Wishes are a plot hole

Also, Homura's abilities are underused; the ability to stop time is a very powerful combat tactic that Homura barely ever uses.
Their powers are weirdly balanced:
- Mami: can just pop out guns from nowhere, seemingly only uses Tiro Finale at the end though it's super strong and there seems to be no reason to not start off with it.
- Kyouko: just has a staff, like what else does Kyouko do?
- Sayaka: has a sword, but also heals super quickly.
- Homura: can materialize guns, rocket launchers, grenades, and stop time... how is Homura so much more powerful than all the others?
- Madoka: ...has a bow and arrow? what other powers does Madoka really have as a magical girl?

while it's true that he never lied and most likely never does. It feels cheeky that he withholds such a crucial detail to the contract.
Although I believe he brings up that spoiling this fact about the works of magical girls negatively affects the relation between him and the girls, which, iirc he doesn't want. I forget, it's been a couple of years.

I mean, it's not like they can do that anyway. If your wish is impossible (given your potential), Kyubey will just "Sorry, I can't do that. Choose again."
If you think about it, the first magical girls were fucked because there were NO WITCHES AT ALL, meaning that they had no way of cleaning their Soul Gems.

>what else does Kyouko do?
she used to be able to create copies of herself but due to the rejection of her wish she lost this ability
feel free to reply to me with "Different Story isn't canon", for am I used to it by now.

>I will grant you one wish.
>I wish for infinite wishes.
Congratulations, you now get infinite wishes that QB has no obligation to grant because he already granted you your one wish.

OP is a fucking retard.

He withheld the negative energy part; he was outright inconsistent about that wishes are limited.
This is the only time in the series that I know that Kyubey has outright contradicted himself, if we assume that he's willing to, and capable of lying, together with his complete disregard for the human species and individual humans, then it raises even more quæstions of why he doesn't lie about many other things to further his goals.
>I mean, it's not like they can do that anyway. If your wish is impossible (given your potential), Kyubey will just "Sorry, I can't do that. Choose again."
And that'd be the retcon, originally Kyubey said any one wish, and only later is it treated as being bound to one's magical potential, which Kyubey never actually stated, but suddenly when Madoka contemplates to become a M.G. to turn Sayaka back, he and Kyubey talk about wishes as if this is established lore and they both seem to understand this.

Yes he does, because he has the obligation to grant your one wish, which was infinite wishes.
This is as nonsensical as saying that he has no obligation to grant healing Kyousuke's arm.
Besides “infinite wishes” is just having a middle man, just wish for omnipotence.

I honestly can't understand how these anime retards can't see the bullshit you're listing and claim madoka to be all-time classics. It's just beyond retardation.

Perhaps he's not lying but instead reasons that even with the knowledge that a magical girl can wish "for anything" they still wish for something grounded and mundain most of the time or vague enough that it can be construed into another meaning. It makes me wonder if he's just never dealt with a cheeky girl who actually considered what "anything" meant and not just the immediate solution to whatever problem she is currently facing. He does prey after particularly vulnerable individuals for a reason.

ugh this, I am too intelligent for this cartoon

Kyouko has a spear that can turn into a segmented chain staff thing, and she can also create those lattice barriers. That's not counting her alleged illusion powers from her backstory.
Homura just has a hammerspace shield and timestop, her power relies a lot on preparation to actually be useful. In a way she's the weakest since she has no direct magical weapon, she just needs smart usage of tactical timestop.
Madoka has arrowspam and can summon death from above. Her powers were never really fleshed out because the story relies on her not being a magical girl for most of it, so spinoffs just had to run with what little we saw.

That is the one big problem with Madoka to me: the plot.
I feel the plot is very complicated, but consequently over-ambitious and has too many holes in it.
The visuals, the sound, even the concept of Kyubey himself are outstanding, but the plot just has too many holes.
I also think that the “Magical Girl” stuff actually detracts from how grounded it tries to be — in a grounded world they would also probably be asking “So why do we have to wear these very impractical suits to battle?”, and the explanation Kyubey gives for why all the M.G.'s have to be teenage females is such a load of crap; I'm sure that you can find some adult males as well that are just as emotional and are suitable for a contract, and many of the M.G.'s shown weren't even that emotional, but pretty calm and collected about things.

Syakugan no Syana is actually very similar in many ways thematically, though not as visually outstanding, but cuts the weird M.G. tutus and just has Flame Hazes walk around in functional attire; the plot is less ambitious, but also less filled with plot holes as a consequence.

QB is totally willing to be "misleading" if it serves his purposes, he intentionally misled Kyouko to think it was possible to save Sayaka from being a witch because he wanted Kyouko dead.
Presumably he decided it was in his best interest not to give too much unneeded information about the karma requirements of wishes to most contractees, although he does hint at it in some of his conversations with Madoka.
More importantly it never really becomes crucial to the plot except in the case of Madoka, since most girls just wish for something related to their specific situation when QB approaches them. He is pretty good at knowing when to approach a girl at a moment when they are likely to wish for a specific thing - look at his timing of showing up to Mami, Sayaka, Kyouko, and Homura. Madoka is an exception to this usually careful approach since she has so much potential, he NEEDS her to make a wish, any wish.
I don't see this as a plot hole at all.

If she started off with it it wouldn't be called Tiro Finale

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>Kyubey originally said “any one wish”; retconning is an inconsistency and a plot hole.

The potential of your wish is bound to your karmic weight, fate, whatever you call it. It's either that you can't not wish for what your karma dictates, or you can only wish for things within you reach. Kyuubey would obviously want to maximalise the wishes girls ask for, so naturally they say "any one wish".

>All this could have been avoided by Kyubey just saying at the start “the power of the wish is proportional to your potential as magical girls”.
But user, Kyubey didn't want to avoid anything. That's the point

Not as retarded as the people seriously reading past the emoticon text.

I know OP is just cheap bait but 'muh infinite wishes' retards exist and in large number

OP is the type of guy that would says "Evangelion is retarded because 14 year olds pilot weapons of mass destruction"

>QB is totally willing to be "misleading" if it serves his purposes, he intentionally misled Kyouko to think it was possible to save Sayaka from being a witch because he wanted Kyouko dead.
Yes, but he didn't outright lie. If we accept that he is willing or capable of lying then it opens even more plot holes than it answers.
>More importantly it never really becomes crucial to the plot except in the case of Madoka, since most girls just wish for something related to their specific situation when QB approaches them.
It is completely central to the plot and ruins the enjoyment because one's constantly asking oneself throughout the first 8-9 episodes. “Why not use the wish to fix this problem you're having right now?”.
>He is pretty good at knowing when to approach a girl at a moment when they are likely to wish for a specific thing
Yet Madoka and Sayaka ask a lot of critical quæstions when the concept is first introduced to them, but somehow don't ask. “So why doesn't everyone just wish for omnipotence?” — they asked why no one heard of these witches; they asked where the source of an M.G.'s power comes from; if they can ask that they can certainly ask this.

Maybe so, but as said, if he be willing to lie then that opens up even more plot holes of why he is so often truthful when it goes against his agendum — the plot is built around the idea that, for whatever reason, Kyubey cannot lie; he cannot omit information, but he cannot lie, except in this one case.
That was actually given a reason; they can only be piloted by those born after the second impact.
The problem with Madoka's plot hole is that it looms over the entire series; it's a constantly præsent answer to all their problems, and the viewer is left with the frustration that no one is willing to use it to solve all their problems.

But it's absolutely retarded that no one in the thousands of years of history of magical girls would make a wish "too powerful" for their grade as a magical girl. the consequences for doing so are incredibly vague as well, and even mediocre mahou shoujo like Homura could do batshit broken stuff like infinite time travel, so it's not even consistent. Madotards are braindead sheep that screech in pain whenever anyone brings up the scores of obvious flaws in their precious "masterpiece"

I don't think you understood very well.
If it's not possible, i.e. the karmic burden isn't there, then it will be a version of this. Nobody says QB has to follow the letter or the spirit of the wish specifically. The implication is that QB gives you want you want, even if it's not exactly what you ask for.

If you wished for infinite wishes, why would that not work? You get the magic ability to fulfill wishes, but using it neaerly kills you because it takes too much magic. He technically fulfilled both the letter and the spirit of your wish. You got your infinite wishes, just gotta keep killing witches, because you have to pay for them proportionally with grief seeds.

It's not a plot hole or an inconsistency at all.

>no one in the thousands of years of history of magical girls would make a wish "too powerful"
How would you know?

Agreed, this series is æsthetically brilliant, but it's full of plot holes and a deus ex machinā ending. It was established in episode 8 already, I believe, that Madoka could pretty much wish for anything with so much magical potential, which was also the first time it was addressed that there are limits to what one can wish for, and it somehow takes 4 more episodes for the series to conclude on “lol, I wish that all our problems disappear”, which is a pretty mild wish compared to what Madoka could have wished for.
Why stop there and not end world hunger, murder, scarce resources, and why not also wish for the heat death of the universe to never happen to throw Kyubey a bone?

>ruins the enjoyment because one's constantly asking oneself throughout the first 8-9 episodes. “Why not use the wish to fix this problem you're having right now?”.
Funny, I wasn't asking myself that, and most people I've discussed the show with don't give a shit.
Maybe the problem is on your end.

This can easily be explained away by saying "QB knows to only select the people who don't fuck shit up and Madoka was an exception because she offered such a massive harvest."

Even if your version of events is true(, which would still establish that Kyubey is willing to lie, and thus raise why he doesn't lie more often to advance his goals), then why aren' t they asking on that table. “So Mami, why didn't you wish for omnipotence, what stops anyone?”.
And the way Kyubey and Madoka talked about it is not your version of events that any wish can be granted, but the negative karmic value would just kill one. The way they talk simply establishes that asking for too much cannot be granted, unless one's magical potential be high enough for it, which directly contradicts what Kyubey originally said.

>it's not a plot hole because I'm too dumb to realize it when I'm watching.

>“Why not use the wish to fix this problem you're having right now?”.
Like for example?
Think about what the characters know at each point in the story.
At first, they just think, oh wow I can wish for anything? So many choices, I need to think about this since there is a cost.
Then Mami dies and they realize, holy fuck, if I become a magical girl I could actually fucking die! Never mind, it's not worth it.
Then Sayaka succumbs in a moment of weakness and makes a wish to help Kyousuke after seeing him suffer, and of course QB shows up at exactly the right moment to convince her. So after this point Sayaka has no more wish to make, and at every step along the way her decisions made sense from her point of view and according to her motivations. After Mami's death, every single possible wish has to be balanced with, "is this worth dying for?"

Once Sayaka is a magical girl, Madoka is mostly still too scared to make a wish. However she does consider making a wish to help out Sayaka on a couple occasions, only to be stopped by Homura who chastises her that she shouldn't sacrifice herself like that.
Once Sayaka witches out, Madoka realizes that regardless of what wish she makes, the same fate awaits her. So that presents another major point to consider.
It's only at the very end that she comes up with a wish that addresses everything - she decides she is willing to sacrifice herself, but in a way that prevents her from becoming a witch.

At every point along the way, their decision on whether or not to make a wish is logical (to the extent that teenage girls can be expected to be logical) based on what they know. You can't just look at it from the point of view of a viewer who already knows the whole story and say "well why didn't they wish for eagles to fly the ring to Mordor" because then you're ignoring the actual story.