There’s a scene in PMMM that I feel often gets overlooked: the scene where we see Madoka decide to be a magical girl and what her wish will be.
Throughout the entire series, Madoka has been a helpless bystander. She can only stand by and watch as the rigged magical girl system hurts and even kills her friends. Although she has enormous potential as a magical girl, Homura’s good intentions and her own hesitation and fear has prevented her from making a contract to become a magical girl. In the end, the only ones left standing are her and Homura as Walpurgisnacht threatens to destroy everything.
But then Madoka asks Kyubey why Homura is so insanely determined to save her and defeat Walpurgisnacht, and Kyubey answers that it’s because Homura still hasn’t given up hope. She’s repeated this time frame God knows how many times because she has never given up the hope that she can save Madoka from the terrible fate that comes with being a magical girl, which is to either die fighting a Witch or become one yourself. But it goes deeper than that. Because if Homura were to stop hoping, it would be the end. She would be overcome with despair over her inability to save Madoka and the pointlessness of the pain and suffering she’d gone through and become a Witch.
To Kyubey, Homura is a fool for continuing to hold onto her hope. Not only Homura, but every other magical girl as well. To Kyubey, hope is a futile emotion that only prolongs and intensifies the inevitable despair that will follow. This is the pessimistic view of hope: the idea is that by hoping for or expecting a good life that we can never have, we prolong our torment. So it is better to live without hope.
But Madoka’s view is different. To her, hope is never bad. It is never wrong to hope that things will be better and strive for a better future. Hope is a blessing that makes us strong and keeps us going. It’s what we hold onto and fight with when all else seems lost. To Madoka, the idea the hope could ever be twisted into something bad or pointless is unacceptable. She makes her feelings clear after she makes her wish, and it’s an outright refutation of Kyubey’s earlier statement:
To me, this is why Madoka became a magical girl. A large part of it is to save her friends and stop Walpurgisnacht, yes, but also it’s bigger than that. Madoka can not stand by and watch a system that penalizes hope exist. She also alludes to this when she is making her actual wish:
“I don’t care what I become. All those who have fought against Witches, who believed in hope as magical girls… I don’t want to see them cry. I want them to smile until the very end. If any rule or law stands in the way of that, I will destroy it. I will rewrite it. That is my prayer. That is my wish.”
And this is the scene where we see Madoka decide this. The scene where she finally gets fed up and thinks “You know, screw you Kyubey. I’m going to wish for a universe where magical girls will never die in despair. Where they can hold onto hope and smile until the very end.”
To me, this is the final message we’re left with in PMMM. That we should be like Madoka and never stop hoping. That hope is never wrong.
