature Move.
• Supporting Protagonist: Madoka. In contrast to the other four, who spend the whole story—or, in Sayaka's case, most of it—as magical girls fighting witches and sometimes each other, Madoka remains on the sidelines and refrains from becoming a magical girl until the very end. Ultimately, she is the main character because it is her observations of and empathy with her friends' misery and mistakes that saves the universe, not the actual actions they take.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Magical girls aim to kill Witches. However, as is the case with fights, one mistake can be lethal even if the person who made it was previously winning the fight, as Mami found out- and there's no second chances or miraculous saves at the last moment.
  • Sayaka becomes a magical girl and gets powers and the ability to summon weapons. But what she doesn't automatically get is the knowledge of how to fight, which puts her far behind all the other magical girls, especially since they all had a lot more experience.
• Surreal Horror: The witch's labyrinths tend to use a very strangely animated collage-like style that can often drift into this.
• Sweets of Temptation: Charlotte is an adorable, harmless-looking doll-like witch who resides in a barrier filled with desserts. Mami thinks she's going to be an easy kill, but gets the shock of her life when Charlotte suddenly reveals her second form, a giant worm with razor-sharp teeth. She bites Mami's head clean off and feasts on her remains right in front of a horrified Madoka and Sayaka.
• Synchronized Morning Routine: In "As If I Met Her In My Dream...", Madoka and her mother do their Morning Routine together as a way to show their close relationship and their difference in maturity —Junko wears makeup while Madoka ties her hair in Girlish Pigtails, Junko is a night owl because of her job (and stress) while Madoka is an early riser. This part becomes important later in the anime, as the Incubators target teenage girls because they are more gullible and emotional and overall less experienced than adult women.

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