Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica Plot Holes and/or Questions

[Sir Fluffykins]

Watching blind sheep wallow in a pile of filth that they believe is gold can only be described as pathetic. I take it that Madoka your first Gen Urobuchi story? I say this because anybody that isn't an edgy teen can comprehend that Urobuchi's writing is formulaic and stale. His always has his characters die off a few moments after they get their (hamfisted) development in an attempt to force the audience's emotions. This is an unruly method that shows immaturity and incompetence. Compare it to, say, Kei Amemiya's death in Jin-Roh. Her character evolved throughout the movie and featured a twist that, though was surprising, wasn't abrupt. Through her character we get to see an actual dilemma in Constable Kazuki Fuse's story in which he must make the choice between soldier or bystander with the undertones that once your involved you can't get out. Her involvement in the story had meaning, her development was well paced, and her death had subtle undertones that were only evident to the viewer through inspection, as opposed to being filled with preachy overtones. To continue on with the subject of Urobuchi's characters, let us move on to the characters themselves as opposed to how he uses them. Let's discuss the characters of Madoka, Mami, Kyouko, Sayaka, and Homura. Mami and Kyouko's characters were the second most flawed characters in Madoka, in my opinion. It's obvious that they were to serve as the "seasoned veteran" characters with Mami assuming somewhat of a guiding role while Kyouko served a role to show how Magical Girls rivaled one another (Before we got to her, we only saw a glimps of that with Homura and Mami.) Mami's character was extremely two-dimensional in comparison to, say, Lisa Lisa from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 2: Battle Tendency. They both were veterned characters who were to guide the characters (Mami = Sayaka and Madoka, Lisa Lisa = Joseph and Caeser). Mami's character, however, was just that, a guide. That was it. I wouldn't have too much of an issue with this if it weren't for the fact that she was given some "development" before her inevitable and obligatory death. If you are going give a character development, do not do it in this last minute manner. At the very least, build up to this moment, show some signs of her development. Do whatever you can, but at the least avoid it. Lisa Lisa's character was great. Her emotions were shown when they were necessary. For example, look at the time when Caeser died. How does she react? Well, at first we are lead to believe that she cares not for the death of her pupil; however, when she "fought" the vampire (The one that says "OK" at the end of his sentences) We see a great deal of her character as she attempts to hold in her grief and gets an obviously lump in her throat. As for Kyouko, let's talk about her relationship/rivalry with Sayaka by comparing them to that of Dio Brando and Jonathan Joestar's relationship/ rivalry. Kyouko and Sayaka's relationship/ rivalry developed too quickly for it to even be considered well written. It was a spur of the moment ordeal in which Kyouko suddenly became Sayaka's best buddy who would do anything for her, while completely disregarding their past confrontations. Dio and JoJo's relationship/rivalry grew into a monumental rivalry. One was a charismatic con-artist from a family of con-artists while the other was just a gullible child who wanted nothing more than to do the right. We see Dio and JoJo's relationship go from your average squabble in between brothers to a monumental rivalry of tremendous proportions. JoJo overcame the bounds of being a human to fight against Dio, a genetically superior vampire. After all, JoJo was acting out of grief for his father's death and could care less about what happened to himself. We see more of how JoJo felt when he "killed" Dio. He struggled when he "killed" him. He still, despite all of what had occurred, thought of Dio as family and couldn't let go of this fact. Their rivalry was great. We didn't have rushed development with them. Their rivalry still had their brotherly bond involved, and wasn't black-and-white such as Kyouko and Sayaka's. As for Homura, well, her character was just poor in general. Her motives, though clear, were generally idiotic and went along the lines of, "I will save one person, at the price of the world." This was just insanity, especially because this occurred because Madoka was nice to her in class. I generally dislike characters such as Homura (Characters whose motives are just bi-products of extreme overreactions.), so I might have a bit of a bias, thus, I won't get into her character to avoid a biassed review of her character. Madoka herself is a fairly average, but has barely any focus placed onto her. It would have been more impactful to give her some more inner monologues, so we could get more from her character and find out what she thinks about the specific situation. Unfortunately, we barely get much of her thoughts on being a magic girl. Especially around episode 8 or so in which the show pretty much becomes Homura Magika. This leads into another issue, the ending. Let us compare Enrico Pucci's universal reset to Madoka's universal reset. Madoka's universal reset was a pretentious deus ex machina, another unruly literary tactic. The animation of it all happening was completely unnecessary and ruined the entire moment in that it was blatantly just SHAFT using up the rest of their budget and Shinbo being a horrible director, as usual. The scene would have been better if it just acted as a reset, rather than Madoka doing some TTGL ****. It's like Scar Symmetry's Morphogenesis music video. The directing of the music video detracted from a great song. You see, Enrico's ability to reset the universe was explained before hand and the audience was well aware of it. We also weren't subjected to some tedious panels to lead into this, we just got one page to focus on it, and that was it. It wasn't delivered poorly either. In fact, the universal reset lead a monumental change in the world that affected the entirety of the story (as opposed to some minor effect such as Madoka's Demons = new Witches and Madoka = Magical Escort to Magic Girl Valhalla) The universal reset (The one that led into Steel Ball Run) occurred because of the defeat of the main antagonist, as opposed to occurring to combat the antagonist due to the author writing himself into a corner. By the way, never use that He-Doesn't-Like-It-So-He-Must-Hate-The-Whole-Genre "argument." It just makes you look like an immature child who can't handle differing opinions. Although, the shoe fits in this situation.

Someone get Backmask some grief-seeds, he's clearly fallen to despair.

With the exception of Mami, don't all the girls have their character developments -around 2 episodes before they die? I also agree at some point it became about Homura, but as it's explained in Homura's flashback and why Madoka is now queen-bee of the magic-girls I let it slide.

As I said, to me it was something different from the panty-shots and boob-groping -but why after all the "tradegy", forced and what-not, does Madoka's very existance (as a schoolgirl, daughter, etc) have to get erased as well? It's like in Kingdom Hearts 2, where everyone forgot Sora and you find out people don't "die" per-say, they're "forgotten" and I found that a hell of a lot worse than death.

[jinzo64]

I want to say a couple of things

1.Back wrote way to much,and the way it's presented makes it hard to read,big ol block of text style.

2.I recently started reading the manga just need to order volume 2

3.the anime is out in the u.k at the end of the month so i'll probably buy that next month.

4.From what I've read so far it seems interesting I guess I'll have to wait and see if I acctually enjoy the series,I can't realt make a justified opinion on the reading of 1 volume of the manga.

[abyssion1337]

I see that you're still using that strung-out, hypocritical garbage that is essentially a glorified way of saying, "ur a faget" as an argument.

Again, I'm not though, I'm legitimately criticizing your lack of thought when you post, I'm in no way trying to invalidate your opinion when I say that, I'm saying hat you're not adequately backing up your opinions, which would be fine if you ever just said, "I just don't like it." But no you get super defensive and start throwing **** at me, you're the hypocrite here and you know it, so cut the bull**** and have a discussion. As for the rest of your wall of text (FOR THE LOVE GOD PLEASE IF YOU'RE GOING TO TYPE THAT MUCH BREAK IT UP INTO PARAGRAPHS), or rather as much as it as I can without getting a headache. It's actually not my first Gen Urobuchi story, I simply don't care about the failings of the stories he's written before, when I look at a thing, unless it's some sort of sequel where you have to have seen previous parts to understand what's going on, I make sure to look at that thing as it stands on its own. I don't think Madoka has a problem with obligatory character deaths because that's how he writes, their obligatory because the story calls for them. And actually I also have to disagree about the character development being ham-handed, for starters, it IS a little ham handed at times, not as much as your hyperbolic rhetoric would suggest but it is a little. This is what's known as a story telling concession, as an example think of the FBI agent's glasses from Heavy Rain, they clearly don't fit in with the tone of the story but they're only a little disruptive compared to how much they smooth out the pacing of the story. That's obviously just a big obvious example, it's usually more subtle than that but honestly for someone who knows so much about story telling, I shouldn't have to explain this.

Actually now that you've brought up character development, you're wrong about Mami, she very much isn't supposed to act as a guide. She kinda is, but that's actually primarily Kyoko's job. The thing with Madoka Magika is that it's easy to focus on the fact that it's a magical girl deconstruction, so it's easy to overlook other things, like how it's also a Hero's Journey deconstruction (I assume you've read hero with a thousand faces.) I suspect this is largely due to the fact that Magical Girl is a genre that heavily relies on parts of the hero's journey to tell it. You can just think of her as a subversion of Obi Wan. And that's the thing, the huge flaw in your argument, mentors get little to no development, because it's not their story, their story already happened (and in Obi Wan's case it was a ****ty prequel) all you need to know about the mentor is that they're a seasoned veteran. Mami though, like I said is less of a mentor more of a cautionary tale, she does explain what being a magical girl is like but she doesn't help the heroes in any meaningful way save to show them not to embrace the doomed existence of a magical girl life. In all actuality her death serves as the first bit of evidence that Kyubei is deceitful, because she didn't survive that car accident, kyubey didn't give her live her gave her borrowed time. She knows being a magical girl sucks but she has no choice in the matter so she accepts the magical girl life as much as she can. It's a little like batman, Bruce Wayne died with his parents the night they were gunned down and while a hint of him still exists, Bruce Wayne is more or less a mask batman wears to fit in with normal society so he can also sometimes operate within the boundaries of the law.

I would talk about Kyoko here, about how she functions as a mentor but honestly, they ****ed up with her, she's a badly done character. Too much angst, not that she doesn't have a reason to be a little angsty and bitter, because those should be aspects of her character but they went too far and now all I can see her doing is spending all her free time listening to Alice in Chains and reading Catcher in the Rye. Honestly I'm going to call it quits here for now, because it's getting really tedious to go through that wall of text and you're making a rather large mistake by comparing to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, they two aren't really comparable because of pacing of and tone they're just so different straight down to genre that it seems more like you're using a monumental number of words to say, "I don't like that genre, I prefer this one."

Oh one more thing, I like discussion especially with people who having opposing viewpoints, but if you continue to be hostile towards me personally I'm going to ask you to leave the thread, it's just not cool what you're doing. I remember there as a Lucky Star thread, I really ****ing hate lucky star so you know what I did? I didn't ****ing post there and bug all the people who do like it. Also because you're going to bring it up, me asking you to give reasons for your opinions and telling you to stop hand waving counterpoints and questions I bring up isn't me being hostile, you hand waving is just really disrespectful and not conducive to a good discussion which is why I get angry at you in the first place.

[Guthix]

Watching blind sheep wallow in a pile of filth that they believe is gold can only be described as pathetic. I take it that Madoka your first Gen Urobuchi story? I say this because anybody that isn't an edgy teen can comprehend that Urobuchi's writing is formulaic and stale. His always has his characters die off a few moments after they get their (hamfisted) development in an attempt to force the audience's emotions. This is an unruly method that shows immaturity and incompetence. Compare it to, say, Kei Amemiya's death in Jin-Roh. Her character evolved throughout the movie and featured a twist that, though was surprising, wasn't abrupt. Through her character we get to see an actual dilemma in Constable Kazuki Fuse's story in which he must make the choice between soldier or bystander with the undertones that once your involved you can't get out. Her involvement in the story had meaning, her development was well paced, and her death had subtle undertones that were only evident to the viewer through inspection, as opposed to being filled with preachy overtones. To continue on with the subject of Urobuchi's characters, let us move on to the characters themselves as opposed to how he uses them. Let's discuss the characters of Madoka, Mami, Kyouko, Sayaka, and Homura. Mami and Kyouko's characters were the second most flawed characters in Madoka, in my opinion. It's obvious that they were to serve as the "seasoned veteran" characters with Mami assuming somewhat of a guiding role while Kyouko served a role to show how Magical Girls rivaled one another (Before we got to her, we only saw a glimps of that with Homura and Mami.) Mami's character was extremely two-dimensional in comparison to, say, Lisa Lisa from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 2: Battle Tendency. They both were veterned characters who were to guide the characters (Mami = Sayaka and Madoka, Lisa Lisa = Joseph and Caeser). Mami's character, however, was just that, a guide. That was it. I wouldn't have too much of an issue with this if it weren't for the fact that she was given some "development" before her inevitable and obligatory death. If you are going give a character development, do not do it in this last minute manner. At the very least, build up to this moment, show some signs of her development. Do whatever you can, but at the least avoid it. Lisa Lisa's character was great. Her emotions were shown when they were necessary. For example, look at the time when Caeser died. How does she react? Well, at first we are lead to believe that she cares not for the death of her pupil; however, when she "fought" the vampire (The one that says "OK" at the end of his sentences) We see a great deal of her character as she attempts to hold in her grief and gets an obviously lump in her throat. As for Kyouko, let's talk about her relationship/rivalry with Sayaka by comparing them to that of Dio Brando and Jonathan Joestar's relationship/ rivalry. Kyouko and Sayaka's relationship/ rivalry developed too quickly for it to even be considered well written. It was a spur of the moment ordeal in which Kyouko suddenly became Sayaka's best buddy who would do anything for her, while completely disregarding their past confrontations. Dio and JoJo's relationship/rivalry grew into a monumental rivalry. One was a charismatic con-artist from a family of con-artists while the other was just a gullible child who wanted nothing more than to do the right. We see Dio and JoJo's relationship go from your average squabble in between brothers to a monumental rivalry of tremendous proportions. JoJo overcame the bounds of being a human to fight against Dio, a genetically superior vampire. After all, JoJo was acting out of grief for his father's death and could care less about what happened to himself. We see more of how JoJo felt when he "killed" Dio. He struggled when he "killed" him. He still, despite all of what had occurred, thought of Dio as family and couldn't let go of this fact. Their rivalry was great. We didn't have rushed development with them. Their rivalry still had their brotherly bond involved, and wasn't black-and-white such as Kyouko and Sayaka's. As for Homura, well, her character was just poor in general. Her motives, though clear, were generally idiotic and went along the lines of, "I will save one person, at the price of the world." This was just insanity, especially because this occurred because Madoka was nice to her in class. I generally dislike characters such as Homura (Characters whose motives are just bi-products of extreme overreactions.), so I might have a bit of a bias, thus, I won't get into her character to avoid a biassed review of her character. Madoka herself is a fairly average, but has barely any focus placed onto her. It would have been more impactful to give her some more inner monologues, so we could get more from her character and find out what she thinks about the specific situation. Unfortunately, we barely get much of her thoughts on being a magic girl. Especially around episode 8 or so in which the show pretty much becomes Homura Magika. This leads into another issue, the ending. Let us compare Enrico Pucci's universal reset to Madoka's universal reset. Madoka's universal reset was a pretentious deus ex machina, another unruly literary tactic. The animation of it all happening was completely unnecessary and ruined the entire moment in that it was blatantly just SHAFT using up the rest of their budget and Shinbo being a horrible director, as usual. The scene would have been better if it just acted as a reset, rather than Madoka doing some TTGL ****. It's like Scar Symmetry's Morphogenesis music video. The directing of the music video detracted from a great song. You see, Enrico's ability to reset the universe was explained before hand and the audience was well aware of it. We also weren't subjected to some tedious panels to lead into this, we just got one page to focus on it, and that was it. It wasn't delivered poorly either. In fact, the universal reset lead a monumental change in the world that affected the entirety of the story (as opposed to some minor effect such as Madoka's Demons = new Witches and Madoka = Magical Escort to Magic Girl Valhalla) The universal reset (The one that led into Steel Ball Run) occurred because of the defeat of the main antagonist, as opposed to occurring to combat the antagonist due to the author writing himself into a corner. By the way, never use that He-Doesn't-Like-It-So-He-Must-Hate-The-Whole-Genre "argument." It just makes you look like an immature child who can't handle differing opinions. Although, the shoe fits in this situation.


I see that you're still using that strung-out, hypocritical garbage that is essentially a glorified way of saying, "ur a faget" as an argument.

oh man, only backmask can piss me off witch such a wall of text [i think ill even try to type decently].
i just love, how your jojo examples are like 3 times longer regarding explanation.

First off, Mami, I sorta agree on the guide role ,but I think you forgot something, or simply didnt type it. Mamis death WAS part of the guide, it was a sign that **** is real, that being a magical girls is truly not rainbows and flowers.

Kyoko - all I can say that those who don't see the reason of all her "angst" try actualy starving, you'll be surprized how it changes you. On top of that the rivalry between Kyoko and Sayaka is closer to the describtion you gave Back. Kyoko was dead serious about survival unlike the newbs who still thought witches were the main problem. On top of that Kyoko sees how hard Sayaka was hit by reality [as in her wish backfired], in stories there are characters who show compasion to others who walk a similar path, they both wished for something and they both got despair in return.

Madoka - eh... you got me there, the writer just slapped a shalow airhead, who is like a child put in a tiger pen, untill the last moments.

Homura - you underestimate lonelyness, because not only in stories, but even in real life people go into extreemes pushed by this emotion. Homura was attached to Madoka almoust in a yandere style.

Kyubei - out of these debates i've come to realize that he was actualy lying. The reason why QB didn't fix his own **** with wishes, because he knew they were flawed. Each wish had a side affect, which nullified the main point the wish was made in the first place.

The ending. By the side affect theory, if the wish cannot have a side affect it simply consumes the user itself, to insert the flaw ragardless. Simply speaking Madokas wish was granded, but she never actualy got it. As for the memory of the non egzistant protagonist, I'm assuming the're going by the same logic Madoka has such immense power. The same way Homuras time jumps created power, the same way madokas egzistense was imprinded in everyones subconsious.

Aslo i've been meaning to tell you this back. While elitism and perfection are commendable traits, they also have flaws. Elitist are often alone, lonelyness breeds the sense that you're always right letting you pick up flaws as they fit only your logic. You may go for superiority, but once you detach from the rest, no one will understand you and you'll just be another useless person, looking like a retard. Flaws will always be there, no matter how discust you'll be at them.

[abyssion1337]

Don't get me wrong, I agree that Kyoko should have angst, I just think she was more angst than needed by quite a bit.

Also guthix, grats on mostly using real words. Mostly.

[Guthix]

Don't get me wrong, I agree that Kyoko should have angst, I just think she was more angst than needed by quite a bit.

Also guthix, grats on mostly using real words. Mostly.

thats kind of an opinion matter since when creating something like emotion you cant clearly measure it, since i my self found her actions fitting her background.i would have said it was too much if she simply stayed in the background watching the slaughter and the collecting the "food" without showing any compasion

as well i dont see any reason to congratulate me, it just tends to be tiresome when i need to do extra explanation from doing typos

[abyssion1337]

Honestly my problem with Kyoko's angst is she has so much it overshadows her other character traits, having a dominant trait isn't such a bad thing but angst isn't one of her main traits, angst is how she expresses bitterness and there are more ways to express bitterness than just angst. They should have cut a lot of the angst so she could show one or 2 of them. Also angst != callousness.

[Gleeman]

I was referring to the quality of the writing, not Madoka's contraversy.

Fair enough, I was responding to the thread in general anyway. (why I didn't quote you) It's possible to poke plot holes in anything from The Godfather to Uwe Boll films. I haven't seen the other shows you mention - JoJo's I just haven't seen (I usually avoid Shonen Jump and the description didn't sound interesting), Kamen Rider - I don't do Super Sentai; so I can't judge your opinion on that. Have seen Madoka, thought it was good, but have not read the manga.

Kyubei - out of these debates i've come to realize that he was actualy lying. The reason why QB didn't fix his own **** with wishes, because he knew they were flawed. Each wish had a side affect, which nullified the main point the wish was made in the first place.

My easy answer: Kyubei's a dick.