#but i like the idea of madoka being the first one to become aware of this and overcoming that flaw they both share

[greatgoddyke]

some bobbles (+ two unfinished things)

[duessperare]

some more headcanons for this blog, some of which are old but i'm re-iterating since it's been a while:

madoka came up with the idea of her wish because she wanted to save all magical girls. but in the end, the reason she actually went through with it was to save homura, who was stuck in an endless cycle and headed towards becoming a witch. that's what gave her the courage to make the decision in that moment, though she might not fully realize it herself.

homura and madoka were always sacrificing themselves for each other. homura was the first to voice her frustrations with madoka's constant self-sacrifice, and how it hurt her, but madoka was the first to realize that homura was the same. homura's self-sacrifice hurt madoka too, and homura never considered the fact that that's what brought madoka the most pain.

as a result, after the events of rebellion, madoka was the first to decide that she was going to find a solution where neither of them had to suffer. she wouldn't accept any kind of sacrifice. she still wanted magical girls to be saved - despite knowing that that was her own selfish desire, just as much to ease her own pain as to ease theirs. but she stubbornly believed that there had to be a way for everyone to be happy.

mind you i don't know what solution that would be yet. if anyone has any ideas pls share, lol, i am desperate,

[atamascolily]

One of the fun things about being a fan of multiple shows by the same author is that you get to watch them play with the same ideas over and over again. It's especially fascinating with Thunderbolt Fantasy (2016-present), where you can see Gen Urobuchi returning to and building on many of the themes and issues in Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011).

AKA a long-winded analysis on the ethics of time travel, or what a tired wandering swordsman has in common with a 14-year-old magical girl (hint: heart is an awesome power). [CW: spoilers for both series.]

When the possibility of using the scrying mirrors to travel back in time is first introduced in TBF Season 3, Lang Wu Yao zeroes in on using them to save Mu Tian Ming from being blinded by Huo Shi Ming Huang--an injury he feels personally responsible for. He's upset by Shang's dismissal of this idea, but Lin Xue Ya interrupts before Shang can explain his position any further, even though I doubt there is any argument that Lang would accept at this point.

Lang Wu Yao sees the world in binary terms--good and evil, action and in-action--and he also believes that the ends justify the means, so his stance on using time travel to prevent a terrible fate is not particularly surprising. His offer to sacrifice his life for Tian Ming's well-being is genuinely sincere. But it's not that simple and Shang is acutely aware of the dangers that come from meddling in the past; furthermore, the show offers some tantalizing hints that this knowledge came from personal experience (more on this later).

Shang's stance that time travel is against the natural order of things is in sharp contrast to that of Homura Akemi in Madoka Magica, who, like Lang, wishes to defy the laws of space and time and travel back into the past in order to save the most important person in her life from a terrible fate. In Homura's case, she wants to save Madoka first from death, and then from becoming a magical girl in the first place, reliving the same few weeks over and over again in an effort to do so; conveniently, Kyubey, a cute cat-like figure and stand-in for Mephistopheles is right there, willing to grant that very wish in exchange for Homura's soul.

Unfortunately for Homura, every time she goes back in time she's actually traveling to an alternate dimension, and the karmic "weight" of all these timelines ends up making Madoka more and more of a target as both her power and potential grow on an exponential scale. This unexpected consequence ultimately results in Madoka making a wish to save all magical girls from their fate--but which condemns her to a liminal existence as a concept, once again denying Homura her true wish.

Wishes are a dangerous thing in Urobuchi's stories, as Lang will discover. A hooded figure calling himself the "Cross-Time Guardian" (actually the demon Azibelpher) takes Lang back in time to the battle against Huo Shi Ming Huang, and, in classic devil fashion, tempts him to take matters into his own hands and save Tian Ming. When Lang and Ling Ya question his motives--correctly sensing this is too good to be true--Azibelpher says, "I'm simply curious as to what kind of karma you are willing to shoulder."

Like "fate", "karma" is a loaded word in Thunderbolt Fantasy (there's a reason why Huo Shi Ming Huang's weapon is called "All Karmas Destroyed Together"). As in Madoka Magica, karma is a source of power; Lang's intervention would essentially make him responsible for everything that happens in this new timeline as a result. In this case, this statement also points to a more straightforward narrative purpose: this scene is a test of Lang's character.

Unlike Homura, Lang gets to see the potential consequences of his actions in advance, and it's not pretty: an eldritch demon god unleashed upon the world. Lang's choice is Tian Ming or the world.... and if he chooses Tian Ming, there won't be a world anymore. Any semblance of choice was an illusion from the beginning; the past cannot be changed without destroying any hope of a future. As Homura herself notes in Madoka Magica, "Kindness can lead to an even greater tragedy".

On a meta-narrative level, Tian Ming's mutilation and Shang's subsequent arrival in Dong Li are what makes the story of Thunderbolt Fantasy possible ; Lang can change the past.... at the cost of erasing the entire story. [Note: Do I hate that Urobuchi made a woman's suffering the unchanging crux on which all canon events subsequently hang? I sure do! Was it technically well done? Also yes, but I cannot emphasize enough how much I hate it.]

However, while it's taken to an extreme in this particular case, I would argue that this kind of narrative erasure is the logical goal of most time travel stories--the fantasy that you can somehow go back and fix everything, conveniently ignoring the fact that life generally doesn't work like that. The exceptions, of course, are those stories where it turns out that time cannot be changed for whatever reason--either because it's a stable time loop or because certain events will always happen no matter what changes are introduced--but their power comes in large part from how they are still addressing this same fantasy by subverting it. (There are also stories like Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder", which hinge on the difficulty of maintaining the status quo in a world where the timeline is all too easily altered, but again those are the exceptions rather than the rule.)

Being Lang Wu Yao is suffering and he's only just begun, because Azibelpher twists the knife in further by asking him, "Okay, so the world would be destroyed, so what? If fate is cruel and suffering is inevitable, why not give it the middle finger by wrecking everything on your way out?"

The meta irony of puppets discussing whether or not they are "puppets" of fate gets me every time.

This is the same question Homura asks Madoka as they lay dying in episode 10 of Madoka Magica--why not destroy the world that has betrayed and failed them and is full of so many terrible things? Here, it is the Devil himself making the argument; after much agonizing, Lang's response is ultimately, "Not today, Satan!" Once again, Shang Bu Huan was right about everything, and Lang finally understands that now.

Lang is able to make this choice because he is more fully aware of the consequences of interference--knowledge that Homura did not have. Given that there wouldn't be much of a story if she didn't go back in time, I doubt it would have made much difference, but you never know.

What's especially striking about the next part--as Lang witnesses Tian Ming's fate and taking full responsibility for his inaction--is that it's intercut with Shang Bu Huan's discussion with Bai Lian in the distant past. Instead of the previous epic battle music, the same scene is recast as melancholy and bittersweet, with the music and framing changing the entire tone. The events are the same, but we are experiencing them differently along with Lang this time, watching from the outside as spectators without changing anything--very much like a memory or a dream.

I've speculated elsewhere what exactly the point of Azibelpher sending Shang Bu Huan to this particular point in time to meet Bai Lian, but on further reflection, I wonder if this was (among other things) a similar test of character for Shang. If so, he passes with flying colors; when Bai Lian asks if Shang is here to correct the "mistake" of making the Shen Hui Mo Xie, Shang tells him he's doing just fine.

"No way in hell is it just a 'mistake'. The future that starts here isn't just disasters. There's joy and salvation, too. Saying what you did is wrong is like denying any of that happened."

This is Madoka's answer to Homura in Puella Magi Madoka Magica--the world is terrible and cruel, but it is also full of good things too, and therefore it should be preserved rather than destroyed. Urobuchi is often pigeonholed as a "dark" and "edgy" writer, but I see Shang and Madoka voicing his true opinions, which are ultimately hopeful and uplifting.

Furthermore, this emphasis on "mistakes" hearkens back to an earlier conversation between Madoka and her mother Junko, who serves as a dispenser of worldly advice, in which Junko explains that sometimes, the only way to help a friend is to let them make their own mistakes, or be willing to do it for them. Paradoxically, mistakes are sometimes necessary; for better or worse, our mistakes have made us who we are and attempting to erase or undo them is to also erase and undo ourselves and any good that may have come of them.

(The irony, of course, is that Shang can accept this about anyone and everything except for himself--but then we all have our blind spots and Shang, for all his wisdom and maturity, is still human.)

Even Azibelpher kind of gets into this when he tells Lang to "Accept the weight of what your actions will result in." Sure, he means it to hurt, but for better or worse, this is a fundamental part of adulthood, something that Lang must accept in order to mature. And even though I don't think Azibelpher intended it this way, this harrowing experience of re-living his past trauma forces Lang to let go of his fixation on "fixing" things and accept them for what they are--to finally move beyond obsession over the past so he can enjoy the present and the future.

It's an open question if demons in Thunderbolt Fantasy can truly experience anything like "love" or "affection" in the human sense, and if Azibelpher sees Lang as anything more than a toy and tool, but there's nonetheless the element of "tough love" in this scene, of a father schooling his son in the harsh realities of life (which later become textual, but that's another essay). Azibelpher is mature and polished, but unlike Shang, he has no compassion, no "heart", and I think that will ultimately prove to be his undoing.

Azibelpher's obsession with fate blinds him to the truth that human beings can grow and change and move beyond their old roles and into something new, as Shang is constantly attesting--and whatever else he might be, Lang is still human. Lang surprised Azibelpher in this scene with his restraint, and I think he will continue to surprise Azibelpher in the end--in large part from what he learned from his time with Shang.

To bring it back to time loops once more, I mentioned earlier that Shang was a part of one, and I have a sneaking suspicion we haven't seen the end of it yet. Will future installments show a younger Shang in the ruins of the Void Junction? And if so, who will he meet there and what will he learn as a result? Has the whole story been one big loop after all, circles within circles, wheels within wheels just like Madoka Magica?

tl;dr: Thunderbolt Fantasy and Madoka Magica are two different stories that can be experienced independently of each other, but there are a lot of fun parallels for the folks who have seen them both as Urobuchi continues to explore these same tropes and issues in different circumstances and contexts, and this is especially true for the time travel subplot in TBF S3.

[princess-of-the-corner]

Gosh seeing PMMM AU's via time travel reminds me of this one idea I had.

Homura wakes up, seems like a regular, familiar timeline.

She goes through the motions, the habits, the familiar parts.

She barely pays attention to anything outside her narrow purview.

Until she gets to school & the receptionist clicks their tongue at her ring.

"I thought we were meant to be told when someone new was assigned here. Go check out the club room on the top floor."

(or something like that XD)

Confused she goes along with it and finds herself freezing at the name on the door.

"Puella Magi - Mitakihara Branch #1!"

Things she'd been ignoring or glossing over, certain looks or comments, idle chatter overheard, flashes of posters & recordings all come roaring to the forefront of Homura's mind.

Then the door opens with a click and she's greeted by a smiling Madoka who already made a contract.

____________________________

Long story short, this is a timeline where someone's sister or friend died heroically as a magical girl & so their successor wished that everyone would know what heroes the magical girls are.

This led to the masquerade being pulled back, violently.

Suffice to say, Witches suddenly being visible to the public eye and more, leaving their domains to attack causes no end of shock, horror and chaos.

One of the first major reported cases (In Japan at least) was Tomoe Mami defending and saving hundreds, including some noted media personalities as a witch descended on a public park.

She wasn't the only one to do such things of course, but it did give her a very public and uncomplicated heroic debut compared to some magical girls. Especially as her demeanor and manner makes it easy for her to be well liked compared to some rough around the edges types.

(Oriko Mikuni is also of noted importance)

Anyway, chaos spread as awareness grew with some areas or countries not doing so hot & others processing things very well. The truth regarding the Incubators came out and oh boy, did that cause problems; & briefly saw them outright banished from the planet.

Now they are back but are contained to diplomatic agencies & pretty much universally hated but still needed to deal with the problems they created, ala Witches, Familiars & some new critters that popped up that they didn't plan on.

Japan was one of the countries that bounced back rather well, so Puella Magi are largely regarded very positively. Though be it in a "I hope my daughter doesn't become one, its so dangerous" kind of way, with many becoming celebrities.

Mami is a major face for their loosely organized association that collaborates with the government to ensure Puella Magi can live normal lives & defend their communities & get enough support to avoid stuff like turning into Witches.

The Incubators are also not meant to create new, unsanctioned magical girls, so Homura is kind of as giant red flag, save that the Incubators also have no fucking clue where she came from.

____________________________

Aside, but Homura freaks out about Madoka, gets pulled back by magical girl Hitomi & basically tries to fucking bolt with them in hot pursuit.

(She shot Hitomi in the leg but it didn't take & Homura got punched through a window over it)

Mami was in town & helped them orchestrate an ambush after observing Homura's powers for a bit. Did some quick PR & then left with a bound up Homura to go raise merry hell with the Incubators.

There'd be a brief cut to Sayaka & Kyoko at their own local branch being like, "What the fuck is today right?"

Sadly I never got much further than that with planning.

Gods sorry for the massive submission XD

Oh that's fucking WILD I love it

[dejabooooo]

So is Madoka actually happy, not just content, as the Law of Cycles? Because as I gather there's a lot of material strongly suggesting she just straight up isn't.

Director Shinbo has said something to the effect of the outcome of the TV series, "a human becoming a god" might be too heavy a fate for a girl in middle school to bear, the lyrics of Mata Ashita (the end song for the first 2 episode) might be... somewhat telling, becoming the LoC is directly called a fate worse than death in the original series, it's been strongly implied in various side materials (and directly by the MagiReco game apparently) that the LoC isn't actually much of an afterlife, more like a long peaceful sleep like some interpretations of the Buddhist concept of Nirvana, and Madoka herself doesn't actually have regular contact with the girls in her care outside of missions and such, and of course the old concept movie had the "what is happiness" thing about how God is denied the simple pleasures of life.

She might be watching over everyone she cares about but that isn't really a... relationship if her friends and family that aren't magical girls simply don't know she exists.

well thats a good question! because i don't think there is an incredibly definitive canonical answer. not a simple solid yes or no anyway.

one thing i did before writing "be not afraid" (which i assume is what ur here from?) was watch a video of ultimate madoka's quotes from magia record to get a feel for how she spoke in that form. one thing she stated repeatedly was that she absolutely did not regret her decision, she was happy with it. but being happy with her decision does not necessarily translate to her being happy in general. in fact one particularly heartbreaking line was about how she could see her brother drawing by himself and was sorry that she couldn't play with him.

so the argument that madoka is satisfied with her wish but it regardless comes at the expense of her happiness in almost the same way that devil homura exists is a very interesting thought.

I think because in canon these concepts are so immensely complex but our knowledge about how exactly they exist is somewhat vague, there are lots of different ways u can interpret it.

My personal depiction (which i fully admit to containing plenty of speculation) is this:

Madoka is absolutely lonely and not always happy as the loc. but she isn't in a constant state of happiness or sadness anymore than when she is a human. the thing about madoka kaname is that her happiness throughout the series is dependent on how much she's HELPING OTHERS. of course she becomes god as a middle schooler human girl, but in becoming the loc, she becomes something other than human. being in that state of nirvana, in that state of otherness, i can't imagine that the feelings and thoughts of this immense concept she becomes can translate directly into human ideas of happiness or sadness, i can't imagine emotions being completely definitive in a being of such immense power with infinite facets. she is in a constant state of helping people tho, and the human madoka that is left must be happy, not just content, about that. She is aware of everyone she loves, she can see them at all times and watch over them, and i think a contradiction occurs here where she is glad she can watch over them but at the same time there must be a part of her that misses them.

i know this is all very abstract. but put in simpler terms madoka is the embodiment of hope while she is in the form of the loc. i imagine she must feel hopeful and if she is constantly hopeful and purposeful then that has to prelude to happiness in an overall sense too despite everything else

so my final answer as to whether madoka is happy as the loc is: it's... complicated😭

[thesleepykuma]

I am in the middle of trying to write a Magical girl raising project fanfiction. I'll spare you any details of the story to avoid getting your hopes up because I'm notorious for starting creative projects and not finishing them, but it lead me to think about some problems with the story that I'd want to fix in a retelling.

As a caveat, I did like the show. It's not as good as Madoka or Utena but it's structured better than Yuki Yuna (Yuki Yuna was unfortunately plauged with some adaptation issues that MGRP lacks) and is miles above a lot of the other trash that is often published in the 'dark magical girl' genre. I also haven't read the light novels but I'm aware of their existence and some of the things that happen in them.

Problem #1: Most of the characters are flat.

This is an unfortunate consequence of the ratio of number of characters to length of source material; the main source material for the anime is a light novel with is quite short and a few short stories that were published later. The vast majority of characters get one main personality trait and a backstory which can range from insightful to vauge to nonexistent. This means that the amount of emotional investment you are able to put into a character before their death is variable and often minimal. This is an unfortunate problem with a lot of death game stories and can be solved by decreasing the number of characters, making the story longer, or both, which allows for more opportunities for character development.

Problem #2: Power balance

In the show, each magical girl has either a magical weapon or a magical power of some kind. Some exceptions to this such as the Peaky angels who in addition to their transformation powers get flight and Cranberry who gets super hearing in addition to her main sound based powers. The powers are not incredibly well balanced, which I'll explain by comparing the powers of a few different characters. Hardgore Alice's power gives her the ability to regerate unless her entire body is destroyed. This makes her nigh invulnerable and if she had paired this ability with any non-magical offensive weapon she would have been a top contender the winner from raw ability alone. Compare this with Magicaloid 44's power of a random futuristic item a day, which is extremely luck based, Sister Nana's ability bless someone to make them stronger which relies on having a living ally to use it on, and Ruler's mind control power which has too many restrictions to make the most of. In my opinion the best death games are balanced so that anyone has a change of winning or at least surviving. Emotional investment in a given character drops when you can accurately predict that they won't last long.

Problem 3# Snow white

Snow white is the main character of the arc. Her Schtick as a stereotypical magical girl is a good contrast to what the story ends up being, but her main problem is that she has little agency in the plot. Her power has an offensive capability that is used in later light novels but she doesn't have the foresight in the first arc to use it, and she spends most of the plot hiding behind other characters or cowering in a corner. She has one moment where she chooses to do something significant towards the end of the show and even then the payoff relies on multiple other characters actions and not on anything that she did. She makes it to the end of the story because of plot armor.

I don't want to be completely unfair to Snow White. The idea that her simple, childish, innocent desire to spend her days spreading kindness and joy to other people was so moving to the other characters that they decided to help her in spite of what the world turned out to be is emotionally poignant in its own way. I think she works best as a foil to Ripple as Ripple slowly softens throughout the story and Snow white becomes more jaded. She just isn't entertaining to watch most of the time, however, and I suspect that's why Magical girl raising project doesn't have as large of a fanbase as other similar shows.

[brazenautomaton]

Given that you are literally the perfect candidate for this, I request your assistance. In light of recent animu viewings, and upon stumbling across the TVTropes page for Princess the Hopeful, I was inspired to run a few sessions for my boys. However, digging back through your blog, I found a post indicating you had some fairly negative feelings on the system. As I trust your judgment, I would like your input on How To Make Princess Work, whether these suggestions are thematic and/or mechanical.

well I can't be as helpful as you would think because after a certain point the instinctive shame was too much and I can't even bear to read the current version of it so I don't know what to say "don't do this" other than "don't do anything that was Earthscorpion's idea". I asked someone to read it and summarize for me but then they just didn't do that.

and some of it was mechanical stuff you can't change, and probably the most important one was the post about nightmares as the primary environment, which I can't find now because of course I can't and now I am thinking maaaaaybe I never actually detailed it outside of PM?

the primary environment and source of low-level threat is a Nightmare, which is a little sub-reality bubble created by one person's fear and misery, operating under dream logic, where spirit creatures that are manifestations of that person's fears and flaws dwell, and the person is both the prisoner and monarch, exalted and tormented. the nightmare creatures go out into the world and hurt people and try to bring them back in, so that's the first source of monsters of the week. to put a stop to them you need to find the source, the Nightmare itself, and free whoever is trapped inside. the Nightmare reflects their fear and trauma and etc and you need to at least somewhat understand it to free the person, because you need to convince them they can and should leave. also because the nightmare creatures aren't self-aware it's a situation where starting a fight doesn't mean the end of social interaction; some challenges have to be talked through and some have to be fought and maybe you're doing both at once because the talky creatures don't notice or care you're fighting the gibbering monster creatures and you need to get past both to get to the core

yes, there's a lot of Madoka in that, but when Princess was first conceived Madoka didn't exist so it gets to catch up

higher level antagonists use and exploit these Nightmares. Princesses of Tears drive people to this point on purpose because like Kyubey harvests magical girl despair, the energy released by awakening a Nightmare is what keeps the lights on in Alhambra for a little while longer. evil warlocks use them as a source of disposable minions.

things are bad, it is a World of Darkness, because everything is tainted by Darkness. the taint of the Darkness is not Blizzard fel corruption or sinister black mind control oil -- the taint of the Darkness is fear. people do bad things because they are afraid. if an antagonist isn't cackling and unapologetically evil and clearly Okay To Kill, their actions are motivated at some basic level by fear. set them up so they can be redeemed and helped because a Princess is about fighting fear and balming misery. but also that redeeming them will take away most of their evil powers so that the group doesn't just accumulate a larger and larger posse of warlocks to stomp everything.

Dark Magical Girls should always be able to be redeemed. Ignore whatever stupid fucking subsystem EarthScorpion put into Princesses of Storms that kills them if they turn good, whether it's still the stupid organ implants or he changed it to something else. Basically anything that is a unique subsystem just for them was probably EarthScorpion's idea, he was obsessed with them for some reason

give players lots of opportunities to interact with higher-level antagonists before they are in a situation where one of them has to die, so they can get to know the antagonist better.

never imperil a character's civilian-life relationships unless they have fucked up super hard or you have given them ample, ample chances to prevent it from becoming a problem -- you cannot make it so the best idea is to cut yourself off from your friends so they won't be in danger, that's what lonely and isolated and terrified Dark Magical Girls do

the Queens are maternal figures who cannot give advice relevant to the situation on the ground (can't solve problems for you) but help you work them out yourself (they would love to do more but the dream-state they are in makes it hard to operate on anything but dream-logic)

Princesses are not evil, Queens are not evil, there is no "oh no you're so morally grey maybe you're the bad guys" because that is covered by every other WoD game. the darkness level of the game is keyed off of "how much does it matter that you're truly and righteously good guys? will that help you change things?"

this does not preclude them from getting into conflict with other forces who believe themselves to be or truly are motivated by goodness, but play up how that's a tragic thing that people who want to help the world have to fight

I also had a thing where Princesses basically gambled Belief the way Hunters gambled Willpower, to represent getting extremely emotionally invested in what you were doing and the possibility of being spiritually crushed if you try your hardest and fail. this was a way to get fucking super amped up EX modes on your Charms but not knowing how their system works I can't say how to adapt it

one other mechanical thing I wanted was "a Princess is basically invincible if she's devoting all her juice to keep herself safe, but has very little capacity to actually do anything else; the more effective you want to be at actively doing things to the world, the more you have to put yourself out there and risk being harmed" but again don't know how to integrate that into whatever mechanics they have

if I think of anything else I will let you know

[darkershining]

So, since the release of YTTD Chapter 3-1 Part B, I’ve seen people comparing Midori to Kyubey of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and so I toyed with some ideas of what a PMMM AU for YTTD might be like. And I’ve seen that I’m not the only one playing around with such ideas, so I thought about it and figured I might as well share my ideas. I’ll put them under the Read More:

- I don’t know if there’d be a time loop plot point, but if there is, I imagine either Kai or Shin would be the one causing it, because those two seem like the most fitting characters for that role. I’m leaning towards Kai being the one causing the time loops, but Shin might also to some extent be aware of the time loop.

- Kugie went missing some time ago, having secretly become a magical girl at some point, and likely got killed in battle against a Witch. Affected by her sister’s mysterious disappearance, Kanna is targeted by a Witch that lures her into its barrier. Luckily, Shin comes to her rescue, but afterwards, tells her to forget what happened and tries to keep her from getting involved. However, Kanna can’t stop wondering about what happened, and begins looking for answers. Shin continues to keep an eye out for her, and trying to make sure she doesn’t become a magical girl.

- Multiple people would likely be trying to prevent Sara from making a contract for various reasons, whether just to keep her safe (Joe, Ranmaru, maybe Keiji), or for different plot reasons (Kai and maybe Shin).

- Following on from the above, if there’s a time loop involved and Shin is aware of it, then Shin’s reasons for trying to keep Sara from making the contract, might be because he either suspects keeping Sara from contracting is the key to ending the loop, and/or because he may vaguely remember that Sara’s Witch form killed Kanna in at least one previous loop.

- Ranmaru might become a magical boy at some point to protect Sara. This may or may not later lead to him becoming a Witch.

- I imagine the first encounter between Gin and Q-taro would involve Gin having difficulty taking down a particularly tough Witch on his own, when Q-taro shows up and takes it out. Q-taro initially tries to take the Grief Seed the Witch left for himself, only for Gin to protest that he was fighting the Witch first and used up more of his magic than Q-taro did in the process. Realizing Gin’s Soul Gem is indeed a bit darker than his own, Q-taro lets Gin take the Grief Seed and goes off to look for another Witch.

- I guess sometime after that, Gin might end up meeting and teaming up with Nao and Mishima for a while.

- I imagine Anzu might initially appear to be one of the weaker magical girls, but this is mainly because she hasn’t fully figured out the full extent of what she can do with her powers yet. She’s on a team with Kurumada, and maybe Mai.

- I imagine the Yabusame siblings may have first gotten involved when they wandered into a Witch’s barrier, and Alice got wounded trying to protect Reko, leading her to become a magical girl in order to save him. After discovering what had happened, Alice became a magical boy soon after to help Reko fight Witches.

- Haven’t figured out what roles the rest of the YTTD cast would play.

- I do have a few more thoughts for possible scenarios that might play out depending if certain things happen, but maybe I’ll save those for later. 

[shiny-procrastinates]

(re)Watching Magia Record S1 - part 3

part 2 here

Hello everyone and welcome back to our watch-through of the first season of Magia Record! Last time, we met a trio of Kamihama magical girls, Momoko, Rena and Kaede, and, after Rena and Kaede fighting, Kaede is kidnapped by the “chain monster”, a part of the rumor of the Staircase of Severance. Now, it’s up to Iroha, Momoko and Rena to find and take her back. Will they succeed, or will someone lose their heads? The only way to know is by watching, so let’s get right to it.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story: Magia Record Episode 3

Rather than going back to the plot right away, we are given a flashback of Iroha’s younger sister and two other girls. The brown haired girl has apparently created an eternal motion machine in the form of a toy train, saying something about how adults must be stupid if they never thought of that before, and that toy train proceeds to crash into a pile of books and set fire on them. Good job. 

I don’t want to hear this from a gacha game character. Your original work is even more fragile than this!

The megane girl, Nemu, compares the brown haired girl, Touka’s actions to the burning of the Library of Alexandria (dramatic much?) and the two start fighting, with Ui trying to stop them. They’re just like Momoko’s trio on the previous episode, breaking their friendship up and everything.

Once again, it was Iroha’s dream. You know the erasure really went in on it when even the rug is cut in half.

Iroha’s sister had friends at the hospital, so she could get some new clues if only she could find them.

Floof Momoko.

Before going looking for Kaede, Momoko and co. drop by Kamihama Mirena-za, aka. the Coordinator’s. I tried searching if Milena constellation was actually a thing, but the only thing I could find was that there’s a Galileo satellite named Milena. Huh.

The Coordinator had a client, but she’s done right away. We learn that the Coordinator’s name is Mitama Yakumo, but still have no idea what she actually does.

Besides not having a sense of personal space.

Momoko explains that Iroha’s not there to get adjusted, whatever that means, and asks if Yachiyo is there yet. Who’s this Yachiyo though?

Aaawkward.

To no one’s surprise, I guess, since I already said it, but this girl is Yachiyo. And she absolutely ignores Iroha. Rude.

Yachiyo and Momoko start talking between themselves about Kaede’s case. (and MItama’s fixing Momoko’s hair. Cute). It seems Yachiyo is well aware of the rumor of the Staircase of Severance. She pulls out a notebook, and Momoko notes that she’s knowledgeable about these things.

Momoko asks Yachiyo to lend them her help, and Yachiyo agrees to do it, since Kaede is in danger, but adds that she won’t work with people who will only be a burden, looking at Iroha.

...not that she’s wrong, but still rude.

Well, I mean, that might make sense when you’re so op, but you don’t have to say it outright!

Still, Yachiyo has a point: it’d be too dangerous to bring along a weak magical girl to a fight with an unknown enemy. So Mitama offers a solution: why don’t they just adjust Iroha’s Soul Gem?

Mitama does a very short explanation of what “adjusting a Soul Gem” actually entails, and this one short screen tells us the rest. It’s basically what let Momoko and Rena do that joint attack earlier. I wonder if this was even long enough on the screen for the people who watched this on tv to read it. 

Momoko says that Yachiyo should have no complaints as long as they do that and Yachiyo is like “yeah, whatever”.

...now that I think about it, what is Mitama doing here?

Continue? Iroha hasn’t sacrificed anyone tho.

...oh, I forgot we don’t get to see Iroha getting adjusted.

So, our girls are now at the rumored stairs at Kamihama University Affiliated School. Leaving aside Momoko and Rena, since they are students there, one has to wonder how exactly did Iroha and Yachiyo manage to get up there without being found. This school’s security is lacking!

While the girls run up to the rumored Staircase of Severance (this is so annoying to write) we see some messages on screen of what I assume are Rena’s classmates, and get pushed some ideas of what friends should be like, all while Momoko tries to cheer Rena up.

Okay, that’s a really narrow staircase. Who decided to put this creepy thing here?

Momoko writes her and Yachiyo’s name on the staircase (and we sneakily learn Yachiyo’s surname is Nanami). The two are reenacting the rumor, so now they’ll make up to draw the Chain Witch out. That is, after they give us their transformation scenes!

While Yachiyo’s themes are water and stars(?), and she has gracious movements, Momoko’s literally burning up and kicking things. Their transformations parallel one another, and yet they are completely opposites. I love it! (but Momoko kicking the sword still takes the cake for me).

Now that I think about it, for all that fire theme she has going, Momoko's not that hot-blooded. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, I guess.

Rena’s transformation focuses on her shapeshifting powers, throwing her through mirrors and with lots of expression changes. It’s not because she’s tsundere, the transformation seems to tell us Rena has lots of faces.

...I also like her DDR routine right at the start, it’s cute.

The theme of Iroha’s transformation is birbs. Rather than telling us something about who she is like the others, I see hers as basically about what she’s doing right now: much like she did by coming to Kamihama, Iroha takes the courage and jumps into the unknown, chasing after a mirage.

I’m always a little bothered with how she falls straight down despite taking impulse when she jumps, but hey, what can you do lol

One of the (many) cool things about this whole sequence is how the bgm is continuous throughout the transformations, only changing a bit to match each of the girls.

That’s not very convincing acting, Momoko. Yachiyo’s is not much better, either. They theorize it only works if they’re really fighting, and Rena says she’ll do it.

Rena starts apologizing, but nothing happens. Iroha says it might be because she’s not saying it from her heart and Rena’s gets upset.

Rena can’t just feel like making up right away, but it’s not like she doesn’t want Kaede to come back. These two seem to have a complicated relationship, but in the end, it’s clear that Rena does like her. Rena starts crying and apologizes for making Kaede be friends with someone like her all this time. Then, the Chain Witch appears.

We get a flashback to Rena flashbacking (confusing, I know) about all the times Kaede apologized to her, while watching an idol show.

Don’t we all?

So, yeah… Rena is a complicated character. (and a Sayuki stan)

Iroha wakes up in Rena’s room for some reason. Clearly-not-Momoko starts a monologue of how no one could ever like Rena.

Rena hates herself, so she wanted to change. She wanted to become someone else, so her wish gave her shapeshifting powers, but didn’t change her, so she still hates herself (considering the implications when this type of wish does work, see Oriko’s Kirika, she might have gotten the better end of the deal.

Kaede calls out to Rena and Iroha and Rena break out of the strange television-exposition-vision-thingy. So the first thing they start doing, naturally, is start bickering again. Great friends! 

Oh look, the weird Kyuubei is back! Like the nice mascot character he is, he’s showing Iroha the way to the main Witch.

Rena and Kaede start to have a heart-to-heart while fighting (the familiars now, not each other).

Familiar: hahaha, that tickles

Rena says their friendship is over once they get out of there, since they were never real friends to begin with, but Kaede doesn’t want that. Kaede says that if Rena’s problem is that she never apologizes, she just did earlier and Rena says that didn’t count, so Kaede replies that then they breaking up doesn’t count either. Nice, Kaede!

Kaede basically says that, yeah, Rena can be terrible, but she likes her that way anyway, so they can continue being friends.

Rena says that Kaede needs to listen to her, she needs to let her apologize too and tells her she’ll do it once they get out.

While they’re doing that, Yachiyo and Momoko climb to the top and knock down the witches’ main body. Momoko then calls for Kaede and Rena to finish it off. Nice VFX there btw.

Rena and Kaede join hands and using both their magic they pinball the witch into the air with Rena's mirrors. Rena launches plant-enchanted copy spears at it and the witch bursts into leaves and dries... Kaede's magic is kind of scary like this.

Oh, how adorable. Aaaand he's gone. 

The witch is defeated and Rena now has to make good on her promise to apologize. But, seems like honestly apologizing is still too much of a hurdle for her so after some struggle she swerves to another thing. Thankfully, Kaede knows Rena well enough and she's fine with this.

Look at them, so precious.

While Momoko and Iroha catch their breath, Yachiyo approaches them and informs them the Witch didn't drop a Grief Seed. In fact, she says that might've not even been a Witch at all. Yachiyo points out it's weird to have a Witch that comes out anywhere whenever the conditions of a rumor are met, in particular since they didn't even feel it's magic beforehand. She warns them that something weird is going on in Kamihama, then leaves in the most dramatic way possible.

Sometime later, our group is back at Satomi Medical Center. Seems Rena has given in and decided to help after all.

Going by the original plan, Rena transformed into a nurse and investigated the hospital. It's pretty cool how her voice is slightly distorted in this little sequence with her undoing her transformation.

No one in the hospital remembered Iroha's sister, but they did remember Touka and Nemu. That means Iroha's memories aren't entirely wrong.

With that, Iroha goes back to Takarazaki for the day, with some new friends and a very small but important step closer to finding her beloved younger sister.

"Sorry for making you my friend."

That's it folks, this was the third episode of Magia Record('s first season)! No one lost their heads... well except that not-witch if we count the bell as it's head, but I think that's just fine for this series, because--

OH WAIT THERE'S MORE

Talking about lost heads, look who's here! I totally forgot this episode had a stinger. My bad.

Kyuubei can't enter Kamihama now for some reason, so he needed someone to investigate the cause for him and contacted Mami as a strong veteran Magical Girl. There are rumors about that someone in Kamihama is gathering all the Witches around to monopolize Grief Seeds, which would explain why the city is infested with them and they being stronger than normal. Mami says she doesn't want trouble with the Magical Girls of another territory, but will investigate whether the current events are due to a Witch or Magical Girl. I like the short cut that shows her from beneath the grating, it's neat. Just have no idea what it's supposed to mean.

!--rant incoming--! (I say, as if this whole post isn't one)

Anyways, like I was saying... writing? Before the stinger disrupted my thoughts, I think it's just fine that Magia Record's ep3 doesn't have any big twists like Madoka. The original had that maybe for the shock factor, yes, but also because it needed it to make clear what kind of story they were actually going for, and that worked great for that show and the time when it came out. But Magia Record is more of a mystery. We don't need it to push the point of magical girl suffering because the original already did that, we need it to give us things to puzzle about, and that it already did with the weird witch of this episode. Could it have made that better? Maybe, but Magia Record also has the problem that it's cast is significantly bigger, so they have to fit those introductions somewhere. So while it introduces Momoko's trio and a bit Yachiyo, it also tries it's best to situate us (and Iroha by extension) as to how Kamihama's magical girl's world is like and what's going on there. It's a lot to juggle and the anime doesn't get the benefit like the game of being able to just put the character's backstory on a separate chapter. I really like character focused things, so I don't mind the anime trying to fit as much as it can in, but I can see how that might turn other people off. That's one of the things that's really a matter of taste I guess.

!--ok, you can come back now--!

One of the visual things I really like in this episode is the effect with the floating kana and kanji on the Labyrinth. I wonder how that was done. It's animated, so I don't think it's part of the background, but then I'm also not sure at which stage of production that'd be put in. It's really neat.

Well, with this, we are done with episode 3 of Magia Record! What will we do next? Who knows! It doesn't seem like Iroha noticed it, but just knowing that Touka and Nemu existed, not even getting their surnames, does not give her any new clues to go with. She barely started and already is at a dead-end, poor girl.

Before jumping off the building, Yachiyo also added another question to our already filled question bucket: what was up with that weird witch? What is this strange thing that is going on in Kamihama? Why are you looking like that at Momoko's team?

As viewers, however, there is only one way of answering all this: by watching. So I'll be looking forward to having you guys join me tomorrow for episode 4! Have a good morning/afternoon/evening!

PS.: The last two episodes had about 30 screenshots, this one has about 40, at this rate by the time I get to episode 13 I'll be taking screenshots of the whole episode...

[mahou-furbies]

It is time for

Last year the Dazzling Pink Precure were supposed to host the event but were unavailable due to being redesigned, but this time they are ready for the job!

Here is the magical girl (and related) media consumed on this blog this year:

(you can read my closing thoughts on them here)

Anime: Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel & the 2 OVAs, Twin Angel Break, Pretear, Happy Seven, Ojamajo Doremi (started), Healin’ Good Precure (most of it that’s out now), Magia Record (also following the game news though I don’t play), Myriad Colors Phantom World, Re:Creators, Concrete Revolutio)

Movies: Fresh, DokiDoki, Happiness Charge, Go! Princess, KiraKira & Star Twinkle Precure season movies, Spring Carnival & Miracle Universe crossover movies, Magical Sisters Yoyo and Nene)

Manga: Magical Girl Site (finished), Zodiac P.I. (reread), Sugar Sugar Rune (reread), Nogi Wakaba is a Hero, Puella Magi Suzune Magica (reread), Puella Magi Tart Magica (reread), Can You Become A Magical Girl, Colourful Macchiato)

(revisits to old familiar stuff don’t qualify for an award unless I had forgotten everything about it, Doremi is ineligible since I've only seen 1/5th so far)

Unexpectedly I managed to finish quite a lot of stuff on my last year's "plans for 2020 list".

As for blog stuff, this year the Precure Chibi Project was concluded for the designs that exists so far, but obviously it will continue when more are released and I'd also like to draw some more of the civilian clothes too. But this year over 400 chibis were drawn...

Then we of course had the Precure Dress Tournament, with Cure Magical emerging as the winner. Hosting it was a lot of fun since I like graphs and numbers, as the fact that I keep a google sheet that documents the dates when I draw the chibis (it also calculates useful data such as how many percent I've finished).

(Also Megumi's heart dress should totally have won the tournament)

The Precure positivity posts were also a thing this year. Usually the franchise is bitched at here at Mahou-Furbies so I tried to say something nice about each Cure that I had seen. Which was a major struggle in some cases but hopefully they don't come across as too much damning with faint praise. I plan on writing similar posts for the Cures from the other seasons too as I watch them, but also because I managed to write an entire post about Mana without complaining I take that as justification that I get to write a huge bitchy "the flaws of the Precure franchise" post later.

And then now at the end of the year the Dazzling Pink Precure finally managed to emerge again with their new designs. I hope I'll be able to post more about them in 2021!

And now, the Mahou-Furbies 2020 magical girl awards!

Let's start with Best Henshin Design: Megumi Moka from Magia Record! I always love a good sweets theme and I can't get over how cute she is.

(Kikko from Concrete Revolutio was also a strong contender)

Best Team Design goes to Nogi Wakaba Is a Hero, I've always loved the YuYuYu henshin outfit design.

The Best Powerup Look award goes to Lala's Cancer form in the Star Twinkle Precure movie! I just really like the fresh colour palette...

Runner-up is Nagisa's MagiReco Valentine's outfit which I like for being sweets themed but I guess it's more like an alternate form than a powerup?

There weren’t that many contenders for Best Civilian Design but let’s say that since I like the casual outfits in KiraKira Precure in general, The Movie was also good at this. So let’s reward Ciel’s look, it’s nice to see a more muted colour palette in Precure every now and then!

Oh, right! Also everyone from the Star Twinkle Precure movie! Love all their outfits. 

Best School Uniform is the one from Sukoyaka Middle School, from Healin' Good Precure! I like the colour palette, and the cut of the dress.

The uniforms from the Twin Angel franchise are also fun with their cherry ribbon.

Best Hair award goes to Kikko, from Concrete Revolutio! The "rectangular" cut ends are fun.

Best Magical Item is Mamika's wand from Re:Creators! There's really nothing special about it, I just think it looked nice enough with the candy cane and the heart crystal (and also not so merchandise driven since this isn't a kid show).

The Best Henshin Scene award goes to Sudachi from MagiReco! I don’t like how detailed all the body curves are drawn in the few seconds before her outfit appears, but otherwise there’s great backgrounds in this, starting from the space theme, twinkling stars, beautiful blue sky and then ending with cute hearts.

Best Fan Creation award goes to Marighoul’s comic “First Hunt”! (read it here) It was a fun little story and the colours were amazing!

Best Relationship is Hikaru and Lala with the alien in the Star Twinkle movie! I would never have guessed that I’d enjoy Precures raising a “baby” mascot this much, but it is true! I love how much role their bond had in the story, and the conclusion was more epic than anything Precure has managed to offer elsewhere. 

The Best Mascot of 2020 is... the aforementioned alien UMA! Unusual design for a girl show, doesn’t have an annoying voice or speech pattern (or in fact doesn’t talk at all), and has an interesting role in the story.

Second place is Nyatoran from Healin' Good Precure, he pairs well with Hinata and I love the scene where she records cat videos of him with her phone.

As for Best Supporting Character, this is a joke character, but I have to say Mayune from Pretear. I'm sorry I just like this kind of dumb diva characters (with the o-ho-ho laugh!) and always had a good time when she was on screen.

Discount Tuxedo Mask from the Twin Angel franchise was also fun, he had nice chaotic energy to him.

Best Visual goes to Kikko's magical effects from Concrete Revolutio! We always get the standard sparkles so I was so happy to see something different for once.

Best Audio award goes to Pretear OP! The song feels a bit dated but in a good way, this is just the kind of music I like.

The Best Scene award goes to Healin' Good Precure attack!

Usually in Precure I really don't care for the stock attack animation and instead just focus on the henshins, but in this one I really like the bit where the giant hands rip the element spirit out of the enemy. The music is so good in that part, and the huge hands compared to the tiny spirit feel majestic.

I also liked Re:Creators scene where the (in-story) writers create a powerup for their character by getting their audience excited about it by tweeting. It was dumb how a tweet from some ranobe author goes viral in a matter of seconds, but I still thought the scene was fun and worked well.

The Innovation Award for doing something magical girl related I haven't seen dozens of times already goes to Happy Seven! I thought it was fun how the main character wasn't on the magical girl team at all and instead was practically the Muggle friend for most of the story!

Re:creators is the runner up here with its "fictive characters show up in our world" story, but I think it could have done more with the idea, and I think Happy Seven is commendable for doing something that feels refreshing without having to be all smart and self-aware about it.

Then the Golden Mana Award for one thing that I really didn't like this year. 

The questionable honour goes to Meguru's unbearable behaviour at the start of Twin Angel Break, when she keeps pushing her friendship on the blue girl who has made it very clear that she'd rather be left alone. And of course the blue girl is secretly lonely and ultimately caves in so Meguru faces no consequences for being selfish and entitled and having zero respect for other people's boundaries. Stuff like this fuels my rage at the Friendly-And-Energetic-Stock-Magical-Girl-Heroines.

For Best Character I want to pick Lala from the Star Twinkle movie but she won Best Character last year so let’s pick someone else. To be fair nobody (else) this year made me super excited, but leaving such a broad category as this completely empty would be really stupid, so the winner is Himeno, from Pretear!

She had a lot more multifaceted personality than I initially predicted, had interesting and different relationships with many different characters, and of course had many unique henshin!

And finally, Best Work of the year... I know I picked Star Twinkle as the best series last year (award has been renamed now) so this feels somehow redundant, but I still can't get over how enjoyable their film was and as you may have noticed it has been mentioned in plenty of other awards already so it deserves the spot. On principle I liked that it wasn't centered around the pink Cure for once, and additionally it was about Lala who is my favourite Cure, and also since there wasn't really a villain the plot was more interesting than the same old "bad guy wants to take over the world". Also great visuals.

And that’s it for 2020! It has been a weird year, but that didn’t really show on this blog.

Plans for 2021:

Also once I finish drawing the chibis for the Madoka girls, expect a Madoka themed character tournament in 2021!

[mistbornthefinal]

Madoka Magica Aniversary Analysis: Part 10

I Wished That I Could Turn Back Time

Well this is the episode, Episode 3 may have gotten people talking about Madoka but it was this one that cemented this series as a classic. 

We begin with Homura, but very clearly not the Homura that we’re familiar with. The introduction of this Homura is an inversion of what we saw in episode 1. Rather than brush off the curious students she needs to be “saved” by health officer Madoka. (rather than her transfer being mysterious we are told she just got out of the hospital for an unspecified heart condition that she still takes medicine for) This time Madoka leads and Homura follows, Madoka is the one setting the terms by which they refer to each other, Madoka complements Homura’s name which echo’s back to EP 1. Rather than Homura exhorting Madoka not to change it’s Madoka who exhorts Homura to try live up to her name. 

Also unlike in the first episode where Homura blows everyone away this Homura struggles with both academics and athletics. As she walks home she recalls Madoka’s call to “be cool to match her name” which only deepens her depression. She’s overcome with a sense of directionlessness and ennui that’s fairly similar to Madoka’s own insecurities. As he mood darkens the Witch Izabel calls to her seeding her with suicidal thoughts and then pulls her into her labyrinth. Her minions lurch toward Homura, all seems lost, but then a familiar theme is heard.

The Puella Magi, Mami and Madoka(?!) are here for a clutch save and they make short work of the witch. At Mami’s apartment Homura is (presumably) filled in on Meguca 101 but also that Walpurgisnact is soon to arrive. 

We cut to that immediately after that because this episode doesn’t mess around. Mami’s dead, Madoka is the only thing standing in the way of the mightiest Witch. Homura pleads with Madoka to run, that no one will blame her for it. But for better or for worse Madoka has the soul of a true hero. Even though it’s brought her into this seemingly hopeless situation Madoka doesn’t regret becoming a Puella Magi she leaps back into the fray with a smile on her lips.

She’s even able to defeat Walpurgisnact but only at the cost of her life. As Homura sobs over her body, she should have lived rather than save someone like her. In her grief Kyubey is there with the same offer as always, is there a wish she’s willing to trade her soul for? There is, of course.

I want to redo my first encounter with Kaname-san. But this time, instead of her protecting me, I want to be strong enough to protect her!

The soul gem rises from her chest shining, her wish has surpassed entropy. As she grasps it we see the gears of her shield start to turn. She awakens in a new timeline, the clock wound back to the day she was discharged from the hospital.

At school she grabs the hands of a very confused Madoka at the first oppertunity and tells her that she became a Puella Magi. We then cut to Homura demonstrating her power by wailing on an oil drum with a golf club in stopped time. It’s an impressive power but as Mami points out it’s limited by her ability to actually do damage as she seems to lack the superhuman physicality that the other Puella Magi seem to have. 

Homura elects to solve this problem by making pipe bombs, which we see her demonstrate on the witch Patricia. Much to Madoka’s... enthusiasm. 

Sadly the happy-fun-(yuri)-times can’t last while the shadow of Walpurgisnact looms. We’re back to were the last timeline ended, only this time there’s still a Soul Gem in Madoka’s hand one about to fully darken. Homura leans the terrible truth as Kriemhild Gretchen is loosed on the world, and then the clock is wound back yet again.

Now knowing the truth Homura attempts to warn the other Puella Magi about Kyubey’s deception. Unfortunately the other Puella Magi now incudes Sayaka, who is instinctively hostile to Homura and dismisses her out of hand. Though it might in part owe to swords comboing poorly with bombs. That part at least is something Homura can solve, by stealing guns from the Yakuza. 

Just in time for Sayaka to become a Witch. Madoka is on the “try to talk down Oktavia” plan that we saw in the last episode and it’s not any more effective than that last time we saw it. As Madoka is cornered by wheels Homura steps in with her time stop to deflect the attack with her new end the fight.

As the reality of what happened set’s in the girls are distraught, especially Mami who ties up Homura with her ribbons and then just shoots Kyouko’s soul gem. She turns her gun on Homura saying that if Witches are born from Soul Gems then they have no choice but to die. Before she can pull the trigger Madoka kills her. Homura tries to comfort Madoka saying that the two of them can still defeat Walpugisnact.

Well she was right, but though victorious the two of them are out of magic, and they both know what happens next. Maybe it won’t be so bad Homura muses, the two of them can become monsters together and lay waste to this awful world. Madoka has a different idea, she actually has one last grief seed and she uses it to cleanse Homura’s gem. She wants Homura to do something that Madoka can’t.

Could you save me from my stupidity... before I get fooled get fooled by Kyubey?

Homura agrees and in this moment that the Homura we know is truly born. She’ll do it no matter how many times it. But there’s on last thing, Madoka doesn’t want to become a Witch, the may be many sad and awful thing in this world but there are some worth protecting, and one last thing the two of them can do for this world. 

It’s in this moment that Homura is finally able to call Madoka by her first name, just as Madoka asked her two timelines ago. 

In the new timeline Homura leaps from her bed, heals her eyesight with magic, and undoes her braids, completing her transformation into the Homura we’ve gotten familiar with throughout the series. She then appears beside Homura’s window dead Kyubey in hand and tells her that if anyone offer a miracle she shouldn’t trust them.

Homura raids a military base and then wages a one girl war against Mitakihara’s Witch population. She makes a vow, she will never depend on anyone again, never allow Madoka to fight, she will destroy all the Witches by herself. Including Walpurgisnact. 

Just like that we’re back to the very beginning of the show. The scene that the current Madoka saw in her dream, Homura struggling alone against the legendary Witch. As before Madoka looks on in horror and Kyubey is there to tempt her into his trap. This time though we hear as Homura desperately calls out to Madoka not to trust his contract. 

And this time we see the aftermath.  Kriemhild Gretchen looms on the horizon like a mountain of darkness, Kyubey estimates that she will destroy the planet in about ten days. Kyubey predicted that something like this would happen but given he has met his quota it’s humanities problem now. But not Homura’s this isn’t her battlefield she says as she turns back time once again. 

We’re now in the main timeline seeing Homura hunt Kyubey in episode one from her perspective.

I’ll do it over... as many times as it takes. I’ll relive the same time over and over, searching for the one way out. I’ll find the one path that will save you from your fate of boundless despair. Madoka... my one and only friend. If it’s... If it’s for you, I don’t mind being trap in this endless maze... for all eternity. 

This episode ends with Connect rather than opening with it, just in case we weren’t now aware that it’s Homura song. This version ends with all five girls rather than Mami, Sayaka, and Madoka (who are never contracted at the same time in the main timeline)

So that was episode 10 as previously stated this episode is all about Homura’s character, her wish and how she came to be the person we met in episode one. Honestly I’d say that Homura is the most misunderstood characters in the series, like we’ve all seen plenty of “crazy stalker Homura” jokes.  Homura’s determination to save Madoka isn’t a totally one sided thing either, ultimately she working to fulfil the request of TL 3 Madoka. Rather the tragedy is that she decides her devotion to saving Madoka must take priority over her relationship with Madoka, which doesn’t leave anyone happy.

To a certain extent Homura is a foil to all the other girls. Much like Mami most of what we see from her is a façade, as much they both project confidence they’re hiding a lot of pain and loneliness. Like Sayaka she made a selfless wish for somewhat selfish reasons and is ultimately kept from the person they love in part because they are unwilling to be honest about their feelings. She puts on an air of cynicism despite being a disillusioned romantic in a similar way to Kyouko even though both of them are still willing to put it all on the line for the person they love. 

And of course Homura and Madoka share a self-sacrificing streak born from a low opinion of their own value, and what they both want form their wish is not only to save others but also to change themselves. Homura doesn’t wish merely to save Madoka but to become someone capable of saving her, much in the same way Madoka wants to be a person who saves others. 

[natsumebookss]

Valka Sparks Voice Lines

Here's my first PN character, Valka! She's a genetically engineered magical girl (called an Actress) from a fictional country called Olympia. I've got a whole novel I'm working on about these girls, so this is kind of a crossover AU, but I've tried to cram as much important lore about her as I can in these lines. I've had her concept since high school, so she is extremely important to me.

Self-Introduction 1: Good to meet you, I'm Valka Sparks. People in my country call me Actress Espoir, the girl genetically engineered to become the worst Witch. I came to Kamihama to avoid that fate, for me and for everyone. I'll help you out with whatever you like, as long as it doesn't involve the other factions. It's best for everyone here if me and the other Actresses just look out for ourselves.

Self-Introduction 2: Call me Valka. I refuse to use the other name that man gave me unless it's on my own terms, and that means using it to make everything blow up in his face. I like to think that's the name I would have had if I wouldn't have been forced into this damned contract...but enough about that. You'd rather know what my crew is doing here, right?

Personal Story

Story Chapter End 1: They're using me to breed the worst possible Witch. That's really all I'll ever be to them?

(NOTE: In the original PN verse, Valka's body contains a dark spirit, created by Star Corporations trying to inject both light and dark magic into her at once. This dark spirit is a Witch in the Magia Record crossover, but is something entirely unique and staggeringly rare in the novel concept. Basically, if Valka were to turn, it would be less like a Witch transformation and more like a possession, where she would still be aware of what was going on without being able to do anything about it.)

Story Chapter End 2: If I'm cast aside by humans and hunted down by Actresses, what even am I?

Story Chapter End 3: I'll give my life to save every Actress who was ever made. That's the only way I can atone for what I am.

Story Select 1: The Firebrands are after my power...it's my fault...

Story Select 2: Is that what hope means to them?

Story Select 3: How can I protect the others if I couldn't even protect Xing?

Story Select 4: I can't let the Manufacturer get to Omega! She has to stay human!

Story Select 5: Aren't humans supposed to dream of loving people who aren't like them?

Story Select 6: I won't fail you again...Omega...

Stats

Strengthening Complete: I tend to prefer brains to brawn, but I could get used to this.

Strengthening Max: I should be able to stave off the new moon better now.

Episode Level Up: Get away from me now before the Manufacturer turns you too.

Magia Level Up: Hopefully, this takes me one step closer to freeing all us Actresses.

Magical Release 1: I was genetically altered to become the worst possible Witch, so I guess that makes me little more than a living weapon to them.

Magical Release 2: Protecting all Magical Girls is out of my scope, but I know I can at least protect my own kind.

Magical Release 3: I do believe a stronger magical girl of hope does exist, though. When she comes, it won't just be for Actresses...we'll all be freed.

(NOTE: Since Valka and Madoka both have hope motifs and Madoka is seen as a Messianic figure in the anime, I like the idea of Valka being a similar, but more minor prophet, like John the Baptist was in the Christian mythos PMMM taps into occasionally.)

Awaken 1: The Premiere Nebula was formed in honor of a fallen friend. For her sake, I must protect it.

Home Screen

Login (first login): You should be careful around me. Star Corporations and the Firebrands can both take advantage of you being close to me. Though I guess that's not a problem since I'm not in Olympia anymore?

Login (morning): You think I'm up too early? Well, since I fought as the Manufacturer's soldier for so long and I'm an athlete now, I guess this is just normal for me.

Login (noon): In Star Corporations, our diets were strictly regimented. Can't have your soldiers falling ill, can you? I still have to keep in shape for my job, but that's why I still like to indulge now and then.

Login (evening): My Witch's power is tied to the moon, so the more light the moon gets, the stronger I am. On the new moon, my Soul Gem darkens and she tries to come out.

Login (night): I'm used to doing patrols right about now, but the Kamihama girls seem to have things handled here. Time for me to turn in for the night.

Login (other): Actress Soul Gems are different from yours, so I don't know how going to a Coordinator would affect me. But if you need to go, I can give it a shot.

Login (AP full): Omega's my apprentice, so I'm still committed to training her even in an unfamiliar environment. These Witches should segue right into today's lesson.

Login (BP full): Fighting copies feels wrong when your country has sentient clones. But if they can duplicate Actresses, we have to put them down.

Tap 1: You guys don't have Cielflight around here? I guess you could say it's like air hockey, except you play on this big magnetic field. It clears my mind, even though I'm up in the air like always.

Tap 2: Omega and I are reserves on a Cielflight team. She plays defense and I play offense. Unfortunately, that means she still tries to shield me in battle, even though she's still a newbie...

Tap 3: Io always calls me "Valvi-nee," but I don't mind. Battle has turned us into sisters, and besides...I never really did have a cute nickname like that growing up.

Tap 4: Since my magic ebbs and flows with the moon, strategy's the name of the game for me. If I didn't have my wits, there's no way I'd be able to beat someone like Alarice on an off day.

Tap 5: What would I have wished for? Probably for my dad to be president. He campaigned when I was little, worked hard...but still couldn't beat the Manufacturer's influence.

Tap 6: My last ex abused me for being an Actress, so love isn't really a thing for me. With the way my powers are, I'm even too weird for Actresses...though sometimes I wish that wasn't true.

Tap 7: Yachiyo Nanami interests me. She's a lot like how I used to be, and I've gotta say...sometimes I'm jealous of how much support she gets from everyone here. The Nebula's all I have back home.

Tap 8: The Manufacturer wanted me to be his beacon of hope. But now I want to be that same light for the Actresses. If I can do that, I feel like that would make up for everything I've done.

Tap 9: My dad was single, so he asked the Manufacturer and Star Corporations to create a baby for him. That's where I came from, and why they still think they own me.

Battle Start: Okay, so here's the plan...

Battle Victory 1: I believe that's checkmate.

(Since she loves strategy games, I had to use this one even though it's similar to Oriko's.)

Battle Victory 2: As long as Star Corporations sees me as their chosen one, I have a reputation to keep.

Battle Victory 3: That's how it's done! Remember this for next time, Omega.

Doppel: *strained* I have to...keep it together!

Dying: The Manufacturer will never win now.

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE: How Usopp the Liar Became a True Hero in One Piece

  Hello everyone, and welcome to Why It Works. Over the past couple months, I’ve been powering through One Piece at breakneck speed, journeying from the early crew recruitment through the end of Enies’ Lobby. After my earlier attempts at breaking into the series sputtered out, I’m finally learning what so many fans already know: One Piece improves at an absurd rate over its first several arcs, polishing and expanding in basically every way a narrative can. Nowhere is that evolution more clear than in the journey of the Straw Hats’ most unlikely crewmate: Usopp the Liar.

    When Usopp first entered the crew, I frankly found him pretty obnoxious. He appeared to be an icon of the kind of loud, slapstick comedy you frequently find in battle anime, which doesn’t have much appeal to me. Additionally, it was clear from the start that he couldn’t measure up to titans like Luffy or Zoro in terms of physical strength, and given his clownish disposition, I feared he was destined to be relegated to the peanut gallery — one of those characters who can only stand on the sidelines, cheering for the actual heroes to succeed.

  As it turns out, while Usopp is a bit of a clown, he ultimately proved to more often play the opposite role. While Luffy, Zoro, or Sanji might happily engage in some ludicrous, death-defying shenanigans, Usopp could generally be found on Nami’s side, playing the straight man to their ridiculous ideas. The reason for that would neatly resolve my second concern — both One Piece and Usopp himself are perfectly aware of his own fragility. While many of the Straw Hats are superhumans enjoying a superhuman adventure, Usopp is a normal human on a superhuman adventure, with all the incessant peril that would involve.

    The wildly uneven strengths of the Straw Hats is actually one of the more interesting things about One Piece. Not all of the Straw Hats are fighters; they’re first and foremost a ship’s crew, with several members more suited to maintenance or navigation than combat. Because of this, the non-combat-oriented crew members frequently have to find ways to contribute that avoid direct fighting. Over the first several arcs, Usopp offers sharpshooting, basic engineering, misdirection, and a profound talent for making friends with strange, dangerous creatures.

  Rather than being a dramatic drawback, this uneven power distribution actually becomes one of One Piece’s signature strengths. With this need for dramatic flexibility baked into the very fundamentals of its cast dynamics, One Piece is essentially required to come up with conflicts more complicated than “all of our guys fight all of their guys,” offering far more narrative creativity and complexity than your average action property. At the same time, this imbalance also helps emphasize the scale of a world like One Piece, wherein a character like Usopp will perpetually be staring up at giants he could never hope to face. 

    Eventually, Usopp’s persistent efforts to prove his worth as a crewmate fall short, and he begins to internalize the futility of his situation. By the time the Straw Hats reach Water 7, their journeys have long since lost their original playfulness and even mightier monsters are looming on the horizon. His journey echoes that of the Going Merry itself; beaten and bruised, he no longer has the strength to match up with their challenges or the hope of ever being a “great warrior” like them. His ultimate goal is the point they’re starting from, as they gaze toward challenges he could never even imagine. And thus, when Luffy makes his well-intended but deeply misguided speech about abandoning the Merry, Usopp explodes.

  Usopp clearly loves the Merry, even more so than any other member of the Straw Hats. They essentially “joined the crew” at the same time, and the ship had been not just his friend, but also perhaps his most essential role within the crew. Though Usopp was not a shipwright, he took maintaining the ship as a clear point of pride, something that was usually all too rare on their journeys.

    But more than his feelings about the Merry itself, Usopp personally relates to the Merry. He sees himself in their ship — a creaky, amusing companion who’s journeyed with them this far, but simply doesn’t possess the strength to help them any longer. Luffy’s dismissal of the Merry feels like a dismissal of him, and the anger of his own response reflects his understanding that Luffy is right. Usopp isn’t really strong enough for this journey anymore and doesn’t really have any skills they could not replace. He’s not an indispensable member of the Straw Hats, he’s just Usopp — and he suspects, if Luffy were willing to be as pragmatic about his crewmates as his ship, Luffy would likely toss him off too.

  It’s a hard thing to come face to face with your own limitations like that, and harder still when the verdict comes from the person you respect the most. Usopp does not accept this situation with dignity; he rages against it, blaming Luffy for his callousness, and literally fighting his captain to prove he can measure up in this world. Given his admitted understanding of both his and the Going Merry’s limits, you could perhaps consider this his way of saying goodbye — of giving the crew an excuse to leave him by leaving first and thus taking the blame upon himself. So certain of his inadequacy, perhaps this is the only way he thinks he can still help the Straw Hats.

    But ultimately, fate intervenes. Captured first by Franky’s family, and then by the World Government, Usopp finds himself taking part in the Straw Hats’ next adventure in spite of himself. Though he truly believes he is not strong or brave enough to be a Straw Hat anymore, he no longer has the choice to abandon their adventure. And so, Usopp defends himself the only way he can, by employing a power he’s been cultivating since his very first episode.

  Usopp lies. He has always been a teller of tall tales, bragging of the foes he’s bested and giants he’s befriended — but now, surging across the tempestuous seas of the grand line, he is in a world of true giants. In order to believe he belongs here, he lies — both to his crewmates and to himself. He puts on a pointed mask and dons the mantle of Sniper King, the hero of countless battles, whose brave feats on Sniper Island and legions of followers mark him as a clear equal of the Straw Hats.

    Usopp might not be strong enough to be a Straw Hat, but Sniper King can be. After all, Sniper King is as strong as Usopp says he is. Usopp uses his signature talent to ultimately fool himself, proclaiming himself strong and brave, and through doing so forcing himself to embody those qualities. If his conflict is a crisis of faith, then he just needs a new symbol to believe in. Usopp might not truly be on par with the other Straw Hats, but if he can force himself to believe he is, then perhaps the difference is negligible.

  Having given himself permission to believe he is Straw Hat material, Sniper King goes on to prove that he really is Straw Hat material. Not with his combat strengths — among the Straw Hats, he alone doesn’t defeat a member of CP9. Instead, he chips in with all the strengths he’s been cultivating so far, the various oddball strengths that nonetheless add up to an essential teammate. His upgrades to Nami’s weapon allow her to win multiple battles. His kind and courageous heart win him the friendship of the Lobby’s own giant protectors. His genuinely formidable sniping abilities keep Robin safe. In the end, his passionate faith in his captain and ability to boast of greatness even in the face of certain death gives Luffy the last, vital push to secure victory.

    Usopp demonstrates that whatever our natural talents, we are as indispensable as we choose to be. Through his journey, he not only expands One Piece’s dramatic horizons but also illustrates something essential about the nature of bravery and how we construct our self-image. I could easily relate to that sharp terror of not measuring up to my peers and the ways that optimistic lies can help us through impossible circumstances. Usopp embodies the difficulty of believing in yourself, and his journey feels all the more meaningful for just how difficult it was and how great the distance between him and his friends. He’s a remarkably compelling hero and my favorite Straw Hat so far.

      Nick Creamer has been writing about cartoons for too many years now and is always ready to cry about Madoka. You can find more of his work at his blog Wrong Every Time, or follow him on Twitter.

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: Nick Creamer

[drcreatureflix]

More Family Content: Setting Up A Grimdark Campaign

Grimdark is a setting style thats focus on dystopian fantasy violence and the ammoral, think less ‘Starving Games 9: the diverging maze runner, girl is special but in love with two guys’ nonsense and more the Warhammer. I myself, (being someone who never grew out his angsty side) is an absolute whore for this kinda stuff. The main appeal for this setting is no matter who you are, you are a villain. But thats good. Cause everyone is  a villain in a grimdark campagin and being the villain is cool sometimes. So I thought I would give you my process of setting up a Grimdark D&D Campaign if anyone wants to try it.

Inspiration

Well before we commence on actually scarring our players we need ideas. And to quote Picasso, “good artists borrow, great artists steal”. So lets look at some recommendations for you to read or look up or play to steal-I mean take ‘inspiration’ from.

The Warhammer Franchise: If you looked up Grimdark in the dictionary you would find a image of the Warhammer universes with the words ‘For The Emperor’ covered in heretic blood. The Warhammer Franchise has two Grimdark settings, the ‘40k universe’ and the ‘Age of Sigmar universe’, both good examples. The 40k universe being a high gothic sci-fi universe as the zealous and xenophobic imperium of mankind and their space marines who fight gods of chaos and egyptian alien terminators... and Orks (Yes actual orks) who paint things red to make them ‘go fasta’. Age of Sigmar is the more fantasy side with Giant bat zombies and Rat hulks and whatever the Hell-pit Abomination is supposed to be. Both good starting points, if you would rather read then trying to play the games and get drowned in lore, for the Age of Sigmar angle try ‘Scourge of Fate’, ‘Court of the Blind King’ and ‘Rulers of the Dead’ for my recommendations, though Age of Sigmar has book series for each faction in the game so choose an aesthetic you would like. For 40k, could not recommend anything outside the Horus Heresy series, yes its over 50 books but pick the first one ‘Horus Rising’ and that should help. Warhammer actually even has ‘Warhammer horror’ series set in the universes as well if you want to go a spoopy angle.

The Starcraft Franchise: Moving alittle over and returning to the realm of science fiction there is the Starcraft franchise. The starcraft games really pull from the previous mention Warhammer for its concepts and designs and pulls it off well. Plus I really enjoy the world building almost as much as the warhammer stuff (Okay last time I will mention Warhammer). So go onto youtube and look  the games up or go buy and play them. However there are some books aswell if you would rather just read up on the lore like ‘Flashpoint’ and ‘Queen of Blades’. Obviously this is if you want to go for a more sci-fi or steam punk styled game but its D&D, do want you want (And if you want to do a sci-fi, look up the Dark Matter suppliment). But overal a good idea of how to do Grimdark.

The Song of Ice and Fire Books: Now put your pitchforks and torches down, I know season 8 of Game of Thrones was the equivlent of a hooker; that being you expect a huge payoff but you get robbed the satisfaction, being left with nothing but disappointment and a strange itch in your groin afterwards that reminds you of what you hoped for. But we are talking the books not the tv series (Though you can include it I suppose). Many of us know this franchise for its sheer bleak outlook of alliances and the concept of loyalty and the roulette of life that may just kill someone important at any point. Obviously a more medival approach for Grimdark but a good one and I would recommend it to anyone (When he finally finishes writing THE DAMN FINAL BOOKS). Obviously the whole book series is the reading recommadtion so find them cheap somewhere and delve in headfirst.

Other more Eldritch recommendations: Cosmic horror and grimdark go together like a fat kid and diabetes so I thought I would throw some quick recommendations for if you want to explore this angle aswell:

The Yellow King-Robert Chambers: A collection of short stories revolving around cults and maddness... yes please.

Bloodbourne-fromsoftware:  Phenomenal game, explores both classic gothic and cosmic horror, I have drawn from this game for inspiration A LOT more than I am comfortable saying. If you can’t get through the game, maybe try the Offical Artwork book as it can gve images that you can use a inspiration for scene dressing in game.

The HP Lovecraft bibliography and the Cthullu Mythos: Seperating the man from his work, the penned work of HP Lovecraft is still some of the best written cosmic horror from the arguable father of cosmic horror... once you get over the racial stuff.

The Dark tower book series and IT- Stephen King: A more light hearted apporach to Cosmic Horror but still good horror to pull inspiration from. Main issue, if you wish to read up on Stephen King, set some time aside  

The Darkest Dungeon-Red Hook Studios: Not gonna lie, I love this game probably too much (I will probably blame it for my obesity if I wasn’t aware thats it’s my fault I am a fat f*ck) I think it shows exactly how bad it probably would be a adventurer (I actually base my own stress rules on this game-more on that in another post) so is a good representation on what a grimdark fanatsy world would be like on these characters.

Session 0

Alright now that you have successfully ripped off every grimdark franchise-I mean collected recommendations for inspiration, let’s move onto what to discuss in your Session 0.

1. What are your players okay with?

This one is painfully obvious but a session 0 is like when you lose your virignity; you don’t set some bounderies or go into it somewhat prepared, you are gonna face a sticky situation afterwards and probably get your head kicked in by someones dad for corrupting their kid (Just me?...).On the topic at hand, its good to know what your players are okay with and can inform your story direction. For instance, I had a player who want to play a reform brothel worker but i would not allow it due to the circumstances of another player.  Normally the questions I ask beforehand is is the following

Are you okay with detail viseral descriptions of violence?

Are you okay with scenes of torture/depravity?

Are you okay with depictions of slavery or prostitution?

Are you okay with themes like suicide or mental/phyiscal abuse?

Are you okay with sacrifical death or occult themes?

Are you okay with swearing?

Following this you should adjust according to suit your players, you want them to enjoy being evil, not weeping at the evil around them. So before you do anything, set your bounderies.

2. What is their motivation?

Another obvious one but also important one. To help establish characters in the world they live in, you must discuss their motives. Why are they on a quest? What are their intentions with the reward after? And so on and so on. Then once you have that and have discuss you can help the players fit the world alittle more. A thing I have told my players is to think of a motive for a character and turn it into an obession; this is due to the theme of obession is thorough throughout many grimdark settings as it’s easy to make a character’s good intentions twisted when they become so obessed with and wrapped up in it.

Of course you’ll get players that while wanting to play grimdark still want to be the token good upstanding hero because reasons (These would be the people that go to a pick and mix shop just gets white mice the bland pricks). But it is okay, you can work with it and truthfully I like the dynamic of the bright eyed advenutrer and friends that slowly gets tainted by the reality of the world they live in (If you want some inspiration on this I recommend the show Madoka Magica).

3. Understanding

Okay this is a more serious point. Alot of players I have played grimdark have kinda took some of the darker elements for granted as well they haven’t experience things like that. Which in turn can hurt players that have experience in those matters. So I always ask my players (And I am asking you too future grimdark DMs) to look into these themes, research and understand why they are not right and why we should not really have them in real life. If you are playing something like this just so you can be a slave trader without consequence then may I ask you to leave the table.

Playing to be a villain is good, playing to be an asshole is bad.

And that should help, I would in0clude some the additonal rules I use aswell like Stress and Bleeding but I will save them for another post after I am finished rewriting them for the third time and this post is already so goddamn long. If you also have recommendations for new DMs when it comes to running Grimdark, by all means share them. Thank you for reading.

[takerfoxx]

Notes on Restless

A day overdue, but here it is! My thoughts on writing Restless.

Restless is, in many ways, the most important arc in the story, not because it is the most plot or character significant (though it definitely is very important to both), but because it was one of the first, if not the first story arc I planned out, and have been cooking up in the back of my mind and working toward ever since this story started. And, as indicated by the title, it is one big reference to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Restless, which is my favorite episode and also featured all of the main characters trapped in their little dream worlds.

What can I say; I like dream sequences!

In fact, and I know I have mentioned this a few times already, but it bears repeating the first chapter of this arc was literally the very first scene I thought up for this story, back when I was still in post-episode 9 depression and wanted nothing more for Kyoko and Oktavia to reunite somewhere and be happy together (well, the story definitely gives us the former, but, um, not really the latter, because I am still a sadist). If memory serves, my original vision had the two of them and Mami relaxing in a fantasy-world hot spring that had a bunch of big crystals everywhere (because I like crystals), only for them to be interrupted by the sound of something moving nearby, and, upon inspection, they would find the doll version of Charlotte watching them.

Obviously that scenario’s gone through a lot of fine-tuning, especially when it comes to Charlotte. And the crystals got moved to the end of the story after the hot spring had been removed, but hey, they still made the final cut. Regardless, I did settle on a finalized version some years ago, and the final cut came out more-or-less exactly as I envisioned, down to Mami and Charlotte going off alone for some, ah, quality time.

The only new addition was Jerky’s little scene and the Sayaka/Oktavia flirting sequence, and, well, that happened. I honestly don’t know if I’m even allowed to say much about it without getting into trouble with someone, even though I wrote it, but let’s just say the time has come to finally kick things into high gear on that end.

Okay, so onto the dreams!

Kyoko’s dream was of course the one I came up with first, and yet ended up being the shortest. I guess it’s because while she’s white-hot mess of issues, she’s at least a straightforward white-hot mess of issues, and honestly, it came out more-or-less how I initially planned years ago, with very little addition.

Now, Mephisto gave us a pretty clear breakdown of what the individual girls’ dreams meant thematically when she started torturing them directly, but it bears repeating that Kyoko’s dream was mainly dealing with her poor reaction to loss (the concept, not the meme), specifically the loss of Sayaka to Oktavia, and her stubborn and yet misguided quest to bring Sayaka back at any cost.

We start with a perfect repeat of her dream from waaaaaaaay back from chapter five, when she was first waking up from being drugged. I was originally just going to begin with the continuation, but it had been so long since that chapter that I just copied and pasted the original dream so we can have it in its entirety, which included the all-important image of Sayaka dissolving into silver fishes.

From there it’s mainly Kyoko’s singleminded quest to find Sayaka at any cost. And from there, we see her think that she’s found her time after time, only to be disappointed, from thinking that Madoka was Sayaka (and it’s a shame that they never interacted more beyond that single episode, as they had a good dynamic), to nearly catching the silver-fish Sayaka only to have her torn away, to finally finding the fake fish-faced conductor Sayaka, further establishing her inability to accept Oktavia as not being Sayaka. The hole that her father left in her heart and how deeply she misses him even with what he did does come up, but she abandons catching him once Kyubey makes it clear that doing so is impossible, as well as showing that while she still loves her father, part of her still does not forgive him and she truly believes that he went to Hell.

Also, was that the first time I’ve had Kyubey show up and have original dialogue? Because it might be!

Mephisto’s first appearance has her occupying the same role that she would in everyone’s dreams, that of a surly gatekeeper. She’s a bouncer in Kyoko’s dream, a ticket-taker/ride operator in Sayaka’s, a hostess in Mami’s, and a receptionist in Charlotte’s. And in each one, she lets the dreamer pass while making it clear that doing so is probably a bad idea. Her design was a lot of fun, though there truly is no significance to her rainbow dreadlocks, punk-rock aesthetic, or denim outfit, other than I liked the way they looked. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Annabelle Lee and the dockengauts have very short appearances in the nightclub, as despite all the pain they’ve put Kyoko through, she is still so singleminded in her pursuit that she considers them nothing more than obstacles to be overcome, which Annabelle Lee would probably be annoyed to hear.

As for Mami’s weird striptease, well, Kyoko is just now having to grapple with her own budding sexuality, and it stands to reason that Mami would have been an early crush for her. The “ending” though shows that while she’s more-or-less okay with Charlotte, she is still very aware of how Mami died.

Like Annabelle Lee, Elsa Maria would have the same role in everyone’s dream, the same role she had in Annabelle Lee’s feverish dream during the Help arc, that of the person who points the way to what the dreamer is seeking while still advising against it, which is always ignored. Though don’t read too much into her working with Mephisto in the end, as it’s not the real Elsa Maria and Mephisto is still the one in control.

And what better place for Kyoko, now Ophelia, to start her quest to find Sayaka for real than the same train station that she originally lost Sayaka in?

Anyway, while this chapter came out basically as originally envisioned, there are a couple things that I wish I had included, firstly a scene where Kyoko loses her necklace while being swept along by the current for Sayaka to find it later, and to have the sound of the crying child from the beginning to continue throughout the whole chapter, showing that she still hadn’t forgotten her quest to find her sister, as impossible as it might seem now.

Sayaka’s dream had largely to do with her and Oktavia’s issues with personal identity, and the dichotomy that Oktavia feels at all times, but translated through Sayaka’s eyes. In fact, bits and pieces of both their personalities are present through the circus (and given that Rumia’s dream took place in a circus in Imperfect Metamorphosis, it does just seem to be a recurring theme with me). The whole knight in shining armor for Sayaka is obvious, as is her sense of righteous justice as what Lily did. But her dynamics with the various characters that she comes across, her memories in general, her growing attraction to Kyoko, and her annoyance at being addressed incorrectly is all Oktavia.

It’s the two Kyoko encounters I want the highlight. The first at the shooting gallery shows that while Oktavia does love Kyoko, she is getting quite fed up with the constant nicknames in place of her actual name, while the second in the dunking tank shows her growing concern that Kyoko’s dogheaded persistence is only going to keep getting her hurt until there’s nothing left, as well as show her growing sexual attraction to Kyoko as she is progressively more stripped.

Mami and Charlotte’s brief appearance was in part to get them on the dream, and so show that that while Oktavia cares for them deeply, she’s not nearly as worried about them as she is Kyoko, hence why they’re here so briefly. Also, them pushing Ticky Nikki around in a stroller, aside from being Nikki’s only appearance this whole arc, was also a tip of the hat to the original Restless episode from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as Giles’s dream had him and his girlfriend pushing a stroller around through a carnival in the middle of a graveyard.

The Freakshow was a mixture of the traumatic monsters both Sayaka and Oktavia had to encounter, from the various witch familiars and to Gertrud, the first witch Sayaka ever saw, to the witch form of Charlotte, who traumatized Sayaka deeply, to Brooklyn, who briefly showed up earlier and was sort of Oktavia’s nemesis in The Heist and targeted her specifically, which left a mark.

And that whole business with Annabelle Lee “pouring” Kyoko into the tank was to lean more into dream logic, where deeply personal fears tend to be translated through nonsensical imagery. I’ve had plenty of dreams where I’d “lose” a close friend or family member because they got turned into a jar of dried corn or something and I’d just be so devastated and obsessed with turning said corn back into my loved one, and it’d be very serious and emotional, and it wouldn’t be until I had woken up that I’d realize, “Dude, dried corn?” Plus, her guilt about stabbing Annabelle Lee was a reference to Sayaka’s own increasing guilt when she realized that she wasn’t the shining hero she had wanted to be.

The clown dance is pretty self-explanatory, in that Sayaka spent so much time killing witches and treating them like monsters only to become a witch herself. Plus, given how quick her downfall was, it serves to reason that she would think of herself as a clown. Plus, I just like Lily as a character, and wanted any excuse to use her as much as possible.

The whole bit with the train station acting as the loading gate for the roller-coaster is also fairly obvious. That’s where Sayaka became Oktavia, hence the cart turning into the wheelchair, or the coaster track leading into Oktavia’s barrier. I’m honestly not too thrilled about the coaster going through Genocide City, because while having it make an appearance makes sense, since it’s literally Oktavia’s first memory, but if I recall, I had the hardest time settling on a location for the rollercoaster to ride through before heading into the castle. I tried Freehaven, the outside of the high school, and returning to the circus itself before just settling with Genocide City, which honestly was chosen mainly because the deadline was coming up and I had to go with something. I guess it works though.

There really isn’t much to say about the reversed Kyoko/Oktavia fight, as it’s literally just a perspective flip of their final battle. Incredibly important and significant as it embodies the entirety of Sayaka’s aspect as the “Monster” of her dream and hammered in her connection to Kyoko? Absolutely. Has much that I can explain that isn’t literally sitting right on the surface? Nope.

We do get Mephisto basically spelling out Sayaka’s contradictory identity in her final days though, in which she was the valiant knight she always wanted to be, she was the damsel in distress that Madoka and Kyoko tried and failed to rescue, and she was the monster holding that damsel captive. No doubt that part was inspired by the meme of the Dragonborn princess paladin who was hired to rescue herself from herself.

From there, the “Monster” is slain, and the cute mermaid Oktavia von Seckendorff is born, the only time during her own dream that she makes a full appearance. She then is treated to a montage of Sayaka’s memories, but of course, they mean nothing to her.

However, I would like to point out what amounted to the payoff of a joke I had set up literally years ago. Readers of all my stuff might remember that way back in Rhapsody of Subconscious Desire, another story that took place in a dream world, Kaguya Houraisan was split into two identical copies of herself, called Head and Body, who encountered Oktavia swimming around in a large aquarium, who in turn shot them a rude gesture and swam off. Here, we finally see the inverse of that scene, which is why a couple of previously unseen twin girls showed up with no explanation.

Next is where the dreams start to converge. Oktavia finds Kyoko’s necklace (which, again, I wish I had included in Kyoko’s dream. Maybe in time I’ll go back and edit it in) and meets the silver fish’s from Kyoko’s dream, absorbing them and turning fully into the princess and, as a result, Sayaka Miki finally returns in full.

Funny thing about that.

At this point, I didn’t know how much the whole Sayaka thing would play out, and originally she would just be Oktavia in a dress. But after having Sayaka’s memories intrude again and again, I thought, “Huh, wouldn’t it be fun if she just became Sayaka again for a short time? Have a weird inverse of the Oktavia situation?” and went ahead and did it.

This choice led to…major consequences.

Mami’s dream is next, and despite being the one that I literally had planned out the least ahead of time, ended up being the most fun to write. Naturally, her dream dreams with her immense guilt over having been Kyubey’s poster girl for so long, helping him ensnare several innocent girls into his scheme as well as kill them off herself when they became witches. Also, it served as a little nod to Candeloro’s job as a baker in WN. Anyway, the whole thing was heavily influenced by Sweeney Todd, in that victims are misled into doing something they think is innocent, only for them to be gruesomely murdered and sent off to be turned into food.

The world of candles is just something I thought would be neat imagery, so infer from it what you wish. However, it is interesting to note that Mami is the only one to have a dream that features Annabelle Lee as the persistent antagonist that she is, showing up over and over to antagonize her. There wasn’t an intended reason for this, but come to think of it, with Kyoko focused on her endgame, Oktavia just wanting her friends to be safe, and Charlotte obsessed with what was lost, Mami would be the one most living in the nowness of their situation, convinced that she is finally in Hell for her sins.

In the restaurant, Mami is indirectly guilt-tripped by Shizuku for essentially abandoning all of her responsibilities to help Kyoko, and is then given a choice: abandon her quest and stay with her loved ones, or continue on with her “duty” despite all warning signs, thereby sealing her own destruction. Charlotte even goes so far as to beg her directly to not go on, but Mami refuses, saying over and over again that she is, “On the clock,” signifying how being a magical girl essentially took over her entire life after her parents’ death, and how full she threw herself into it to shield herself from her own loneliness.

And from then on, her fate is sealed.

While descending the long staircase, the father of Mami’s occasionally mentioned former crush Ryu Hagane shows up to chastise her for throwing her life way in making her contract, and then Mami’s actual love Charlotte shows up on the big TV to remind Mami of what she was now throwing away, and curiously, when she brings out the doll version of herself, it’s not to remind her of how Charlotte kill Mami (though the worms coming out of the doll’s mouth shows that Mami still hasn’t forgotten), but to remind her of how Mami had tried to kill Charlotte upon their first meeting, as her own guilt is more powerful than even the trauma from having her own head bitten off. Annabelle Lee emerges again, and in the process, the staircase is destroyed. Mami’s choice was made. There is going back.

Sure enough, when she enters the classroom, the marionette corpse of Kazuko Saotome (a reference to how she was killed and eaten in the Oriko timeline, in addition to just being very creepy) spells out to Mami’s face what an idiot she was for trusting Kyubey, how many lives she had ruined by doing so, finishing with Homura showing up to basically say, “I told you so.”

Annabelle Lee attacks again, and Mami is sent into a montage of battles she has fought since their disastrous adventure begun, but with each of her assailants being replaced at the last second by one of her friends, showing that even after forgiveness, she still feels like she’s their murderer, as well as driving home the point that in all of her battles to defend herself over the course of this story, she was still just fighting and hurting other magical girls, and regardless of which side they were on, they were all still victims of the same scam.

Annabelle Lee is finally defeated and put down, but there is no victory, only horror at what Mami had done. She flees, but finally finds herself in the Hell she always felt that she deserved, pursued by the zombified corpses of all the monsters that had defeated her, from Lily, who had stolen her mind and made her commit atrocities, to the wild girls, whom she had slaughtered, to the Worm, whom had killed her in her arrogance.

She escapes, but that just leads her back to the bakery, signifying that no matter what, the second she had made that contract she had been doomed. It didn’t matter if she was leaping through the sky in an extravagant outfit, effortlessly defeating monsters with her magic, or if she was sinking into her own despair with a darkening soul gem, it was all the same. She was just food for the Incubators, to be chewed up and discarded, thrown into the mouth of the Worm and run down by the same vehicle that had killed her parents.

She then wakes up in the hospital, reliving a twisted version of when she had been recovered from the car wreck that had taken her parents, taking her back to her first sin that still haunted her: only saving her own life with her wish and letting her parents die. And thus, she is turned into the same monster she had spent the last few years fighting: the witch, Candeloro.

The whole bit in the hospital was a twisted version of what it must have been like for the original Mami to wake up in the hospital and learn that her parents had died. No doubt Mephisto’s dream doctors would have continued to further twist the knife had Ophelia and Sayaka not violently intervened (which gives us a rare case of blood instead of mist). And Candeloro is brought into the party, and with a Cyberpunk reference no less!

Charlotte’s dream comes last, and in my opinion, is the most multi-layered. The bulk is focused on how bitter she is at having her perfect life with her wife stolen away and how many people she resents for it, her own feelings of helplessness at being unable to prevent it, and also it addresses her own guilt at having killed Mami to begin with and how much she fears the return of the Worm that did it, but also she seems to be the only person that has some subconscious awareness of how Homura is timelooping them over and over again, forcing them to relive the same torturous sequence of events (probably has something to do with Homura being the one who killed her after she ate Mami).

In the first loop, Mami is taken by Annabelle Lee, and Charlotte is totally helpless to stop her. This is pretty obvious: Annabelle Lee has been a thorn in her side since day one. It was because of her that they were ambushed in Cloudbreak and forced into their horrible adventure. And more directly, it was because of Annabelle Lee that they fell into the Etherdale to begin with, leading to them all being enslaved by Lily and Charlotte and Mami being forced to commit atrocities.

Also, it’s hinted that the city that Charlotte is forced to march through is the same one Kyoko had been following her father through in her dream, indicating that their minds are already crossing over.

The second is a little more complicated. Yes, Charlotte and Kyoko are on better terms. Yes, they’re getting along. Yes, Kyoko apologized and they bonded. But if it weren’t for Kyoko, then none of this would have ever happened. If it weren’t for Kyoko, Charlotte wouldn’t have lost her home, wouldn’t have been targeted by Reibey, and wouldn’t have to suffer being pursued by dockengauts and valks, two creatures that she has an acute phobia of. So there is still some hard feelings there.

The third is when Charlotte is forced to confront something about herself, that no matter how many people she blames, her own actions still played a part as well. Now she is the one riding the Worm. She is the one who cost Mami her life. And in the hospital, it was her misguided wish that cost her her mother, whether she knows it or not, as well as why she became a witch in the first place.

Couple notes about the hospital: first, the cheese slices do signify how Charlotte threw her wish away for something as stupid as cheesecake, but are also another reference to the original Restless, in which a man carrying cheese slices shows up in each of the characters dreams, just to be weird.

Also, Charlotte’s magical girl outfit was in part inspired by a 4koma MamiLotte doujin from before The Rebellion Story, in which Charlotte becomes human again and crushes on Mami big time. And her outfit consists of a double-breasted coat and skirt. Also there were parts taken from the character notes from Walpurgisnacht, in which one of her familiars is an early draft of Human!Charlotte, before Nagisa had been designed, and she’s depicted holding a staff topped with the wrapped candy charm.

The final loop is where Charlotte fully becomes Nozomi (a name I think I just took from another fanfic that gave her that name) and finally defeats the Worm, this time ridden by Homura Akemi. After all, Homura Akemi is the one resetting things over and over again, forcing Charlotte to relive the same terrible events over and over. And as for that rooftop meeting…well, explaining that would be telling, so infer what you will.

The next chapter is mainly spent playing catch-up, gathering all the characters together and pushing toward the final battle with Mephisto. Here, things get less symbolic and more character based, so there’s a lot less to explain. Ophelia’s path of destruction through Sayaka’s carnival and Mami’s school are basically in line with lucid dreaming, in that once you know that you’re in a dream, everything just feels so much less solid, leading Ophelia to take down the ravaged versions of Brooklyn and Annabelle Lee with ease. Also, that scene with her talking to the dying Lily was an American Gods reference, which featured a similar scene.

So let’s talk about the big thing with this chapter. Let’s talk about Sayaka.

Originally the plan was to go straight from Charlotte’s dream to the fight with Mephisto, but then I realized what a bad idea that is. I mean, Sayaka was back! It’s something that’s been hinted and talked about all through the story’s run, but now it’s actually a thing. The original Sayaka Miki, the one that fell into despair and became a witch, is now back, and without having merged with Oktavia and gaining her memories. She’s thrown literally into the middle of things, during the gang’s weirdest adventure yet. And, it should be noted, her most recent memory is literally sitting with Kyoko in the train station, right before she became Oktavia. That is one hell of a bad day.

Obviously she reacts poorly, and who can blame her? And give her credit, she pulled herself together pretty quickly. However, she did pick up very quickly on Kyoko’s feelings for her. And why shouldn’t we just start saying it? It’s obvious to everyone! But obviously, as short as it was, Sayaka’s brief return will have major consequences that will play out over time.

Anyway, obviously everyone else has their own identity crisis. Mami turns fully into Candeloro, which provides a measure of relief from her own shame, while Kyoko as Ophelia is the rare witch that remembers everything while still sticking fully to her witch identity.

As for Charlotte, her case as Charzomi is easily the weirdest, with her constantly shifting back and forth between Charlotte and Nozomi, and her own memories fading in and out, forcing her to work extra hard to stay focused. It’s been suggested that this might serve as a metaphor for gender fluidity, and while this wasn’t the intention and thus I can’t speak to its accuracy, I can see and support the applicability. Still haven’t worked out what the long-term consequences of that will be, but I do want this to play into her future character development.

The walk up the tongue was mainly me realizing that the fighting was going to start soon, and Sayaka was going away right after, so I had one last opportunity to make the most out of her presence and I was determined not to waste it.

So we ticked off the boxes on everything we ought to address with her. She cleared the air with Charlotte over having to watch Mami get eaten. She finally got to hug Mami (well, Candeloro anyway) and got everything she wanted to say off her chest. And with Ophelia, she naturally wants to know more about exactly what Kyoko has been getting up to with Sayaka’s other self.

Sayaka again confronts Ophelia about how she feels about her (or, well, Oktavia, or maybe Sayaka? It’s weird), and naturally she is kind of freaked out by it. Remember, from her point of view, her relationship with Kyoko had been nothing but antagonistic. Whether Kyoko had been attacking her or trying to help her, Sayaka always resented her presence, so now suddenly being dropped into the middle of things and learning that her one-time rival now has a thing for her? Well, can you blame her for getting a little freaked out?

Also, it’s worth pointing out how the script had been flipped with everyone’s new identities. Now it’s Ophelia and Candeloro with the witch names, while Sayaka still thinks of them using their old names, causing them discomfort, but she has no problem calling Charzomi whatever because they had just met and she didn’t care.

And then we get to the fight, and of course it has to be a pro wrestling match. I’d also like to point out that there were a lot of songs I wanted to use for this chapter but was unsure of where to put each one. Originally the climb up the tongue was just going to have generic thrash metal playing the background, while Mephisto’s entrance theme was going to start with Mr. Sandman, only to transition into Bad Reputation (which is Ronda Rousey’s RL entrance theme), but then I was like, I should put Welcome to My Nightmare in there somewhere. And then I remembered that Cult of Personality is a thing, which is also CM Punk’s entrance theme, so I finally decided to move the first three songs to the tongue scene and have CoP as Mephisto’s entrance music.

And finally, we come to the last chapter. The magical girl fight scene was another one of those checklist things I wanted to have so long as I had Sayaka around. That way, I could actually build some real KyoSaya moments to make the KyoTavi angst all the more potent, as Sayaka realizes that she is developing an attraction to Kyoko as they fight side-by-side, letting me recreate that magical little moment from The Rebellion Story in which Sayaka basically confesses in the middle of the battle, complete with Charlotte ruining the mood.

I’ll admit, I kind of skimped out on Mephisto’s witch design and didn’t give it as much thought as I could have, but that part was never important. The important part was to recreate a classic witch fight and let the girls interact during it. I am proud of the Charlotte’s Web joke though.

What happens next is to establish that it doesn’t matter how hard they fight or how smart they are, they simply cannot beat Mephisto now. She’s taken complete control, enough to flick them through their various personas on a whim turning them into Puella Magi, then to human!witches (basically the Walpurgis Nights girls), then to full witches, then to the classic squad from the bulk of the story (bringing Oktavia back briefly), then to vanilla humans. It doesn’t matter. Mephisto has them, and can do whatever she wants.

From there, she separates them again and subjects them to a condensed version of their previous dreams, with the same themes but different imagery. Kyoko is subjected to a sermon about her poor responses to loss from her dead father, as he really lays into her over how much damage she had done. And I gotta admit, even I felt pretty bad just for writing that scene. Because I know torturing Kyoko is kind of this story’s MO, but damn.

Sayaka is a little more nuanced. Yes, the identity issues from her own dream are brought up, but it’s more focused on a new issues: mainly, now that Sayaka is back, she not only has to grapple with all the weirdness that she’s been thrust into, but also with essentially having been replaced. We see the vision of her friends getting along happily without her, the friends she had pushed away and alienated having moved on without her, Madoka basically having replaced her entirely with Homura. Of course this is not reflected in reality, as by this point in the world of the living they probably haven’t even found Sayaka’s body yet due to the time difference, but it is definitely that Sayaka would easily believe.

The next part is basically the whole reason for bringing Sayaka back in this manner. Mephisto then shows Sayaka a real memory that of Oktavia spending time with Kyoko, Mami, and Charlotte and being loved and accepted by them.

Sayaka’s character arc in the original series was driven by her letting her insecurities cause her to overcompensate and destroy herself, and Oktavia has largely been characterized as what Sayaka would be like if she didn’t have those insecurities. Sure, she’s had the shadow of the original Sayaka hanging over her, but for the most part this hasn’t seemed to bother her much, aside from getting annoyed at being called the wrong name, but it’s been taken for granted that sooner or later being thought of as Sayaka instead of herself by Kyoko was going to come to a head.

But here we have one of those happy unplanned gold veins, something I hadn’t planned on doing but am thrilled gets to happen now: we have Sayaka being forced to come to terms with living in Oktavia’s shadow.

Yes, they’re the same person. Yes, Oktavia is just Sayaka with her memory wiped and many of her self-destructive issues cleared away. But as WN demonstrated, it’s not as clear cut as that, and there is still some degree of separation between the two. And the infamously self-loathing Sayaka would most certainly be messed up by being confronted by a version of herself that people like and enjoy being around, that doesn’t feel the need to prove anything. And this is coming right off the heels of her realizing that she might have feelings for Kyoko after all (even if that is in part because of her empathetic connection to Oktavia), only to have it thrown in her face that it was Oktavia that Kyoko really loved, when she herself never did anything other than push Kyoko away. Granted, she had good reason for doing so, given that the first thing Kyoko did was try to kill her, but the point stands.

The Kyoko/Oktavia dynamic has always been messy due to Sayaka’s constant presence, but I kind of feel that that was unfair to Sayaka herself, as she deserves better than just being a memory, and I wanted her to have an actual voice in the whole deal, to be able to express her own feelings about it, even if it does complicate an already incredibly complicated situation.

Anyway, the next bit is pretty self-explanatory, with Mephisto further twisting the knife by replaying Sayaka’s last conversation with Madoka and really driving home what a wreck Sayaka had been at the time. Remember, from Sayaka’s point of view, that whole moment was only a few hours ago, at most!

Mami’s was very interesting, because the whole trial bit is self-explanatory, but it’s actually a reference to the bizarre trial that made up the final episode of the classic mindscrew TV show The Prisoner, which featured a jury wearing masks, the plaintiff sitting on an ornate chair on a raised platform, witnesses being pulled out of steam-filled holes, and an extended singalong of Dry Bones. Granted, I mainly knew about it because Reboot, one of my favorite shows, also referenced it in a dream episode of their own, but I liked that episode, and wanted to rip it off.

For the witnesses, we first get the expected faces from the show itself, but we also get a few new ones. Brooke Alexander was already named once before when Mami was reflecting on the various girls she had trained, Janice Goldberg was made up specifically for this scene, but we also get Michiru Kazusa, from the really weird spin-off manga Kazumi Magica, who was established as having a past with Mami. Kazumi Magica had its problems, but I did like a lot of the characters (i.e. The Twins), so this seemed like a good time to bring in another one.

Charlotte’s dream is the most straightforward, as it’s basically just her first dream condensed into a claw machine. What I wanted to put focus on was that Charlotte is the one character that knows who Mephisto is, as her role as the team scholar who does the most reading, she would actually have heard of the Ideal Witches, and thus would really understand just how much trouble they were all in.

And at the end of each segment, Mephisto gives each of them the same offer: submit willingly and be given a pleasant fantasy while Mephisto digests their souls, or continue to resist and get digested anyway, only in eternal torment. And her offer would give them each what they wanted the most. Kyoko wants her loved ones back, Sayaka wants to be loved and appreciated, Mami wants forgiveness, and Charlotte just wants to go home. And in light of what they were facing, can any of them be blamed for wanting to take Mephisto up on her offer?

Enter Jerky.

Jerky was a ton of fun to write for, and judging by the overwhelming positive response to his segments, bringing in the baby space raptor was a good idea. Like I’ve said before, his bits were one big love letter to Raptor Red, a novel by paleontologist Robert Bakker which tells of the life and times of a female Utahraptor from the Utahraptor’s point of view. And the nice thing about Jerky is that he’s smart enough to know the does and don’ts, but simple enough to be uncomplicated. He’s an animal. An exceptionally smart animal, but still an animal. He knows that he loves Kyoko and is loyal to her, he’s been made to understand that he can’t let Charlotte, Mami, and Oktavia see him, and he knows that Kyoko’s skin is softer than his and he needs to be careful, but beyond that he couldn’t care less of their various issues. It’s refreshingly simple.

As such, when confronted with a complete inexplicable threat such as Mephisto, something well beyond his ability to comprehend, he’s worried, he’s scared, he doesn’t know what to do, so he defaults to his predatory instincts.

When in doubt, start biting.

And it does the trick, because something that needs to be said is that while the Ideal Witches are powerful, they’re not omnipotent. Mephisto needed to lure the girls in and submerge them fully in her dream in order to control them the way that she did, but in the real world, she was vulnerable once she had manifested fully, allowing Kyoko to break free long enough to fire the final shot.

In the end, everyone escapes, but not unscathed. Kyoko especially had been scarred even further, in part from the dream of her father, but also from having to watch Sayaka basically die again, leading to her reaching what very well might be her breaking point. Mami’s slipping deeper into depression, having been forced to once again confront all the damage she unwittingly did as a magical girl, Charlotte is fully fed up with everything that had happened to them. And Oktavia? Well, now that it’s been shown that Sayaka Miki can and has come back, suddenly her own identity issues are going to become worse. She’s really going to have to grapple with Sayaka being an actual person with a legitimate claim to her body, especially since when Sayaka came back, she effectively traded places with Oktavia instead of merging with her. That’s gotta be scary.

At the very least, Kyoko did not reject Oktavia. In some way, she does understand that Oktavia is her own person, and she’s coming to respect that. But there are some deep wounds having to do with Oktavia’s creation, and they’re both going to have to come to terms with a great many things in the days to come.

And at the very end, it’s shown that Mephisto is weakened but still alive, and she’s pissed! We also learn that one of the girls did accept Mephisto’s offer before she was defeated, so that’s definitely going to come up later. And we meet the rest of the Ideal Witches. Obviously there is more to come with them, so I will say nothing further.

Anyway, I guess that’s it. Feel free to message me if you want anything explained further, or just make your own interpretations. Either is fine.

[osakaso5]

Spirit Kaleidoscope: Empty Absolution

Chapter 25 - Epilogue

Chapter Index

Katanashu Station - Reception Room

Hanabusa: Sorry that you had to come all the way to the station. If anything, I feel like I should've come to the Phantom Realm to deliver my apology...

Mizuchi: I don't mind. It's not as if you can get into the Phantom Realm.

Hanabusa: Some of our troops caused you a great deal of trouble. As a representative of the katanashu, I offer you my sincerest apologies.

Mizuchi: ...You're the one bowing your head to me? Even though you were betrayed, yourself?

Hanabusa: The misdeeds of my subordinates are my responsibility, as the superior officer. I failed to notice their schemes and prevent their rebellion.

Hanabusa: In order to appease the people of Hikagemachi, our troops' actions will be strictly regulated from here on out. I aim to rebuild the trust that was lost due to these events.

Mizuchi: Fufu. I doubt the people of Hikagemachi care that much about what happened.

Mizuchi: ...Now that I'm talking to you like this, I finally understand why you stopped me from striking Kasane with lighting back then.

Hanabusa: .........

Mizuchi: You even shielded him with your body, did you not? If I'd struck right then, you could've been badly injured, or worse.

Hanabusa: Human laws are different... I couldn't let his punishment be left up to the rules of Hikagemachi.

Mizuchi: I see.

Hanabusa: ...I'm well aware that I'm pushing our own morals on you, however.

Hanabusa: I don't expect you to accept the fact that I stopped you from taking out your anger...

Mizuchi: ...Right. It was a struggle for me to bring a storm back then... But these sorts of incidents have happened many times before.

Hanabusa: ...They have?

Mizuchi: When I was in the human realm. I told you about all the warriors who would challenge me, didn't I?

Mizuchi: Plenty of them wanted not only to battle me, but to take my powers as well.

Hanabusa: ...Like Kasane.

Mizuchi: Fufu. Thanks to it, I experienced something that made my heart race for the first time in ages. I suppose trouble like that isn't always bad.

Hanabusa: I'm glad to hear that... But wasn't that the reason you left  the human world and began living  in the Phantom Realm?

Mizuchi: That was one of my reasons for it, yes.

Aoi's Voice: You two! Stop sneaking into the station!

Hanabusa: Was that Aoi..?

Mizuchi: Hahaha. It's so lively here.

Katanashu Station - In Front of the Grand Gate

Onibi: Uh oh! Aoi caught us..!

Kamaitachi: Hurry, Onibi! If we pass through the gate before he catches us, we'll be fi... Ow!?!?

Onibi: What is that!? Water!? Owie..!

Aoi: ...Idiots. I set up a holy water trap on the gate. You won't get through this time.

Onibi: What!? A trap!?

Kamaitachi: That's no fair!

Aoi: Hmph. I don't care.

Madoka: You guys sure have a lot of energy. Leave them be, Aoi... They're always sneaking around, anyway.

Aoi: ...Madoka... Shirking your duties, as always.

Madoka: Yeah, sorry about that, Mr. Model Employee. Yawn... So tired...

Aoi: Don't apologize while yawning. ...Don't tell me, you've been in bed up until now? It's already noon.

Madoka: Nope. I'm tired because I've been doing paperwork all morning. We had a mountain of reports about the tournament, remember?

Madoka: I gotta say, that holy water of yours is pretty effective. Your family owns a shrine, right? Is the god there extra benevolent or something?

Aoi: I don't know if they're benevolent or not, but I hear they're a really powerful serpent god.

Aoi: Apparently they laid waste to a human village with heavy rain in order to save a shrine maiden who was going to be sacrificed... We worship that destructive spirit.

Aoi: We're descended from the shrine maiden they saved. It was such a long time ago that I don't know if any of it really happened, though.

Madoka: Wow.

Madoka: Aoi, are you sure?

Aoi: .....? About what?

Madoka: About letting Onibi and Kamaitachi slip through the gate just now.

Aoi: ...Huh!?

Phantom Grotto

Sana: Shisei-san, it's time for to eat! Come out.

Shisei: ...Oh, Sana. Good morning.

Sana: It's already noon!

Shisei: Fufu, I see. ...It smells delicious, as usual. This is...

Azuma: Heh. I tried my hand at making some stew. I slaid a mighty pig, and even got a pot for it.

Shisei: ...Even a pot... You're becoming quite the professional cook.

Azuma: Might was well build my own kitchen somewhere around here.

Sana: A kitchen..!? We'd be living very nicely if you did!

Hokuto: ...And Shisei's still holed up in this grotto.

Hokuto: After you finally got around to visiting Hikagemachi, too. What's so great about this damp old place?

Shisei: Even if it is damp and old, I've lived here for so long. ...Besides... It feels more comfortable now.

Hokuto: ...Does it? Well, as long as you're fine with it, I suppose.

Shisei: Fufu... It does.

Sana: ...Ah. But Shisei-san, aren't you going to go eat ramen in Hikagemachi?

Sana: I believe it was Mizuchi who invited you...

Hokuto: ...Mizuchi!? Why haven't I heard about this!?

Shisei: He'll treat me as thanks for helping him the other day... Apparently, this "ramen" sold by a shop named Kuzunoha is quite the treat.

Shisei: I hear it's like thin udon noodles.

Sana: Hmm..? I'm not so sure about that... They’re a bit different, in my opinion.

Azuma: Oh, so you've had some too, Sana?

Sana: Of course! There were places that sold it in the capital when I was still a human.

Hokuto: ...Hmph. Ramen isn't much of a reward for saving a mighty water god.

Azuma: Ramen, eh... I want to try it, too. It'll be a good chance  to experience new flavors.

Shisei: Then... Why don't we all go together?

Sana: Ah..! That's a great idea! Let's go as a group!

Hokuto: Huh? Why do I have to...

Azuma: Just come. ...I know you want to, despite your grumbling.

Hokuto: Shut up. ...Fine, I'll come! Got a problem with that?

Shisei: Fufu... I can't wait to eat ramen with all of you.

Ramen Kuzunoha

Kasane: Ow... Sigh... My bottom hurts so bad I can't sit right...

Kasane: Kamaitachi gave me a real beatin'. Not to mention I got lectured by Hanabusa-han and Madoka...

Uta: They were super pissed. Commander Hanabusa was so mad that his face looked like one of those ogre masks!

Kyubi-no-Kitsune: Even Kamaitachi was actually mad, for once. ...Fufu. Just be happy that he didn't cut you up into little pieces with his sickle.

Kasane: Oh dear. I'd rather not be turned into mincemeat.

Uta: Why don't you just forget about all that, and have some ramen? My treat, Kasane!

Kasane: Why, thank ya. ...So, yer droppin' the honorifics as soon as I get demoted, huh?

Uta: You're just a regular soldier now, aren't you? Our ranks are the same now that your job got taken from you.

Uta: Things have really calmed down now that Commander Hanabusa's taken charge of both the first and second squadrons.

Kasane: Sigh... Ya sure seem to be enjoyin' this, Uta. Yer sadism really gives away how ya were raised.

Uta: Oh, sorry about that. But... Fufufu! I'm just happy to finally get on your level!  

Uta: ...Or more accurately, that you were brought down to my level.

Kasane: ...Yer level?

Karasutengu: Right. You're talking about the time you tried to trap me into being your slave, aren't you?

Uta: Ugh..! Karasutengu!? ...Sir!

Uta: Ah... I think it's about time for me to get back to the station...

Karasutengu: Not so fast. I won't let you run away this time.

Karasutengu: I told you that I'd blow you away if you kept doing that during the tournament.  

Uta: Ahaha... You did..?

Kasane: ...What's this, Uta? Not a fan of Karasutengu, are ya?

Kyubi-no-Kitsune: Oh. You don't know, even though you're in the same troops? ...Uta tried to do the exact same thing as you once.

Kasane: ...Did he, now?

Kyubi-no-Kitsune: To Karasutengu instead of Mizuchi, though. ...Fufufufu.

Uta: ...It was the biggest mistake of my life... I didn't know what a quick-tempered and brutal yokai he was...

Karasutengu: Who are you calling quick-tempered? I showed you plenty of hospitality when you came to pick a fight with me, didn't I?

Uta: If by hospitality you mean giving me a beating...

Kyubi-no-Kitsune: Uta was so scared by Karasutengu's anger... It was too pathetic for me to even watch...

Kyubi-no-Kitsune: ...Pfft. Ahahahaha!

Uta: ...Hey, Owner! Do you have to laugh at me!?

Kyubi-no-Kitsune: Why not? It gets me every time.

Uta: Don't joke about my trauma! Ever since then, every time he finds me he makes me help him with his work while kicking and trampling on me.

Uta: Even on the day of the attacks, he was using me for slave labor... Sigh...

Kasane: ...Huh. That's quite the incident.

Kasane: I knew ya had made some kinda big mistake back in the capital, but I'd never heard the full story.

Uta: Well, that wasn't all there was to it. ...Can you understand how I feel now?

Kasane: Sure... Ugh. Just rememberin' Mizuchi's face gives me the chills...

Kyubi-no-Kitsune: Hey now. I don't want to see those gloomy faces in my establishment. ...Have some ramen.  

Kyubi-no-Kitsune: The fried tofu on top will be on the house.

Uta: ...Huh!? Owner, you're cooking ramen yourself..!?

Kasane: ...What's so special about a ramen seller makin' ramen?

Uta: ...No, it is special! You're a first-timer here, so you wouldn't know... It's not just weird, it's practically like some kind of natural disaster!

Uta: Maybe we'll get hit by a meteor next...

Kyubi-no-Kitsune: Fufu. I had a good time at the tournament thanks to you. I thought I'd give you some customer service for once.

Kyubi-no-Kitsune: Here, my handmade ramen. Make sure to appreciate it.

Kasane: Why, thank ya. I dunno why ya look so smug, though...

Karasutengu: Oh, Kyubi-no-Kitsune. I'll have a bowl, too.

Kyubi-no-Kitsune: You can make it yourself.

Karasutengu: Why!?

Forest on the Outskirts of Town - Big Maple Tree

Momiji: .........

Ungaikyo: ...Are you looking into the kaleidoscope?

Momiji: Ungaikyo... Sitting in the tree again? You're like a child.

Ungaikyo: I'm way older than you. ...You came here again, huh. The katanashu sure have a lot of free time.

Momiji: Not as much as you do. I came to bring you the kaleidoscope today. You've had it longer than I have.

Momiji: I thought you should be the one to have it.

Ungaikyo: .........

Ungaikyo: ...Nah, I'm good. Keep it.

Momiji: But...

Ungaikyo: I really don't need it. ...I'm fine with katanashu being  around me now, so I wouldn't  use it anyway.

Momiji: ...I see. I guess it did originally belong to me.

Ungaikyo: ...Did you want anything else with me?

Momiji: Of course I do. Come down from there. We're going to have another match.

Ungaikyo: ...That, again... I don't wanna. Plus, you come ask me for a rematch every day.

Momiji: ...You're not coming down?

Ungaikyo: Nope. I'm gonna eat cup ramen and take a nap.

Momiji: ........ I see. Then you leave me with no other choice.

Momiji: ...Tadaakira Inui.

Ungaikyo: ......!

Momiji: Get down from the maple tree at once. We're going to battle.

Ungaikyo: Wha... Whoa, whoa, whoa..!

Thud!

Ungaikyo: Ow... You made me fall! Don't call my name so carelessly!

Ungaikyo: What do you think people's true names are, exactly..?

Momiji: You've used my true name before, too.

Ungaikyo: ........ Yeah, but... That was a long time ago!

Momiji: Haha. Now, let's fight!

Ungaikyo: I said I didn't wanna... ...Ugh. I guess I have to. If I win, you're treating me to lunch.

Momiji: Deal. You can eat whatever you like.

Ungaikyo: ...Seriously!? In that case...

Ungaikyo: If I get to eat ramen, I'll think about it.

The End.

Translator’s notes..? 

this took a pretty long time, but it’s finally done! i’m probably not going to do extra stuff for a while again, but i’ll still be posting card translations every other day!