#pmmm discussion

[himehomu]

While we all are pretty much aware that this is Madoka's concept art outfit finally being used for her new Magical Girl design, there seems to be a lock and some chains around her ribcage. The first thing I thought about was the metaphor “hearts are wild creatures, that's why our ribs are cages” which is meant to illustrate that the heart cannot be governed, that it will go anyway it wants, that it is uncontainable, hence the “wild creature” title, and the heart being a “wild creature”, needs to be encased, limited, caged, hence the “rib cage”. This could symbolize a lot in terms of Madoka's character, but one of my theories is that Madoka's memories of every loop where Homura fought for her and never gave up, the realization that someone like Madoka, whom has never seen herself as worthy of anything, let alone love, unless she was helping or being of use to someome else, actually had someone all this time who's loved her for who she is, not what she can do for others, the clarity of “oh. this is the love letter I've always wanted,” the reciprocation of Homura's love that transcends time and space, all of that is locked away with the final memory wipe at the end of Rebellion. Maybe the metaphorical key to unlocking it is her finally regaining all of those memories, all of that love. Of course, she'd have to regain her godhood to do so. My second theory is that maybe this is meant to symbolize Madoka's ultimate sacrifice being locked away both as a means to keep her alive as a human and as a means to spare Homura anymore grief; maybe eventually Homura's acceptance of her death and acknowledgement of her grief will be the symbolical key to unlocking Madokami... which unfortunately will kickstart the inevitable battle between God and the Devil.

[funnycreatortimetravel]

Whenever I rewatch the Madoka Magica episodes + the two recap movies, I always feel that the sentiment "Homura did nothing wrong," shines through the most here and less so Rebellion (I'll get into this later) even though ironically, the Rebellion movie is where that infamous saying was coined.

-Homura cannot DO any wrong when everything sort of already goes wrong no matter if she intervenes or not. Mami dies whether or not Homura intervenes (she goes crazy when she finds out that magical girls are all destined to turn into witches and then goes on a murder-suicide rampage, she's killed by Walpurgis, she gets caught off guard, etc.) All of these deaths happened on Mami's accord and not Homura's, so of course there's no wrongdoing to be had.

-Even if you argue that Homura could've been nicer to her, Mami automatically assumed that Homura had the worst intentions for Madoka and the others, so she never really gave her a chance even WHEN Homura went through the effort of finding a grief seed solely to befriend Mami (which Homura does in most timelines FYI.) The moment Homura isn't Mami's sweet little junior student anymore, Mami is automatically on defense and even calls her a loser just because she doesn't want Madoka to make a contract, and Mami just assumes that it's because Homura doesn't want competition (which makes no sense because Homura offered her a grief seed.)

-Mami does the same thing to Kyoko in the Different Story Manga; Once Kyoko's parents died and she became distraught, she didn't want to follow Mami's ideals anymore and this leads them into getting into a physical altercation (sound familiar?)

-Mami has never been a person you can just causally talk things through to. If she believes you don't share the same ideals on things, she can and will fight you. She doesn't fight Sayaka or Madoka because those two largely agree with her on everything, but Kyoko and Homura? They're free game if they so much as look at her sideways.

-Mami also says that making a wish should be something you seriously think about and not just dive in willy nilly, but then turns around and tells Madoka that she should wish for a cake if she still hasn't figured it out all because Mami doesn't want to be alone.

-I'm going to give Mami the benefit of the doubt and assume she wasn't being serious, but she knows how impressionable Madoka is and regardless of how serious or not she is, she's still fine with Madoka making a wish and becoming a magical girl just so she won't be lonely anymore.

-Homura tries her damn hardest to befriend Mami (she offers her a grief seed as I mentioned earlier, she listens when Mami tells her to go away without a fuss, and she warns Mami of the witch Charlotte only to be ignored and tied up) and the only thing she gets in return is Mami's unwarranted hostility. And once Homura is proven right and Mami is beheaded in front of Madoka and Sayaka, causing an insurmountable amount of trauma to them, she still quietly grieves for her even when all Mami did was assume the worst with no evidence.

-I don't necessarily blame Mami for assuming that Homura didn't have the best intentions since she's a veteran and I'm certain has had other negative run-ins with magical girls, but it's not like Homura even provided enough evidence that she would be like them. Mami was just being territorial due to force of habit (she's fine with other magical girls so long as they stay her juniors as evident in Rebellion when the moment Homura "turns different," she's highly suspicious and is ready to go guns blazing.) She doesn't even give Homura a chance to explain herself in either the show or the movie and that's one of her biggest flaws; she's so perfectionist that she can't even see what's in front of her sometimes.

-Despite this, Homura still values her as her old mentor and is hurt when the person who saved her all those timelines ago calls her a loser to her face. She even says that Mami has the softest heart of all and wishes she could forget how she trampled over her and other's feelings, (even though when you look back, Mami was the one who hurt her feelings rather than the other way around.)

And yet she still says this...

-"And it hurt me..." Homura admitting that shows just how much she cares. The fact that she's able to admit that it wasn't what Mami said that hurt her, but the fact that shattering Mami's optimistic viewpoint with the reality of the magical girl system was what hurt.

-Homura knows about Mami's tragic backstory with her parents and also knows that Mami, "doesn't have any other family to speak of," which shows she's been very close to Mami at one point, even seeing her vulnerable side just like Madoka did when Mami had that breakdown shortly before she died to Charlotte.

-She also "envies Mami" because Madoka states that she'll remember her even after she dies. Homura is obviously envying Mami because Madoka will forever see Mami in a good light in death while Madoka is afraid of her, but she could also just be envying Mami because, well, Mami died and left Madoka feeling attached to her while Homura thought she was going to die without ever being able to be close to Madoka as she once was. Context clues people, context clues.

-If you look at the different story manga, which I and many others consider canon, Homura clearly still has PTSD from Mami's murder-suicide attempt, which is the main reason why she tries to be gentle with her and listen to her when she's ordering Homura around.

-And she also notes that Mami never "held her hand," like that. Regardless of what Homura thinks, she clearly still wants or wanted that intimacy with Mami. She still saw her as an older sister figure and I know it crushed her heart when Mami said something so cruel to her.

-She also declines when Mami believes that Homura is going to kill her, even though her soul gem is stained and she technically is on her way to becoming a witch. Instead, Homura imparts some words to her.

-In the case of Sayaka...Whooo boy, it's like ten times worse than Mami. Sayaka is so caught up in her ideals that she hates anything too wild and selfish, but also weak and passive. She craps on Kyoko for being immoral and then also craps on Madoka AND Homura for not doing enough (she says that Madoka has a lot of potential but doesn't do anything with it and says Homura is too unskilled to fight effectively.) She views herself, or at least tries to, as the ultimate magical girl of justice who's moral, selfless, and most of all, strong. She doesn't view Homura, at least the one in the past timelines, as someone strong enough to be a proper magical girl.

-Sayaka holds everyone to the standard of Mami Tomoe, someone who's graceful, strong, and selfless, but she never gets the chance to realize that that version of Mami Tomoe isn't the real one and the standard she holds herself and others don't exist, which is why in every single timeline, she ALWAYS ends up witching out. It's also why in every timeline, she's antagonistic to Homura no matter if it was her timid self or the one hardened by trauma.

-She blames Homura in one timeline for attempting to warn them about Kyubey, accusing her of trying to split the group up, but then in Magia Record, when Homura DOESN'T tell them about Kyubey because she's seen how pointless it is, Sayaka gets on her case for not telling them sooner and accuses her of not telling because Homura "finds it funny." She literally can't win, no matter how quiet and out of the way she is.

-And it doesn't get better once Homura becomes "stronger" (or at the least the facade of becoming it) Sayaka just thinks that she's one of those magical girls who kills only for herself (and while Sayaka's not ALL the way wrong as she will kill solely for Madoka, she also doesn't understand that the system is designed to be like that and that's the fault of Kyubey and not Homura.)

-We're never actually shown Homura saving civilians, but we also don't see her sit idly by and let them get hurt either. Homura's viewpoint is that magical girls aren't morally obligated to be heroes and she's right; magical girls are cattle being harvested and the "good" they do is only delaying the inevitable once they witch out. No matter how noble and pure Sayaka was or wanted to be, she was eventually going to witch out and harm others, even if she wanted to save people.

-The nature of magical girls is equivalent exchange; whatever "good" is done, an equal amount of or even more bad is sure to come of it. Sayaka was going to keep killing innocent civilians as a witch until someone put her out of her misery, and that was what Homura was going to do. Sayaka doomed herself the moment she made a contract with Kyubey, and more importantly, she doomed innocent civilians, and she doomed her friends.

-Sayaka's witching out leads Mami to go crazy and attempt to kill everyone, Madoka making a contract in several timelines to save Sayaka from witching out (she does so in the Different Story Manga and Sayaka still ends up hurt) and Kyoko dying either from suicide during her confrontation with Octavia or dying from the wounds she sustains from the battle. Not to mention Sayaka witching out breaks Madoka's psyche, which is what Homura is trying to avoid.

-It would be one thing if Sayaka just died on her own accord, but she always brings others with her down her descent into despair, whether it's by killing civilians as a witch or being mean to Madoka and making her feel as though Sayaka's witching out was partly her fault.

-That's why Homura was in the right to "put her down" essentially, and even though she said she would, she couldn't bring herself to because somewhere deep down, she still cared for Sayaka. She apologizes for blowing up Sayaka in one of the first few timelines when she witches out and she blames herself for Sayaka making a contract in the TV series timeline, even saying that she should've protected Sayaka as much as Madoka even though Sayaka has never been anything BUT mean to her in the beginning. She takes responsibility for the girls' downfall even though it was inevitable.

-Another thing is her kinship with Kyoko. Because Kyoko and Homura both grew up in religious homes (Homura with catholic school and obliviously Kyoko's father being a preacher) they have the closest views on what it means to be magical girls. Note how I didn't say similar, but closest. Homura and Kyoko's wishes were for someone else, and as a result, they firmly believe that their wishes are for the sake of those people and won't pretend to be heroes or the like. The only difference is that Kyoko is much wilder and rougher because her wish directly led to the murder-suicide of her family (cough cough, like a big sister figure that killed her OTHER found family.)

-It's also the reason why Homura and Kyoko became so close in Rebellion. Kyoko was the only magical girl, apart from Madoka and even SHE sometimes didn't trust Homura, to kill Walpurgis. Kyoko agrees to fight with Homura and even though she is purely doing this for her benefit, she at least gives Homura a CHANCE and hears her out, even offering her a pocky stick. She was willing to team up with her and was also the first person that Homura felt comfortable talking to in Rebellion when she felt that something was up.

(I'll go into further specifics in another post since I ran out of image/video usage. Damn this app 😭.)

[soyellipsis]

in a madoka magica x evangelion crossover, would madoka be Kaworu or would homura be Kaworu?

on one hand Madoka becomes divine, repeatedly dies in front of Homura, and is the first person Homura truly loves/is loved by, but on the other hand Homura repeated countless time loops to ensure a world where Madoka was happy and survives (but it was really for her own happiness)

[sanchoyo]

guys @spectralreplica drew a madoka magica x tm2 design for mira! look how cute this is I am obsessed 😭

[diximixy]

Mind flayers and magical girls or M&M.

(spoilers for Madoka Magica(pmmm))

(THERE IS AN ILLUSTRATION AT THE END AFTER THE HELL OF TEXT)

Okay so in dnd lore mind flayer don't mesh well w the undead to say the least. I mean you can't really mind control someone whoes brains are rotting, or eat that that's just kinda disgusting. Eating moldy food be like.

And in pmmm magical girls are just basically liches. Okay just follow me for a sec when they make their wish (all magical girls can make one wish in exchange they have to kill witches for the rest of their lives) they get their souls removed from their bodys and it's placed in soul gems (ring/cristal seed looking thing/gem on their body when transformed) that they carry around w them, that's just a lich. Also they are kinda techically immortal, like if they don't fall into dispear and turn into witches (Lovecraftian mental breakdown monsters, look up "(magia record:) She is Kuroe" youtube video if you want a fast understanding of that) otherwise they can theoretically live forever.

Okay, so my biggest piece of argument for magical girls not being affected by psionics is that if a soul gem gets 100 meters away from their physical body they can't use it and they also don't preceive any of the thing happening around the. Okay but counter question. Do their bodys still function when their soul gems are near by? The answer is sort of, yes they eat, have body heat, a pulse but do they have brain activity? Argument in favor of this is that they still have their bodys function normally but even those bodily functions are more for not alerting the girls that their souls been ripped from their bodys and are dead. They would notice their body being cold or not having a pulse also other people might notice it and Kyubey does not want that (animal mascot the girls get their wishes from, when magical girls turning into witches that is a power/energy sorce for his people basically btw). But would Kyubey go this far, to make/fake brain activity? My honest anwser is most likely, yes. We know of sick magical girls residing in hospitals (Magia Record) he would have an intrest in making them look alive.

But real question are they alive in any real way? A really interesting bit of canon about this was/is in a Psp game in which Sayaka's soul gem got lost for an extended period of time and her body rotts and she basically in all sense becomes a zombie. Also she doesn't seem to have any memories of her soul gem being lost and time passing inbetween that.

So I think based on all of that my final answer is that soul gems only keep a magical girls body in stasis but do not truly keeping them alive. So I don't think they have real bodily functions just imitate them, so the girls or anyone else wouldn't realize they aren't alive anymore.

Anyway this as to say how funny would be a group of mind flayers horrified running from a girl in a pink dress w a wand in hand.

Did I write all of this to explain this joke/the art? Yes I'm sorry but I don't take responsiblity for you reading this.

[kiwisandpearls]

I really hate it when people act like madoka magica somehow invented darker magical girl stories, because like…

Sailor Moon (in both the original manga and anime) had darker moments in it. Heck the ending of the first season shows our main cast getting killed off one by one.

Revolutionary Girl Utena (yes I consider rgu a magical girl anime you can fight me on this) while not dark and bleak right out of the gate slowly but surely shows it’s more ugly side as the anime goes on

so like…yeah. There are probably way more examples but magical girl anime before pmmm weren’t always sunshine and rainbows, they did have darker undertones to them, it’s just that madoka magica was more upfront with the more darker and bleaker aspects of its story.

[samble-movedd]

i just found out about madohomu fanart where they make homura a cis guy. my day is ruined.

wghat, like, specifically cis?

i try to ignore pmmm genderbends even if i tend to not like them (mostly because pmmm is what made me realize im a lesbian, so seeing them portrayed as dudes tends to rub me the wrong way) because it's objectively harmless and usually done by trans guys, but, like, Actually Cis? i wasn't aware genderbends were a) still super popular and b) specifically denoted as cis vs anything else.

[clegfly]

The best worst thing about my PMMM x omori au is combining PMMM’s ending with OMORI’s. Yeah I’d like two depressions for the price of one

(SPOILER WARNING IN TAGS!! MOOTS THAT ARE PLANNING ON WATCHING PMMM (I have a few of you hehe) LOOK AWAY!!!)

[mystiqmemory]

Me because I thought of a specific OC's backstory and the ALMOST entire history of TURIF World building in the same minutes:

[vicsep7250]

Do you think if a Magical Girl ate another MG's Soul Gem, they'd ascend into a higher/stronger form of themselves, with remnants of the consumed Gem's magic and personality?

Do you think consuming a Soul Gem also creates a huge implosiom of energy and potential, and deforms the consumer into a different uncontrollable or inhumane form, like the Secret Stones in TotK?

Do you think any of the World Ending Witches (i.e. Walpurgisnatch or the other Record Witches) could've done that as humans and that's why they bevome uber powerful over time?

I'm fascinated by the consumption - literal and otherwise - of souls by other beings with souls.

[lesbianpoetess]

yes!! they are blatantly opposite to each other – madoka's ideals and homuras wishes – they are yin and yang, except they can not exist in a world together. homura's selfishness cancels any of madoka's selfless acts, they can't ever love eachother the way the other does.

i love the way you expressed this, and i love Madonna Magica.

Fandom Problem #5529:

Personally, I always read Madonna Magica as a story of near-fundamental incompatibility between Homura and Madoka. They may both have genuine love for each other, but their values and the ways they love are diametrically opposed. Madoka’s philanthropic, self-abnegating love for all magical girls means Homura’s wish to protect and keep Madoka with her can’t be fully granted. Because Homura’s love of Madoka is possessive and she wants to be with Madoka, it means Madoka’s wish to let all magical girls have their wishes granted but spare them when they fall to despair can’t be fully granted. As much as they may love each other, it’s tragic love that can never be lived out peacefully in the way either of them would want.

This doesn’t mean I’m anti-MadoHomu, it just means I can’t get the diametric opposites thing out of my head when I see MadoHomu stuff. It is often very well-made art, though. And honestly, what are fanworks for if NOT for giving yourselves what canon can’t? Good on y’all for that

[atamascolily]

There is a tendency I see in PMMM analyses and discussions to treat the witches simply as monsters that can be overcome with sufficient force regardless of other circumstances--and thus Homura's failure to ever win against Walpurgisnacht on her own terms is something that could be easily fixed with more firepower and different tactics. And while there's nothing wrong with this interpretation, it's not one that particularly interests me, either.

What I like about PMMM and what makes it so engaging for me, is that it can be read on multiple levels--both as a literal journey and as a symbolic one. In-universe, witches are the shadow selves of magical girls; is it really so surprising that they also serve as narrative foils to those who face them, thus making victory or defeat as much of a character issue as a tactical one?

It is not a coincidence that Mami Tomoe, a girl who was forced to grow up too fast and who could have wished to save her dying parents but didn't, meets her end at the hand of a particularly childish and immature witch, a lumpen, misshapen doll that transforms into a clown--a girl who never grew up, who could have wished to save her dying parent but didn't. Mami, an experienced veteran who wiped the floor with the Rose Witch and her familiars earlier, is completely caught off-guard and is eaten alive by a witch who embodies all of the issues she herself struggles with and has yet to overcome within herself.

Yes, Mami was careless and overconfident, which led to her doom--but she had also fulfilled her role of introducing Madoka to the world of magical girls. On a narrative level, her death was necessary--not only to free Madoka from her impulsive promise to become a magical girl too early in the story, before she'd learned all the facts and could make a fully informed decision, but also to teach Madoka one final, horrific lesson about what life as a magical girl is really like.

This is not to say that AUs where Mami survives are wrong or missing the point--I've written them myself and I love them! (It helps that Mami's survival is usually the result of someone else's interference, not something she accomplishes on her own.) Nor do I mean to suggest that Mami's death is a moral failing on her part--merely that I think that Charlotte represents Mami's own particular brand of kryptonite at that particular point in her life, one she might have been able to survive if she had been able to move beyond the psychological issues hobbling her.

Meanwhile, Homura is able to easily defeat Charlotte, because metaphorically she's moved beyond the childish worldview that Mami is still stuck in. From that same symbolic perspective, it's this relative level of maturity, as much as her time stop and pipe bombs, that allows her to win.

Likewise, it is not an accident that the next witch Madoka encounters is one that specializes in extracting the memories of its victims, trapping Madoka in a spinning carousel as she is tormented by her own grief and guilty conscience over Mami's death. She is freed by Sayaka, who has moved beyond such angst by her decision to take on Mami's role as an idealized magical girl protector. Later on, Sayaka's descent into dualistic thinking is symbolized by her fight against a witch whose world is literally black and white--whom Sayaka defeats, but only at the cost of pushing herself dangerously to her limits.

As with Mami, Sayaka's death is directly tied to her own psychological issues--in this case, by her incredibly strict rules about how magical girls should behave and her refusal to cut herself any slack whatsoever. Her metaphorical self-denial results in literal self-denial, and her death as a magical girl and rebirth as a witch.

Then we come to Walpurgisnacht, a witch made of cogs and gears--the one witch Homura cannot beat, no matter what she does. Homura is stuck in her loops, unable to imagine a future beyond them, increasingly isolated from any meaningful connections or relationships--Walpurgisnacht may be the "fool that spins in a circle", but so is Homura. The inside mirrors the outside; when we watch Homura fight against Walpurgisnacht, we are also watching Homura's struggle with herself. Unlike Mami and Sayaka, Homura's magic allows her to fight this battle over and over again--again and again she is forced to retreat and start over, unsatisfied with the results and determined to do better next time. She doesn't die, but she doesn't win, either--instead, she's locked into perpetual stalemate with no end.

Madoka, however, is able to see beyond the vicious cycle represented by Walpurgisnacht and thus easily and repeatedly defeats an enemy that Homura cannot, regardless of her relative power levels in any given timeline. It's probably too simplistic to say that hope triumphs over despair--and yet, that's exactly what happens, every single time. Homura has numbed herself through repeated exposure to where she no longer feels hope or despair, thus existing in perpetual stasis with her purpose the only thing driving her. Paradoxically, the one thing she needs to do to win is the one thing she cannot do--and the thing that Madoka can do all too easily.

(This is not to say that Madoka doesn't have her own issues--she does!--just that her issues are different from Homura's, meaning she's not tripped up by this particular obstacle in the same way that Homura is. And it's not that Homura's struggles were pointless--they were what allowed Madoka to get to point where she had both the power and the knowledge that she could save everyone, including Homura.)

Homura's final battle with Walpurgisnacht shows Homura going to insane lengths, including a wall of C-4 explosives inside a refinery, a flaming oil tanker, and a submarine with Type 88 Surface-to-Ship missiles--none of which has any lasting effect on Walpurgisnacht whatsoever. That episode goes to great lengths to show that Homura's approach to fighting Walpurgisnacht fundamentally isn't working; I don't think adding more nukes would help.

The one time Homura gets the closest to her happy ending is the one timeline where she and Madoka fight and fall together--the one timeline where they are shown as equals, and the one where they debate becoming witches together and destroying the whole world before Madoka thinks better of it. This is also not a coincidence. If there is ever to be a truly happy end to this franchise--or an end at all--Homura and Madoka must be equal and willing partners, not one protecting/sacrificing themself for the other again and again. It is also likely that they will remake the universe in the process, through the combined power of their mutual wish.

[It also wouldn't surprise me if that line foreshadowed future plot elements--after all, Madoka technically became a witch in the final episode of the TV series (she got better, thanks to the nature of her wish), and so did Homura in Rebellion--but we shall see if the series ever follows up on this.]

This is why I'm so excited that Walpurgis no Kaiten seems to be laying the groundwork for Homura creating her own enemies and her greatest enemy being herself--once again, making the metaphorical literal. I'm excited about the prospect of Homura getting a do-over with Walpurgisnacht, which would represent a chance for her to confront her narrative foil one more time, and show us how her character has changed. Though it may play out on a larger stage, the real battle will be inside Homura's mind and heart--and, I would argue, always has been. The only way the outcome will change--the only way we can move beyond what's been and into something new--is if/when she changes.

I want to be clear that there's absolutely nothing wrong with the strictly literal interpretation of witches, and I think people should write what they want to write; if that's the story you want to tell, then go for it! For me, however, I find it far more compelling--not to mention richer and truer--if the actions and words on-screen correspond to the characters' emotional and psychological journeys, and there's no question that this preference how I interpret media in general, and PMMM in particular. And it's not that I think Homura couldn't defeat Walpurgisnacht in an AU scenario--merely that any story where she achieves this victory without changing in any way or addressing her own psychological issues in some fashion removes exactly the elements that drew me to this series in the first place.

[muffinrecord]

Magia Record: Links Masterpost (Post-EOS)

Here is the old link to the previous Links Masterpost. This new one excludes information on how to play the game, given that it is no longer in service. I've pruned a few other links to keep this one tight on information.

Wiki Sources

Magia Record Fandom Wiki: A fandom wiki where you can read about information from the game. It includes memoria, characters, past events, enemies, a list of items, and so on. This Wikipedia is more based in game information than the below one.

Puella Magi Wiki: The link to this wiki is to the Characters section for Magia Record. I find it to be a good source of learning about characters easily. It also is a total overview of all the Puella Magi Madoka Magica properties and an interesting site to browse. Note: because anyone can edit this wiki, sometimes some character entries are hilariously inaccurate or biased.

Story Content / Translations

Magia Record Master Translation Sheet: A Google Spreadsheet showcasing Arc Two fan translations. Here you can see what has been translated, where to find it, and also who has done the translation.

Google Drive: A google drive containing archived videos of both NA content and the fan translations of Arc two. You can see what is on there and what isn’t by looking at the aforementioned Master Translation Sheet-- there’s a special column on the right that notes if something has been uploaded or not.

Magia Union Translations: A youtube channel that hosts all of the translated content in the game for both arc one and arc two.

MagiReco Event Guide: A guide to all of the events in Magia Record, written and edited by several fine folk: Grox, LuminousSky, Ai, SerenDark, hobe, Amano Suzune, and Pinknoise. It orders the events by release, notes who was released, gives the genre, a short synopsis and ratings.

Magia Record Master Playlist: Organized by @scarfanon, this massive playlist lists everything in order of release. And I do mean EVERYTHING-- all main story, magical girl stories, event stories, quotes, transformation videos, doppels-- it’s got it all. This is the most definitive playlist for the game out there. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by how much story content out there exists, give this a look! Please note that this playlist is still a work in progress.

Magia Record - Doppel Encyclopedia Translations: Tumblr run by Gilde which translates Doppel entries! This includes Arc 1 and Arc 2 content-- peruse the links at the top of the post to access all the character entries.

Null Magical Girl Translation: The Null Magical Girl story is translated! Translation done by @nymphatix.

Useful Bookmarks

Rika Ren: This site has it all-- a news Mirror, File Mirror, APKs, sound and video viewer, Live2D Viewer, Background and CG Viewer, and other things I’m sure I’ve forgotten.

Mochi Magia Report: This is a link to Mochi's translations for both Magia Report and the new Exedra comic, "Ready Set Exedra!"

Madomagitransparent: A tumblr blog that contains transparent character art from Puella Magi Madoka Magica and its spinoffs. The linked post in particular is a Masterpost itself for image resources.

Magia Record Costumes: This site is a visual list for all the alternate costumes in the game.

Discord Channels

PMMM: Magia Record Discord: This is what I often refer to as “The Big Discord.” It’s a large and active discord with different kinds of people inside of it. It's pivoting to become a Magia Exedra discord now that MagiReco is over.

Magia Union Translations Discord: This is the Translator’s Discord. You don’t need to be a translator to join, and this is a friendly and passionate group for discussing the game.

Project Mokyuu: This is the Project Mokyuu’s discord, which is for a project dedicated to dubbing the game into English.

Other Places

Music Collection: A google drive containing a ton of PMMM music. Don your pirate hat and take a peruse.

MuffinRecord2: A channel I am curating that hosts all of the Transformation/Henshins, Magia, and Doppel videos.

Magia Record Anime Official Guidebook 2: Scanned by @silvermoon424, this post hosts several links, including where you can download/view the book, a link to purchase it, and links to other scanned Magia Record merch by the same author.

Walpurgis Raid Dialogue: An imgur album that was collaborated on by many players, and collected all of the dialogue characters made during the Last Magia event.

Event Side Dialogue Recordings: YouTube playlist made by the ever amazing Vivi! This is not translated but should be helpful for any translators looking for cross-reference material or for adding in future videos.

[aihoshiino]

Would you say there are any narrative parallels between Kyubey and Ichigo Saitou?

Oh for SURE. Obviously they both exist in very different contexts and are approaching the topic from varying levels of abstraction and such but both OnK and PMMM are at least in part about engaging with (specifically misogynistic) systems of exploitation that turn the societally imposed expectations of women's emotional labor into a commodified resource.

Kyubey and Ichigo are both agents of their respective systems acting to further its goals and ends, not necessarily out of malice but because they see exploitation as just the done thing within the framework they operate in.

Ichigo, obviously, is a businessman and I've talked before about how interesting I find the slightly manipulative undertones in the early days of his and Ai's relationship and how disappointed I am that it's something the series seems to want to downplay/retcon these days. Either way, he was still the one managing B-Komachi and therefore, he was the one who decided to market a bunch of middle school girls as 'gachikoi' idols to grown men who were way too fucking old to be thinking of them as romantic interests.

Kyubey is even more manipulative than Ichigo at the end of the day, but more out of this obsession with raw, razor's edge efficiency that the Incubators as a whole operate with. It's not that he feels... basically anything about the girls he's exploiting, but that it's just easier to bullshit them if it gets them to agree a little faster.

On that note, both of them are also pretty obviously similar in the ways they disguise exploitation as opportunity. The big hook of the MadoMagi magical girl system, after all, is the promise of having your wish granted up front and Kyubey constantly goes out of his way to emphasize to the girls just how much they could do with the opportunity that represents. The entertainment industry in OnK is framed in much the same way - Ai lets slip a certain lack that she's wrestling with and Ichigo immediately leaps at the chance to prescribe idolhood as the cure to all her ills.

Where they differ is in their actual personhood as characters as opposed to their utilitarian function in the greater narrative. Kyubey obviously doesn't really HAVE personhood, from both a Doylist and Watsonian perspective. He's an anthropomorphized representation of the system the girls spend all of PMMM fighting against and The System does not feel any sort of way about you or anything. It just Is.

Ichigo is, at the end of the day, an actual person who can and does have feelings about the exploitation he perpetuates and - at least in theory - comes to regret his hand in it. His entire role in the story post-volume 1 is (at least when Aka lets him do anything lol) about him trying to make sense of his grief in the wake of Ai's death and the role he ultimately had in making it come to pass.

TBH, there's a lot of interesting parallels between OnK and PMMM as a whole now I'm rolling them around in my head - the tension of trying to retain your personhood and agency within a system that's rigged against you, the way said system will use your desire for agency to make you complicit in your own abuse, the discussion surrounding the way girls 'fall from grace' and become monstrous once their emotions are no longer pure and palatable enough... A lot of this is just naturally emergent from being a story about systems that cannibalize girlhood, but it's interesting all the same. It's been way too long since I've properly engaged with PMMM for me to dig into it more but if anyone is at the right cross-section of OnK and PMMM brainrot, I'd love to see if you pick up on any of these same ideas too!

[connectfanzine]

☁️ INTEREST CHECK BREAKDOWN ☁️

Now that our interest check has closed and our applications are open, we wanted to thank everyone who responded to the interest check, which had a whopping total of 274 responses!

We are very happy to see so many people excited about our zine, and it's amazing how many different characters people are interested in!

View below the break for a breakdown of our data!

Additionally, many of the questions we received are answered in the FAQ on our Carrd.

Please check it out!

Out of 274 responses:

There are 173 interested artists, 63 interested writers, and 154 interested consumers (largely consisting of people who also wish to contribute)!

"Puella Magi Madoka Magica" is the series with the most interest, at 74.5% of all responses!

"Magia Record" is the runner up at 50.7%! The rest are as follows:

Magia Exedra - 27%

Oriko Magica - 18.2%

Scene 0 - 9.9%

Tart Magica - 9.5%

Suzune Magica - 6.2%

Kazumi Magica - 5.8%

Null Magical Girl - 3.6%

We received responses for an amazing 106 unique character pairs!

The top 5 pairs that people are interested in:

Madoka & Homura

Sayaka & Kyouko

Madoka & Sayaka

Mami & Kyouko

Rika & Ren

The top 10 pairs involving spin-offs specifically:

Rika & Ren

Oriko & Kirika

Iroha & Sana

Karin & Alina

Masara & Kokoro

Iroha & Yachiyo

Kaede & Rena

Homura & Mabayu

Momoko & Mitama

Tart & Riz

Shoutout to some of the more unique pairs we saw submitted:

Ichizo & Giovannia

Gisela & Kirsten

Eruna & Kosane

Hiyori & Elise (Mobage)

Namae & A.Q.

Regarding questions we received!

First things first, we wish to reiterate information about our project.

This is a free, digital-only zine with no merchandise, nothing physical, and nothing to purchase. There will be a PDF file in the end that everyone can download, and it will be distributed through itch.io.

This zine is open to ages 13 and above, and as such, it is completely SFW with no NSFW content or discussion allowed (like on our Discord server). Depictions of violence, gore, or other potentially sensitive content should be no worse than the level seen in the original PMMM series.

The core theme for our zine is vast and open-ended:

The meaningful relationships between a couple characters of choice, which can be platonic or familial rather than romantic. Contributors have the freedom to make up whatever story or art concept they want to create for the character pairs they want to focus on, so long as our guidelines are followed.

They are free to come up with their own pitches for what they want to draw or write, but we can assist with providing further themes or ideas if wanted. In order to ensure a level of variety, we will be providing feedback and reviewing all pitches before accepting them.

Contributors will all be invited to our Discord server for the zine, and will be able to choose how they are credited in this project.

Contributors are allowed to create up to two submissions if they wish to, but no more than that.

For more information on how contributors will be accepted, applications, and submission guidelines (such as art dimensions and fic word limits), please view the new guidelines page on our Carrd!

https://connectzine.carrd.co/#guidelines

We would like to allow contributors to draw/write the pairings of their choice, but in order to ensure a level of variety, we ask that everyone is open-minded to the possibility of being asked to change off of their first choices. This is a zine for the Madoka franchise, not just the HQ girls.

While Magical Girls are the focus of this zine, other characters are allowed within our core theme. Junko, Kazuko, Kyosuke, Hitomi, Shirogane, Hiko, Tasuke, even Witches-- They are allowed! Additionally, non-human artwork of characters is also allowed. AUs are also allowed as long as they follow our guidelines.

Once the application period has ended, we will take some time to review them all and will send out acceptance emails inviting everyone who has been accepted to our Discord server. After this point in the schedule, the team behind the zine will be settled and we will not be looking for any more new people, so there are no future opportunities for someone to try and join if they couldn't apply during our application period.

However, that being said, we will look at our pinch hitters in the case that we need them. Applicants can mark down in the application that they are okay with being a "pinch hitter" if they are not accepted into the zine, and what this means is that if someone has to leave the project, we will reach out to a pinch hitter in order to replace that missing person, thereby bringing them into the zine. There is no guarantee that we will need to make use of any pinch hitters.

Small artists are absolutely allowed to apply for our zine! Popularity or number of followers are not determining factors for how we will accept applicants, as per the information on our new guidelines page. We will not be able to accept everyone that applies, unfortunately, but we will make our choices based on the portfolios that applicants include in their contributor applications.

[yuzepi]

ok. cool. watching pmmm today, Things I Noticed, mostly sayaka-based bc she is my baby. I feel like most of these should be obvious but wahhh I want to gather all my thoughts here before I forget them

1. Sayaka’s magical girl costume design is just GENIUS. she has a really heroic cape which gives her figure really notice movement + I have to emphasize HEROIC MOTIF AGAIN1!! and she says she thinks she was “born to be a magical girl” so where is her soul gem in her magical girl outfit? Her Naval. #awesome

2a. The scene where Sayaka and Kyoko discuss like why kyoko became a magical girl and stuff is just riddled with religious imagery, from the actual content of the discusses (kyokos father being a preacher) to the scenery surrounding them to even the fact that kyoko is Eating An Apple. In the conversation she has with sayaka about how she should be more selfish. Like kyoko is almost always seen eating which I take to reading as Consumption, but it’s really powerful that in this scene she’s also offering sayaka a Temptation. and again, the stained glass part is so good

2b. in this same scene we get to see how genius they’ve been at foreshadowing the magical girls become witches thing because thoughout the show what we initially see as the really scary and start and abstract witches labyrinths contrasted with just the “purity” or normalcy of the real world is slowly stripped away as we learn more and more abt the dark secrets of magical girls. the bgs become more abstract the things we see surrounding actual magical girls resemble the weirdness found in the witches labyrinths more and more. ESPECIALLY apparent with kyoko here. also bro the eye motifs are so good you get your ass I’m going to copy and paste that into my own art

3. scene where sayakas fighting a witch. 1) the stylistic choice to me is incredibly mythic feeling, like something out of a legend or a children’s story. 2) its (almost entirely) monochrome and achromatic. Black and white. Much like sayakas own mindset where she never seems to observe the in between s and does see everything as black and white. going out on a stretch here but particularly the black against the white bg, sayaka herself being portrayed in this darkness, as though… She’s taking on this blackening toll in order to protect those she sees and innocent and pure

4. Ok I was watching the scene with madoka and kyoko and was like huh. Those are some very particular and specific silhouettes they’ve placed in the foreground. And then lo and behold. water motif with sayaka like she drowned in her empathy or smth (ok no, there are definitely better things I can try to figure out what the water is a motif , but I don’t have the brains for that rn) and like kyoko with her stabby spears being the unicorn. sorry im not rlly cooking anything I just loved how they came back to this

5. DEFINITELY a stretch but kyoko telling homura she has to fight for the one thing that matters most to her and protect it to the end and homura is 1) holding madoka here and 2). It sort of looks like a pieta!!!!!!

I’m enjoying watching this a lot and the art direction is incredibly gorgeous and the visual storytelling is strong and also obvious enough for someone like me to at least pic up on. ya im watching this to up my jonelias game . if I were to kin assign elias he would be kyubey or something. very gender (no surprise) and I love the commentary on being a girl and being a woman and the dehumanization and the horror of it all. I also want madokas mom. really good im having fun. bonus points to mami teacup motif but i feel like that ones so super duper obvious there’s not much point in me going off on a tangent about it. really making me realize how much I crave stories about Being a girl