ひだまりスケッチ
In the initial planning meeting of the "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" franchise, which began as a 2011 anime television series, writer Gen Urobuchi imagined that the heroine of the series would be a girl with a "cheerful and idealistic" personality. Madoka is an unusual character for Urobuchi's writing style, and fits more closely to character designer Ume Aoki's worldview. In order to incorporate a "foreign character that did not exist inside [himself]," Urobuchi wrote the initial script as if Yuno, the main character of Aoki's manga series "Hidamari Sketch", was the protagonist. During this phase, Urobuchi even intended Kana Asumi to take on the voice acting role for Madoka. The personality of Madoka was specifically designed as an "Ume Aoki character", while other characters of the cast, such as Homura Akemi and Sayaka Miki, are more typical for Urobuchi's style. Urobuchi said that at the beginning, there was an idea to write the story as "Homura strives to save Madoka", therefore, he created the characteristics of Madoka and Homura as a contrast to each other. Madoka's birthday, October 3, was chosen as it was the file creation date of the series' initial project proposal.