List of Puella Magi Madoka Magica characters

The following is a list of characters from the anime and manga series, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and its two spin-off manga series, Puella Magi Kazumi Magica: The Innocent Malice and Puella Magi Oriko Magica. The series revolve around magical girls who are granted any single wish in exchange for fighting against evil beings known as witches.

Contents

Puella Magi Madoka Magica characters

Main characters

Madoka Kaname (鹿目 まどか Kaname Madoka?)
Voiced by: Aoi Yūki (Japanese), Christine Marie Cabanos (English)
Madoka is a 14-year-old girl that comes from a loving family. Her life changes when she encounters the magical girl Homura and the familiar Kyubey, who offers to transform her into a magical girl. She sees herself as a person without special qualities or talents, and after seeing Mami fighting against witches, aspires to become a magical girl like her. She is a kind and gentle person that is averse to fighting. She hopes that the magical girls will support each other, sometimes even putting her own life at risk to help them. After witnessing Mami's death, she grows uncertain about becoming a magical girl, growing ever more hesitant as the true cost of the role is revealed to her.
In previous timelines, Madoka became a magical girl in a pink dress wielding a rose-topped bow and arrow. However, every time, she was either killed or transformed into a witch, one that became ever more powerful with each time reset centered around her fate. After being shown the suffering of magical girls throughout history, Madoka decides upon her wish: she contracts to prevent them from becoming witches when they are at their limits. The laws of the universe are rewritten such that at the moment that a soul gem becomes black with anguish, Madoka appears and purifies it before the magical girl passes on. As a result of this wish, she becomes an omniscient savior that exists for all time, leaving only Homura with the memory of her human existence.
Homura Akemi (暁美 ほむら Akemi Homura?)
Voiced by: Chiwa Saitō (Japanese), Cristina Vee (English)
Homura is a magical girl who first appears in an apocalyptic nightmare of Madoka's. She transfers into her school the day after the dream. She is a beautiful, mysterious individual that performs exceptionally well in academics and athletics. This makes her instantly popular even though she is cold to others. Homura's cold personality developed from repeating the same timeline again and again. She was originally a shy, weak transfer student who spent a long time in hospital due to heart disease. She was befriended and eventually saved from a witch by Madoka, who revealed that she was a magical girl. When Madoka was killed in her battle with Walpurgis Night, Homura contracted with Kyubey in order to become a person that could protect her. She became a magical girl with the ability to manipulate time, allowing her to return to her first meeting with Madoka in order to change her fate. She tries again and again to prevent Madoka from being killed or becoming a magical girl and, inevitably, a witch, but is never able to save her. She always returns to the beginning of the month upon failure.
Her magical weapon is a shield filled with sand that allows her to freeze time. However, this power becomes useless if she is physically restrained as she cannot turn her shield to activate it. She can also use this shield to block projectiles and store the various infinite amount weapons that she carries. Since her shield and magic has no offensive capability, she instead attacks using stolen firearms and homemade explosives while time is stopped. None of the girls actually know what weapons she has, since she only uses them while time is stopped and puts them. Once the sand on her shield runs out, Homura must reset the timeline. In the final timeline, she inherits Madoka's rose bow and arrows along with a set of white wings.
Sayaka Miki (美樹 さやか Miki Sayaka?)
Voiced by: Eri Kitamura (Japanese), Sarah Williams (English)
Sayaka is Madoka's classmate and best friend. She is a lively tomboy with strong ideals of love and lawfulness. After helping Madoka rescue Kyubey, she contracts with him to grant her wish to heal the wounded hand of Kyōsuke Kamijo, a young violinist that she is infatuated with and visits daily in the hospital. As a magical girl, Sayaka's weapon of choice is a cutlass, she can produce multiples of them at a time. She also has extraordinary regenerative ability due to the healing nature of her wish. Sayaka insists that her wish is selfless and feels that fighting witches to save people is a bonus, even after witnessing Mami's death. As Sayaka's ideals are put against the reality of her wish's consequences and the stress of fighting, her view of the world is slowly corrupted. She becomes hateful and distrustful towards others, including Madoka, whom she lashes out at and accuses of being selfish. After learning that her soul is no longer attached to her body and that her close friend Hitomi intends to become Kyōsuke's lover, she falls into isolation and refuses all help. When she overhears a conversation between two men that mock and despise their girlfriends, Sayaka reaches her limit. As she reveals her corrupted Soul Gem to Kyouko, she states that she was a fool, and allows her Soul Gem to transform into a Grief Seed. Sayaka becomes Octavia von Seckendorff, an armored mermaid witch with a labyrinth similar to a concert hall. In the final timeline, Madoka in her omniscient state offers Sayaka a second chance at life, but Sayaka turns it down, saying she only wanted to see Kyousuke succeed with his violin before passing on.
Mami Tomoe (巴 マミ Tomoe Mami?)
Voiced by: Kaori Mizuhashi (Japanese), Carrie Keranen (English)
Mami is a veteran magical girl and a third-year student at Madoka's school. She lives alone in a penthouse after the death of her parents in a car accident, one which she was able to survive only due to contracting with Kyubey to save her own life. Her magical abilities include being able to produce nearly infinite amounts of Tanegashima-like flintlock rifles, yellow ribbons to suspend her enemies, and healing magic. Mami is particularly focused on saving those around her, with a traditionally selfless perspective on the role of magical girl, and has a habit of giving names to her finishing attacks. Though her outward disposition is cheery and confident, Mami feels deeply alone as she has no friends to confide in or support her as she fights. Madoka offers to become her partner and save her from her loneliness, but Mami is killed immediately after during battle with a witch; as per Madoka's wish, at the close of the final timeline, this witch never existed, and Mami is therefore seen, alive, with Kyoko and Homura at the end of the series. According to Kyubey, she never knew the darker truths concerning Soul Gems and origins of witches. In a previous timeline, learning of these truths drove Mami insane and she attempted to murder the remaining magical girls to prevent them from becoming witches, and in the Oriko Magica timeline, she contemplates letting herself be killed and/or committing suicide so she doesn't become a witch herself. In the upcoming PSP game, she is to become a witch named Candeloro.[1]
Kyōko Sakura (佐倉 杏子 Sakura Kyōko?)
Voiced by: Ai Nonaka (Japanese), Lauren Landa (English)
Kyōko is a veteran magical girl who comes to the city following Mami's death. Her distinguishing features include long red hair, twin fangs and a voracious appetite, almost never being seen without food. She came from a poor church family and used her wish so that people would listen to her father's preaching; when her father learned of this, however, he went mad and killed everyone in his family aside from Kyōko. As such, Kyōko decided only to use her magic for herself from this point on, since using it for others will only cause despair. Having grown up in a poor family, she often has to steal food and hates people who waste it, a logic she also applies to Grief Seeds, as she only goes after fully grown witches.
Kyōko has been a Puella Magi much longer than the others, and thus is more skillful; she wields a spear which can extend itself, split into multiple sections, and produce a ball at the end of a chain, which can constrict and hit others at the same time. She also has the ability to put up barriers to protect others or keep them from interfering. She initially clashes with Sayaka, but after learning the truth about Soul Gems, she sympathizes with her and tries to help her. After Sayaka becomes a witch, she becomes determined to save her and restore her to normal, but ultimately sacrifices herself in the fight so that Sayaka would not die alone. She overloads her soul gem to create a massive explosion that kills them both. In a previous timeline, she was killed by Mami, who was driven insane after learning that they would all eventually become witches. In the final timeline, Kyōko survives, and grieves over Sayaka's death in battle. In the third drama CD, it is explained that, prior to the main storyline, Kyōko once had the power to utilise illusion magic, but after her family's death she subconsciously lost that ability. She also had a friendship with Mami prior to her family's death, which was severed when Kyōko decided to be more selfish with her magic. This friendship was also explored in Oriko Magica, though not in-depth.
Kyubey (キュゥべえ Kyūbē?) / Incubator (インキュベーター Inkyubētā?)
Voiced by: Emiri Katō (Japanese), Cassandra Lee (English)
Kyubey is a genderless extra terrestrial being posing as a familiar who can grant any wish to a certain girl, on the condition that she become a magical girl and fight against witches. When the chosen girl makes a contract with him, he extracts her soul and places it inside a Soul Gem, reconstructing their body into a shell that is more resilient in order to fight witches. He constantly tries to get Madoka to make a contract with him, as she allegedly possesses great magical potential within her that would allow her to become the most powerful magical girl. He can only be seen or heard by magical girls and those with "magical" potential, and is able to communicate with them telepathically. Kyubey has an unknown but possibly infinite number of bodies; when one is killed, another body appears and devours the destroyed body.
Kyubey's true name, or at least job title, is Incubator, and comes from a race whose goal is to find and gather a form of energy to counter entropy and prevent the impending heat death of the universe, developing a technology to turn emotions into this energy. After evaluating many species throughout the universe, the Incubators find that the souls of humans, specifically pubescent and prepubescent girls, contain the most powerful form of this energy. This energy is the strongest when a magical girl's Soul Gem turns into a Grief Seed, and then can be collected and used towards preventing entropy. Kyubey claims his race lacks emotions (or, at least, that those in his race who have emotions are abnormal), and has little understanding of human values and morality, not understanding why the death of one human among billions is viewed so catastrophically, instead believing the Incubators' actions are not cruel but utilitarian in nature. Despite this, Kyubey is a very skilled manipulator, never actually lying, but instead leaving out important details involved in the forming of contracts and the details behind them, only presenting the truth when it is asked of him. The very existence of the Magi-Witch system is what allowed the evolution of mankind's civilization, according to Kyubey, as many of the main events in human history have a Puella Magi involved (it is implied but never explicitly stated that Cleopatra, Tomoe Gozen and Joan of Arc were all Puella Magi), and without them, humans would probably still be living in a pre-historic condition. Despite answering all questions posed to him, there is still much about the universe that Kyubey has not spoken of.

Supporting characters

Hitomi Shizuki (志筑 仁美 Shizuki Hitomi?)
Voiced by: Ryōko Shintani
Madoka and Sayaka's classmate and friend, quite popular with the boys. She sometimes feels left out of Madoka and Sayaka's friendship. At one point in the plot, she and numerous other people receive H.N Elly (Kirsten) witch's kisses and attempt to commit suicide by entering a mostly sealed warehouse and starting a reaction of bleach and ammonia, producing chlorine gas. Madoka, who throws the reaction container out a window before anyone is killed, saves her life just before getting caught in the witch's labyrinth, where she is further rescued by Sayaka when she arrives to kill the witch and save Madoka. It is later revealed that she is also in love with Kyōsuke, and her confidence in being able to confess her feelings outshines Sayaka's own insecurities of possessing a soulless body, contributing to the latter's despair. She is seen at Sayaka's funeral, clutching Kamijo's shoulder and crying, though their faces are both shadowed over.
Kyōsuke Kamijō (上条 恭介 Kamijō Kyōsuke?)
Voiced by: Seiko Yoshida
A disabled boy whom Sayaka constantly visits in hospital. He used to be a violin player, but an accident crippled him and destroyed the feeling in his fingers, making him unable to play an instrument again. Sayaka uses her wish to cure his hand, allowing him to play the violin once more. Sayaka initially appears to be happy about her wish, but after Kyubey reveals that her soul is no longer attached to her body, she decides that she is not fit to pursue Kamijo as a romantic interest. This problem is further magnified by Hitomi's interest in Kamijo, which becomes the catalyst for Sayaka's despair. After Sayaka disappears, he vaguely senses her presence at his audition.
Junko Kaname (鹿目 詢子 Kaname Junko?)
Voiced by: Yūko Gotō
Madoka's mother, an executive who wears a lot of makeup and sometimes comes home drunk, making it hard to wake her up in the morning. Aside from this, she is a caring and gentle person and often gives Madoka advice whenever she is troubled.
Tomohisa Kaname (鹿目 知久 Kaname Tomohisa?)
Voiced by: Tetsuya Iwanaga
Madoka's father, who seems to be the one in charge of the house.
Tatsuya Kaname (鹿目 タツヤ Kaname Tatsuya?)
Voiced by: Kaori Mizuhashi
Madoka's younger brother.
Kazuko Saotome (早乙女 和子 Saotome Kazuko?)
Voiced by: Junko Iwao
Madoka's teacher, who constantly has trouble keeping a boyfriend. She is good friends with Junko.

Puella Magi Kazumi Magica: The Innocent Malice characters

Kazumi (かずみ?)
The main protagonist of Puella Magi Kazumi Magica and a magical girl with no memories besides her name, though she slowly starts to regain her memories as she fights alongside her friends, Umika and Kaoru. She wears bells on her ears that can sometimes change things according to her wishes, and an ahoge that allegedly can detect witches. She often judges people to be bad or good depending on whether they waste food. When transformed, she dons a black outfit with a witch's hat and fights using a large cross. As a result of her memory loss, she does not remember the wish she made as she never told Umika or Kaoru what is was. As a result of absorbing Evil Nuts from Airi, she occasionally enters a rabid state. As she regains her memories, it is revealed she is the one who saved the other Pleiades Saints when their individual despairs led them to be infected by Witches Kisses and commit suicide. Having once been saved from a witch by Mami, she takes after her habit of naming her special moves.
Umika Misaki (御崎 海香 Misaki Umika?)
Kazumi's friend and a middle school student who lives in her home with Kazumi and Umika and is also a magical who is part of a seven girl group known as the Pleiades Saints. She is a best-selling novelist as a result of using her wish to meet with an editor who would recognize her talent. She uses a magical book which allows her to read a witch's mind, allowing her to determine its weakness. Whenever she has writer's block, she grows horns and enters a fierce cooking phase before going on a shopping spree.
Kaoru Maki (巻 カオル Maki Kaoru?)
Umika and Kazumi's friend, a magical girl who lives with them. She enjoys playing soccer and used her wish to get a healthy body, giving her great physical strength. In battle, she is able to form powerful armor around her limbs.
Saki Asami (浅海 サキ Asami Saki?)
An intelligent magical girl who is the leader of the Pleiades Saints. When she learned of the nature of the magical girl's transformation into witches, she and the other Pleiades Saints began removing Soul Gems from other magical girls and preserving their bodies so that they would not become witches, hoping for a way to make them human again.
Mirai Wakaba (若葉 みらい Wakaba Mirai?)
One of the Pleiades Saints, who often acts like a rich kid and tends to whack Kazumi on the head whenever she doubts herself. She has the ability to summon large amounts of teddy bears to overwhelm the enemy.
Satomi Usagi (宇佐木 里美 Usagi Satomi?)
A polite magical girl. She used her wish to gain the ability to talk to animals as she wants to become a vet when she grows up.
Nico Kanna (神流 ニコ Kanna Niko?)
A slow-witted magical girl who often speaks in blunt statements. Her wish involved regeneration, giving her the ability reconstruct materials into other objects, which she can use to create mini-missiles or clones of herself.
Jubey (ジューベー Jūbē?)
An incubator who contracted the Pleiades Saints, turning them into magical girls. He can absorb the darkness from Soul Gems directly into his black fur.
Yūri (ユウリ?) / Airi Anri (杏里 あいり Anri Airi?)
An evil magical girl who targets Kazumi in an attempt to get revenge on the Pleiades Saints. She is able to create Evil Nuts, which she uses on humans to produce pseudo-witches that prey on their desires. Her true identity is that of the real Yūri's best friend, Airi, who suffered from a terminal disease but was cured by Yūri when she became a magical girl. However, when Yūri transformed into a witch and was forced to be killed by the Pleiades Saints, Airi swore revenge on the Pleiades and made a contract with Kyubey to take Yūri's form, targeting Kazumi so they can feel the pain of losing someone precious. She attempts to kill Kazumi, but in the end she ends up using too much magical power and transforms into a witch too, who Kazumi is forced to kill.
Yūri Asuka (飛鳥 ユウリ Asuka Yūri?)
Airi's best friend who had desires of becoming a famous chef. When Airi was diagnosed with a terminal illness that would kill her in a short while, Yūri made a contract to become a magical girl in order to cure her of her illness. She had often used her powers as a magical girl to go around curing other ill children. However, she soon transformed into a witch and was killed by the Pleiades Saints.
Sōichirō Tachibana (立花 宗一郎 Tachibana Sōichirō?)
A man who discovers Kazumi inside a briefcase which was supposed to contain a bomb he had intended to use to blow a place up. After Kazumi sees good in him and prevents him from being set up by a possessed detective, he becomes the manager of an ice cream store.
Ayase Sōjo (双樹 あやせ Sōjo Ayase?) and Ruka Sōjo (双樹ルカ Sōjo Ruka?)
Ayase is a magical girl who goes around picking the Soul Gems out of other magical girls. Her body actually resides two souls, Ayase and Ruka, each with their own transformations.

Puella Magi Oriko Magica characters

Oriko Mikuni (美国 織莉子 Mikuni Oriko?)
A magical girl with the ability to see into the future. She looked up to her father who was a government official, until he hung himself after being caught doing illegal business, which in turn left Oriko betrayed by her classmates. She made a contract to Kyubey wishing to know the meaning of life, gaining the ability to see into the future, which also gives her foresight in battles where she attacks using metal orbs. After seeing a vision of a witch she cannot possibly defeat, she makes it her goal to kill Madoka in order to prevent her from becoming a witch. She attempts this by nominating Yuma as a magical girl candidate and sending Kirika to hunt other magical girls in order to distract Kyubey from making a contact with Madoka.
Kirika Kure (呉 キリカ Kure Kirika?)
A magical girl who is using her powers to hunt down her own kind. As a girl who had no interest in anything and was often bothered, she became infatuated with Oriko, the one person who paid attention to her, and made a contract with Kyubey in order to change herself so she could become friends with her. She has a strong admiration for Oriko and will do anything she asks her, including killing other magical girls. When transformed, she wields a pair of powerful claws and has the ability to slow down time, giving the impression of her moving quickly. When Oriko is confronted by the other magical girl, she willingly becomes a witch to protect her, but is ultimately killed by Kyōko, Mami and Yuma.
Yuma Chitose (千歳 ゆま Chitose Yuma?)
A young girl who Kyōko encounters after her parents are killed by a witch. She was often bullied by her parents and wants to become useful to her, going into distress whenever she feels useless. Despite Kyōko warning her not to become a magical girl, she ends up becoming one in order to save Kyōko's life due to Oriko's manipulation. She specialises in healing magic and wields a spherical hammer.

References

  1. ^ http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/interest/2011-12-20/madoka-magica-psp-game-puts-major-character-in-new-role