Puella Magi Madoka Magica Book 3

"It starts with a prayer and ends with a curse" - Kyubey

So here we are with the third and final volume of the manga adaptation of the 2011 twelve episode anime of the same name.  The story revolves around the sinister creature Kyubey, an amoral genderless bunnycat who finds vulnerable teenage girls and offers them a deal.  A contract with it that if it grants them a single wish, they will become Magical Girls whose job from now on will be to fight "Witches" - eldritch abominations that feed off the living.  Kyubey does this by extracting the girl's soul and placing it in a "Soul Gem", so while the girls acquire super-strength, the ability to manifest weapons and can heal from the most appalling of wounds, their bodies are merely empty husks as for all intents and purposes the girls are now liches.  Kyubey hid this detail from them but events conspired to reveal the truth.  Sayaka, took this news very hard and started down a path that left her Soul Gem at it's limit and at the end of Book 2 transformed into a witch as witnessed by the constantly pursuing Kyoko who had started out bullying Sayaka but after the Soul Gem revelation became more well... interested in her well-being shall we say.  Meanwhile the other Magical Girl, Homura was revealed to have time manipulation powers and Kyubey dropped the bombshell that she is does not actually originate from the current timeline.  Both she and Kyubey are engaged in a very aggressive battle for Madoka's soul (Homura has killed Kyubey several times just out of annoyance because the little shit is a hive mind with infinite bodies), Kyubey for reasons still unstated, really, really wants Madoka to contract with it.  Homura will do anything to stop that, and she has managed to be in the right place at the right time many times to intervene and stop it happening.  This final volume sees the focus move to Homura as all the questions thrown up by her actions and attitude are finally answered.

The manga is unflipped and so reads from right to left, honourifics used too, and before we explore Homura's character it's time to wrap up Kyoko and Sayaka's story.  Sayaka's witchform is called Oktavia Von Seckendorff, this is a meaningful name as it comes from Karl Siegmund von Seckendorff, who composed for "Der König in Thule", the poem that appears in Goethe's version of Faust, as well as wrote a book called "Das Rad des Schicksals" (The Wheel of Fate). Oktavia fights by throwing wheels, and the word "Schicksal" appears in her labyrinth.  Faust is a big influence on this series and we'll be finding out just which Magical Girl is Faust in a short while.  Oktavia is also a mermaid, which if you know the original non-Disneyfied version of "The Little Mermaid" is incredibly appropriate to Sayaka's story arc.  Why it's almost like it was deliberate or summat.

Homura to the rescue.

Kyoko swiftly changes into her Magical Girl form and scoops up Sayaka's empty shell of a body.  Suddenly Homura appears and when Kyoko asks her what that thing is, Homura confirms that Sayaka has become a Witch, didn't Kyoko witness the change with her own eyes?  Homura says they can't fight with Kyoko holding Sayaka's body so she tells her to grab her hand.  When she does so, Homura's shield whirrs and clicks and time freezes and they escape the labyrinth, just as Madoka comes running up to see what has happened.

Kyoko lays Sayaka on the ground and turns away in great emotional pain as Madoka tries to rouse Sayaka, but it's futile.  Sayaka is dead.  Asked why, Homura doesn't spare her feelings, "her soul mutated into a Grief Seed... then a Witch was born causing its destruction".  Madoka can't believe it but Homura assures her this is reality.  Madoka wails that Sayaka wanted to be a champion of justice and help people.

Homura: "She took on a curse corresponding to the scope of her wish she made... and to the same extent that she saved some people, she cursed others.  That was how she lived as a Magical Girl."

Kyoko angrily accuses Homura of "flaunting your knowledge at a painful time like this!  This girl is Sayaka's..." and she trails off overwhelmed with sorrow.

Homura is relentless though and says to Madoka that now she understands the truth behind what "you so wanted to be."  She starts to leave telling Kyoko that now she's brought the corpse out to be careful with how she disposes of it.  "You call yourself human!?" rages Kyoko.  "Of course not" says Homura, "and neither are you".  And she walks off.

I thought fighting entropy included computers and CVEs!

Later a grief stricken Madoka sits in her bedroom and Kyubey comes to visit her.  It says it has something to discuss with her. Madoka says Kyubey wants to turn everyone into Witches, that's what the contracts are for.

Kyubey: "Don't misunderstand us.  We have no evil intentions toward you humans.  It is an unavoidable circumstance that drove us to this."

So get ready for the reason it's doing all this.  It's all about fighting "entropy" and prolonging the lifespan of the universe.  Yeah.  It gives a simplistic explanation of how the universe is slow ridding itself of energy. So Kyubey's people went out to find a source of energy that "does not fall under the laws of thermodynamics".

Well if it works, it works.

They discovered it in Magical Girls.   Its culture developed a "technology that can take the emotions of sentient beings and convert them into energy". They themselves don't have emotions so they researched the various life-forms of the universe and discovered humans.  The souls could provide enough emotional energy to overturn entropy, and the most effective were "females of your species entering the second stage of maturity, transitioning between hope and despair".

Kyubey: "In the instant that a Soul Gem burns out and turns into a Grief Seed, it releases an enormous amount of energy.  The job of we Incubators is to collect that energy."

Madoka says that they are "disposable goods" then, supposed to die for them?  Kyubey tells her that eventually humans will leave the planet and take their place with them, "in the long run this is a deal that benefits your race too".

Madoka shouts that Mami died and Sayaka went through all that pain for some "incomprehensible excuse!?"  She says it's too cruel.  Kyubey says it did nothing without mutual agreement no?  Madoka cries that it "was just you tricking us!!"  Kyubey says that it doesn't understand the whole "trick" thing.  It thinks humans don't take responsibility for their own failure to "understand the consequences of their decisions".
It says that they have a really hard time comprehending human values, with a population of nearly seven billion, "what's the huge fuss over the death of each and every single creature?"  Madoka says if it thinks like that Kyubey is the enemy of humanity. He sighs that it was futile trying to explain to her.

Kyubey: "Someday you will become the greatest of all Magical Girls... and then you will become the evilest Witch ever known.  And when that happens, we will have our hands on an amount of energy the likes of which we've never seen before.  When you decide to die for the good of the universe, call me anytime... I'll be waiting."

Shithead. And with that it leaves and Madoka curls up and starts sobbing herself to sleep. Kyubey then goes to see Kyoko who's broken into a hotel and has Sayaka empty shell of a body laid out on the bed as Kyoko uses her magic to keep it from decaying. Kyubey says it can't understand why she's going to all that "trouble to preserve the freshness of this corpse."

Kyoko taking care of Sayaka's remains.

Kyoko asks Kyubey if there is a way to get Sayaka's Soul Gem back and like the good spin-doctor he is, Kyubey gives her a non answer.  He says Magical Girls defy logic but it's never happened before, implying maybe it could but he can't give any advice how.  Kyoko starts eating furiously saying she didn't want his help anyway.

Next day Madoka comes to meet Kyoko, who tells her she thinks she can save Sayaka.  She's a Witch now but if she hears the voice of a friend she might remember what it means to be human, and maybe "if I split that Witch in two, a Soul Gem might come popping out and we could revive Sayaka!!"

Kyoko: "Well, isn't that the way it should work?  In the end courage and love triumphs over all?  Like in those stories.  When I thought about it, I became a Magical Girl 'cos I loved those stories.  Sayaka was the one who made me remember".

Kyoko tells Madoka it'll be dangerous, she might not be able to protect her.  But Madoka agrees.  She formally introduces herself and Kyoko laughs, pressing a candy bar into Madoka's hand as she introduces herself too.

They find the labyrinth and Madoka asks if Homura would help but Kyoko says she's not the type.  She isn't friends with her they just have some mutual interests. In a few days Walpurgis Nacht (for some reason this volume goes back to the fully German name of Walpurgis Night as used in the anime) will come to the city.  It's like the "ultimate enemy to us Magical Girls" and can't be defeated by one Magical Girl alone.

Madoka sadly thinks that she is a coward, letting other people do the fighting for her.  But Kyoko roughly says being a Magical Girl isn't a joke or playing around, they put themselves in harms way because they have no choice.  She then smiles and says one day Madoka might have her back against the wall, so "you can think about that stuff when the time comes."

Oktavia Von Seckendorff.

They reach Oktavia and Kyoko sets the plan in motion, she'll protect Madoka while Madoka does the whole "I Know You're In There, Fight" trope thingy.  But it doesn't work.  Oktavia assualts Kyoko with projectile wheels and swings a huge sword at her.  Kyoko starts shouting too, telling Sayaka not to be so stubborn but she is battered harder, Kyoko can only muse darkly "come to think of it, we met trying to kill each other, huh..?"

She tells her to bust the place up, release her anger and Kyoko will come with her, and once she's had her fill, wake up.  But Oktavia grabs Madoka and starts to squeeze. Kyoko slices her hand off, then Oktavia catches Kyoko with stab to her torso and slices through the floor and all three tumble down to the next floor and Kyoko thinks to herself:

Kyoko: "Oh come on God... you saw what my life was like! So just once... let me have a nice, happy dream..."

Homura arrives and catches the unconcious Madoka.  Kyoko is drenched in blood and barely able to stand, she tells Homura that Madoka was nice enough to hang out "with a dummy like me".  She tells her to go, she can't fight and protect Madoka at the same time, "you pick the one thing in the world you wanna protect and you protect it to the end."

Kyoko makes her decison.

Homura leaves and Kyoko tells Sayaka not to worry, "I know how rotten it can be... to be lonely". As Oktavia bears down on her, she starts powering up an attack from her Soul Gem as she kneels in the prayer position, "so it's okay.  I'll stay right here with you.... Sayaka" and with no regrets she detonates her Soul Gem and both she and Oktavia are killed in the blast.  The anime version is a little different, Kyoko manifects a huge spear and standing on top kisses her soul gem and tosses it in the path of her attack where it shatters as the killing blow strikes.  Check it out here.

That's Kyoko out of the story. So girl meets girl, girl tries to kill girl, girl falls in love with girl, girl turns in to Lovecraftian ambination and it all ends in a spectular murder/suicide.  Aaah. How many times have we heard that story Mr. Lister?  I'm only joking because I have something in my eye. And something in my other eye.... I HAVE SOMETHING IN MY HEART!  Luckily the manga gives me something to cry happy tears over as they meet again in the afterlife.

Magical Girl Valhalla, lesbianism mandatory.

Back with Homura, she has returned Madoka to her home and sits brooding in her own flat.  Kyubey appears and Homura asks if Kyoko ever had the chance to save Sayaka, Kyubey responds "not remotely".  But it's all worked out well for it as now Homura is the only Magical Girl left and she can't defeat Walpurgis Nacht alone, so Madoka will have to make a contract.  "I will never allow that to happen" scowls Homura.

And now it's time for a flashback to finally answer all the questions Homura's words and actions have thrown up.  It's the first day of school for a new transfer student who has been hospitalised for some time with a heart condition.  And it's Homura Akemi, but she's not the hair flipping, Zen warrior of mystery we've come to know, she's well... a massive dork.  She's shy and awkward, and freaks a bit when girls cluster round her asking questions.

H.. Homura?!

Madoka comes to her rescue, saying she'll take her to the nurses office.  Now we get a repeat of the walk we saw at the start but this time Madoka is the confident one and Homura the stammering shy girl.  Madoka asks her if she can call Homura by her "cool" first name (Homura means "Flame"), and she insists Homura should try to be cool to live up to her name.

But unlike the Homura we know, this one can't answer the questions written on the whiteboard and becomes out of breath easily during the athletics class, fainting during the warm-ups.  She miserably walks home thinking "I... can never be cool, can I..?"  Then a voice tells her "then it would be better if you just died, huh?"  And a Witches labyrinth forms around her as a voice yells "WHY DON'T YOU DIE....!" 

Familiars start to come for her when suddenly Mami and Madoka (armed with a bow), both Magical Girls appear and save Homura.  Kyubey perkily tells Homura they hunt Witches, and Madoka tells Homura to keep it a secret from their classmates.  They have tea round at Mami's and they explain the Magical Girl thing to Homura.  Madoka is a newbie, she only contracted a week before, "I'm sort of a half-baked beginner she says".  Mami says she did very well, but must get even better for Walpurgis Nacht is arriving in a few weeks.

Mami and Madoka, a Magical Girl team.

We then jump forward to that battle.  Mami lies dead.  Homura, not a Magical Girl herself, sobs that she and Madoka should run away.  But Madoka says she is the only one left to stop Walpurgis Nacht, and she tells Homura how glad she is she became a Magical Girl because she was able to save Homura and become friends with her.  And she leaps off to fight Walpurgis Nacht alone.

We then cut to to a weeping Homura sitting by Madoka's dead and brutalised body, "you knew you were going to your death... I wanted you to live on... even if it meant you couldn't save me."  Her grieving attracts Kyubey and he offers her the standard spiel about having a wish granted in exchange for a life of battle, she has more than enough potential.  So Homura stands up and makes her wish:

Homura: "I want to redo my meeting with Kaname-san.  I don't want to be protected by her!  I want to be the one to protect her!"

Her Soul Gem is formed, her powers unlock and suddenly she finds herself back in the hospital roughly ten days before she is to start school.  When she does so, and is introduced to the class, she is so happy to see Madoka again she rushes up to her saying she's a Magical Girl too, embarrassing Madoka a bit.

Bunnycat wants your soul...

So she goes to start training with Mami and Madoka, her ability to stop time is powerful, but she's got no offensive capabilities.  Never fear, thanks to the internet she starts making powerful pipe bombs she hides in her shield's Hyperspace Arsenal.  So she is able to defeat her first Witch, Patricia using them.  Anime version of that battle here.  Afterwards Madoka holds hands with Homura and she is definitely beginning to have strong feelings for Madoka.

But Walpurgis Nacht this time brings a nasty surprise.  Madoka over exerts herself and doesn't cleanse her Soul Gem in time to stop it turning into a Witch, Homura can only watch in horror as an ominous back figure boils out of Madoka's Grief Seed and she realises the truths Kyubey has been keeping from them.

Ever wonder why she didn't just tell the others?  Well we jump to the next timeline and Homura is telling Madoka, Mami and Sayaka what she knows.  And they don't believe her.  Sayaka says she is just trying to cause strife and also she doesn't like having Homura on the team as bombs going off in her face isn't fun. So using her time freeze ability Homura goes to a Yakuza den and steals all their guns.  Cool.

Suddenly Oktavia! Hello Oktavia.  Kyoko by now has joined them and as before Madoka is calling out trying to reach what she thinks might be Sayaka inside her.  Of course it doesn't work, and Homura freezes time, pulls out a revolver to shoot the missiles heading towards Madoka then blows Oktavia up with another large pipe bomb apologising to Sayaka as she does so.

Mami snaps.

So Oktavia is dead. Again.  But who gets her phat lewt?  Time for everyone to roll on it. Just joking, actually what follows it perhaps the second grimmest moment of the series.  Mami disables Homura via ribbon bondage and shoots Kyoko right in the soul gem which shatters and instantly kills her.  She then points her gun at Homura saying hysterically, "if our Soul Gems turn into Witches... then the only thing left for us to do is die!! You and me both!!"  But before she can kill Homura, Madoka shoots Mami's Soul Gem shattering it and killing her.  Homura hugs the broken Madoka saying they'll take Walpurgis Nacht down together.

Well that doesn't go as planned.  Battered, they both lie on the ground, their Soul Gems at their very limits.  And they have no Grief Seeds left.

Homura: "Say... we're going to become the monsters next huh? We're gonna throw things into chaos... do terrible things. Making everyone sad... destroy everything as if it never existed.  Okay I think I can live with that."

Madoka then says she lied, she has one left (it's heavily implied it's Oktavia's which Madoka couldn't bring herself to use).  She presses it to Homura's Soul Gem cleansing it.  Homura sits up and holds Madoka's broken body saying she wasn't worth saving.

But Madoka says she can go back in time right? Change history so this doesn't happen, "I want you to go back before Kyubey tricked us.. find the stupid me from then... and save her."  Homura says she promises, no matter how many times she has to do it over she'll protect her. Madoka is pleased but has one last request.  She wants Homura to destroy her Soul Gem which is already starting to turn into a Grief Seed.  Homura calls her Madoka for the first time and pulling out her revolver, shoots Madoka right in the soul. The grimmest moment of the series.

I um... see Homura perferred revolvers at first.

Time turns back, she is back in the hospital ten days before school.  And she has changed.  The events of Timeline 3 have hardened her.  She undoes her braids, uses her magic to fix her eyesight so she doesn't need glasses anymore and generally sports the air of the cold Homura we already know.

So what Homura does now is what any gamer knows to do when you reach the same sticking point in a game.  Reset to an earlier check-point and grind up your stats on weaker enemies until you can finally beat the end boss. This timeline she takes care of all the witches herself and ends up fighting Walpurgis Nacht in a rerun of the dream Madoka had right at the start. This time we hear what she was trying to scream at Madoka, not to listen to Kyubey, not to make a contract.  But Madoka makes the contract and we jump forwards to the aftermath of the Walpurgis Nacht battle, or curb-stomp more like.

Madoka's witchform runs amok.

Kyubey comments that he knew she'd be powerful, but she destroyed Walpurgis Nacht with one shot, then transformed.  And into something way worse as we see a huge black whirlwind like form on the horizon.  Kyubey tells Homura they have more than filled their quota of energy here now, so Madoka's Witch form is a problem humans are going to have to sort out now. So it may have been a different timeline Kyubey but it DID lie about having humanity's best interests at heart then.  He asks why Homura isn't going to fight it, but she says "this is not my battlefield anymore" and turns back time again.

Homura: "I'll relive it over and over. For you, my one and only friend.  As long as it's for you I don't mind being stuck in an never-ending labyrinth".

And that brings the flashback to an end.  There are a few things to tease out of this section.  First of all it cements Homura as Faust and Kyubey as Mephistopheles, but in Goethe's version of Faust there is also a female character Faust is obssessed with, her name is Gretchen.  And Madoka's witch name?  "Kriemhild Gretchen".  I rest my case.  Also there is elements of the legend of Sisyphus, fated to push the same boulder up a hill over and over. 

It's never stated outright how long Homura has been resetting time just that she's seen countless deaths.  Spin-off media like various manga miniseries and the PSP game have filled in events that have occured in other loops, and the head writer himself, Gen Urobuchi said she spent around 100 times trying, reliving the same six weeks for nearly twelve subjective years. Yeah things are shitty for Homura, but she'd do anything for love.

Kyubey puts it all together...

Back in the present she seems to have told all this to Kyubey.  It says she's travelled a large number of parallel worlds, "seeking a singular result you desire".   Now he understands Madoka's potential:

Kyubey: "A Magical Girl's potential is decided by the scale of the burden of fate she is forced to bear... Madoka is a normal girl with a normal, average life.  I couldn't understand and ascertain why so many threads of fate were concentrated upon her."

Because Homura rewound time over and over perhaps this created Madoka's potential to become a stronger and stronger Magical Girl, "I knew it!  The one placing all the burden upon her is you".  Each universe tied a strand of fate to Madoka, "then suddenly her unprecedented magical potential makes some sense."

Kyubey: "Those lines of burden that you've placed upon her time after repeated time have all twisted about connecting to Madoka Kaname.  What an achievement Homura! You raised her to be the worlds most powerful Witch."

The sudden revelation leaves Homura horrified and speechless and Kyubey goes off to bother Madoka.  It tells her Kyoko and Sayaka are dead. It then gives Madoka a lesson in how Incubators and Magical Girls have helped humanity evolve.  Ever since prehistory they have been making Magical Girls and wishes granted have caused turning points in human history, "and in the end they all fell in the depths of despair".

Madoka says Kyubey betrayed them all, but it responds that their wishes betrayed them, and if they couldn't deal with that they shouldn't have made the wish in the first place.  Their tears have become "the foundation for the standard of living that you all enjoy today".  Madoka asks if it ever understood what pain they went through, but Kyubey says if they understood that emotion they wouldn't have come to Earth in the first place.

Madoka then goes to Homura's flat (which in the anime is much bigger on the inside than out) to talk to her about Walpurgis Nacht.  Homura tells her Walpurgis Nacht is so powerful it doesn't have a labyrinth but normal humans will just see it as a natural disaster.  Homura assures Madoka she can beat Walpurgis Nacht on her own but Madoka doesn't believe her.

Suddenly a tearful Homura lunges forwards and hugs Madoka.  She wants to tell her who she truly is, she lives in a completely different time from her, she's from the future and she's met Madoka over and over, "and as many times as I've met you, I've seen you die!"
Homura: "What can I do to save you?  I've been searching for that answer, starting over and over again time after time."

Homura apologises saying this won't mean anything to Madoka, "I got the feeling I got lost in time long ago".  The desire to save Madoka started it, and now "please... let me protect you".

The battle begins.

The day of reckoning has arrived.  Homura is ready for it, as the normal humans including Madoka are herded into safe shelters from the extreme weather front they see Walpurgis Nacht as.  Homura freezes time and fires many RPG's at her (they slow down and stop then when she restarts time they all hit at once).  She fires mortars and then crashes a truck full of explosives into it.  But it doesn't work (check out the battle in the anime.  Bad ass. She basically throws the entire armaments of the JDF at Walpurgis Nacht).  If I could say why I think this is so, I think it's because of the nature of Homura's weapons.  They aren't magical like the other girls manifest and I think that if this was a videogame, she's be coded as completely physically immune, only magic can damage her.

Homura has to fend off Familiars taking the form of Mami and Kyoko, but she's tiring and in big trouble.  Madoka in the emergency shelter wonders how Homura is doing.  Kyubey appears and tells her Homura is fighting desperately because she is still trying to attain her goal.

Kyubey: "She'll repeat this meaningless chain of events over and over, never learning her lesson.  I imagine that now she equates stopping the cycle with giving up."

When she finally realises Madoka cannot be saved, she'll give into despair and turn into a Witch.  This causes Madoka to start to leave the shelter, but her mum Junko appears and sternly asks what she is hiding from her.  Madoka says she has a friend whose life she has to save and she must go now to do it.

Homura can't win, no matter what she does.

Junko yells at her for being selfish, but Madoka replies that she holds her families lives precious and wants to make sure they are protected, "it's something that only I can do, so it's something I just have to do."  Junko looks sternly at her, then asks if she is sure she won't botch this and nobody is tricking her...?  And she lets Madoka go.  Out into a hurricane.  And she isn't even drunk this time.

A badly injured Homura struggles to get up, despairingly she wonders why she just can't win against Walpurgis Nacht.  She starts to turn back time, but then remembers Kyubey's words, that this will just make Madoka even more powerful.  Tearfully she sits and waits for the end.  Then Madoka comes up accompanied by Kyubey and says Homura doesn't have to protect her anymore.  She is going to make a wish.

Kyubey tells her that any wish can be granted as she is so potentially powerful.  Homura tries to tell her not to. If she does, what has Homura been doing all this for? Madoka sits down by her and says because of her wish to protect her, she's become powerful enough to make a wish which she thinks is finally the answer, "so please... trust me." Kyubey is practically salivating at hearing her wish so she makes it:

Madoka: "I wish for all Witches to vanish before they can be born.  All the Witches through all of space and time, in the past, present and future... I'll save every last one myself."

Kyubey is actually shocked, it tells her that's going to mean a  "reversal if the laws of cause and effect!"  Madoka is lit up now by heavenly light, she says she wants to erase the tears of all those who trusted in hope, "I want them to be left with a smile on their faces."

Madoka: "Any stupid rule that interferes with it... will be erased!  It will be changed! That is my wish! Now... grant it! INCUBATOR!!!"

Suddenly Madoka is in a void speaking with Mami who says that was a frightening wish. Madoka will be a permanent part of the universe, the very concept of eliminating Witches for a limitless eternal stretch of time.  Madoka says that's what she intended, she wants to embrace hope and keep saying it forever.

Madoka's wish.

Kyoko appears and congratulates Madoka for finding a reason to do battle and she is determined not to run away? So all that's left is to "run with it as hard as you can".  Mami and Kyoko fade away saying Madoka is Hope now, all Magical Girl's Hope.

We return to reality and Madoka fires her bow into the air and millions of arrows burst forth, each arrow finds a Magical Girl about to become a Witch and Madoka appears, destroys the Soul Gem before they can transform and allow them to die in peace, fading away to join God Madoka in her Magical Girl Valhalla.  Madoka then takes on Walpurgis Nacht and as the many cursed Witches who make her up are purified she crumbles away.

Madoka's wish in action.

Then Homura finds herself in a dark void.  Kyubey's voice in her head (because of course that shithead survived) says because of her time powers she can see what ends up happening to Madoka.  It tells her that Madoka is rewriting the laws of the universe as they speak.  A huge black coment flies past, it's Madoka's Soul Gem, with every curse taken on a part of it now. 

It starts to transform into a Witch so huge it circles the Earth.  But as Homura stands aghast at what is happening, she hears Madoka's voice and she appears saying that her wish was to destroy all Witches and so "even I have no reason to despair" and she purifies her gigantic Witchform in a double page spread I can't scan.

Madoka's wish protects even herself.

We then see Madoka in a bright void.  Kyubey mentally tells her thanks to her actions her life has no beginning or end anymore.

Kyubey: "There will be no proof nor memory that you will ever have existed in this world. The existence that is you will shift up a level, becoming only a concept.  No one will ever be aware you existed and you will never be able to affect the world again.  You will no longer be a member of this universe".

Homura cries out that this is even crueller than killing her.  But Madoka appears to her (in the anime they are naked and do some serious snuggling, just to dial the gay up further) and reassures her this is what she wanted.   She can see all the universes that might have been and all the universes that still may be.

Now she understands what Homura went through for her, all the tears and scars.  She had a precious friend and she never realised it.   Now she has become what she is now, she's seen it all, "Homura-chan you were my very best friend".  They hug and Madoka tells her she'll always be with her even if she can't see or feel it.  Homura wonders if she'll forget her as well.

Hey, where the Naked Space Hug, huh?

Madoka says that she may remember her as she came out all this way with her and gives her the pink ribbons from her hair.  Then she starts to fade away saying she has many people to meet and that one day they'll meet again and then she is gone as Homura tearfully say, "don't go..."  She then falls back down to Earth.

We then cut to Kyosuke playing his violin on stage for an audition.  Sitting in the audience is Madoka and Sayaka.  Madoka says she could have made it so this never happened, but she didn't think Sayaka would have wanted that.  Sayaka agrees, saying she wanted to hear his violin and have other people hear it.  She thinks Hitomi is too good for him though.  Having made her peace with her wish, Madoka takes her away.

Homura finds herself back in the aftermath of the battle that caused Sayaka to push her Soul Gem past its limit and now she has disappeared thanks to Madoka although the others don't know that, they call it the Law Of Cycles.  Mami and Kyoko are here too as they were killed by Witches who have never existed now. Kyoko is upset and holding back tears at Sayaka's death says they had just become friends as well. Homura looks at the ribbons in her hands and starts crying, saying "Madoka..." Who's Madoka the other two ask her?

Poor Homura, even when she wins, she loses.

Sometime later wearing Madoka's ribbons in her hair, Homura bumps into Madoka's family. The son Tatsuya is now an only child, drawing a picture in the sand he calls "Madoka".  Junko has a chat with Homura saying hearing the name gives her a feeling of nostalgia.  She notes Homura's ribbons and says they are cute, saying "if I had a daughter... I'd probably make her wear them".

Later one night Homura sits talking with Kyubey telling it all about the Witch system.  Kyubey says it could be a reason why things are the way they are now.  Instead of Witches they fight Wraiths which drop mutiple cubes that cleanse the Soul Gem and are collected by Kyubey as a power source.  Seems Madoka saw the need for The Icubators' plans to still exist.  Kyubey says the old world is a memory in her head and is now "indistinguishable from some fairy tale your brain has constructed".

But it is fascinated by the concept of Witches (uh-oh), they have no idea why Soul Gems disappear when they can no longer be purified. If there was such a convenient source of power their methods would be quite different.  Homura says "that's just the kind of creeps you are".

Kyubey notes that the miasma is heavy tonight and the wraiths are out in force.  They are created by the curses of the world now.  She and Kyubey jump down and Homura brings out her new weapon, a bow as wielded by Madoka and huge black wings erupt from her back as she hits the ground.

Homura: "Sadness and hatred revive in an endless loop and there's no saving the world from it... Even so, this is the place that a certain girl was determined to protect. And I remember.  And that's why I will keep up the fight!"

The anime ended with Homura walking alone in a desert, sprouting huge wings she leapt into battle with many wraiths.  The manga ends with Homura being taken away by Madoka having returned to her original shy girl look.  This didn't happen in the anime and frankly it relies on Homura having healed from her PTSD and learned to deal with all the shit that happened to her.  The sequel movie Rebellion explicitly de-canonises this sequence.  But it does bring the manga to a happier ending than the anime.

Homura's new weapon.

So this volume is pretty damn epic, from the death of Kyoko, to the suprising revelations of Homura's backstory to the reveal of Kyubey's plan to Madoka's ascension to Godhood the pace never lets up.  With allusions to Faust, Sisyphus and The Little Mermaid the whole thing is saturated in symbolism.  You can see why I see romance between various characters, the ridiculous lengths Kyoko goes to to try and rescue Sayaka go above and beyond friendship as does Homoura's hellish existence to save Madoka. Even in the nicer new universe Sayaka still dies.  I'd get upset about this but I've seen Rebellion and she seems to have acquired a Jean Grey style ability to keep coming back from the dead so I think she just keeps doing it to annoy Kyoko.  Notably it's the three orphans, Homura, Kyoko and Mami that survive, while Sayaka who did have parents dies (the manga is missing her funeral which the anime covered) and Madoka now never existed.  Some people have criticised Kyubey's plan as somewhat ridiculous, but I was a teenage girl, my angst could definitely have powered whole cities.  Interestingly Kyubey is the real Lovecraftian being, it's an alien with values that we can't comprehend, apathetic towards humanity only seeing them as a resource to be exploited for some vast cosmic plan that we can barely comprehend (I'm going with the excuse he dumbed down his explanation so a fourteen year old could understand it).  And what of Homura? In actuality she failed.  She lost Madoka, and she's been left so numb and socially stunted she won't open up to her friends Mami and Kyoko, she confides in Kyubey of all beings.  I'll be convering the manga adaptation of Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Rebellion in a couple of months time, but as a taster I let you know that Homura confiding in Kyubey was a horrific mistake on her part.  Anyway I hope you enjoyed this jog through the series's manga adaptation, for all its faults, it does manage to tell the underlying story well despite it's fairly so-so art.  The anime is well worth watching, so I hope maybe these posts will encourage you to seek it out.  It's been split into two movies, with some added scenes and some edited out.  I still think the episodic anime is better, but there's choice there if you want it.  Before I close this out, I encourage you to check out this incredibly well blended and edited anime video that posits a timeline where Homura kept the other three alive to help fight Walpurgisnacht, it tells a full story in three and a half minutes with no dialogue and an awesome tune.  Fan vid makers are often hugely talented people and Puella Magi Madoka Magica seems to bring out the best in them.  Enjoy!