Puella Magi Madoka Magica

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 that aired in Japan in 2011. Due to its innovative incorporation of the traditional Magical Girl 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 In 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 7, 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. As well as the anime series, three films were created based off the series. The first two, released on October 6 and October 13 of 2012, acted as feature length retellings of the anime series, while the third, set to be released on October 26, 2013, will tell an original story based of the series. A number of Manga have also been released, such as “Puella Magi Kazumi Magica: The Innocent Malice” and “Puella Magi Oriko Magica”, which acted as side-stories, unrelated to the main series, as well as A direct manga adaptation of the TV show.

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) board^[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 10,000 likes^[12].

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 off the anime. In this episode, Mami Tomoe battles the witch Charlotte, while Madoka and Saya 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.