50 Fun Facts About Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Why did the last two episodes of Puella Magi Madoka Magica reach Japanese television weeks late?

The Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami halted the broadcast, and the pause gave animators time to rescue an eleventh episode the writer feared would disappoint.

Sayaka Miki spends her wish healing a hospitalised boy's hand so he can again play which instrument?

Violin prodigy Kyosuke Kamijo recovers, but he soon starts dating her friend instead, the heartbreak that tips her into despair.

A Production I.G director sought out Puella Magi Madoka Magica after hearing it outdid which mecha anime?

Neon Genesis Evangelion was the comparison Neo magazine reached for too, saying the show did for magical girls what that series had done for giant robots.

Who drew the deliberately clumsy sketches that fill Madoka Kaname's school notebooks in the anime?

Her voice actress got the job because the professional designer could not draw like a real schoolgirl, and the director then asked her to sketch worse than she normally would.

In Madoka Magica, Kyubey's species turns the despair of magical girls into energy to postpone which cosmic fate?

Heat death is the end Kyubey's kind are trying to stave off, and they judged human girls the ideal subjects after weighing up races all across space.

Which colour was Madoka Kaname meant to wear before her designer forgot the plan and made her pink?

White was the writer's choice in the first draft, and it finally returned in her goddess-like final form, which is built around that colour and cherry blossoms.

Which studio animated Puella Magi Madoka Magica, keeping only five episodes fully in-house because of its workload?

Shaft was so stretched that it kept only episodes 1 to 3, 10 and 12 in-house and sent the rest out to other studios.

What is the true name of Kyubey's emotionless alien race, the one Homura Akemi calls it to its face?

Incubators share one hive mind, which is why a fresh body simply takes over the place and identity of any that is destroyed.

Which colossal witch arrives with a storm that sends the whole city to shelters and defeats Homura Akemi?

Walpurgisnacht so startled the writer, who had pictured ordinary movie monsters, that on seeing its surreal concept art he wondered how Homura could fight such a thing.

What killed Mami Tomoe's parents and forced her to spend her wish on simply staying alive?

A car accident left her no time to think, which is why she later tells younger girls to find a wish worth risking their lives for before they contract.

In which fictional Japanese city do the middle schoolers of Puella Magi Madoka Magica live and fight?

Mitakihara draws in Kyoko Sakura, a loner from Kazamino, in the fourth episode because the area's previous guardian has just died.

In Madoka Magica, what does a Soul Gem turn into once despair has tainted it completely?

A Grief Seed is also the prize a defeated witch leaves behind, and magical girls use them to cleanse their own gems and recover their magic.

Which item carried by Homura Akemi holds the sand that lets her freeze time in battle?

A shield with no attacking power is all her magic gives her, and the trick fails if she is restrained and cannot turn it.

Which weapon does Kyoko Sakura wield, one that can extend and split into chained sections?

A spear with so many joints took real planning, and the staff held discussions to settle the logic of how it would work in each setting.

Which Nitroplus writer scripted Puella Magi Madoka Magica, his first solo screenplay for an anime series?

Gen Urobuchi turned down repeated pleas from fond colleagues to spare the mentor character whose death he had planned from the proposal stage.

Which pop duo, junior high schoolers who kept their faces hidden, sang the Madoka Magica opening theme Connect?

ClariS took Connect to number five on Japan's Oricon chart, and the director was surprised how well its words fit a story the lyricist had never been told.

Kyoko Sakura wished for crowds to listen to her father, who did which job before his breakdown?

Pastor was his calling until he was excommunicated for heresy, and learning that magic had filled his pews is what broke him.

Which weapon, formed from a rose branch, does Madoka Kaname carry as a magical girl in earlier timelines?

A bow was enough for her to bring down the mightiest witch in the very first timeline, though the fight cost her life.

In Madoka Magica, the loner magical girl Kyoko Sakura is rarely seen without what?

Some food is always in her hands because her family once nearly starved, a hunger that left her with a voracious appetite.

When one Kyubey body is destroyed in Madoka Magica, what does its replacement do with the corpse?

Eats it, in fact: the writer used the moment to show how far Kyubey's morals sit from those of the girls it recruits.

At the climax of the Rebellion film, Homura Akemi seizes Madoka's power and declares herself what?

A demon is her own word for it, yet the world she rewrites hands every one of her friends a happy, ordinary life.

Sayaka Miki's caped magical girl outfit was designed to make her look like which fantasy figure?

A knight suited her sense of justice, and the designer cut her hair and skirt unevenly to show a boyish side and a girlish side at once.

During the bridge duel in Madoka Magica, where does Sayaka Miki's Soul Gem land after it is thrown?

On a passing truck it is carried out of range, so her body drops lifeless and the girls learn that their souls now live inside the gems.

Homura Akemi's own magic cannot attack, so what does she fight witches with while time stands still?

Stolen guns and bombs come out only while the clock is stopped, so the other girls never actually learn what weapons she carries.

In Madoka Magica's Rebellion film, Homura Akemi says her Soul Gem was darkened not by despair but by what?

Love is the emotion she names, and it gives her the strength to split a goddess in two and rewrite the cosmos to her own design.

Which doll-like witch suddenly becomes a huge caterpillar creature and kills Mami Tomoe before Madoka's eyes?

Charlotte delivers the shock the writers had fixed at the proposal stage, and a 2012 BIGLOBE poll named it the most memorable death in anime.

What is the first name of the armoured Mermaid Witch that Sayaka Miki becomes when despair overwhelms her?

Oktavia von Seckendorff cannot be turned back, and Kyoko Sakura finally destroys her in a blast that costs Kyoko her own life too.

Which classmate gives Sayaka Miki one day to confess before telling the boy of her own feelings?

Hitomi Shizuki later weeps at the funeral and is said to blame herself for everything that followed her confession.

What name is given to the cosmic rule Madoka Kaname becomes, which carries magical girls away before they fall?

The Law of Cycles came from a wish so paradoxical that it lifted her out of ordinary existence, and nearly everyone forgot she had ever lived.

Which new monsters do magical girls hunt in the rewritten world at the end of the Madoka Magica television series?

Wraiths replace the old enemy because no girl turns into a monster any more, and only one fighter recalls that things were ever different.

Which director, who had earlier made Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, proposed Puella Magi Madoka Magica to Aniplex?

Akiyuki Shinbo insisted on keeping the words Magical Girl in the title when others wanted them cut, and he had the show advertised as innocent to hide its darkness.

Which manga artist, creator of the gentle comic Hidamari Sketch, drew the original character designs for Madoka Magica?

Ume Aoki drew such soft, cute girls that the writer said filling their story with tragedy felt like bullying her earlier characters.

Which composer scored Puella Magi Madoka Magica after the writer, a long-time fan of her soundtracks, recommended her?

Yuki Kajiura wrote the music for an earlier gothic horror series by the same director, and it inspired the writer while he worked on parts of the script.

Which vocal group, first formed to sing themes for The Garden of Sinners, performs the Madoka Magica ending theme Magia?

Kalafina later recorded a second version of Magia to close the first recap film in 2012.

What does Madoka Magica call the lesser creatures that Kyoko Sakura lets escape so they can mature?

Familiars carry no reward when beaten, so a girl hunting only for profit lets them go until they grow into full witches worth the trouble.

Besides Homura Akemi, who keeps a faint memory of Madoka Kaname after her wish erases her from history?

Her little brother Tatsuya is the only other person who remembers her, while she lives on merely as a concept in the rebuilt world.

The writer of Puella Magi Madoka Magica likened Kyubey to monsters from which horror author's fiction?

H. P. Lovecraft came to mind because Kyubey is not evil at all, and its total absence of feeling is what makes it frightening.

Who voices Homura Akemi in Japanese, despite the director's worry that she sounded like Hitagi Senjogahara?

Chiwa Saitō first tried out for Kyubey and then for the injured boy before the writer suggested the part that made the director say she was the one.

Which light novel by the future writer of Madoka Magica persuaded a producer to recommend him for the job?

Fate/Zero impressed the producer so much that he handed the director a copy of its first volume while putting the team together.

Madoka Magica so impressed director Katsuyuki Motohiro that he asked its writer to script which crime thriller?

Psycho-Pass came about after he was amazed that anyone could write such a work and began studying the writer's other stories.

Which girl, new in Madoka Magica's Rebellion film, wished to share a cheesecake with her dying mother?

Nagisa Momoe realised too late that she could have asked for a cure instead, and that regret is what first turned her into a witch.

In Madoka Magica's Rebellion film, what is the name of Mami Tomoe's small mascot-like companion?

Bebe helps the team trap Nightmares inside a small cafe-like barrier and later turns out to be a magical girl in disguise.

Which heroine of the spin-off Magia Record wished to cure her younger sister, who then goes missing?

Iroha Tamaki first appeared in a 2017 mobile game, which later grew into three seasons of television anime.

Before her contract, the shy original Homura Akemi had been in hospital a long time with which condition?

Heart disease had left her timid and friendless, which is why one classmate's friendship came to mean everything to her.

According to Kyubey, why does the ordinary Madoka Kaname hold more magical potential than any girl before her?

Countless resets of time by a friend trying to save her made her the centre of many timelines, and each loop added to her power.

Who won a Seiyu Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Kyubey in Puella Magi Madoka Magica?

Emiri Katō starts out monotonously cheerful, and one reviewer praised how she slowly reveals the strange alien logic that drives the character.

Which word followed Magical Girl in the working title of Puella Magi Madoka Magica before the staff dropped it?

Apocalypse was cut, and some wanted Magical Girl gone as well, but the director was adamant that those two words stay.

Which spin-off manga heroine foresees the future and plots to kill Madoka Kaname to avert a world-ending witch?

Oriko Mikuni gained her foresight by wishing to learn the meaning of her life after her father's disgrace left her shunned by classmates.

Which two-person troupe designed the witch worlds of Madoka Magica, inspired by Czech and Russian stop-motion?

Gekidan Inu Curry were also free to rework the script, and the black wings that sprout in the finale were their idea rather than the writer's.

Which spin-off manga reveals that Mami Tomoe and Kyoko Sakura were once partners who split over their ideals?

The Different Story grew out of a drama CD in which the pair fight side by side until a family tragedy changes the younger girl's outlook.