For a girl who has so much potential, Madoka Kaname is someone who looks down on herself a lot.

At the start of the series, Madoka is an average 14 year old girl who only had mundane things to worry about – grades, friends, love letters and the likes. Her life was incredibly average as she lived with her successful mother, her stay at home father and her baby brother. While it was mundane and average, Madoka enjoyed it for the most part, until one faithful day she met a girl trying to kill some weird creature.

From her child-like appearance, it’s safe to say that Madoka is a gentle and friendly girl who would give up her soul to protect others – literally. Due to being a young teenager, Madoka is rather naïve when it comes to growing up, often asking her mother for advice, and she’s rather naïve about the truth of magical girls. She may show signs of naiveness, she isn’t dumb. She’s certainly not the type of girl to rush into things, and usually makes level-headed decisions about certain things, such as what her wish should be. While Mami Tomoe says she should make a wish for herself quickly, Madoka prefers to have more time to think it over. She was able to act fast by taking out a violent Mami in the third timeline when she was about to kill Homura. She may make some level-headed choices, but even Madoka can make some bad choices, such as throwing Sayaka’s soul gem away and caused her body to become comatose (to be fair, she had no idea that would happen, since no one knew what soulgems truly were).

While she does show signs of being naïve, Madoka does have an understanding of humanity. She states to Kyuubey that “even though Incubators have a good reason for collecting energy, they are still humanity’s enemy”, because Incubators use humans for their own good. Madoka has the mentality to deal with the truth and does not fall into despair easily unlike her best friends, who fell slowly into despair and turned into a witch (Sayaka), and who tried to kill all the other girls to make sure they never suffer the terrible fate of becoming a witch (Mami), making her a good representation of hope.

Madoka is a good girl – never causing any trouble, is the aid for the nurse, and is simply quiet. She treats others with respect and gentle care. As stated by her mother, she “never lies and doesn’t do anything bad”. She’s “always doing the right thing” as well, even if she has to make some sacrifices along the way. She is the first one to show kindness towards Homura Akemi, the new transfer student, and would sacrifice herself for her best friend Sayaka Miki if she ever got into any trouble.

While she’s friendly and open to people, the young middle school is rather shy around people. It’s shown that she’s more open and outgoing around other girls her age, calling them by their first name and adding a cute honorific, such as “-chan” or “-san” at the end. When it comes to males, she simply calls them by their family name, attaching the honorific of “-kun”. She tends to get flustered about things easily, such as when Mami and Sayaka gave a friendly laugh at her cute doodles of her as a magical girl and when Sayaka said she would make Madoka her wife.