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| Part 13: Episode 12 - "My Very Best Friend" |
Link to Intro
Links to Episode: One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven
And so, we've come to the conclusion:
The episode starts with Madoka comforting an injured Homura, telling her that she finally understands what Homura had gone through and promising to take care of everything, despite Homura's anguish at the prospect of seeing Madoka become a witch. Madoka then stands up and, at Incubator's urging, finally makes her wish: "I wish to erase all witches from existence before they're even born. Every witch in the universe, from the past and the future, with my own hands". As promised by Kyubey her wish is granted and she becomes a goddess, breaking the Incubators' system at the same time.
Madoka is seen talking to Mami and Kyouko in Mami's apartment. Mami warns Madoka of the consequences of her wish, while Kyouko encourages her in her usual forceful way. Madoka is then seen travelling through space and time, healing defeated magical girls (among which we can see historical figures such as Anne Frank, Cleopatra, and Joan of Arc).
The consequence of her becoming a Magical Girl quickly follows the "rescue" of the other magical girls: due to her wish, the laws of nature have been altered, and the old world will be put to an end in order for a new one to take its place. Homura witnesses the Earth being swallowed in despair from the moon, where she also sees Madoka's soul gem, now the size of an asteroid, traveling through space.
The gigantic soul gem collapses into a Grief Seed and Madoka's new planet-sized Witch form is unleashed: However, true to her word, she erases her own Witch self from existence. The resulting paradox removes Madoka from the universe.
The cosmic sequence continues with Madoka losing her physical humanity to become a force of nature, detached from mankind; however, she is now suspended in interdimensional space, in contact with everyone and everything. After a sequence highly open to interpretation, she finally parts with a tearful Homura, giving her her ribbons as a souvenir with the promise that they may meet again.
The scene cuts to an audition where Kyousuke is playing Charles Gounod's Ave Maria. In two of the seats in the audience are the spirits of Madoka and Sayaka. Madoka apologizes for causing Sayaka trouble, and says that she believes her sacrifices were not in vain. Sayaka responds that she only wanted to hear Kyousuke play one last time, as many more would come to see him in many years to come; she states that she has no regrets and that she believes Hitomi (who is hiding behind the curtain watching the performance) and Kyousuke will be a happy couple, and that while it still hurts a little to see them together, she cannot hold it against them anymore. The two get up and depart, and the scene cuts to Kyousuke as a famous violinist; as the audience applauds for him, he is struck by a memory of the hospital and says Sayaka's name.
Mami and Kyoko, now alive, fight a creature together (revealed later to be a "demon"), and find that Sayaka had used the last of her magic to help Kyousuke and thus disappeared from existence. Mami reflects on how the fate of a magical girl is to disappear before they can cause grief; Homura, wearing the ribbon and thinking of Madoka, says her name and starts crying, and it is revealed that nobody in this world remembers Madoka but her. Homura later sees Tatsuya drawing a picture of Madoka in the sand; she talks to Madoka's parents and find that they also have no memory of their daughter, though she seems to manifest as Tatsuya's imaginary friend. Junko comments that the name Madoka feels nostalgic.
Homura then discusses her story with Kyubey, who says that it's possible everything Homura went through could be her imagination, and there would be no way to prove otherwise. However, he remarks that the concept of harvesting witches for energy would be more efficient than the new method: because there is still grief in the world, it manifests in the form of demons that the magical girls must fight, who upon defeat drop cube-shaped pieces much like Grief Seeds. Homura reflects on the new universe, thinking that this corrupted, grief-filled world is what Madoka sought to protect -- but she will never forget Madoka's wish. She then leaps upon the demons, extending wings of light from her back and carrying a bow and arrow.
After the credits, Homura walks through what looks like either a wasteland or a barrier towards a bunch of demons. Black wings sprout from her back, containing distorted images that resemble those of a witch's barrier; Madoka's voice encourages her, and Homura springs upon them to fight.
And with some hopeful words, Puella Magi Madoka Magica comes to an end.
Questions I will answer:
q: I don't get the ending at all. Help?
a: Madoka fixed the system by removing witches out of the equation. This means all of the magical girls that become witches will just die instead. Magical girls will pass on knowing that they saved a lot of people and won't curse anyone once they're gone. In the new universe Madoka created, magical girls still fight and spread hope. Madoka becomes a witch in the process of granting her wish, because that immense amount of power does not go without consequence. However, since Madoka wished to remove all witches, she kills her own witch, resulting in a paradox. Madoka will now exist as a concept because she needs to exist to remove witches. She becomes the concept of hope, a goddess almost. All memories of her on Earth are erased, except for maybe in the minds of Homura and Tatsuya (her little brother). In the new world she created, magical girls still fight enemies and spread hope, while being on better terms with the Incubators.
q: Why didn't Madoka wish this in the first place?
a: Normally such a wish would be impossible to fulfill as stated by Kyubey, "Your wish is near impossible! Though it might just be possible because of all the world lines converging on you." The system as it is set up would normally reject granting such a wish as it has to be proportional to a girl's cosmic karma or power (actually, it is possible that the wish would be granted as Kyubey is still contractually obligated to grant any wish, but it would instead go unfulfilled as it would fail to meet the required energy input to attain the desired output). Normally a girl like Madoka with an ordinary life would only be allowed to attain an ordinary but still powerful wish, but in Madoka's case it is an exception because she is an anomaly. Usually people with large karmic burden are historical figures that posses a destiny that could change history, but even at that level it would still be quite literally impossible for such a wish to be fulfilled as it would fail to meet the energy requirement to have such a powerful wish granted. It is thanks to Homura's countless time travels that Madoka has accumulated such a large reservoir of cosmic karma, the amount was unprecedented enough to grant her a wish that was powerful enough to rewrite the current laws of the universe that concluded with a paradox. This is an event that literally goes against all odds of ever repeating again. No other girl in history could have such a wish granted, not unless their power/karma was proportional to it, and that doesn't happen naturally.
q: What happened to Sayaka?
a: Madoka explains that she could have changed Sayaka's fate (let her live as a normal girl in the new world) but not without changing Kyousuke's as well. Madoka tells Sayaka that she left their fate unchanged to respect her sacrifice, Sayaka agrees with Madoka's decision. They join the magical girls that fell to despair on a higher plane of existence.
q: What are the enemies in the new world?
a: Some subs I've seen call them wraiths or Majuu and basically they're another form of despair. Madoka fixed the despair of magical girls, not the whole world. A production note says that "they form grief seeds in their bodies by sucking emotions that originally form magic. Humans that get sucked in turn into slaves". So magical girls still have a reason to exist and spread hope to the world.
q: What happened in the after credits scene?
a: Homura faces a gathering of demons somewhere in the new world. (My headcanon is that like Walpurgis Night, a side effect of despair and magic is a large gathering of enemies at one place every so often.) Homura spreads her wings, now witchlike and corrupted. As she walks towards the demons, she hears Madoka's voice encouraging her. She smiles and flies directly into the crowd. The screen fills up with her corrupted magic and cuts to black. My personal conclusion is that she eventually succumbed to despair and hears Madoka's voice before she's about to die. Madoka will take her soul away and save her like all of the other magical girls.
q: Who are the figures in the last frames beside the main characters?
a: Those are the silhouettes of the magical forms of the witches that appeared in the anime. More speculation here. (< this is also my favorite page on the wiki)
q: I am disappointed at the ending because I thought this was going to be a dark and sad show. It's too sweet.
a: Then I think you missed the theme of the entire series. Sure, I advertised the series as a dark deconstruction of the magical girl genre, and it was. But I also advertised it as changing what it means to love, hope, and sacrifice. The show isn't dark for the sake of being "oooooh look I'm so dark and edgy", the theme of the show was hope in the face of despair.
What keeps all magical girls from becoming witches is hope.
What kept Homura from falling into despair because she couldn't save Madoka was the lingering hope that she still could.
And how did Madoka find hope in the face of so much despair? She became it.
This ending is what makes Madoka from being just another daaark deconstruction, but into a beautiful story.
The ending is bittersweet, because everything that Homura fought for does not exist in the memories of anyone else, and is not part of this world. Homura will probably never see Madoka, her best friend, again until the day she dies, which most likely was the after credits scene mentioned above.
SF Debris' Analysis
Mark Watches
Matt High's Review
Ume Aoki's 4koma
Meduka Meguca - Ante Up.
Changes made in the Blu-Ray versions.
Don’t forget.
Always, somewhere,
someone is fighting for you.
As long as you remember her,
you are not alone.
----
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