Sayaka Miki

Sayaka Miki is the deuteragonist of the Puella Magi Madoka Magica franchise. She is Madoka's best friend and, like her, a second-year student at Mitakihara Middle School. Tomboyish, confident, and a little brash, she upholds a strong sense of justice and adopts a heroic attitude as a magical girl.
She is voiced by in the Japanese version of the anime (who also voices Mina Ashido in My Hero Academia, Cana Alberona in Fairy Tail, Mikoto Aiura in The Disastrous Life of Saiki K., and Uni in Hyperdimension Neptunia), and by in the English version of the anime (who also dubs Nonon Jakuzure in Kill la Kill, and Hello Kitty in Hello Kitty and Friends Supercute Adventures, and Lisbeth in Sword Art Online.).
==Biography==
Sayaka is Madoka's classmate and best friend. She is a lively tomboy with strong ideals of love and lawfulness. After helping Madoka rescue Kyubey, she contracts with him to grant her wish to heal the wounded hand of Kyōsuke Kamijo, a young violinist that she is infatuated with and visits daily in the hospital. As a magical girl, Sayaka's weapon of choice is a cutlass, she can produce multiples of them at a time. She also has extraordinary regenerative ability due to the healing nature of her wish. 
Sayaka insists that her wish is selfless and feels that fighting witches to save people is a bonus, even after witnessing Mami's death. After learning that her soul is no longer attached to her body and that her close friend Hitomi intends to become Kyōsuke's lover, she falls into isolation and refuses all help. When she overhears a conversation between two men that mock and despise their girlfriends, Sayaka reaches her limit. 
As she reveals her corrupted Soul Gem to Kyoko, she states that she was a fool, at which point the corruption overwhelms her and her Soul Gem transformers into a Grief Seed. Sayaka becomes Oktavia von Seckendorff, an armored mermaid witch with a labyrinth similar to a concert hall. In the final timeline, Madoka in her omniscient state offers Sayaka a second chance at life, but Sayaka turns it down, saying she only wanted to see Kyousuke succeed with his violin before passing on.
In Puella Magi Madoka Magica: The Movie: Rebellion, Sayaka has become a piece of the Law of Cycles, the universal law established by Madoka Kaname that preserves the souls of dying magical girls. As Madoka feared that the Incubators would attempt to imprison or control her when she went to take Homura's soul (as Homura had been kept on the verge of becoming a witch inside a Incubator-created containment field), she grants Sayaka and another piece of the law of cycles, Nagisa Momoe, parts of her power to keep them safe within Homura's barrier.
In the barrier, Sayaka initially plays along and acts like everything is normal, but once Homura fights Mami Tomoe in an attempt to kill Nagisa (thinking her to be the Witch responsible for the barrier), Sayaka saves and confronts her. Sayaka expresses sympathy for the witch, to Homura's horror, before revealing that she is both Sayaka Miki and Oktavia von Seckendorff, and disappearing before Homura can attack. She later appears once Homura fully transforms into a witch, guiding Madoka, Kyouko, and Mami in their fight to save Homura. She watches as Homura rips Madoka Kaname's soul out of the Law of Cycles.
In the new world created by Homura, Sayaka, uniquely among the magical girls, retains her memory of what Homura did, and confronts her about it. Even as Homura manually erases her memory, she swears that she will never forget that Homura Akemi is a demon.
==Personality==
Sayaka is a bit tomboyish and acts heroic. She is devoted to her friends, especially when she makes the contract right away and saves Madoka. However, she also has a large girlish side in that she loves classical music, and is very interested in romance.
She loves and cares deeply for Kyosuke and is extremely hurt when he chooses Hitomi. This is why she falls into deep despair, as a result corrupting her soul gem and ultimately making her a witch. When she listens to Kyosuke one last time, (unless in the new universe by some people's theories she can watch over the universe with Madoka then she may listen to Kyosuke play again), she actually feels glad and proud for him that Hitomi will make him happy. By Rebellion, she seems to have moved on from him, going so far as to refer to him as 'Captain Oblivious' for never noticing her feelings.
Sayaka is also a very righteous girl; unlike Madoka who believes conflict between Magical Girls is wrong, Sayaka doesn't care if her opponent is a witch or a Magical Girl, outright saying that she became a Magical Girl not to fight witches, but so she could have the strength to do what's right and protect the people she cares about, even if it means fighting people who aren't witches. She stayed true to this even after learning about Kyoko's past, although she did feel sorry for her.
After learning the truth about magical girls, Sayaka begins regarding herself as a zombie, and grows insecure of everything she believed in up to that point, shown as she is too ashamed of what she became to try and approach Kyousuke. As Sayaka's ideals are put against the reality of her wish's consequences and the stress of fighting, her view of the world is slowly corrupted. She becomes hateful and distrustful towards others, including Madoka, whom she lashes out at and accuses of being selfish. She starts to wonder what she had been fighting for all that time, slowly becoming an empty shell, until succumbing to despair and becoming a witch.
After joining the Law of Cycles, Sayaka is a lot more patient and understanding than she was previously. Having regained her memories of previous timelines, she has fully moved on from Kyosuke Kamijou, and appears to instead pursue either a romantic or a platonic relationship with Kyouko Sakura. Unlike her previous antagonism, Sayaka expresses sympathy and understanding for Homura, and subtly tells her not to blame herself for becoming a witch. She still retains a fiery temper and stubborness, however, as her first action after the universe was rewritten was confronting and attacking the person who did it, with little regards to her own safety.
==Trivia==
*Gen Urobuchi describes Sayaka as the main character of Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
*The first character in her last name (美) means "beauty". The last character (樹) means "tree". Her name could also be written (幹) "tree trunk" or (神酒) "sake offered to the gods."
*Her last name can also be used as a first name.
*Her first name is written in hiragana, which has no special meaning. The word sayaka (さやか【明か／清か】, usually written in hiragana) can mean "clear", "fresh", or "bright" in Japanese.
*The official Chinese translation uses (沙耶香) as the kanji for her name. The characters also have no particular meaning (沙 "sand" 耶 "question mark" 香 "fragrant") and are used mainly for their phonetic value in Japanese to represent the word sayaka as a name. No official kanji of her name exists in the original Japanese version.
*She describes herself as having been born "petit bourgeois," which is French for "petty bourgeois". This would mean that her family is at least from the middle class, but is by no means from the upper class (despite the fact that, if Japan has even less living space in the future than it does now, her family's apartment is far larger than a normal middle-class family could afford).
*Although her character design depicts her with a two-edged sword she is seen using a saber in the anime. The manga uses the sword from her original design.
*According to recent interview, Sayaka had her personality based on a 'Gen Urobuchi character'.
**In episode 5, Madoka said she always act before thinking twice, and is easy to conflict with others. But on the other side, she is kind, courageous and willing to work hard for others. Homura commented her good side is fatal for a magical girl. Her kindness makes her ignorant, her courage makes her careless, and she'll get no return on her hard work for others.
*When Sayaka transformed in the train in Episode 8, the fate of the two hosts was open to interpretation in the original scenario by Gen Urobuchi. While Shinbo has recently confirmed that Sayaka did not kill the two men in the anime, they were in fact killed in the manga version.
**The train conversation scene between the two hosts is actually based on a real event that Gen Urobuchi witnessed.
*Shinbo stated in an interview that he liked Sayaka and asked Gen Urobuchi if something could be done to get her back to life but Urobuchi said that was impossible. Despite this, she was brought back in Rebellion.
*Sayaka's sword has a scabbard but was never used in the anime.
*Sayaka's hairpin disappears when she transforms into puella magi form.
**According to Official Guidebook, both Shinbo and Aoki think it would be better to attach something instead. Aoki has tried adding another hairband with something in star or ball shape, but that would make her look like playing in a serious fight so she gave up such idea. Urobuchi said a cloak is flashy enough, however.
*Eri Kitamura (Sayaka) likes the company of other seiyuu, besides Ai Nonaka (Kyoko).
*According with Gen Urobuchi, even if Sayaka won over Kyousuke, she would never be happy with him.
*Her seiyuu, Eri Kitamura, also provided the voice of another magical girl whose first name was Miki and whose theme color was blue, in the anime series 'Fresh PreCure'.
*In an interview, when asked about Madoka's casual clothes, Shinbo said that he forgot to have a scene where Sayaka also wear casual wears. He feels a little regret.
*A prominent screamo band on Bandcamp named Dreamwell released a song on their album Modern Grotesque titled "Sayaka" as its sole lead single. The resemblence it has both lyrically and instrumentally to Sayaka Miki's downward spiral is not a coincidence, as the official Bandcamp webpage says "Literally about a f---ing anime". This is likely to be noticed by Madoka fans, but others who are unfamilar with the franchise probably will think nothing of it since it ties in with the rest of the album, which is fairly repetitive and consistently matches up with screamo lyrical themes and uses poetic lyrics that are equally introspective and full of imagery.
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