Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica – Episode 8 – Thoughts and Analysis

Episode 8 was so astonishing! All the angst from Sayaka just blew up rather quickly. Meanwhile, Madoka gets emotionally hurt as Sayaka rips the relationship apart in the path of her destruction. In the center of this mess, we learn more about Kyubey’s sinister plan and the big reveal that Homura is from the future. (Image Source)

From the last episode, Sayaka fights in a berserk manner as a result from the regrets caused by her wish with Hitomi taking Kyousuke away from her. Since Sayaka believes that her friends betrayed her, she cannot trust anyone. Her extreme angst can be compared to what happened in Spiderman 3 where someone takes the hero’s girlfriend then the hero start having a feeling of angst with the person who killed his father.  The difference is that Kyoko and Homura want to help Sayaka out by purifying her Soul Gem with the Grief Seed to make her feel better. Unfortunately, Sayaka is blinded by her distrust towards everyone that she kicked it away. This reaction and her attitude suggest that she has too much pride even though she can’t bring herself to love Kyosuke as a zombie that caused her downfall.

From the day Sayaka became a magical girl, I suspect that she had too much pride by the actions she took. She becomes a magical girl with the hopes of healing Kyousuke so she can ultimately win him over. Unfortunately, everything went south and she refuses to admit that she is wrong. On top of that, she views Kyoko and Homura as adversaries without realizing that they want her to feel better. While Homura throwing the Grief Seed at Sayaka might not be the best course of action, it was necessary to stop Sayaka from destroying Madoka. So essentially, her refusal to purify her Soul Gem indicates that she gives no regards to her friend’s feelings until its too late. She simply brushes her off and continues to recklessly defeat the witches and eventually kill the misogynists.

In a way, Sayaka’s transformation into a witch can be viewed as a hubristic tragedy. She acted if she was holier than thou and that nothing can get in her way. Instead, she is blinded by her pride, which causes her to become out of touch with reality. Eventually, she treats everyone like they are nobody, especially Madoka. If only sheleft Kyousuke alone, it wouldn’t result in her becoming a witch and their romantic relationship would stay in tact.

Since Madoka mentioned that she saw Homura somewhere and Kyubey revealing her time traveling magic suggests that Homura is actually from the future.  While this is nothing new since the dream scene had her batting a witch in the first episode and her prior knowledge of everything already indicate this, except her motives to travel back in time. The possible reason why she went back into the past is to prevent destruction and to save her love one, which is Madoka. Madoka in the other time line may have made a contract to save the city or for something else. As a result, she may have possibly died or became a witch. To prevent this horrible fate, Homura used a second wish or obtained magical powers to go back in time to set things right. Therefore, this is a reason why she wants to protect Madoka from Kyubey to the point of killing him to prevent history from repeating itself.

After Homura shot Kyubey numerous times, more information is revealed regarding him and his motives. While it was cool to see Kyubey look like Swiss cheese after Homura shot him with her gun, it was ineffective since Kyubey can generate many bodies. In theory, he could transfer control to another body if the body he was in becomes unusable.  In addition to transferring to different bodies, he just eats his former body, which is kind of disappointing since many people want to see him dead and never come back. Few moments later, Homura refers Kyubey as an incubator. This brings us back the scene in Episode 6 where Kyubey ate the Grief Seed that Sayaka collected on his back. This action is basically storing and taking the Grief Seed out of circulation. As a result, magical girls won’t be able to purify their Soul Gem with the scarcity of these seeds. To survive, they would have to fight each other to their death or become witches. Also, take the word “Incubator” into consideration. An incubator is a safe place to grow something without worrying about danger. In theory, Kyubey might be collecting these Grief Seeds to make the witches grow in his dimension and then releasing them on Walpurgis Night for mass destruction. From this, Kyubey’s Grief Seed storage proves that his motivates are somewhat malevolent.

Lastly, when Sayaka turned into a witch, Kyubey has said something important about magical girls and witches. Puella Magi in Latin is translated out to be “girl magician” or “immature witch.” This makes sense since girls will gradually grow into women. Instead of becoming a woman, if a magical girl builds up too much grief in a short period of time, it will eventually grow into something really bad and transform into a witch. Considering that grief seeds are the former souls of magical girls, we don’t know what happens to the girl’s body after transformation.  But then again, this is probably Kyubey’s motivate to make contract with girls to turn them into witches and trap them in the incubator, a cycle that Homura wants to break forever.

Although most of the theories came true with these plot twists, there are many questions remain regarding Homura’s relation with Madoka and whether or not Madoka will become a magical girl. If Madoka becomes a magical girl towards the end of the show, it will most likely not involve Kyubey. Instead, her powers will be granted from a different source. This will practically allow her to defeat the witch on Walpurgis Night and break Kyubey’s ability to make contracts permanently. Whatever may be her choice, Homura will be on her side as a mentor while protecting her from Kyubey.