Wham Episode / Puella Magi Magica Series

aka: Puella Magi Madoka Magica

This page encompasses the anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica and its Spin Offs Puella Magi Kazumi Magica and Puella Magi Oriko Magica. Now remember folks, GET READY!

• Puella Magi Madoka Magica has not one, not two, not five, but SEVEN Wham Episodes. Not bad for a 12-Episode Anime.
  • Episode 3: Mami, the cool mentor, dies suddenly and horribly. It serves both to demonstrate that being a magical girl is highly dangerous to the point of being potentially lethal and that Anyone Can Die.
  • Episode 6: It turns out magical girls are, basically, liches.
  • Episode 8: Homura is a time traveller. Sayaka turns into a Witch, which will also happen to all magical girls who don't die beforehand.
  • Episode 9: Kyubey is a Sufficiently Advanced Alien harvesting emotional energy to delay the end of the universe. And Kyouko kills witch-Sayaka in a suicide attack.
  • Episode 10: Homura's backstory and why she acted a certain way throughout the series is revealed; it is also discovered she is attempting to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, but has failed rather miserably a number of times. Also her former self in the first few timelines is spectacularly different from her current self.
  • Episode 11 sees Kyubey point out that all the time traveling has inadvertently given Madoka all the magical power of all her previous incarnations, which due to Homura's "Groundhog Day" Loop, are legion, meaning she's destined to be the most powerful witch ever, and every time Homura tries to fix it, she makes it worse. Speaking of Madoka, she shows up at the very end, causing divergence from the foreshadowing of episode one, and announces her intent to make a wish.
  • And in Episode 12, we see what she wishes for — and it's big enough to completely rewrite the laws of physics. Even Kyubey freaks out.
• The Spin-Off Kazumi Magica also has Wham Episodes. To date:
  • Chapter 4: Kyubey makes a small but significant cameo. The Mysterious Watcher from the previous chapter is revealed as Juubey, a fairy that can purify The Corruption from Soul Gems. The strange witches fought in the first two chapters were actually pseudo-witches created by Yuuri - the antagonistic magical girl from previous chapters - using imitation Grief Seeds. She then promptly takes the role of Knight of Cerebus, bloodily incapacitates the other magical girls, and shoves one of her imitation Grief Seeds in Kazumi's forehead.
  • Chapter 5: Yuuri becomes a witch, and furthermore it's confirmed that everyone but Kazumi knew that magical girls become witches. We then get an extended Flashback sequence of Yuuri's past, which reveals that she's not Yuuri at all but her friend Airi. The real Yuuri wished to heal Airi's life-threatening illness. She then overused her magic to heal people, turned into a witch, and was subsequently destroyed by the other magical girls in Kazumi's team. When Airi learns this, she goes off the deep end and wishes to become Yuuri, taking on her appearance. She then goes after the magical girls who killed her friend, kicking off Puella Magi Kazumi Magica's entire plot. And just to put the icing on the cake, Kyubey was behind the whole thing.
  • Chapter 8: Fairly minor but the new antagonists pull out Evil Nuts, suggesting they either avert No Ontological Inertia or they were created by someone else. Then Nico suddenly becomes a witch. Or does she?
  • Chapter 13: Oh boy! And we get to know that Kazumi is a clone of the original Kazumi, Kazusa Michiru.
  • Chapter 14: Kazumi has the ability to eat her clones and got stabbed by Satomi from the behind. DAMN!
  • Chapter 15: Satomi becomes a witch and so the horror after horror came one after the other!
  • Chapter 16: Fairly minor but the detective actually had a friend who went missing. However! Kazumi came back into the Freezer and so demanded something so great that might cause chaos into the scene.
  • Chapter 17: Kazumi transformed into her witch form and started attacking everyone. Everybody made a counter attack and defeated her. It turns out that it was just a puppet by Nico who then spattered some words and inserted an Evil Nut into Saki and thus... Oh no!
  • Chapter 18: Saki became a witch and then Mirai's head got chomped by her witch form and that is not all!
  • And then it turns out that the real Nico became a witch, which then made it clear that one that they had right now is actually an Artificial Human and her name is Kanna Hijiri!
  • Chapter 19: Things are getting grimmer and grimmer folks! Just when Juubey is about to purify the Soul Gems, he suddenly dissolves into two Grief Seeds and is revealed to have been an incomplete incubator! This is explained more in Chapter 21, Where it is revealed that Juubey was created by the Pleiades in an attempt to fight against Kyubey and the Magical Girl system, and they had Kyubey wiped out of the memories of all the magical girls in the city (including themselves) and replaced with Juubey. However, the plan failed, and Kyubey reveals that Juubey never actually had the ability to purify Soul Gems, only removing the darkness on the surface without removing the corruption!
• Puella Magi Oriko Magica also has this. It starts with that fact that Oriko is not the girl on the first volume's cover.
  • Chapter 2: The series has an Antagonist Title; Oriko is the Big Bad.
  • Chapter 5: The witch Oriko saw is Kriemhild Gretchen; she's trying to kill Madoka.
  • Chapter 6: Everything Oriko did was just to distract Kyubey from Madoka and put her in a position where she would be killed. And the first part doesn't work.
  • Chapter 7: Okay, everything is going darker and darker until eventually everybody (Homura, Mami, Kyouko and Yuma) defeats the Big Bad and her friend who became a witch. And then the Big Bad delivers a Diabolus ex Machina onto the scene, killing Homura's best friend Madoka with her two other friends Sayaka and Hitomi mourning by her side and so... Oh boy! Here we go again!
• The first two movies were basically recaps of the Madoka Magica series. Rebellion, however managed to top all the Wham Moments above: First we learn the movie takes place in a witch's barrier, despite witches being Ret Goned. Then we find the witch is actually Homura herself, due to an experiment by the Incubators. Then, just when everything looks like it will turn out alright, Homura takes a piece of Madoka and essentially becomes a Buddhist-esque version of Lucifer, taking control of both the Incubators and the universe and trapping Madoka in a utopia. Oh, and she says to Madoka that if she doesn't stop being so selfless, they will become enemies.
• The interquel Puella Magi Madoka Magica Wraith Arc has a few of its own:
  • Chapter 4: Homura lost the ability to use her weapon when the wraith attacked her in the previous chapter. And after seemingly being taken by the Law of Cycles, Sayaka returns.
  • Chapter 5: The Sayaka from the previous chapter is actually one of multiple wraiths that learned to copy a human's appearance. In addition, a wraith copy of Kyouko stops time. Homura starts hearing a Guardian Angel voice, which is revealed to be Madoka.
  • Chapter 6: This Madoka is also a wraith. It turns out that when the giant wraith consumed Homura's energy, it began to mutate, causing other wraiths to want it destroyed. Also, Homura convinces herself that she used her memory manipulation magic to create false memories of Madoka existing.
  • Chapter 8: Several wraiths combine to become a witch, due to the influence of Homura's shield.
  • Chapter 9: Ultimate Madoka and Homura destroy the time shield, resetting the universe. No one remembers the old timeline... except Kyubey, who now has empirical proof that the Law of Cycles exists. Cue Rebellion.
• Did you really think the Gaiden Game Visual Novel Magia Record would be left out?
  • Chapter 3: Iroha's Soul Gem is almost completely dark, Yachiyo is understandably freaking out, and the Uwasa of the Commoner's Horse is No Selling everyone's attacks. Then Iroha's witch appears... exactly like Sayaka's and Nagisa's do in Rebellion. Yes, Iroha has become a Stand user, and it's as awesome as it sounds. Unfortunately, Mami doesn't know this and tries to kill the "witch disguised as a human."
  • Chapter 4: The Doppel system that protects magical girls from becoming witches? Yeah, that system was created by the villainous cult Wings of Magius, who also create and protect the Uwasa.
  • Shizuku Hozumi's side story: Shizuku, with her spatial connecting personal magic, is the one who funnels Witches from other cities for the Magius. This is later elaborated on by the Whereabouts of the Feather event.
  • Chapter 6: We meet the second Magius: Touka Satomi, one of Ui's friends from the hospital. Furthermore, she has no memory of Ui's existence. Meanwhile, Mami has joined the Magius, and three of Iroha's allies also join them after finding out the truth of the magical girl system.
  • Chapter 7: Oh boy! The Magius are willing to kill hundreds of non-magical humans (which the Magius deem less important than magical girls) just to provide a power source for their mysterious Embryo Eve project. We meet Kanagi Izumi, the leader of Eastern Kamihama, and it turns out that she is the only magical girl left in the East who isn't part of the Magius. The third Magius is Nemu Hiiragi, Ui's other friend from the hospital. And all that's left to complete Eve is the coming of Walpurgisnacht.
  • Spurred to Separation/Breakpoint: The Mirror Witch nearly caused a civil war one year before the game's story begins.
  • Chapter 8: The Magius have had enough of resistance from Kamihama's magical girls and attempt to commit genocide. If that's not enough, Iroha was one of the four creators of the Uwasa along with Ui, Touka and Nemu.
  • Ultimate Madoka's side story: Not only do Ultimate Madoka and the anime's ending exist, the game is set in an Alternate Universe where the only difference is Iroha kicking a pebble. And Ultimate Madoka can't get in.
  • Chapter 9: Eve is Iroha's sister Ui. Oh, and the Magius plan for her to consume Walpurgisnacht.
  • The Green Jasper Diviners:
    • The villagers of Tokime know about Magical Girls and Witches, while worshipping Kyubey as a god.
    • While the players know that the protagonists will eventually know about the truth of Witches soon, the fact that Sunao is the one who kills Chiharu in the bad ends and being The Mole is quite shocking.
    • The reason why Tokime village is closed-off from the rest of the world is because it has been inside a Witch's labyrinth for centuries.
  • Crimson Resolve:
    • The event starts with the death of Yuna's senpai, causing the Bloody Tragedy to start when the Magical Girls in Futatsugi knowing about Witches.
    • Hikaru is recruited into Janomiya by Ao and each of them will be spies in the gangs Torayamachi and Ryuugasaki respectively. Turns out Hikaru has been in Torayamachi all along, penetrating Janomiya by Yuna's orders.
    • The bad endings. Turns out choosing to or not to shake one's hand can result in more conflicts and bloodshed then you'd ever think.
    • The climax. Yuna is seemingly defeated by Juri's bursting flame, but she comes out unharmed... along with a horn and as batshit as ever.
  • The similar conclusions of the two aforementioned events: Kyubey actively tells the event's protagonists about Kamihama's auto-purification barrier with the intention of starting a multi-faction war for the Doppel system.
  • Final Mirrors Story: The identity of the Mirror Witch? Sena Mikoto, the deceased Morality Pet to Hanna Sarasa (the overarching villain of ''And So The Azaleas Bloom'' and one of the vilest antagonists in the game).