"Beyond Good and Evil" - Encomium of Homura (on Nietzsche, Camus, and love)

it took me literally 2 years to bring this project to its conclusion bc of my insecurities and my crippling ADHD, for which i started taking medication 1.5 years ago, so im super happy about finally posting this! i am proud of myself for managing to finish this project, even though it came out a bit rambly, and i now feel more confident about creating more content like this in the future! ✨

in this essay I tried to tackle some of the arguments i saw people often use to prove that homura is an “evil” character (her wish was selfish, she is obsessed with madoka but obsession =/= love, she says herself she is evil etc.), but of course i must have missed some stuff! the show and the movie are full of philosophical references, and i did not analyze them all, i merely took the ones that helped me support my thesis (you can’t argue homura is bad without completely misunderstanding the series), there is so much more to analyze in this show! 🧃

i just rly love homura and it makes me sad to see people say she’s evil so here’s my two cents on best girl (for me) and an excuse to infodump about philosophical references in the series lol

anyway thank you sm for watching, have a great rest of your day/night! 💌

📖 link to the script 📖

http://tinyurl.com/yjnt3eyc

⌛ timestamps ⌛

Introduction - 00:00
Chapter 1 - Of Selfish Wishes and Hope 02:46
Chapter 2 - Rebellion, from the cave to the Übermansch 14:03
Chapter 3 - Homura's true feelings 23:22
Interlude - On Gen Urobuchi, Camus and Nietzsche 37:15
Chapter 4 - Encomium of Homura: the fifteenth doll 44:56

↓ here are some of the topics i had to cut out of the script! ↓

👾 more theology: madoka as buddha/homura as mara, a comparison between homura and lucifer/iblis
👾 the holy quintet representing different types of love (storge/agape/eros etc.)
👾 kyubei being a utilitarian little shit and rebuttals to his utilitarianism (bc no, he is not a ‘neutral’ figure, he’s a bitch)
👾 feminism and femininity in the series
👾 freud’s interpretation of dreams and the symbols present in homulily’s maze (falling teeth, dolls singingig about needles etc.)
👾 swan lake parallels (madoka as odette, homura as odile/rothbart)
👾 originally I had planned to dissect every scene in which the clara dolls appear to explain in more detail what homura is truly feeling (ex. during her confrontation with sayaka the dolls are clearly telling us she’s lying and hates herself lmao) but that would have made the essay like an hour longer so :/

↓ and here are some of the sources i used ↓

📚 translation of the Clara Dolls’ names: https://wiki.puella-magi.net/Rebellio...

📚 the video about the Kishibojin’s story is from an older anime called “Manga Nihon Mukashibanashi”

📚 credit for the video i used while explaining Plato’s cave allegory:    • Plato's Cave (animated version)  

📚 Tsuruoka’s quote is from the Rebellion material book, here is a transcription of the full interview: https://wiki.puella-magi.net/Rebellio...

📚 Urobuchi’s quotes are taken from different interviews, I can’t link a transcription but you can find the quotes I used in this essay everywhere online!

📚 Other sources I used are my old philosophy textbooks from high school and my own copies of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” and “The Myth of Sisyphus”.