Megami Magazine 2011-07

These interviews were published in the July 2011 issue of Megami Magazine. They cover the characters, their abilities, and their thoughts during events in the show.

Translated by symbv from evageeks forum.

• Q - So what is the magic power of Kyouko?
• A - Regarding Kyouko, it is really very special. Because she got her wish of "getting people to listen" while in fact it was something like charming or hallucination, she got the magic power related to those things. However, because she lost her family, she totally negated those power with her subconscious mind. As a result, she fought only with the magic power she learnt later. This is the "hidden setting" (ura-settei) for her, although we never got to tell it in the anime.

• Alternative translation from /a/ - Kyouko's magic is actually rather unique. Due to her wish for "People to listen" her true magic is about　shining light on things and illusions and such. That's the kind of magic she had. However, after losing her family she began to subconsciously reject that magic, and thus by the time of the events in the anime she had already lost those powers. That's why she only fought with the magic she learned after that. We had that all set up behind the scenes, but were never able to work it into the story to explain it explicitly.

Translated by symbv from evageeks forum.

• Q - This is also something that has got divided interpretations. It seems that when Kamijou went back to school, he neglected Sayka. What happened there?
• A - To make it really clear, Kamijou-kun did not see Sayaka as a potential love object. He saw her as just a close friiend. Of course he was thankful to her when she came before everybody else to congratulate him. But he did not hold any kind of thought like seeing her as a potential love object or carrying any romantic love feeling. And the fact that he did not notify her about his discharge from hospital was just because he was in such a hurry. And he did not say anything to her at school was also because he was so occupied as there were so many girls who greeted him before then. Something like..... it would be great if I could call out at Sayaka, but I just was not able to...like that. Alternative translation from /a/ -I believe the explanation behind this one is already generally understood, but when Kamijo returned to school it looked as if he'd started ignoring her. Why was that? To put it bluntly, Kamijo simply didn't recognize Sayaka as a member of the opposite sex. Just a close friend. Of course he's grateful to her for celebrating his recovery before everyone else, but it didn't make him fall in love with her, or allowed him to see her as a woman or anything. When he was discharged from the hospital too, he didn't let her know only because things were happening to quickly, and when her returned to school, he had his hands full with other girls welcoming him back so he never greeted her. It would have been nice if Sayaka had made an effort to reach out to him then, but she was already at the point where she couldn't do that... and that's how it is.

Translated by symbv from evageeks forum. (Top excerpt)

• Q - Kyouko was always eating some snack. I really wanted to know how she got those food.
• A - Probably by stealing or something like that. For example, possibly she used magic power and stole it from a store nearby, or broke open an ATM and got the money (laugh). Absolutely brute force. Although she would not go so far as harming other people, I could imagine there were many cases of bugglary in the town of Mitakebaramachi. Although she looked like a villain, she became a bad girl only in order to vent out her desperation, and by doing so she managed to carry on living. Alternative translation from /a/ "Kyouko is always eating some kind of snack, but I wonder, how does she manage to get so much food? It's probably all stolen. If I had to say she probably used her magic to steal from the local stores and break ATMs to get the money inside them (lol). It's actually pretty hard work, it definitely is. I doubt that she went as far as to hurt anyone in the process, but I think there must have been quite a lot of cat burglary stories going around. That kind of mischievous activity seems fitting for her. But, it's thanks to her becoming so mischievous* that she was able to shake off her despair and it's thanks to that that she was able to survive the hard times she went through." *lit. "Bad Girl"

• There's a few place in the script that I'd like to touch on, first about Mami and Kyoko. How is their "wish" connected to their powers when they became magical girls?
• In Mami's case, her wish of "to connect lives" gave her the power to "tie" and "combine" things together. That's why her power comes from the ribbon. By using the ribbon as a weapon, she can use that to produce guns that are useful in a battle. In ep3, Homura is stopped in her tracks by being tied up. That is her true magical power. She has the most experience so has a lot of different magical powers beyond those of her original powers.

• In ep3, where Mami fails in her battle with the witch, it had a big impact in how it was presented but, how was that written in the script?
• Mami's magic was to tie things, so to go against that, the witch was made to shed it skin. Even if bound by a rope, another would come out from the open ends. The witch was made to be unbeatable by just tying it up. That was the fault that killed Mami. Well, it was a shocking scene. In the script it just said, "The head is missing but in a way that can't be seen" and it was done in a way that I wanted it. It was a bit odd that the witch was so cute. The details were handled by Inukare-san, but that opened this production, and I believe it made it a much deeper story.

• In episode 9, we saw Kyouko desperately try to save Sayaka, but why did she go so far for her?
• It was probably because she saw Sayaka as "What I could've become". There's also the part of her that resented the fact that she didn't stay true to her beliefs. If Kyouko had followed what she believed in the same way Sayaka did she might have fallen into the same trap. That's why, Kyouko probably thought that by saving Sayaka from that trap that she'd be able to save herself as well. She became much more serious than she usually was, and did things she normally never would have done. As a result, ended up destroying herself. Looking at it that way, I think it's likely that even though she put up that bad girl act that Kyouko didn't really have much self-confidence. I'm quite confident in saying that is the best way to look at it.

Translated by symbv from evageeks forum.

• Q – It was very shocking to see Mami fall into panicking when she learned the true nature of QB in Ep.10 that we just discussed.
• A – If you consider various aspects of Mami like her fastidiousness, or the fragility unique to her, I think her reaction was actually natural. But since Mami got very popular when the anime was broadcast, I got worried about how that scene would be received. While she was in an onee-san (elder sister) role up till ep.3, deep down she was a girl that had fragility inside. At the end she was the one who was least able to bear the truth and the moment she learned of it she could only break down. That dependable onee-san image was really her pushing herself, in her own way, and glossing things over.

• In the last episode we saw the "Walpurgis Night", but what kind of witch is it specifically?
• It has the destructive power to bring about natural disasters powerful enough to blow away an entire town, but originally it was a single witch. It's a witch that has grown from the combination of countless other witches. Walpurgis Night combines with other witches in the same way two powerful tornadoes are able to combine and become larger. It's essentially a "conglomeration"-type witch. Because it's so powerful, it rarely shows itself. The design we used was actually the very first one we received from Inu Curry*, but when we saw it we all thought "Damn this is good." I myself had imagined a more Godzilla looking monster (laughter), and I must admit when I first saw that crazy looking upside-down ballerina I thought to myself "What the heck is this thing?" * - A design studio, they've done some stuff with Gainax and (obviously) SHAFT.

Translated by symbv from evageeks forum.

• Q – The last scene made a deep impression. What do you think about Homura there?
• A – (Saito, Homura's seiyuu) I could tell that by Homura doing that scene things that were not put into words could hold such a strong message. My job is to use words and so it was just walkover, and yet it got me to feel the sense of overwhelmed defeat that, to Homura, still felt great. Homura is a character that worked by painstakingly bearing in mind that she always distills her mind into the minimum dialogues. And so depending on how the viewer feels about it, his view of her could be very different. All those many things that she carried on her back also produced a depth in her that even I was not able to tell. More than anybody, she could not live by herself and was the most depending on Madoka, but yet as this feeling got so strong and deep..... Even in ep.8 when she tried to call out Madoka's name, she could not raise a voice. When human was so overwhelmed with emotion, she could not say anything. Therefore, my own interpretation regarding the ending of the last episode is that, as the basis for her existence has disappeared all she could do is to keep taking action. It was indeed very sad thing, because all the ground for her actions was based upon Madoka. I felt that I have learned that the deeper a human feeling is actually the harder for it to show up on the surface. (Mizuhashi, Mami's seiyuu) She must have thought about many many things while she went through all those many loops. (Saito) In ep.10 she tried to tell everybody about QB, but she got suspected by Sayaka that she was intending to cause a fallout within the group... She must have thought, because of that “words” could really have no meaning at all. Although I cannot say whether the answer she came up was right or wrong, and I am sure people will have different views regarding her fighting till the end alone, for me I came to it with very much a sad mood. (Mizuhashi) Yeah, she could no longer see Madoka. Besides, nobody remembered Madoka any more. (Saito) Everyone is calling that final ending as “Homu-Q-END” (lol). Something like, “Homura and QB?! That is the most impossible scenario!” It was such a sequence of surprises to see that “Homu-Q-END” really came true.