An analysis of Relationships and Connections of the highly-popular anime series… from a view of an anime fan & an engineering student.
The original viewpoint was first posted on a Facebook group page in February of last year, and the Editorial Team thinks that it was interesting that we asked the author to write a longer version for our website. Please take note that this post does contain significant spoilers of the anime series.
I realized as an Engineering student that I can apply most of what I’ve learned in school to what happened on Puella Magi Madoka Magica produced by SHAFT. Why is this series popular to many anime enthusiasts?
For one thing, its plot goes through many unpredictable twists and turns that you wouldn’t easily guess what will happen to the five main characters of the story.
The story itself also has the balance of light and dark elements, with the light elements from the events before they become Mahou Shoujo, until it changes everything when they’ve become one that consists of the dark elements. Lastly, the characters themselves each have their impact to the viewers that makes this series an unforgettable to watch.
Well, here’s my point of view on the series. This analysis does contain spoilers, so I strongly recommend that you watch the series before reading further.
For Sayaka: Her only wish was to heal the hands of the violinist. But after her wish was granted, her friend fell in love with the violinist, leaving her to feel emptiness and sorrow. Moreover, her negative emotions bring bad energy to the universe because her desire is equivalent to her life.
For Kyouko: My first impression on her was quite bitchy, but her personality changed a lot throughout the series. She understands Sayaka’s emotions due to her uneasiness of her granted wish, so in the end she had to sacrifice for Sayaka just to maintain the balance of Sayaka’s emotions.
For Mami: This girl had changed everything in the series ever since her infamous fatality. Well for me, she has to go. Why? First, she was a veteran who assumes that knows everything about witches, but actually doesn’t know how the main characters all became witches. Second, since her popular technique “Tiro Finale” convinced Madoka to become a Mahou Shoujo, she became one of her closest companions.
I’m not saying that I hate her, but in the 10th episode where all of them are alive in a different time dimension, they knew that Kyubey is using them. He caused entropy to the five of them, making them kill each other off just to maintain the balance of the energy around them. Also, when Mami died early during the Walpurgis Night, Madoka wanted to continue the fight but Madoka ended with that same fate.
For Madoka: She’s afraid of losing her friends, meaning she cares about the people around her.
Madoka had a contract with Kyubey on the last episode, for she wanted to eliminate all the witches before the Grief Seed gave birth, since the Grief Seed is a corrupted Soul Gem that creates the birth of a witch—in other words, she wanted to release all the bad energy in the universe before it happens.
But it’s impossible to have all the good energy around the universe because it may cause entropy or randomness. In exchange, her existence in the universe is erased, which may mean she was banished in the Void or treated as a God.
For Homura: She was a time traveller all along, with the intention of protecting Madoka in her travels from one dimension to another. But despite all of her efforts, Madoka will still end up at that same fate where she’ll be a Mahou Shoujo. She also said that, “to give someone’s happiness, there has to be someone’s curse.” This is true as illustrated by this analogy: happiness is to good energy as sadness is to bad energy.
Homura is entirely to blame for this chaotic situation, for if you change the dimension of time, worse things may happen to other people. One thing at the end of the series you may notice that Homura had the full of bad energy around her, one reason is that she missed Madoka a lot, her emotions right now after what happened to Madoka, consists of bad energy around her. So in other words, bad energy is to Homura, as good energy is to Madoka. Hence, there is a yin-yang concept.
For Kyubey: Well, you may find Kyubey really annoying throughout the series, but for me he isn’t. Entropy occurs in his point of view, meaning the energy around people is purely chaotic, which is why he was really interested in humans. Moreover, our emotions will be considered as an entropy, for it is very random and unpredictable. He may be also considered as a guide on how to maintain the balance of good and bad energy. Although he didn’t exactly know why he understands the human value, our human value consists of our emotions that we are holding now.
It all fits the pieces together, but you may need critical thinking with some engineering analysis. Here are the engineering concepts that I’ve seen throughout the series:
1. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but it can transfer or change from one energy to another. In the anime, the soul Gem consists of energy to the soul of the human; it may change into a grief seed if the soul consists of bad energy of the human.
Kyubey was right on the 6th episode: our body is only a container that has the energy within—in other words, our soul is our energy. Also, all 5 of them have one thing in common: those Mahou Shoujos are considered to be the ones in control of the entropy that happened in the series.
Again for Sayaka, after her wish was granted, she transformed herself into a witch when she found out what she had to do in exchange of that wish. Despite Homura’s efforts to change Madoka’s fate through her power to travel through time, her fate never changed.
2. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
The main characters have truly gotten their desires, but for every wish granted, there is an equal price to pay. Sometimes, the price has the negative effect in your life. So be careful what you wish for, cause you just might get it.
3. The theory of relativity.
Since Homura is a time traveller, she can change the parameters of the world, but at the end of the day, she’ll lead our characters into one converging point, where Madoka became a Mahou Shoujo. Unless Kyubey was out of the picture or a different character made a contract with her, it will change everything.
From an Anime perspective, I considered this as a god-tier anime series, because it really shows what will be the viewer’s perspective on why all the various events happened to the main characters.
This is also different from any anime that you know, from generic mahou shoujo stuff to generic shounen action series. It is known that this series is full of dark elements, but it needs such elements to maintain balance.
But from a Real life perspective, it shows that life is really needs to be in balance: you have to be good most of the time, but sometimes you have to be evil to maintain the balance of energy within you.
Know your emotions and how to control them. And second, karma… do I have to explain it further? What goes around comes around.
Well this is all I could say for Madoka, so I suggest you watch the series for more critical analysis. Hopefully you will learn something in life, expand your knowledge in science, and at the same time applying one thing to another to improve things.
Now I have to wait for the Trilogy Movie to make a complete perspective.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This blogpost was written by Apa Palma for “Mapúa Anime Lovers” group page, and you may follow him on twitter at @chaotix37, and edited by Lorenz Baliwagan, and you may follow him on twitter at @PBNkapamilya.
