(L) Oriko Magica (Spinoff manga series)

[Snork]

Regardless of the timeline, magical girls are still girls and humans. Remember what Homura said to Madoka in TL1? For all we know, many others might have followed that logic literally.

[Liddo-kun]

Originally Posted by rantuyetmai

Oriko Magica took place in one of Homura's time lines. Homura knew and learn to avoid mistakes after each repeat so I guess she just took care of Oriko, Kirika, etc etc and whatever obstacles she found dangerous to Madoka beforehand. That's why there's no Oriko in Madoka Magica verse.

That looks like a good speculation..
But if we're going with that, Homura would have to "take care" of Oriko before she meets Kirika.
It would be hard fight both of them all by herself.

[rantuyetmai]

Originally Posted by Liddo-kun

That looks like a good speculation..
But if we're going with that, Homura would have to "take care" of Oriko before she meets Kirika.
It would be hard fight both of them all by herself.

Not necessary if Homura gathered enough information about their location and devised a plan to stop time and effortlessly kill them. Battles involve the use of brain too, direct confrontation can be avoided.

From what canon provided there are a lot of things Homura needed to do after waking up from the hospital: hunting QB, keeping an eye on Madoka's safety, planing out the battle with WP, stealing enough weapons from the military and yakuza, installing missiles at the WP location, and hunting witches for grief seeds to sustain her magic. These are all impossible to do within less than a month if Homura didn't have the accumulated experience after each timeline. She appeared to have recordings of various information displayed at her house, she learned how to use various weapons (just like the basics of making pipe bomb). With these progresses and planning skills it wouldn't surprise me if Homura can take care of Oriko by herself.

Originally Posted by Snork

Regardless of the timeline, magical girls are still girls and humans. Remember what Homura said to Madoka in TL1? For all we know, many others might have followed that logic literally.

You meant running away? That's possible. Given Mami's and Madoka's ethics they couldn't leave the city unprotected but it's true were're not not sure about the others.

[Ace Of Scarabs]

All Homura would have had to do was prevent Kirika and Oriko from meeting. Oriko would have then been too broken to go after Madoka.

[rantuyetmai]

1. Homura can only go back 1 month. We don't know when Oriko and Kirika met, might have been way before that.

2. Oriko made her wish independently from her meeting with Kirika (vol 2, ch 7, pg 143-145). She will gain the future vision power and know about Madoka regardless.

[Ace Of Scarabs]

Then all she would have needed to do was off Kirika. Oriko would break quickly after that.

[rantuyetmai]

I don't know what Homura did.

If I were her though, leaving potential threat behind meant I haven't exactly learned my lesson.

[kaigan]

regarding homu-chan taking care of business, i would guess she did. but that doesn't mean she killed them. i remember a quote from shinbo-sensei:

A character that killed other people cannot get happy end.

of course that is off-camera and whatever homu did is probably a topic for speculation. i do hope that they make a dramacd for this to tie-up oriko and madoka magica series since they involve common characters. or do they simply exist independent of each other?

[rantuyetmai]

^ I guess you're implying Homura got a happy end?

This is an interview from Urobuchi regarding his choice to toss Sayaka out, despite director Shinbo wanting her to live:

In “Madoka” Sayaka is a character who would be a problem [to the story] if she was brought back to life; and in the first place to me it is nothing special at all that she could not come back to life, as this is also the future for the surviving mahou shoujo. Inside myself at the point of the final episode, whether she will be alive or she will be dead – the two are absolute equivalent. Whichever it will go, once the decision to become a mahou shoujo is made, those who were living at that point, like Homura or Kyouko or Mami or Sayaka, will all reach the same fate. There may be some time difference, but that is all about it. If I can push it further, the twist of this story is also that disappearing itself is nothing unfortunate at all. Therefore in response to the request to bring her back, I have precisely only this answer “I do not understand.” I even wanted to ask back “Why all of you so obsessed with whether a character lived or died?” (lol)

Every MG had signed a service contract in order to get the payment of a wish. They got their wish, now they have to spend the rest of their lives fighting death battles, it's fair and square. Sayaka is not worse off than any of these girls, if anything she's a bit luckier in the sense that she was released from the service sooner. They are absolutely equal in the end, Sayaka died or not at the end of the anime doesn't matter. Her role to vanish is just to show the various fates MG might have.

[kaigan]

^ the anime ending of madoka is quite unclear. there's no known official interpretation, but we can speculate since the red ribbon homu was wearing "fell off" and joined a shining pink soul gem. i would guess this is a symbolic union of homu and mado in heaven, thus a happy end.

the manga version, which claims to be an adaptation of the screenplay running in parallel to the anime, showed us a more explicit end. homu and mado holding hands and all smiles. together forever. always. i would say they received a happy end. they deserved it. of course, that's only the way i see it. what if urobochi makes a sequel that the last scene was just an illusion or dream. that will make me truly sad.

[Liddo-kun]

Originally Posted by rantuyetmai

Not necessary if Homura gathered enough information about their location and devised a plan to stop time and effortlessly kill them. Battles involve the use of brain too, direct confrontation can be avoided.

Avoiding direct confrontation? That's hard to do against someone like Oriko because her magical girl power is Prescience (knowledge of events before they happen). Unless of course, Homura's time travelling allows her to go back to time before Oriko makes a contract.

of course that is off-camera and whatever homu did is probably a topic for speculation.

@kaigan

I agree. And I'm also one of those hoping for a drama cd that finally gives an explanation to that.

[Snork]

With all my respect for Urobuchi-sensei, he sounds like he's never been a reader/viewer himself. If the character written well and/or appeals to you, you like this character. If you like this character, you want him/her to live, even though you know it might be troublesome for the story's quality. But PMMM didn't have cheap cop outs like mass ressurection for the sake of it (and the circumstances were enough to prevent Madoka from launching such a deal). It was pretty clear that becoming a Puella Magi is a one-way ticket. But come on, timeline 7 wasn't in the spotlight anyway. You didn't even have to treat Sayaka's survival as a factor to the story here - and since Gen states himself it didn't matter to him whether she lived or she died, he COULD have made it. Well, can't but shake his handfor choosing not to do so in favor of the story - Sayaka's character became all the more tragic and touching through that. One might think the combined efforts of Mami, Homura and Kyouko should have pulled her out of depression faster than the anime timeline where it ws practically just Madoka (Kyouko semi-counts, since Sayaka refused to deal with her deliberately), but then again... In TL3 a whole bunch of them INCLUDING Madoka failed to save Sayaka... Not even any use anymore blaming Kamijou (although if it's true what I've read about romantic relationships in Japan traditionally being initialized by girls' change in attitude towards their love interest while the said interest must keep his eyes open and notice it... then Kamijou is an ultimate failure in this aspect - if it's you close friend, you should have known her better and taken a hint long ago, seriously), since he was not the only factor here. But still it's sad for Sayaka fans to see her go despite even the director rooting for the opposite. The price she thought she was deliberately paying was about fighting witches, protecting people and risking your life daily until one day you die one day or another. Sayaka accepted as much and besides a love-struck teenager there was still a naive and silly, but kind and passionate knight. Were she to survive and overcome her personal crisis, every day of her life as a Puella Magi might have meant something in regards to people NOT eaten by another demon thanks to her. That's the meaning Madoka's sacrifice made primary for magical girls' existence, after all. Not to mention that being very much like Kyouko, Sayaka could have also become a moral support for her - and I'm not even talking pairings here, just being there for someone as a close friend and battle comrade.

No wonder Shinbo thought about making a slice of life AU where the characters' fate wouldn't be so restricted by the story, however good it was.

Not necessary if Homura gathered enough information about their location and devised a plan to stop time and effortlessly kill them. Battles involve the use of brain too, direct confrontation can be avoided.

But wouldn't Oriko's powers give her a chance to foresee the threat from Homura? Even in the manga it seems like she already had her taken into account somewhat. If anything, Homura would have to get Oriko out of the game before she contracted - and even if it happened within the preiod of time she controls, she has enough trouble preventing one contract, let alone a number of others. >_<

At least the anime timeline might be explainable if we suppose Homura just watched Oriko as a factor and neutralized her by whatever means when the said factor was back in action. In the anime timeline, Oriko might have foreseen that Gretchen would be stopped, so she didn't do anything about that.

[rantuyetmai]

Urobuchi always write a story to tell people about his world and the message he wanted to imprint, he is never bound by his characters. That's what made him stood out as a brilliant writer ever since Phantom of Inferno and Saya no Uta.

Urobuchi: Instead of showing up in any particular work, I think it is more in how in creating my work I can kill a character without hesitation. Without dodging anything within myself I can work out my imagination regarding what will happen at the moment a character dies. And thanks to that, I never go to a direction that made it easygoing like “since she is cute I cannot kill her!”. Of course when I am creating my work, if I make a character cute or stand out as a character, perhaps I am aware that I cannot be bound by the shackles that I have to let her live no matter what. In “Madoka” too, at the time when the screenplay had been done and after-recording was in progress for episode 9, people like producer and Shinbo-san got attached to Sayaka and I got the request that “could something be done in the final episode to bring her back to life?”. For me, it was “That's enough.” (lol)

Sayaka at the very beginning had been intended to be a tragic character, whose ideals and dreams shine brighter than anyone else, but being broken harder anyone else because she lacked tolerance and understanding of the real world. Sayaka existed to remind the viewers that MG are serious business, just like real life - it's not a flowery world. If you're careless, you die. If you're stubborn, you get into trouble. If you don't pull yourself together under pressure, you broke. Urobuchi needed her to vanish to provide an example what will come at the end of the road for all of these girls. Mami, Kyouko, and eventually Homura will die, just later than Sayaka.

But wouldn't Oriko's powers give her a chance to foresee the threat from Homura?

That's precisely why I explained about the progresses Homura had made timelines after timelines. She obviously had the ability to learn and plan to make thing work, Oriko is not impossible to be defeated given the right course of action.

Just like Walpurgisnacht, it's not impossible to kill. If Homura had the luxury to find a nuke or something similar, she could totally defeat it. However:

1) She only has 1 month time and there are no nuke in Japan. She cannot leave Japan, breaking all the security and password of the nuke, bring it back to Mitakihara, activating it in that window of time.

2) Extensive damage must be avoided, there's no point if the city was blown up.

3) She must remain in the city to prevent Kyubey from contracting Madoka.

Homura doesn't need a nuke to kill Oriko though.

[Snork]

Well, I respect Urobuchi's talent and he did bring all the points home perfectly here. Then again, subjectively Sayaka fans will always feel a bit miffed. When you get to like a character, his/her character value inevitably overlaps the symbolic value in terms of the story for you. And even knowing that this character's suffering as meguca has ended doesn't COMPLETELY sweeten the pill. Objectively, I can't complain about the story, though.
It will be repeated and realised by many who watch this show - magical girl Sayaka Magica simply found herself in the wrong magical girl series...

[Triple_R]

This is way, way late, but I just decided on a whim to read the Oriko Manga series.

I have to say, it was pretty good. I found it much easier to get into than I did Kazumi Magica.


The whole Oriko Manga made me think of Todd McFarlane's 90s Image comics (like Spawn). It had that really trippy, gritty, "Dark Carnival/City" look to it. It was pretty engrossing to say the least.

Oriko and Kirika were great antagonists. They made me think of darker (and probably more powerful) versions of Mami and Sayaka respectively, at least at a visual level.

There were a few things in the Oriko manga that I could nitpick over, but nothing that substantial. On the whole, it made for a gripping tale.

However, I like to think of it as the PMMM equivalent of one of DC's Elseworlds' comics. Trying to incorporate it into the main Madoka Magica anime narrative would be messy at best, and it would raise some tricky characterization issues.

But just like a good Elseworlds comic, Oriko Magica stands very well on its own. A solid, self-contained story that I honestly think could make an awesome 4-Episode OVA in anime format. Some nice Kyouko moments early on, and a thrilling tale from the mid-point on, including some awesome action scenes and character moments for Mami and Homura. And what a great (if sad) twist at the end of Oriko Manga.

[Liddo-kun]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

And what a great (if sad) twist at the end of Oriko Manga.

I had the feeling that there would be some sad twist at the end, but the way it was executed still took me by surprise.

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by Liddo-kun

I had the feeling that there would be some sad twist at the end, but the way it was executed still took me by surprise.

Agreed.

One thing that made Oriko Magica such a gripping read for me was this sense I had of anybody could die in this story at any time. I felt like that because the whole manga had that Elseworlds/'What If?' comic book vibe to me, where literally anything can happen.

Spoiler for Major Oriko Manga spoilers, including final volume:

So, for example, during the Mami vs. Kiriko fight I felt that Mami could get killed at any moment. In fact, there were moments when I thought Kiriko probably was going to kill her. So that made it much sweeter for me when Mami won the fight and lived on.

By the time that the ending was near, I was honestly surprised at the lack of named character death... and then the one character who I thought was the least likely to die got killed.

It did indeed have good execution.

[GDB]

Except Homura, of course.

[AuraTwilight]

Even Homura could die, though, because this is "a timeline that shouldn't exist."

[Shyni]

I thought the story works pretty well as just another timeline Homura went through. It showed that things can go better, and that probably motivated her to keep trying.

As for the characters here not showing up in the main anime, it's probably some unseen variable that's not worth thinking about too hard, or simply the fact that the anime wasn't written with anything like this in mind. But maybe that's just me.