Analyzing Madoka Magica and what can we take from it?
T/W for talks of suicide and self harm
What is the meaning of Puella Magi Madoka Magica about?
I think this is pretty obvious and most people have already figured it out.
The show is meant to be an allegory for young girls being used and abused. But I feel like we can go even further into that.
Let’s start with Kyubey.
He is meant to symbolize predators. People who prey on young girls for their own dark and twisted wants and needs.
He approaches young, very young girls who are in bad positions in their lives. He offers them a way to make things better, to help them, but is lying and purposely makes their lives worse.
Kyubey is from a species called Incubators. They don’t feel emotion. Happiness, sadness, gratitude, jealousy.. it’s all foreign to them. In fact, it’s treated as a mental illness. (I like to think this is meant to represent young boys who are taught to block out all their emotions).
But, the universe is dying out. The only way to save it is to give it a continuous power source. But how to do that?
Well, emotions give off a lot of power! But Incubators can’t feel emotion. So they can’t do that. But humans.. humans feel all kinds of things. The most common and strongest one being sadness and despair. And you know who feels those things more than anyone? Young girls.
So Incubators purposefully prey on young girls, telling them they can be special and powerful. But they’re not special. Incubators do this to every young girl who are in bad situations in their lives.
Kyoko’s family was starving and in poverty, Mami was on the verge of death, Sayaka was watching the boy she loved have to suffer.
Of course they’re going to make a wish at these points in their lives. Either they were suffering, or they were watching the people they loved suffer.
(I like to think that Kyubey is meant to symbolize Satan, as well. He appears alluring and approachable and offers things too good to be true, only to want to hurt you in the end. It would be extra interesting given that Kyoko’s dad was a priest)
They take girls with promising futures, who are just in bad situations within their own lives, and tells them that they can make it all better. But once they do, things, just get worse.
Magical girls are destined to die. Destined to die in combat or fighting witches.
Witches are formed on a magical girl is at their lowest point, in the depths of despair. And whenever they’re killed, it releases a huge power source that keeps the universe going. I personally see this as symbolism for suicide. Feeling like things will only get better if you were gone and out of this world. That the universe will heal and be perfect if you just weren’t in it.
Now, Sayaka.
She is probably the most interesting character to talk about, since she is the prime example of all of this.
She was a young girl, so full of life and joy. But she was sad. Sad because the boy she liked was suffering in the hospital with an incurable illness.
But Kyubey showed up and told her he can help her. All she had to do was fight witches.
And, eventually, she agreed.
Things started off ok, but things went down fast.
Mami’s death from beforehand, for sure, but the thing that really fucked her up was learning the truth about the soul gem.
The soul gem is what given to magical girls once they agree to the contract. It’s what helps them transform and nothing else… right..?
No.
Kyubey never told the girls that soul gems are literally their souls. He removed their souls from their body and put it into a different source, essentially meaning magical girls aren’t even people anymore. They’re not alive, they’re not living. That they can’t physically feel anything.
This breaks Sayaka. How can she have the boy she loves when she’s not even human anymore? Does she even deserve him at that point? She can’t physically feel anything, not just spears and attacks, but also whether he were to kiss her or hold her. She would feel none of it.
Sayaka is meant to be an allegory for self harm.
“It’s true! I can block out the pain!”
“Just because you can feel anything doesn’t mean you can keep hurting yourself!”
Sayaka goes out of her way to put herself into dangerous situations and where she will get hurt, but since she can’t feel it because her soul isn’t in her body, she lets herself get hurt. In fact, she welcomes it.
But then things go from bad to horrible to even worse when she learned the boy she loved was going to be with Hitomi. The boy she had literally sold her soul for wasn’t even in love with her. Then again, that wasn’t exactly what Sayaka wanted. She can’t feel physical things anymore. She’s not even human anymore. She doesn’t think she’s worthy to be with him.
But what really pushes her over the edge is when she hears a group of guys trash talking their girlfriends. Sayaka had literally given up her entire life for a boy she loved. Now a group of guys were just out here saying girls aren’t worth shit.
Sayaka no longer sees any point in trying to protect people. Is the world even worth protecting? Is the world even worth.. living in? And so she becomes a witch.
Also, I love how Sayaka is often depicted with mermaids. If you know the original story of The Little Mermaid, then you know why.
So, who’s the next person to talk about?
Madoka.
Madoka sees how awful everything is. That young girls are used and abused by the Incubators? But what can she do?
She makes her wish. A wish that magical girls can’t and never have had to turn into witches.
Madoka literally changes the fabric of the universe with this wish, changing it to where past magical girls have never turned into witches. She saves them from a cruel ending. A cruel fate where they’ll only end up being used.
Madoka represents hope.
Even in this new timeline, magical girls still exist and have to fight monsters. But.. why? Madoka changed the timeline. She changed the universe. Why, why, WHY? Why are the girls still forced to do this? To fight and be used by the Incubators. Sure, they no longer are destined to die in the end, but they are still being used by the Incubators. Why does it have to be so?
This is how I view it.
It symbolizes that things will never be perfect.
That no matter how sad, how tragic, how horrible it is that young girls will be used, it happens.
We can’t put a stop to it all. We can’t halt the truth.
But what we can do is help them. Help them avoid giving in to the despair and hopelessness.
There will always be disgusting bastards out there who want to hurt young girls and use them to their advantage, but we can stand by them and help them to be hope within this world that isn’t beyond saving.
Usually these types of shows will try to say that we can fix the world and make it entirely good and perfect. But Madoka Magica takes a realistic approach on it. We can’t make the world perfect, but we can heal it and the people in it.
It’s bittersweet, but it’s beautiful.
And that’s what I think Puella Magi Madoka Magica is about.
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