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sayaberry · 9 months

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completely sane and comprehensive walpurgis rising trailer analysis (+ concept trailer stuff)

from a normal madoka fan who can be trusted with lore

for coherency sake im putting this in sections of this doesn't completely look and read like word vomit, these are just some observations and theories i had about the stuff in the new film trailer

(im so fucking sorry for how long this is)

Homura’s new role

i’ve seen other fans bring this up over the past week so i won’t go fully into detail, but i do agree with the sentiment going around that homura has taken up kyubey’s role as the one who gives out contracts to new magical girls. mainly this part is just to further give evidence to this theory + other observations I noticed in relation to this

while there are some lines of dialogue in the trailer, what’s interesting is we only have 3 speaking voices in the entire film - homura, madoka, and what i believe might be walpurgis themselves (keyword here is might be, but we’ll get to that). focusing on the lines homura however, they sound interesting don't they?

they sound like she’s asking the viewer (possibly even a new magical girl) if they agree to the terms of a deal - a contract.

there is also that unknown new girl where, not only with her outfit having motifs of homura's original design, but in the background of the scene she first appears in, we can see homucifer's symbol appearing as she begins to cast her magic - a way of indicating that homura is giving magic to these girls maybe?

not to mention that the dress homura is wearing in this shot is absolutely emulating walpurgis’s aesthetics, so if homura really is playing villain like she claimed she would be at the end of rebellion to madoka, then taking up the role and dressing up as the 2 things that hurt her the most is a good way to show it

Multi-homu

the devil herself has some very… inconsistent character designs shown in the trailer - going from having a new dress to completely lighter hair and a new headband in her uniform to even in the POSTER design with a red ribbon similar to the one on her ultimate form

i want to posit this theory; that the homura’s in both the trailer and poster (with the exception of one) aren’t homura at all, or at least not a true homura - they’re her clara dolls

i have good reason to believe this, see, the multiple homura’s we see do have one thing in common with each other despite the differences in their designs (save for the fact they’re all homura) and that is they all share a design with a certain corresponding clara doll

the contractor homura we see at the beginning? she’s the 10th clara doll due to the flower clip and the similar looking shawl this homura wears:

uniform homura? that’s the 2nd clara doll due to the cross pattern found both on homura’s new headband and the nekura’s hat:

ribbon homura from the poster? its a little tricky since we can’t see her front but judging from the ribbon this could either be the 4th clara doll or the 8th clara doll, due to them both having ribbons in their hair design wise.

alternatively, this COULD also be the real homura, but the tell of whether it’s the real homura or not is obscured in the poster for the same reason we’re able to tell which one is the real homura in the trailer

the real homura? it's the one we see sitting in the chair on the school roof, and we know this is her because this is the only homura we saw with her soul gem:

her soul gem being here is important bc from what we can tell, the other copies don't have soul gems on them - for example, contractor homura summons the rotary phone right? if this was the real homura the she would have had her gem visible on her hand AND be able to summon the phone with it instead of using a proxy (the lizard, notice how the magic to summon the phone is also red?)

one more thing that proves this could be what's going on is in the concept trailer, we hear this conversation between 2 girls, and since the clara dolls are technically alive, this could be referring to them pretending to be homura (although i'll admit this could be a stretch)

i assume having multiple homura's is real homura's solution for not only keeping an eye on things, but a way for homura be near madoka 24/7. even if homura is the devil she can’t exactly be everywhere all at once (she only has a piece of the law of the cycles, so unlike godoka her powers are assumingly more limited than we realize),

therefore in my mind her solution then would to put a fake homura in locations that she would be able to keep constant watch over madoka - and with the ones we’ve seen so far; one at the school, and one for her magical girl duties

and why wouldn’t homura do this, after all the real homura is a clara doll herself! she’s canonically the 15th clara doll that’s missing, ai; and if the real homura can be a clara doll, why can’t the clara dolls become homura herself?

The Moon

one of the first shots we see within the trailer is of this room. the first thing that someone will notice is the giant half moon with telescopes embedded into it in the dead centre of the picture.

of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this moon before is it, it's also at the very end of rebellion!

due to the angle of the framed moon, one might assume that the one we see in walpurgis is the missing half of the moon from rebellion, but it's not! the halves are the moon in both walpurgis + rebellion are meant to represent homura and madoka respectively; with homura’s half being the one hanging in the sky and madoka’s half being missing. this can be further proved with further context the moon in walpurgis shows us

i want to talk about the actual frame the moon is being enclosed by. the frame itself isn’t really a frame at all - it’s a tarot card. specifically, it’s the tarot card for The Moon (XVII). not only is it fitting, but it’s also proof that what we are seeing is homura’s half of the moon given the meaning of the tarot itself

while i'm no expert in tarot, from what i’ve read The Moon seems to symbolize bad energy, false friends, deception, and intuition in people’s lives. but this is just the main meaning of the card, for those who don’t know tarot cards can have 2 different meanings. when The Moon is upright it’s a symbol for anxiety, illusion, fear, misconception, etc - basically, negative emotions. when The Moon is reversed however, it becomes a symbol for unveiling secrets, truth, regaining composure, and generally more positive/intuitive things

don’t these descriptions sound familiar? they are meant to represent madoka (reversed) and homura (upright) respectively, and due to the frame being in the upright position, it’s clear that the moon here is actually homura’s

if this is not proof enough, look at the telescopes imbued into the missing half of the half moon. what other character would it be other than homura that would be constantly looking for/at their missing half (madoka)?

(side note: while her half is still missing, those pinned butterflies we see could represent madoka here, as pinned butterflies often represent something that is innocent and fragile when alive being now trapped and dead, but still just as beautiful. great way to present how homura views normal madoka and godoka visually/subtlety)

Voice on the Phone

the trailer has 3 characters who have spoken lines of dialogue; homura, madoka, and a third unknown voice we hear talking to homura over the phone, and i have 2 ideas who this could be

here is the dialogue spoken by the unknown voice in the entire scene (+ one other character but we'll get to that)

(note: the pink line is madoka's line, just highlighted it for clarity)

before i explain who i think it might be i wanted to point out smth, the “it’s a secret/don’t tell anyone” lines might in fact be related to what hitomi of all people says in the concept trailer, the secret obvs being about madoka being a god and if she were to find out, everything would end:

additional context aside, one person i believe to be that voice on the phone is actually walpurgis. after all, the film is named after the stage witch and therefore playing a central part of the film, so them being a character would make sense. walpurgis is also a witch who is implied to be made up of other witches, so having multiple voices would make sense as well

as for the dialogue, it’s clear that it’s asking for homura to set madoka free so she can bring hope again. considering the end of the original series and how madoka brought hope for all magical girls who despaired and became witches (esp if they were the witches who became part of walpurgis by the end), it would absolutely want madoka to come back and bring them hope again. she was their salvation (just hope), their “best friend” who they don’t really know (madoka disappears due to her wish) but know they love - exactly why it’s able to call homura out on her hypocrisy of her doing this all for madoka in the first place. plus the trailer shows shots of walpurgis from the original show during this scene so it could be the trailer’s way of showing not telling who’s on the other side of the phone

as for the second person, you're gonna have to hear me out on this one; i believe there is a strong chance that the person on the other end of the phone is actually godoka - or to be specific, what's left of the law of the cycles (LoC)

remember, madoka split into 2 pieces; the piece that homura stole for herself - the human girl known as ‘madoka’, and the law of the cycles (godoka). if one piece is being under constant surveillance, where is the final piece? also crucial to point out that despite madoka being “normal” again and homura in charge, madoka’s wish is still in effect. this is both proven at the end of rebellion, the concept trailer, AND the new trailer - and the how is simple; the magical girls are still fighting wraiths, meaning the witches are still gone!

in rebellion homura states she still needs to deal with the wraiths, in concept trailer we see oktavia fighting a wraith + concept art for one, and in walpurgis we see the word wraith what im assuming to be a per-transformation scene (we'll get to that soon):

going back to the dialogue, it also would make sense this is LoC calling homura out to free her other half. Loc is like a cog in the machine without her human half, she only knows her job is to bring hope (just hope) but lacks the humanity to understand everything else, which would leave her without her emotions (something essential to magical girls) and sort of… monotone, perhaps even something like the voice speaking on the phone. without her humanity, LoC wouldn’t know who homura actually is (magical girl i don’t know), but she might retain that homura was her best friend that stole her humanity. not to mention madoka herself was also THERE when homura made the claim that she was the devil and doing this out of love for madoka! and call her out for it as well!

and if that still wasn’t enough the ONLY other voice we hear speak in the trailer is madoka herself, and only during this dialogue. at this point there’s enough of her to keep the witches away, but not much else

Unknown Magical Girl

as everyone knows, we see an unknown magical girl (who is wearing an outfit reminiscent of homura's) getting ready to fight something offscreen, and while we don’t get a really good look at her she doesn’t seem like someone we recognize. this is girl is highly likely one of the new magical girls we saw in the concept trailer, and while designs have obviously changed a lot since the trailer came out back in 2015 (and yeah, it WAS that long ago), if i had to take a guess on what concept design she would be, i'd guess this one:

her bangs are the closest to the new girl's hair from what can be seen so currently, she's the most likely contender

another thing to help prove this is a new girl is the shot we see of abandoned shoes on top a building (something that is usually seen as a way to imply suicide in japanese media) and a girl falling off a building into a cloud of pink.. something. im fairly certain what we're looking at is a pre-transformation scene, as:

even though the girl is falling, interestingly enough, if you look at the environment around her the rain has suddenly stopped, as if we’ve frozen time again (more proof for homura being involved with the magical girl process via a contractor this time around?)

is when the text for ‘wraith’ pops up

in a blink and you miss it moment, we see this kanji repeated on screen - and with my shitty transitional skills, the kanji shown here is the one for “who”, as in “who are you?”

pretty close and shut case right? mainly because i'm a contrarian i do want to throw out that this could absolutely be a red herring and this isn't a new girl at all, and actually madoka, but i might actually save that for an entirely separate theory post since it mainly fits into that

Hidden Images

now this is the one that I'm going to sound completely crazy for, which is why i saved it for last, but I fully believe there are hidden images hinting more to stuff that might happen in the film within the credits over the course of the entire trailer

i don't think any of these are new scenes, but just like with the walpurgis/homura part they’re showcasing relevant scenes from the anime/rebellion. But the keyword here is relevant, and it’s VERY interesting if i’m right on the scene they’ve hidden throughout the trailer.

first one is straight forward, there’s a hidden walpurgis in this shot here:

the second one however is way more interesting, as it appears MULTIPLE times throughout the rest of the trailer! once at 0:42, then again at 1:12, and the finally at 1:21 with the title credits. this is the image as i can get it most clearly:

doesn't that look familiar? it should. because this is none other homura than wrapped up in the karmatic strings from the original anime; the same strings that we ALSO see madoka is wrapped in!

of all the scenes to chose, it's fascinating that they choose the karmatic strings where homura specifically (since the girl in the trailer doesn't have madoka's pigtails, so we can conclude it's homura) is wrapped up. in the anime the original context is talking about homura becoming a witch (which shows her turning into a grief seed which is also in the trailer, not adding the screencap tho since its harder to see), and considering the stuff happening in walpurgis this is probably another red flag we're seeing for homura

(side note: im also personally interested for a different reason due to another theory i have related to homura being an anomaly since the end of the og anime like madoka but i haven't written/posted yet but i will someday. probably. bringing it up here tho just in case)

Extra

this is just some extra stuff i noticed that didn't really cleanly fit into a theory:

while im not 100% sure what the object contractor homura is sitting on (i know it's SOMETHING, but i cannot for the life of me remember what it is, looks a little like a mix of a harp and iroha's crossbow ironically tho), what is identifiable are the lights that surround her

specifically, the pink-ish sand we see in the lights is the same sand we see in homura's shield, the same sand she uses to reset time with

and of course the most obvious one, sayaka's new outfit with the bandages is a redesign of her with the mask we see in the concept trailer! shame we can’t have a better look at the original but tbh i like the new one better

(note: i do think the new designs for everyone tie into the previously mentioned theory from the unknown girl section but im putting this one here bc why not lol)

i believe that's mainly everything i wanted to talk about, idk how to end this

#THIS IS SO LATE IM SORRY but last 2 weeks irl have kicked my ass #plus editing this to sound half way coherent was apparently harder than i thought it would be (i cut out like 2 entire sections too LMAOOO)#I CAN BE TRUSTED WITH MADOKA LORE I SWEAR #madoka magica #walpurgisnacht rising #hopefully i can post the other theory i talked about soon its technically done but i gotta edit it again now that ive decided to separate i

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