Homura Residence

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Please refrain from reading if you are not yet familiar with all the latest media released.

Exterior of Homura's home.

The residence of Homura Akemi. An aging, European-style building at a Y intersection in a district surrounded by skyscrapers. It is unclear if this is a new building or part of the original town that didn't undergo urban redevelopment.

Contrastingly, the interior of Homura's apartment is ultra-modern, and the walls appear to be digital displays of documents pertaining to witches. There is a decoration on the ceiling made of clockwork, and the "desktop" within the digital display features a pair of swinging, bladed pendulums. Along a fourth, unseen wall, there is a row of candlesticks and pillars.

Official Info

Looking from above, the interior looks like the surface of a clock.

Speculations and observations

Apartment interior in episode 8. Three of the four walls in the room appear to be digital display.

The apartment layout might represent a clock of some sort, in line with Homura's time manipulation abilities. The time might be 6:40, AM or PM.
Because the appearance of the apartment interior is quite surreal and bears a superficial resemblance to a Witch's Labyrinth, some viewers have proposed that Homura might have refurbished or reconstituted her flat with magic.
- In a prior iteration of the timeline, Homura's apartment was far more mundane in appearance.
  - A magazine article suggests that Homura's house hasn't physically changed: the white walls, floating texts, and clockworks are all a holographic projection superimposed on a more mundane setting. At the same time, the article does suggest that Homura's residence was intentionally drawn to resemble a witch's barrier.
2ch has referred to the residence as 「ほむホーム」 (homu hōmu). The first "homu"("ほむ") refers to Homura herself, and the latter comes from the word "home."
The shadows of the pendulums resemble imagery used in The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allen Poe.^[1]
The exterior view of Homura's residence resembles a scene from Shadow of Memories (Shadow of Destiny for North America). Interestingly it went through several title changes before release, among them The Day and Night of Walpurgisnacht, Days of Walpurgis, and Time Adventure.
As shown in the gallery below, the exterior of Homura's home also bear strong similarities with the house from Le Portrait de Petit Cossette. This shot (also present to a lesser extend in Bakemonogatari) might be inspired by Koji Morimoto's designs.
Prior to the discovery of Homura's home, some fans assumed that Homura was homeless.
- Some fans are calling Homura's home the Homucave.
  - Those holographic displays? Speculated that it could be the result of a supercomputer powered by magic.
Homura seems to live in it alone. It is unclear whether her parents have died or are constantly away.
The Madoka PSP game's world map gives the approximate location of the Akemi residence in the game.
- According with the PSP world map, the Akemi residence is located to the northwestern part of the city. It appears south of an area with a large number of commercial buildings and skyscrapers. Near the Akemi residence is a train station and to the east is a hospital. Further to the east, is the location of the downtown area and from there to the northeast there is the Highway Overpass.

Walpurgisnacht documents

The following is a gallery of the documents on Homura's wall display.

Screencap	Description
	A woodcut image of a Witch resembling the one from Episode 1. At left, the German word Unbekannt (Unknown or Anonymous) is displayed beneath a scanned image from a Renaissance-period book.
	On a black space between a scan of a Renaissance-era book and a diagram with a sticker that says "Plan A," there is a line of green text that says 1914_Bücher. "Bücher" meaning "books" in German, this is possibly a reference to the story "Dracula's Guest", by Bram Stoker, published posthumously in 1914, which takes place during Walpurgis Night. At center, there is a page with illustrations of what appear to be the humanoid forms of six witches, marked "1/25p." (A similar illustration appears in Episode 4.) At bottom left of the page, "Walpurgisnacht" is printed. At top right, there is a photograph of some circular object (the Moon?)
	Besides Homura's right arm, there is an annotated diagram of a feminine body, whose left half wears a skirt. Beside Homura's left hand, there is a similar image of a feminine figure colored in neon green. Beneath it, in red text, are the words "Walpurgis Nacht."
	At right, there is a passage from Faust. At center, there is a detail of the "Plan A" document, which appears to diagram the movements of some object or being in red lines across marked regions. At bottom right, the neon green feminine figure is displayed in better resolution, appearing to be descending a spiral staircase. Note also that the framing print of the Faust manuscript also frames several other documents -- they may be from the same book. Within the frame, at top, the Sun pierces the clouds like the iris of an eye, and two birds fly beside it. At bottom, a Moon is suspended above an illegible plaque within a circle of clouds. There are vaguely humanoid figures in the pillars.
	At top left, there are the words "Bühnentechnik" (stagecraft) and "Gear" in stylized text. Besides, beneath a drawing of the Witch from Episode 1, there is the word EinNarr (german for 'a fool')." A letter or two may be cut off from the beginning. A thick-lined illustration of the Episode 1 Witch is shown to be a book page opposing the annotated diagram of the half-skirted feminine figure. At right, there is a less elaborate woodcut image of the Witch from Episode 1.
	At right, an enlarged image of the photograph of the circular object. There appears to be a pattern engraved or printed on it?
	The full "Walpurgis Nacht" image is displayed. Also, there is a circular illustration on the page opposing the Faust passage. It appears to be the same pattern that appeared in the sky behind the Episode 1 Witch.

Gallery

Front view of Homura's residence, red.
Front view of Homura's residence.
A name plate that says "Homura" in Hiragana. Presumably the kanji for "Akemi" is offscreen.
Apartment interior. Three of the four walls in the room appear to be digital display.
Candlesticks and pillars along the fourth wall.
The interior of Homura's residence in a previous iteration of the timeline.
A parallel between Homura's residence and the house from Cossette no Shouzou, another anime by Shinbo.
Further comparison between the houses in Madoka, Cossette and Bakemonogatari, as well as Morimoto's design.
Further comparison between Homura's home and one of the sites which appears in Le Portrait de Petit Cossette (an OVA directed by Akiyuki Shinbo)
Final draft for the interior design.
In Magia Record as a background