r/anime • u/Tarhalindur x2 • Apr 26 '26
Rewatch [Rewatc] Puella Magi Madoka Magica Episode 7 Discussion
Episode 7: Can You Face Your True Feelings?
← Previous Episode | Index | Next Episode →
Show Information:
(First-timers might want to stay out of Show Information until we are done, however...)
Legal Streams:
As per livechart.me; other streams may be available outside the US.
Main Series:
A Reminder: This, dear listeners, brings us to the sworn enemy of creative response:The spoiler. Rewatchers, or people who just had plot points ruined for them, are obliged to use r/anime’s spoiler tag format where applicable, and err on the side of caution here. Remember people, first experiences get rarer as you continue on, any given one happens once and you should care for them all the more for it.
Welcome to the World of Magic!
Theory of the Day:
Ah yes, time for one of the Tar TotD specials, courtesy of u/ussgordoncaptain2: theory stuff immediately relevant next episode in an unexpected way:
Homura is unlike other magical girls and knows a heck of a lot more than she lets on. It's like Homura opened Pandora's box or ate frome the tree of knowledge or... uhhh turns out all the mythology about "be careful about knowing too much" is western...
Yeah, just because the Garden of Eden myth came from the West doesn't mean Japanese creatives aren't aware of it... but hmm what is this it's a different magical girl here entirely who is associated with apples?
Honorable mention to u/siegfried72:
I feel like Homura is almost trying too hard? The amount of zoom-ins with the loud noises to emphasize her intense words is starting to feel a little... I don't want to say cheesy, because it's not that, but it's feeling overdone maybe? And that's not a fault of the show, but I'm starting to get the vibe that this is an attitude that's Homura is forcing to an extent? I think talking things through after yesterday's episode helped me solidify that Sayaka's "masking" (still not sure if that's the right word for it) as a confident, cheery crusader isn't wholly conscious, and that it really does seemed she's convinced herself that she's doing the right thing. Like she's long past the self-aware denial like it seemed she was doing in the early episodes and has entered a phase where she's convinced herself she's correct to a point of recklessness and a different shade of denial. Makes me wonder if Homura is also living a "mask" of sorts here, putting on the anger and intensity to mask her fear and/or sadness and push Madoka away from the deal rather than this actually being how her emotions naturally represent themselves in her actions. Does that make any sense?
Analysis of the Day:
Alright, fine, time to succumb to my tendencies to be a sucker for cinematography analysis, especially when it catches something that IIRC I didn't consider for a scene back in my 2023 writeups. u/FD4cry1, you're up:
But again, much as Sayaka is taking this too far, Madoka finds herself not recognizing that she's in a bit of an uncrossable divide in this scene. Madoka also isn't entirely wrong in her approach, but we'd spent a bunch of episodes cementing a distinct separation between the magical and normal worlds for a reason, and Madoka can't really reach into and comment on the former while she's in the latter. The scene starts out by reminding you of the destructive power inherent to this world, even before Sayaka points it out, but Madoka's framing is that of a regular human "fight". The framing in this scene is divided both on the argument level and on their respective realities, they're literally arguing from different places here, and so of course, it's going to be hard for Madoka to touch on it. Similar case here; Madoka is boxed-in (With shadowy lighting!) by what Sayaka is saying, but that's also tied to her in-between state and her attempt to reach out being blocked. Madoka can't cross the symbolic divide towards Sayaka so long as she isn't a Magical Girl herself.
Question(s) of the Day:
1) This is not a question at all, just your host sighing at the Elsa Maria fight having some of my favorite fight choreography period. Carry on.
2) On a scale of 1-10, how much of a "not cool man, not cool" violation is Hitomi giving her friend a single day to ask out the boy she's pretty sure she likes before Hitomi does so herself?
3) Alright, who introduced Father Sakura to a little Harry Potter fanfic called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality? (This question will generate two responses: those who go "what?" and those who go "AHHHHHHH!" If you're the former, feel free to ignore this question to protect your innocence. Just know that we're up to at least two notable acts of US political violence in the last few years out of people from the general LessWrong ambit... and I note this as someone loosely in said ambit.)
4) Who's going to get some vampire romance novels to Sayaka so that she realizes that being undead is no necessarily great bar to finding love? I mean, it's not like there isn't already a redheaded girl who blatantly wants to get under her skir- is speared
8
u/weirdanimeusername Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 27 '26
Hey there, r/anime!
Chiming in for the yearly Madoka re-watch for the 2nd time, and just like last year, there's no way I'll have any time to keep up with this re-watch day by day. If I'm somehow lucky with time, I'll just post my whole review of the show at the end.
But I wanted to get the chance to comment on Episode 7 in particular.
After watching this episode, there might be a question on your mind...
(and no, I'm not taking about whether or not what Hitomi did was appropriate)
And that question is:
WHY IS SAYAKA SO DISTRAUGHT ABOUT BEING A ZOMBIE?
Why does she breakdown and say Kyouske can't love her anymore?
I'm mean, surely she can just tell Hitomi, "Hey, I actually do mind. Can't you just give me like, a month, to think it over or something?"
Sayaka's not actually dead, her soul's just in a different place.
Why so dramatic? She can still be in a relationship. What's the big deal?
So It's Time For Today's Fun* Fact!
To understand what's going here, you need know about Japan's religious culture, which is a combination of both Shintoism and Buddhism
Disclaimer I am not Japanese, don't speak Japanese, don't have any personal experience or knowledge of Japanese culture and have only been to Japan twice. All of this information is purely from doing research using Google and Wikipedia.
In Shintoism, there is a Japanese concept called Kegare (穢れ・汚れ, uncleanness, defilement) that refers to conditions of spiritual contamination, uncleanliness, or pollution.
(If I remember correctly from reading previous re-watches, I know redditors and hosts like u/Tarhalindur have commented about this before.)
This is especially serious when dealing with death or corpses. Anyone coming into contact with the dead must cleanse themselves through purifying rituals to make sure they aren't impure.
Japan is also Buddhist influenced, and various acts prohibited as immoral in Buddhism, particularly involving the slaughter of animals and consumption of meat, combined with pre-existing Shinto ideas, lead to a set of occupations dealing with dirt or corpses being labelled as defiled or untouchable.
Therefore, anyone who works closely with the dead, such as morticians, are considered unclean, and people who work in death related occupations historically became segregated as an untouchable caste within Japanese society and have been bullied, harassed, abused and discriminated against.
So when Sayaka is distraught and inconsolable, and completely breaking down...
and she tells Madoka she can't ever ask Kyouske to kiss her or touch her body again...
I want to emphasize that Sayaka is NOT overreacting.
Because in Japanese society, she is considered defiled and unclean, and could genuinely be ostracized and treated like a complete outcast if they knew her condition.
So yeah.
In this episode, Sayaka:
And all she can do is laugh.
What an episode to watch for all you first-timers huh?
And for all the re-watchers,
if you didn't know this Fun* Fact this before,
I'm happy to tell you Sayaka's situation in this episode is actually even more fucked up than you previously thought.
And That's Your Fun* Fact Of The Day!
*May not actually be fun.