NewType 2011-05
Sayaka Train Interpretation
Urobuchi - InuCurry-san did not just design the witches, they also decided under what situation the fight scenes took place. That was really fun.
Q - And there was Sayaka turning into a witch in Ep.8
Urobuchi - The conversations between two hosts that was overheard by Sayaka were true. I was in a crowded train and right in front of me were two guys making that kind of conversation.
Shinbo - Wanna add: Sayaka in the anime did not kill those hosts.
Urobuchi - In the screenplay it could be taken either way, so in the manga version by Hanokage-san the interpretation was taken as killed.
Kyubey as Alien Entity
Q - There were more than one QB appearing in Ep.8. Do they have different personalities?
Urobuchi - The individual entities may be separate, but the consciousness is one. So even if one individual entity should die, there was not much damage. Just one individual dying is only like when you pull off one thread of hair.
The scene where QB ate its corpse was a scene added during the screenplay writing. I wanted to write something about QB that would highlight how it and human being could be absolutely mutually incomprehensible. Something like the reaction when your compatriot died.
Homura's shield
Homura and her hammer space shield. Seems that Gen wasn't really fond giving her only this as weapon, but after seeing the storyboards it seems that he liked the whole pulling machine guns out of nowhere dynamic. The producers also liked it.
More on the shield:
―――ほむらの能力設定をもう少し詳しく教えてください
虚淵：
ほむらの盾に見えている武器が砂時計で、その砂の流れを遮断することで 時間をとめているんです。で、砂時計の上部分の砂が全部なくなった時点で ひっくり返すと１か月分の時間が戻る。それまでは止める事しかできない。 つまり、砂時計の１か月分の砂をやりくりする能力がほむらの特殊能力なんです。 まき戻った時間は…そこが主題の作品ではないので厳密には考えていませんが 世界は平行して分岐しているのかな、と思っています。
Q - Could you elaborate a bit more on the power of Homura?
Urobuchi - The weapon that looks like Homura's shield is actually a sand timer. When the flow of the sand is blocked, time is stopped. And when there is no sand on the upper part of the sand timer and then the timer is reverted, one month's worth of time is turned back. But before that stage is reached, only time stopping is possible. This means the special power of Homura is the ability to manipulate one month's time's worth of sand in the sand timer. As for the time passed and then turned back, since it was not the focus in this work I did not think it through very thoroughly. I think you can say that the world split up and became parallel worlds there.
Origin of Mami's Tiro Finale
Because when I wrote the screenply there was still nothing done for monster design or art settings, I did not try to decide the layout of the battles. This means in the original screenplay there was only rough sketches like "In this scene they fight while speaking these dialogues".
At that time Mami-san's strongest attack move was named "Ultimate Shoot" (lol). And I thought this really sounded so stupid, so just at the voice dubbing studio I got anxious and rushed to translate the words on the net. I tried using Spanish and Greek but at the end I picked Italian which became "Tiro Finale".
Madoka Sequel
Note: this interview was made on Mar 13th
Q - We can only wait for the completion of the battles in the second half. It may be a bit too soon, but what do both of you think about making a sequel "Madoka 2"?
Shinbo - I have many ideas coming up, like what we could do with 2 cours, or some episodes that happen within the 12 episodes already made. As we have already come this far, I want to expand on the world we created.
Urobuchi - Because the length was only one cour, a lot of elements and details had to be cut off. I am now thinking very hard about how to develop the next "Madoka".
Gallery
by 住本悦子
