Puella Magi Madoka Magica

• 1. Deconstructing The Magical Girl Genre

  ›

  In the fictional city of Mitakihara, Japan, a middle school student named Madoka Kaname and her best friend, Sayaka Miki, encounter a small, cat-like creature named Kyubey. Kyubey offers them a contract in which a girl may have any wish granted in exchange for obtaining magical powers and being tasked with fighting creatures called witches. Meanwhile, a transfer student and mysterious magical girl named Homura Akemi tries to stop Madoka from making the contract with Kyubey. Madoka and Sayaka then meet Mami Tomoe, an upperclassman at the same school who is also a magical girl. Noticing their indecisiveness on whether to become a magical girl, Mami offers to take Madoka and Sayaka along on her witch hunts so they may learn of the responsibilities of being a magical girl.

  However, after witnessing Mami's death at the hands of a witch, Madoka realizes the life of a magical girl is filled with suffering and pain. This is further enforced by the appearance of Kyoko Sakura, a veteran magical girl whose wish unintentionally caused the death of her family. Madoka also discovers magical girls give up their souls to form Soul Gems, the source of their magic. When a Soul Gem becomes too tainted with despair, it turns into a Grief Seed, which "hatches into" a witch. After learning that becoming a magical girl would allow her to heal her hospitalized friend Kyosuke, a musician on whom she has a crush, Sayaka decides to do so. However, her friend Hitomi Shizuki confesses her love to him first, causing Sayaka to become disillusioned and fall into an inescapable despair that turns her into a witch.

• 2. The Cosmic Horror Of Kyubey

  ›

  Kyubey reveals to Madoka that they are of an alien race that has been harvesting the emotions of magical girls for centuries to use as energy to counteract the spread of entropy, and thus stave off the heat death of the universe. Homura is a magical girl from a different timeline who has repeated the same month countless times to try to save Madoka from a grisly fate. Madoka and Kyoko attempt to reverse Sayaka's transformation, but the plan fails and Kyoko is forced to sacrifice herself to allow Madoka to escape, leaving Homura as the only remaining magical girl.

  Following this, an extremely powerful witch known as Walpurgisnacht approaches the city. Homura attempts to stop it but is defeated. She begins to lose hope and is on the verge of becoming a witch when Madoka arrives. With the past month's events in mind, Madoka decides to become a magical girl, despite Homura's efforts to stop her. Her wish is to stop the creation of all witches in the past, present, and future. The paradoxical nature of her wish causes her to transcend into a psychopomp form, called the "Law of Cycles", which is a new rule of the universe where magical girls are purified and disappear into a higher plane instead of becoming witches. A new reality is formed, and Homura is the only one who remembers Madoka. Homura vows to continue fighting in honor of Madoka and the world she cherished.

• 3. From Planning To Production

  ›

  While collaborating on Hidamari Sketch and Bakemonogatari, Akiyuki Shinbo told Aniplex producer Atsuhiro Iwakami he wanted to create a new magical girl series, beginning the development of Puella Magi Madoka Magica. According to Shinbo, while talking with Iwakami, he had mentioned that there was still improvements for him to make to the genre from one of his previous series. During the early planning stage, Iwakami decided not to adapt an existing work to give Shinbo more freedom in his directional style. Another goal of the project was to develop an anime that would appeal to a wider audience than the usual demographic for media within the magical girl subgenre.

  Iwakami and Shinbo intended their series to be accessible to "the general anime fan". Gen Urobuchi was suggested to be the writer by Iwakami due to his work with the Fate/Zero light novel (which Iwakami gave Shinbo a copy of the first volume to), and Shinbo asked Ume Aoki to be character designer. The series was Urobuchi's first time writing the screenplay for an anime on his own. Takahiro Kishida was arranged to adapt Aoki's character designs for the television series. The series' working title was, at that point, and the staff got used to calling it Madoka Magica during production. It was proposed that the "Magical Girl Apocalypse" part of the title be dropped and the series instead be titled simply "Madoka Magica", but Shinbo was adamant in retaining the "Magical Girl" segment of the title, which stuck.

• 4. Visuals And Musical Atmosphere

  ›

  Both "Connect" and the ending theme "Magia" by Kalafina were revealed in a television commercial several weeks before the series' premiere in Japan. The animation studio led the conception and design of the witches, and created each one's individual backstory. Urobuchi had originally envisioned the witches to be similar to conventional monsters such as Godzilla, but upon seeing the surreal concept art for one of the main witches, Walpurgisnacht, he said; "How can Homura possibly fight against something like this?" Gekidan Inu Curry's art style and design work is largely Czech- and Russian-inspired stop-motion animation.

  On the 7th of January 2011, Puella Magi Madoka Magica debuted on Mainichi Broadcasting System (MBS), Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), and Chubu-Nippon Broadcasting (CBC) in Japan. The first ten episodes aired weekly without interruption and were made available for streaming on Nico Nico Douga and BIGLOBE's Anime One service. That March, the planned broadcasts of the last two episodes were halted because of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami; TBS also canceled its scheduled airing of the 10th episode so it could provide more news coverage of the natural disaster.

  Urobuchi apologized to viewers for the delays; he also said the postponements could be viewed in a positive light because they alleviated some production pressures on animation studio Shaft because of the tight broadcast schedule. Citing particularly

• 5. Broadcast Delays And Earthquake Impact

  ›

  challenging drawings for episodes 11 and 12, Urobuchi and Iwakami planned to have Shaft continue to improve the episodes up until their rescheduled broadcasts. According to Urobuchi, if episode 11 had been aired in its current state as scheduled, the result would likely have been disappointing. On the 23rd of March 2011, the broadcast for the rest of the series was indefinitely delayed, but the production team reported that they were continuing to work on the episodes and announced their intention to finish airing the series by April.

  Puella Magi Madoka Magica received widespread critical acclaim. Masaki Tsuji lauded the series' world-building and narrative as well as the character development, and called the series groundbreaking. Masaki went on to say that Madoka Magica had reached a "level of perfection", and noted that the series was worthy of people's admiration. UK Anime Network's Andy Hanley rated the anime 10 out of 10, lauding it for its deeply emotional content and described it as immersive and filled with grandiose visuals along with an evocative soundtrack.

  The first Blu-ray volume of the series sold 53,000 copies in its first week, 22,000 of which were sold on its first day, breaking the record held by the sixth BD volume of Bakemonogatari. The second volume sold 54,000 copies, breaking the

• 6. Critical Acclaim And Commercial Success

  ›

  first volume's record. Each subsequent volume sold over 50,000 copies in their first week. As of October 2012, the total sales of BD and DVDs of the series exceeded 600,000 copies, which was unusual for a late-night program at that time.

  In November 2011, it was announced in the December issue of Kadokawa Shoten's Newtype magazine that Shaft was developing a three-part theatrical film project. The first two films, titled , are compilations of the anime television series featuring re-recorded voice lines and some new animation. The first film, which covers the first eight episodes of the television series, was released in theaters on the 6th of October 2012, while the second film, which covers the last four episodes, was released on the 13th of October 2012.

  A video game based on the series titled was released by Namco Bandai Games on PlayStation Portable on the 15th of March 2012. The game allows players to take many routes and change the ending of the story. Urobuchi returned as

• 7. Expanding The Franchise Through Media

  ›

  the writer and Shaft animated the title, while Yusuke Tomizawa and Yoshinao Doi produced it. A free smartphone application called was released on the 14th of October 2011. A third-person shooter (TPS) titled Puella Magi Madoka Magica TPS featuring Homura Akemi was released for Android devices in December 2011.