Epilogue – Very Best Friend

I stood in a train station in the middle of the night. It was pitch-black all around… until the domain began to disintegrate, melting into the darkness.

“…Where’s Sayaka?”

Before I could even come back to reality, Sakura Kyouko was already shouting.

“Hey, what happened to Sayaka?!” Long-handled spear in hand and her long hair tied up, Sakura Kyouko’s typical bluster and overwhelming demeanor was gone. Instead, she was just a flustered young girl, looking much more like her age.

“…She’s passed on. Taken by the Law of the Cycle,” a girl in a lustrous yellow outfit slowly mumbled. Even the gallant figure of Tomoe Mami was marred by sorrow. “Miki-san… gave everything she had in that final blow.”

Kyouko violently punched a pillar. “That dumbass… Letting herself get erased just ‘cause she got googly eyes for some guy! That idiot… not after… we finally became friends…” As Kyouko yelled, transparent tears slowly fell from her eyes.

I watched it all go–

Something was wrong… No, I was just watching.

But no, something was wrong. I kept mumbling under my breath.

“This is… what it means to become a magical girl. You knew what you were signing up for… what the cost of this power would be. When we reach the point that our reckless pursuit of hope would inevitably bring a curse upon the world… we must disappear.”

As Tomoe Mami spoke… I tightly clutched the objects that I found in my hand.

The soft ribbons draped over my palm… confirmed the sad reality that it hadn’t been a dream.

She’s gone.

Madoka… my one and only friend. She took all causality upon herself, reborn as nothing more than a concept.

I’m so sorry that I never noticed until now. It was like her voice still graced my ears, resonating in my mind. Now that I’ve become what I am, I can know the real you. I learned that I had such a wonderful friend beside me for all that time.

When she said those words… the impurities in my soul gem, so close to hatching… had all vanished. I couldn’t stop my tears as I thought about my friend, who had found me wandering in that endless maze… saving me again at the very last moment.

“…Madoka…” The name slipped out of my mouth accidentally.

“Akemi-san?” Tomoe Mami looked over at me with concern.

And Sakura Kyouko asked,

“Who the heck is Madoka?”

A difficult question. A difficult truth.

I held the ribbons against my chest with trembling hands.

I knew that Madoka still lived inside of me. She was right there with me, and I could almost feel her warmth… but she was gone.

She didn’t exist in the traditional sense any more. For all of eternity, nobody would ever know that a girl named Kaname Madoka had given everything to guarantee the world’s security.

I created so much despair in all the time that I repeated… But then, when I was in the next world, seeing Madoka there, the faintest of lights sparked within my frigid heart. Just seeing her from a distance warmed my heart.

But then… that small comfort was ripped away. I couldn’t stop crying.

I almost cried out her name again… but I grit my teeth, holding it back.

And somehow, as I did so, Madoka’s gentle smile graced my soul. Countless memories of her rushed into my mind. It was so painful that I wished I could just be filled with her smile and disappear right there. I wasn’t sure that I could handle living an entire life with memories of a friend that I would never see again.

I had returned to the old, timid Akemi Homura.

The girl who spent every day afraid of everything, who choked under pressure, and who always ran away.

Meeting Madoka had finally helped me escape those terribly empty days. But now I felt myself slipping right back.

And honestly, a part of me thought it might be easier just to go back. Sure, it’d be an empty life, just waiting until the day I died, but it would be better than knowing Madoka only to have her leave me forever.

But…

But…

I just couldn’t do it.

If I forgot her… then Madoka really would be alone.

So even though it would be difficult, even though it would be painful, I had to live alongside her memory. To feel her presence with me, and fight alongside her.

Get up, Homura. You can’t go down here. I ground my teeth, scolding myself for wanting to collapse then and there. I roused what strength remained in my heart and my legs.

You’re her best friend, right?

Kaname Madoka’s… very best friend.

Even if I never saw her again… even if I never spoke with her again… I needed to live. I had to live a life that would make Kaname Madoka proud, as her friend.

And then, someday, if I really did meet her again…

She would smile, telling me, “I knew you could do it, Homura-chan.”

Keep going… keep going… live… I desperately begged my body, somehow forcing strength into my trembling knees.

I never managed a response to Tomoe Mami or Sakura Kyouko.

I just fixed my eyes on the path ahead. The path worse than death itself.

◯

Being by the riverbank on a day off was peace incarnate.

The late summer sun gently shone down on me, accompanied by a wonderful breeze. I sat alone on the bank among the swaying grass.

But even though I was still getting my fill, I found my eyes following a particular family. A young couple with a little boy.

The boy was crouched down on the ground, completely absorbed in drawing something as his parents watched with their eyes narrowed fondly.

After a long enough time, I stood up, slapping the dust off my skirt and school bag. I began walking away, bag in hand.

“…Madoka! Madoka!” the boy cried out as I came closer.

I smiled, crouching down to look at the boy’s drawing of a girl.

It was a picture of a very dear friend.

Two ponytails tied up on the sides of her head. A slender body in a frilly outfit.

And a most wonderful depiction of her spring-like smile.

“Yup, that’s her. Spot-on,” I said.

“…Nuh?” the boy mumbled, tilting his head quizzically.

His eyes fixed on something, and he thrust his hand out.

He aimed directly for the bright red ribbons tying up my black hair.

“No, Tatsuya, that’s not nice,” a man’s voice reprimanded. “You can’t pull on a girl’s hair!”

It was the boy’s father.

My eyes settled on Madoka’s father. It was my first time meeting him. He had gentle eyes and a smile like the sun. Such a strong resemblance with my best friend.

“I’m so sorry about that. Are you okay?” the father asked with a slight bow of his head.

“It’s alright. I should apologize for interrupting him,” I said, returning the formalities. I smiled at the boy thrashing about in his father’s arms. “Madoka, right?”

“Uh-huh!” The boy called Tatsuya nodded enthusiastically.

I refocused my gaze towards the boy’s mother, who was standing behind his father and watching us. She was a beautiful woman with her gorgeous hair styled in a bob cut.

I bowed politely as the woman watched me, looking like she was trying to remember something.

“Best I can tell… she’s some kind of imaginary friend that he plays with when he’s alone. It’s not terribly uncommon for a kid his age,” Madoka’s mother, Kaname Junko, said with a chuckle.

“I understand. I know what that’s like.”

But not from childhood, I finished in my mind as a deep pain sprouted in my chest.

The two of us sat side by side on the riverbank, watching Tatsuya play with his father.

“So did you know that Madoka girl, too? Is she an anime character, or something?”

I answered Junko’s question with a small smile. “I dunno. It sounds like someone I would know, but then again, maybe not.”

“Really? Maybe it was someone I saw while I was out with Tatsuya… But something about it just sounds so familiar. Madoka.”

“Is that right?”

Happiness and sadness seemed to equally balance the mother’s words.

And I thought that maybe Madoka hadn’t completely disappeared, after all. The idea that there was still something left of her in the world… was very comforting.

“Wow, those ribbons are so cute!” I realized with a start that Junko was talking about my hair. “They’re exactly my type of accessory. It’s a little surprising, really.”

Junko narrowed her eyes, and they sparkled as though she had found a long-lost treasure.

It couldn’t have been any clearer.

Those parents really, truly loved and cherished their daughter. No wonder she was capable of pouring that love out onto all those curses.

“Would you like to have them?”

For just a moment, I seemed to catch Junko off guard. Then she chuckled in embarrassment. “Oh no no, those wouldn’t look any good at all on an old woman like me.”

Personally, I couldn’t have disagreed more. Kaname Junko didn’t seem like an old woman in the slightest.

She was so beautiful and stylish… and beneath it all, she carried an inner strength. The exact kind of strength I had seen in my best friend.

A love that could hold anything in its warm embrace, and a strength to go on forever.

“Tell you what, though, if I had a daughter she’d definitely be wearing them.”

As Junko laughed, I found myself reflecting.

Thank you, Madoka.

Thank you… for the gift of being my best friend.

◯

The wind howled. It was an evil wind, slicing through the night.

I sat on the roof of a high-rise, glaring down at the skyscrapers below. Glaring at the battlefield.

My fierce black, white and gray outfit whipped in the wind.

“I see. Well, your proposition makes sense, at least in theory,” said a carefree voice from behind me.

“It’s not a theory. It actually happened,” I replied, placing my soul gem in the middle of a number of small cubes arranged into a circle.

The tiny little cubes sparkled like gems, but unlike grief seeds, multiple were required to cleanse a soul gem of its impurities.

“Say what you like, you have no way of proving it. If the very laws of the universe were rewritten as you claim, we have no way of verifying that in post. More to the point, if you’re the only one who remembers, then it’s no different than any other fantasy you might have dreamed up.”

“…Hmph,” I snorted, tossing the used cubes towards the source of the voice.

The white creature with a long, white tail and matching ears. Kyuubey.

“…Though I will concede that we cannot understand why soul gems vanish when they go beyond the limits of purification. In that respect, the witch concept that you brought up actually sounds quite interesting,” Kyuubey mumbled, tossing the spent black cubes into the mouth that opened up on its back. “It sounds like a much more effective method of harvesting emotional energy. If we incubators had access to that methodology, I’m sure our strategy would be quite different.”

“…Indeed it would. That’s just the kind of creatures you are,” I said dismissively, dusting off my hands and standing up.

Kyuubey looked up at me. “Well, in this world with witches you speak of, you didn’t have to fight these magical beasts, did you? Collecting curses must have been a much quicker process.”

“It wasn’t that simple. For starters, we didn’t have the best relationship with your kind.”

“…Hmm. Can’t say I’d understand why. You humans and your strange values.”

I ignored Kyuubey’s commentary, staring down at the many lights glimmering below me.

I thought of the countless people that inhabited those lights. The countless wishes and thoughts that came from them.

And of the countless despairs that lay beyond them in the depths of that thick, black miasma.

Those despairs coalesced into grotesque shadows, beings entirely unlike the witches I fought prior. They were referred to as magical beasts, but they preyed on lost souls all the same. Even in a world without witches, the curses of the human world still took form. The world was still distorted, just in a different way.

And even now, it targeted people from the depths of the blackest darkness.

“The miasma’s really thick tonight. There’s just no end to these magical beasts, no matter how many we take down.”

“Complaining about it won’t change anything. Time to go.” Dismissing Kyuubey’s flippant remark, I leapt down, stretching out my arms and falling into the night.

The rushing wind whipped all my hair up, exposing my face.

I had to wonder how others saw my face as it was exposed to the darkness of night.

Was it the timid, sickly face of the past me?

Or the calm, collected me, cold as ice?

I turned my head towards the darkness as I landed on the ground, and the inky blackness began to stir. Strange creatures, cloaked in the delusions of those who had lost all hope, began to take form.

As long as humans were still around, magical beasts by the hordes would be created by them.

I stared coldly at a dark world that deserved nothing less than my abandonment.

But a single thought kept me there.

As hopeless as the world may be, filled with its cycles of sadness and hatred…

It was a place she wanted to protect.

I remember that. I will never forget it.

And so…

“I will keep on fighting.”

With a flash, my hand glows, and a large magical bow appears in one hand.

Strong magical power rises in my body as the bow is loosed.

A beam of light makes its way forward. Towards that vast, thick darkness that seems to swallow everything.

Even the light couldn’t pierce it, instead being swallowed whole by the miasma.

Naturally, I end up in quite the predicament.

The vast darkness is far too thick for one single girl on her lonesome.

But I already know. I am never truly alone.

I have an irreplaceable friend who will always and forever be by my side.

Her smile.

Her gaze.

Her words remain with me.

My body may be battered, and my heart pulled in all kinds of directions.

But my spirit will never be crushed.

Because I can always be sure that someone out there somewhere is fighting for me.

And when I remember that someone’s face…

I know that I’m not alone.

I unleash magical power that threatens to tear my body apart. With it go the feelings that threaten to rip my heart to pieces.

At the end of another lonely battle, so lonely that I would almost rather die…

Your voice resounds in the depths of my ears.

I, too, used to be a coward. I felt like I could fall to pieces at any given moment. In fact, I didn’t even know what a friend was, until you came and taught me.

I fight out in this infinite spatial abyss, so far removed from what I once considered the world, but I’m never alone.

Because I can always be sure that Homura-chan is out there somewhere, fighting… and because she remembers me, my spirit can never be crushed.

And so, the both of us can say it with pride.

I am her friend.

Her very best friend.

And so…

“I know you can do it.”

Afterword

The famous musical number Clair de Lune is referenced in a particularly striking scene in this work, and its composer, Claude Debussy, once said, “Art is the most beautiful of all lies.” Every time I think of that quote, a similar one always comes to mind: “Art is not created; Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” A line uttered first by Michelangelo, then by many sculptors following him. So… is art a lie, or something that was always there? Sometimes I find myself unsure. What we call a “plot” is a narrative blueprint, an omniscient perspective capturing the whole picture. While some writers demonstrate their masterful craftsmanship in constructing an excellent plot, other writers only consider one line to the next. I don’t think it comes down to one way being “better” or “right”, since all that can be judged is the finished product, but I find myself constantly struggling to decide which way is better for me personally on any given project.

With that said, the job of adapting Puella Magi Madoka Magica was a plot-first process, where the entire story was decided well before anything was put down on paper. Typically, I tend to just immerse myself into the characters, and part of me wondered at first if I would be able to handle a different methodology. I was actually very concerned about how it would all go before I began writing, but my worries turned out to be completely unfounded. This story constructs an extraordinary container for its world, then faithfully follows the emotional journeys of all the characters living within it. Each magical girl remains pure and innocent in the face of a most cruel fate, and their emotional beats synchronize perfectly with the ups and downs of the story, racing to the ending as if the story had just been waiting to be told.

What I mean to say is, this story surprised me by proving that art can be both a beautiful lie and something naturally unearthed.

Back when I wrote the afterword to the Nitroplus edition of these books, I said, “A good story has something about it that can violently draw the reader in, as if grabbing them by the throat, whether they like it or not.” I don’t know that I could define what exactly that “something” is, but this story definitely has it.

I’d like to thank everyone at the Seikaisha editorial department for this wonderful opportunity.

Above all, my deepest gratitude to everyone who loved this story enough to allow it to be released as a published work.

-Hajime Ninomae, September 2013

Translator Message

ShwampBam, Translator – It is the very last day of February 2026. Although nobody will be reading this until at least a bit into March, I wanted to push myself to finish the project by the month’s end, and by golly I did it, even if it’s only 2 hours until midnight.

Yet another project for the books (literally). I always say this, but I’m really glad I worked on this project, and found this an incredibly satisfying work to be a part of. It’s really nice that I have the opportunity to take on these passion projects rather than working for translation slop corporation number 32. Even if that means I don’t get paid. I guess I’m paid in exposure?

Madoka Magica is such a powerful story, and getting it straight from Madoka’s perspective solved what few narrative qualms I felt held the anime back. Not that the anime is bad by any means. Excellent OST, brilliant use of visuals, clever ways of masking unnecessary gore while still committing to a dark, violent tone– I have all kinds of praises for it. But it chose a narrative that could be a tad impersonal at times, not in the sense that it was disconnected from its characters, but rather because it kept switching between them so aggressively. Dramatic irony is one thing, but keeping track of who knows what and how that informs their decisions is hard enough when you have one perspective, let alone three or four.

Really, it’s a personal thing, but in my opinion you just can’t beat a solid first-person narrative. I love making little connections to characters and really digging deep into an individual. And this is a story all about those connections. It was such a treat being able to write Madoka saying that she will never have reason to despair after all that we know she’s been through.

Now, as far as a translator’s note, here’s a fun fact: A classic way of distinguishing between speakers in a multi-perspective book is by controlling the usage of personal identifiers. This isn’t to be confused with the post-modern, Western concept of personal pronouns; there are just a lot of ways to say I in Japanese. If everyone has a unique identifier, you know who’s talking right away, no further context needed. In this book, our main two speakers are Homura and Madoka. While both refer to themselves as watashi, a typical, polite identifier that tends towards the feminine, they utilize different spelling, at least in the way Japanese has spelling. Homura always uses the kanji form (私), where Madoka uses the pronunciative hiragana form (わたし).

This difference makes identifying the swapping speakers in the last few paragraphs significantly easier. But I want to focus on the very last moments. In one of the final lines, “I am her friend,” the raw Japanese was as follows:

  わたしには、 私には、       友達がいる。

Watashi ni wa, watashi ni wa, tomodachi ga iru.

Literally, this says “I and I have a friend.” However, as you may see, we have both of the identifiers here. The actual lines don’t signify “both of us,” that was just my workaround. Rather, it uses general language while literally speaking for both of them at the same time.

While I am quite proud of the way I worked around it, and don’t truly think anything was lost, it is a very cool trick used by the Japanese author.

I currently have no other novels lined up. I sure hope to find some soon, but it’s really hard to get something that’s exactly what I’m looking for, and the risk of jumping into something that I would then be tempted to drop due to quality or content is high. You can just never know until you take the plunge and dig in, but I have nothing I’m prepared to do that for in the immediate present. I do, however, have plenty of manga backlog that needs finished, and I hopefully can reorganize some workloads to get that moving.

Big thanks to Shaggy and Aidan, as always. Shaggy did a tremendous job touching up the images on these books, and he’s always such a great help when anything needs done. Aidan is also a very good proofreader, at least when he actually does it.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought, and if you have any projects you might like me to check out. Who knows what might come next? I haven’t had anything resembling a pattern between my chosen projects so far, and I see no reason to start that now.

And whatever you do, my wish is that you won’t give in to despair, either.

Until next time!