our partner Kaylin screened Madoka Magica for us again, over the last few days; we finished yesterday. I don't know exactly how many times we've watched the show—perhaps a dozen times now? there once was a time when the show would simply devastate us emotionally. now we feel more dispassionate about it, but Madoka Magica is still quite capable of reducing us to tears. this show was the first really powerful creative work that we encountered after Undertale set fire to our souls; Madoka and Homura were there when our RL father was dying.
if we cling to hope still, it's thanks largely to Kaname Madoka. and that's a curious position to be in, because Madoka exists within a corporate context. she's a veritable goddess of speranza and yet she's also a commercial product. I can say the same thing about most of the people who have inspired me with their heroism; I've looked up to Kamen Riders, Super Sentai teams, comic-book heroes...all of them exist within a money-making context. all of them are (to varying extents) creations of capitalism, which I would like to see smashed dead and consigned to oblivion. what does that mean for such heroes?
Gen Urobuchi, the creator of Kaname Madoka, seems quite aware of the ambivalent nature of his own work—if the Madoka film Rebellion is any evidence. but one need not look to "Rebellion" for evidence that Urobuchi did not want his audience to feel excessively happy or content in Madoka's apparent victory against despair. Madoka Magica ends with Akemi Homura all alone, fighting a futile battle against evil with only her memories of Madoka to prop her up—stranded in an "irredeemable" world pervaded with a suffocating miasma of curses, and Wraiths that emerge from every crevice. and the Incubators are still there, still scheming. in the end, what victory did Kaname Madoka achieve? she wished that there could be no more Witches, but the Witches were evidently merely a focal point for the evils of the world—curses condensed into a point source, something contained, something that could be directly confronted and fought. now the Witches are gone and the Earth's evils have become shapeless, but no less powerful. it's quite possible that Kaname Madoka made the world worse.
and yet...I still believe in her hope. I've been near despair many times and one of the reasons I can stumble onward is because of Kaname Madoka. "Sagitta Luminis" still makes me cry—I try not to listen to it too often, so as not to dilute its power through overfamiliarity. am I foolish? probably. (I intended to write quite a different piece but this emerged instead.)
~Chara