Homura Akemi

Homura Akemi (暁美 ほむら, Akemi Homura) is a character from the 2011 anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica (魔法少女まどか☆マギカ, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica). She has appeared as a main character in the anime, as well as the manga adaptation and all three movies, even being the protagonist of the third film, Rebellion. An alternate timeline version of her appears in the mobile game Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story (マギアレコード 魔法少女まどか☆マギカ外伝), but did not appear in the anime adaptation.

She is known for her role as an antihero in the original story, and for the late-series reveal that she has been using time travel to repeatedly attempt to save her friends, particularly her love interest Madoka Kaname, from certain doom.

Appearance
Homura is a short teenage girl with a petite build. She has light skin, purple eyes, and long, black hair that she initially wears in dual braids tied with purple ribbons, but switches to wearing it down with a black headband after becoming hardened by her experiences time traveling. She also wears red-framed glasses prior to her hairstyle change. At the end of the original series, she replaces her black headband with one of Madoka's red ribbons.

Her school uniform is mostly the same as the other girls': a cream blouse with white and red accents, a red bowtie, and a black and white plaid skirt. She wears black tights under her skirt and brown loafers.

Her magical girl outfit features a layered dress shirt that is white with muted purple and black accents, dark purple ribbons on the neck and back, a muted purple skirt with white trim, and black and purple heeled boots that double as leggings. After the events of Rebellion, she wears a backless black dress with a long train, long black gloves, purple checkered leggings, and black shoes with a slight heel. She also sports two unnatural-looking wings with black feathers, and a black feathered choker. Her hair ribbon becomes much larger.

Personality
Homura is originally very shy and timid, lacking in self confidence as well as physical strength. After living through an unknown amount of traumatic timeloops, she becomes more confident, but much more cold and distant to those around her, not trusting them to help her or understand the true nature of being a Magical Girl. She maintains her softspoken nature, but her shift in demeanor affects how it is presented. Consistently, however, she is shown to be intelligent but socially awkward.

Though she usually has good intentions, her actions are not always taken with consideration for how they might affect others, either done for the "greater good" or for the protection of Madoka. Particularly, in Rebellion, her affection for Madoka becomes quite possessive after she fears losing her again.

Role in Story
At first, Homura plays a mysterious and somewhat antagonistic role towards Madoka and her friend Sayaka Miki. She tries repeatedly to kill Kyubey, a seemingly-innocent magical creature with the ability to grant wishes at the cost of becoming a Magical Girl, and attempts to prevent Madoka and Sayaka from making contracts with it. She is stopped by Mami Tomoe, an upperclassman and Magical Girl herself.

It is revealed later that becoming a Magical Girl involves separating one's soul from their body. The soul can become corrupted by strong negative emotions and can only be healed by the use of a grief seed, which is created after the defeat of a hostile creature known as a witch. The true twist, however, is that witches themselves are created by the souls of Magical Girls that are corrupted beyond healing.

After Sayaka falls victim to this fate, Homura reveals that she knew of this because she has been time traveling, reliving the past few months over and over. At first, she was a very meek girl with little confidence in herself and her abilities, but Madoka and Mami had saved her from a witch and showed her what it was like to be a Magical Girl. Not sure what to wish for, Homura had hesitated to make a contract herself until witnessing her friends die to a powerful witch known as Walpurgisnacht, afterwhich she wished to be able to redo her first meeting with Madoka, this time being the one to protect her. Kyubey grants her wish and gives her time traveling abilities.

As she lives through multiple timeloops, she comes to understand the true nature of Kyubey and its contracts. She had tried in previous timelines to explain her motivations to the others, but was never believed until it was too late. In the most recent timeline, this had resulted in Mami having a breakdown in which she killed fellow Magical Girl Kyoko Sakura, and attempted to kill Homura before being killed by Madoka instead. Madoka and Homura attempted to take on Walpurgisnacht, but ended up badly injured and dying. In her last moments, Madoka healed Homura with a grief seed she had been saving, and asked her to go back and prevent any of their friends from becoming Magical Girls in the first place. At Madoka's request, Homura, though distraught, kills her before she becomes a witch, and travels back in time once more. Not wanting any of this to happen again, Homura had given up trying to explain herself and had attempted to act as an independent agent this time around.

With Madoka not yet having become a Magical Girl in this timeline, Homura tries to defeat Walpurgisnacht by herself, but fails. Madoka decides in that moment to wish to prevent Magical Girls from ever becoming witches in the first place, leading to her gaining god-like abilities and rewriting reality completely. Madoka gives Homura one of her red ribbons to remember her by, and Homura is left as the only person to carry on her memory. In the new reality, Magical Girls still exist, but rather than fighting witches, they fight amalgamations of negative energy called wraiths.

Madoka Kaname
Homura is first drawn to Madoka due to her kind nature and self confidence as a Magical Girl. Madoka treats her with gentle encouragement and protects her from danger, the latter of which Homura would go on to do for her instead. Homura has very strong feelings for Madoka which are heavily implied to be romantic and confirmed as such in a later continuation. Though in some timelines Madoka is initially uncertain of what to think about Homura, by the end of each one she shows a deep trust for her, and it is implied that she returns Homura's feelings. After Madoka sacrifices herself to save all Magical Girls from becoming witches, she effectively erases herself from reality, leaving Homura as the sole person to remember her existence. It is bittersweet, but Homura remembers her fondly.

In Rebellion, their relationship is explored further. After being trapped in a false reality and manipulated by Kyubey, Homura becomes a witch. Madoka, after regaining her memories about her true nature, attempts to save Homura's soul gem as she has done for other Magical Girls, but Homura, unable to handle losing her again, steals her divine power and rewrites reality once again, this time as an antithesis of Madoka's deity-like role. She claims to be acting out of love, but her perspective has been warped by her grief and trauma. In this universe, Homura and Madoka may become enemies should Madoka regain her abilities, but Homura feels that it is worth it, and the story ends with an air of uncertainty about the future of their relationship.

Mami Tomoe
In early timelines, Homura looks up to Mami's confidence and abilities and the two have a generally positive relationship, but as Homura learns more with each loop, tension and distrust increases. In the timeline before the events of the main series, Mami has a mental breakdown after Sayaka's death and attempts to kill Homura, but Madoka destroys her soul gem before she can shoot her. In the final timeline, Mami saves Kyubey from Homura and prevents Homura from "interfering" as much as possible before she dies in her encounter with Charlotte.

In Rebellion, Homura, remembering Bebe to be Charlotte, kidnaps and interrogates her, only to be stopped by Mami. The two get into a fight, but eventually Mami's memories are partially restored.

Sayaka Miki
Sayaka and Homura do not typically get along. Sayaka generally distrusts Homura, and often assumes her to have bad intentions, and Homura does not do much to refute this interpretation, seeming to view Sayaka as a lost cause and focusing her efforts on Madoka only. Sayaka becomes a witch in every timeline, and Homura is sometimes the one to defeat her. However, the two do not have any outright malice towards one another, and their tension mostly arises from circumstance and conflict of personality. In fact, after Homura becomes a witch in Rebellion, Sayaka helps save her.

Controversies
Most of the controversies surrounding Homura's character did not arise until the release of the third film in the movie trilogy adaptation, Rebellion, which was a continuation of the original story. In this movie, Homura is the protagonist rather than an antihero, and it follows her journey as she comes to realize she had been trapped in a false reality and is being manipulated by Kyubey.

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Speculation
Homura shares many qualities with Kaworu Nagisa, and by extension Ryo Asuka, namely that she blurs the line between being a hero and an villain, and has romantic feelings (bordering fixation) for the same-gender main character. Like Ryo, she is central to a third act plot twist in the story and attempts to save her love interest from death, but unlike Ryo, she does not become an antagonist, and eventually succeeds in saving Madoka. These death scenes also occur by the ocean.

Similar to both Kaworu and Ryo, she is intelligent but doesn't always follow social convention. Though she is technically human, the "demon" form she takes at the end of Rebellion has very clear fallen angel motifs.

Trivia

 * The name Homura can have multiple meanings, but as her's is written in hiragana it is unclear which one is intended. Her surname Akemi written as 暁美 means "beautiful dawn".