Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Wraith Arc, Vol. 3

Puella Magi Madoka★Magica: Wraith Arc #3

by Magica Quartet, Hanokage (Artist)

Don't forget. Always, somewhere, someone is fighting for you. — As long as you remember her, you are not alone.

Weary of doubting her own memories, Homura succumbs to Wraith Madoka, which consumes Homura’s emotions until she slips into a peaceful stupor. Mami and Kyouko worry for their friend, but wraiths don’t actually kill humans—or so they thought. Whatever is behind the giant wraith’s power has also turned the creature into a deadly threat for the city...and the magical girls tasked with taking it down!

Genres: Manga, Fantasy, Comics, Horror, Fiction

178 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 2016

About the author

A group collaboration consisting of director Akiyuki Shinbou, writer Gen Urobuchi, the original character designer Ume Aoki, and the producer Atsuhiro Iwakami.

Reviews

[Hoshi]

Useful spin off to understand better the setting of Rebellion. I don't feel like it's necessary to understand the movie but it gives lots of info about the world after the series, which is something missing in Rebellion. It's kinda interesting seeing how in every timeline/world some things stays kinda the same.
I'm pretty sure this reading will be also useful for Waluprgisnacht Rising, maybe even more than for Rebellion.

[Siobhan]

maturing is realizing that although everyone thinks madoka is the most powerful, it is actually homura who is the most powerful. she has all this time and memory manipulation magic and now she has wraith piercer magic. all this magic came from her love and passion for madoka. they are truly a couple to be reckoned with. when the gang finally finds madoka, maybe all evil beings will be gone from their city for good.

[Letteredpanda]

The stakes skyrocket in the final volume, to a world-ending Kriemhild Gretchen scale. The majority of this volume is fight scenes, which…well, I don’t find terribly interesting, and, as I mentioned before, can be hard to decipher. The finale involves a big Cosmic Retcon that makes the whole story feel kinda pointless. On the other hand, we get more MadoHomu goodness, and Rebellion makes a little more sense now.

The design of the Spindle Witch was neat (more interesting than the wraiths), especially those crown-shooting Homu birds and the lashing braids.

Unfortunately, the true nature of wraiths is left annoyingly unclear given that the mutated Madoka wraith is straight up born of Homura's memories/magic/feelings whatever. What are wraiths normally like?? Do they possess words and feelings? Do they really need to be killed?

But my biggest problem with the story is when it's shown that post-Madokami Homura tried to throw her shield away because she "didn't need time manipulation anymore." Girl, maybe not rewinding, but what about your TIME-STOP?? That's hella helpful in wraith battles. Indeed the imposter wraiths deploy it to great effect later on. How is she discounting her time-stopping magic? I’d hate to see the writers giving Homura of all people the Idiot Ball…

I was also fuzzy on just how the Witch of All Despair ended up in Homura's shield. It cheapens Madoka's "erase all witches" wish because the biggest, most threatening witch of all somehow escaped, despite the anime showing her shattering it. Hell, where is it now? Did it disappear with (most of) the shield, or is it still lurking out there somewhere? Though I did like the "second wish/miracle with monkey's paw effects" angle that explained how Homura remembered Madoka and got her new magic—that did NOT play nice with the old, and the unintended disaster that set in motion. Fits very well with the themes of PMMM...

...as does the reconstructive nature of Homura's multiple declarations of "My love for Madoka literally powers me, I can make anything happen if I just belieeeve" throughout the climax and denouement. It's a cool emotional set-up and contrast to Rebellion. In Wraith Arc, Homura has Madoka's wish to guide her, and she is a loyal holy warrior for Madokami. But in Rebellion, thanks to that one pivotal conversation with Madoka (an amnesiac one!), Homura changes her mind and believes she should've prevented Madokami from happening (somehow...girl, you were helplessly pinned to rubble at the time 😅). Now all she has is Madoka herself. And I think that terrible loneliness we see in Wraith Arc led her to create a world where she can watch over, talk to, and even hug Madoka. It's all still love for Madoka, the selfless now mixed with the selfish.

It's a plot set-up, too, of course. I'm still wondering how Kyubey apparently managed to latch on to Homura or the shield when she rewound time. And how he lied to Homura and said there's no proof of her previous world when he was hiding that shield fragment—I thought Incubators didn't lie, only obfuscated? Anyway, it's clear that Wraith Arc was written after Rebellion because it kinda spoils the hell out of it, so I definitely would advise people to only read it after they've watched Rebellion.

Is Wraith Arc worth reading at all? Well...it's a pretty quick read, so I would say yes. More lore and more yearning is good, lol. But there's nothing terribly earth-shaking here. From what I've heard, Magia Record is way more innovative, though I don't know how canonical it's supposed to be. We are all just eagerly anticipating the fourth main movie/third installment of PMMM.

[Nick]

Unfortunate!

As strong as the second volume was for expanding on the consequences of previous plot points, this one slips right back into being completely unnecessary. Which is honestly just even more disappointing considering they had the chance to do something really unique here and Decided with their full heart Not To.

Details under the cut for spoilers:

Volume 2 was as strong as it was because it really honed in on Homura's unique position in the universe and all the baggage that causes. So, naturally, the storyline loses all impact when Homura is immediately taken out of the story at the beginning of Volume 3 and we follow this timeline's Mami and Kyouko instead. We watch them fight fruitless battle after fruitless battle until they both die in the process.

We've seen this all before. There is no impact to this.

Next Homura is dropped back into the plot and the narrative proceeds to INFO DUMP for pages and pages, just going through all the technicalities that they should have dealt with earlier instead of dropping them all at the end. We get a jumble of technicalities that shouldn't really be possible in anyway at all - and we skip RIGHT over the fact that Witch Madoka is kind of living inside Homura's shield somehow? That's the one detail that doesn't make any possible sense, but sadly it is also the cornerstone of literally everything else that is happening.

Regardless! Homura gets another big Power Moment and ends up solving all the problems. Excellent! We love to see it. Highlight of this volume for sure.

BUT THEN.

OOPS TIME REWINDS - NONE OF THIS HAPPENED OR EVEN MATTERS.

AND JUST... HUH?

THAT'S YOUR VISION?

Your vision for filling in the missing plot beats between the series and Rebellion was just for some events that would be rewound anyway so none of them never even happened to begin with?

We even get dumped RIGHT BACK INTO THAT SAME SCENE THAT HAPPENED IN THE ORIGINAL SHOW. THE ONE WE ALREADY PAINFULLY RETREADED IN VOLUME ONE.

Why are we bothering? Why even bother reading this? There is no payoff for any of this.


Ultimately, nothing in this needed to happen. The plot hooks that lead into Rebellion are nothing new and are possibly worse than what we had before, because now it makes Rebellion repetitive. Things lose their impact when we just see echoes of the same event happening over and over and over again - so much so that anyone who reads Wraith Arc before Rebellion will be getting a worse experience as a result.

So, yeah. Would I recommend this to Madoka fans? No.
Would this be comprehensible to anyone who wasn't a Madoka fan? Not even slightly.
Did I even enjoy it? Only briefly in the middle there!

Ultimately I think it achieves what it sets out to do. It's just disappointing that what it sets out to do is "nothing much of consequence".

[Seeker of Knowledge, may he never succeed]

In the previous volume I was really piqued about how this story was going to serve as the bridge between the main series and Rebellion. Although the ending felt satisfying for this particular work, the most spoiler free way to put it is that it didn't fully deliver as a perfectly clean bridge. However, despite that, this still was a good resolution to what is hands down the best Madoka Manga spinoff I've read so far. The art and action is still great, and in the context of this plotline we get some great character moments from Mami, Kyouko and even Kyubey. Absolutely check it out!

[Cavak]

Heavy exposition dumping at the end there. Basically only for fans who want to know what happened after the TV series. I think the ending could have been handled with a bit more care, especially in regards to how quickly it escalated to "It's all up to Homura and Madoka."

Liked how literal words within the TV series's ending turned out to be a huge deal. Don't mess with divinity and magic, sheesh.

[Katrina Payne]

... oh... my.... gosh... yes...

Every question is answered--at varying levels of a sinister response expected

Things go sideways pretty far--with an artifact that should not be getting eaten and giving the monster digestion issues

Sweetness, body horror--and all the nightmare fuel one expects in a Magical Girl genre

I will have to pick this trilogy up and read it over and over again

[Aaron Meyer]

The ending was pretty interesting. Seeing Homura essentially reborn was impressive, and the explanation for the Madoka wraith that was cool. It is sad that despite winning it is all begun again at the moment Homura just appears earlier in the story to repeat. Things are set up for Rebellion and Kyubey's inside knowledge lol I like how things get turned on him there.

[Miranda]

I think this one missed the landing for me. It was cool to see Homura’s resolve, but the explanation of her powers was confusing. Lots of info was dumped at the end. This might have made more sense as two separate volumes, but this series always does arcs of three so 🤷‍♀️

[Santiago Bueno]

Una conclusión interesante. Hubo bastante exposición, pero a mi me interesó el tema y no me resultó pesado. Pero bueno, quizas esperaba algo un poco mas explosivo. Igualmente cerró bien esta historia.

[nana ❀]

tudo o que acontece no rebellion sendo explicado bem aqui... it was all an act of love. every action of homura was an act of love towards madoka. her magic is her love for madoka. nothing is stronger than that.

[Jucá]

Explica bem muitos detalhes que ficaram confusos em Rebellion, ao mesmo tempo que entrega algumas explicações fracas. Definitivamente não gostei do plot do escudo e achei que vai diretamente contra o que é dito no anime, mas entendo o que eles quiseram fazer.

[Belle Ancunin]

Confusing somewhat but overall good. Solid if you're really interested in Homura's overall character development.

[ZeroTwo]

Easily one of the best Madoka Magica manga.

[Leah]

I'm in love with these stories. I'm obsessed. Addicted.

[Jade]

Really love this series! It bridges the gap nicely in between the anime and rebellion!

[Reese]

A bit confusing..but a good volume. There is a lot of exposition and it does lose me a little. But still a pretty good arc

[Dony Grayman]

Tomo 3 de 3. Parte del pack con el que se distribuyó la saga completa.

[Cinna]

(i gor the en version on amazon!!) it was so good oml

[Lisa]

Excellent ending to the story and great bridge to the movie.

[Isel]

I just don't understand the cat

[ReadingFrog]

1.5 stars.

[Aurakinski]

Poor girl can't catch a break.

Not sure I appreciated the "twist" in the last pages, but it makes sense within the larger story I guess. Time to rewatch Rebellion?

[Gláucia]

prefiro as bruxas do que os espectros

[Andie Wachauf]

This is a spin-off of the original main story. I love it because it provided us with more backstory about Kyoko and the wish she made. Also, it didn’t hurt that we got more of Mami, who is my favorite character.

[Momo]

This series definitely helped wrap the main storyline up better than how the story originally left off. As Madoka goes, this volume was a bit confusing but it's not that bad compared to like the rebellion sub series.

[Megan Mullins]

Bro, like what do you mean though. Omg 😭😭😭

[Jessica]

⎯ ✩✩✩ ⎯

Not the ending I expected, but it was interesting to see Homura's regression arc leading up to the Madoka Magica: Rebellion movie.