A wish to see the dead again is a wish that cannot come true, at least, not without suffering on the part of the person making the wish or the deceased. This is something we learn when we are little, Aladdin is the first instance of hearing a rule like this. Another example I can think of is Buffy, as she suffers deeply after being ripped back from heaven.
We see this rule again in this Magia Record episode, as both Yachiyo and Iroha make a wish at the shrine to see the people who are the most important to them. Ui for Iroha and a girl named Mifuyu. Yachiyo’s friend since they were twelve and a fellow magical girl.
Of course, they aren’t real. How could they be? Ui has vanished and Mifuyu is gone as well, they don’t say she’s dead or even give a clear answer on what happened to her. Just that Yachiyo wants to see her to find the truth of her disappearance. It didn’t say it, but it was fairly clear that the creatures formed here were figments of the heart and imagination. That’s why the figment of Ui only uttered the words that Iroha has heard in her dreams and why the Mifuyu one was so lifelike.
The figment of Ui vanishes without a fight, but the Mifuyu one fights against Iroha before being taken down by Yachiyo. Tsuruno joins the others and they are presented with the master of the area, a tough battle to be sure. In particular when Iroha’s soul gem is immensely murky and close to becoming a pure black.
As they try to escape, Iroha falls into this darkness in herself. Cold darkness she takes to mean she’s dying, instead, she becomes a witch. Or something like a witch? A half-transformation of sorts, where it’s not a complete witch yet but it’s not Iroha either.
It demolishes the cause of the curse/rumor surrounding the shrine and returns all the people who were spirited away by it.
The witch that once was Iroha remains though until it’s brought down by Mami Tomoe.
It leaves Iroha behind, which brings up a lot of questions. We’ll get to those later though I guess. Yachiyo and Mami have a few tense moments and Mami is told to leave. So things simmer down for now. I forgot how, aggressive for a lack of a better word that Mami was before meeting Madoka and Sayaka.
After the situation calms down, Yachiyo brings Iroha to her apartment and lets her rest in Mifuyu’s old room. Making dinner for the two of them, honestly, I think she’s starting to warm up to Iroha. Vice versa, it could be that after the situation with the half-witch transformation that Yachiyo wants to keep an eye on her.
The credits come far too early.
An after-credits scene of the witch thing happening to Kaede and the fear that Momoko and Rena might not be alright. Oh no, please, series, be nice to my child. She’s too pure for this, too good. I hope everything is okay. Kaede is too good for this!
I know that this is a Madoka spin-off and being Meguka is suffering but please, not my baby!
Well anyway, we have a new mystery to be looking into next to investigating the gathering of witches in town, why Kyuubey can’t enter, what these Urban legends have to do with anything. We’ll see how things go and how things start to come together as we move forward.
Anyone with a familiarity with Madoka (which is probably everyone watching this show) has probably been waiting for some tragic event or revelation. Still, my jaw dropped when Iroha, our main character, started transforming into a witch (a death sentence in the original series)…and in episode 5 of what I think is a 20+ episode series.
What a fist-pump moment it was when Mami came jumping in with her theme music blaring in the background.
Since Kaede had the same witch-like transformation in the after-credits scene, I’m beginning to suspect we have a weaker/twisted version of Madoka’s wish at play here. When they were showing a bunch of the wishes in episode 1 or 2 that girls made to get their soul ges, there was one that had something to do with the witches in Kamihama. Seems like that person couldn’t stop witches from ever existing, so maybe their wish allows the witch transformation to be reversible. That’s still a pretty powerful wish, so that might explain why the phenomenon is limited to Kamihama City instead of worldwide like Madoka’s. The question remains who would have made that wish – Ui? Iroha? Mifuyu? Someone yet unseen? I could even see the tiny Kyubey being tiny because it gave up some of its own power to fuel this experiment. If their whole point was to collect the energy when a magical girl turns into a witch, wouldn’t they get a ton more energy if the magical girls can repeatedly turn into witches?
Biggest problem with this theory is that Yachiyo doesn’t seem to know what’s going on with Iroha’s transformation. Then again, she was pretty insistent that Iroha wasn’t dangerous anymore when Mami was trying to kill her after she turned back into a human.
Thanks for the review!