Puella Magi Madoka Magica

“Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Rebellion”, also known as “Goddamnit, Homura”.

Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.

So here is something I'm curious about but is it possible to create magical girls who can not become witches? I'm asking because I'm curious if the whole witch transformation is something that naturally happens to magical girls or if it is something that the Incubators specifically designed the system for.

Edited by Mega_zxa on Jan 13th 2020 at 3:11:50 AM

I don't think so. On the one hand it can be messed with (that's kinda the point of the Wings of the Magius' plans in Magia Record as well as Madoka's Wish, and even there the Witches still manifest themselves). OTOH it does kinda have the feeling of "trading one inevitability for another".

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jan 13th 2020 at 3:44:43 AM

I dunno how much of it you've seen, but that question is more or less what the whole show is about. Becoming a goddess or a demon are two options, apparently. Kyubey gets most of his magical energy from witchification, though it seems he didn't exactly "design" it, more like he discovered humans happen to follow a pattern that creates a lot of emotion-electricity.

Edited by Kotomikun on Jan 13th 2020 at 3:29:49 AM

Tart also adds a little bit on this subject. You can become a magical girl that endlessly cycles between witch and girl, or become a witch that possesses a human body, or not quite meet the goddess threshold and get suspended between magical girl and witch. But it seems the only permanent way out is goddess or demon.

Also, more Tart on the legal questions: Isabeau is an example of a magical girl that asked a lot of questions. Apparently Kyubey will just answer if you think to ask him about all the details.

Edited by PhiSat on Jan 14th 2020 at 12:25:45 PM

Oissu!

If it wasn’t such a massive spoiler, I’d argue for making this the movie’s new name.

One Strip! One Strip!

More like "Damn God, Homura." Amiright?

Mega Man fanatic extraordinaire

In more ways then one! First by telling the Incubators about Witches and then stealing Madoka from the Law of Cycles and becoming Bitch Queen of the Universe.

Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.

Watching Madoka is about assuming that Homura is the villain of the piece.

Then realizing that she was actually on the good guys' side the whole time.

And then following up with the realization that even so, she's still the worst.

Homura's a lot like Sayaka. Her story is tragic and I feel bad for her. But if she could just not suck for five minutes, I'd appreciate that. Rebellion actually gave me that for Sayaka, so I was very pleased since Sayaka's my favorite.

EDIT: Meanwhile, Kyoko's also a shitty human being, but her shittiness is part of her charm so it works. She has absolutely no delusions of being the Good Guy here, so she doesn't have those "Goddammit, Saya/Homs, this is not how you Good Guy" moments.

Mami is White Lady incarnate. The refined middle-class soccer mom who presents herself as refined and eloquent but then blows her top and starts screaming racist obscenities because someone minorly inconvenienced her at the grocery store.

And Madoka is present. For stuff. Sometimes.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 15th 2020 at 9:14:13 AM

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

Homura is the hero we don't deserve, someone willing to become the devil herself in order to do what she needs to do.

Fight for something, even if its meaningless.

The moment you decide to become the devil itself to do what needs to be done, that's the moment when you should take a step back and go, "Wait, is my idea actually completely mind-numbingly insane and I'm just too invested in it 'cause it's mine to see that?"

Maybe workshop it a bit with some of your friends. See what they think. At the very least, sleep on it; you'd be surprised what a good night's rest will do to an idea that you thought, last night, was the most brilliant plan ever concocted by a human being.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 15th 2020 at 9:59:22 AM

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

At that moment, Homura isn't that sane. Her Soul Gem is nailed on so she's dying but cannot die, all while her mind is floating in a fever dream where everyone's getting along, singing a song about cakes, and not dying horribly. All because certain space rats want to see if ghosts are real, and if they can catch the psychopomp so she can mine entropy for them.

Most people have at least one favorite character and as a result likely disagree with this, but one of the main points of the show is that all the characters are seriously flawed, and cause bad things to happen through mostly-good intentions (that's kinda how a tragedy works). Yes, that includes Madoka—she's so over-the-top selfless that she has trouble understanding the needs and motivations of more selfish people (Homura especially) and ends up hurting them. She doesn't value her own existence, and doesn't understand how her disappearing/dying/whatever could be a bad thing for other people. (One of the main analogies to suicide in the show.) All she really wants to do is make other people happy, but ironically, her devotion to that goal often backfires.

Homura basically wants to be like Madoka, but lacks the inherent selflessness to pull it off; similar to how Sayaka wants to be like Mami but isn't strong enough and never understood that Mami wasn't as perfect as she appeared, or how Kyouko wants to be like Sayaka but can't reconcile that with her past traumatic experience related to trying to be openly heroic. Suppressing her selfishness over like a decade of torturous time-loops was bound to have consequences.

What Homura did was extremely selfless, though. She gave up any prospect of her having any kind of happiness with Madoka to give her happiness.

Fight for something, even if its meaningless.

She’s brainwashing everyone in an attempt to create her personal fantasy of what a happy Madoka might look like. All while throwing Madoka’s agency and desires to the wind (and everyone else’s as well, for that matter).

Slavery ain’t selfless, mate.

Edited by TheAirman on Jan 15th 2020 at 5:13:47 AM

PSN ID: FateSeraph | Switch friendcode: SW-0145-8835-0610 Congratulations! She/They

Madoka told Homura her desires in the flower field scene. Madoka didn't become the Law of Cycles because she wanted to, she did it because she needed to, and even though she is ultimately willing to make the sacrifice, she is still suffering from being forever separated from the physical world. Homura was willing to give Madoka her happy ending, even if that meant her own eternal suffering.

Fight for something, even if its meaningless.

Homura's actions have a heavy reek of 'I know what's best for you', which I'm sure is a pretty common justification for domestic abuse.

Heart of Stone

Rebellion definitely puts Homura in the wrong.

The thing about Homura is that what she did mostly benefited her with everybody else not really wanting to be part of it or even getting a choice in the matter.

Madoka gets ripped away from the Law of Cycles, which kinda flies in the face of Madoka making her wish to destroy all witches with her own two hands. Like, Madoka was totally O.K with this, with becoming a metaphysical concept because it meant that she could be useful, that she could actually help by easing the pain and suffering of every magical girl that ever existed and ever will exist. That was the point of her (weirdly naked) talk with Homura.

Sayaka, Mami, and Kyoko are alive but everybody had already accepted being up there with Madoka. The only person who actually can remember what Homura just did is incensed and swears revenge, that even as her memories are being rewritten, she will never forget this.

That's kind of what makes the moment she steals Madoka so shocking: the movie looks ready to wrap up, the happy ending is coming with the Incubators beaten by the Power of Friendship among the Holy Quintet and Homura's finally going to reunite with Madoka and be freed from her hell. Then Homura hijacks the ending to make her own and I can't say the movie looks at that positively.

Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.

You mean the scene where Homura makes it sound like she's asking if Madoka would ever just randomly up and move to another country without telling anybody.

Because that's what happens in that scene. Homura asks her question in such a completely roundabout vague manner, while presenting literally no context of what she's talking about, that Madoka answers a completely different question altogether.

Edited by TheAirman on Jan 15th 2020 at 7:38:37 AM

PSN ID: FateSeraph | Switch friendcode: SW-0145-8835-0610 Congratulations! She/They

Yeah, I watched that scene too, and there's a problem with that scene: that Madoka was basically the Madoka we see at the beginning of the show, not the Madoka who watched her best friend turn into a monster under the weight of unsustainable ideals, watched her soon-to-be mentor die in front of her, learned about Homura's sacrifice, and learned about the entirety of the intervention of the Incubators in human history and how many Magical Girls suffered for their wishes.

That Madoka wasn't the Madoka that went up to Walpurgisnacht and made her wish to "to erase all witches before they are even born, to erase every single witch in every universe, past and future with my own hands". That Madoka wasn't the one who talked to Homura before saying farewell. That Madoka accepted her price for becoming the Law of Cycles.

It's like asking a child and asking that same person as an adult what they want to become and holding that person to their response as a child.

Edited by fredhot16 on Jan 15th 2020 at 8:57:04 AM

Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.

Me too. People were really giving Sayaka the lol! she sucks Meme treatment and I kinda got frustrated about it to the point where I just turned on her.

I kinda came to terms with what she was supposed to be (and that she'd always suck because that's Urobuchi's style for that kind of character) but then the movie came along and showed what she'd be like if she was more stable and got a chance to actually learn.

Not only that, she kind got to pwn Homura on multiple levels and even reverse their original relationship of Homura knowing everything and Sayaka being in the dark....

The hilarious part about it is that despite not saying anything out loud, Sayaka explained the entire thing to Homura far more effectively than the latter did when it was the other way around.

One Strip! One Strip!

What the actual fuck? Mami is a scared kid who's managed to survive in a dangerous situation long enough that she's gotten kind of a handle on it, but she's still desperately afraid and alone. Her interaction with Madoka and Sayaka is her trying to appear cool and mature so that they'll look up to her, in the hopes that they'll become friends and allies. She doesn't want to outright lie to them and trick them into becoming magical girls under false pretenses, but she very much wants them to become magical girls so that she won't be alone anymore. So she plays up the "magical girls are cool heroes of justice who protect people by destroying evil witches" angle and plays down the "being a magical girl is a isolating existence of being forced to risk your life fighting nightmarish creatures" angle, while still cautioning them that the decision is a very important one and they should make it with their eyes open. And she mostly seems to be making the impression she wants to, at least until she gets killed.

I have no idea where you got the idea that she's Actually Bad but pretends not to be, except when she reveals her true colors by flying into a frothing rage at the slightest provocation. The only time she "blows her top" at all is when she finds out that witches are magical girls, which is certainly more than being "minorly inconvenienced".

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Is Mami an Epic Gamer?

Mami is strictly judgmental. Once she's made up her mind about something, she refuses to even listen to others. She presents herself as a civil authority in all things, but has absolutely no interest in hearing others' perspectives.

The whole conflict between Homura and Mami in the beginning happens in part because Homura does a poor job of communicating and in part because Mami doesn't want to hear it anyway; she declares Homura to be the bad guy based on her own preconceived notions of Homura's behavior and refuses to hear anything else.

Mami literally dies because she's unreasonably stubborn and quick to retaliate over perceived slights. Homura actually tries to save her from Charlotte, and before Homura can get two words in, Mami attacks her, chains her up, and goes back about her business. She's polite and civil towards her students, but she is absolutely convinced of her own rightness and shall not be contradicted.

And when something comes along that shatters her worldview, her fragile psyche shatters into a million pieces and she starts spree murdering her friends. Of all the people who had to wrestle with the awful truth, Mami's reaction is by far the worst of the lot. Homura, in Rebellion, suggests that this is a pattern of behavior across loops, too; it wasn't just one particularly bad loop where this happened.

As noted before, all of the characters are flawed individuals. There is no perfectly good character in the cast, with possible exception of Madoka whose flaws are at least harmless. Mami's flaw is that she's self-righteous, judgmental, and highly aggressive in asserting her judgmental self-righteousness - all under the veil of a Stepford smile.

She likes to be seen as the "Above It All" embodiment of civility and politeness. She basks in the role of the mentor, the leader, the hero, the one person who is always right and always good and should always be treated with the utmost respect. But she'll take her fragile psyche and stubborn streak to the grave. She engages people only as their superior; never as their peer.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 16th 2020 at 12:28:16 PM

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.