Puella Magi Madoka Magica

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About

Puella Magi Madoka Magica (Japanese: 魔法少女まどか☆マギカ Mahō Shōjo Madoka Magika) is a TV anime series created by SHAFT that aired in Japan in 2011 and has since grown into a large multimedia franchise. Due to its innovative incorporation of the traditional magical girl story with a dark psychological theme, it has become one of the most successful anime series in 2011 and received largely positive critical response. The series has also become hugely popular on the internet, encouraging the creation of numerous fanart and parodies.

History

The Madoka Magica series first began as an anime series, which first aired in Japan for 12 episodes, starting on January 7th, 2011. The show detailed the life of 14-year old Madoka Kaname and her best friend Sayaka Miki, who are approached by Kyubey, who offers to grant them a wish if they agree to become magical girls and help fight against evil beings known as witches, who cause a number of incidents to humans by giving them special marks known as "Witch's marks". However, after a transfer student named Homura Akemi tries to stop Madoka from becoming a magical girl, she soon realizes the true extent of becoming a magical girl. The trailer was posted onto Aniplex's official YouTube^[15] channel on August 14th, 2011, gaining 700k views in 10 years (shown below).

As well as the anime series, three films were created based off the series. The first two, released on October 6th and October 13th of 2012, acted as feature length re-tellings of the anime series. The third, titled "Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Rebellion", released on October 26th, 2013 and told an original story that acted as a sequel to the TV series. On April 15th, 2021, at an event commemorating the 10th anniversary of the franchise, a fourth movie and sequel to Rebellion was announced, titled "Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Walpurgisnacht Rising". No release date for this movie has been announced as of yet.

A number of manga have also been released to complement the anime, including a direct manga adaptation of the TV anime and various spin-off manga such as "Puella Magi Kazumi Magica" and "Puella Magi Oriko Magica", which told side-stories mostly unrelated to the main series but sometimes contained cameos from the anime's cast.

Magia Record

In 2016, at SHAFT's 40th anniversary event, the studio announced "Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story: Magia Record", a gacha-style mobile game that would tell a new story in the Madoka Magica universe. The mobile game's story would take place in an alternate timeline from the original anime and primarily focus on a new cast of original characters, including the new protagonist, Iroha Tamaki. The original Madoka Magica anime cast also appears and plays a role in the Magia Record story, while characters from various spin-offs such as Kazumi Magica and Oriko Magica would also be obtainable and have various events and side stories for them. The game also features individual character stories for every single obtainable character, including the original cast, spin-off casts, and "MagiReco" (as it's often abbreviated) original characters.

The game released in Japan on August 22nd, 2017, and would also see an English release in the United States on June 25th, 2019, but the English server closed down after a little over a year of service. A manga adaptation of the MagiReco story began running in Manga Time Kirara Forward on August 24th, 2018, and an anime adaptation began airing in early 2020. A second season of the anime premiered in July 2021, and the third and final season is scheduled for later in 2021.

Online Relevance

The Madoka Magica series has garnered a significant online following. The show has a significant presence on sites such as Tumblr^[1], Reddit^[2], 4chan's /a/ (Anime and Manga) board^[3] and /c/ (Anime/Cute) boards^[4], Fanpop^[5], My Anime List^[6], FanFiction.net^[7] and DeviantART^[8]. There are numerous sites holding information of the series, such as the two Madoka Magica wikis^[9], TV Tropes^[10] and Anime News Network^[11]. The Madoka Magica Facebook page also has over 84,000 likes as of September 2019^[12]. Since its Japanese release, the Magia Record mobile game regularly has threads on 4chan's /vg/ (Video Game Generals) board^[13] and also has its own dedicated subreddit^[14] as well.

On July 31st, 2021, the Funimation official YouTube^[16] channel uploaded the season 2 trailer of Madoka Magica, titled Magica Record, to begin streaming later that season (shown below).

Notable Sub-Memes

Connect

Connect is the name given to the opening theme of the TV series. Due to the popularity of the song, several parodies, remixes, and MADs have been created, both on Nico Nico Douga and Youtube, inspired by this song.

Kyubey

Kyubey (Japanese: キュゥべえ) is the magical being who can grant normal girls any wish they want along with magical powers to fight witches. Due to its deceptive nature, Kyubey has been regarded as a notoriously infamous character in the internet community and thus portrayed in fanart, comics, fanfiction, and flash games.

Glasses Sayaka/Too bad, it was just me!

Glasses Sayaka (Sometimes referred too as Too bad! it was X-chan) refers to a series of Image macros, originally featured in a bait-and-switch style format, which shows a number of characters, along with the line "You expecting Some Hot Girl/It's me, X!". In the west, the meme is often linked with an image of a Glasses-wearing Sayaka.

Headless Mami

Headless Mami originated from the third episode of the original Madoka Magica anime. In this episode, Mami Tomoe battles the witch Charlotte, while Madoka and Sayaka watch behind. After Mami deals what she thinks a finishing blow to Charlotte, the witch strikes back by rapidly approaching Mami and chomping her head off. The scene garnered a large impact within the internet fan community, and as a result, Mami is often depicted as headless in fan art. Fans intentionally omit Mami's head in pictures (either cropped off or hidden behind something) as part of the running joke.

This meme has been loosely acknowledged by SHAFT and the anime's staff. In reference to the popularity of Headless Mami memes, the tickets to theatrical showings of the first two Madoka Magica movies in Japan depicted Mami on the ticket, with the part being "torn off" when you enter the theater having her head.

Meduka Meguca

Meduka Meguca originated from a series of threads on 4Chan's /a/ board. The threads take the form of a series of image posts, featuring cropped low-quality details of episode screencaps, with corresponding dialogue. They retell the story of the original Madoka Magica anime in a humorous way, with intentionally misspelled character names and bad grammar. In the first /a/ thread after the announcement of the Magia Record anime, a similar low-quality screenshot appeared in the thread and hinted that MagiReco may have revived the meme.

The term "meguca" is still used, usually ironically, as a way to refer to the magical girls of the franchise, and it is commonly seen in Madoka Magica threads on /a/ and Magia Record threads on /vg/.