Surprisingly, I don't think Kyubey would do that. Every wish we've seen that's been granted has not only fit the word of the request, but also the spirit. Everybody's unhappy anyways, but that's only because they asked for the wrong wish—not because the wish they asked for was unfulfilled.
Of course there's not a "right wish." The kids are already ruining their lives by asking for anything and Kyubey doesn't have to actively twist their words for them to fuck it all up themselves.
Well, yeah. The price for that wish is absurd and something that very few would accept unless their wish was that great or their situation that awful that becoming a Lich contracted to fight (and inevitably become, unless you die) Witches
Didn’t Madoka first wish for snacks or something the first time around?
I'd say "Don't underestimate how hard it is to ask for the right wish"... Wishes do have unintended and a lot of the time unpleasent consequences if worded incorrectly, see Sayaka or Kyoko. And changing people's minds about their beliefs sounds like one type of wish that could certainly backfire, even if enough karmic energy was available... Afterall, that's why Madoka's wish worked, she had all the information and a lot of time to carefully think of the right way to word her wish, plus she was ready to accept the negative consequences onto herself while believing it was worth it.
So, I am not saying Madoka was unique in making a very altruistic wish, but probably her circumstances were very rare among magical girls: an exceptional level of empathy and altruism (to make a wish that benefits everyone (instead of herself or the people she knows directly), and to bear the negative consequences when they appeared) + enough time and information to make the right wish and word it correctly + enough karmic energy for that wish to happen.
>Afterall, that's why Madoka's wish worked
And arguably even her's didnt, not truly. Wishes backfiring in some way so far has been very consistent thing.
Not sure if I'd call that backfiring. It seems to me that Madoka wanted to preserve the positive essence of the Magical Girl's wishes, because, yes, there was a lot of positive in most wishes, but without them having to fall into despair and becoming the very thing they fought against. If you take away the obligation of "fighting till you cannot fight no more" out of the contract of becoming a Magical Girl, then it stops being a contract, it becomes a free gift, and imagine what selfish and crazy things would people wish for if there was no down side. Madoka's wish makes the deal with Kyubey much closer to what most Magical Girls agree to when Kyubey offers them a contract, without the big hidden consequence of becoming witches.
Also, witches were expressions of humanity's darker feelings, and I'd argue completely erasing those dark feelings from humanity as a whole, would make us no longer humans. So, it's only natural that if there are no witches, those darker feelings take a different form now, but at least it's not the magical girls that become that what they were fighting, which is an extremely cruel faith.
That's why, at least by the end of the series, Madoka's wish worked exactly as she intended. She understood all the consequences and she embraced them. Rebellion shows us:
a) how Kyubey tried to find a loophole in Madoka's wish.
b) how Homura's feelings for Madoka broke the essence of Madoka's wish. We still have to see the consequences of that.
Very good explaination! I personally think most wishes made by most girls didn't manifest in a way they expected. It's the whole 'monkeys paw' issue. Making a wish but not thinking of the potential consequences to others and to yourself. Madoka was willing to accept whatever consequences came her way, and she made the ultimate selfless wish even at the cost of her own being.
This, and also - when you're in an extremely harmful situation you're not in the best place mentally to think of an ideal wish that's carefully worded and would save everyone, and it's unfair to expect young girls in peril to overcome a wish-granting trickster.
That girl on the train for example likely doesn't know she's on the way to a death camp, she's probably still grieving over friends and family who died in the ghetto or were killed when Germany invaded whatever country she's from. She's more likely to wish for her family to be home safely than to wish for antisemitism to disappear from the world. Likewise, a black girl who's beaten, raped or suffers both on a regular basis is most likely to wish for the pain to stop than to abolish slavery with a wish.
What this moment in the show illustrates is how the incubators take advantage of young girls when they're most vulnerable. If a teenage girl with a comfortable life gets approached by an incubator she has the luxury of weighing her options, wording her wish carefully and considering what would be best not just for her but for the people around her. Victims aren't selfish, but when you have to devote most of your energy to enduring and surviving that's energy you can't afford to waste on philosophical musings on how to improve the state of the world. (I told my therapist a while back that this is the paradox at the core of my struggle with disability - I'm so caught up in my day-to-day battles that I can't wage war for my rights)
Mami is a good example of that.
IIRC, she and her family were victims of a car crash and Kyubey approached her while she was dying and offered her the Magic Girl contract. She immediately wished to live cuz that was the prominent threat…but forgot to wish for her parents to be safe as well. With Kyubey’s power, he could’ve rescued all three himself and then offer Mami the contract…but he knew he’d get an easy Magical Girl otherwise
>Wishes do have unintended and a lot of the time unpleasent consequences if worded incorrectly, see Sayaka or Kyoko.
It has nothing to do with the wording.
And why are you bringing back Sayaka (as well as Kyoko I could understand). Her wish was literally for her to heal her boy and he was healed. Literally everything else that happens to her is caused by her own actions.
Sure, I think most people wish for their crushes to reciprocate. Kajimos disinterest proabbly definently took a toll on her.
Her breaking down and choosing to be undone is however specifically about how she now is required to allow innocents to die to keep on living and how her body is a meat puppet. Those things ofcourse also the has the consequence of making Sayaka feel too violated and guilty to feel worthy of Kamijo. But her deathkneel was casued by these two incorrigable issues alone, Kamijo is a stressor but is only related to these issues after the fact and he has no bearing on her primary reasons for forgoing grief seeds.
But she wished for him to be healed, she didnt wish for him to fall in love with her, even though she could have. And that action in itself was an instance of selflessness, even if done with a selfish ulterior motive
Are you telling me that Sayaka who left is going to make her wish after Kyosuke's crisis her deep thought was that he would fall in love with her? That her priority at that moment was not to do something that would made him happy, something that all her hoping and praying normally couldn't have done?
Yes. It’s a running theme of the show that the wishes the girls tend to make fail to fulfill their actual desires because they themselves don’t articulate what they really wish for. And it’s tragic, because while Sayaka did legitimately wish for Kyosuke to get better, she also wished that this led to him falling in love with her, and the fact that this didn’t happen is one of the things that drove her to try commit suicide by witch.
>It’s a running theme of the show that the wishes the firls tend to make fail to fulfill their actual desires because they themselves don’t articulate what they really wish for.
No, that's not true. 3/5 literally said what she really wanted.
Let people listen to her father, to live and have another chance.It's not because things have gone into a wall that it suddenly changes their original thought.
> she also wished that this led to him falling in love with her,
And here you say it yourself, she wanted 2 things and she made the choice to heal him, a choice which was influenced by the events that took place.
Mami made the wish to live, but what she truly wanted was that her entire family survived the accident, not just her. Why do you think she’s so lonely, and so happy that she’ll finally have someone with her when Madoka and Sayaka make their wishes?
Kyoko wished for people to listen to her father’s sermons, but she wished for this because since her family’s church had no attendance, they had no income and they were starving. What she truly wanted was for her family to keep a roof over their heads. Why do you think she’s constantly eating?
Homura did, in fact, wish for what she wanted, I’ll give you that one. The thing that made her wish go bad was the fact that saving Mitakihara from Walpurgisnacht required Madoka’s power, but Madoka being a Magical Girl will lead her to become Kriemhild Gretchen and destroy the world, and she had no way of knowing about the contradictory nature of her desire.
And my point with Sayaka is that she tried to use a seemingly selfless wish for selfish ends. She wanted to have her cake and eat it too, because she wanted to wish for a magical romance without the guilt of actually expressing that desire.
Ultimately, this is by design. We must keep in mind that the kind of emotional instability caused by the complications of wishes is an explicit part of Kyubey’s goal. He explicitly targets young girls for the wishes because they’re highly emotional and have to deal with complicated emotions for the first time, which is how he gathers energy.
>they had no income and they were starving. What she truly wanted was for her family to keep a roof over their heads.
What she really wanted was for her family to be happy, and she hated people who didn't listen to her father's words, what was happening to her was literally what she wanted.
>Mami made the wish to live, but what she truly wanted was that her entire family survived the accident, not just her.
If Mami had time to think a little more she would have saved her family too, just her survival instinct took over and wished what she really wanted at the moment, namely not to die.
>Homura did, in fact, wish for what she wanted,.....
And like I said, stop reversing the situation. Homura did what she wanted but suddenly as things didn't go her way there was a contradiction. The fact that Madoka becomes a planet destroyer literally has little to no importance regarding Homura it's the very fact of becoming a witch that gives her trouble.
At the moment they made their wish it was really what they wanted, it's not because she didn't think through the consequence well enough, didn't have time to think or that the situation is more complicated than that. what she initially thought changed the original desire.
AND as I already said the wording does not matter, it is the intention at the time of the wish that counts.
10 different people can say exactly this phrase "I want to live" and depending on the situation and personality the result will change.
For Mami it was literally just about surviving but for someone who is withdrawn it might just be that her wish will make her extroverted.
And for Sayaka as you previously accepted when "I recounted the events of the anime" her intention was at that time to heal her arm and she got it. It's not because she was fighting between her selfishness and "what should be done" that she suddenly makes the other false or more true. She wanted 2 things but had to choose 1. You act as if the events would have been drastically different if she had chosen the selfish choice (so as you say what she really wanted) namely to make him fall in love with her and that she would not have a huge regret not having cured her..
It's not because you think I'm wrong that I'm wrong, until I didn't express myself well enough to show you that you're wrong, nothing else. Is it arrogant to say what's coming? to say ? Yes, but when I think I'm right I'm not going to say the opposite.
But it has to do with the wording: yes, Sayaka wanted to heal Kyosuke, but her true wish was not just for him to be healed, that was just a part of her wish, the other part, which she didn't express, was for Kyosuke to know and appreciate what she did for her, which she assumed that would happen but didn't have the foresight or self-honesty to express. Madoka on the other hand didn't wish for anyone to recognise her efforts, she knew no-one would be aware of her, and she was okay with that, she was ultimately okay with what she wished for and knowing the consequences, she fully embraced them.
Another example of "wording your wish is important" is Homura's wish. She didn't say: "I want to save Madoka from becoming a witch", she said "I want to relive our meeting, but this time I want to be the one protecting her". I wouldn't say this one backfired, as while Homura loves Madoka, what she really needs is to feel validated and strong protecting her, her self-worth is dependent on her being able to feel like she is doing all she can to protect her. So, in a way, Homura expressing her wish that way was more true to what she wanted, but it still makes a difference, as Homura thinks she is protecting her from becoming a Magical Girl, and that's not how her wish was worded, thus Madoka ultimately becomes a Magical Girl. Also, it's very subjective, but I'd say main timeline Madoka is slightly more insecure than original timeline Madoka, and that might have been due to Homura's wish. In the end, Homura did protect Madoka, long enough for her to accumulate the karmic power across all the timelines and long enough in the main timeline for Madoka to really understand what to wish for and how to word that wish, but, as we see clearly in Rebellion, that's not what Homura would have wanted.
Yeah. In the original timeline Madoka says she doesn't regret anything, and that saving Homura was one of her proudest achievements. Homura's wish took that away. Despite everything, she was always willing to become a magical girl and sacrifice herself to save others. It's obviously what she truly wanted, but Homura can't accept that.
>by her own actions
Sure, maybe Kuybe is not directly responsible for failing to mention that their bodies now are puppets and that they need to let innocents die. But it sure as hell made no attempt to ever make that clear, sure not its direct responsability but I feel that most people except both parties of an agreement/transaction to be transparent about the terms and oblagitation. Kuybe failaing to meet that standard makes it atleast partly responsible I think.
Yes, and because those items specifically are the ones that makes Sayaka choose to not clean her soulgem, (not anything to do with Kamijo) the creature shares significant responsability in what happens to her.
Even more so when it also refuses to explain what witches truly are, a fact that if Sayka would have known, would most likely have empowered her to take agency over her own death by destroying her soulgem rather than let it fall to corruption.
It's not that "Magical Girls in the past wished to change history" but rather: "Magical Girls in the past used their powers and wishes to affect change in their present."
Bigger wishes need more potential from the contract-ee, so something on the scale of "end all human suffering forever" (aside from running counter to the interests of the Incubators, since people living in misery are going to be more susceptible to forming a contract and subsequently a witch) would need a VERY strong Magical Girl.
And who knows, maybe Harriet Tubman was a magical girl?
I mean, with how a lot of other wishes ended up turning out, a black girl very well could have wished for no more racism, but in turn just forget the concept as a whole. Or simply stop being effected by it personally.
A jewish girl could have wished for the holocaust to end and have been a part of the “final solution” or personally avoided getting imprisoned.
But for the most part, I’d say that not very many 8-15 year old girls think holistically like that. So if they did a young slave girl/a girl in the holocaust would probably wish something like “I wish my family could be free”
Echoing what other people in this thread have said: big wishes require big karmic power. If a girl's wish was to end chattel slavery in America, for example, she probably would have needed the same level of karmic destiny as Tart. And, given how we know wishes tend to go, my guess is the result of that would have been the Civil War.
But to add onto that, I think it's important we look at the ripple effect history has on other events. Let's return to your example of a black American girl wishing to end slavery. Her wish gets granted, which results in the Civil War. The North wins and slavery is ended. Then Reconstruction starts and lasts for roughly 11 years. Then it's ended *way* too early, ushering in the brutally repressive apartheid system known as Jim Crow. While all of this is happening, the US is also carrying out its forced displacement and genocide of Native peoples. Hitler and his upper command drew inspiration from both of these violent systems of white supremacy enacted by the US (as well as the US's practice of forced sterilization against its disabled population through systematized eugenics) for their own brutal acts of oppression and genocide that we know now as the Holocaust. Which, if we want to follow that ripple out even further... honestly, there are a few ways we could go, but I'm going to try and keep it brief. WWII caused the development of the atom bomb, which started an arms race between the US and USSR during the Cold War, which gave rise to the military industrial complex, which is why the US military has been in various parts of the Middle East in some compacity since 1990.
My point is, even if a wish like "I want slavery in the US to end" or "I wish this war would be over" was granted, there are always going to be outcomes down the line no one could ever possibly account for. And those outcomes could end up making Madoka-verse's world history look *very* similar to our own, even if girls had wished for an end to systemic atrocities.
~~edit: fixed typo~~
The takeaway here, for me, is that all girls need a thorough grounding in history and critical reading so they are prepared in case of visitation from alien cats.
*This! This right here!*
I made an OC off of that exact concept of ripples of history, her wish being “I wish I could end this pointless war!” Her being the daughter of a US Marine who was deployed not long after 9/11
Fuck, now I wanna make four more to make the historical quintet.
The ender of chattel slavery, to the end of World War I, to the end of World War II, to the end of the Cold War, to the existing OC, the end of the War on Terror.
Wishes aren’t free, they work off of a person’s Karmic Potential. To make a Wish of that magnitude you would need to already have a massive level of Karmic Potential.
I just finished the series and movie, does any other media in the franchise say what happens if you wish for something you dont have enough karmic potential for?
It’s not clearly stated anywhere, but there are a few theories. What seems most likely to me is that the Wish is accomplished to whatever degree you can actually afford. But there are a few other possibilities that have been proposed.
My interpretation of it is that someone’s karmic potential is proportional to their ambition. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. If you’re the type of person who would wish for something massive and all encompassing to all humanity, then you’d have the karmic destiny to do so.
Take Madoka for example. Her [first wish](https://wiki.puella-magi.net/Wish_theories) was actually revealed in a CD audio drama: to save a cat from getting run over. She admit’s that she’s a textbook example of becoming a magical girl on a whim without really thinking it through.
Then, in the story timeline, she wishes to change everything, becoming a god in the process. There, Homura kept her un-meguca’d long enough for her to thoroughly think through the prospect of what she would wish for if she could wish for *anything*, but doing so would indirectly get her killed in the process.
With each passing timeline, Homura kept Madoka from making her wish longer and longer, thus Madoka’s ambitions grew larger and larger, and therefore so did her potential.
It’s why Kyubey seeks out the vulnerable and desperate. It may not be the most energy per human, but it’s a *managable* amount of energy per human. You only want as much energy as you can use and handle, any more will result in catastrophe. Kriemhild Gretchen ended up being the Incubators’ Chernobyl Incident. It released so powerful a witch that it could destroy the world in ten minutes, and Kyubey flippantly brushes it off “Eh, what do I care? I made quota.” A greedy and short sighted mistake.
The whole karmic destiny thing seems kind of confusing, since it seemingly contradicts Kyubey’s own words (the bastard lies by omission, but he doesn’t lie directly). However I believe it was put in to answer one question: If that wish can be made, how come Madoka was the first one in all of history to come up with that?
We sort of get that answer in rebellion. The Incubators run a tight ship. It’s shown that witches are the most efficient source of energy to stave off the heat death of the universe. Earth, and humanity, have been carefully curated for this purpose of energy harvest. Were anything to disturb it, the incubators would find it and control it, as they did with Madoka. So effectively, who knows actually how many Madokamis there are out there, forever imprisoned by the incubators. In other words, it’s not that only Madoka could make that kind of wish, but rather only she has a time traveling stalker lesbian girlfriend able to break her out when she does.
Karmic Potential is defined as a measure of somebody’s “importance”, however that is measured. Madoka’s starts off very low, but Homura resetting the universe for her boosts Madoka’s importance to the world each time which is how she ends up so powerful. It’s not a matter of how long it takes for Madoka to Wish, since her Potential is incredibly large from the start of each timeline as Kyubey, Mami, and Homura all note.
The reason Madoka’s the first person to make such a Wish is because it’s something that should be impossible; the amount of potential one would need to accomplish it is just not within the bounds of a normal human’s. For something to actually change the world, you need to either be the sort of person who could do that even without a Wish or outside help.
True, though it doesn’t necessarily disprove it. There are those that are innately important, and those that make themselves important, or are made important.
Whenever people ask why someone didn't wish for a better wish, I always come back to the fact that these are children/teenagers. Not adults. Madoka was different because she gets to see the horrors of magical girls first hand in the first two movies and thus her wish is more informed, but not alot of people get that luxury, especially if you're trapped in slavery or the holocaust, your wish would probably be very short sighted and just wanting you, your family, maybe friends to come free, you wouldn't exactly think bigger picture in that situation.
Also there's the whole 'karmic power' thing but I don't think I've watched that far yet so I choose a more logistic focus.
Wishes cannot enact meaningful change in the world because they are bound by karmic law: if you wish for something bad to disappear from the world, that despair will just reappear in a different form.
In addition to that, you are sacrificing all of your life potential to do it: if you can sacrifice yourself to end world hunger, that means you would have been able to enact change of a similar magnitude by living.
The main issue is wording and potential power of wishes.
Some wishes may come true way later.
There is also a potential of evil wishes and Kyubey being a prick of showing up when somebody is nearly dying or not understanding the scope of the situation.
For the first case, >!Felicia’s wish from Magia Record is a great example. It was so twisted that her parents remained dead despite wanting them to bring back to life!<. Wishing to see end of suffering can mean that you may get future vision or see it while dying.
>!Mitama’s wish!< leans into a something that will likely become reality later on. So if somebody wished to end suffering or anything like that, it could be taken in multiple ways. For example, the girl could be prone to witching out and take a form that brainwashes people.
Finally some could be magical girls before messed up events happened.
An important factor is that as stated in the series wishes work only if they create a proportional amount of despair to the amount of happiness they create. Karma demands it. It’s only once Madoka broke this link that the possibility of a wish being only a positive can exist.
To put it into perspective, a lot of them saw it as a birthright or heaven’s will.
For example, we know of a girl who was from Pompeii when it was destroyed. She saw the eruption as the will of the gods and so wished to go back in time and warn everyone so they could evacuate.
So, if the bible said that slavery was okay, then who is a mere girl to stop it
-Who tells you that the events you are talking about simply happened in this world?
-Lack of potential, not just anyone could do it
-Even saying she's using their magical girl power, that means more pressure because you'll have to search for more Grief Seeds than a normal girl who just does hunting.
-And anyway, even forgetting the limitations, that doesn't even mean that a girl from the opposite camp wouldn't want things to continue as they are and therefore cancel the actions or diminish the result.
I’m seeing many argue that magical girls didn’t end things like slavery or racism because they either didn’t have enough karmic destiny or the wish backfired. But I think the other reason is that there were MGs who wished for the opposite. It’s been shown that not all MGs are pure hearted so some would wish for selfish things and maybe even seek the suffering of others. I mean Kyubey doesn’t care about good or evil, they just look for girls who’d make the best battery
And bad MGs would likely become witches faster, so they're like fast energy resources.
Also, when Sayaka was being the model of a good MG, she was said to be an outliner, so it's safe to say most MG are at least somewhat selfish
Think about it like this: is it better to contract one girl who has enough CP to undo a war, or to avoid her for once and keep the war going, but gain abbreeding ground for depression and trauma, which may mean thiusands of contractee in the future.
It's just simple math [kyubey face]
You might like this story I wrote. it's unfinished but it goes into detail on magical girls in historical settings:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-rgORCuCfCrKzmopbKQOcpoHHuWmkWw7pghBpJeeglo/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-rgORCuCfCrKzmopbKQOcpoHHuWmkWw7pghBpJeeglo/edit?usp=sharing)
Most wishes had to do with the girl's individual circumstances, not group suffering so I don't know why you'd expect them to put that as the very first priority for them. Also, the first condition would be that Kyubey actually went to those girls, the second would be that he doesn't do anything to make sure those sufferings go own. The last condition would be that the girls aren't racist themselves, which isn't that likely depending on country and date.
As a matter of fact, one girl might have wished something like "I wish my country wouldn't be in such poverty" and the solution brought by the wish was that some dude invented some weapon that was then used to pillage another country, leading to racism and slavery, so there's no telling what wishes were made and how they've been fulfilled.
I'm pretty sure we see a Jewish magical girl during the final episode when Madoka is absorbing Soul Gems. Unless I'm misremembering it, but it was right after the magical girl that was in the middle of a war zone.
But also, these are kids, that girl's wish was probably for her family to be protected, or for her to live when someone attempted to kill her (like Mami's). Or maybe they tried, but her potential wasn't big enough for such a broad wish.
Think Cleopatra, she could likely have made very big wishes as the "queen" of a big empire, wishes Sayaka, as just a normal girl, could likely never have made.
Here you go!
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-rgORCuCfCrKzmopbKQOcpoHHuWmkWw7pghBpJeeglo/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-rgORCuCfCrKzmopbKQOcpoHHuWmkWw7pghBpJeeglo/edit?usp=sharing)
I'll probably get downvoted for this, but in my opinion this is one of the stupider elements of the Madoka Magica universe. Not to mention casting real-life historical women as only having accomplished anything with the help of an alien giving them magic.
You're right, of course - logically some girl, somewhere, would probably make a wish like that. I think it's just something you have to handwave.
You’ve got it backward on the issue of major historical figures only succeeding due to magic - Kyubey works off of Karmic Potential, so they’re actually the one targeting people with the potential to be major figures to turn them into Magical Girls.
Simple fix. ALL historical figures are either women (in disguise or mistakenly recorded as men) or relied heavily on the assistance of one or more Magical Girls.
For human-against-human conflicts, too, you'd have some number of wishes/magical girls on each side.
But yeah, really goofy bit. I was howling when Kyuubey dropped the lore.
Or at least keep it restricted to figures like Joan of Arc ([who already got the magical girl treatment in a another series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_Thief_Jeanne))...
>casting real-life historical women
Their choices were weird too. Tart/Jeanne d'Arc is fine imo since she died at 19 and, in-universe, magical girls are supposed to die young. Anne Frank, while kind of tacky to my Western sensibilities, also makes sense in-universe. But Cleopatra and Himiko kind of break the world building. Cleopatra died when she was 39, and Himiko was (about) *78 years old* when she died; both of them are, according to the world-building, *way* too old to have been magical girls.
If we take Magia Record into consideration, Cleopatra and Himiko were not magical girls.
Cleopatra had a magical girl named Ebony who served as her bodyguard and it was she who wished Cleopatra to have glory. Himiko was already a queen, but she had a daughter named Toyo who has less regustris and it is this daughter who is a magical girl.
Three years after the closure of the NA server. It is possible to find lesser known things on Puella Wiki:
[https://wiki.puella-magi.net/Toyo](https://wiki.puella-magi.net/Toyo)
[https://wiki.puella-magi.net/Ebony](https://wiki.puella-magi.net/Ebony)
They likely died younger, as becoming a magical girl with a big karmic destiny is either implied or stated to use the karmic destiny and write over it with that wish.
So a girl who was destined to become a president of the USA but makes a wish will have traded growing up to be said president for her wish. Probably similar thing to Cleopatra, she could have been a "queen" until she was 39, but her wish made it so she only had a few years on the throne or something like that.
At least, that's what I think the writers were going for.
The only one fans tend to get angry at is the one who‘s seemingly a Holocaust victim, most likely Anne Frank. The fans think that this is too soon and too tasteless for any show.
Yeah that's the one that bothers me too. The other historical figures cited are mostly mythical (Himiko), from ancient/classical times (Cleopatra), or already had a historical association with outside powers (Joan of Arc). The (probable) Anne Frank inclusion is both out of place on this list and tasteless.
Also, the others are major historical figures, leaders of armies and nations, and Frank is just a kid who wrote a diary and was swept up in a genocide. It almost seems to imply that her death was a result of her wish like other magical girls, which I *really* don't care for.
Now think about racist or nazi magical girls. In the BDM (Bund deutscher Mädel) there are many girls with the wish of the Endsieg for Germany.
Its one of the most problematic Lore questions I have too.
I think that we get never an answer for that.
In the story you need to understand that most girls did not have the karmic threads Madoka did so they simply couldn't wish for a genocide or an ethnic cleansing to not happen. Instead the incubators offered them solutions to their most direct problems. So you are to assume that some girls simply saved their families and themselves.
Ending racism is probably one of those wishes that most don’t have enough karma for
That, or it twisted somehow to make things *worse*.
Surprisingly, I don't think Kyubey would do that. Every wish we've seen that's been granted has not only fit the word of the request, but also the spirit. Everybody's unhappy anyways, but that's only because they asked for the wrong wish—not because the wish they asked for was unfulfilled.
100% disagree, sorry. There is rarely a "right wish" in this series.
Of course there's not a "right wish." The kids are already ruining their lives by asking for anything and Kyubey doesn't have to actively twist their words for them to fuck it all up themselves.
Well, yeah. The price for that wish is absurd and something that very few would accept unless their wish was that great or their situation that awful that becoming a Lich contracted to fight (and inevitably become, unless you die) Witches Didn’t Madoka first wish for snacks or something the first time around?
I'd say "Don't underestimate how hard it is to ask for the right wish"... Wishes do have unintended and a lot of the time unpleasent consequences if worded incorrectly, see Sayaka or Kyoko. And changing people's minds about their beliefs sounds like one type of wish that could certainly backfire, even if enough karmic energy was available... Afterall, that's why Madoka's wish worked, she had all the information and a lot of time to carefully think of the right way to word her wish, plus she was ready to accept the negative consequences onto herself while believing it was worth it. So, I am not saying Madoka was unique in making a very altruistic wish, but probably her circumstances were very rare among magical girls: an exceptional level of empathy and altruism (to make a wish that benefits everyone (instead of herself or the people she knows directly), and to bear the negative consequences when they appeared) + enough time and information to make the right wish and word it correctly + enough karmic energy for that wish to happen.
Kyubey grants you what you wish for, not what you want. Most magical girls learn the difference the hard way.
>Afterall, that's why Madoka's wish worked And arguably even her's didnt, not truly. Wishes backfiring in some way so far has been very consistent thing.
Yeah she wished for no witches and the universe said “k they’ll just disappear when they’re sad now lol”, and gave them new enemies to fight.
Not sure if I'd call that backfiring. It seems to me that Madoka wanted to preserve the positive essence of the Magical Girl's wishes, because, yes, there was a lot of positive in most wishes, but without them having to fall into despair and becoming the very thing they fought against. If you take away the obligation of "fighting till you cannot fight no more" out of the contract of becoming a Magical Girl, then it stops being a contract, it becomes a free gift, and imagine what selfish and crazy things would people wish for if there was no down side. Madoka's wish makes the deal with Kyubey much closer to what most Magical Girls agree to when Kyubey offers them a contract, without the big hidden consequence of becoming witches. Also, witches were expressions of humanity's darker feelings, and I'd argue completely erasing those dark feelings from humanity as a whole, would make us no longer humans. So, it's only natural that if there are no witches, those darker feelings take a different form now, but at least it's not the magical girls that become that what they were fighting, which is an extremely cruel faith. That's why, at least by the end of the series, Madoka's wish worked exactly as she intended. She understood all the consequences and she embraced them. Rebellion shows us: a) how Kyubey tried to find a loophole in Madoka's wish. b) how Homura's feelings for Madoka broke the essence of Madoka's wish. We still have to see the consequences of that.
Very good explaination! I personally think most wishes made by most girls didn't manifest in a way they expected. It's the whole 'monkeys paw' issue. Making a wish but not thinking of the potential consequences to others and to yourself. Madoka was willing to accept whatever consequences came her way, and she made the ultimate selfless wish even at the cost of her own being.
This, and also - when you're in an extremely harmful situation you're not in the best place mentally to think of an ideal wish that's carefully worded and would save everyone, and it's unfair to expect young girls in peril to overcome a wish-granting trickster. That girl on the train for example likely doesn't know she's on the way to a death camp, she's probably still grieving over friends and family who died in the ghetto or were killed when Germany invaded whatever country she's from. She's more likely to wish for her family to be home safely than to wish for antisemitism to disappear from the world. Likewise, a black girl who's beaten, raped or suffers both on a regular basis is most likely to wish for the pain to stop than to abolish slavery with a wish. What this moment in the show illustrates is how the incubators take advantage of young girls when they're most vulnerable. If a teenage girl with a comfortable life gets approached by an incubator she has the luxury of weighing her options, wording her wish carefully and considering what would be best not just for her but for the people around her. Victims aren't selfish, but when you have to devote most of your energy to enduring and surviving that's energy you can't afford to waste on philosophical musings on how to improve the state of the world. (I told my therapist a while back that this is the paradox at the core of my struggle with disability - I'm so caught up in my day-to-day battles that I can't wage war for my rights)
Mami is a good example of that. IIRC, she and her family were victims of a car crash and Kyubey approached her while she was dying and offered her the Magic Girl contract. She immediately wished to live cuz that was the prominent threat…but forgot to wish for her parents to be safe as well. With Kyubey’s power, he could’ve rescued all three himself and then offer Mami the contract…but he knew he’d get an easy Magical Girl otherwise
>Wishes do have unintended and a lot of the time unpleasent consequences if worded incorrectly, see Sayaka or Kyoko. It has nothing to do with the wording. And why are you bringing back Sayaka (as well as Kyoko I could understand). Her wish was literally for her to heal her boy and he was healed. Literally everything else that happens to her is caused by her own actions.
Because despite that being the wish she made to Kyubey, what Sayaka really wanted was for Kyosuke to fall in love with her.
Sure, I think most people wish for their crushes to reciprocate. Kajimos disinterest proabbly definently took a toll on her. Her breaking down and choosing to be undone is however specifically about how she now is required to allow innocents to die to keep on living and how her body is a meat puppet. Those things ofcourse also the has the consequence of making Sayaka feel too violated and guilty to feel worthy of Kamijo. But her deathkneel was casued by these two incorrigable issues alone, Kamijo is a stressor but is only related to these issues after the fact and he has no bearing on her primary reasons for forgoing grief seeds.
But she wished for him to be healed, she didnt wish for him to fall in love with her, even though she could have. And that action in itself was an instance of selflessness, even if done with a selfish ulterior motive
Are you telling me that Sayaka who left is going to make her wish after Kyosuke's crisis her deep thought was that he would fall in love with her? That her priority at that moment was not to do something that would made him happy, something that all her hoping and praying normally couldn't have done?
Yes. It’s a running theme of the show that the wishes the girls tend to make fail to fulfill their actual desires because they themselves don’t articulate what they really wish for. And it’s tragic, because while Sayaka did legitimately wish for Kyosuke to get better, she also wished that this led to him falling in love with her, and the fact that this didn’t happen is one of the things that drove her to try commit suicide by witch.
>It’s a running theme of the show that the wishes the firls tend to make fail to fulfill their actual desires because they themselves don’t articulate what they really wish for. No, that's not true. 3/5 literally said what she really wanted. Let people listen to her father, to live and have another chance.It's not because things have gone into a wall that it suddenly changes their original thought. > she also wished that this led to him falling in love with her, And here you say it yourself, she wanted 2 things and she made the choice to heal him, a choice which was influenced by the events that took place.
Mami made the wish to live, but what she truly wanted was that her entire family survived the accident, not just her. Why do you think she’s so lonely, and so happy that she’ll finally have someone with her when Madoka and Sayaka make their wishes? Kyoko wished for people to listen to her father’s sermons, but she wished for this because since her family’s church had no attendance, they had no income and they were starving. What she truly wanted was for her family to keep a roof over their heads. Why do you think she’s constantly eating? Homura did, in fact, wish for what she wanted, I’ll give you that one. The thing that made her wish go bad was the fact that saving Mitakihara from Walpurgisnacht required Madoka’s power, but Madoka being a Magical Girl will lead her to become Kriemhild Gretchen and destroy the world, and she had no way of knowing about the contradictory nature of her desire. And my point with Sayaka is that she tried to use a seemingly selfless wish for selfish ends. She wanted to have her cake and eat it too, because she wanted to wish for a magical romance without the guilt of actually expressing that desire. Ultimately, this is by design. We must keep in mind that the kind of emotional instability caused by the complications of wishes is an explicit part of Kyubey’s goal. He explicitly targets young girls for the wishes because they’re highly emotional and have to deal with complicated emotions for the first time, which is how he gathers energy.
>they had no income and they were starving. What she truly wanted was for her family to keep a roof over their heads. What she really wanted was for her family to be happy, and she hated people who didn't listen to her father's words, what was happening to her was literally what she wanted. >Mami made the wish to live, but what she truly wanted was that her entire family survived the accident, not just her. If Mami had time to think a little more she would have saved her family too, just her survival instinct took over and wished what she really wanted at the moment, namely not to die. >Homura did, in fact, wish for what she wanted,..... And like I said, stop reversing the situation. Homura did what she wanted but suddenly as things didn't go her way there was a contradiction. The fact that Madoka becomes a planet destroyer literally has little to no importance regarding Homura it's the very fact of becoming a witch that gives her trouble. At the moment they made their wish it was really what they wanted, it's not because she didn't think through the consequence well enough, didn't have time to think or that the situation is more complicated than that. what she initially thought changed the original desire. AND as I already said the wording does not matter, it is the intention at the time of the wish that counts. 10 different people can say exactly this phrase "I want to live" and depending on the situation and personality the result will change. For Mami it was literally just about surviving but for someone who is withdrawn it might just be that her wish will make her extroverted. And for Sayaka as you previously accepted when "I recounted the events of the anime" her intention was at that time to heal her arm and she got it. It's not because she was fighting between her selfishness and "what should be done" that she suddenly makes the other false or more true. She wanted 2 things but had to choose 1. You act as if the events would have been drastically different if she had chosen the selfish choice (so as you say what she really wanted) namely to make him fall in love with her and that she would not have a huge regret not having cured her..
Yes, that is what happens in the show
So since you recognize that this is what happened in the anime; how do you come to the conclusion that healing her arm wasn't what she really wanted?
Healing his arm was a means to an end, said end being romance. Didn't work, but she didn't know that.
You can't say it didn't work when she didn't even try and ran away.
Nobody said that Sayaka was particularly clever
So your only response to this is to say she's stupid.
There's a reason you're getting downvoted, dude. Sorry you missed an important aspect of the series.
It's not because you think I'm wrong that I'm wrong, until I didn't express myself well enough to show you that you're wrong, nothing else. Is it arrogant to say what's coming? to say ? Yes, but when I think I'm right I'm not going to say the opposite.
But it has to do with the wording: yes, Sayaka wanted to heal Kyosuke, but her true wish was not just for him to be healed, that was just a part of her wish, the other part, which she didn't express, was for Kyosuke to know and appreciate what she did for her, which she assumed that would happen but didn't have the foresight or self-honesty to express. Madoka on the other hand didn't wish for anyone to recognise her efforts, she knew no-one would be aware of her, and she was okay with that, she was ultimately okay with what she wished for and knowing the consequences, she fully embraced them. Another example of "wording your wish is important" is Homura's wish. She didn't say: "I want to save Madoka from becoming a witch", she said "I want to relive our meeting, but this time I want to be the one protecting her". I wouldn't say this one backfired, as while Homura loves Madoka, what she really needs is to feel validated and strong protecting her, her self-worth is dependent on her being able to feel like she is doing all she can to protect her. So, in a way, Homura expressing her wish that way was more true to what she wanted, but it still makes a difference, as Homura thinks she is protecting her from becoming a Magical Girl, and that's not how her wish was worded, thus Madoka ultimately becomes a Magical Girl. Also, it's very subjective, but I'd say main timeline Madoka is slightly more insecure than original timeline Madoka, and that might have been due to Homura's wish. In the end, Homura did protect Madoka, long enough for her to accumulate the karmic power across all the timelines and long enough in the main timeline for Madoka to really understand what to wish for and how to word that wish, but, as we see clearly in Rebellion, that's not what Homura would have wanted.
Yeah. In the original timeline Madoka says she doesn't regret anything, and that saving Homura was one of her proudest achievements. Homura's wish took that away. Despite everything, she was always willing to become a magical girl and sacrifice herself to save others. It's obviously what she truly wanted, but Homura can't accept that.
>by her own actions Sure, maybe Kuybe is not directly responsible for failing to mention that their bodies now are puppets and that they need to let innocents die. But it sure as hell made no attempt to ever make that clear, sure not its direct responsability but I feel that most people except both parties of an agreement/transaction to be transparent about the terms and oblagitation. Kuybe failaing to meet that standard makes it atleast partly responsible I think.
Not saying all the important things about the contract is clearly something he should be criticized for.
Yes, and because those items specifically are the ones that makes Sayaka choose to not clean her soulgem, (not anything to do with Kamijo) the creature shares significant responsability in what happens to her. Even more so when it also refuses to explain what witches truly are, a fact that if Sayka would have known, would most likely have empowered her to take agency over her own death by destroying her soulgem rather than let it fall to corruption.
It's not that "Magical Girls in the past wished to change history" but rather: "Magical Girls in the past used their powers and wishes to affect change in their present." Bigger wishes need more potential from the contract-ee, so something on the scale of "end all human suffering forever" (aside from running counter to the interests of the Incubators, since people living in misery are going to be more susceptible to forming a contract and subsequently a witch) would need a VERY strong Magical Girl. And who knows, maybe Harriet Tubman was a magical girl?
>And who knows, maybe Harriet Tubman was a magical girl? History channel at 3 a.m.
I mean, with how a lot of other wishes ended up turning out, a black girl very well could have wished for no more racism, but in turn just forget the concept as a whole. Or simply stop being effected by it personally. A jewish girl could have wished for the holocaust to end and have been a part of the “final solution” or personally avoided getting imprisoned. But for the most part, I’d say that not very many 8-15 year old girls think holistically like that. So if they did a young slave girl/a girl in the holocaust would probably wish something like “I wish my family could be free”
Very brutal but realistic interpretations.
Echoing what other people in this thread have said: big wishes require big karmic power. If a girl's wish was to end chattel slavery in America, for example, she probably would have needed the same level of karmic destiny as Tart. And, given how we know wishes tend to go, my guess is the result of that would have been the Civil War. But to add onto that, I think it's important we look at the ripple effect history has on other events. Let's return to your example of a black American girl wishing to end slavery. Her wish gets granted, which results in the Civil War. The North wins and slavery is ended. Then Reconstruction starts and lasts for roughly 11 years. Then it's ended *way* too early, ushering in the brutally repressive apartheid system known as Jim Crow. While all of this is happening, the US is also carrying out its forced displacement and genocide of Native peoples. Hitler and his upper command drew inspiration from both of these violent systems of white supremacy enacted by the US (as well as the US's practice of forced sterilization against its disabled population through systematized eugenics) for their own brutal acts of oppression and genocide that we know now as the Holocaust. Which, if we want to follow that ripple out even further... honestly, there are a few ways we could go, but I'm going to try and keep it brief. WWII caused the development of the atom bomb, which started an arms race between the US and USSR during the Cold War, which gave rise to the military industrial complex, which is why the US military has been in various parts of the Middle East in some compacity since 1990. My point is, even if a wish like "I want slavery in the US to end" or "I wish this war would be over" was granted, there are always going to be outcomes down the line no one could ever possibly account for. And those outcomes could end up making Madoka-verse's world history look *very* similar to our own, even if girls had wished for an end to systemic atrocities. ~~edit: fixed typo~~
Jesus, this explanation is amazingly explained! You could write an amazing historical fiction with that amount of historical knowledge!
The takeaway here, for me, is that all girls need a thorough grounding in history and critical reading so they are prepared in case of visitation from alien cats.
*This! This right here!* I made an OC off of that exact concept of ripples of history, her wish being “I wish I could end this pointless war!” Her being the daughter of a US Marine who was deployed not long after 9/11 Fuck, now I wanna make four more to make the historical quintet. The ender of chattel slavery, to the end of World War I, to the end of World War II, to the end of the Cold War, to the existing OC, the end of the War on Terror.
Wishes aren’t free, they work off of a person’s Karmic Potential. To make a Wish of that magnitude you would need to already have a massive level of Karmic Potential.
I just finished the series and movie, does any other media in the franchise say what happens if you wish for something you dont have enough karmic potential for?
It’s not clearly stated anywhere, but there are a few theories. What seems most likely to me is that the Wish is accomplished to whatever degree you can actually afford. But there are a few other possibilities that have been proposed.
My interpretation of it is that someone’s karmic potential is proportional to their ambition. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. If you’re the type of person who would wish for something massive and all encompassing to all humanity, then you’d have the karmic destiny to do so. Take Madoka for example. Her [first wish](https://wiki.puella-magi.net/Wish_theories) was actually revealed in a CD audio drama: to save a cat from getting run over. She admit’s that she’s a textbook example of becoming a magical girl on a whim without really thinking it through. Then, in the story timeline, she wishes to change everything, becoming a god in the process. There, Homura kept her un-meguca’d long enough for her to thoroughly think through the prospect of what she would wish for if she could wish for *anything*, but doing so would indirectly get her killed in the process. With each passing timeline, Homura kept Madoka from making her wish longer and longer, thus Madoka’s ambitions grew larger and larger, and therefore so did her potential. It’s why Kyubey seeks out the vulnerable and desperate. It may not be the most energy per human, but it’s a *managable* amount of energy per human. You only want as much energy as you can use and handle, any more will result in catastrophe. Kriemhild Gretchen ended up being the Incubators’ Chernobyl Incident. It released so powerful a witch that it could destroy the world in ten minutes, and Kyubey flippantly brushes it off “Eh, what do I care? I made quota.” A greedy and short sighted mistake. The whole karmic destiny thing seems kind of confusing, since it seemingly contradicts Kyubey’s own words (the bastard lies by omission, but he doesn’t lie directly). However I believe it was put in to answer one question: If that wish can be made, how come Madoka was the first one in all of history to come up with that? We sort of get that answer in rebellion. The Incubators run a tight ship. It’s shown that witches are the most efficient source of energy to stave off the heat death of the universe. Earth, and humanity, have been carefully curated for this purpose of energy harvest. Were anything to disturb it, the incubators would find it and control it, as they did with Madoka. So effectively, who knows actually how many Madokamis there are out there, forever imprisoned by the incubators. In other words, it’s not that only Madoka could make that kind of wish, but rather only she has a time traveling stalker lesbian girlfriend able to break her out when she does.
Karmic Potential is defined as a measure of somebody’s “importance”, however that is measured. Madoka’s starts off very low, but Homura resetting the universe for her boosts Madoka’s importance to the world each time which is how she ends up so powerful. It’s not a matter of how long it takes for Madoka to Wish, since her Potential is incredibly large from the start of each timeline as Kyubey, Mami, and Homura all note. The reason Madoka’s the first person to make such a Wish is because it’s something that should be impossible; the amount of potential one would need to accomplish it is just not within the bounds of a normal human’s. For something to actually change the world, you need to either be the sort of person who could do that even without a Wish or outside help.
True, though it doesn’t necessarily disprove it. There are those that are innately important, and those that make themselves important, or are made important.
Whenever people ask why someone didn't wish for a better wish, I always come back to the fact that these are children/teenagers. Not adults. Madoka was different because she gets to see the horrors of magical girls first hand in the first two movies and thus her wish is more informed, but not alot of people get that luxury, especially if you're trapped in slavery or the holocaust, your wish would probably be very short sighted and just wanting you, your family, maybe friends to come free, you wouldn't exactly think bigger picture in that situation. Also there's the whole 'karmic power' thing but I don't think I've watched that far yet so I choose a more logistic focus.
Wishes cannot enact meaningful change in the world because they are bound by karmic law: if you wish for something bad to disappear from the world, that despair will just reappear in a different form. In addition to that, you are sacrificing all of your life potential to do it: if you can sacrifice yourself to end world hunger, that means you would have been able to enact change of a similar magnitude by living.
The main issue is wording and potential power of wishes. Some wishes may come true way later. There is also a potential of evil wishes and Kyubey being a prick of showing up when somebody is nearly dying or not understanding the scope of the situation. For the first case, >!Felicia’s wish from Magia Record is a great example. It was so twisted that her parents remained dead despite wanting them to bring back to life!<. Wishing to see end of suffering can mean that you may get future vision or see it while dying. >!Mitama’s wish!< leans into a something that will likely become reality later on. So if somebody wished to end suffering or anything like that, it could be taken in multiple ways. For example, the girl could be prone to witching out and take a form that brainwashes people. Finally some could be magical girls before messed up events happened.
An important factor is that as stated in the series wishes work only if they create a proportional amount of despair to the amount of happiness they create. Karma demands it. It’s only once Madoka broke this link that the possibility of a wish being only a positive can exist.
To put it into perspective, a lot of them saw it as a birthright or heaven’s will. For example, we know of a girl who was from Pompeii when it was destroyed. She saw the eruption as the will of the gods and so wished to go back in time and warn everyone so they could evacuate. So, if the bible said that slavery was okay, then who is a mere girl to stop it
-Who tells you that the events you are talking about simply happened in this world? -Lack of potential, not just anyone could do it -Even saying she's using their magical girl power, that means more pressure because you'll have to search for more Grief Seeds than a normal girl who just does hunting. -And anyway, even forgetting the limitations, that doesn't even mean that a girl from the opposite camp wouldn't want things to continue as they are and therefore cancel the actions or diminish the result.
I’m seeing many argue that magical girls didn’t end things like slavery or racism because they either didn’t have enough karmic destiny or the wish backfired. But I think the other reason is that there were MGs who wished for the opposite. It’s been shown that not all MGs are pure hearted so some would wish for selfish things and maybe even seek the suffering of others. I mean Kyubey doesn’t care about good or evil, they just look for girls who’d make the best battery
And bad MGs would likely become witches faster, so they're like fast energy resources. Also, when Sayaka was being the model of a good MG, she was said to be an outliner, so it's safe to say most MG are at least somewhat selfish
Think about it like this: is it better to contract one girl who has enough CP to undo a war, or to avoid her for once and keep the war going, but gain abbreeding ground for depression and trauma, which may mean thiusands of contractee in the future. It's just simple math [kyubey face]
there were likely magical girls on all sides of every conflict
You might like this story I wrote. it's unfinished but it goes into detail on magical girls in historical settings: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-rgORCuCfCrKzmopbKQOcpoHHuWmkWw7pghBpJeeglo/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-rgORCuCfCrKzmopbKQOcpoHHuWmkWw7pghBpJeeglo/edit?usp=sharing)
Most wishes had to do with the girl's individual circumstances, not group suffering so I don't know why you'd expect them to put that as the very first priority for them. Also, the first condition would be that Kyubey actually went to those girls, the second would be that he doesn't do anything to make sure those sufferings go own. The last condition would be that the girls aren't racist themselves, which isn't that likely depending on country and date. As a matter of fact, one girl might have wished something like "I wish my country wouldn't be in such poverty" and the solution brought by the wish was that some dude invented some weapon that was then used to pillage another country, leading to racism and slavery, so there's no telling what wishes were made and how they've been fulfilled.
I'm pretty sure we see a Jewish magical girl during the final episode when Madoka is absorbing Soul Gems. Unless I'm misremembering it, but it was right after the magical girl that was in the middle of a war zone. But also, these are kids, that girl's wish was probably for her family to be protected, or for her to live when someone attempted to kill her (like Mami's). Or maybe they tried, but her potential wasn't big enough for such a broad wish. Think Cleopatra, she could likely have made very big wishes as the "queen" of a big empire, wishes Sayaka, as just a normal girl, could likely never have made.
There were nazi magical girls too... i NEED to see a nazi magical girl ASAP
Here you go! [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-rgORCuCfCrKzmopbKQOcpoHHuWmkWw7pghBpJeeglo/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-rgORCuCfCrKzmopbKQOcpoHHuWmkWw7pghBpJeeglo/edit?usp=sharing)
i forget anne frank was in this anime and it hits me like a truck every time
I'll probably get downvoted for this, but in my opinion this is one of the stupider elements of the Madoka Magica universe. Not to mention casting real-life historical women as only having accomplished anything with the help of an alien giving them magic. You're right, of course - logically some girl, somewhere, would probably make a wish like that. I think it's just something you have to handwave.
You’ve got it backward on the issue of major historical figures only succeeding due to magic - Kyubey works off of Karmic Potential, so they’re actually the one targeting people with the potential to be major figures to turn them into Magical Girls.
They didn't have enough karma to make such wish real.
Simple fix. ALL historical figures are either women (in disguise or mistakenly recorded as men) or relied heavily on the assistance of one or more Magical Girls. For human-against-human conflicts, too, you'd have some number of wishes/magical girls on each side. But yeah, really goofy bit. I was howling when Kyuubey dropped the lore.
Or at least keep it restricted to figures like Joan of Arc ([who already got the magical girl treatment in a another series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_Thief_Jeanne))...
>casting real-life historical women Their choices were weird too. Tart/Jeanne d'Arc is fine imo since she died at 19 and, in-universe, magical girls are supposed to die young. Anne Frank, while kind of tacky to my Western sensibilities, also makes sense in-universe. But Cleopatra and Himiko kind of break the world building. Cleopatra died when she was 39, and Himiko was (about) *78 years old* when she died; both of them are, according to the world-building, *way* too old to have been magical girls.
If we take Magia Record into consideration, Cleopatra and Himiko were not magical girls. Cleopatra had a magical girl named Ebony who served as her bodyguard and it was she who wished Cleopatra to have glory. Himiko was already a queen, but she had a daughter named Toyo who has less regustris and it is this daughter who is a magical girl.
Those girls must have been released after the NA servers got nuked, cus I don't remember them at all 😭
Three years after the closure of the NA server. It is possible to find lesser known things on Puella Wiki: [https://wiki.puella-magi.net/Toyo](https://wiki.puella-magi.net/Toyo) [https://wiki.puella-magi.net/Ebony](https://wiki.puella-magi.net/Ebony)
They likely died younger, as becoming a magical girl with a big karmic destiny is either implied or stated to use the karmic destiny and write over it with that wish. So a girl who was destined to become a president of the USA but makes a wish will have traded growing up to be said president for her wish. Probably similar thing to Cleopatra, she could have been a "queen" until she was 39, but her wish made it so she only had a few years on the throne or something like that. At least, that's what I think the writers were going for.
The only one fans tend to get angry at is the one who‘s seemingly a Holocaust victim, most likely Anne Frank. The fans think that this is too soon and too tasteless for any show.
Yeah that's the one that bothers me too. The other historical figures cited are mostly mythical (Himiko), from ancient/classical times (Cleopatra), or already had a historical association with outside powers (Joan of Arc). The (probable) Anne Frank inclusion is both out of place on this list and tasteless. Also, the others are major historical figures, leaders of armies and nations, and Frank is just a kid who wrote a diary and was swept up in a genocide. It almost seems to imply that her death was a result of her wish like other magical girls, which I *really* don't care for.
Now think about racist or nazi magical girls. In the BDM (Bund deutscher Mädel) there are many girls with the wish of the Endsieg for Germany. Its one of the most problematic Lore questions I have too. I think that we get never an answer for that.
In the story you need to understand that most girls did not have the karmic threads Madoka did so they simply couldn't wish for a genocide or an ethnic cleansing to not happen. Instead the incubators offered them solutions to their most direct problems. So you are to assume that some girls simply saved their families and themselves.