WARNING: SPOILERS FOR BOTH MADOKA MAGICA AND MADOKA MAGICA: REBELLION BELOW

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Note: Madoka Magica is the only magical girl show I’ve seen so I cannot speak on it in terms of it’s merit as a deconstruction of the magical girl genre. That’s not what this essay is about though so it shouldn’t matter too much.

Those of you who have seen Madoka Magica should know plenty about Homura Akemi, one of the main characters alongside the likes of Madoka, Sayaka, Kyubey, etc. Homura is one of the most interesting characters I have ever seen in an anime, her motivations, actions, design, and fighting style are all extremely interesting to me. She also goes through one of the most radical character transformations I’ve seen in any form of fiction: starting off as a scared, shy little girl and becoming a full fledged badass by the end of the season.

Where Homura really shines is in Rebellion: the movie follow up to the Madoka Magica show. Rebellion really centers around Homura, much like the main show does, because Homura is the real main character of Madoka. A sentiment that I often see is that Homura is evil or her actions in Rebellion are morally wrong, and I strongly disagree. Homura’s wish (and entire existence after Walpurgisnacht descends in the first timeline) is to save Madoka. Homura doesn’t care about the well being of the universe or the fate of the world outside of Madoka and her little circle. To me, Homura is the perfect embodiment of a Magical Girl. Kyubey always makes a point of saying things along the lines of “what wish will you give up your soul for?” and Homura, very literally, gives up her soul to make her wish come true. At the end of Rebellion, the pre-Godoka Madoka that Homura stole and trapped in her little world is happy. Sayaka and Kyoko are happy. Mami is happy and alive. Homura, despite being a demon, does a lot of good for her friends in her eyes and likely theirs. It just comes at the price of Homura’s soul and the well being of the universe. Homura sacrifices everything for Madoka’s well being, and while it’s not good, it’s not morally unjust.

Fake as it is, Homura’s world is far better and more hospitable than the “real world.” Universe be damned, everyone’s happy, and that’s all Homura cares about.

Homura’s story is also incredibly tragic to me. The end of Madoka Magica is considered to be a victory by many, Madoka saved the magical girls, hooray! In reality though, the finale of Madoka Magica is the biggest defeat of Homura’s life. I already said this, but Homura has literally relieved the same short period of time over and over and over again. Shes spent a lifetime trying to save Madoka from dying. It’s not even that she’s trying to save her from dying, all she really cares about is that she’s lost her friend. As Homura continues to go through this hellish cycle all that continues to push her forward is the hope that one day she’ll save Madoka.

When the day comes where she “succeeds” in saving Madoka from death, she still loses her. Madoka has to go off and be a god while Homura is left just like she started: all alone. That has to be devastating for her, and is ultimately why Homura steals a piece of Madoka in Rebellion. At the core Homura is an extremely selfish character: So when Madoka survives the end of the world attack and goes off to become a god, Homura still loses in her mind, just like she did in the hundreds of other timelines (except technically Madoka isn’t dead in this one.) This is why she goes crazy at the end of Rebellion.

Lastly, I don’t think Homura is evil. At all. She calls herself a demon, but shes really not. In both her labyrinth and her space world at the end of the movie, all the main characters are, for all intents and purposes, happy. Maybe not Sayaka in the 2nd world, (I still don’t really understand what was up with the Homura Sayaka interaction at the end of the movie), but Kyoko, Mami, Bebe, all of these characters are happy in Homura’s space dimension/world. The rest of the universe is so fucked it’s not even funny, but Madoka is happy (or at least she thinks she is.) And that’s all that matters to Homura. Plus Mami is alive in Homura’s world, so it’s not like Homura’s actions are all bad. Homura did good for her tiny little section of the universe, and she did it out of love, it was just at a massive cost.

Homura is just an extremely tragic character whose life got so immensely screwed over by Kyubey and Walpurgisnacht and all the other bad shit that happened to her that it transformed her from a shy, soft spoken girl into an insane dimension creating devil. Homura just wanted to save her friend, and really, to save herself. Homura’s character arc is far more tragic and interesting than any of the other characters, which is why to me she is the real main character of the show.