Puella Magi Kazumi Magica/WMG

Puella Magi Kazumi Magica

Kazumi is actually a witch that was turned back into a magical girl

Kazumi has signs of a Dark and Troubled Past, even referring to her amnesiac self as a "new Kazumi" as opposed to the "old Kazumi". At the end of chapter 2, her friends say that anyone can become a witch, with the implication that that they're referring to the "standard" witches of the anime, and they've had to deal with it personally. And let's face it, her magical girl costume is a Cute Witch outfit! A black cat even appears in the second chapter!

Of course, the anime has said that such a thing is impossible, which is why this WMG must be taken together with the next WMG

Alternatively , given the ending of Madoka Magica, Kazumi might be one of the few Magical Girls who stood on the brink of oblivion via Grief, and while she might have become a Witch under the old rules , she is one of the few who managed to overcome/reversed this. It might also explain her memory loss. Her memory might be deliberately erased by Madoka so that Kazumi's "second chance " can occur.

• Confirmed, amazingly, though the specific details differ: Kazumi is actually a witch who's been stuffed inside a human body.

Kazumi takes place after the anime, specifically after Madoka makes a reality-altering wish

Specifically, a wish to change the magical girl system forever. Part of the changes would include a way to turn witches back into magical girls. Note that the black cat in Kazumi chapter 2 resembles the one seen in the OP of Madoka (and in a piece of official artwork with Homura). Earlier guesses on the Madoka WMG page say the cat could be a result of Madoka's wish.

• Chapter 3 reveals that Kazumi is part of a seven member magical girl team. And they're clearly all friends. Either the city has enough witches to hold off The Corruption for seven magical girls (eight if you count the girl in the witch's hat), or something else is going on.
• While Madoka does make a reality-warping wish involving witches, it's to destroy them before they ever exist, and extends to the past, present, and future. So this is impossible.
• The witches that resembled anime variant Witches might not actually be Anime Witches , as in Witches born from depleted Grief Seeds, but a new variant of Witch , created by some yet unknown method that replicates the effects of a Madoka Magica Witch. However , their origins and very nature might be sufficiently different enough to bypass Madoka's Wish.
• Alternatively , the demons that replaces the Witches under Madoka's new rules might be designated as Witches in some timelines. Furthermore , the nature of the enemy that Puella Magi face might differ from time-line to time-line. This might be set in the same "multi-universal" continuity in Madoka Magica , but is still an Alternate Universe of sorts.
• There are several , more unpleasant possibilities. Someone in this time-line has foolishly , or perhaps maliciously undone Madoka's Wish. Or this whole plot might be an attempt to reintroduce a modified Witch system into some time-lines. Or Madoka has finally snapped.
• Again, it is heavily implied that magical girls become witches in Kazumi ("there is the possibility that anyone can turn into a witch"). Unless we get evidence otherwise, we can probably call this theory Jossed. The non-standard witches may be what the demons are in before the anime's events. On the other hand, a full blown Alternate Continuity seems very likely right now - especially since if it is before/during the anime, Madoka's wish would Ret-Gone the events of this series.
  • On the other hand, Chapter 4 explains the inconsistencies from the anime, without making it an Alternate Continuity.
• And completely Jossed in Chapter 5.

Either Kazumi or Umika and Kaoru are evil.

Think about it. Kazumi's outfit looks like a witch's, and now there's a second magical girl with a similar costume theme. Umika and Kaoru's outfits look more like nun-outfits...there's gotta be something going on with that.

Kazumi can't remember her friends or past...

...because she wished for it.

• It can't be that she wished to not remember; how could she be working with them before then?
• Actually, it's revealed that none of Kazumi's memories are real. They were implanted by Umika because Kazumi is actually a clone.

Kazumi's wish was to have friends.

Explains how she could be in a seven-member magical girl team. Of course, the knowledge that she only has friends because she wished for them may have been causing her grief...

• Jossed. She wished to cure her grandmother's illness.
  • Actually, she wished to bring her grandmother out of her coma so that they could spend one more day together. She specifically didn't heal her grandmother's illness, because she wanted to respect her grandmother's lifestyle.

Kazumi's wish Ret Conned reality.

In the first chapter, she alters reality by turning the bomb into a toy. A Puella Magi's abilities are linked to the nature of the wish they made. Perhaps, as speculated above, she wished to have friends... and thus, the others' memories were altered to include her in their group.

• Jossed.

Kazumi helped create the new type of witches.

Possibly with the help of the other Cute Witch magical girl and/or the Pleiades Saints. This is why her hair can only detect the new kind, and not the original kind. She may have given part of her own magic to help make them, therefore giving her a connection to them.

• It explains why the Evil Nuts seem to avert No Ontological Inertia even when Yuuri becomes a witch in Chapter 6, how the Soujous pull them out in Chapter 8 even when Yuuri and her witch form are dead, and then there's Kazumi's aforementioned ahoge. It might be that the "old" Kazumi is pulling a Memory Gambit, using other magical girls as Unwitting Pawns to kill the Pleiades Saints while she remains beneath suspicion.
• Actually, Kazumi literally is a new type of witch. A clone of a Puella Magi created using witch flesh.

The mysterious, unnamed magical girl wished to save Kazumi from becoming a witch, just like Homura did for Madoka.

She has a similar costume because she admired Kazumi and wanted to be like her. She now regrets doing it, possibly due to her own despair that would be the same amount of happiness Kazumi has/makes by existing. By getting rid of Kazumi, she could possibly become happy again.

• If this takes place after Madoka Magica like it was speculated earlier in this page, this guessing is absolutely impossible, since after the anime witches are no more, and Puella Magi don't become witches at all, therefore it has to be more complex than that. Or the series just doesn't take place after Madoka.
  • Anime-style witches still exist in this series, so it is possible.
• Jossed. She was a bit like Homura, though.

The new type of witch was born from a wish for more witches.

More specifically, for more Grief Seeds. Need a lot of those to maintain a group as big as the Pleiades Saints, after all...

• Alternatively, the new type of witches were born from the original witches searching for new ways to reproduce, since Madoka's wish in the finale of Madoka Magica made it so that the original way does not work anymore, meaning that the witches risk facing extinction if they don't find new ways to increase their numbers before they are hunted down to the last one by the Puella Magi.
  • No, Madoka's wish means that witches never existed.
    • It's still possible. Madoka's wish was more like to destroy/stop the witches from being created by herself. Since Madoka still had to destroy Walpurgisnacht and also had to take the corruption/soul from the magical girls who were gonna die or killed.
• Alternatively alternatively, the new type of witches are created from demons and the anime-type witch came to Kazumi's universe from one of the alternate universes that Homura created with her old ability (While we know that Madoka's wish affected the current one, we know nothing about the others). Of course, this is all assuming that Kazumi takes place AFTER Madoka, which remains uncomfirmed.
  • While it's not quite explicit, part of Madoka's ascension involved her becoming aware of all of Homura's various version of that month that ended with Walpurgis Nacht; it's implied that that's necessary for Madoka to carry out her wish. Consequently, it's not unreasonable to assume that Madoka prevented witches in all those alternate realities, too, doing a heck of a number on cause and effect, too.
• To add on to this , this might very well be a Time-line where some foolish Puella Magi wished for more varied enemies. We get this. Or it might be an attempt by the Incubators to push the boundaries of Madoka's rules.
• Likely Jossed as of Chapter 4.

It's All Just a Dream

Yup. Alternatively, Kazumi's wish was to be able to make her dreams into reality, which is why things don't fit.

• Alternatively alternatively, Kazumi is a witch and this is how she perceives reality.

Yuuri...

...is a former Pleiade.

Maybe they lost their memories of her, and she was shamed in some way; this is why she holds a grudge.

• The Pleiades seem to recognize her once they get a clear look at her face, which makes this even more plausible.
• This is about as heavily implied as the Pleiades knowing that magical girls become witches.
• Instead of lost memories Yuuri left the team when Kaoru, Mirai, and possibly Kazumi joined. The girl seen in Yuuri's brief flashback was also a former Plieade, but she died or became a witch, which is why Yuuri is so messed up.
  • Also, some possible Genius Bonus foreshadowing: The Pleiades Star Cluster is also known as the "Seven Sisters", but the actual stars named after the Seven Sisters are only part of the nine brightest stars in the Cluster. If the Pleaides had two members who are no longer part of the group...
• Shockingly Jossed. Well no word on whether the REAL Yuuri was one. The details of the WMG are jossed but there's nothing to say about the original yet.
• Turns out, the real Yuuri was a candidate of the Saints that the original Kazumi will introduce when she turned into Witch.

Plot predictions as of the end of Chapter 4

• Fortunately, Evil Nuts don't work on magical girls, because Yuuri never got the memo about magical girls being liches; if she had put it into Kazumi's Soul Gem she might have had more success. This causes her backstory to come out, which gives Kazumi much consternation. It ultimately culminates in Yuuri becoming a witch, while the Pleiades coldly watch, giving Kazumi a full blown Heroic BSOD when she learns the Awful Truth. After a climactic battle, she'll turn on Jubey, giving him the "bad guy" tests. Jubey explains the whole purpose of the magical girl system, saying that he only purifies the Pleiades Soul Gems because they gather more energy as magical girls than they would release as witches. The other Pleiades are all aware of this, but are helpless to stop it because Jubey can just decide to not purify their gems, dooming them to become witches, or at least break up (because the number of witches in the city can't support seven magical girls).
  • As of Chapter 5 we have Evil Nut doesn't work, Yuuri becoming witch, and backstory coming out.

Yuuri...

... made a wish to take revenge on the Pleiades. She was their Muggle Best Friend, but they left her to die in a fight she'd tagged along to. She lived long enough for Jubey to find her and contract her, letting her live until she takes revenge. This is why she continues to use magic even while she's at her limit: she's going to die anyway. Alternatively, she just doesn't know any better, because the Pleiades found out about where Witches come from after her supposed "death".

• Mostly Jossed. She did want revenge on the Pleaides, though that wasn't her wish. Everything else is Jossed.

Kazumi will become the witch Suleika

Truly a Wild Mass Guess, as there is no evidence whatsoever seriously Oriko-as-Charlotte has more evidence than this!. This idea only came about because it was noticed that the symbol on Kazumi's bells (and hair, and hat, and in two places on her Soul Gem) resembles a question mark, as in the question mark found on Suleika's (and Albertine's, and Uhrmann's) witch card. It would also make a very neat pair of Book Ends: Kazumi begins in darkness and ends in darkness. Although that would lead to Kingdom Hearts jokes...

• The corollary to this is that the "old" Kazumi may have been mentally unstable - Suleika has a "deluded" nature. Combine with the theory below and we suddenly have a possible Nitroplus reference!

Kazumi wished to be able to make her thoughts into reality.

"Stop the bomb. Bibbity Bobbity Boo".

• Jossed.

Kazumi Magica is actually the prequel

This one here shows that Oriko Magica is likely the actual sequel rather than being the prequel. The Madoka Magica showed that there have already been magical girls in the past so its possible this was before the timeline of the anime.

• This means that the Pleiades have been trying to convince Kazumi that the only witches that ever existed were the "imitation" ones.
  • No they didn't. They told Kazumi that the first two witches she fought were unusual. They're clearly trying to hide how real witches are created...probably because they don't want to expose Kazumi to the Awful Truth.

Kazumi and Yuuri are the same person.

Admittedly extremely wild and possibly even able to be debunked at this point. Kazumi has amnesia because she is the "good" side of the entity that Yuuri is the other side of. The girls had thought that they had "purified" Kazumi. (This could be why Yuuri is at her limit of turning into a witch.)

• Jossed.

The girl in Yuuri's memory is Kazumi.

Specifically the "old Kazumi". She was close with Yuuri. Kazumi and the girl are in an identical position, and Yuuri seems to react in a way that implies she doesn't like the attitude of the "new Kazumi".

• But they look nothing alike! Kazumi has consistently looked like herself in all her brief flashbacks.
  • Kazumi also has very spotty memory.
    • Then what about this? Unless she dyed her hair...
    • She also has a completely different hair style, so this seems unlikely.
• Jossed

Jubey will become evil.

He absorbs the blackness into his fur, which is turning black. Perhaps he becomes some Eldritch Abomination and the girls have to fight him. Assuming Kazumi is a prequel, this prolly explains why Kyubey and the other Incubators don't do this anymore.

• Actually, Jubey was already evil. He is only the way he is now because he was brainwashed by Umika into being nice.

The person who gave Kazumi her bells is the same person in Yuuri's flashback.

This girl is now dead, which set off both Kazumi's amnesia (because she didn't want to remember), and Yuuri's Roaring Rampage of Revenge (because she blames the Pleiades for what happened). She may have been a Magical Girl and died fighting a witch or turned into one.

• Given that all the Pleiades except Kazumi seem to know what happens to magical girls that use too much magic turned into a witch is much more likely.
• Jossed. That person is Yuuri herself when she was Airi. The real Yuuri may have done it, though.
  • Turns out it was her grandmother, so doubly jossed.

Juubey is a prototype Incubator.

If he's successful, he'll be used as a template for the the tenth 'edition' of Incubators. Kyuubey was a member of the ninth and most recent batch.

• Jossed.

Yuuri was a witch but came back

That would explain why everyone is so shocked and yells "Impossible!" when seeing her, as well as the power of her Evil Nuts.

• Jossed. It's what she wanted the Pleaides to think though.

Yuuri is an alias

That's why no-one recognized her name.

• Confirmed!

Cosmic Retcon effect predictions

It's likely the real Yuuri will still vanish because she'll overuse her magic. Since no-one killed Yuuri, Airi won't go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge; however, she may still become a magical girl to continue what Yuuri did (with a different wish), and then vanish in an attempt to be with her.

• As of Chapter 8 this troper half-expects the Pleiades become this ludicrously huge magical girl team.
• Although he's quick to correct himself, Jubey says Kazumi's powers are "sacrilege" or "breaking religious law". One can only wonder how that would relate to the divinely imposed "law of circles". Breaking that law would be a catastrophe beyond measure...

Kazumi is the real Yuuri

Well, I don't have much of an explanation for this, but crazy theories tend to be true in this series. And there are little bits of foreshadowing if you know where to look:

• Kazumi has no memory of anything that happened before the events of the manga, and when she starts recovering it, there are flashbacks of her being with Yuuri. This is a bit of an inconsistency, but it could still work if the black haired girl turned to be someone else other than the current Kazumi.
• There is the Cryptic Conversation in episode 3: "It doesn't matter, that's something the familiars did." Just what the hell did the familiars do? Use someone's wish to rewrite Yuuri's soul and bring her back as a completely different person, of course!
• Alternatively...
• Jossed

Kazumi is a close friend or sibling of the real Yuuri.

This may make a bit more sense than the one above. One of the Pleiades, or someone else altogether, perhaps Kazumi herself, could have wished that Kazumi forgot about the real Yuuri so that she didn't suffer from her death. This still leaves the inconsistency of Kazumi appearing inside a suitcase. Why there and not somewhere else?

• Alternatively, Kazumi was one of the people healed by the real Yuuri. She may have also given Kazumi her earring bells, which would explain why Kazumi is sensitive to the magic of Airi (who wished to "take over Yuuri's life"). If we go by the above "Kazumi was mentally unstable" theory, the earring bells might actually be what keeps Kazumi sane.
• Jossed
• Not exactly jossed, but the circumstance was different. In a short story about Yuuri and Airi's past, Kazumi is indeed Yuuri's friend and she's the one who suggested Yuuri to make her contract to heal Airi. But whether the original Kazumi realizes that Yuuri turned into Witch is not yet known.

Jubey is born from a wish, probably from Kazumi's wishes.

• Like Madoka, Kazumi finally realizes the wrongness in magical girl system, and wished to change it. Basically, she asked for means to purify magical girl soul gems in great number and power, without fully depending on Grief Seeds. This is why Kyubey was very upset with Pleiades, they just broke the whole system, although not to the extent that Madoka does.
• Jossed in that Kazumi didn't wish for it.

Jubey is from a different, competing race from Kyubey.

Jubey and Kyubey both aim to save the universe through emotions. However, Jubey, wishing to help the humans (possibly because he may have emotions), decides to leave it up to the emotions of the girls to generate energy rather than forcing grief on them, and cleans their Soul Gems both to save them from becoming witches and gather more helpers to stop the witches (e.g. fighting things like Walpurgis Night). However Kyubey prefers the more energy-generating method of forcing girls to become witches; it's possible he may not even be able to clean gems. Both of them have struck a truce of sorts, seen by them standing by each other. Either Jubey is dead by the end of Kazumi or his work wasn't effective enough to stop Kyubey's witches.

• Jossed: Jubey is an Incubator; he acts so differently from Kyubey due to Umika's brainwashing.

Jubey is a mentally ill Incubator.

That is, he feels emotions. Power Born of Madness, anyone?

• Actually, he was brainwashed by Umika to be nicer.

Chapter 7 spoilers: The Pleaides are turning Soul Gems directly into Grief Seeds.

Probably as part of some Deal with the Devil with Jubey.

• This could be the dirty things Airi accused Saki, the leader of the Pleides of hiding from Kazumi. Rather than deny it, Saki tells Airi to shut up pretty much confirming that the Pleides are hiding a dark secret. As you know the Pleides, except for Kazumi until the end are aware that Magical Girls turn into witches when their magic runs; their except from this comes from Jyubey purifying their gems before that happens. So they could be creating witches for the Incubators to collect energy from in exchange for Jyubey not letting that happen to them. Though this leads to Fridge Horror in that the Pleides might have done this to the original Yuri turning her into a witch, then killing her. Here are some hints:

1. 1. The Pleides recognizing Yuri's face when Airi showed it to them which would indicate they were with her when she transformed;
   2. The unlikelihood of Yuri falling from despair since she was on the verge of winning a cooking contest and celebrating with her best friend and had nothing to despair about and she couldnt have used up her magic fighting a witch given her transformation happened shortly after she met with Airi;
   3. When the Pleides communicate with Airi after killing witchYuri, the looks are not of relief or satisfaction as you'd feel after saving an innocent but more like a MIB covering up.

The reason why Kyubey didn't relay this to Airi was because he was saving it up as an emotional bombshell to drive her over the Despair Event Horizon or an extra motivation in case she showed signs of relenting against revenge. The Evil Nuts are her way of getting back at the Pleides which is to turn of their own into a witch like they did with her friend.

More chapter 7 spoilers: The Pleiades are actually trying to slow down The Corruption in order to stop witches from being born.

They may be testing out new technology made by Nico on other magical girls to do this.

• • Confirmed.

The Pleaides Saints will become Walpurgisnacht

Unlike Kyubey, Jubey is willing to play the long con, waiting for one of them to become a witch in the middle of a fight. Once one of them does it will send the others into despair at which point he'll stop cleaning their gems and tell them it was his plan all along. This one-two punch ought to get the rest to transform in rapid fashion. However, before all this happened they all became such close friends that all they want after their transformation is to be together. So their witch forms fuse to form Walpurgis.

• There is another way that this theory could happen. In the most recent chaptera new Puella Magi appears with a large collection of Soul Gems. If the Gems and Pleaides corrupted at the same time they could all fuse into Walpurgisnacht. That could explain why WN's nature is helplessness and why her Familiars look like they are made out of stars
  • See one of the WMG'sbelow for why this might be doubtful. Walpurgisnacht seems to be a very ancient witch.

New!Kazumi was a Familiar

Bear with me on this. in Madoka Magica, Familiars were stated to become clones of the original witch if they kill a human and therefore drop Grief Seeds. In the first chapter you see a flashback of a naked Kazumi covered in blood and standing next to corpses, add in her amnesia, the subtitle 'The Innocent Malice', the fact she calls herself New Kazumi and Nico not encouraging her to get her memories back: its probable that she is a familiar of the Old'Kazumi.

• Kinda confirmed. The current Kazumi is the 13th clone created from witch flesh.
• In this case,

Kazumi will become the antagonist

Her flashback hints at a Dark and Troubled Past with her standing over a pile of dead bodies and during her conversation with Nico about her memories Nico glances at a report about a shooting while saying that some memories are better forgotten implying that Kazumi may have been a mass murderer in her past or at least been a witness or complicit in some dreadful tragedy that caused many deaths. The subtitle 'The Innocent Malice' could be Foreshadowing her as a ticking time bomb waiting to go off at the right provocation. Remember that Madoka Magica and Oriko Magica had the titular characters as DecoyProtagonists, in Oriko's case, she turned out to be the villain, Kazumi could be something similar.

• See "Kazumi helped create the new type of witches" above.

Ayase/Luca Souju are stealing other Magical Girl's powers via their Soul Gems

Jyubey mentions that they are two Soul Gems that control the same body rather than one Magical Girl with two different transformations. The same magic that allows this also allows the two to draw powers from Soul Gems. Besides acting as a Soul Jar, the Soul Gem also serves as a Transformation Trinket and source of a Magical Girl's power. The Soujus know this and actively seek to increase their own strength by collecting Soul Gems to gain access to a wider variety of powers. (i.e. Kazumi's Reality Warping, Nico's regeneration, etc.) It would explain why their interest in collecting bright gems and their disinterest in darker ones since a Magical Girl's magic strength corresponds to their gem's brightness. It is also possible they're aware of Magical Girls turning into witches once their gems darken. Drawing magic from other gems would decrease their need to use their own thus slowing down The Corruption. If they really needed a Grief Seed, they could just use up a gem until it darkened, and changed into a Grief Seed and destroy the resulting witch, though its more likely they just destroy the gems that get too corrupted.

• Jossed, sort of. Apparently they need to collect Soul Gems to continue existing in the same body...but it might just be to turn them into Grief Seeds.

Jyubey is the 10th species to join Kyubey's alliance to fight off entropy

This is, of course, assuming we can even believe Kyubey's claim to begin with, including the one when he told Madoka his species was waiting for humans to join them someday. According to these thoughts (sort of an "honest Kyubey" theory), Jyubey could be, appropriately for its name, the 10th species to join the alliance Kyubey belongs to. Kyubey itself/themselves could be the 9th, even! ...meaning there are other eight species doing the exact same, each with their own version of an "incubator", perhaps all mixed up and spread through the universe to gather emotions to fuel the universe back. In this case, the 9th and 10th species are assigned to Earth, but other planets with sentient and emotional species could be victims to any combination of -beys ranging from the 1st to the 8th.

• In Chapter 8 Jubey says something about Kazumi's powers, but then quickly corrects himself. Incubators don't do that.
  • Which indeed means he's not the same thing as Kyubey.

The black cat seen around Kazumi's (really, Umika's) house is actually Amy

Based on nothing more than the fact that the guy who writes Kazumi Magica wrote the screenplay for the drama CD that introduced Amy. So to make this WMG work, Kazumi Magica has to be set before the events of the anime, and the Pleiades Saints (or at least Kazumi, Kaoru, and Umika) will get wiped out or worse. Then the now lonely cat wanders over from Asunaro to Mitakihara and you know the rest.

...that would actually mean that Kazumi Magica created the anime's events. Shocking.

The witch that appears at the end of Chapter 8..

• ...is Nico.
• ...is Nico, who is also the shooter in the news article she was reading in Chapter 7. Notice how the witch and it's familiars resemble target practice dummies.
• ...is not Nico, but is the witch form of the shooter in the news article Nico was reading in Chapter 7. It may have manifested through Nico's Soul Gem somehow, possibly because of whatever the Pleiades are doing with the Soul Gems of other magical girls. Also, compare Chapter 4's Cliff Hanger and it's resolution in Chapter 5; it's a similar situation.
• ...is one of Ayase/Luca's collected gems, corrupted to the point it finally spawned a witch.
  • And may or may not be the aforementioned shooter.
• And the answer is... none of these; it was actually Nico's "backup". Of course, that only raises more questions. See "Nico's backup wasn't made from scratch", below.

Kazumi is Charlotte

She adores her sweets, after all, and has a darker personality lurking under her own cuteness...

Kazumi is tapping into Spiral Power

Yes, THAT Spiral Power. Given the counter-rotating Spirals on her Soul Gem emblems, and the extremely overpowered, rulebreaking magic she has, and her generous appetite often applicable to Spiral Energy users, this explains so much about why she exhibits powers unusual even for Contractee Magical Girls.

The Pleiades are attacking other magical girls because...

They're trying to prevent them from becoming witches by taking away their deteriorating Soul Gems, and are willing to sacrifice the girls in order to prevent the witches from being born.

• As a corollary it will be revealed it doesn't really work, and they're all just Unwitting Pawns for Jubey.
  • the subtitle 'The Innocent Malice' seems to support this
    • First part confirmed.

Kazumi Magica's Chapter 9 Freezer might become Walpurgis Night's birthplace.

• Okay, this may sound crazy but seeing a lot of girls being suspended in those chambers within that building that Kazumi and Umika went into might indicate something. It will become the birthplace of the Walpurgis Night.
  • The biggest problem is that Walpurgis Night's witch card implies that she has been around for a long time - "The witch's mysteries have been handed down through the course of history". This is not something that was made recently. It's possible however they may create "a" Walpurgis Night - a witch made from other witches - and not "the" Walpurgis Night - the one seen in the anime.

Kazumi is a clone

• Chapter 9 has a clone of Nico...and the dead bodies seen in Kazumi's flashback WAYYYYY back in Chapter 1 look like Kazumi herself. Of course, the original Kazumi may still be alive, especially if she created the Evil Nuts.
  • Holy shit CONFIRMED! The current Kazumi is the 13th of a series of clones of the original, who ended up becoming a witch.

Nico's "backup"...

...wasn't made from scratch. Her powers are like Fullmetal Alchemist transmutation, and you can't create a soul from that, but her copy had a Soul Gem and it could become a witch. Plus if the Incubators could clone humans you'd think they'd do that instead. What Nico is doing is transmuting another girl into a Body Double. Maybe also used Fake Memories or Brainwashing to make the duplicate think she's Nico. Based off the symbolism, she would then be that girl shooter Nico read about in Chapter 7. Bonus points if Nico was actually paralyzed by that girl shooter, made a wish to regenerate herself, and then took revenge in a horrific fashion.

The Pleiades are taking Soul Gems in order to continue to purify theirs.

The Soul Gems they take are used to give Jubey the power to purify their own Gems.

• Jossed. They're doing it to keep the girls from becoming witches.

Juubey's energy plan is more diabolical and will be more successful than Kyubey's

While many people think that the Madoka Magica characters got gypped by Juubey's cleaning method, in actual fact they are lucky. Juubey only seems to clean the Pleiades' gems, thus creating a very powerful witch fighting team full of special people. He also eats the Grief Seeds straight away, denying other Puella Magi their use. Non-Pleiade Puellas then have less chances of getting a Grief Seed, leading to the reveals in the latest chapters. He has therefore created a situation where if he was to leave, even simply just hiding for a time: His seven special Puellas would find they no longer have the luxury of automatic Gem cleaning and will then have to fight each other for Grief Seeds leading to them all falling into despair at more or less the same time. Seven witches appearing at once will create a very large amount of energy and create more Puellas. Juubey can then rinse and repeat and this way doesn't have to just contract powerful girls to get energy.

• Not to mention none of the characters seem to know the Grief Seeds remove the taint from Soul Gems

Juubey is working with the Pleiades in order to find a way to stop magical girls from being corrupted.

Umika and Juubey explain that they attack other magical girls and and put them in the Freezer as a response to the magical girl system, which basically exists to screw them over. Juubey is helping the girls to fix/escape this system either because he's mentally ill and has emotions, or because he's planning on using them for some other purpose.

• Acutally, Juubey was brainwashed by Umika into helping them.

The series ending will result in the Madoka universe being possible.

The Pleides Saints will sacrifice themselves, it may even result in Walpurgis Night being created; but it will enable more than one timeline to be tied together. They will know this; that it will be possible to create a super-magical girl whose wish who can either save them all or destroy the world.

Kazumi Magica is the result of...

Kyubey and Jyubey, essentially, are playing space chess against each other, using magical girls as their pawns. In other words, while he's technically helping magical girls, Jyubey isn't necessarily good or bad, it's simply a convenient result of fighting against Kyubey. This will likely end with Kyubey winning and moving on to Madoka's town, possibly with at least one of the Pleiades becoming one of the witches from Madoka. This also explains how a lot of the "enemy" magical girls, thus far, haven't recognized Jyubey - as shown with Yuuri and Airi, they were likely contracted by Kyubey instead of Jyubey as WELL as why Jyubey is still prone to making his crazy grins. This is probably just fun and games to him, regardless of his doing "good."

Jyubey is actually an incubator corrupted by Kazumi's magic

Jyubey doesn't act anything like we've come to expect incubators to be like. He seems to feel emotions. He can feed on grief directly without needing the soul gem to become completely corrupted. He's changed his mind or corrected himself on his explanations (calling Kazumi's magic 'destruction' vs. 'sacrilege.') He's flat out lied to Kazumi about where witches come from. Of these, the most egregiously out of character actions have all been centered around Kazumi, or at least associated with her.

It's possible that Kazumi used her wish to make the incubator trying to contract with her more human/able to understand and empathize with humans, granting her her reality altering powers. If she wished for something else originally, a later incident may have sparked her using her reality altering powers on the incubator, such as learning the Awful Truth about where witches come from and then forcing the incubator to be more helpful. This destruction (desecration) of Jyubey's original nature may have been what lead him to first describe her powers with the the more charged 'sacrilege' before admitting it was -just- 'destruction,' regardless of his personal feelings about it. We see her powers doing something similar to the witch form of Airi when she tries to turn her back into a magical girl. It doesn't work, but then, Kyubey (who has never *outright* lied) did say that it was impossible for a witch to be turned back into a magical girl.

This would even explain Jyubey's name. 'Kyubey' is pretty obviously a cutesy shortening of 'Incubator,' which fits with their mentality of 'hide what would upset the target, but don't *lie.*' Since 'Jyubey' was no longer part of the 'Kyubey' hive mind after the incident, the Jyu- suffix was chosen (by him or one of the girls) for the nine/ten pun noted elsewhere. The Kyubey hive mind haven't done anything about him because they regard the situation as an experiment. If the Jyubey model proves effective, they'll adopt it. If not, he's only affecting one city and a relatively small pool of puella magi, and can be dealt with if necessary.

• It was Umika's wish.

A traumatic event in the past caused Kazumi to become evil or at least antagonistic

The Spin-off series tend to base characters from characters in the anime and Kyoko's the only one without a counterpart comparison. Like Kyoko, Kazumi was once an idealistic Magical Girl who believed in helping others the flashback in Ch 10 shows her rescuing the Pleiades before they became magical girls from a witch-kiss induced suicide kinda of how Kyoko helped protect Madoka and Sayaka from a witch as explained in the 3rd CD Drama.. Unfortunately, her world-view became shattered by a traumatizing event. A flashback in Ch1 shows her standing over dead bodies; its possible she may have been the sole survivor of a massacre wherein she lost loved ones including the person who gave her her bells which may be why she hates people touching them. Alternately, finding out the truth behind the Puella Magi system soured her selfless worldview driving her to despair and deciding that she may as well just look out for herself rather than other people. Of course, it could have been both. The Pleiades shocked at the change in personality and beliefs of the one who saved their lives and failing to convince her to change her mind otherwise erased her memories so she would go back to the old Kazumi. This is why the girls become so desperate to hide the truth behind magical girls from her and what leads them to go to extremes to prevent Puella Magi from becoming witches and turning them back to humans. Also going with the previous theory that Kazumi created the 'new witches', in her Start of Darkness she may have been responsible for the creation of the Evil Nuts.

• Kyoko's counterpart could be Ayase. Out of all of the Expys, she's actually the most blatant. Kazumi is really a lot more like Madoka.
  • She could be an evil Madoka.
  • In going with the above theory that Kazumi created the new witches, its possible that after finding out the Awful Truth, she looked for an altnative source of energy for the Incubators to harvest and came up with the Evil Nuts. The new witches, similar to the anime ones are capable of consuming emotion from living humans and revert back to ordinary humans upon defeat. In this way, she hoped that this new solution would turn the Incubators away from their current method of turning Magical Girls into witches. Unfortunately, as shown with Jyubey, Incubators cant make use of Evil Nuts.

Juubey is an Incubator capable of feeling emotion

Consider what Kyuubey tells Madoka in Madoka Magica:

"Among my species, the phenomenon known as 'emotion' only exists as a mental illness."

Or in other words, there are Incubators who feel emotion, but they are regarded as having a mental illness. It's entirely possible that an Incubator with emotions would see the magical girl fights witches → magical girl becomes a witch → more magical girls are needed to fight witches cycle the same way a human would, and that it might want to ally itself with magical girls to end it all.

• He was an Incubator affected by a wish. However, emotion really might be a mental illness here.

Saki Asami becomes Gertrud.

The symbol on the top of Saki's soul gem and Gertrud's grief seed is a butterfly. In the flashback in chapter ten, Saki shows and interest in flowers. The symbol on top of Gertrud's grief seed is a butterfly. This article shows that the symbol on both Sayaka's soull gem and Oktavia's is the same musical note. Gertrud is shown to obsessed with roses, and Saki's flashback shows her with lily-of-the-valley flowers saying that her dream is to make a wedding bouquet out of them. Her friend Miyuki says that's impossible as no man is good enough for her, and says she wants to marry Saki. Miyuki is later killed in a car crash. Gertrud's witch card says that "She holds roses dearer than anything else. She expends all of her power for the sake of beautiful roses. Despite stealing the life-force of humans who wander into her barrier to give to her roses, she loathes the thought of them trampling the inside of her barrier.". Roses could represent Miyuki, and the thought someone destroying flowers could represent the car crash that killed Miyuki. Roses are symbols of love, which is why Gertrud's barrier is filled with roses instead of lily-of-the-valleys.

• Actually, her symbol is a Lily of the Valley, like Miyuki's flower, which makes this slightly less probable but not impossible.

Satomi will die.

Satomi shares personality traits with Mami such as patience, friendliness as well as a hidden fragile mind with a tendency to snap. The end of Chapter 12 shows her suggesting to Saki to kill Kazumi with a Slasher Smile after the Evil Nuts insignia appears in her eyes before her fainting. In the orginal series, third timeline Mami wound up killing kyouko in a murder-suicide attempt after finding out the Awful Truth about Magical Girls and was killed by Madoka before she could kill Homura. Its possible that Satomi may have concluded that Kazumi was the one responsible for creating the Evil Nuts and seen her as a threat to be eliminated. She will then try to kill Kazumi resulting in the other Pleides or Kazumi herself killing her making her earlier words about not wanting to die Ironic and Harsher in Hindsight. Bonus points if her crazyness results in her worst fear of turning into a witch. 

• Furthermore this will result in a break in the Pleides Saints. On one side there will be Satomi, Saki and Mirai (possibly out of green-eyed jelousy towards Kazumi) trying to kill Kazumi and Umika, Kaoru and Nico trying to defend her. Given how the orginal series' loved to subvert the Power of Friendship coupled with Anyone Can Die, this sounds possible.

As of Chapter 15, Satomi has become a witch. Confirmed!

The Pleiades are lying to Kazumi, and her memories are fake.

There are quite a few things here that don't add up.

• Umika and Kaoru tell Kazumi their parents are overseas in the first chapter, but according to Kazumi's memories, she only had her grandmother.
• Kaoru lied about her wish to have a strong body.
• They lied about her not telling them her wish, and also about where witches actually come from.
• The final scene of the flashback Umika shows Kazumi does not have Kazumi in it, and Airi's memories don't show Kazumi there, either. How could this be part of her memories if she wasn't there?

Umika is shown to have memory-altering powers, making this a possibility. They might be doing it because Kazumi was on the verge of becoming a witch before her memory loss due to some incident, perhaps involving the creation of the Evil Nuts, and so they're trying to hide it from her. It's also possible she already turned into a witch, and Kazumi is their experiment to test if they can bring girls back from witchdom.

• • Confirmed. This Kazumi is a clone; ALL of her memories are fakes made by Umika.

Jubey is Kyubey.

The anime taught us that Incubators have multiple bodies. Who is to say that the two making an appearance in Chapter 4 wasn't just two of the bodies together at the same time? Also, there is an instance in Chapter 10 where a silhouette that appears to be Kyubey turns out to be Jubey - page 14, to be exact. We don't know everything about Incubators, so who is to say that they don't have shapeshifting abilities in addition to everything else?

Jubey's purification...

Doesn't work perfectly. In Chapter 13, Saki points out that Nico's spare became a witch even though her Soul Gem was clear, and thinks they're all on the verge of becoming witches. In Chapter 15, Satomi also becomes a witch despite having no corruption in her Soul Gem. Considering what the Pleiades do, Jubey may be able to purify their Soul Gems, but at the cost of their sanity.

• Alternatively, Jubey is only pretending to be purified so that the Pleiades won't suspect him any further; after all, who's to say that Umika's powers would work on something like an Incubator? Not to mention that when Kyuubey remarks about things going well "this time", most likely referring to Kazumi's clones, Jubey has an evil grin. He's clearly not working in the Pleiades' best interests.

The Evil Nuts were created by Incubators.

When a Puella Magi went too long without becoming a witch (like, say, the Pleiades Saints), the Incubators would release Evil Nuts into their territory, causing her to use up magic fighting pseudo-witches and transform. Alternatively, Evil Nuts would be used to send the Puella Magi into a fit of rage and exhaust her. Tying into that...

The Incubators are behind most of the plot.

All of the big plot points - Evil Nuts, the Freezer, and the clones - are experiments to see if they can milk any more energy out of a single Puella Magi. One of the Pleiades Saints could be working with them, or it might just all be manipulation.

• This could be supported by the fact that the Magical Girls seen using the Evil Nuts, Anri and the Soujous were already familiar with the Pleiades Saints. We know that Anri got her information about them from Kyubey and someone must have told the Soujous about the Pleiades.

Satomi's Fantasma Bisbiglio works by possessing people with her dead cat.

Think about it. Why would wishing to talk to animals let you brainwash humans? The spell is translated as Ghost Whisper, and the runes resemble cat paws and tails. Not to mention that Saki appears to grow fangs while under Satomi's control.

Everything is a part of Juubey's Plan

The set up is just too delicious for the Mangaka to pass up. In chapter 13, Kazumi learns that she is the 13th clone of the Magical Girl Kazusa, the original founder of the Pleiades Saints, and all of the previous clones have been set loose on Kazumi. The shock generated will send [[spoiler: Kazumi over the edge into despair, and become a witch. Because all the other Pleiades Saints might be on the verge of becoming witches, the despair of their thirteenth failure to bring back Kazusa will cause them to become witches too. The Pleiades Saints all lose, and Juubey wins. All in all, a good day of business...

All of the Pleiades Saints are witches.

It's not just Kazumi, all of them are the same. They all became witches at some point or the other and each of them is an experiment by the remaining girls to bring them back. Each individual girl thinks she's the only remaining one that didn't turn into a witch and hides the truth from the rest, until one of them snaps.

• This would explain why, in the image of the girls performing the ritual, they are all dressed in more traditional western witch clothing instead of anything else.
• One piece of evidence against this is Kazumi herself. If the girls were successfully able to bring back each other member of the Saints with their combined skills, then why haven't they succeeded with her as well? Plus, if they're all aware that they've been up to this - and whether or not they know they themselves are witches they know that their magic has brought everyone else back - how come in private they never refer to how others have been in these situations?
  • This does not exclude the possibility that Kazumi may be a unique case, and that her magic may actually be the one ingredient that actually makes the process work.
• There's also Nico. She's an interesting case in this situation. Her line, referring to the girls as "you humans," would seem to indicate that she KNOWS she is a witch, and that she is aware that the others are not. This goes with the assumption, but also conflicts with it. This means that Nico doesn't remember bringing the others back but remembers being brought back herself - but it also would indicate that Nico is in fact a witch given human form.

Michiru knew the truth about the Magical Girl system before she became a witch.

During the scene in Chapter 14, Michiru turned into a witch while Umika and the Pleiades were talking about how much better their lives had been since meeting her. What better reason to give into despair than knowing you've condemned your six new friends to eventually turn into witches? (Not to mention her being responsible for Yuuri.)

Satomi is about to turn into a witch.

However, this time, Kazumi will find a way fully revert her back, unlike Airi due to their bonds of friendship... even after what has happened.

• The title is confirmed, but the guess is jossed. Kazumi kills witch!Satomi.

Saki and her sister were in the same accident that killed Mami's parents.

Its possible as the location of the accident is unknown and Asunaro and Mikitihara may be with in drivable distance of each other.

We'll finally learn exactly what Nico's wish was in chapter 18.

It is probably the one thing that can explain Nico's behaviour at the end of chapter 17.

Nico's wish turned her into some sort of Magical Girl/Incubator hybrid.

Her powers, as well as her behaviour and ability to create Evil Nuts in chapter 17 may suggest something like this. It was probably not what she intended when she made her wish, but somehow the wording gave her similar abilities to the incubators.

Kazumi will be able to make a contract that can fix everything.

As a clone, Kazumi might have the powers of the original Michiru, but technically she has not yet made a contract of her own. Kyubey mentions in the original series that they searched other parts of the universe before settling on Earth, so there's nothing saying that they can only make contracts with humans. So if Kazumi has the chance to contract, she can use her wish to somehow fix everything.

Nico is not a witch, she's either lying or crazy.

At the end of Chapter 17, Nico uses the phrase "you humans" to refer to the other girls. This isn't like how Homura used the phrase - she doesn't consider being a Puella as inhuman, as she uses it to refer to OTHER PUELLA. It's fairly clear, then, that she is a witch given flesh like Kazumi, but let's unpack this. Up until this point, we have seen no evidence to support that Nico is any sort of a condition akin to Kazumi's. Kazumi had no memories (although that might have been a failure on their part to completely perform their ritual), she reacted strangely to the Evil Nuts - a reaction only she had and that she couldn't help - and several other things that Nico has not. We can assume that, if they're going to bring Kazumi back, they're definitely going to try it on the others, but we haven't seen too much evidence to indicate that this has happened. There's also the contradiction of how the other remade girls could be so normal and be successes when Kazumi could not. In otherwords, we can assume that they haven't been having the problem of turning into witches until recently (exceptions accounted for, of course). In otherwords, the only thing we have to go on is Nico's single statement and the following actions which doesn't even really do much besides reference herself as being non-human and wanting to protect other non-humans. So what does this mean? It means that Nico may be going crazy, as opposed to ACTUALLY being a witch like Kazumi. There are a few things that might lead her to be this way, too. Nico is the one who turns others into witches in her stead, which may lead her to either believe she let the REAL Nico turn into a witch by accident at one point, or see herself as a horrible evil monster for how she strips innocent people of their lives to give herself a chance she should've lost a long time ago. We also know that the incident where she killed her friend still weighs heavy on her conscious, something that may also degrade her to the point of feeling like she's a monster and doesn't deserve to be human. She also knows, for a fact, that Umika can make up and alter memories to the point where she brainwashed an entirely emotionless being into being a fairly cute if not somewhat aloof and creepy friend. She might BELIEVE she was turned into a witch, brought back, and had her memories of it erased. If this is the case, she may think that her creation of the Evil Nut is a sign of this, even though it's well within her power.

There's also another distinct possibility that she may actually just be doing the equivalent of LYING. Nico may find what the girls are doing with the Soul Gems, what they're doing to Kazumi, and several other things as morally reprehensible. Considering how she uses people as fodder for her own continued survival, she probably has a different idea of the value of a life then the others and may see it as cruel how every time they remake Kazumi and flub up, they simply discard the corpse. She may have staged this plan then to fight them off and punish they're evil. Her comment, then, would be a way to sow mistrust and discord among them, in hopes that they start blaming each other for creating Nico and getting angry at Umika for whipping their memories of it. It could also be a deliberately decietful remark simply meant to make them feel bad instead of apply anything

• If this is case, then it may be that she DOES see herself as inhuman as a Puella and instead sees the way the girls act as human, thus making her comment an insult.