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(info: kenos.)
HOMURA AKEMI
Puella Magi Madoka Magica
CANON
14 (physically), ?? (mentally)
AGE
Meridian
FACTION
Tier 1
HARMONIZATION LEVEL
Post-anime, pre-Wraith Arc
CANON POINT
she/her
GENDER
Exalt
ASPECT
Tier 0
DISCORD LEVEL
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
A petite Japanese girl appearing to be about fourteen years old, with long silky black hair, white skin and purple eyes. 5'1" (155 cm) tall; very thin build. Exudes an aura of quiet confidence and subdued emotions. Always seen with a red ribbon tied around her head like a headband.Aside from being quite pretty for her age, she is otherwise unremarkable on first glance. Most days, she dresses in plain, modest clothing, with a preference for skirts and long sleeves. However, you can occasionally catch her wearing a peculiar grey and purple outfit with long black stockings.
Speaks in a calm and even voice. CV: Chiwa Saito (JP), Christina Vee (EN).
SHARD
A purple rhombus-shaped gemstone, approximately 3 cm wide and 4 cm long, located on the back of her left hand. The Shard is set inside a golden filigree frame, which itself cannot be removed from Homura's skin.
ASPECT TATTOO
A very small purple tattoo on the fingernail of her left middle finger. On closer look, the tattoo is clearly beneath the nail, on the nail bed, instead of being on the surface of the nail itself.
PERSONALITY
Homura presents to strangers as a quiet and aloof young girl with a standoffish streak. She does not have trouble making friends her age, thanks to her petite beauty and "cool" name, but rarely does she show any deep interest in forming real bonds with others. While she is socially competent enough to be cordial with others, smiling when necessary and doing the "right thing" when expected, much of her social interaction feels detached.In her role as a magical girl, her personality is even colder. She is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve her goals and does not try to hide her harsh outlook on any given situation. This attitude extends to everyone, even those people she would consider her closest friends and allies. This distant personality developed from repeated traumatic experiences, forming armor around a meek and shy true self that technically still exists deep inside, but is almost never glimpsed by others. Through sheer determination, she gained strength and confidence that she never had before becoming a magical girl, but lost her gentleness and innocence in the process.
Although her willingness to do whatever it takes to protect others suggests a fierce commitment to dearly-held principles, in reality, her motivations are selfish at their core. She does not simply fight to save others, but to get to a point where she can save one very particular person. If sacrificing the same people she once protected becomes necessary to achieve that goal, she will throw those people away. Even her desire to save her one special person is not truly selfless: she has to be the one to save her herself. Because if she isn't the one who manages to finally do it, what was the point of all her sins and all her misery? Homura is far beyond the point of having troubled inner debates other whether her methods are just, having committed too many isolated atrocities at this point to afford feeling guilty about them.
Selfish or not, the end result of her stalwart determination is a magical girl who prioritizes results. The truth is that saving others usually does benefit her in the long term, and so, she will go out of her way to do good deeds when the circumstances are right. Homura has developed the ability to stay calm under incredible pressure, having already lived through so many situations that would send fresh combatants into a panic. She possesses an inhuman (somewhat literally) level of patience and resolve, being driven ever forward by the singular goal of saving her best friend.
This is not to say that Homura is completely robotic, as she can and will have moments of extreme emotional fragility. This is especially true when overwhelmed with the gravity of what she's forced to do, or furstration with the impossible maze she's trapped in. But, even then, such instances are relatively rare — outbursts do not benefit her or her mission. Homura is far too used to being her own sole companion in an unfeeling and uncompromising world. She has reached a point where she cannot and does not rely on others, not only out of out of sheer necessity, but as a defense mechanism.
BACKGROUND
Warning that this contains spoilers for Madoka Magica. Like... basically it spoils the entire show. If you've never seen it, I really implore you to watch it instead of being spoiled by this!! Fair warning!Homura has not always been the cold but confident person she is now. She was born with a heart condition that caused her to miss school and be unable to participate in most normal childhood activities. To make matters worse, her parents suddenly passed away when she was very small, leaving her alone while social workers helped her manage her health problems. As she grew up, she was in and out of various hospitals, often missing school and never making lasting friendships.
When she was 13, she underwent heart surgery which helped alleviate the symptoms of her condition, but it required an extensive stay in the hospital to recover. The day finally came when she could leave the hospital and attend a school with other children her age, but even this happy occasion was very stressful for her — it was a new school, she was lagging behind in her grade level, and she did not have the social skills to make friends or even go to school without a heavy amount of anxiety.
But, on the first day, a girl from her class showed her where the nurse's office was so she could take her medication. This girl, named Madoka Kaname, was kind and warm to her, and encouraged her to relax and make friends. The other students were very friendly to her as well, but she could not muster the courage to talk to them even as they were genuinely trying to talk to her. For the next two weeks in her new school, Homura found herself in frequent humiliating situations, as she was unable to answer questions when called on in class and unable to fully participate in PE due to her weak constitution and poor health.
One afternoon, while Homura was walking home from school, she started to become overwhelmed with feelings of depression and worthlessness. Her brain started telling her that she caused nothing but trouble for everyone around her and even herself — and then that inner voice turned into many voices, belonging to someone or something else. Would she be weak like this forever? Maybe she should just die. When Homura stopped and looked around, the bridge she was crossing had become a strange, bizarre, nightmarish wasteland.
Monsters appeared and started shambling towards her. Terrified, Homura was frozen in place, but at the last second she was rescued by two magical girls wielding guns and arrows. It was Madoka, the girl she met at school, and an older girl named Mami. Homura learned that they were magical girls, who gained powers to fight beings called witches in exchange for a wish granted by a creature named Kyuubey. They explained to Homura that while Mami was a veteran magical girl, Madoka had only just become a magical girl one week prior to saving Homura. According to Mami, they were preparing for a powerful witch called Walpurgisnacht to arrive in their city.
Two weeks later, Walpurgisnacht descended. An enormous witch of unprecedented strength, it flattened the city with its enormous power, appearing as devastating earthquakes and tsunamis to normal humans who could not see witches. Unfortunately, despite their attempt to prepare, Madoka and Mami could not stop it, and Mami was killed in the course of fighting it. Homura tried to convinced Madoka to run away, but Madoka decided to stay and fight Walpurgisnacht, believing that she had a duty to protect everyone. Before leaving to face certain death, Madoka smiled at Homura and told her she was happy to have saved her from the witch, and that saving her alone made it worth it to become a magical girl. Homura watched her fight Walpurgisnacht, but as expected, Madoka fell to the witch just as Mami had.
Homura, powerless to do anything, found Madoka in the rubble and wept over her body. She wished Madoka hadn't chosen to protect her, to fight Walpurgisnacht, even though she knew she would lose. As she said this, Kyuubey — the strange creature that grants wishes to create magical girls — appeared next to her and offered her the chance to make her desires come true. Kyuubey could grant her any wish if she agreed to become a magical girl. Homura dried her eyes, rose to her feet, and declared her wish: the chance to redo her meeting with Madoka one month earlier, on her first day of school, except this time, she would protect Madoka instead of Madoka protecting her.
The next thing she knew, she was in bed at the hospital on the morning she was going back to school. That day, in her first class, she joyfully and confidently walked up to Madoka and introduced herself as a magical girl, who would be able to help her this time. Of course, Madoka didn’t remember her from the timeline she had come from, but Homura did her best to work with Madoka and Mami as a new magical girl.
Thanks to the nature of her wish, Homura had a special advantage: the ability to stop time using a magic shield containing a functional hourglass. The hourglass was timed to one month, the same amount of time that had elapsed between her first day back to school and her wish to Kyuubey. By turning the face of the shield such that the sand inside the hourglass would stop falling, Homura could stop time. Using this ability, along with a handful of new ones fostered with effort using magic, Homura helped Mami and Madoka prepare for the arrival of Walpurgisnacht.
But even with herself, Mami and Madoka, it still wasn’t enough to stop the immovable force that was Walpurgisnacht. At the end of the battle, with all of her magic expended, Madoka was on the verge of death and in some kind of strange pain. To Homura's horror, Madoka suddenly became a witch — revealing to her that all witches are fallen magical girls, and that Kyuubey recruits magical girls for the explicit purpose of generating more witches. Unable to accept this outcome, Homura used her shield's powers to reverse time and return to her first day of school again.
This time, Homura was determined to warn everyone that Kyuubey had tricked them. But when she tried to... none of the other magical girls believed her. Madoka’s friend Sayaka, who became a magical girl in this timeline, felt that Kyuubey had nothing to gain by lying about the origins of the witches, and opposed teaming up with Homura due to her use of dangerous explosives in battle. Homura, still intent on carrying out her wish, stole guns and other firearms in order to placate her friends’ worries and keep fighting together. Nevertheless, the girls saw the truth of her words firsthand when Sayaka transformed into a witch, causing Mami to go insane with panic and forcing Madoka to kill her to stop her from killing Homura.
With no regard for the surviving girls' pain, Walpurgisnacht arrived again, on the same day as always. Again, they were unable to defeat it. Madoka, on the verge of becoming a witch again, asked Homura to go back in time and stop her from being tricked by Kyuubey into becoming a magical girl. Before resetting time, Homura granted Madoka's last request and killed her, to prevent her from becoming a witch.
Homura was never the same after this especially harrowing timeline. When she awoke, she decided that she had to bear the burden of finding a solution to this horrible fate that her, Madoka, their friends, and their city were trapped in. Homura's allies had proven themselves unable to accept the truth if she tried to tell them, so she decided to rely only on herself to finally destroy Walpurgisnacht. She used her magic to fix the last of her physical weaknesses and began to allocate a huge stock of heavy weaponry and weapons of war in her shield storage. As she did this, she monitored Madoka and the other girls, her only concern being the prevention of Madoka becoming a magical girl. She would depend on no one. No one had to believe her or understand her. Homura repeated the same month "countless" times, resetting after ever failure and keeping track of every alternative outcome that she could, looking for the one path ending in Walpurgisnacht's defeat and Madoka's safety.
The "final" timeline is the one at the focus of the original anime. In this timeline, Homura's body has completely recovered from her surgery and is strengthened thanks to her power as a magical girl. She is a seasoned witch-killing veteran who relentlessly acts to prevent Madoka from contracting with Kyuubey, even if it means treating her coldly, ignoring the safety of their other friends, or using violence against Kyuubey himself. Mami is killed by a witch, Sayaka becomes a witch again, and over the month's events, Madoka learns the truth about the details of being a magical girl. Still, Homura does everything she can to prevent Madoka from contracting with Kyuubey. Madoka could be an extremely powerful magical girl if she became one — according to Kyuubey, she'd be able to beat Walpurgisnacht in just one hit — but this means she would also be the strongest witch ever when she eventually lost her power and transformed. Homura could not forget her own wish and the promise she had made to Madoka long ago in another timeline, which made relying on Madoka's power unacceptable.
At the end of this final timeline, Madoka uses her wish to create a new world where magical girls do not have to become Witches. Instead, magical girls are recruited to right monsters called "Wraiths," and fade away into nothing when their Soul Gems burn out. In this world, she ceases to exist as a human being, and instead becomes a concept — a new rule of the universe that defies the normal laws of physics and reality. In this new world, Homura is the only person who remembers that she ever exists, or that the universe has ever been any different to begin with. With her original wish never technically happening, her time manipulation powers are lost and replaced with memory manipulation, to better match her status as the sole survivor of the old status quo. In honor of Madoka, she takes a bow and arrow as her weapon, instead of her shield and firearms.
ABILITIES & SKILLS
The following section contains spoilers for Puella Magi Madoka Magica and the Wraith Arc manga.
PERMISSIONS
PLAYER INFO
Played By: Lazdo
Contact Info: PM,lazdo, OddLazdo#2470
Character Survey: here
Harmonization Tracker: here
Activity Check: here
OUT OF CHARACTER
Writing Style: Present tense. No preference for format, I am happy to match whichever you prefer.
Backtagging: Yes — I may drop a thread on my own, but only if it feels like it has run its natural course. Please let me know if you ever want to restart a thread.
Threadhopping: If a network thread is not marked as private, it's fair game!
Offensive Subjects: Go for it. Hit me with the full force of your character's traumatic backstory/evil mastermind actions.
IN CHARACTER
Physical Violence: Yes
Death/Dissipation: Yes
Physical Affection: No
Shipping/Sex: Obvious no for sex. Characters around her age are free to express an interest in her, but they aren't going to get very far.
Mental/Communion: Yes
Offensive Subjects: Yes