(TW: suicide)
Part 2: Crimson's Conflict
Right then. So that's the truth at the heart of Madoka Magica. It strung you along for three episodes with a typical magical girl-like structure, a status quo totally familiar to anyone with passing knowledge of Sailor Moon. It then just killed one of its main cast, letting the veil drop. There are other dark and terrible truths to be learned, but we must tread carefully in this grim world of despair. As this section suggests, we're going to get some good old-fashioned magical girl ideological conflict in a bit. Before we can get there, we have to set things up and try to cope with the loss of our friend Mami. How do Madoka and Sayaka take that?
Not that well, all things considered. The combined nature of Mami's death, Homura's defeat of the witch that killed her, and the dissolution of the witch's lair means that Mami left behind no corpse. With no immediate family, it will take time before she's reported missing. There's no trace of Mami Tomoe in this world any more, and Madoka will later visit her abandoned apartment and find it still lived in. Half-eaten cake and half-drunken tea, a last meal that will never be completed. It's enough to make Madoka break down and sob at the sheer grief of it all, and it's not even the first time she breaks down and sobs in the episode. At breakfast with her family, her eggs remind her of Mami and she weeps over how glad she is to be alive, to be here in the moment. Point is, she's not in a good place with her grief right now... but the one person who comes to try and help her feel better is actually Homura.Well, it's a bit of a cool detached comfort, but it is at least an attempt to tell Madoka that she shouldn't be blaming herself for Mami's death. No, this is just the apparent reality of being a magical girl. You make your wish, you fight for the sake of it, and then you die. Madoka finds it horrible, but Homura tells her it is what it is; a fundamental fact of the magical girl experience. As it turns out, another fundamental fact of the magical girl experience is that selfish nature of them only being out for each other. In an earlier conversation with Kyubey about it, Kyubey says that he thinks only other magical girls can criticize that way of thinking. Madoka doesn't know what it's like, but she knows she doesn't like that system as it is. It's unfair. If magical girls could work together, then maybe Mami didn't have to die. We will untangle the ramifications of Madoka's opinions on the system later, but for now we need to see what Sayaka's been up to.
As it turns out, it's wondering why bad things have to happen to people she cares about instead of herself. We're not just talking about Mami here, as her death has struck Sayaka hard as well. No, Sayaka has a friend we've not talked about, a hospital patient named Kyosuke. He was a prodigy with the violin until he got in some unspecified accident, and now his legs and left hand are all fucked up from it. The poor boy can't play the violin any more, but Sayaka visits him and keeps bringing classical music CDs for him to listen to in order to brighten his spirits. This is who Sayaka is considering using her magical girl wish on, and things move that desire forward. Namely a depressive burst of anger from Kyosuke, who sees Sayaka's kindness and hope that he'll get better as torture, all those CDs just reminding him he'll never play the violin ever again. Sayaka's ever hopeful for her friend, but...
Madoka hits a low point as well, encountering her pal Hitomi... but she's under one of those witch curses and heading into a warehouse with other depressed people so they can all kill themselves by what I think is mixing ammonia and bleach. Madoka stops them but the witch that drove them to suicidal despair drags her into its lair, and the stylized lair this time has Madoka as a lineless animated blob, forced to witness her own despair and relive Mami's death on a meta TV screen before her death. Lucky there's a magical girl to save her, as well as all the people who were about to die! Yes, Sayaka did indeed use her wish to heal Kyosuke's hand and has become a magical girl. You'll note, though, that we promised an old-fashioned magical girl ideological conflict. Having set up Sayaka to show the scope of a magical girl's rise, we now need to give her a foe. It's time to talk about Kyoko Sakura.
In talking about her, though, we have to square away the duality of my two selves: the me who watched this in 2011, and the me who watched this in 2020 and is writing about it now. To that first me, Kyoko Sakura was definitively my least favorite of the five main characters of Madoka Magica. All the others just interested me more for their own reasons, and Kyoko was quite the brash antagonist who didn't sit right with me. I don't know how to explain myself any further than that, as the mists of time and memory have obscured my reasoning. What I can tell you know is I was completely full of shit. Kyoko, while rewatching Madoka Magica for this, became my second favorite of the five. The #1 being Homura, for reasons we'll delve deep into when we get to her section. As it turns out, melting my brain with magical girl media for two years has made me find the antagonists and their conflicting ideologies fascinating. Over the next handful of episodes, Sayaka the rookie magical girl will come into direct conflict with the experienced Kyoko. The question remains: What will they fight over?
The usual ideological conflict of naive idealism vs. grim practicality only sort of tracks onto Sayaka vs. Kyoko. We need to come up with something new. Let's see. Ah, yes. Why don't we say... Noble heroism vs. selfish acquisition? Oh yeah. That works. Over her scenes in her introductory episode, Kyoko's intent is clear. She really is the type of magical girl that Mami warned us about. A competitive and skilled player in the witch-slaying business who won't play nice and is ready to edge out her competition by any means necessary. Kyubey is actually the one who called her in to protect the city, after Mami died and Madoka and Sayaka were (obviously) reluctant to make a contract with him. Sayaka changed her mind after, but Kyoko isn't just going to give up a prime piece of witch-hunting real estate like that... so the two enter conflict with each other. Kyoko stops Sayaka from killing a witch's familiar, and then explains Sayaka's folly to her:
Kyoko goes on to explain her ideology in terms of the food chain. Witches kill weak humans, and then magical girls go on to kill the witches. To Kyoko, this is the natural order. She goes on to mock any idea of Sayaka being a hero who rescues people, and that sets off Sayaka enough to come out swinging with her sword. Easy and clear ideological conflict. Sayaka used her wish for another person, and is taking the role of the noble hero who will protect the city. Bravely risking her life not just for the person she saved, but also to fill the gap Mami left when she suddenly died. Not just filling the gap, but living up to her dead friend's ideals. Kyoko thinks all of that is a load of shit, and is all in for herself with the magical girl game. Who gives a shit if a couple of weak-spirited people off themselves from a witch's curse? It's just the natural order.
Mad as she is, though... Sayaka is still a newbie to the magical girl scene. The nature of her wish helps her a little; since her wish was a healing wish, as a magical girl she has potent regenerative powers that allow her to get back up from Kyoko's powerful blows. It's not a fight that will end well, but it's pre-emptively ended thanks in part to Madoka. Earlier, Madoka had went out to lunch with Homura in the hopes that she and Sayaka could work together instead of fighting each other. Homura was her usual cold self, telling Madoka to give up on Sayaka and that there was no hope of salvation for her. In desperation to stop the fighting, Madoka almost makes a contract then and there... but Homura breaks up the fight in her own way and Kyoko clears off. Homura is quite cold to Madoka here now for almost contracting, as Madoka not doing that has been her goal all along.
Madoka, ever the hopeful one in this dark world of despair, suggests that maybe actually Sayaka and Kyoko can talk it out. Sayaka all but goes off on Madoka and that hopeful friendship ideology here. The two of them were really, truly attempting to kill each other when they fought. For Sayaka, the noble heroine, Kyoko and Homura are almost as bad, if not worse than, the witches. At least the witches are just unknowable monsters. Kyoko and Homura are sentient and selfish beings, unconcerned with the affairs of others. Sayaka will stand strong against them and be a heroic bastion of nobility. Someone Mami would be proud of. It's enough to get Madoka to vaguely ask for advice from her mom about all of this, and her mom has some simple but sage advice:
The time for making such a mistake is sooner than later, as Kyoko gets to confront Sayaka again while she's outside Kyosuke's home. Kyoko now knows who Sayaka used her wish on, and can't believe how Sayaka could throw away her one wish like that. Nothing good at all comes out of using magic for someone other than yourself, after all. That's Kyoko's ideology, and she does have good reason for holding it. The real provocation comes when she sarcastically asks if Mami even taught her that much. Which Mami did try to impart, in her own way, to be fair. We will deal with the parameters of Sayaka's wish, but Kyoko does cut to the heart of it; if she wanted the guy to fall in love with her, she could have wished for anything else. Did Sayaka truly want to selflessly heal Kyosuke's hand, or was she expecting to then be rewarded with true love for her heroic act? Kyoko, being Kyoko, is simple and to the point.
Oh, it's on now. A duel above the freeway, now that Kyoko's pissed Sayaka off this much. Before they can get to it, though, Homura intervenes. She's made a little temporary alliance with Kyoko for reasons we'll get into, and is going to take on Sayaka herself. Madoka arrives, tries to stop the fight, and then she takes her mom's advice and makes one hell of a mistake by tossing Sayaka's Soul Gem off the freeway and onto a moving truck. Sayaka protests for about five seconds before collapsing into a heap, and then we learn the awful truth of it all.
Kyubey wonders just what the hell the magical girls freak out about when they find this out, showing that he knew and withheld the information. This contract is getting worse and worse all the time, but this is horrific. Magical girls are walking shells fueled by their souls. Holy Christ. The ideological conflict between Sayaka and Kyoko is not so much resolved as brushed aside in the face of the horrifying revelation of what they've become in making a contract. For Kyoko, this doesn't especially hurt. For Sayaka, however?
We've witnessed a noble heroine's rise. Now, she has to fall.
(Continued in Part 3)
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