"Theorize and Philosophize Together": Voice Actor Aoi Yuki, Who Plays Madoka Kaname Once Again, on the Appeal of Puella Magi Madoka Magica

— Actually, I was already working in the industry when the TV series was airing, so there was a part of me that could not join that festival 100 percent as just one anime fan.

Yuki: The people working on it are too close for you to simply enjoy it as a festival, aren't they. Because their hard work is right there beside you, you can't quite let yourself get carried away.

— Precisely because I was watching that festival from a step back, I find myself wondering now what lay at the root of that frenzy. The environment surrounding anime has changed in 2026 compared with 2011, when it was airing. What do you think made Puella Magi Madoka Magica such an enormous work?

Yuki: I think the first thing that made everyone find it interesting was the "theorizing." People analyzed the world of the story, and there was a movement to watch while predicting together how things would unfold. Talk like, this is depicted here, so perhaps it turns out this way — I think it was a work where imagining and thinking things through together was fun.

Back then there was still a sense that anime belonged to otaku, but that is no longer the case, and all kinds of people now enjoy anime as a hobby.

I take pride in it being one of the works that opened that door, and because it does not hand you the answers (within the work itself), it is a work everyone can enjoy theorizing and philosophizing about together. Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie -Walpurgisnacht: Rising- contains that element too, and while I don't yet know whether it will suit the tastes of people today, I found that I really love the fact that it was made without changing that.

— With the spread of the internet and then of social media, there certainly were a great many theories back then. I even used them as reference when writing articles (laughs).

Yuki: When I watch anime, I love thinking about what the work was like for me, about the world it depicted and about the sense of justice and the happiness of each person in it. That comes with the job of being an actor, of course, but that is where the fun lies.

I think the strength of Puella Magi Madoka Magica is that it provides all the material you need in order to theorize, and that it is packed with stories offering room for interpretation that only animation, a composite art form, can create.