Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Mahô shôjo Madoka magika: Puella Magi Madoka Magica

A middle school student called Madoka Kaname and her best friend Sayaka Miki come across a little, cat-like creature by the name of Kyubey in the fictional Japanese city of Mitakihara. It proposes a deal where a girl can have any wish fulfilled in exchange for magical abilities and a job combating witches. Homura Akemi, a strange magical girl and transfer student, tries to dissuade Madoka from signing the contract with Kyubey in the meantime. Then, Mami Tomoe, an upperclasswoman at the same school who is also magical, is introduced to Madoka and Sayaka. Mami offers to bring Madoka and Sayaka along on her witch hunts after observing their uncertainty over whether to become magical girls so they can learn about the obligations associated with being one. Madoka, however, comes to the realization that a magical girl's life is wrought with anguish and pain after seeing Mami die at the hands of a witch. The emergence of Kyoko Sakura, a seasoned magical girl whose wish mistakenly killed her family, further supports this. Madoka also learns that magical girls sacrifice their souls in order to create Soul Gems, which are the magic's power source, and that when Soul Gems are too contaminated by despair, magical girls are transformed into witches. After learning that being a magical girl will enable her to heal a young musician whom she admires, Sayaka makes the decision to do so. But when Hitomi Shizuki, a classmate, professes her love to him first, Sayaka becomes disillusioned and plunges into an unavoidable sadness, which transforms her into a witch. Madoka learns from Kyubey that his alien culture has been harvesting magical girls' emotions for generations to use as energy to stop the growth of entropy and prevent the universe from going into thermal equilibrium. Madoka also discovers that Homura, a supernatural being from a different time period, has repeatedly relived the same month in an effort to spare Madoka from an unpleasant end.