Null Magical Girl/Cultural and historical references

Although the story references many concepts, events, authors and works by name, some remain more implied, with more field to interpret the events. References that remain somewhat speculative will be marked in orange.

General

• According to a tweet from the publisher, "非" kanji's atypical reading as "null" (ナル) is a reference to a certain widescreen baroque text. That description matches The World of Null-A, titled "非 (ナル)Aの世界" (null A no sekai) in Japanese.
  • Null Magical Girl's protagonist, Kosane Kiriha, is also named in reference to The World of Null-A - its protagonist is named Gilbert Gosseyn.
    • His surname is pronounced like the English phrase "go sane"; removing the space, changing the first letter to its unvoiced variant, and treating the phrase as a romanization of Japanese rather than English words yields Kosane's given name.
    • Removing the last two letters from his given name, devoicing G and B (by Japanese phonetic rules), switching L to R as it is typically rendered in Japanese, transforming the E into A based on the Japanese pronunciation, and inserting an extra I between L and B (R and H) yields her surname, Kiriha.
    • Finally, ordering her name in the typical Japanese way (surname first, given name last), Kiriha Kosane, and ordering his name in the typical western way (given name first, surname last), places the counterparts (Kiriha-Gilbert, Kosane-Gosseyn) in the same order.
  • Eruna's given name (えるな) spelled backwards syllabically is naru e, which is homophonic to "Null-A" in Japanese.
  • By extension, both texts also reference non-Aristotelian logics.
    • As a more specific example, Kosane directly explains in Chapter 3 that Homo sapiens follows Aristotelian theory, while Homo neanderthalis would be null-A, or non-Aristotelian.
• The novel starts in March 2021, which is also the year of its publication.
  • The publisher highlights that Kosane would have been 14 years old a decade earlier, that is in 2011. Null Magical Girl was published as a part of celebrations for Puella Magi Madoka Magica's tenth anniversary of release (January 7th, 2011). This would mean that Kosane would have been Madoka Kaname's age during the original run of the anime or even, provided the theory that the anime itself is set in 2011 is true, that Kosane and Madoka could be the same age.
• The novel makes numerous references to SARS-COV-2, a disease first discovered in late 2019 that was announced a pandemic in early 2020. Many areas introduced safety measures to prevent the spread and mortality of the disease, such as masking, that Kosane can be seen performing.
• Kosane references Yuval Noah Harari's book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind on multiple occasions:
  • For the first time in Chapter 1, in her dream, in which she discusses her master's thesis with a professor at her university. She evaluates his theory of cognitive revolution as unlikely, instead suggesting slow evolutionary changes.
  • For the second time in Chapter 3, evaluating the history of various species in the genus Homo, concluding that the cognitive revolution theory was in fact correct, and that the cognitive revolution was caused by the arrival of Kyubey and Magical Girls.

Chapter 1

• Eruna Kiriha's disappearance as Kosane's imaginary friend is dated to 2011, the year of the Tōhoku earthquake. In real life, Episodes 11 and 12's releases were delayed due to the earthquake.
• Kosane likens Kyubey to ELIZA, an early 1966 AI chatbot. She also mentions GPT-3, a 2020 large language model (LLM), which is considered another form of AI.

Chapter 2

• Kosane describes Homo magica as "cute girls doing cute things", which is the name of a genre in Japanese media. Most media in that genre also fall under the slice of life genre.
  • Although Madoka Magica's generally is not considered a "cute girls doing cute things" series (due to dealing with heavier topics and not being considered even remotely slice of life), its manga was is published in magazines from the Manga Time Kirara group, which typically focus on "cute girls doing cute things" series.
• Upon hearing that she and Kyubey travelled 800000 years into the future, Kosane mentions H. G. Wells, a science fiction author.
  • More specifically, she is likely referring to The Time Machine, his 1895 novella, in which the protagonist travels to year 802701.
• Kosane explains neoteny, a biological phenomenon in which some species retain juvenile traits, when describing Homo magica.
• Kosane reminisces on Project Itoh, a science fiction writer, when Kyubey explains that the human mind consists of multiple components. She does not recall which novel she read that in, however.
• Kosane likens the area surrounding her to The Castle of the Pyrenees, a painting by René Magritte.
• Coeurl's name and appearance reference Black Destroyer, another text by van Vogt. In it, Coeurls are a race of black cat-like creatures. Additionally, the light novel's Coeurl, similar to the alien race's color, wears a black cloak.
• The Witch from the Soul Gem bomb might be based on Finger Family (also known as Daddy Finger), a nursery rhyme. Notably, the Witch is also hand-shaped, Kosane lists family members in the same order as they go in the song, and she comments the Witch does not invoke the emotions of childhood nostalgia (which nursery rhymes are commonly associated with).
  • More specifically, this Witch may or may not be a reference to algorithmically generated children's content on platforms such as YouTube, of which Finger Family would be a popular example. Said videos often contain characters or other elements from media inappropriate for its target audience.
• Yamata no Orochi, the spaceship that Kosane, Kyubey and Coeurl board, references the eight-headed and eight-tailed serpent that appears in Japanese mythology by the same name.
• The planet Terminus may be a reference to the planet of the same name from Isaac Asimov's novel Foundation.
  • Alternatively, the planet could be named after the Roman god of boundary markers.
• Two out of three species mentioned to be living on Terminus are likely named after various concepts in Greek mythology:
  • Kronos, the leader of Titans, or Chronos, the personification of time. (both are spelled the same in Japanese as Kuronosu (クロノス))
  • Hemitheos (ヘーミテオス, Heemiteosu), which is the Greek word for demigod.
• Kosane likens a planet that was turned into a ring by Homo magica to a Ringworld, a concept in a 1970 science fiction novel by the same title.
• Kosane likens herself to Othello, the eponymous character in a play by Shakespeare.

Chapter 3

• Kosane likens the collapse of spacetime around her to an Ouroboros, an ancient symbol depicting a snake eating its own tail.
• Kosane describes many prehistoric and historic events:
  • A supervolcanic eruption that occurred around 75000 years ago in the Toba Caldera, in which Homo erectus went extinct, and Homo sapiens' population was decimated.
  • The extinction of Homo neanderthalis, that Kosane claims was due to its inability to perceive magic.
  • The invention of movable-type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440 AD, which lead to faster propagation of written word, and by extension, stories.
  • The Big Bang, that is a rapid expansion of the universe, considered to be the beginning of its existence in popculture.
• Kosane shouts "baritsu" to indicate she is using her special move as the ultimate detective. This is a reference to The Adventure of the Empty House, a Sherlock Holmes short story by Arthur Conan Doyle. In it, Baritsu is a Japanese martial art that Holmes uses to survive what was supposed to be his death in The Final Problem, an earlier story about him originally intended to be the last Sherlock Holmes story. Baritsu is a misspelling of Bartitsu, a martial art actually originating in 19th century England.