Magical Girl Archetypes:
Madoka Kaname: The Wide-Eyed Protagonist
Madoka Kaname shows us exactly how a sweet and gentle girl would react to the ups and downs of the magical girl system. Originally enticed by the promises of being able to help others and get a wish granted doing so, she is quickly exposed to just how dangerous and horrific the life of a magical girl is. Madoka spends the majority of the series with a terrified expression on her face, in tears, or just depressed. It’s clear that the horrors around her have taken their toll on her and, had she not learned of the sacrifices Homura had made for her, it’s very possible that she would have spent the rest of her life emotionally scarred. Madoka shows us how many of us would react to the less than glamorous aspects of being a magical girl. In addition, it’s implied that Madoka’s self-sacrificial nature stems from her sense of self-worthlessness.
Homura Akemi: The Aloof Loner
Many magical girl shows include a girl who is very aloof from the others and oftentimes refuses to work with them. Homura Akemi is introduced as one of these loners. It’s only towards the end of the series do we learn why Homura is the way she is. Originally a cute and shy girl, she lived through countless timelines, forced to watch her friends (especially Madoka) die over and over again in each one. After being forced to mercy kill Madoka in order to prevent her from becoming a witch, she became uncaring and aloof as a defense mechanism. Madoka Magica shows that this is the case for many of these loner girls; they became the way they are after countless heartbreaks.
Mami Tomoe: The Big Sister
Mami Tomoe is introduced as the ideal magical girl- Cool, beautiful, elegant, mature, and, most importantly, uses her powers to protect the innocent and vulnerable from witches. Madoka and Sayaka are in awe of her, and she takes them under her wing and acts like a big sister to them. However, as time wears on, the viewer begins to see the cracks in the face that Mami puts on. In episode three, she admits to Madoka that she is desperately lonely and only acts cool, crying alone and not letting anyone see the real her. The cracks only deepen after this revelation. In one of Homura’s alternate timelines, it’s shown that Mami cracked after learning the terrible truth of where witches originate and takes it upon herself to mercy kill her teammates (starting with Kyoko) in order to save them from a fate worse than death. Finally, in The Different Story manga, Mami doesn’t snap upon learning the truth but ends up so broken by her experiences that she commits suicide by shattering her Soul Gem. Mami’s appearance of an ideal magical girl and big sister figure is nothing more than a facade she puts up to hide how broken she is from battling witches on her own and living in isolation.
Sayaka Miki: The Selfless Hero of Justice
Sayaka starts her career as a magical girl vowing to follow in the footsteps of Mami, who cared more about protecting innocent people than getting grief seeds. Sayaka swears to become a knight of justice, protecting the weak and being a hero to those who need it. This is even reflected in her costume, which is the only one in the series to feature a cape (an item often associated with superheroes and dashing swordsmen). She even starts with a selfless wish, to heal Kyousuke Kamijou’s hand. However, as the series wears on, Sayaka begins to wonder if she’s really as selfless as she appears to be. She agonizes over whether or not she healed Kyousuke’s hand simply for his own sake or because she wanted him to be indebted to her. Sayaka’s motives imply that there is no such thing as a truly selfless wish or heroine, and all altruistic actions are motivated in part by the person who commits them’s own desires, at least subconsciously. However, in the final episode, Sayaka redeems herself when she realizes that she never wanted Kyousuke to be indebted to her at all. She just wanted other people to be able to hear his music.
Kyoko Sakura: The Selfish Antihero
The antithesis of Sayaka, Kyoko is introduced as a selfish magical girl who is looking out for no one but herself. She even stops Sayaka from killing a familiar, as a familiar would eventually grow into a witch (after consuming enough people) that would have a grief seed, something every magical girl needs to clean her Soul Gem (Kyoko explains it as a food chain- “Witches eat people and we eat witches.”) Kyoko is much more of an antihero than Homura; she willingly lets people die and is incredibly selfish, only ever using her magic to benefit herself. However, we soon learn why Kyoko has this philosophy. Her wish was that people would listen to her father, a preacher whose followers had turned on him once he had stopped preaching regular doctrine. Although Kyoko’s wish works, her father soon learns that the people who listen to him only do so under the influence of magic, leading him to accuse Kyoko of witchcraft. In despair, he gets drunk, murders Kyoko’s mother and sister, and hangs himself, leaving Kyoko alone in the world. Kyoko believes that her wish destroyed her family, causing her to lose her ideals as a selfless magical girl and driving her to only care about herself, as she believes that any attempts to help others will only end in disaster. Through the influence of Sayaka, Kyoko slowly regains her ideals, but the deconstruction is still clear- many selfish people have a reason to be selfish.
The Transformation Item:
The major magical item featured in PMMM are the Soul Gems, beautiful jewels that give a magical girl her power. However, it is revealed later in the series that a Soul Gem is quite literally a soul in a gem. When a girl contracts, her soul is literally ripped out of her body by the Incubator with whom she formed a contract with and placed inside of a gemstone. From there on out, the magical girl’s body is nothing more than an empty shell. If a magical girl’s body is more than a few hundred feet away from her Soul Gem, it will collapse and appear to be, for all intents and purposes, dead.
Unlike most transformation items, which are used to transform a girl into a magical girl, Soul Gems seem to have it the other way around, as they use the body to project the soul into, as it is the Soul Gem that contains the magical girl, not the body.
The Mascot:
Kyubeyis a deconstruction of exactly what kind of creature would willingly send young girls off to battle against horrific monsters. Kyubey likens the relationship between Incubators (Kyubey’s species) and magical girls to humans and cattle; cattle are freed from their predators and the effects of natural selection and are allowed to thrive, while humans eventually slaughter the cattle for food. In the same way, magical girls are allowed one wish (no matter how outlandish) and the Incubators harvest their energy.
It’s also implied that the Incubators’ image of being cute and cuddly isn’t their true appearance, but rather a facade they put up to better appeal to the young girls they contract with.
In most magical girl shows, the mascot is there to guide the newly awoken/created magical girls through their roles, and usually have humanity’s wellbeing in mind (for example, many magical girls are awoken for the sake of protecting people from monsters). The Incubators, however, use humanity as a means to an end. Their goals are ultimately for the good of the whole universe (harvesting energy to prevent the eventual heat death of the universe), but they are utterly removed from human concerns.
The Role of a Magical Girl:
Madoka Magica demonstrates the realistic effects of a young middle/high school-aged girl having the huge responsibility of fighting against monsters. This is probably best exhibited in Mami Tomoe, who had been a magical girl for two years prior to the start of the show. Mami’s duties as a magical girl prevented her from making friends or becoming close to anyone or having a lot of spare time to just have fun. This crushing isolation and responsibility led to Mami becoming emotionally and mentally fragile and hiding her true feelings behind a facade.
Madoka Magica enforces that the effects of this kind of responsibility on a teenager (and especially a preteen) would eventually have disastrous results (as highlighted in Mami’s archetype post)
