Puella Magi Madoka Magica Witches-A small analysis
First of all let's establish one more time what are witches. Puella Magi bring hope in the world, but when that hope turns to despair they stop living as physical beings and become the entities known as witches, phenomena that works against the natural and ordinary laws. Normal girls become puella magi to fight those witches and in exchange they are granted wishes limited by their Karmic destinies.
Now a lot of people complain why characters such as Mami have such weak witches:
But characers not so powerfull such as Sayaka can create a very dangerous witch:
I don’t think there is only one reason why that is happening so I’m going to talk about the main problems:
The hope they embody(selflessness of their wishes) and level of despair they reach;
The age they have and the time they spend as puella magi;
1.The hope they embody (selflessness of their wishes) and level of despair they reach
As I was saying magical girls bring hope, and not only by fighting witches and wraiths, but also by the wish they make to become magical girls. Now getting back to Mami her wish was to be saved from the car accident that killed her parents and from that point she fought in order to pay for her salvation, after she found herself unfit to be a magical girl and regrets she let her parents died letting her alone she becomes the witch Candeloro. I think the oposite of Mami in this case would be Madoka.
(Isn’t she adorable?) Even from the first timeline her wish was always pure and made for somebody else (She made her wish to ressurect a stray cat if I’m right) and from that point she fought for the sake of other people ready to sacrifice her own life to defeat Walpurgis Night.
In another timeline before she becomes a witch she asks Akemi Homura to shot her because she couldn’t stand to live her life as one of the problem sources in the world. As for the despair that tainted her soul gem is very simple as putted down by Kyubey a puella magi that defeats the most powerfull witch will receive the despair from that witch and will turn into an even more powerfull monster(Kriemhild Gretchen).
Now I know that even in the first timeline Madoka was ridicusouly strong so I’m gonna talk about the other fabulous duo Sakura Kyoko and Sayaka Miki. Let’s start with Kyoko, she was the child of a chatolic preacher who tried to start a cult and was raised in a strong christian doctrine. It was hard for her parent to gather followers so they had money problems and were starving, she mets Kyubey and wishes for people to listen to her father, and starts to fight witches under the beliefs she and her father could save the world and that she is doing the dirty work so people with happy lifes won’t need to. She becomes the witch Ophelia after Oktavia is killed and she can’t try to turn her back to normal anymore. Sayaka on the other hand lived a happy life with one of her friends being a violinist who couldn’t play the violin because of an accident that limited his hands mobility. Now her wish has two meanings. On one hand she wanted to get her friend out of his misery and help him play the violin again and on the other hand she hoped after he is healed he will recognize her for the time she spend by his side and will fall in love. Her despair hits hard mainly because unlike the other girls she had a very strong justice sense and was used to view the world in black-and white and tought if you do good you can only receive good. Now in a fight Sayaka is weak and not only against Kyoko, but also against weaker magical girls such as Homura (and before you say anything in combat only her small shield and time stoping powers won’t help a lot, that’s why she uses additional weapons she made/stole)
Now this actually could explain a lot: Mami and Kyoko have been trough tough times they experienced harsh situations they can take pain much easier and don’t have enough hope to turn into despair, not to mention they made wishes for their own health or their families(Mami wanted to live and Kyoko was starving). Madoka and Sayaka on the other hand lived very happy lifes without major problems and never missed necesities so they wanted to help others resulting in their hope being the fuel to a lot of curses.
2.The age they have and the time they spend as puella magi
Older magical girls exist. We have Tsubaki Mikoto from Puella Magi Suzune Magica:
And also the witch Roberta who is in her 20s-30s:
The idea here is simple magical girls can live a long period of time but because they are matured they no longer release vast amounts of energy so their witch forms are weak.
On the other hand Mami and Kyoko are only one year older than the other girls(and yeah I know Kyoko was in the same class as Madoka in Homura’s world I’d rather believe this was a mistake than to think Homura was smart enough to figure out Kyoko would loose a school year by living on the streets) Candeloro and Ophelia don’t seem a lot stronger than those previous two. According to “The Different Story" Mami fought as a puella magi for at least two years and Kyoko one year previous to the events of the series. Now we know Mami was really preoccupied with helping the others so she searched for witches every day and when she didn’t found one she would only kill the familiars. This might seem altruist, but over a while it would became really time/magic-consuming.
This could also mean that if somebody is a magical girl for a long enough period of time and uses too much magic that magical girl also reduces her witch potential. Returning to Sayaka she’s been a magical girl for like two weeks and as we stated before Sayaka couldn’t beat Kyoko in a fair fight, but Sakura managed to destroy Oktavia only by using all her powers and killing herself in the process in the last timeline.
And I’m not analysing Homulily because:
She tainted her own soul gem:
Also she corrupted it with love not despair;
The only place where Homulilly appears aftr Homura felt into despair is the Game and only for less than a second;
Each time she repeated the month in which she befriended Madoka she waked up in her young body so we can’t actually appreciate if she’s a magical girl for 1-2 months or over 12 years, also we can’t appreciate her actual age;
We only see Homulilly inside her soul gem but the soul gem never turned to a mature Grief Seed and we don’t know how she would work as a witch if she’d actually release her witch barrier in the world;
With this said lets see Nagisa Momoe’s character. She is not very powerfull, her weapon is pretty childish, not to mention her wish would result in a lack of additional and unique powers, but if we analyse her history according to the previous observations:
she’s the youngest puella magi in the show (around 8 years old);
we will assume she hed a happy life before her mother got cancer;
her wish was to share a cheese cake with her for the last time(which in her mentality could be considered selfless);
because she was young she was very inoccent and pretty much obvious to life so she had a lot of hope to fight;
felt into despair after finding out she could’ve helped her mother so most likely she wasn’t a magical girl for a very long time;
And would explain how we got from this:
But of course the potential of the magical girl also plays a huge point in the process.
But we don’t need to worry about that now.
I hope this was usefull and you found this theories interestring if you have question I haven’t fullfilled please let me know and I will explain them.(Oh god is my english as bad as I think it is?).
So basically, the power of a witch is determined by the…let’s call it “Despair Shock” which results from the destruction of what most likely has been a happy life, and thus the impact is bigger making stronger witches, but Puella Magi who have become used to the despair and misery in their lives, aren’t as shocked by it therefore when they despair they produce weaker witches?
Not bad, I REALLY like it, great job my friend, it is a very plausible theory.
I just really have one correction, Mr. Sakura was not Catholic, if he was he couldn’t have gotten married, he’s most likely from a protestan division, the safest bet is Anglican, but that’s it, other than that, GREAT analisis, my aplauds to you n_n
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