I had always thought it was a jab at Sailor Moon or any of the other prior magical girl shows, the kind of pet/partner/advisor they tend to have. Kyubey has been filling that role so far, twisting it to new terrible directions of course.
We don't know what Madoka's wish was as Homura was falling, we only saw the result of her becoming the ultimate witch. Maybe this timeline she'll wish for something different. Maybe Madoka's new wish will be for none of this to happen, rendering Kyubey a tiny kitten.
Dang, that episode was just... so beautifully executed. Too many shows try to give an excess of information before they've given the viewers a chance to care about the characters. The way they revisited familiar scenes and showed the slow progression of Homura becoming who she is now... so heart-wrenching. Everything makes so much sense now. I was wondering why Homura didn't try to tell the girls earlier about becoming witches, but now we know she already tried it and it didn't work. And I also thought it was strange before why she was so unaffected by Mami's death, as well as Kyouko and Sayaka's deaths. But I suppose seeing those deaths again and again would cause someone to be desensitized to it.
I bet Homura really is the weakest of the Puella Magi in terms of actual power. The only reason she can take on Mami or Kyouko is because they trained her, and in addition she must by now be familiar with all the witches that appear prior to Walpurgis so she can easily defeat them. Hence her warning to Mami that "this one is different". So, from what I can see, her Puella weapon is her grenades, and her power has 2 uses: the first to stop time for a short stretch (the way they showed it ticking like that looks like there's a finite limit on it) and the second to employ a "general reset" back to before she met Madoka. This seems to give her just enough time to take out Kyubey before his first contact with Madoka.
So even though Kyubey grants Homura's wish, he himself is unaware of what happens each time Homura sets back the clock. This gives her the advantage she needs to predict his actions and kill him. However, if she tips her hand too soon, she loses much of that advantage, so we've seen her being very closed with her information this time around. And although she is focused solely on saving Madoka, we've learned that the survival of the whole earth could hinge upon this sequence of events. Kyubey pretty much admitted that it wouldn't take Madoka long as a witch to destroy it all, but that he didn't really care because he'd collected an excess of energy.
I love Madoka during this sequence of events. We really see the strength of her character here that we've only had small glimpses of thus far. I was blown away when she destroyed Mami's soul gem. That takes a resolve and decisiveness few people would have, and she made the decision in a split second. I also loved when she uses the grief seed at the end of one of the timelines to cleanse Homura's gem. I wonder.... if you can do that to someone else's gem with a grief seed, could you do it with your own soul gem and speed up your process of becoming a witch by cleansing their gem for them?
I agree that Madoka's wish is probably the biggest wild card left in this show. Since Madoka doesn't have anything already in her circumstances compelling her to make a wish, then her wish must be very dependent on this sequence of events, and as Homura changes those events, it likely changes Madoka's wish.
I disagree on this point. Even Mami said that Homura's power was incredible, but she didn't know how to use it. Homura is probably the strongest Puella Magi if it is a 1 on 1 duel against another Puella Magi. She can simply stop time and destroy the soul gem, assuming of course she knows that is the weakness. Unlike witches, it does not take much to kill a puella magi if one aims correctly, as this episode showed. The enemy would not stand a chance, even without the guns, bombs, fancy moves, etc.
Unless you mean simple destructive power, in which case I agree about her being the weakest, but she can still kill Mami or Kyouko easily.
Peace.
I wonder if Madoka will make a wish in the end in the same fashion of Homura's... to reset their meeting creating an enormous paradox or something
It's more appropriate to say that Homura doesn't have a weapon at all. She only has the time-stop shield/watch. She started using a golf driver. The grenades are home-made, she was looking up how to make them on the computer in the very next scene, and loaded them on her desk. The shield seems to have a considerable "magic-bag" capacity as well. If her shield's time-stop does have a finite limit, isn't easy to tell what it is, which brings me to the next point.
Given the application of her power, Homura is both the weakest and the strongest of all. If her shield/watch does have a time limit, it is incredibly long. She barely knew how to hit things with a golf driver (stumbling on the first swing) and then she had time to pelt it repeatedly, getting exhausted because she was out of shape and weak, but the thing was ultimately trashed. Now that she uses guns and grenades (even a minigun!), in that long amount of time, she can do unspeakable damage to her target. She normally only unloads one clip or lobs one grenade. But imagine if she stopped time, walked up to them and hit them with a hammer/golf driver/katana, fired the minigun, and then threw a grenade. Nothing could possibly survive that.
If her arsenal was large enough, I don't think she would even have that much trouble killing witch-Madoka.
Unless witch-madoka is big enough to be practically invulnerable and had absurd regeneration. I'm betting she has both.
Peace.
Oh, good catch with the home-made grenades. But let's not forget that in the last iteration of events, Homura was unable to defeat the Walpurgis night, whereas Madoka killed it in a single hit. Even when the girls were working together, they suffered casualties. It requires so much magic power to defeat that the girls who are left are either dying or have their gems so tainted that they can't go back. I'm still a bit confused how Madoka could be defeated by the Walpurgis so many times, and yet in the time when she becomes a Puella Magi at the last minute she deals with it quickly. Maybe her wish itself is to defeat it, in that case?
I think so.Originally Posted by Kitkat
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
If that is so, why did Madoka become a witch in that cycle? Does it mean that by simply defeating the witch of walpurgisnacht, the ones who defeat it automatically become the next one?
Peace.
Maybe she just used too much energy and thus her Soul Gem couldn't make it.
So even that one shot took all her energy? Then it wasn't an easy battle at all. Was Madoka weaker in the first few cycles? Or did she just have better back up (Homura) in the ones where she beat the walpurgis night?
Peace.
At least she never becomes a witch, that we've seen. I think Mami has it a lot better than Sayaka.
Also, I was thinking on how Kyubey collects the energy when girls become witches. Ostensibly, if they never transform i.e. destroy their soul gems, Kyubey doesn't get to collect that energy. Back when we first saw Kyouko die, I thought that the big explosion was energy being released from her soul gem, but this latest ep shows that the girls simply die when the gem shatters. Does that leave Kyubey at a net loss for his investment?
I thought KB gets a burst of energy when the girls form the contract, then another burst when they turn into witches. The gem is probably about recycling or something, who knows.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
I think forming the contract puts Kyubey at a net loss. He does have to grant their wish after all, which takes energy. But from what I understand, the payoff from the witch transformation is more than enough to make up for it and give energy to spare to power the universe.