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i never took homura's intentions as to keep madoka dependent, weak, or a child forever. as long as madoka continues to become a magical girl, she cannot ACTUALLY grow up. she will always die or become something else. homura wants madoka the human girl to have a chance to grow up and become a human woman, not a witch or a god or a corpse.

less than a minuet in and I can tell I am probably going to agree with this 100% as I did a critical analysis video years ago about how Madoka Magica isn't horror but just another magical girl anime that shows what everyone thinks of the genre vs what the genre actually is once you get a bit into it A lot of people don't even consider that the original Sailor Moon manga ended their first arc with an attempted s*icde/m*rder between the protagonist and her brainwashed love interest don't even get me started on the heavily censored anime version of the first arc where all the girls just straight up died and needed to be resurrected with memory wipe for season 2 genre is way dark than people think and madoka was trying to teach people that

Two things that put Mami's death after achieving a moment of happiness in context for me: 1. Madoka takes heavy inspiration from Goethe's Faust, and Faust quotes are heavily referenced (in runes) in the first couple episodes. The deal Faust makes with Mephistopheles is that if he can give a moment so blissful he wishes to remain it forever, the Devil gets his soul. This pretty much mirrors Mami experiencing such a moment of bliss before immediately dying. 2. There is a route in the Portable game (the Bonus Route) where Homura basically goes around fulfilling all of the girl's true wishes so they can be happy and not turn into witches. They all survive and fight Walpurgisnacht together but are not strong enough to win. It felt to me like kind of a longer exploration of the themes of Mami's death and made me think back to it. Basically the idea that magical girls cannot achieve happiness and live.

Whatever you think of this show, I think it is relavent even 10 years later. Its still pretty revolutionary too. Not just for redifining the Magical Girl genera, but of its perspective on humanity through the characters. Its a subversion of a fantasy, but a very realistic one. It looks at the magical girl story and says "No, this is probably what would actually happen." Even Kiyube serves to point this out. He says repeatedly that the magical girl gets what she wants (paraphrasing obv), but he does it in such a way that its clear thats not all shes signing up for. He never expressly says the down sides, but he does show them, and does admit to them when questioned (at least somewhat). Mortality too, is definatly a fair argument with this show. Kyubei definatly doesnt see the girl's lives in the same way they (or we) do. They are fuel and a means to an end. Nothing more. People say its a message on cruelty, but I think its more accuratly described as a message on empathy. Not everyone has as much empathy or shows it in the same way, and thats ok. Just look at Homura. I can't shake the notion that her desire to protect Madoka, while selfish, stemms from a place of empathy. She doesn't want Madoka to suffer, because she doesn't want to suffer. They are foils for eachother. Madoka wants to save everyone, but Homura wants to prevent Madoka from doing that so that neither of them have to suffer, nevermind the rest of the world or the magical girls in it. Both, to some extent, are empathetic notions, even if Homura's is definatly more selfish than empathetic. She's the bad guy of the series, but she isn't a bad guy. She does tell them the truth. Her role, more or less, is to show what being a magical girl is really like, above and beyond what kyubei says.

This is easily one of the best video analysis I've ever seen, it's well written and explained and made me want to re-watch the anime in a new light.

i love madoka magica sm

I love that Cure Idol is down to throw hands the moment she realizes she *can*

I've talked on end about how Homura essentially doesn't view Madoka as a person anymore. Everything she did was out of love for Madoka, but through the endless timeloops and going back to fix things, her knowledge about the world exceeds Madoka's by a vast amount. She can basically predict the future, and she uses that ability all the time to protect Madoka. Madoka is an object of her protection. Homura loves Madoka, but Madoka is not the person she loves. She loves the idea of Madoka, the fantasy of being able to give Madoka what she loved Madoka for giving her. Love, especially romantic crushes, and unrequited love, essentially dehumanises the object of affection.

This is so well articulated and put together, made me realize so many things I didn’t notice on my own about the story, thank you for the hard work!!

Ice this maybe your best one yet I love the breakdown you did and it actually makes me really want to watch the show. I’ve heard about it for years, but wasn’t aware of how dark it actually was which is maybe why it’s so popular. Great work.

I was so blind that i didn't notice they couldn't take the hearts of girls. Too bad 😂

I like the outfit at 0:30 (not her cure form!!) and her school uniform more than all her other outfits 😭

A lot of people watch Madoka Magica because they know the premise. I read the manga, then watched the anime, with absolutely ZERO awareness of what it was, at like 12. And I absolutely loved it

Well this is the first video I've seen that hasn't mentioned kubey at all. He is the pinnacle of the whole thing. I disagree about the themes. It's about how something bright and promising actually turns out to be a really bad idea and how they were too young and innocent to understand that at the time and the moral of the story is don't become a magical girl.

Something I want to point out is although Homura is selfish for ripping Madoka from the Law of cycles, Madoka basically says she's unhappy as it. You say Homura wants the meek and helpless Madoka, but I feel she ,mostly, just want her to be happy in the end. And the reason she wanted to break out of the 'Perfect world' was because she realized Madoka was in danger from Kuuybi.

GOD this was so good. thank you for creating it! it really helps put into words why i love madoka magica so much, its usually the "darkest" shows with the most hopeful messages. madoka magica is about love, hope, growing up, and like you said, our fleeting connections with others making life worth living. i truly think the next movie will expand on homura's selfishness. i think madoka will forcibly (with the help of her friends) break free from this cycle homura has forced them all into, that they'll no longer be stuck in this birdcage. that you're not really *living* if you never get hurt. theres so much i wish i could eloquently explain, but you did a wonderful job at at it in this vid!!!!! just subbed :3 . im glad you pointed out the nature of homura's obsession, and that the "good person/bad person" homura arguments dont really matter. homura wants to be the one depended on, she wants some sort of *control*, something that the endless march of time takes away from all of us. its just these are the consequences when she *gets* that control, its unnatural. the whole point is she's human, she wants to elongate the time she has with someone she loves, but by doing so she's going against nature. madoka's extreme selflessness in the show only happens because of homura keeping her from being able to do anything, after all. homura is the reason madoka makes her wish, and i think that makes it even harder for homura to bear. its just.............so good.......... despite it all madomagi says its not useless to dream, and to hope, and to wish for a better world. that girls deserve to have their wishes heard and granted <333

i havent watched this yet but the comments are giving me hope god bless

I really do love that Madoka’s development in the show, growing into someone confident and strong, was in small part thanks to Homura helping Madoka realize that someone out there values somebody as “insignificant” as her and was willing to sacrifice so much for her. Homura helped Madoka grow but sadly Homura doesn’t see this in Rebellion and effectively controls her in an effort to save her. At the end of Madoka Magica Madokami tells Sayaka the only way to truly save Sayaka was to make it so she never made the wish, but she understood Sayaka would never want this and thus let’s her pass on. Madoka respects and understands people, all she wanted from her wish was to give every magical girl in history some form of dignity when they pass on. In contrast, when Homura gains power she “saves” Madoka without ever truly understanding and respecting why Madoka made that wish to begin with, that the wish Madoka made was inspired by Homura fighting for her for so long. It’s genuinely an interesting contrast and I can’t wait to see how the new movie concludes(?) this story.

We can all agree this show can be best described as wtffffffffffffffff

"The Magical Girl never becomes a Magical Woman... Only a Witch."

I really like this viewpoint. Madoka IS different, but then, what Magical Girl show isn't? At its core, just like you said, it's about young girls trying to achieve their idolized selves! That what I admire about them so much, and why I consider myself one of them.

As someone who grew up with mermaid melody I'm loving what I'm seeing so far btw if you watched it do you think in the future you could make a design diary video for mermaid melody

*gasp* we need the tatsuya deep dive

I do think that in the story of both the anime and the movie, they convey very well the theme of Homura alone has achieved adulthood. Not only repeating the loop multiple granted her knowlegde and time to mature the others didn't have enough, she also learned to be selfish as Madoka's mother tells is necessary to grown into adulthood, and Homura is not afraid to break someone else's happy ending for hers, to prolongue her connections, even if she is dissatisfied. It also connects very well with the themes of womenhood, where pursuing your own interests will have you villanized and repreatedly shun for it. At the end of the movie her efforts achieve the closest to her wishes, but not what she needs, and perhaps she is adamantly refusing her needs for she knows that would be her actual end, and Homura embody the refusal to yield.

this isn't some profound new idea youve come across. any actual magical girl fan could've told you this from the numerous references to sailor moon and revolutionary girl utena they have in the show and movie💀

Good

I don't think that most of these sacrifices are intended to be worthwhile. I think that the underlying theme is that only with labor can the wish be worthwhile.

The way you described how Homura keeps Madoka from growing was never something I thought about after watching the show. I thought that it was more something like a refusal to let madoka disappear or become a Witch, but those are in fact the same thing. Madoka is like a domesticated bird that wants to fly, but Homura keeps the bird caged because she knows that if the bird flies, it would probably not survive in the wild.