Work Text:
Unreal city, city full of dreams,
Where ghosts in broad daylight cling to passers-by.
-Charles Baudelaire, "The Seven Old Men", as quoted by T.S. Eliot in "The Waste Land" [1].
0.
Every great anime has its own distinctive visual style, but Puella Magi Madoka Magica takes it up to the max with the jaw-dropping and frequently surreal locations that serve as a unforgettable backdrop to the unfolding story. However, viewers may be surprised to learn that some of the most memorable structures in the series have real-life counterparts, a design choice which raises fascinating questions about the (literal) world-building that underlies the series.
While it's undoubtedly true that each of these real-life is aesthetically pleasing in its own right, and that it's easier to draw existing buildings designing new ones, the animators at Studio Shaft didn't have to go so hard, but they did. Why?
PMMM is a tightly plotted series where nothing, not even the most casual background element, is left to chance. These seemingly random visual references aren't merely fun Easter Eggs for architecture nerds; they were deliberately selected to keep the audience subtly off-balance and reinforce the series' underlying thesis: that nothing is what it appears to be on the surface.
1.
Our first glimpse of Mitakihara is of a city under siege, a bizarre, monochromatic metropolis where skyscrapers fuse with shadowy trees or hover in mid-air. It's initially unclear whether this is a dream or reality (the eventual answer turns out to be "both"), but when protagonist Madoka Kaname wakes up, she finds everything is back to "normal"--or is it?
In the establishing shots that follow, PMMM takes pains to show us that Mitakihara is not a typical city. Instead of the traditional Japanese urban architecture of a historic city like Kyoto or a modern Japanese suburb, Mitakihara is a sophisticated, almost futuristic, city dominated by gleaming glass skyscrapers, with little to ground it in a specific era or place. Even so, it's immediately clear this is no dreary backwater, but a wealthy and prosperous city with global connections. Cosmopolitan is in fact the perfect word for it, as the buildings that compose it are literally drawn from around the world:
- The Burj Khalifa--located in the United Arab Emirates and currently the world's tallest skyscraper--is featured prominently in the show's opening credits. [2]
- The bus shelter where Sayaka confronts Madoka in the rain is Episode 8 is based on similar structures from Curutiba, Brazil. [3]
- Buildings from Singapore, Moscow, and Dubai are visible in the skyline in several episodes [4].
- Outside shots of the mall where Madoka and Sayaka meet Kyubey for the first time is based on the Weltstadthaus, a famous German department store. [2]
- The bridge that Mami, Madoka, and Sayaka cross in Episode 2 resembles the Helix Bridge, a pedestrian bridge from Singapore. [2]
The net effect is a city that literally cannot exist in our own world--the kind of landscape one would expect to find in dreams. Just as dreams assemble diverse and unrelated images into a unified whole independent of logic or reason, so have the animators created a landscape whose connection to the world as we know it is tenuous from the beginning.
Thus, while each of the buildings that compose Mitakihara is plausible when considered individually, the collective result is an architectural fantasy, unmoored in space and time and existing everywhere and nowhere at once.
2.
The word 'utopia'--Greek for 'no place'--was originally used to to describe any non-existent society. From an architectural standpoint, Mitakihara is unquestionably a utopia, as it is both a fictional city and a city that that could not possibly exist in our current reality. Whether it represents a utopia in the modern sense--i.e., an improvement over existing societies--is open for debate.
Certainly, the show goes to great pains to emphasize Mitakihara's idyllic qualities. Madoka's route to school follows a tree-lined path beside a winding stream; she and her friend Sayaka relax after school on the grassy slopes along the riverbank with a glorious view of wind turbines on the horizon; her house includes a charming courtyard garden bursting with ripe produce. Viewed beneath the flattering illumination of day, Mitakihara is a paradise devoid of shadows--the quintessential utopia.
Or is it? Veteran magical girl Mami claims to regularly inspect bars, the red-light district, and sites of frequent car accidents as part of her duties, hardly the average tourist destinations. As the series progresses, Madoka is drawn into this gritty urban landscape of back alleyways, abandoned buildings, dimly-lit warehouses, active construction sites, industrial plants, railyards, and shipping ports. In a subtle visual nod to the Incubators' use of magical girls as a power source, several scenes feature coal-burning power plants and oil refineries in the background. As the sun sets and the shadows lengthen, what was solid and certain at noon becomes elusive and ambiguous, as the city's hidden side comes to the fore.
If Mitakihara is a city of dreams, it is equally a city of nightmares, filled with witches who mark their hapless victims with a "kiss" before luring them to their deaths. Eventually, Madoka learns that witches are former magical girls who were so overcome by the pain and suffering of the world they became monsters who created distorted and personalized reflections of that world--their labyrinths--in a futile effort to escape from it. Just as there can be no hope without despair, it seems that Mitakihara-as-utopia cannot exist without a corresponding dystopia lurking beneath the surface. Once Madoka and her friends uncover the truth, however, there is no going back.
In this, Mitakihara's closest literary analogue is the city of Omelas, the shining, seemingly perfect setting of Ursula K. Le Guin's 1973 short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" [5]. In a twist worthy of PMMM's darkest moments, the beauty of Omelas and the joyful lives of its citizens are revealed to come at a terrible price: the solitary confinement and neglect of an innocent child. Every child in Omelas--usually between the ages of eight and twelve--must personally visit the prisoner to witness their suffering, and accept that everything good in their own lives is a direct result of this misery. Most end up rationalizing the situation and moving on with their lives, but every now and then someone will make a different choice, and vanish into the unknown.
As with Omelas, Mitakihara's prosperity--and, if Kyubey's account is to be trusted, the entirety of human civilization--is only possible through the suffering of isolated and abandoned children forced to confront humanity's darker side at the cost of their own lives. On a more personal level, Madoka's idyllic life is only possible through Homura's repeated efforts across multiple timelines to save her from the consequences of her own actions. Eventually, Madoka will sacrifice her entire existence to save magical girls from their fate.
It is no coincidence that the original PMMM series ends with a lone Homura striding through the desert, seemingly far from Mitakihara. However, as the Rebellion sequel movie proves, leaving the physical city behind is one thing; leaving the idea of it is another matter entirely.
3.
So far, this analysis has focused on the city of Mitakihara as a whole, but, fractal-like, a closer look at some of the show's most frequently recurring locations reveals the same patterns and themes on a more intimate scale.
School is Hell
Like most of the structures discussed thus far, Mitakihara Middle School is dominated by glass, to the point where all of interior walls are completely transparent. This is eerily reminiscent of both the Justice Centre Leoben, a glass-walled prison in Styria, Austria, and the panopticon, a prison designed by the eighteenth century philosopher Jeremy Bentham which allows prisoners to be monitored by a single unseen observer. [6, 7]. Rarely are the parallels between students and prisoners so overt; Madoka's ordinary life may be beautiful and carefree, but she has ample reason to feel trapped by it.
Even without the full historical context, the message behind the school's unsettling design is unambiguous: Someone is always watching. This is especially true for Madoka, who is stalked by both Homura and Kyubey over the course of the series. By the end of Rebellion, Homura will have gone one step further and transformed all of Mitakihara into a literal panopticon--complete with a giant rotating eyeball hovering above the skyline--right before the credits roll.
Other elements of the school's design are also highly symbolic. The enclosed glass hallway where Madoka and Homura have a pivotal conversation in multiple timelines--inspired by an observation deck of the Shanghai World Financial Center--is both a bridge connecting two different wings of the building and a liminal space where anything (including Madoka's reversion to godhood) is possible [2]. A modern art sculpture outside the school building provides camouflage for a spying Kyubey, who blends into the distorted shadows with ease.
Unexpectedly for such an otherwise modern building, the towers on the school's rooftop are a more classical European style [6]. This cathedral-like appearance suits its narrative role as a place of contemplation and philosophical reflection, where the characters are literally raised above the cares of the mundane world--though even there, they are not free from surveillance.
The Monster in the Labyrinth
Although the hospital where Sayaka visits her crush does not, to my knowledge, have a real-life counterpart, it contains several elements worthy of note. While glass windows are prominent throughout the building, the narrative pays especially close to attention to Sayaka's transits in a clear glass elevator, whose movements mirror her own emotional ups and downs (and, notably, is a machine not fully under her control). A smaller version of the sculpture outside the school--perhaps by the same artist--appears on the hospital rooftop, which Kyubey uses as a perch to create another equally ominous silhouette that foreshadows the use of his elongate "ears" to create Sayaka's soul gem.
As with the school, the hospital rooftop is a place of contemplation and reflection, but there is no shelter here; Sayaka must make her choice alone and exposed out in the open. Instead of soaring towers, she stands in a circular parterre garden of low raised beds laid out in a shape reminiscent of both European knot garden or hedge maze--also known as a labyrinth.
In Greek mythology, the labyrinth was a twisting, confusing prison built to house the Minotaur, a cannibalistic man-bull hybrid fed on human prisoners. A simplified form etched on Cretan pottery and coins was later modified into the four-axis "Chartes" form, which was etched on the floor of Gothic cathedrals as a form of worship in the early Middle Ages [8]. In the modern era, labyrinths are a popular feature in both spiritual and secular contemporary healing gardens, perfectly in keeping with the hospital setting.
In PMMM, of course, labyrinths are also distorted dreamworlds under the control of witches, which magical girls must push through in order to confront the monster within. Unlike other specialized terminology such as "Soul Gem" and "Incubator" that are presented in English, "labyrinth" is a translation of the Japanese word kekkai (結界), or magical barrier, that roughly approximates the cultural and mystical significance of the original.
Despite the many paths possible through this hospital garden, choice is an illusion, as they all eventually lead to the same place--just like the fate of all magical girls. In addition, its circular design is a subtle visual foreshadowing of both the cyclical nature of Kyubey's system, and the repeated time loops the characters undergo.
The irony of Sayaka's wish to become a magical girl while standing inside a labyrinth is breathtaking, as a space meant for healing becomes the first step on the path to self-destruction. Here at the hospital, the monster at the center of the labyrinth is Kyubey, but later on, the monster will be Sayaka herself--complete with a labyrinth of her own.
People in Glass Houses
Although Madoka is repeatedly framed by the narrative as an ordinary girl, the Kaname family home is anything but. Designed in-universe by an architect friend of the family, the house is a series of nested rectangles in a modernist style stacked atop, remeniscent of contemporary "glass houses", including the Nested House N in Oita, Japan [9].
Even at home, it seems, Madoka is not free from prying eyes; the house's most striking feature are (what else) the floor-to-ceiling glass walls in almost every room, including the luxurious bathroom. Though Madoka's own room is comparatively sheltered--with the shades usually kept drawn for additional emphasis--Kyubey and Homura will both violate her privacy by lurking outside her window.
But the cold sterility of the house's design is tempered by the sheltered greenhouse where Madoka's father grows luscious ripe tomatoes out of season, and by its inhabitants' genuine joy in each other. Despite its unconventional appearance--and a wealthy, unconventional family bucking conventional Japanese gender roles--this is a house full of love, warmth, and affection, all of which Madoka draws on over the course of the series. Unfortunately, this is not enough to shield her from the harsh and painful experiences she endures--and the juxtaposition of the soft domestic comforts and the cruel reality makes the latter even more brutal.
Empty Chairs at Empty Tables
This is not, strictly speaking, an architectural element, but there's no way I can talk about the Kaname house without addressing the elephant in the room: what is up with all the chairs, anyway??!!!
The Kaname household contains an unexpectedly large number of chairs of different shapes, sizes, and styles, with no two alike. Their first appearance is in the background of Madoka's parents' bedroom, but later these chairs appear in Madoka's bedroom as Kyubey expounds on the history behind the Incubators' harvest of human souls. Their purpose is primarily symbolic, and a reference to Bokurano, a series that does to children's mecha shows what PMMM does to magical girl genre.
Bokurano follows a group of school-age children who make a contract with a mysterious alien creature to pilot a giant robot. Originally framed as a "game," the children gradually realize with mounting horror that they must sacrifice themselves in order to save their loved ones and the entire world. In addition to the obvious parallels to PMMM, each of the child pilots in Bokurano has a unique chair that represents them in the "game"; as the cast dwindles, the chairs remain as a stark and unsubtle visual reminder of the children sacrificed for the greater good.
Not only does the composition and framing of the Bokurano chairs mirrors their depiction in PMMM [10], the animators later added additional chairs into certain scenes in the Blu-Ray and movie versions of the series to emphasize the point [11, 12]. While no explanation for this ever given in-universe, I like to think that one of Madoka's parents (and perhaps Sayaka's as well?) collects them as a hobby.
Magical Girls At Home
Homura and Mami have a great deal in common--both are magical girls who fight using firearms and orphans living in their own apartment without parental supervision. In spite or perhaps because of this, they are repeatedly framed as opposites by the narrative in their appearance, the thematic possibilities they represent, and their dwellings.
The contents of Mami's apartment differ drastically between editions, with each version focusing on different aspects of her personality and situation. The bare and empty apartment of the TV release emphasizes her loneliness and isolation, while subsequent DVD editions depict her apartment as warm, friendly, and nurturing like Mami herself, right down to the carpet decorated with her signature flower motif [13]. By Rebellion, the apartment has expanded yet again to include a loft and additional rooms not depicted in the original series. Regardless of the exact details, however, Mami's neat and organized apartment reinforces her characterization as the perfect mentor and host, a model for Madoka and the others to aspire to.
The emotional hub of Mami's apartment, present in every incarnation, is the triangular coffee table (glass, of course) around which the girls gather for tea, sweets, and exposition. Clear floor-to-ceiling glass walls nearby allow for an influx of natural light--and, in Rebellion, provide an easy escape route for Homura to flee the scene. Following Mami's death, a sink full of dirty dishes represents her humanity fallibility and frailty more poignantly than any words.
Unlike Madoka and Mami's homes, which are dominated by glass and full of natural light, Homura's apartment is as mysterious and unforthcoming as its resident. In early timelines, this place is initially presented as dark, empty, and unwelcome, with no furniture save for a bed and a desk where she constructs homemade explosives. In later timelines, its main room is transformed into a stark, blinding white, yet somehow still claustrophobic space with no obvious windows, entries, or exits (save for the shadows that Kyubey uses for his own purposes); the only furniture is a series of colorful low backless cushions arranged in a series of concentric circles, which form the shape of a clock when viewed from above. A series of digital displays line the walls--which, depending on the moment, illustrate either Homura's research or pivotal memories from her life. Meanwhile, the ominous shadow of a clock pendulum, swings ominously back and forth like a guillotine, a reminder of the intense deadline that Homura is perpetually up against.
Although the show's creators have said the unique look of Homura's apartment is result of a holographic display rather than magic, they also admit it was deliberately drawn to mirror a witch's labyrinth [14]. As a result, many fans headcanon that magical girls can consciously or unconsciously the shape the spaces they spend their time in as a kind of proto-labyrinth, further blurring the borders between reality and fantasy within the series.
In keeping with Mitakihara's cosmopolitan and composite architecture, the exterior shots of Homura's apartment depict a European-style building with stone sidewalks and wrought-iron lanterns outside, reminiscent of a similar shot from Le Portrait de Petit Cossette, an OVA directed by PMMM director Akiyuki Shinbo [15]. Like Homura herself, the building stands at a crossroads, with two identical streets branching off from a Y-fork intersection. In contrast to the modern and contemporary design of Madoka's house, this is an imposing and old-fashioned residence, with no hint of green or growing things anywhere to soften its formidable appearance.
Despite its distinctly un-Japanese appearance, this neighborhood is often hand-waved by fanfic writers as "Mitakhara Old Town" or part of a historic district, even though its very foreignness marks it as a modern recreation. Narratively, it demonstrates that Homura lives in a different world than the rest of the cast--both literally and metaphorically. As the rest of Mitakihara embraces the future, Homura's neighborhood remains stuck in an imaginary past.
4.
When it comes to PMMM, it's safe to say that first impressions are almost always wrong. Mami's confidence is a front to conceal her desperate loneliness; Kyouko's selfishness hides a more generous spirit within. The cute and seemingly harmless Kyubey is an amoral alien intent on using Madoka to further his own ends, while the grim and stoic Homura is desperately trying to save her.
So it is with the city of Mitakihara itself--however normal it appears on the surface, closer inspection reveals it to be a castle in the air, one that subtly reinforcing the series' central theme that nothing is what we think it is. The borders between reality and fantasy are both closer and more permeable than one would expect, to the point where it becomes increasingly difficult to determine which is which.
Thus, it's only fitting that city-as-dream motif from the original series reaches its climax in Rebellion when the city of Mitakihara depicted in the first hour is eventually revealed to be a creation of Homura's own mind. The apocalyptic destruction of the false Mitakihara mirrors Homura's deteriorating mental state as the fantasy crumbles beneath the crushing weight of reality and vice versa. By the end of the film, Homura has rewritten reality completely, centering herself in a new version of the city that is once again her personal playground. This time, however, she is not only fully conscious of her decision, she wholeheartedly embraces it.
But Mitakihara's relationship with reality was always tenuous at best even before this new management, and so it continues to be in this latest incarnation. No matter how the characters turn their world upside down again and again, Mitakihara will remain the same as it has always been: an unreal city, a city full of dreams.