Characters / Puella Magi Madoka Magica - Homura Akemi

Puella Magi Madoka Magica Main Character Index
Magical Girls (Homura Akemi, Sayaka Miki) | Kyubey | Witches | Supporting Characters | The Movie Rebellion | Kazumi Magica (Magical Girls | Others) | Oriko Magica | Suzune Magica | Tart Magica | Portable | Magia Record | Concept Movie Trailer | Wraith Arc

Voiced by: Chiwa Saitō (Japanese), Cristina Valenzuela (English) ^{Foreign VAs}Ariadna Jiménez (Spanish), Alessia Amendola (Italian), Nathalie Bienaimé (French), Kaya Marie Möller (German)

"You're in no position to question my help. Or do you just hate the idea of it?"

^{Click here to see Homura in her normal attire.}
"Remember this...and take it to heart: kindness sometimes leads to even greater tragedy."

"I won't rely on anyone anymore! I don't care if no one understands! I won't let Madoka fight! I'll destroy every last witch by myself if I have to! And this time... I'll defeat Walpurgisnacht... once and for all!"

A New Transfer Student in Madoka's class and a stoic magical girl with unknown motives. For whatever reason, she will go to any length to prevent Madoka from striking a contract with Kyubey. The true nature of her magical powers is unknown at first, with hints being gradually dropped over the course of the series before being fully revealed in the last few episodes; however, beyond her magic she also wields conventional weaponry such as handguns and explosives.

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A-D

• Academic Athlete: One of the smartest and best at sports in her class; she knows the lecture better than any student and sets a track record on her first day. Not surprising, considering she went through the same time loop a hundred times. She was actually humiliatingly incompetent at both academics and athletics before the time loop began, due to the six months she spent in a hospital room.
• Achilles' Heel: Her time-stopping ability is incredibly potent and can end most fights in a moment if she can pull it off, but it can be easily negated by either immobilizing Homura so she can't turn the gears in her shield, or damaging the shield itself. Both Mami and Kyoko manage to cotton onto this weakness and exploit it at different points, with disastrous results for Homura each time. She also cannot use it on people who are in physical contact with her.
• Action Girl: She knows her way around firearms and explosives and she's the most experienced when it comes to fighting witches.
• Adaptational Modesty: The Compilation Movie changes the "naked space hugs" scene so that Madoka and Homura are instead wearing white lace dresses.
• Adaptation Expansion: The manga has an epilogue that differs from the anime's, with Homura walking through a desert towards a group of wraiths and sprouting a pair of nightmarish wings. In the manga, she is taken into the afterlife by Ultimate Madoka.
• Adrenaline Makeover: In one of the later timelines shown in Episode 10, she undoes her braids and uses her magic to heal her ailing eyes. This is partially so Madoka won't recognize her.
• Aloof Ally: She's initially antagonistic because she's introduced attacking Kyubey. Later, she helps with witches but still stands apart from the other magical girls. This is mostly a show in order to make the other girls avoid her, as well as a coping mechanism to avoid becoming attached to those whose deaths she saw many times.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: She's pretty, has long dark hair, and appears to be extremely aloof and cold.
• Always Save the Girl: She will protect Madoka at any cost. This means Homura tunnel-visions on Madoka and regards everyone else as a nuisance, having no qualms with them dying so long as Madoka survives. This naturally conflicts with Madoka herself trying to save everyone she can.
• Anti-Hero: She has a more-or-less good goal and extremely pragmatic ways of pursuing it.
• Apologetic Attacker: During the third timeline, she tearfully says her goodbyes to Oktavia von Seckendorff before activating the pipe bomb that destroys her.
  "I'm sorry... Miss Miki..."
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: In the manga she goes with Ultimate Madoka to be with her forever after her work as Dark Angel Homura is done.
• Athletically Challenged: When she first came to Madoka's school, she was very clumsy and bad at sports, due to having a heart condition. After going through a time loop of repeating the previous month numerous times and having to fight many witches, she became the best athlete in the class.
• Attack Reflector: According to Word of God, her wings in the new reality have this ability.
• Badass Adorable: Formerly she was a clumsy Shrinking Violet that blew up witches with homemade bombs. Afterwards she's only adorable in a Stoic Woobie sense.
• Badass Boast: "I won't make any excuses for myself. No matter what sins I must bear, I will continue my fight to the end."
• Bag of Holding: Either up her sleeve or just behind her shield; she uses it to store all her conventional weaponry.
• Beautiful All Along: Played with. When first introduced, Homura has an elegant beauty to her. However, Episode 10 reveals that she originally looked closer to a Hollywood Homely, with huge glasses and braids. Later, her Adrenaline Makeover shows that she did indeed follow this trope.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Her devotion to Madoka stems from the latter's kindness.
• Beneath the Mask: Despite pretending to be an Emotionless Girl, she has a soft side that she hides. She even cried after Madoka almost became a magical girl. Episode 10 confirms that she was a Shrinking Violet. Part of her new attitude is because she Took a Level in Badass, and is hiding the part of herself that she considers "weak." It is also from the raw emotional and mental trauma of repeating the same month over about a hundred times. It is also likely due to Madoka's comment that she should “act more cool” from the first timeline, and because she promised Madoka in one timeline to prevent her from making a contract ever again, which forced her to become The Stoic so that nothing else reaches her and she can be determined to fulfill that goal.
• Berserk Button: If you mess with Madoka in any way, she will drop her cool to stop you with lots of firepower.
• Bespectacled Cutie: She wore glasses back when her personality was timid, clumsy and insecure. After deciding to become more independent and stronger, she stopped wearing glasses.
• Big Damn Heroes: She often jumps in to save others, for example when she stopped time and emptied a pistol into Kyubey, narrowly saving Madoka from screwing herself over.
• Big Good: For the bulk of the series Homura is the only one taking direct action against Kyubey.
• Blinded by the Light: Flashbangs are amongst her arsenal.
• Bolivian Army Ending: In the final scene of the anime, she walks towards a massive horde of wraiths while sprouting dark wings, either as part of her new superpowers or as a sign that she'll go to Heaven soon, with No Body Left Behind (as that would normally be the sign of a Witch, and in this timeline, Witches don't exist). Averted in the manga, when she does indeed go to Heaven in the final scene. And this is where the two canons diverge.
  • According to Urobuchi, "Homura's fight just goes on," and Iwakami states that he "personally believes it to be a Good End", making it unlikely that Homura dies in the final scene.
• Braids of Action: Inverted. Homura let her braids down when she Took a Level in Badass.
• Break the Cutie: By the time we see her, she's not so much broken as emotionally numb. While things like Mami's decapitation, Sayaka's degeneration into a witch and Kyoko's Heroic Sacrifice certainly affect her, they carry less weight since she's seen them a minimum of four times before by dint of her Reset Button.
• Broken Ace: She never loses her cool, and is both book smart and athletic, as well as an extremely skilled Magical Girl. However this is result of being stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop that has given her a LOT of time to develop her skills, and her composed attitude is her way of staying sane after watching her best friend die or become a witch over and over again.
• Broken Bird: She's extremely cold and a loner as a result of her experiences as a Magical Girl. Watching your best friend die horribly many times over and failing to stop it will do that.
• Brutal Honesty: She freely tells Madoka that she is a naive idiot. She's even harsher on other characters.
• Byronic Heroine: She has conflicting emotions, isolates herself from others, has a troubled past, is cynical and arrogant, and she doesn't hesitate to render her enemies full of holes when things call for it.
• The Cassandra: Nobody is ever willing to listen to her warnings.
• Casting a Shadow: Appears to have darkness-based powers in the rewritten universe.
• Celestial Body: In the final episode the black wings when she fights the wraiths have stars within them.
• The Champion: Aspires to be Madoka's, in a purely martial sense. Her devotion to doing so is the only thing holding her psyche together. After Madoka becomes a goddess, this takes on a more religious bent.
• Character Catchphrase: "That won't be necessary."
• Chekhov's Gun: There's a reason why her weapon is a shield.
• Classical Anti-Hero: In her Shrinking Violet phase, she was a Super Loser even with her Time Stands Still ability.
• Cold Ham: Most of her lines are loaded with the overly-dramatic arrogance you'd expect from a Large Ham, delivered without a hint of emotion. She rarely raises her voice, but always manages to become the center of attention. This is mostly an act, and an attempt to convince herself that she's strong enough to save Madoka.
• Colour-Coded Timestop: Everything on the scene goes greyscale when Homura activates her time stop ability. Only Homura and whoever she touches is in color.
• Combat Pragmatist: She uses Time Stands Still to paralyze her enemies and either fill them with lead or blow them up while they're helpless.
• Combat Stilettos: She sports heels in her magical girl outfit. Considering that she uses explosives and time powers, they don't really hinder her, though she can run just fine in them.
  • Notably, when she did trip over them constantly was back when she still had glasses and braids. After she changed, the heels add to her air of maturity. And the one moment she trips over them again is after narrowly preventing Madoka making a contract again, when she's breaking down.
• Conveniently an Orphan: Heavily implied. We never see or hear of any parents, and the nameplate of her residence only has her name, much like Mami's. In the first episode she said she came from a missionary school. In Episode 10, not only is no one with her in the hospital, but she filled out her school transfer forms by herself. It's convenient because it explains how she can get away with her drastic personality changes from being the Groundhog Peggy Sue without anyone noticing, and why she's so determined to help Madoka; she doesn't have anyone else.
• Cracks in the Icy Façade: Its hard to see anything beyond a cold, uncaring demeanor with Homura at first. At worst you see annoyance and frustration, but deeper, kinder emotions are hard to spot. But they slowly become visible, and we eventually see just how much of a facade that icy exterior really is.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Know why Homura can summon conventional weapons apparently from nowhere? It's because she stole them from the Yakuza and later the Defense Force.
  • Her special power as a magical girl is to control time, whether stopping it, or traveling backwards through it she retains her memories, which is why in the beginning she knows a lot about the school subjects, and a lot about Madoka even though they've never met before.
• Crucified Hero Shot: With Madoka, after Sayaka's funeral and Kyubey explains the 'threads of fate' thing. She was tangled up just like Madoka.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: She can easily fight both witches and other magical girls because of her exploitable ability. Case in point, one timeline shows her killing witches all by herself. Walpurgisnacht is the only witch capable of sending her to the receiving end of the curbstomp, despite her best efforts.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: She started out as one. She's uncoordinated during her first attempts at using her magical powers and worked at overcoming this through the loops.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Homura became the cold Anti Heroine she is now after she was forced to Mercy Kill Madoka in one timeline.
• Dark and Troubled Past: It is hinted all along the series that her past was full of horrible moments, but it is not until Episode 10 that we finally find out how deep she is in shit. To summarize: back in the original timeline, it was Madoka who saved her from being killed by a witch. When Walpurgisnacht came she saw Madoka die, and this was what pushed her to make a contract with Kyubey. She returned in time, but no matter how many times she tried, the events conspired against her to make her see Madoka die again and again and again. The trauma she carries on her back is beyond what a normal human could endure.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Despite the dark outfit, creepily sterile house, and aloof demeanor, she's not all that bad a girl. In the new universe, she's still a magical girl, and significantly more heroic than she once was and manifests terrifying jagged black wings as part of her Battle Aura.
• Dark Magical Girl: She starts the main narrative as a stoic and antagonistic Magical Girl opposing our friendly protagonist, Madoka. The truth is closer to a inversion as she was on Madoka's side from the start as her Mysterious Protector and began the story as her shy friend.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • She cracks three jokes throughout the series and they're all at the expense of Kyoko.
    Kyoko: Huh! The annoying bitch has an annoying friend, go figure.
    Homura: [appearing from nowhere] Well, I wonder what kind of friends you'd have, then.
  • When Kyoko explains to Homura that she can only fight Sayaka for the length of time it takes the former to eat a stick of Pocky until Kyoko reenters their fight:
    Homura: That's plenty of time.
  • In Episode 6, when Homura interrupts the fight between Sayaka and Kyoko, by deflecting Kyoko's attack and knocking Sayaka out via chop to the back of her neck:
    Kyoko: What the heck... who's side are you on, anyway?!
    Homura: I'm on the side of those who think rationally, and the enemy of idiots who pick fights. I wonder which you belong to, Kyoko Sakura?
• Declaration of Protection: Her wish is as follows: "I want to redo my meeting with Madoka. Instead of being protected by her, I want to become someone that protects her."
• Delicate and Sickly: The period of time she has been looping was the first few weeks where she was mainstreamed; before transferring to Madoka's class, she spent most of her life in the hospital because of a heart condition.
• Despair Event Horizon: Comes within a hair's breadth of it after failing to defeat Walpurgisnacht for the zillionth time, while realizing that going back and trying to save Madoka again will only make her a more powerful witch. Faced with the Awful Truth, Homura would have witched out right there, had Madoka not showed up at that very moment to make her own wish.
• Determinator: After experiencing the same thing over and over for nearly a ''hundred'' times, and not breaking down yet, she definitely counts. Only Madoka's request has kept her going. Failure is not an option. The moment she accepts that Madoka's fate cannot be changed, she will succumb to despair and turn into a witch.
• Determined Defeatist: For someone who claims that "Dedication has no reward" she is steadfast in her mission to save Madoka. It is implied that the "reward" she speaks of here is Madoka's love.
• Deuteragonist: The entire story and most other canons (such as Oriko) usually turn out to be just as much about her journey as the main character's, if not more.
• Did Not Get the Girl: In the anime because Madoka went to a Higher Plane Of Existence. In the manga, she ultimately reunites with Madoka on that Higher Plane.
• Died Happily Ever After: One of several implied fates for her at the end of the series, and canon in the manga, is ascending to Madoka's heaven after her death.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The nature of her weapon and magical girl powers. She possesses time manipulation powers and a shield that doubles as a Bag of Holding. And nothing else. No way to actually fight anything, and not even the basic combat skills that (if Sayaka is anything to go by) are usually granted to a magical girl alongside her weapon. However, while she can't conjure magical weapons, there's nothing to stop her from using those Time Stands Still abilities to steal a whole bunch of mundane ones from, say, a military base and shove them into said Bag Of Holding. A few timelines' worth of training, and now Homura is a Walking Armory with enough firepower to deal with almost anything... keyword being "almost".
• Discard and Draw: Due to the Cosmic Retcon, she loses her time stop powers and Hyperspace Arsenal and acquires abilities similar to Madoka.
• The Dulcinea Effect: Downplayed. While she wished to go back in time and protect Madoka whom she only knew for a month, it was for a longer time period than most cases of this trope. Also, it's more reasonable, as Madoka was Homura's Only Friend. Furthermore, it appears in the second timeline that she really didn't understand the weight of the situation and thought everything was fine and dandy. It wasn't until she matured, spent more time with Madoka, and realized all of the Awful Truths that she became more steadfast in her determination.
• Dynamic Entry: She makes sure to make an epic entrance whenever she joins a fight. Most of the time, it looks like she teleports into the scene. Justified by being a Time Master.

E-K

• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Her pale skin provide a visual contrast with dark coloured hair and attire. They also reflect her cold and sardonic personality.
• Elemental Motifs: Earth. Her tights and Soul Gem both have diamond motifs, and diamonds are equivalent to the pentacles in tarot, which are Earth-aligned. Her own powers have a more practical nature rather than anything fancy or offensive, and she has been stuck in the same unending rut for years, which she has been utterly stubborn and unwanting to get out of. This is also manifested in the end, when she becomes literally stuck under rubble, unable to move from the ground until Madoka interferes.
• Emotionless Girl: She never smiles, has a completely toneless voice, and acts like she's made of stone when horrible things happen. It is subverted as we find out that she started repressing her emotions after watching Madoka die again and again while stuck in her "Groundhog Day" Loop in a desperate attempt to finally save Madoka from her terrible fate.
• Emotion Suppression: Homura does have emotions, but she keeps them repressed so they don't get in her way and she can focus on her mission to save Madoka.
• Enemy Mine: She forms an alliance with Kyoko to defeat Walpurgisnacht together, but Kyoko dies before the battle.
• Energy Bow: In the final, post-witch timeline, she wields a bow that fires glowing purple arrows as a counterpart to the weapon Madoka had as a magical girl.
• Energy Weapon: On top of that giant arsenal of conventional weaponry, she can also fire purple-toned laser beams from her gem, notably when hunting Kyubey in the first episode.
• Enraged by Idiocy: She's very frustrated by what she considers foolish and stubborn actions. While she thinks of Mami as naïve and respects Kyoko's pragmatic worldview, she detests Sayaka, who threw her wish away for someone rlse and is too stubborn to listen to reason.
• Even the Girls Want Her: She's very popular with her female classmates, as seen in the first episode. The PSP game shows that Hitomi will swoon over her given the right circumstances.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: The 10th episode reveals that Homura used to be a nerdy, shy girl with glasses and huge braids over her shoulders. After sticking herself in a "Groundhog Day" Loop to save her friend, and seeing the situation get worse when its full horror is revealed, she wakes up at the start of a new loop with a speech affirming her determination to fight alone and win at the end, while untying her hair and fixing her eyes with magic, becoming the stern badass we'd known up to that point.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Depending on her choices between timelines, Homura's goals end up being either to protect Madoka's life, to prevent her from contracting, or both - each time met with failure. Even at the very end when Ultimate Madoka did her Cosmic Retcon, she still contracted, and at the same time lost Homura her time travel powers as a result of the retcon. The poor girl just couldn't win.
• Failure Knight: The person she's trying to protect is the same one she failed to save in the first place, thanks to time travel.
• Fatal Flaw: As a self-imposed loner, not only is Homura selfish, but she is a huge Negative Nancy. For the life of her, she just doesn't grasp the concept of Good Feels Good; she views helping others at her own expense with no reward as painful and pointless, something she gets on Madoka's case about more than once. This is especially apparent when Madoka makes her Heroic Sacrifice: while Madoka is calmly and happily explaining that no Puella Magi will suffer again, Homura is screaming and wailing about what amounts to Madoka dying with no way for her to reverse it. Zig-zagged in that she considers helping Madoka painful but believes Madoka is ultimately worth it, and behaves in a sour way to caution Madoka about the bad things that will, without a doubt, happen to her if she makes a contract.
• Faustian Rebellion: She received her time manipulation powers from Kyubey in exchange for her soul and uses those powers to undermine his energy collecting plan.
• Feminist Fantasy: Homura's story (as shown in Episode 10) is a story of Homura's evolution from a depressed Shrinking Violet who cannot do anything right into a hardened Anti-Hero who performs amazing feats to save another girl, never backing down from a challenge.
• Fights Like a Normal: She's the only magical girl who doesn't have some sort of magical weapon or directly offensive powers. Instead, she uses firearms stolen from the Yakuza and the JSDF as well as homemade explosives augmented by her time control and Bag of Holding abilities.
• Flash Step: She appears to have Super-Speed as her magical girl power, since she can disappear and then reappear somewhere else. Her real power is to invoke Time Stands Still, but the effect is the same.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: The Real Life JSDF reported a number of missing weapons around the time the series was aired. They match the kind of weapons that Homura uses in the final battle. Read more about it here.
• Full-Name Basis: For most of the series and toward most people, but refers to Madoka by her first name in particularly emotional moments toward the end. The only occasion when she refers to someone else by their first name is when Kyoko is about to perform a Heroic Sacrifice and Homura was surprised by this. Kyubey tends to refer to her by her full name.
• Futile Hand Reach:
  • Reaches towards Madoka as she's being dragged out of Madoka's cosmic dimension.
  • Also as Madoka rushes to Sayaka's side in episode eight.
  • Also, during the end credits, her silhouette turns and feebly reaches after Madoka as she walks past.
• Gender-Blender Name: Her first name can be used for either a boy or a girl.
• Get a Hold of Yourself, Woman!: In the final chapter of The Different Story, Homura tries to slap some sense into a depressed Mami who has lost the will to live because of Sayaka's and Kyoko's deaths, and reminds her that they still need to stop the Walpurgisnacht from destroying the city. Sadly, Mami is far too broken by that point and commits suicide to join her parents and friends in death.
• Girlish Pigtails:
  • In the anime, she used to wear her hair in huge braids over her shoulders, but after becoming an Anti-Hero, she removed them.
  • In the manga, she wears them again in Madoka's new world with Madoka's ribbons, though they aren't braided. Then they are braided when she ascends to heaven with Madoka.
• Girl of My Dreams: Madoka first sees Homura in a dream before seeing her in real life. When Sayaka hears about this in the manga, she suggests that they were bound together in a previous life. Got it in one.
• Girly Run: She had a particularly slow, dainty version of this as Moemura.
• The Glasses Come Off: She originally wore glasses but used magic to fix her eyesight at the beginning of the loop that happened after the one where she mercy killed Madoka. As she does so, she resolves to kill all of the witches single-handedly, and does a damn good job until she hits Walpurgisnacht.
• Good All Along: She initially antagonizes the other girls, but decides to help them later on. Then the tenth episode reveals her true motives, and that she's been trying to help them the whole time.
• Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: The aforementioned Adrenaline Makeover also saw her Tareme Eyes change in shape.
• Good is Not Nice: A Magical Girl of the Anti-Hero variety.
• Goth Girls Know Magic: Played With. She has shades of being goth, what with her darker outfit in comparison to the others and her sardonic and lonely personality, but her powers as a Magical Girl Warrior aren't as overtly magical.
• Groundhog Peggy Sue: She's trying her hardest to find the Golden Path via time travel. She's an unusual case in that her priority is a single person.
• The Gunslinger: Of the Quick Draw variety normally- She can pull a great variety of weapons out of hammerspace, but tends to default to semi-automatic pistols as a first resort, and is very accurate with them. When the chips are down, though, she transitions to the Vaporizer type, wielding ridiculous quantities of explosives, rockets, and other massive weapons in conjunction with time-stopping to unleash a practical endless barrage of ammunition.
• Hair Flip: Occasionally flips her very long hair when talking. It's become memetic. She's not used to having her long hair hang loose.
• Hammerspace: The circular buckler/shield on her arm can store lots of big items, such as bombs, swords, and guns.
• Hand Cannon: She uses a Desert Eagle in an early timeline, reflecting her inexperience with guns. By the time of the series proper, she's switched to using rifles, explosives, and 9mm pistols.
• Heartbroken Badass: She had to see her beloved best friend die over and over again.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Downplayed; she used to be a Shrinking Violet and ends up as The Champion of a god, but she was never an outright Villain Protagonist, at least until The Movie.
• Heroic BSoD: She comes closest to Witchhood in Episode 11 after giving up on protecting Madoka. Only Madoka volunteering to become a Magical Girl herself snaps her out of it.
• Heroic Safe Mode: She spends the bulk of the series in a stoic focused-solely-on-goal mode because of the trauma of the loops. The fourth one triggered it because she was asked by Madoka to mercy kill Madoka; critical error that one.
• Hero of Another Story: She has been traveling back in time to fight Kyubey and try to protect Madoka from meeting a tragic end as a magical girl. She only see glimpses of her battles and tragedies in previous timelines in episode 10, but it's been confirmed that she has lived through approximately 100 time loops by the time the series begins.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Despite being a snarker and all, she actually cares about the well-being for everyone she knows. This is reinforced by the fact that she's a clever character. If not for her selfless efforts the entire cast would have been killed off several times over. Even Mami gets herself killed by not listening to her. She outright states that it's all for the sake of Madoka, and even accepts Mami's death if it means teaching her a lesson. Even if her words are false bravado, they're still implied to be true.
• Hope Springs Eternal: Even after seeing her friends die, kill each other out of despair, or turn into witches across multiple timelines, she still hasn't given up trying to save Madoka.
• Humanizing Tears: For a while, she seems to be an arrogant loner who wants to prevent Kyubey from contracting any new magical girls, so she will have less competition. That is, until she suddenly breaks down in tears after narrowly averting one of Madoka's attempts to become a magical girl. This is the moment where Homura first shows herself as a vulnerable human being in front of someone of the current timeline.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: A score of rocket launchers, flash grenades, explosive grenades, etc.
• Hypocrite: Homura scorns Mami for her naïvely optimistic worldview, and calls Sayaka foolish for making her wish on someone else's behalf. Yet, she is insanely dedicated to saving Madoka from despair, and her contract was was spurred entirely by her need to preserve some happiness in the world. And despite failing so many times she keeps trying again and again desperately expecting the outcome to go differently, which in effect means she has more idealism than nearly any of the others if she honestly believes things can change after so long.
• I Am What I Am: She will easily admit that as a magical girl she essentially isn't human anymore and doesn't seem bothered by it, because she knows she can turn into something worse.
• I Gave My Word: All that she does is to fulfill the promise she made to a dying Madoka to save her from the inevitable hell of magical girl-dom.
• Indifferent Beauty: She quickly becomes popular at school because of her beauty, but she doesn't care about that and turns down any offers to spend time together.
• Ineffectual Loner: In the original timeline where a witch tried to drive her to suicide based on her friendless and useless nature. She would have succeeded if not for Magical Girl Madoka and Mami.
• Instant Expert: Averted much harder than with Sayaka, who immediately gains impressive fighting skills, even though they're not quite enough to let her stand up to veteran magical girls like Kyouko. The flashbacks show that when she first became a magical girl, she gained no fighting skills at all, an issue compounded by a weapon that embodies Difficult, but Awesome. She needed a lot of time to find out how to make the best use of her powers. Thankfully, time is the one thing she has plenty of.
• Irony:
  • The girl who wished to be the one protecting Madoka always ended up protected by her. This is most evident in episode 11 of the current timeline. When she realizes that she will never be able to protect Madoka, no matter how many times she tries and the despair almost turned her into a witch until Madoka saved her again.
  • She's trying to protect Madoka by making sure she never learns the truth about Kyubey. It turns out the only way to save Madoka is to actually get her in the know of everything, as it's only through learning the suffering of magical girls in the paws of Kyubey does Madoka make her wish to save everyone.
• Jade-Colored Glasses: "With kindness comes naïveté. Courage becomes foolhardiness. Dedication has no reward. If you can't accept any of that, you are not fit to be a magical girl."
• Jerkass Has a Point: Like Kyoko, this applies to a good deal of the things she says.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Although she does not easily show signs of remorse, sadness, or pity, it is only because she had grown used to the suffering around her, and must put up a strong front to continue fighting for her goal. Homura herself has stated that she always feels badly with each life she's unable to save or alter, but nevertheless, it does not slow her down from staying true to her objective in saving Madoka Kaname.
• Kids Driving Cars: In the Manga's version of the Walpurgis Night fight, she drives the tanker towards it, then sets the truck on fire just as she jumps out of the cab. It's about as effective as it is when she does it in the Anime.
• Kill the Ones You Love: She was forced to Mercy Kill her dear Madoka in one timeline to prevent her witchification.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: Uses her time powers to steal high-grade weapons from the Yakuza and the Japanese Military.
• The Klutz: Before her dramatic character change and after a lot of practicing, she was clumsy.
• Knight in Sour Armor: No matter how pointless and impossible it may seem, she would not give up on trying to save Madoka and other magical girls, even in doomed timelines. Besides merely being stoic, she knows the moment she gives up her quest for good, she would become a witch in an instant.

L-R

• Lady and Knight: She can be seen as the Black Knight to Madoka's Bright Lady. Homura is Madoka's strong and brave protector who has sworn to defend her at any cost, but Homura's dark and ruthless nature keep her from being the classical benevolent and noble knight.
• Lady of War: She's always calm and never in a hurry, yet seems even more experienced and dangerous than Mami.
• Large Ham: Despite her being extremely reserved with her emotions, her penchant for flipping her hair with flourish and dramatically appearing out of nowhere makes her startlingly dramatic.
• Last-Name Basis: On most people in the alternate timelines, and even when meeting Madoka in Heaven at the end of the manga. In Rebellion, she refers to Madoka by her first name, but calls the other magical girls by their last names.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: After Madoka's Cosmic Retcon causes everyone but Homura and Tatsuya to forget her, Tatsuya is drawing Madoka on the sand, and his mom asks Homura if she's "some kind of anime character".
• Leitmotif: "Puella in somnio" ^note Girl in the dream and its somewhat calmer piano remix "Inevitablis" ^note Inevitable. When she removes her glasses and unties her braids, it's "Numquam Vincar" ^note I will never be defeated.
• Letting Her Hair Down: This is important to her character because it signifies her new resolve to kill every last witch on her own. She's one of the few characters to have hair like that.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: The dark to Madoka's light because she's cold and rude but no doubt beautiful and graceful.
• Light Liege, Dark Defender: She's the Dark Defender to Madoka's Light Liege. Madoka is a kind, albeit clumsy everygirl with a pink and light theme, while Homura is the sullen, quiet, time-travelling magical girl with a gray and purple color scheme. Homura is aloof and hellbent on preventing Madoka from becoming a magical girl herself for most of the series, sometimes even violently stepping in to protect Madoka.
• Loner-Turned-Friend: Played with. In the original timeline she was a loner due to shyness and Madoka befriended her. In the fifth time line she's a loner due to Heroic Safe Mode and still considers herself Madoka's friend but Madoka doesn't know they were friends.
• Lost Aesop: The Aesop being: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Her constant use of the Reset Button messed up the situation even more because she wants Madoka to stay alive. Kyubey notes that Madoka is getting more powerful every time the Reset Button is pushed. However, this indirectly causes the rewrite of how witches are formed.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Downplayed. Her "weapon" is a buckler but she almost never uses it as a shield. Instead, she has a purple energy barrier.
• Mage Marksman: She has time-control powers but her lack of offensive ability has her resort to using ordinary firearms in combat. This has massive synergy with the fact that her magical shield can store an entire Hyperspace Arsenal, and her powers allow her to take advantage of this.
• Magic Skirt: In the last two episodes her skirt stays down even as she takes hundred meter falls foot-first. It's made all the more strange by the fact that she wears pantyhose.
• Magikarp Power: This is a good summary of how she became the magical girl she is now. She was originally the weakest of Mami's team but became the strongest through work and keeping the nature of her power a secret.
• Meaningful Name: "Homura" means "flame." Madoka points this out in episodes 1 and 10, and in episode 10 says that she should act cool to match it. She does, but only as a side effect of her passion and determination to protect Madoka- most likely the intended meaningfulness of her name. Becomes literal in the last episode: she produces a big purple flame to go with her Memento MacGuffin.
  • People assumed to be witches were also burned at the stake.
• Memento MacGuffin: In the last episode, her magical weapon of choice changes from a shield to a bow, which looks very similar to the bow Madoka had in previous timelines.
• Mercy Kill: In one of the timelines Madoka asks Homura to kill her before she turns into a witch.
• Minor Living Alone: Homura lives completely alone and her family is either nonexistent or estranged. However, her reasons for living alone also stem from the fact that she came to the conclusion that she can only work by herself after countless failed time loops.
• More Dakka: She has an army's worth of munitions stored behind her buckler.
• Morton's Fork: In the last episode, after trying so hard to defeat Walpurgisnacht on her own and failing for the umpteenth time, she realizes it's impossible. But if she starts the loop again, she'll only increase Madoka's karmic destiny and cause her to inevitably become an even more powerful witch. The realization drives her to the brink of the Despair Event Horizon until Madoka arrives to make a wish that will change things once and for all.
• Muggle Best Friend: In the original timeline, Homura was a normal girl who befriended the magical girls Madoka and Mami after they saved her from a witch. In the current timeline, the roles have switched because Homura wants to stop Madoka from becoming a magical girl and dying again.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Homura is horrified when she discovers that by constantly resetting the timeline she inadvertently made Madoka so unusually powerful for a Magical Girl thanks to each new timeline being centered around her. Once she fails to kill Walpurgisnacht the revelation that Madoka will just be stuck in a vicious cycle no matter what she does almost causes her to fall into a Despair Event Horizon.
• My Greatest Failure: All of Madoka's deaths in past timelines.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Her innumerable attempts to Retcon said failure.
• Mysterious Past: She has no family and lives alone in her apartment, with very few details given of her past beyond being in the hospital and some time in a catholic school in Tokyo. After contracting, saving Madoka from becoming a magical girl became her only purpose. Nothing distracts her from her goal because there's nothing and nobody else in her life that matters.
• Mysterious Protector: She self-consciously tries to be this for Madoka by preventing her from contracting and keeping witches away from her.
• Mysterious Purple: The mysterious Homura Akemi has a purple Soul Gem, uses purple colored magical abilities, and has a color scheme that's predominantly purple, grey, and black. Her coldhearted nature and cryptic warnings to the main characters, coupled with her suddenly transferring to Madoka's school after Madoka has a dream about her and showing up whenever Madoka is in danger only add to her mystique. She's revealed to be a Groundhog Day Peggy Sue continuously going back in time to prevent Madoka from becoming a magical girl or fighting the powerful witch Walpurgisnacht, since doing so will seemingly always lead to her becoming world-ending witch.
• Narrator All Along: Of the opening Theme Tune. The lyrics at first appear to be a bunch of semi-meaningful nonsense- then Episode 10 happens, and you realize that the lyrics are about Homura's determination to save Madoka, no matter what.
• Nerves of Steel: She doesn't need time to recover from any emotional impacts. It bounces off all the time, and she always makes the logical decision.
• New Game Plus: She keeps all the information, experience, and "mental development" gained from all of the iterations. This makes her the most capable Puella Magi by a mile and a half, as she can fight any witch (short of Walpurgisnacht) effortlessly on her own. However the trauma changes her personality such that she's unable to emotionally connect the same way.
• New Transfer Student: She transfers into Madoka's class in the first episode after Madoka has seen her in a dream that morning. She's had years of experience in doing this.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Her wish to save Madoka set the world on the path to ruin. By hitting the Reset Button for Madoka's sake, she's stringing together karma and timelines over a single point and therefore creating the potential for the most powerful puella magi and thus the most dangerous witch. However, her wish gave Madoka the chance to learn the truth about magical girl and wish for a complete revamp of the system, saving past, current and future magical girls from becoming witches.
• No Body Left Behind: Her final fate in the manga, as Madoka takes her to Heaven in the final scene.
• No Kill Like Over Kill: In Episode 11 against Walpurgisnacht. Homura freezes time and fires dozens of rocket launchers at it. Then she drives a diesel tank up a bridge and detonates it in the witch's face. Then she lands on a battleship and hits it with a guided missile, and that knocks it into a stadium covered in landmines. This amount of force ends up doing jack shit to Walpurgisnacht.
• Not So Above It All: She may be the calmest and most aloof of the girls, but as time goes on she gives in to despair as things just wind up the same way no matter what she does.
• Not So Stoic: At first her overall demeanor has the traits of The Stoic, but later episodes give visual prompts which reveal that is not the case.
  • During the dream in episode 1 which is actually a part of episode 10, when she sees Madoka she clearly calls out to her. Later in episode 1, while Madoka is walking with her to the nurse's office in the real world, she is seen clenching her teeth.
  • In episode 6, she looks depressed or tired, but relieved when she retrieves Sayaka's soul gem and stares at it before returning it to her owner.
  • In episode 8, after she saved Madoka from making a wish. She breaks down and tearfully asks why Madoka refuses to listen to her.
  • Episode 10 puts all these moments into context. This girl is crying inside.
• Older Than She Looks: Looks fourteen, is really twenty-six thanks to all the time looping she's been doing. See calculations here for details (spoilers in link!). Downplayed since she is still mentally a 14-year-old girl.
• Oracular Urchin: She clearly knows about everything that is going on and that will happen soon, but only shares her knowledge through very vague hints or cryptic advice.
• Outside-Context Problem: Her powers are nothing like anything the other girls have seen, and no one, not even Kyubey, knows anything about her. By the time her true motives are revealed, Mami, Sayaka, and Kyoko are already dead. Justified as she comes from the future/an alternate timeline.
• Pals with Jesus: When Madoka becomes the Goddess of Hope, Homura is her best friend. In the end she's there with friendly encouragement.
• Paradox Person: By the nature of her success, everything that motivated her or developed her character never happened, which changes the nature of her magic.
• Parasol of Prettiness: She is shown with one in a brief frame during the opening.
• Perpetual Frowner: After what she's been through in the past timelines, she doesn't smile anymore. Her default expression is cold as ice.
• Pimped-Out Dress: While it's still fancy, her magical girl outfit neatly averts this, which fits with her cold, somber personality.
• Pin-Pulling Teeth: When she uses grenades, it's like this.
• Poor Communication Kills: For most of the series, one could make this complaint about her—why wouldn't she just tell the other girls all of the horrible things about magical girls? It turns out she did just that in previous timelines. They didn't believe her, and it still ended horribly: Sayaka turned into a witch, Mami killed Kyoko, and Madoka has to kill Mami to stop her despair-filled rampage. Homura knows from experience that she can't save magical girls from themselves, no matter how clearly she spells it out. That being said, her warnings are often too vague or delivered too harshly for them to be received properly. A lot of the hiccups she had with Mami in episode 3 could have been avoided with a better set of warnings, for example.
• Post Modern Magick: Homura proves that sometimes all you need to kill a witch is a machine gun, and if that fails, a missile launcher.
• Power Gives You Wings: In the epilogue of both the anime and manga, she manifests a pair of massive angelic wings while fighting whatever monstrosities have replaced Witches in Madoka's new world. In a post-credit scene in the anime, she also unveils a pair of jagged, Lovecraftian wings called the Black Wings of Corrosion.
• Pragmatic Hero: She is perfectly willing to put aside her morality in order to protect Madoka, but deep down she wishes to help everyone.
• Proper Tights with a Skirt: In all her outfits except in the past, before her dramatic change in character. Perhaps it's a metaphor for maturity.
• Purple Is Powerful: She has violet eyes and an overall purple theme. She also has time powers and is the only one in the know.Word of God ranks her as the most dangerous magical girl so long as no one knows the nature of her magic.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: She has long raven hair and pale skin. When she makes her appearance in Madoka's class, several students fawn over her and Sayaka even says that she's beautiful.
• Rei Ayanami Expy: She has many traits of this, including pale skin, seeming lack of emotions, an unnatural hair and eye color (especially compared to everyone else's Curtains Match the Window scheme), used to be ill, and turns out to be from another timeline with a Dark and Troubled Past.
• Re-Power: For the majority of the series, Homura's Magical Girl powers consisted of Time Travel, Time Stands Still, and a Bag of Holding with room for enough weapons to arm an entire country. After the Cosmic Retcon, Madoka didn't need any protection anymore, and her wish became null. She's still a magical girl, but with powers similar to Madoka's, including wings and an energy bow.
• Retroactive Precognition: She predicts the time and place in which the witch Walpurgis Night will attack the city. When Kyoko asks on what she's basing that prediction, Homura claims it's "statistics". The truth is that Homura is a time traveler and she already faced Walpurgis Night in previous timelines. She also already knows that Sayaka will become a witch because that's her inevitable fate in every timeline in which she forms a contract with Kyubey.
• Retroactive Preparation: She can use her powers to learn from her mistakes, and she's gone through multiple timelines to make sure that Walpurgis Night is defeated, Madoka doesn't die from said witch, and to make sure she doesn't become a witch.
• Riddle for the Ages: What was her life like before she became a magical girl? Her parents are never seen, and neither are any other family members she may have.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: She is the only one who remembers the events of the past timelines and, by the end, the only one who remembers Madoka ever existed.
• Rule of Symbolism: Her wish was to go back in time to protect Madoka and her magical girl weapon is a shield.

S-Z

• Safety in Indifference: The reason she appears so cold to everyone is because she has seen those around her die so many times that she simply decided to stop caring. She still cares about one person (Madoka), but can no longer afford to worry about anyone else. Probably a good thing that the only one she worries about is capable of turning into a planet-destroying witch if not stopped from contracting.
• Sarcastic Devotee: She's annoyed by Madoka's naivete and selflessness and isn't afraid to call her an idiot, but she has dedicated her life to protecting her.
• Satellite Character: Her entire life revolves around Madoka. She's been bedridden in the hospital prior to the start of the story and was a shy, self-conscious girl before meeting Madoka, but that's all we learn about her.
• Save Scumming: Her time powers allow her to do this with the timeline whenever it reaches a Bad End... and also, due to "accumulated karma" from trans-timeline "fate lines", increases Madoka's magical power. The catch? It guarantees that Madoka will turn into an immensely powerful Witch in every timeline where she ends up being the one to defeat Walpurgisnacht.
• Say My Name: Maaadddoookaaa!!!
• School Idol: The school kids admire her for her good grades, beauty and athletic prowess.
• Screw Destiny: Wants nothing more than to save Madoka from her tragic fate, be it her death or her witchification. Unfortunately, as she learns from Kyubey, Failure Is the Only Option.
• Seen It All: Due to the time loops she has seen the full specturm of magical girl life "how many times already?"
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The purpose of her wish is to 'redo her meeting with Madoka' and protect her.
• Shadow Archetype: With Kyoko, of all people. While their personalities are complete opposites, they both have lost their loved ones, yet continue to fight. Kyoko's sacrifice is what triggered Homura's memories of her own past.
• Shaking Her Hair Loose: Just before she Took a Level in Badass in her backstory, Homura untied her braids and let her long hair fall down for the first time.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: She brushes off Mami's death as an occupational hazard. It's explained in Episode 10 that since she came from the future a lot of times, she saw everyone die a lot of times, so her reaction is a muted Oh, No... Not Again!.
• Shoot the Dog: In one timeline, Homura is forced to kill Madoka before Madoka becomes a witch.
• Shout-Out: The story draws direct parallels between her and Goethe's version of Faust, with Madoka as her Gretchen. Nope, no subtext here...
• Shrinking Violet: Before she became a Magical Girl in the first place, she was timid.
• Sickly Child Grew Up Strong: She was nearsighted and had a heart condition before she healed it with magic. After that and going through a decade worth of a time loop, she's one of the strongest magical girls in the series.
• Single-Issue Wonk: If it has nothing to do with Madoka, she's not interested.
• Single-Target Sexuality: The only person she has romantic sights on is Madoka and she will do absolutely anything to keep her alive.
• Slasher Smile: In the manga version, when she intends to kill Sayaka after she refuses her help. There's something frightening when this normally stoic and aloof girl suddenly breaks into murderous glee.
• Sole Survivor: Time and time again she was the last of the group to survive to the very end.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Other magical girls see Homura as coldhearted, rude and suspicious, but she adopted her too-cool-for-you persona as a coping mechanism. Her backstory later explains that she really only cares about stopping Madoka, specifically, from making a contract because she has experienced the horrific aftermath of that scenario many times. It often leads to the end of the world, and always leads to the end of Madoka; the latter concerns Homura much more than the former. She very much wants to be friends with everyone, but she drove them away after a few time-loops because they didn't believe her warnings and repeatedly getting close to them only resulted in Homura seeing them all die or become witches.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: It's her primary mode of transportation, and she has the habit of doing this multiple times per conversation, solely for the sake of showing the other girls how sorely outclassed they are. She appears to accomplish this by Flash Step, and then by straight-up teleportation; ultimately it's a creative application of the power to stop time.
• Stepford Snarker: You might want to look down at the Not So Stoic entry, the reasoning to her snarking is the same. This is also in contrast to Mami Tomoe, whom is the opposite.
• Straw Nihilist: Defied. While cynical she rejects the notion that life is meaningless and everyone is better off killing themselves. Why else would she try so hard to save her best friend?
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Although she may appear cold and emotionless, she has emotions and very strong ones, but they're usually kept under tight lock and key. When she drops the cold facade, she's softhearted and utterly devoted to the one she loves most, Madoka.
• Superhero Packing Heat : Episode 10 shows bombs and guns. Episode 11 shows an impressive arsenal of rocket launchers.
• Super Loser: Originally, she was clumsy and ineffective, even with her timestop powers (something that Mami notes and Sayaka, a fellow rookie, picks on her over). With enough practice and personality changes, she outgrows this trope.
• Super Power Lottery: Her time stopping ability coupled with her limitless bag of guns and explosives allows her to pepper witches with bullets then throw a grenade at their faces before they can move or even realize that they're being attacked. How effective was she? In one timeline, she mows down every witch she encounters alone.
• Survivor Guilt: She saw her best friend die to protect her and prayed that she was the one to die instead of her. She went back in time and saw it over and over again.
• Tap on the Head: Used to subdue Sayaka in the beginning of episode 6.
• Teleport Spam: It's actually brief uses of her Time Stands Still power giving the illusion of a Flash Step. The distinction is important because it explains why she can't escape Mami's binding her in Episode 3 or when Kyoko grabs her by the wrist.
• Temporal Paradox: In the final timeline, the only one of two who remember Madoka and has her ribbon. There doesn't appear to be an alternate timeline explanation for her becoming a magical girl; and her wish no longer applies since there isn't a Madoka to save. Yet she exists as a magical girl. It also extends to the fact that her makeover is still in place and she does not have her braids and glasses, despite her makeover also being a side-effect of her wish for Madoka.
• That Man Is Dead: "I won't depend on anyone anymore."
• This Cannot Be!: After Mami is killed. In the English dub, it's turned into a Little "No".
• Throw Down the Bomblet: She employs a variety of grenades and flashbangs while fighting witches and fellow magical girls alike. In the earlier timelines, she initially stuck to homemade pipe-bombs before graduating to more modern explosives.
• Time Loop Fatigue: She went through who knows how many self-inflicted time loops trying and failing to save Madoka, and watching the same people die horribly over and over again. The ordeal has made her almost completely lock away her emotions to keep herself from going insane.
• Time Master: She can pause time and perform Mental Time Travel, though seemingly only to one specific time.
• Took a Level in Badass: The first one was becoming a magical girl and the second one was after she had to Mercy Kill Madoka which motivated her to become the One Girl Army that she is at the start of the series in order to better protect Madoka.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: She starts off as a cold-hearted and aloof girl due to having Seen It All several times. As the series advances, she starts to show emotions more and more until it turns out she was emotional all along, she just repressed her emotions.
• Tragic Bromance: A female example. She develops a close relationship with Madoka in every timeline before the one where she has to Mercy Kill her.
• Tragic Keepsake: Madoka's ribbon.
  • In the anime, note that Homura only wears one of them but Madoka gave her both.
  • In the manga adaptation, Homura wears both by keeping her hair in pigtails.
• Tragic Time Traveler: Homura has the ability to travel through time as part of her wish to save Madoka after she died in the original timeline. Unfortunately, said time traveling shenanigans not only leave her a broken girl, every time she does so, Madoka, and in turn her witch Kriemhild, only end up growing stronger and stronger, with one timeline ending with Kriemhild so powerful that Kyubey ditches humanity to her fate because they seemingly reached their energy quota with her. She still keeps trying regardless, but in the end, she and Madoka are separated again when the latter ascends and becomes the Law of Cycles, while the former is left behind in a world with new creatures separate from Witches called Wraiths.
• Traitor Shot: Downplayed. There are many dramatic closeups of Homura's face, and it really does drive it in that she is hiding something, but she's no traitor.
• Tranquil Fury: When fighting witches, she kills every familiar she comes across. She just throws bombs and pulls the trigger with a completely stoic expression.
• Troubled, but Cute: A beautiful young girl with an extremely tragic past hidden by a stoic facade.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: In the second timeline, a shy Homura knew where to find instructions to put together pipe bombs. She had no qualms about building pipe bombs when Mami suggested her to find a better weapon than the golf club she used at the time. However, she was clearly nervous when she was looking for this information, so the trope is Zig-Zagged.
• Uncanny Valley Girl: When Homura gets transferred to Madoka's class in the first episode, everyone comments on how beautiful she is, but at the same time finds her creepy. Subverted in later episodes, especially Episode 10, where Homura is shown to act that way because she is a Shell-Shocked Veteran rather than truly evil.
• Undying Loyalty: To Madoka, as she willingly trapped herself in a "Groundhog Day" Loop, and expressed that she'll stay there forever if need be, all for the sake of saving her one and only friend from the fate of death or eternal despair. In the end, she is responsible for fighting the wraiths, the new embodiment of the curses of the world, in accordance with Madoka's wish of keeping the world safe.
• The Unfettered: She'll do anything to save Madoka.
• Unflinching Walk: To show how badass she finally became after several timelines. by tossing a grenade at a group of witches.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Homura's constant timeline resets don't reset one very important thing: Madoka's magical power, which carries over and stacks with each reset. What seemed like a good idea at the time ends up exacerbating the situation to literally world-threatening proportions, as when a magical girl gets stronger, so does the Witch it leaves behind. Madoka's witch causes an apocalypse ranging from class 4 to class 6 in at least one timeline, and would've done it again in the final timeline had Madoka herself not fixed the problem permanently.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Episode 10 shows her as a shy and sweet girl who is overjoyed with Madoka's friendship. But the constant timeline resets and torrent of horrible things happening to her and everyone around her really take a toll on her mental wellbeing. She becomes the cold and calculating stoic we know after one timeline forces her to Mercy Kill Madoka.
• Walking Spoiler: Her true origins, the nature of her power, the purpose and point of her quest, and her original Shrinking Violet self is first seen in a Wham Episode towards the end of the series.
• Weak, but Skilled: Word of God has stated that she possesses little raw magical power, but relies on wit, trickery, her exploitable ability and an unconventional arsenal of weapons to get the job done. As a result, no witch besides Walpurgisnacht can legitimately stand up to her.
• When She Smiles: At the end of Episode 12, awwwww...
• Winged Humanoid: She temporarily sprouts a pair of gigantic angel wings at will just before the credits and, in the epilogue, generates a pair of wings that looks like they're made out of the universe itself.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Invoked when Homura and Madoka are dying in one timeline and, accepting that they'll become witches together, Homura wonders if becoming such great witches as to destroy everything bad in the world would be so bad a fate. Ultimately defied by Madoka's Heroic Sacrifice.
• You Are Not Alone: She receives this repeatedly from Madoka with the most extreme instance being the last episode when Madoka ascends to godhood, and reminds Homura one last time that she will never be alone.
• You Are Worth Hell: Towards Madoka, to the point where her entire existence basically centers around Madoka.
• Zen Survivor: Homura Akemi has survived the horrors of magical girl life and has grown both strong and wise because of it. Her teaching is blunt and summed up in "Don't become a magical girl." No one listens. Ultimately, this is exactly why hope prevails.

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"Tragedy and sadness will never truly disappear, but even so, it's the place she once tried to protect. I remember that and I will never ever forget it. That's why... I keep fighting."