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<big> '''''[[Late Arrival Spoiler]] Warning:''''' ''Puella Magi Madoka Magica'' is one of the most popular anime franchises in the anime fandom as of the Winter 2011 season. It also has a [[Wham! Line]] [[Wham! Episode|roughly every episode]]. In other words, there are a great deal of '''''SPOILERS''''' below—most marked, some unmarked, but ''all'' of which will ruin your enjoyment of the story. ''{{red|Avoiding these pages is highly suggested for those who have not seen the show.}}'' </big>
{{Unmarked Spoilers}}
==A==
* [[Abstract Apotheosis]]: {{spoiler|Madoka's wish turns her into the abstract concept of hope, here also a kind of force of nature. This fulfills her wish to erase all witches (past, present, and future, including ''her own'') from existence, preventing magical girls from becoming Witches}}.
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* [[Acid Trip Dimension]]: ''[[What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?|Almost literally]]'' [[Invoked]] by the [[Pocket Dimension|Witch's Realms]], and implied by Homura's room. It does not help that most of it is symbolic.
* [[Actor Allusion]]: Due to the all-star voice actors ensemble, we were expecting this.
** Eri Kitamura voices Sayaka Miki, the blue-themed member of what amounts to Madoka's magical girl team. In [[Fresh Pretty Cure]], she voiced Miki Aono, the blue-themed member of that show's team. Add also that she played Saya Otonashi from ''[[Blood
** [[Junko Iwao]] plays Kazuko Saotome, Madoka's school teacher, who happens to be a scorned lover who can't keep boyfriends. [[Junko Iwao]] also plays every incarnation of Akane in the [[My-HiME]] metaverse, and most of that character's drama revolves around how she's constantly separated from her sole love interest, Kazuya, no matter what universe she's in. "Kazuko" is literally the feminine form of "Kazu," which is the nickname Akane always calls her boyfriend.
* [[Adult Fear]]. Let's see, {{spoiler|Mami is missing, Sayaka is found dead}}, and Madoka is troubled but refuses to share what had actually happened. Not to mention that with all the Witches, there must've been a whole lot of suicides, missing persons and who knows what else - which makes Madoka's behaviour all the more alarming in her mother's eyes.
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** All of the OST's track titles (save two) are in Latin and uses the correct translation for [[Magical Girl]]: "puella magica".
* [[And Then John Was a Zombie]]: {{spoiler|Kyubey reveals at the end of Episode 8 that the witch is the later stage of a magical girl's existence. She can only delay the inevitable transformation due to [[The Corruption]] of her soul by shoving it into limited-use Grief Seeds (which are incidentally fully-corrupted souls). The same episode also showed a magical girl's transformation into a witch.}}
* [[Animalistic Abomination]]: {{spoiler|Kyubey, who typically appears in the form of a harmless-looking cutesy feline, is revealed to be an "Incubator", a [[Hive Mind]] race who eat their dead and take their predecessor's place and identity; Kyubey is frequently seen eating what looks to be his own corpse, and is capable of surviving ludicrous amounts of injury. Despite seemingly lacking emotion and claiming that Incubators have little understanding of mortality or the value of life in their "utilitarian" approach, Kyubey is more than happy to play [[Jackass Genie]] and leave out vital aspects of the contracts Madoka and company agree to until it's too late.}}
* [[Anthropomorphic Personification]]: {{spoiler|Ultimate Madoka in episode 12 is the anthropomorphic personification of hope.}}
* [[Anyone Can Die]]: {{spoiler|Two episodes away from the series finale, three of the main characters have fallen. Only two remain ... in this timeline. In the four shown timelines, Homura was the only main character alive following the battle against Walpurgisnacht.}}
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** {{spoiler|Madoka's transformation into a witch in previous timelines is guaranteed to cause a Class 6.}}
** {{spoiler|Madoka's last wish and her subsequent transformation into a goddess causes a chain of destruction leading up to a Class X-4, although it's all part of a plan to fix things and rewrite reality.}}
** {{spoiler|Kyubey and his race are actively trying to stall and/or prevent a very prolonged Class X-4 throughout the series.}}
* [[Apocalypse Wow]]: {{spoiler|Episode 12, but Ultimate Madoka saves the day ... by causing ''another'' one.}}
* [[Arc Words]]: Walpurgisnacht is used as some sort of [[Vagueness Is Coming|omnious threat]]. {{spoiler|It turns out to be the appearance of a
* [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking]]: Second episode, discussing wishes:
{{quote|'''Sayaka:''' Hmmm... fabulous riches, eternal youth, Chinese delicacies...
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* [[Canis Latinicus]]: Though the song titles are real Latin, the lyrics to songs such as "Sis puella magica!" and "Credens justitam" are not (composer Yuki Kaijura apparently does this often enough that fans call the "language" Kaijuran). Latin with Italian pronunciation and word construction, with Japanese grammar, would be as good a guess as any.
* [[Can't Catch Up]]: In every {{spoiler|timeline}} shown, Sayaka is the weakest [[Magical Girl]] shown. {{spoiler|Even in the best-possible-timeline ending, she still dies, despite being partnered with Kyoko and Mami.}}
* [[Cash Cow Franchise]]: ''[[Wham! Episode|One episode]]'' was all it took for this series' (and the company's) popularity to go through the roof. Now [[Studio Shaft]] [[Bakemonogatari|is rolling in money]]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20121212072358/http://imgur.com/0j7Vkl Maybe]. (NSFW?)
* [[Cast From Lifespan]]/[[The Corruption]]: Using magic of any kind, as well as experiencing negative emotions (''especially'' despair and [[Angst]]) dims your soul gem. When it's completely dark, {{spoiler|the '''魔'''法少'''女''' ('''Ma'''hou Shou'''jo''') - magical girls - turn into '''魔女''' (Majo) - witches.}}
** {{spoiler|In the new universe, this is even more true -- when the soul gem runs out of power, Ultimate Madoka takes the despair -- and the soul gem -- away to the afterlife.}}
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* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: {{spoiler|The long haired Madoka from the OP. Also, before the last two episodes aired, the website was redesigned to have a picture of Madoka with a pair of wings. Madoka gets both in the final episode.}}
** Homura's original art featured her as the one with a bow. Then there was the later [[Covers Always Lie|illustration of her and Madoka holding the bow together]] in what looked like a disguised spoiler for the last battle. They left guns outside the [[Fourth Wall]]. {{spoiler|Although in the epilogue, Homura is shown using a modified version of Madoka's bow instead of her time-stopping powers. Which makes sense, as in the new reality there was no Madoka to sacrifice herself and gain time powers for.}}
* [[Chromatic Arrangement]]/[[
** For the main [[
** For the second [[
* [[Class Is in Room X-01]]: Mami is briefly shown to be in class 3-A (at least, in the manga).
* [[Combat Pragmatist]]: Homura. The justification, however is [[Puella Magi Madoka Magica/Characters|explained on the character page]].
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** {{spoiler|Walpurgisnacht}} also uses copious amounts of it, though this was likely intentional.
* [[Cosmic Balance]]: ''[[Up to Eleven|Everything]]'' revolves around this.
* [[Cosmic Close Call]]: {{spoiler|Homura}} tries to create these to save close friends, only for [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|something far worse to take its place]], and ends up [[Break the Cutie|going mad in the process]].
* {{spoiler|[[Cosmic Horror Story]]}}
* [[Cosmic Forces Trio]]: There's several:
** Hitomi, Sayaka, Madoka (Basing solely on the beginning character arc).
** Homura, Madoka, Sayaka (Due to {{spoiler|Sayaka's [[Start of Darkness|Start of Darkness arc]].)
** {{spoiler|Homura, Madoka, Kyubey (Basing on Episode 10).}}
* [[Cosmic Retcon]]: {{spoiler|Madoka's wish results in all witches having never existed.}}
* [[Cool Big Sis]]: Mami. Though it's also [[Deconstruction|deconstructed]] in {{spoiler|Episode 10, where Mami attempts to kill her younger comrades as an alternative to letting them "grow up" into witches.}} While she's still acting perfectly in line with her protective, motherly archetype, she's clearly out of her mind and few people would argue this action exemplifies "cool" qualities.
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* [[Cyberpunk]]: While it uses magic rather than technology, and the city is much cleaner than in usual works, the show's hints at transhumanism and, to a lesser extent, Kyubey's mottos and personality could feel right at home in a [[Cyberpunk]] series.
* [[Cypher Language]]: The runes. They are not just a substitution cypher, they are also in German. See the [[Puella Magi Madoka Magica/Trivia|Trivia page]] for the translations. [[The Wiki Rule]], however, is ''filled to the brim'' with the translations.
==D==
* [[Darker and Edgier]]: Expect no less from the author of ''[[Saya no Uta]]''. {{spoiler|The finale makes things a bit [[Lighter and Softer]], though.}}
* [[Darkest Hour]]: In Episode 11, {{spoiler|Walpurgisnacht has endured an army's worth of firepower from the lone Homura, who has finally given up hope of the [[Groundhog Day Loop]] ever saving Madoka, who steps up to make her wish...}}
* [[Dark Reprise]]: Somewhat. "Magia", the ending song of the series, made its appearance in the first scene of the first episode. There, the song is slowed down quite a lot, giving it a much darker atmosphere than it already had.
** Which turned out to be a production error as all of the music in the first episode was slowed down and it was back to its normal speed and pitch in later airings.
* [[The Day the Music Lied]]: {{spoiler|Episode 3's battle scene starts with standard battle fare when the fight with Charlotte starts, but it immediately switches to grim dark once Caterpillar!Charlotte appears.}}
** The music in the scene near the end of episode 8. See [[Musicalis Interruptus]] below.
** The opening theme song
* {{spoiler|[[Deal with the Devil]]:}} Kyubey will give them anything they want, but in exchange, they will have to fight witches {{spoiler|to the death as what is essentially a lich. Also, when they accumulate enough corruption, the girls will turn into witches themselves}}.
* [[Dead Person Conversation]]: {{spoiler|When Madoka was on her way toward goddess-hood, she met [[Heroic Sacrifice|Kyoko]] and [[Cruel and Unusual Death|Mami]] in... somewhere suspiciously similar to Mami's apartment. Chat and [[Brick Joke|cakes]] were had. For some reason, Sayaka was nowhere to be seen.}}
* [[Deconstruction]]: The director
* {{spoiler|[[Decon Recon Switch]]: Specifically, this series deconstructs [[The Power of Love|the power of heart]] often used in [[Magical Girl]] anime. The show does this by drawing attention to the fact that the power of what the girls wish for (the desires of their heart) are never as pure and noble as many shows often assume they would be (these are young girls after all). Tragedy ensues because of their often selfish and unclear desires. The ending, however, reconstructs the power of heart completely in that a wish made for all the right reasons can essentially become the most powerful force to ever exist.}}
* [[Death by Origin Story]]: Mami's and Kyoko's parents.
* [[Department of Redundancy Department]]: The Latin title [[Covers Always Lie|reads as this]], but it's subverted in that there's an alternate, more accurate translation (based off of [[Altum Videtur]]): {{spoiler|''Girl of the Sorcerer: Magician Madoka''. Furthermore, "Puella" literally means "a young girl" but it's derived from "Puerulus", which means "a young slave". "Magi", depending on the context, can be used in two ways: "Magician" or "Deceiver", the latter of which is the closest derivation. The series' title can thus also be translated to "Slave to the Deceiver, Magician Madoka"}}
* [[Deranged Animation]]: For example, [[media:sweet-dreams 3701.jpg|the Anthonies']] ''[[South Park]]-ish'' appearance (read: reminiscent of that series' cutout style), as well as how it ''doesn't'' match the art style of the other characters, is already bad enough for them to deserve to be the page image for [[
* [[Design Student's Orgasm]]: The witches' mazes. The first witch, Gertrud, is a gardener, so the maze is covered in roses and thorns, with floating scissors and butterfly- and puffball-themed familiars. The second, Charlotte, has a maze [[Level Ate|made of cake and sweets]] with syringes and bottled body parts everywhere. Charlotte herself looks like a children's cartoon from the 80s.
** A certain aspect of Charlotte takes heavy inspiration, too, from Takeshi Murakami's Superflat artwork.
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* [[Despair Event Horizon]]: For magical girls, this is more than a metaphor: it's an actual, literal point of no return that has tangible consequences. Sayaka starts heading towards it when Kamijo hits it, gets really close when Hitomi confesses that she wants to ask Kamijo out (going [[Ax Crazy]] in the process), and {{spoiler|passes it in Episode 8, turning into a witch. In episode 12, however, she's "purified" by Madoka's wish, which gives her a more peaceful death.}}
** In Episode 10, {{spoiler|Mami from one of the previous timelines snaps and tries to kill the other magical girls when she finds out about the [[Awful Truth]], murdering Kyoko and nearly killing Homura before being killed by Madoka. Eventually, Homura becomes so desensitized due to her past failures that she essentially becomes a [[Knight Templar]] for Madoka's survival.}}
* [[Divided We Fall]]: One of the major subversions of this series: the [[Magical Girl|magical girls]] are not working together. In fact, there are ''reasons'' for them to not work together, because they're competing for the same resource (the witches' grief seeds). At the same time, the girls are clearly inclined to help one another, and yet are also unwilling to accept the others' help. The results are [[Poor Communication Kills|sadly unfortunate]].▼
* [[Did Not Do the Research]]:
** When {{spoiler|Kamijo starts to play violin again}}, what you actually hear is a viola.
** The description of "entropy" in episode 9 is a bit off. Entropy is described as the net loss of energy from a system, but the first law of thermodynamics state that energy cannot be created or destroyed. Despite this, the show's explanation still works. In reality, entropy is the increase in chaos in an enclosed system over time. Put simply, this means heat from hot places will continuously move to cold places. This means that some useful energy will no longer be useful. For example, think of the heat energy generated by a heater, and how it will "spread" across the room until you can no longer feel the warmth, or how the heat from your blankets escapes when you get out of bed. This means that the amount of usable energy in the universe is still decreasing as time progresses, {{spoiler|and there is still a need to find an alternative energy source}}.
** Homura's explosive and flash grenades seem to have been mixed up. Odd when you consider how much care they put into detailing her other weapons.
** Supplementary material states that "Walpurgisnacht combines with other witches in the same way two powerful tornadoes are able to combine and become larger. It's essentially a "conglomeration"-type witch." Thing is, [http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2011/04/when_tornadoes_collide.html real tornadoes don't do that].
* [[Died Happily Ever After]]: {{spoiler|Sayaka in episode 12, and possibly Homura, following the series conclusion. Mami and Kyoko are slated to go out this way, too, but possibly only after Homura herself is reunited with Madoka in Heaven.}}
** And then there's ''[[The Movie|Rebellion]]'', where {{spoiler|all of that is undone and everybody's alive again - in the worst way possible}}.
* [[Diegetic Theme Cameo]]: Madoka listens to "Connect", the opening theme, at the record store in the mall in episode 1. Episode 6 also features Kyoko dancing to a techno version of the song on a DDR stand-in.
* [[Distant Finale]]: The last pages of the manga occur some unspecified time after the last scene in the anime.
* [[The Ditz]]: Madoka, and {{spoiler|In the first few timelines, Homura.}}
▲* [[Divided We Fall]]: One of the major subversions of this series: the [[Magical Girl
* [[Doing In the Wizard]]: Sort of. {{spoiler|Kyubey is from a species of [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]], and his goal is staving off the heat death of the universe by breaking the 2nd law of thermodynamics.}} Magic is still magic, though.
* [[Downer Beginning]]: The curtain rises with Kaname Madoka dreaming of a mysterious black-haired magical girl battling giant falling pieces of buildings in a grey, war-torn world.
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* [[Dying Alone]]: {{spoiler|Kyoko performs a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] to kill Oktavia so that Sayaka doesn't have to die alone.}}
* [[Dying as Yourself]]: Arguably, {{spoiler|what Ultimate Madoka does for every magical girl that has ever, or will ever, exist. By taking them off to heaven with her, she prevents them from turning into witches and allows them to fade away instead.}}
==E==
* {{spoiler|[[Earn Your Happy Ending]]}}: The series' {{spoiler|[[Bittersweet Ending]]}} would not have been possible without {{spoiler|Madoka and Homura's sacrifices}}.
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* [[Essence Drop]]: A defeated Witch usually leaves behind a Grief Seed, which a magical girl can then pick up and use to refill her lost [[Mana]] and thus restore the brightness of her Soul Gem -- {{spoiler|or rather, that's what they're led to believe. What they actually do is transfer [[The Corruption]] that they had accumulated [[Magic Is Evil|from their magic use]] from the Soul Gem into the Grief Seed, thus delaying their eventual fate of transforming into Witches themselves.}}
* [[Evolving Credits]]:
** If you watch closely, you can see the OP change slightly from [http://wiki.puella-magi.net/images/1/1d/Op1.png episode]{{Dead link}} to [http://wiki.puella-magi.net/images/f/f9/Op2.png episode]{{Dead link}}.
** Similarly, each ending progressively becomes darker.
** The final image of episode 10's outro is changed from just Sayaka, Madoka, and Mami. This time [http://images.puella-magi.net/thumb/9/93/Ep10-ending-group.jpg/800px-Ep10-ending-group.jpg Kyoko and Homura] are in the picture, too.
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*** She's a ''lot'' [[Chaotic Selfish|closer to]] [[Disgaea|Etna]], [[Deadpan Snarker|though]].
* [[Eyes of Gold]]: {{spoiler|Madoka on episode 12}}
{{Split Trope List footer}}
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