#also this is referencing that one homura image

[patchxwork]

[momentary peace of mind] asahina mafuyu

[strawberry-seal77]

yayyy wooo I made a thing!

Mostly just follows events from the main series (with my own silliness applied), but at the very very end there's a reference to a shot in one of the walpurgisnacht rising trailers. Do with that as you will

Aaand specially for tumblr, the image files + bits and bobs that didn't make it into the final thing!!!

I do definitely suggest looking through the three images, since there's a good few panels I didn't end up using :3

I wanted to have a shot referencing rebellion, but there wasn't enough time in the audio! sad!

This took a while to make (~10 hours drawing, ~3 hours editing), but it was super fun !!! After getting it like 90% done, I ended up shelving it for a week or two BUT I locked in and finished today!! If only the same could be said for my homework, eheh.

I didn't have much of an idea going in BUT the hourglass ended up being a fun theme !!! I'm glad I was able to tie it into the ending.

The part where homura and madoka are silhouetted is probably the most animated, but it was simple enough to do and I think pretty necessary to get the idea across.

ALSO look how cute they are!!!!! agrgrggfg

Compression probbably made the actual youtube video a bit blurry, but thats okayyy :33 we stay silly!!!

Given that I drew these real small, I think it all might be a bit too zoomed in for what I'd want to be actually animated, BUT that's not a problem for this project 'cause it's staying like this forever >:3c

ALSO for an explanation of the black panels, those are all to indicate a death! Pretty fun if I do say so myself! The first one is obvious, Madoka, the second one is for Mami, and the third one is shared between Kyoko and Sayaka! A candle underwater...

I'm not sure how easy it is to tell the kyoko + sayaka one even has water, but I think it's cool either way!

[mecheye]

Okie dokie! Thank you so much for answering my ask too, it was fun to read!

Soooo now I’m suddenly curious. Now that we are on the topic of Witches, what do you think of Homulilly? (And her familiars too if you want, especially the Clara Dolls. I love them 😭)

I'm going to be honest and say I have NO IDEA what the deal is with the Clara Dolls!

I know they are part of Homura's menageries of familiars and I was curious to get some information on them from the movie, but they weren't really introduced at any point or referenced by name so I have zero idea what to make of them or what their real purpose was. I do admit that they were pretty cute and rather playful! Which seems to be a contrast to most other familiars in the show.

The other day I reblogged a thing where it was hypothesized that each doll represented one of Homura's timelines. Which would set the number of times she re-did everything to 14 or 15. Which is a lot less than what we heard prior, but it was also stated in the same post that the Karmic growth of Madoka grew exponentially per repeat instead of linear (so instead of 15 do-overs equaling Madoka's power being multiplied by 15x, it would instead be multiplied by 16'384x)

Whether or not that is true or not is HIGHLY debatable, but it was a compelling argument.

I also read on here at one point that the creature rowing the boat in the river was also one of Homura's familiars. I'm not sure what that is supposed to represent either or why it looked different than the Clara dolls. The rules behind all this eldritch nonsense is ill-defined at best, but honestly that's what makes all these creatures so compelling - To an outside viewer without 100 hours of rigorous research into it, there really doesn't really seem to BE any rules regarding how a witch and its familiars is related to the magical girl it spawns from. Its that innate sense of weirdness and surrealism that adds another layer of wonder to the show that keeps people thinking about it long after they finished watching it.

As for Homulily herself? I didn't get to see her design that much since I uhhh couldn't see clearly at the time. But from what Ive seen in various artistic depictions its a really gnarly.

I'm ... not going to pretend I know what ALL the symbolism is. That's not my wheelhouse. But the idea of a skeletal being with flowers coming out its head is wild and freaks me out a bit.

Spider Lilies are not simple flowers. Taking the entire flowering head as a whole instead of a complex series of individual florets gives it a rather alien and otherworldly appearance. But they have deep symbolism regarding martyrdom in Buddhist culture, which is pretty much what Homura was trying to do at that time. Taking this at face value then the restraints can also be explained as a symbol of martyrdom. The flailing blue arms were a great touch. There is a lot of internal conflict in Homura's mind on what she actually wants to do. Its very tragic I'm not sure what the deal was with the silly ass-trumpet. That one escapes me.

All in all, flowers growing out of someones head makes for some low-impact but still rather potent body horror. I'm no stranger to body horror, but that image still weirds me out quite a bit

[dreamerwitches]

Nagisa transformation - Magia Record game

Ultimate Madoka’s symbol appears at the beginning (and is present in the transformation) because this Nagisa is the same as the one from Rebellion (aka, Ultimate Madoka’s secretary who was the original Charlotte and was brought back to help Homura in Rebellion)

The crane machine features two monochrome Pyotr and inside has the viking girl from Episode 12, Momoko and lots of Anthony. I find it cute Nagisa’s event banner is in the back of the machine and the claw features colours reminiscent of Wormlotte. Also, fun fact, it’s Ultimate Madoka using the claw machine (you can see her white gloves!)

When the Nagisa plush is falling, you can see many Pyotr and boxes. I think the boxes are either the one you see in Charlotte’s labyrinth or the Grief Box (a piece of merchandise). The cake Nagisa falls into features Wormlotte’s face and could be a subtle nod to the Cake Song from rebellion.

I only just realised too that there are Pyotr during the bit where the two lines of Nagisa march towards each other, cute!

When Ultimate Madoka dabs at Nagisa’s face (with what looks like an Anthony head) she has little tigers spiralling around her head. Bebe does this same thing in Rebellion. Here’s an explanation of this ‘Laziness' phrase on page 133 is a reference to Little Black Sambo. At one point in the story, Sambo, to appease three tigers trying to eat him, gives each of them his umbrella, shoes and clothing. Each tiger thinks they're the best looking one, and then chase each other around a tree. They run so quickly they melt into ghee (butter). Sambo's mother then uses the butter to make pancakes. This story is referenced briefly during the scene where Homura and Madoka are having tea at Mami's apartment, and Bebe becomes dazed. Three tigers circle around her head before a bubble with "Ghee" written in it appears and is followed by an image of pancakes.’

It’s cute that Nagisa is in Charlotte’s labyrinth during her transformation

[woolishlygrim]

So, with the new Madoka Magica thing coming, I watched Rebellion again, and was reminded of how interesting and thematically rich the weird, surreal transformation sequences from that movie are.

So I looked up some people’s analyses of the sequence, and those analyses were, you know, really bad. Luckily, I’m a relaxed person who can let things go and doesn’t feel the burning need to waste a lot of time analysing a one-and-a-half minute sequence from an eight year old movie.

...

...

1) Mami.

Mami is really straightforward. As the transformation sequence starts, she’s doing an ice dance, a kind of dance that strives to create the impression of free movement, grace, and creative expression but which is actually governed by incredibly rigid rules, not unlike how Mami attempts to foster an external presentation of effortless, free-spirited grace, while binding herself to a rigid code of behaviour.

As she moves into her final spin, she folds up one leg, forming the shape of a grief seed, which her magical girl form tears its way out of, breaking her back open as it goes. This is some incredibly literal symbolism: For Mami, who made her wish solely to escape death while the rest of her family died and later threw herself into being a magical girl, her magical girl persona literally tore its way out of her grief, breaking the person she was before.

Her back breaking also ties back to her death in the series, as Bebe crushed her in its jaws.

2) Kyoko.

Kyoko has an excitable, fast-paced dance to pretty straightforwardly represent her excitable, wild personality. As the sequence goes on, she sprouts a multitude of arms, waving about her, in what is almost certainly a reference to Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy. Apart from referencing Kyoko’s selfless wish to help her father, and her act of mercy-killing Sayaka, Guanyin was typically conflated with the Virgin Mary, with statues of Mary disguised as Guanyin and a cult of 'Maria Kannon’ having formed around her at one point. Giving that her father was apparently a priest excommunicated for heresy, it’s entirely plausible that heresy was the veneration of Maria Kannon.

Next we see a man’s hand reach for Kyoko’s face. This is almost certainly Kyoko’s father’s hand, reaching for her either in affection or in anger after killing the rest of their family. We see Kyoko split into multiple images, referencing her now lost power of duplicating herself, before the scene is torn open by a demonic, red-eyed, terrifying looking Kyoko. This is the one bit of symbolism in this sequence that has me completely stumped. A representation of how Kyoko sees herself, maybe? Or perhaps a representation of how her father saw her.

3) Sayaka.

Winning the prize for ‘least disturbing,’ we’ve got Sayaka, who kicks off her transformation by break-dancing, as coloured silhouettes mimic her movements at a slight time delay. The break-dancing itself is just a reference to her athleticism, but what’s interesting is that some of the silhouettes occasionally flicker to black with spots of oily colour, the pattern of a soul gem just before it becomes a Witch, referencing Sayaka’s fate in the original timeline of becoming the Witch Oktavia.

As the transformation ends, a silhouette of Sayaka as a schoolgirl sprints (with perfect form, again referencing her athleticism) at a silhouette of herself as a magical girl, the two colliding and splattering like water. There’s a general running theme of water in this one, referencing Oktavia again. As the two colours mix, a liquid version of Sayaka as a magical girl emerges, and for a split-second we see her cry into her hands, representing her regret at becoming a magical girl.

This one is almost as simple as Mami’s, all told.

4) Homura.

The most symbolically rich and also probably the most disturbing. As Homura starts, we see her holding her soul gem, which for a split-second flashes to an artistic representation of a scene later in the movie: The forest of lanterns that Homura and Kyoko end up passing through when they’re trying to leave town. 

Homura’s dance is a ballet dance, representing how ... let me check my notes here ... she’s a ballet dancer. Like Sayaka, she has a silhouette following her at a time delay, but unlike Sayaka, her silhouette isn’t actually perfectly mimicking her movements, instead deviating at points. This is probably playing triple duty on the symbolism side: Homura is at this point both magical girl and Witch, both the original Homura and the new universe’s Homura, and is in two minds about what she wants to do. 

As the transformation goes on, the white silhouette gets caught in a film reel, repeating her infinitely, while the purple silhouette is still and singular: The purple silhouette is the new universe’s Homura, while the white silhouette is the original timeline’s, repeating the same period of time over and over again. 

We get another short shot of a future part of the film, this time the rising lanterns that lead up above the city, which will eventually be transformed into the arch and castle where Homura becomes a Witch.

This transitions to a silhouetted, yellow-eyed version of Homura (the ‘lizard-girl’ she figuratively becomes) bursting into patterns as Homura escapes from it, reaching for something, before transitioning to a pair of glowing hands grasping around a soul gem. The colour grading makes the soul gem look purple, making it look like Homura’s, but it’s actually not: Homura’s soul gem is visible on one of the glowing hands. This is actually Madoka’s soul gem that Homura is grasping at.

After a split-second shot of some very sinister witch text, we cut back to Homura, who segues into some more ballet moves before her striking her pose. These actually aren’t just any ballet moves, though: She’s dancing the death of Odette at the end of Swan Lake. At the end of Swan Lake, Odette dies and ascends to heaven, freeing the other swan maidens from the grip of Rothbart. It’s a very close match to someone’s story, but that someone is Madoka, not Homura: Homura’s mimicry of Madoka/Odette casts her in the role of Odile, the Black Swan (whose costume Homura wears as part of her devil attire later on in the movie), who imitates Odette and in doing so steals her purpose from her. This is some really heavy foreshadowing for the end of the movie.

5) Madoka.

Madoka’s dance is styled after the pop dances of idols, figuratively representing her as Homura’s ‘idol,’ (and potentially tying in to ideas of the artificiality of Jpop idols: This both is and isn’t Madoka, after all, it’s a mask that the real Madoka is wearing). 

After the dance, the transformation cuts to the same film reel Homura was stuck in, but this time with an endless line of paper dolls of Madoka. This is pulling double duty for symbolism here: The dolls are both the many iterations of Madoka that Homura has seen in her time loops, and the infinite iterations of Madoka that exist in the moment of every magical girl becoming a Witch -- we actually see an almost identical scene elsewhere, in Ultimate Madoka’s transformation in Magia Record, with the key difference being those Madokas are real, whereas these ones are a chain of paper dolls, hinting at Homura’s view of those Madokas as being ‘not fully real.’ The Madoka she knew is gone, and Ultimate Madoka both is Madoka and is just a pale imitation.

We cut from there to grainy, close-up images of Madoka. The angle of these suggest that we’re seeing through someone’s eyes, and we are: These are Homura’s memories of the ‘real’ Madoka. As we watch, a glowing hand breaks through, shattering the images like a mirror. A lot of people have assumed this is Madoka’s hand, but it’s not: We’ve already seen this exact glowing hand, in Homura’s transformation, because it’s Homura’s hand, reaching for Madoka. As if to confirm this, behind the hand we see buzzing stripes of colours for just a moment: The same ever-shifting rainbow shades as Devil Homura’s eyes briefly turn.

Madoka is revealed, peering through her hands in a way that mimics the floating eyes of Kyubey outside the isolation field they’re all trapped in. Like Kyubey, Madoka is a godlike being who exists beyond the world that Homura has created here.

Whew. Okay, that’s all five. We get Bebe’s transformation later, and the symbolism there is that she likes cake and shit.

[dreamerwitches]

Let’s look at the Madoka Magica concept movie trailer again cause I can’t get over it. Part 4!

Homu time

I don’t like devil Homura but damn she looks so cool here. 

The Clara dolls being like shadows behind her (they really look like Sebastian) remind me of regular Homura’s (non glasses) doppel in Magia Record. Is this a coincidence or not? No idea.

One other little detail about this scene is that the background strongly reminds me of the building Homura was in before she becomes Homulilly in Rebellion.

It also rather looks like a theatre in the original image. The red things in the archways of the scenery could be chairs.

Another awesome Homu. She looks so evil and nassstyyy here-! It reminds me of the way Oktavia is animated in timeline 3 when Homura kills her (could that be what it’s referencing?). She also seems to have a clawed, monstrous hand and her face reminds me slightly of the Clara Dolls.