I recently rewatched Madoka Magica, so it's up for a review. I’ll be reviewing this as if the movie didn’t exist.

Madoka Magica isn't about Madoka, the majority of the show she’s a scared girl with serious self-doubt issues and dangerously low self-esteem. She just like Sayaka is pretending to do, is more than willing to throw her life away for the sake of others. She is an observer in this game of witchhunt, and is constantly prevented from helping. The reality of the situation is that she’s helpless and weak, and she knows it. But the devil on her shoulder keeps telling her that for the small price of her soul, she too can save the world, just like her cool friends are doing.

Madoka Magica is a story about expectations and reality, the expectation of becoming a powerful Magical Girl that saves everyone and looks cool doing it, put alongside the reality that the point of becoming one is to eventually become a witch. The expectation that neglecting yourself could help everyone else, but the reality that suffering is only bearable, when you aren’t the one suffering.

Sayaka wished for the salvation of Violin boy, but she didn’t really care about him, she only wished to be noticed by him. It’s was only selfless on the surface, and when the reality of it was just a young girl’s selfish desire for love. Kyoko similarly wished for her father’s dreams to be fulfilled, she wanted to live in a world where his teachings were accepted, but cheating your way to the top wasn’t the real goal of her father. And as such her naiveté cost her everything she had. Another way to read Kyoko’s motivations is that she flat out just wanted food and stability in her life, but rationalized it as wanting to help her father. Mami was the only one that didn’t have a “real” choice in becoming a magical girl, it was that or death, and as we saw, death was a preferable alternative to the reality of being one.

Kids think that the adults are too stuck in their ways, that they can do it better, the rule of thumb of never using your wish for others is there only because people are selfish and closeminded. But they’ll change the rules, by being truly righteous. And yet, when push comes to shove, they realize that thinking about doing something is a whole other beast than actually doing it. Their childishness comes to the forefront and the choices they’ve made can never be unmade.

All of the girls deal with that differently. Sayaka becomes depressed and self-destructive. Homura becomes single-minded in her obsession with Madoka. Mami turns into a murderer at the drop of a hat and Kyoko just wants to see if the rules are really that ironclad, and when that fails, she just surrenders to destiny.

The incubators have been around humanity for long enough to know that we can’t handle the truth. So they conveniently left it out when talking about the benefits and responsibilities of magical girls. Say that you are going to be fighting witches, and that the impossible will become possible as long as you sign on the dotted line. Humans tend to fill in the blanks in their head with what they want reality to be. While they never lied, it is still deceptive in nature.

Homura was a very sick girl that missed the majority of her childhood, because of an unspecified heart condition. She’s a scared girl with serious self-doubt issues and dangerously low self-esteem, she’s helpless and weak and not particularly book smart and she knows it. She is quite literally in the exact same situation as Madoka is at the start of the show, which is why I copied the paragraph from the top almost verbatim. When her journey is close to an end, she decides to become a Magical girl in hopes of making everything “right” once and for all.

Madoka tells her that she should become cool, because her name is cool and Homura takes that a bit too literally, everytime she loops back to the start, she becomes more ruthless, determined and completely detached from the world. She’s seen it all, numerous times even, she doesn’t have the space in her heart to care about more than 1 person. She’s only there because of Madoka, and everyone else is a side character in Madoka’s story. But while there are parallels between her and Madoka, there are also very important differences. Homura is alone, she’s never shown to think about her parents or her friends in her old school, while Madoka has a very healthy relationship with her Mother, and her friends. She has people that have her best interests in mind, and as such she grew up to be “a very good girl”.

Madoka, while in some of the loops decides that her becoming a magical girl was a mistake, that’s only because of her internalized inferiority complex, her self-doubt and knowledge that a single person can’t really change everything. But even then she doesn’t want to hurt anyone, while Homura was more than willing to destroy the world as long as Madoka wished it. Homura didn’t really care about the intent of Madoka’s words, she just wanted to “save” her in the only way she knew how. By doing everything herself and if something were to impede her she’d remove it by force.

Homura only has space for 1 person, while Madoka’s kindness was infinite, which is where the 2 diverged, and why the outcome was so different in the end of it all. While Madoka couldn’t realistically solve it all on the first attempt, she needed Homura to bring her to the finish line. Homura did the right thing for arguably the wrong reasons. It all comes down to expectations and reality, Homura’s expectations are that if she does it for Madoka, she isn’t the weak willed girl she was at the start, but the reality is that she can’t do it alone and that she never really changed, just hardened.

In the end Madoka doesn’t really change much, magical girls still exist, and they still die, the only thing she gives them is relief in death, so that they can die without hatred for the world. She is just the hope that maybe things aren’t so bad and the world isn’t worth destroying.

Some side notes. I really did love that Homura took the “be cool” advice so to heart, she even studied math just so that she could flex on her class. The music is obviously amazing, with Mami’s theme being my personal standout. When I heard it in episode 10, I quite audibly squued. I still tear a bit when I hear it.

Overall the show is close to perfect, it’s one of the most “complete” and self-contained stories ever put to anime. Even if the movie didn’t exist I’d personally be happy with how it ended.

But the movie does exist and I’ll write about it when I rewatch it these days.

Great show 9.5/10, everyone should watch it.