#while walpurgis is literally made up of multiple witches

[atamascolily]

Gather round, everyone - today I'm going to talk about a topic I've never seen discussed anywhere: the use of lace in Madoka Magica, particularly Rebellion.

Earlier, I was examining sketches of some prototype designs from the Rebellion Production Note, particularly this glove with Homulilly's name on, and I noticed something interesting in the accompanying text.

"黒レース... kuro rēsu... black lace... Wait a minute. That fringe on the bottom of the glove is supposed to be lace??!!!!!!!"

Because I've seen this same "peacock's tail" motif a lot, actually--it's the outer ring on the mandalas that appear around Walpurgisnacht and Homulilly.

Here's a close-up shot of that last shot of Homulilly from the Rebellion Production Note, which has a much higher resolution than the finished film version, so you can really appreciate the details:

Take a look at the "peacock's tail" edges of the mandala and compare them to the lace of Homulilly's shawl. It's the same pattern. It's obvious once you know to look for it, but I never would have made the connection without Inu Curry's comment.

And this is interesting, because lace appears a lot in Rebellion and in surprising places.

Take the "pennants" in this shot, for instance. I had always thought of them as "cobwebs", but then I saw the original sketch in the Rebellion Production Note--again, a much higher resolution than the film screenshot--and realized that they're woven lace, albeit a very different style from Homulilly's shawl.

There's also this striking image of Homura framed by lace that has always puzzled me, because what is it doing there (especially since it doesn't seem to be visible in any of the wide shots)?

I mentioned all of this to Silver, who said, "But wait, there's more!" and sent me screenshots to prove it.

As you can see, lace is associated with curtains, which are also an important visual motif in their own right. Not only does the fringe of Homulilly's glove in the Rebellion Production Note resemble curtains if you squint, the curtains that rise over Homulilly's entrance in the movie are also framed with lace and have the same overlapping "peacock's tail" shape.

Having established the connection between mandalas, lace, and curtains, let's take a look at the other witch who uses these in her design. Here's Walpurgisnacht's curtains from the opening shot of the original series.

Take a look at the lace at the center. You can see the same "peacock's tail" shape around the edges, and also what looks like a flower or a star or a sun at the center. Compare that with Walpurgisnacht's mandala that appears a few seconds later:

As you can see, both the "peacock's tail" and the flower/star at the center are both visible. (The ring in between is full of tomoe, which I have written about elsewhere, and the hole at the center bears an uncanny resemblance to the black hole at Homulilly's heart in the Production Note sketch above.)

In other words, the mandalas here are visual representations of lace patterns (or vice versa?). All of these elements are combined in the mandala of the Law of Cycles, which is literally a lace pattern with a similar flower/star design at the center:

Finally, there are multiple mandalas at the end of Rebellion featuring all kinds of different designs; this one has both the "peacock's tail" design and the central flower:

All of the mandalas in this scene are made of up of symbols that have appeared throughout Rebellion, most notably the dollhouse scene, although not in the same configurations. While they don't appear as physical lace, they certainly have lace-like patterns like the others.

(As an aside: I've always thought of the mandalas in the show as "doilies" in my head, and it turns out that impression wasn't so far off the mark. Life's funny like that.)

Mandalas are typically a symbol of divinity and world-creation, so it makes sense that Walpurgisnacht (the Stage-Producing witch) and the Law of Cycles (a goddess who has adopted many of Walpurgisnacht's attributes including a cart pulled by the witch's green elephants). Homulilly, too, creates a world inside her labyrinth, and is associated with sewing and thread and lace--and since mandalas and lace appear to be connected, it makes sense that she would have a mandala. Ditto for Devil Homura--who, I should take pains to point out, is also Homulilly (see the runes on the glove in the opening image)--as she has set herself up as the Law of Cycle's opposite.

So what does it all mean? First of all, I think this goes to show how much thought and care went into the creation of this series, and how even small details are connected to each other on a thematic and symbolic level. Secondly, it suggests yet another set of visual parallels between Walpurgisnacht and Homura/Homulilly, albeit on a much more subtle level than I was previously aware of.

Inu Curry, if you're reading this--I bet you thought that no one would ever notice and put the pieces together, but I did and now I'm telling the world. My since compliments, and I can't wait to see what you have in store for us in Walpurgis no Kaiten.

[atamascolily]

There's a game I play as a writer that I call "Story Problems" -- I'll stop an episode or a movie halfway to three-quarters of the way through and try to sketch the ending I think the writers have in mind based on what I've seen thus far. Obviously, this is much easier with self-contained mysteries and ten-minute one-shot children's cartoons than extended dramas, but through regular practice, I've learned to pay attention to all the clues dropped in the exposition and how seemingly unrelated details are woven together into a coherent narrative whole.

Some people use the term "Chekhov's gun" for these hints, but I prefer "set-up and payoff". No matter what you call them, writing is essentially a sleight-of-hand performance, where the writer tell the audience exactly what they're going to do while simultaneously distracting them so that they're too busy focusing on other things to notice until the big reveal.

All this is a roundabout way of saying I've spent a lot of time thinking about the "story problem" represented by Walpurgis no Kaiten and how it might unfold.

First and most importantly, why bring Walpurgisnacht back in the first place? What role can a seemingly defeated witch (however mysterious) have in PMMM going forward? What are we, the audience, missing that would allow us to make sense of this? What in her story remains incomplete or unaddressed?

I sympathize with those who wanted Walpurgisnacht's nature to remain a mystery, but I think that ship sailed the moment SHAFT decided to bring her back for the sequel. If indeed Walpurgisnacht is returning--and why name the movie after her if she isn't?--then she must be somehow connected in some way to the main cast beyond her role in the original series as the Final Boss, or else why even bother?

(Seriously, if SHAFT wanted Walpurgisnacht's presence to be a surprise, they could have titled the movie literally ANYTHING else, but they didn't. That was a deliberate choice on their part, so I not only assume that Walpurgisnacht must be important somehow--central, even--but the big twist is not THAT she returns, but HOW and WHY.)

Cut to several years of radio silence after the initial announcement, giving me plenty of time to think. One night in the fall of 2022, the following conversation played out in my head unprompted:

Brain: Hahahaha, you know what, I bet they're really going with the whole 'Homura is Walpurgisnacht' twist after all! "L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace", and all that. Plus, can you imagine how angry this will make people on Reddit? Me: Okay, but why are you telling me this NOW?

Brain:

Me: crying You sick son of a bitch.

To be fair, improbable plot summaries have something of a history in this franchise--if I were to travel back to 2012 and tell people that Homura becomes a witch and traps everyone in her labyrinth and then turns into the Devil, I don't think many people would have believed THAT either until it played out in front of them. But this one was particularly disheartening because the "Homura is Walpurgisnacht" theory*--which was initially popular when the series was released--was seemingly discredited in Rebellion with the appearance of Homura's witch Homulilly. To say otherwise was going to be one hell of a hard sell for a lot of people.

(*I know, I know, I know, Walpurgisnacht is a composite super-witch made of multiple entities, but I need a shorthand way of describing it, even if it's not as technically accurate, so bear with me here.)

But even though my assertion seemed counterintuitive on the surface, I was convinced that it would eventually prove to be the case for several reasons:

1) Another game I like to play as a writer is called "The Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen" (alternate title: "Put That Character In A Situation"). Essentially, I try to imagine what would hurt/challenge the characters the most for maximum drama or effect, and then I make it happen. Based on Homura's history and her relationship with Walpurgisnacht, what would be the worst thing that could possibly happen re: Walpurgisnacht's return?

Well, given how much Homura has invested in protecting Madoka from this witch--from reliving the same month hundreds of times over to becoming the self-proclaimed embodiment of evil just to make a world where Madoka could be happy--the worst thing that could happen to Homura would be that she discovers that everything she's done, all that she's fought and sacrificed for, has led directly to the one thing she's been trying to prevent this whole time: the (re?)creation of Walpurgisnacht herself.

In other words, this tweet:

I mentioned my theory to someone recently, and their response (paraphrased) was that they felt the original series had already covered this particular form of dramatic irony and they hoped WnK would go in a different direction. Fair enough, but this is a series that thrives on revisiting the same scenes from different angles, to the point of a shot-for-shot remake of Madoka with her family at the beginning of Rebellion to mirror the original series! So just because they've done similar things before doesn't mean it's necessarily off the table in the future--to me, that makes it even more likely, actually. And frankly, I think some amount of revisiting the past was inevitable the moment SHAFT decided they were bringing Walpurgisnacht back in the first place.

Given PMMM's obsession with cycles and repetition, I'd go one step further and make it worse: not only are Homura's actions what bring Walpurgisnacht back, these same actions are what lead to all the Walpurgisnachts in the past, so that Homura created the very monster who killed Madoka and caused Homura herself to become a magical girl in the first place. Essentially, Homura becomes her own ancestor in a massive time loop/bootstrap paradox with no beginning and no end (or at least, that's how it seems at first--I doubt that's where the story TRULY ends, though it would make for one hell of a cliffhanger).

It would be bad enough if Homura directly or indirectly created Walpurgisnacht AND created a time loop, but you know what would make the situation EVEN WORSE? What if the enemy that Homura had been fighting for so long wasn't some other external force outside of her, but her own SELF-- if Homura not only created her own enemy, but also WAS that enemy, too, becoming the thing she feared and hated the most? I've talked in my previous posts about how PMMM excels at making the metaphorical literal, as well as its proclivity for turning characters into their opposites, so this would be a logical next step in that direction.

Given that Gen Urobuchi's nickname is "the Urobutcher", I think it's safe to say he knows how to make characters suffer. Thus, I'd be deeply surprised if he doesn't play the same game that I do--and if so, he might draw similar conclusions to the ones I've outlined above.

2) A major twist in every installment thus far has been that Homura is not who or what we think she is--first a time traveler, then a witch, then the Devil. If this pattern continues, what new revelations would surprise us about Homura? In order for the story to continue, it's likely that she must grow and change beyond her Devil persona--what might that look like? A transformation into the massive super-witch that was her enemy would certainly answer both questions and then some, although it may not be the answer people want.

(If nothing else, Homura will likely have at least one new outfit in Walpurgis no Kaiten so that SHAFT can sell the merchandise, lol.)

3) Not only do Homura's actions drive the plot of PMMM, the franchise is deeply concerned with her emotional life, and she is the center around which everything revolves (although this is not always immediately apparent due to the way each installment is structured). Thus, it's likely that Homura's relationship with Walpurgisnacht is both central to the plot and deeply personal--and what could be more personal than this?

4) In a show with excellent visual design, where every detail is selected with care, and usually means something (even if that meaning is not immediately apparent), there are far too many visual and narrative parallels between Homura and Walpurgisnacht to be a coincidence. Having the two be connected in this fashion would explain all of this in a concise and satisfying manner.

5) One of the things I admire about PMMM from a storytelling perspective is how efficient it is--every character and detail has a purpose, and nothing is wasted. Having Homura be/become Walpurgisnacht is not the ONLY way to establish a connection between them, but it is undeniably the simplest and the most efficient from a purely technical angle, as it only involves one character the audience already knows and cares about vs. adding an entirely new entity to the mix.

That was my answer to the story problem of "What is Walpurgis no Kaiten about?" in late 2022, based solely on the limited information available to me (i.e.m the title of the movie + everything that has come before). But while it seemed abundantly clear to me--almost inevitable--that Homura would somehow become Walpurgisnacht, I didn't have a good explanation for HOW this might come about beyond "timey-wimey reality-bending and/or multiverse shenanigans"--which, while adequate for my purposes, was not enough evidence to convince others of my argument, and so I let the matter rest.

Then the key visual dropped in September 2023, and I burst out laughing the instant I saw the second Homura, because I knew how SHAFT was going to solve the problem that had stumped me: one Homura would create/become Walpurgisnacht and the other would attempt to stop her (and probably fail, at least at first).

Homura is such a complex and multi-faceted character, I think it's a bit simplistic to say that one of the pair will be purely good and the other evil. Suffice to say there will be one Homura that we're rooting for (the one with ribbons) and one that we're probably not rooting for (the one with the headband) and leave it at that for now.

I'll freely admit that I still don't fully understand the mechanics of how and why there are two Homuras or how Walpurgisnacht arises from the actions of one or both of them, but I don't need to: everything we need to know is contained within the framing of that key visual. Homura will be the source of all her problems in this movie; that's all that matters. Everything else is details--delicious, to be sure, and I look forward to analyzing them in great detail, but the core (heh) conflict of the movie is already apparent.

Of course, you could make the argument that my original gut feeling was wrong because the second Homura doesn't "count" as Homura. To me, that's semantic hair-splitting--for my purposes, if she looks like Homura and is voiced by Chiwa Saito and retains all of Homura's powers, abilities, and associated symbolism, then she IS Homura in all the way that really matter, but I'm sure people can and will disagree with me on that. In the end, when it comes to PMMM, it's Homura all the way down--and I think Walpurgis no Kaiten will make that literal before the end.

(not gonna lie, the idea that all the Clara Dolls turn into Homuras too, so that Walpurgisnacht is made up of nothing but Homuras is pretty delicious--but so is the idea of the doppelganger Homura somehow hijacking or corrupting the Law of Cycles, which we know is full of witches, and turning it to her own ends. Or both, both is good, too!)

I know a lot of people hate the "Homura is Walpurgisnacht" theory, but I think it keeps popping up for a reason, and will continue to do so until Walpurgis no Kaiten finally gives us sufficient information to either make it canon or lay it to rest for good. Personally, I love the idea--as a quick browse through my "#vein of gold" tag will attest, I love when characters are forced to confront their shadow selves, their dark sides, and their doubles; I love when the call is coming from inside the house. For me, Homura becoming Walpurgisnacht wouldn't be cliche or boring, it would be a plot twist that would explain everything we've seen to date while simultaneously re-framing it, making it a Greek tragedy of incredible proportions. And a lot of people hated the whole "Homura becomes the Devil" twist when Rebellion came out, so why should Walpurgis no Kaiten be any different in this regard?

One of the things that I love about this franchise is that it's never been afraid to go big and bold and cosmic while simultaneously remaining deeply personal--and solidifying the connections between Homura and Walpurgisnacht would be all of those things at once and then some. I don't know why this particular idea has captured me, or why I feel so strongly about it, but in the end, I don't have any inside information, just an intuition that refuses to let go.

Ultimately, I suspect whether you like this theory or not comes down to whether you think the primary conflict of Madoka Magica is external (characters battling an enemy outside of themselves) or internal (characters battling an enemy within). My gut feeling is that Walpurgis no Kaiten will be an internal battle playing out on an external stage, essentially making this a "both/and" situation, and it will revisit many elements of both the original series and Rebellion while simultaneously breaking new ground.

It may well be that Urobuchi and SHAFT have a different answer to this particular story problem than the one I've outlined here--but if so, I can't see it. In the end, all I can do is imagine the story that I would write based on the clues I've been given, which may or may not be the same as the one they are planning. We'll find out if there's any truth at all to my intuitions or if I'm barking up the wrong tree when the movie finally comes out.

And hey, if I'm going to be wrong, I'd rather go out with a wild and crazy idea than playing it safe with some half-assed guessing. If I can't be right, I might as well be INTERESTING. And there's always fanfic to fall back on if the movie ends up going in a radically different direction and I still feel strongly about this by then.