Puella Magi Madoka Magica Trivia Quiz

Answer: Homura Akemi

Homura Akemi is aloof and keeps to herself, and is also shown to be very academic. She supposedly has a heart problem, and has just come out of hospital. Little is known about her family. She makes enigmatic comments to Madoka about staying the way she is.

Madoka and Sayaka later meet a strange cat-like alien called Kyubey, which is short for 'Incubator' (its race), which is escaping from Homura. Homura tries to kill it, but Mami Tomoe, a veteran magical girl, stops her. Kyubey reveals it has the power to make girls into magical girls by granting one wish. Magical girls must fight monstrous beings known as witches, which trap people in barriers, nightmarish miniature worlds, and kill them. They can also drive people to suicide by kissing them.

Answer: Charlotte

Mami seems perfect, but Madoka discovers she is deeply lonely and sad, and has no friends because she has dedicated her life to becoming a magical girl. Homura tries to intervene and Mami ties her up with ribbons. Madoka offers to be friends with Mami, and Mami is so happy that she fights more recklessly than usual against Charlotte, a doll-like witch obsessed with sweets. Unfortunately, Charlotte morphs into a giant caterpillar and bites Mami's head off, before eating her body. Homura, freed by Mami's death, appears and blows Charlotte up.

Gertrude is the first witch Mami kills onscreen; she is a flower-like monster who owns a rose garden. HN Elly and Elsa Maria are both encountered by Sayaka later on when she becomes a magical girl; HN Elly traps people in boxes, and Elsa Maria is a shadowy girl who appears to be praying.

Answer: To heal her friend Kyosuke's hand

Sayaka is a big fan of classical music and has a classical musician friend, Kyosuke, who is in hospital with an injured hand. Kyosuke is frustrated because he cannot play the violin any more, and when Sayaka brings him a CD of classical music, he lashes out in frustration, seeing it as a cruel gift. Sayaka rescues Madoka from HN Elly, after a group of people - Hitomi, Sayaka and Madoka's friend, among them - try to commit mass suicide by mixing chemicals, and Madoka throws the chemicals away and hides in a cupboard, realising too late she is in a witch's barrier. Sayaka reveals that she made a wish to become a magical girl, and sure enough, Kyosuke's hand is healed and he can play the violin again.

Answer: A segmented spear

Kyouko Sakura is another veteran magical girl - drama CDs reveal that she and Mami were former partners - and sees Sayaka as competition. She attacks Sayaka with her segmented spear when the two clash after Kyouko lets a witch's familiar get away, as she only goes after mature witches. (Mature witches drop stones known as Grief Seeds, which magical girls use to purify their Soul Gems to stop them turning black and breaking.) She is much more ruthless and cynical than the idealistic Sayaka, and actively tries to kill her. Luckily, her wish being related to healing has made Sayaka extra-resistant to pain, and able to survive attacks that would be fatal for others. Madoka almost wishes for the fighting to stop, but Homura breaks up the fight and warns Madoka to give up on Sayaka.

Answer: He killed Kyouko's mother and sister, and himself.

Sayaka and Kyouko get into another fight on a bridge and Madoka tries to stop them by chucking Sayaka's Soul Gem over the edge. This has the effect of essentially killing Sayaka, as Kyubey reveals that the Soul Gem contains a magical girl's soul and if she is separated from it, she will die. Homura rescues the Soul Gem and Sayaka is revived.

The girls are furious with Kyubey for not telling them, and Sayaka becomes increasingly depressed, feeling that she is no longer human or worthy of Kyosuke's love.

She and Kyouko bond when Kyouko takes her to her dad's old church and tells Sayaka her story: her father was a preacher whose beliefs alienated his congregation, and he was excommunicated, causing the Sakura family to go hungry through lack of money (which is why Kyouko hates wasting food). Kyouko wishes for people to listen to her father's sermons and he gains his congregation back, but she tells him about her wish after a witch attacks the church and she has to fight it.

Her father goes insane, kills her mother and little sister, and then commits suicide, leaving Kyouko to fend for herself.

Answer: The Little Mermaid

Hitomi reveals to Sayaka that she is in love with Kyosuke and wants to ask him out, but is willing to give Sayaka the chance to get in there first. However, Sayaka fears that Kyosuke will never love her if he knows what she really is. This, along with a fight with Madoka and Sayaka overhearing a conversation between two misogynists on a train, causes Sayaka's Soul Gem to turn black and shatter, to Kyouko's horror. Oktavia von Seckendorff is the Mermaid Witch, and she represents falling in love; like the Little Mermaid, she willingly made a sacrifice for a man, only for it to come to nothing. Oktavia von Seckendorff takes the form of a giant armoured mermaid, and her barrier is a concert hall filled with musicians who look like Kyosuke.

Homura and Kyouko get Sayaka's body out of the barrier, and Madoka tries to reach Sayaka by calling her name, as Kyouko gets the mistaken impression that Sayaka can be turned back. However, Oktavia von Seckendorff grabs her and almost crushes her. Kyouko eventually takes the witch down in a suicide attack. Kyubey later reveals to Homura that once a magical girl becomes a witch, there is no turning back, and that becoming a witch is the eventual fate of all magical girls, unless they die before that.

Answer: Homura has the ability to control time, and has been living through the same repeated timeline.

Homura is not as new as she seems; Episode 10 reveals that the timeline of the series so far is the latest of many timelines she has experienced. She is shown as shy and awkward, with glasses and plaited hair, and is saved by Madoka - who is already a magical girl - and Mami when a witch tries to get her to kill herself. She contracts with Kyubey when Madoka dies fighting an extremely powerful witch, wishing to become a person who can protect Madoka, and to return to their original meeting. Homura is essentially stuck in a time loop which ends with the other girls dying - in one timeline, Mami goes insane and kills Kyouko after learning the truth about witches - and Madoka either dying or turning into a witch. She initially uses explosives in battle, although her main weapon is a shield with sand in it which can stop time. The sand drains over the course of a month and a half, during which time Homura tries to protect Madoka, only to fail. However, she is determined to keep trying.

Homura realises that Kyubey is evil and tries to warn the other girls, but Sayaka is hostile and does not trust her, particularly as Homura's pipe bombs are a liability. Homura's shield and ability to stop time enable her to steal weapons from the military and Yakuza gangs, and she becomes increasingly cynical and obsessed with protecting Madoka. In the third timeline, a dying Madoka gives Homura her last Grief Seed and begs her to stop her becoming a magical girl. The catch is that while Homura retains the memories of past timelines, the other girls do not.

Answer: Walpurgisnacht

'Walpurgisnacht' is a reference to the feast of St Walpurga, observed in Germany on the night of 30th April; St Walpurga was believed to protect people against witches. The witch Walpurgisnacht appears at the end of each timeline, bringing mass destruction with her; either she kills Madoka and Homura, or Madoka turns into an even more dangerous witch, Kriemhild Gretchen. She is a giant witch with a circus theme, who appears upside down, and causes storms and tsunamis. In the first timeline, Mami dies fighting Walpurgisnacht and Madoka sacrifices herself to stop the witch. Kyubey gleefully tells Homura that for each repeated timeline, Madoka's magical potential becomes greater, giving her the potential to become the most dangerous witch in existence.

In the current timeline, Homura fights Walpurgisnacht alone while Madoka and her family are in a shelter; she uses all kinds of weaponry, from missiles to a battleship and a mined stadium, but it is no use as Walpurgisnacht is too powerful, and she ends up badly injured. Madoka runs out into the storm, despite her mother trying to stop her, and finds Homura. The fight mirrors the scene Madoka saw in her dream in the first episode.

(Homulilly and Candeloro are Homura and Mami's respective witch forms from a 'Madoka' Playstation game.)

Answer: She purifies their Soul Gems as they die, and absorbs them into the Law of Cycles.

Madoka had previously talked to Kyubey about witches and magical girls, and Kyubey had revealed that the Incubators were using magical girls as a means of stopping the heat death of the universe, by harvesting the emotional energy of teenage girls. Incubators themselves do not experience emotions, considering them to be a mental disease. Kyubey claims that historical figures such as Joan of Arc were magical girls themselves (and a spin-off, 'Puella Magi Tart Magica', features a magical girl version of Joan of Arc).

Despite Homura begging her not to, Madoka makes the above wish. Kyubey states that it will rewrite the laws of the universe itself, and Madoka turns into a gigantic goddess-like figure with long hair and golden eyes. Her own witch, the Witch of Despair, manifests, but Madoka shoots her with a magical arrow. Walpurgisnacht ceases to exist, and the town goes back to normal, with both Mami and Kyouko being resurrected. Madoka says goodbye to Homura, giving her a hair ribbon as a keepsake. She also takes Sayaka to see Kyosuke play before absorbing her into the Law of Cycles (as Sayaka died as a witch, while the other two did not).

Answer: Tatsuya, Madoka's baby brother

Tatsuya draws a picture of Madoka and his mother thinks it is an imaginary friend, though the drawing reminds her of something. No-one else remembers Madoka besides him and Homura. In the new world, witches are replaced by beings known as Wraiths, and Homura is now using a bow and arrow like Madoka's, instead of a shield and assorted weapons.

She promises to keep fighting, to honour Madoka's sacrifice.