Deviation Actions
Description
It's time to unveil the next entry in what is now becoming something of a series of "Puella Magi Madoka Magica"-inspired "Star Wars" Jedi lightsabers, as I continue to try out new ideas in an effort to keep the gears in my head turning and to force myself to keep drawing, designing, and being creative. This particular design was something that I had actually started at the beginning of November, with the crude, early design freehanded on 11/01/2015, but which ultimately wasn't finished until the evening of 11/09/2015 - but something that I just had to do, because its existence had already been previously hinted at in one of my previous designs. I am talking, of course, about designing a custom Jedi lightsaber for my favorite magical girl in the entire genre: Mami Tomoe from "Puella Magi Madoka Magica."
Mami is an experienced, intelligent and highly skillful veteran magical girl and in several of the timelines glimpsed in the "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" franchise, she is portrayed as being a mentor to practically all of the other major characters. But her breezy, confident facade masks a tragic history, unbearable loneliness and a deep sense of survivor's guilt. I was certainly not going to leave poor Mami in the lurch all by herself while two of her proteges ran off to Coruscant to become Jedi Knights. But I knew right from the start that this project wasn't going to be like the other two that preceded it. In the past, I had transformed a metal infantry saber and a spear into laser swords, but now I was going to have to do it with a mid-19th century percussion-cap rifled musket - a gun - and an extremely ornate fantasy version, at that. I had my job laid out for me, and I had to tread more carefully than I did with the previous designs - ultimately creating a yellow-bladed, dual-phase, "forked" or "crossguard" lightsaber with an intricately handmade, curved pistol-grip and a complex inner focusing system incorporating a primary crystal, a prism, and two secondary crystals projecting energy beams through two separate emitters.
The first decision I made was made before I even began searching for reference material. I already knew that Mami Tomoe's weapon was designed very differently between the anime and manga versions of the "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" story. The anime version looks far more like a real-life U.S. Civil War-era caplock rifle-musket, while the manga version is curvier and less realistic, with a more fantastical shape - and therefore, it was that manga version that I chose to transform into a Jedi lightsaber. I knew from the start that if I was going to keep the design close enough to the intricately complex shapes and details of Mami's actual weapon to make the resulting lightsaber recognizable as belonging to her, I couldn't allow myself to just try freehanding a design on a whim - and therefore, although I still freehanded the crude, test design using nothing but a gel pen during a break at work (this time, I did it on the back of a blank copy of the blue forms we use at the lab to order add-on tests for patient samples), I kept reference material available to look at while I was doing so.
The result of this was that although I was severely delayed in finishing this project (due to the title for my new car arriving over the past weekend, forcing me to spend much of my time away from work during the last week dealing with errands regarding my car), Mami Tomoe's lightsaber actually went through the fastest and simplest design process out of all the "Madoka Magica" Jedi lightsabers I've created. The lightsabers I designed for Sayaka Miki and Kyoko Sakura both went through a number of major design changes and layout rearrangements before a final design emerged, but Mami's lightsaber went almost straight from the initial design to its final form. Besides using my tools to allow me to draw the lightsaber in a clear and better-defined fashion, the only real changes I made between the two drafts of what would become Mami Tomoe's lightsaber involved some minor adjustments to the layout of the controls and the location of Mami's Soul Gem detail. (As always, the second version I designed will be considered the "official" or finalized version.)
***
Mami Tomoe's distinctive Jedi lightsaber is an example of a "forked" or "crossguard" lightsaber, an extremely rare weapon little seen among the ranks of the Jedi Order. The best-known example of the weapon in "Star Wars" lore is, of course, the double-crossguard lightsaber wielded by the dark warrior Kylo Ren in the upcoming movie "Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens," but the concept of a crossguard lightsaber actually predates "The Force Awakens" as the first lightsaber of this type was actually the personal weapon of Jedi Master (and Order 66 survivor) Roblio Darte - a forked lightsaber with a curved handgrip and two blade emitters, a primary emitter that projected a standard-length blade and a smaller secondary emitter, projecting a dagger-length blade, that protruded from underneath the primary emitter at a 45-degree angle. It was Roblio Darte's lightsaber in particular that Mami Tomoe's lightsaber was directly based on:
starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Crossg…
Like Master Roblio Darte's lightsaber, as well as Form II/Makashi-centric lightsabers such as the ones wielded by Count Dooku (Darth Tyranus) and Asajj Ventress, Mami Tomoe's lightsaber features a hilt with a curved shape. In real life, that's because the hilt was designed using Mami Tomoe's musket as an inspiration, but from an in-universe perspective, there are several clues that can be gleaned from the curvature of the lightsaber's hilt. First, there are ergonomic and martial effects from using a curved hilt design. The curved grip fits more securely into the hand, but causes control of the lightsaber to be more in the palm of the wielder's hand than in the fingers. The curved shape further affects the martial art used with the weapon. It causes the point of the lightsaber's primary blade to be perfectly lined up with the hand, allowing for easier, more efficient thrusts and aiding in the motion of a fluid cut. Furthermore, curved-hilted lightsabers can allow their wielders to deceive and surprise their opponents, as the curved hilt affects the way the weapon moves when swung and allows for rapid, precise changes to be made in the angle of attack. A Jedi wielding a curved-hilted lightsaber can feint an attack toward one target, then quickly change the angle of attack at the last second to attack a different angle - or block an incoming attack, then suddenly riposte to an unexpected target with just a twist of the wrist.
(Mami's lightsaber is also known for being unusually close to a blaster in shape due to its distinctive pistol-grip and gun-like frame. In real life, that's because Mami Tomoe's actual weapon *is* a gun - a mid-19th century percussion-cap rifled musket, to be exact. In universe, perhaps we could say that there is a subtle benefit to be gained from a shape like this: because the weapon looks like a gun, Mami can easily "conceal" it in plain sight by simply carrying it at her waist, disguised as a blaster, should she need to go on undercover missions. Woe betide the smuggler, battle droid, miscreant or Sith acolyte who discovers, too late, that Mami's "weird-looking blaster" isn't a blaster at all. However, I should also note that this weapon *is* a traditional lightsaber and it is *not* a lightsaber/blaster hybrid like Ezra Bridger's weapon seen in "Star Wars: Rebels." I do not believe the technology needed to produce a lightsaber blade can be easily reconfigured to also allow it to fire energy pulses, and Ezra Bridger's weapon seems to support this as its blaster barrel is separate from the blade emitter assembly - and, moreover, I seem to lean toward a portrayal of Mami Tomoe as being more of a traditional Jedi, and the Jedi Order didn't have a very high opinion of blasters.)
Unlike Roblio Darte's or Count Dooku's lightsabers, however, the hilt of Mami Tomoe's lightsaber is longer than the normal 30-35 centimeter lengths of most Jedi lightsaber hilts. This lightsaber hilt measures about 40-45 centimeters overall, technically making it something akin to one of the "long-handled lightsabers" seen in the "Star Wars" Expanded Universe. The expanded length was needed to allow Mami to install a more complex focusing system to power the lightsaber's two blades; in this lightsaber, the primary crystal chamber houses a single large Adegan Kyber crystal that serves as the weapon's main focusing source. The energy produced from the crystal is then channeled through a prism housed near the center of the lightsaber hilt, which splits it into two beams. Each of the resulting beams is then refocused through a smaller Kyber crystal (one per blade) before being projected through one of the lightsaber's two blade emitters as an intensely focused, tight, bright yellow to yellow-white rod-shaped energy blade. The blade produced by the primary emitter, when Dual-Phase mode is not engaged, is a standard lightsaber blade of between 1 and 1.5 meters in overall length, while the blade created by the secondary emitter, which projects outward from underneath the primary blade at an angle, is roughly equivalent in length to the blade of a miniature lightsaber or "lightdagger." It is the combination of these two blades that forms the weapon's defining feature.
The "crossguard lightsaber" is an unusual weapon. It seems to have a number of disadvantages right off the bat. Due to the intricate complexity of its mechanical components, it is much more complicated to design and far more difficult to build than a standard single-bladed lightsaber, requiring a better understanding of the electronics and mechanics that go into lightsaber design, a powerful ability to focus and concentrate, and an especially keen attunement to the living Force to line all the components up correctly and connect everything in such a way that the resulting machine will work, rather than detonating in the wielder's face. The cross-blade affects the martial art used with the weapon, forcing the wielder to think somewhat differently, and consequently, the weapon is much harder to use properly - a liability compounded by the fact that this particular lightsaber also features a Dual-Phase function that suddenly lengthens and widens the primary blade from a thin, rod-shaped 1-meter-long lightsaber blade into a gigantic 3-meter-long "lightclub," but consequently makes it even harder to manipulate in combat. It is not a weapon meant for a novice - but Mami Tomoe is no novice.
In the hands of a skilled veteran like Mami, the "forked" or "crossguard" Jedi lightsaber, with its two blades, provides a number of unique advantages that can more than make up for its deficiencies. Mami Tomoe's lightsaber may have an oversized, extra-long hilt, but because of its internal design and the components used to create it, it is also unusually light, nimble and responsive for a lightsaber hilt of its size and power. The forked cross-blade gives Mami far more flexibility when countering and riposting against enemies, making the lightsaber more effective at catching and deflecting blaster bolts or enemy melee weapons and especially deadly in a lightsaber duel; with the ability to parry an enemy lightsaber with one blade and then quickly shift around to riposte with the other, Mami's lightsaber - when wielded with the speed, lightness, agility and fluid grace shown by its owner - is swift, unpredictable, a nightmare to defend against, and nearly impossible to avoid in close combat. Furthermore, the cross-blade helps to defend Mami from losing a hand to an enemy lightsaber, while also making it dangerously easy for her to take off her opponent's hand at the wrist - a technique the Jedi call "Sun Djem" - by using a simple twist of her own wrists to cut her opponent with the cross-blade.
Mami is speculated to use a unique, idiosyncratic version of Form VI: Niman as her fighting style. Form VI, the "diplomat's form," is a hybrid fighting style that combines elements of Forms I through V into a single discipline. Although it does not particularly excel at any one feature of lightsaber combat (due to the fact that it is not as specialized as the forms it's drawn from), it covers all the bases of lightsaber fighting and presents no obvious weaknesses. It is also noted for being unusually focused on usage of active Force techniques such as Force-pushes or Force-pulls in conjunction with one-handed and two-handed bladework. Mami's own version of Form VI tends to heavily lean toward the fast, light, precise cuts and blade manipulations found in the "dueling" style of Form II: Makashi and the powerful, aggressive, Force-boosted acrobatic maneuvers of Form IV: Ataru. She can seem like a blur in combat, a "controlled cyclone" of speed and power, and her lightsaber's two yellow-white blades almost seem to whirl around the battlefield; her fighting style is a perfect match for this unconventional weapon, which is light enough to be easily used with a one-handed fighting style (sacrificing power and some precision for speed and the ability to use the other hand to perform Force techniques) or a more traditional two-handed fighting style; Mami herself would seem to fluidly switch between both styles as the situation demands, a sort of flexibility that Form VI: Niman practitioners are well-known for.
Like Kyoko Sakura's long-handled lightsaber, Mami Tomoe's lightsaber also features a Dual-Phase capability which can reconfigure it into a "long-bladed" form. However, it is not activated in exactly the same way as Kyoko's was. The trigger for the Dual-Phase mode on Mami's lightsaber is found on the right side of the weapon's hilt and looks like the hammer of most guns. It is easily accessed by the thumb in use, and cocking it downward will suddenly cause the primary blade of the lightsaber to thicken and overextend from one meter long to three meters long, transforming from a standard lightsaber into a giant "lightclub" (a sort of slang term for a number of types of super-sized lightsabers). In this configuration, the blade can be used for a devastating surprise attack from long range, to cut down vast swathes of enemies in one fell swoop, or destroy large or particularly heavily reinforced targets in a single strike; the lightsaber's "official" nickname - "Tiro Finale" (final shot) is partially a reference to the lightsaber's ability to suddenly transform into a giant weapon for a single decisive blow, as well as a reference to "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" itself, where the term is the title Mami Tomoe gives to her finishing move.
However, just like everything else about this unusual weapon, Dual-Phase Mode comes with its own disadvantages. It can only be used for a maximum of 30 seconds before critically draining the lightsaber's power cells, a limitation that prompted Kyoko Sakura to install one extra power cell (for a total of four) into her own long-hilted lightsaber, "Confessio," to give the weapon more power and extend the amount of time that Dual-Phase could be active for. The lightsaber becomes extremely hard to control when the blade is in its "lightclub" form, requiring a great deal of focus, a strong attunement to the Force and enormous strength and concentration to properly use it. Finally - again, because of the enormous power drain - Dual-Phase mode cannot be used when both of the lightsaber's blades are ignited. Only its primary blade has Dual-Phase functionality, and when Dual-Phase mode is triggered, microcircuit pathways built into the lightsaber handle will automatically shut off the smaller cross-blade until Dual-Phase mode is deactivated.
Dual-Phase mode aside, the two blades of this lightsaber cannot be individually ignited or shut off; there is a single, red (a homage to the activation trigger of Count Dooku's lightsaber, which was also a bright red color) palm-activated ignition trigger toward the rear of the handgrip just behind the Dual-Phase switch, and it will ignite both of the lightsaber's blades simultaneously. The lightsaber seems to have few other main controls; like all Dual-Phase lightsabers, it does have a blade width adjustment switch. On the first version of the design, this switch is located in front of the ignition trigger and was designed as a slider switch, while on the second (and finalized) design, it has been transformed into a twist-knob and is now located above the ignition trigger, on the right side of the lightsaber hilt. The lightsaber, unlike most "prequel"-era lightsabers, connects to a hook on Mami's utility belt via a simple metal D-ring (this is also how the lightsabers in the Original Trilogy were carried), and a port for a power source's recharge plug can be found in the rear of the lightsaber's buttstock section at the bottom of the lightsaber hilt. The lightsaber itself seems to built around an alloy-metal cylinder assembly inside an outer shell made up of different materials. The emitter sections needed to be able to resist attacks from enemy lightsabers without being damaged or destroyed, so the long, straight blade emitter section of the lightsaber, including the housings for both emitters, are built from a special white-metal alloy laced with a lightsaber-resistant metal known as Phrik (compare this to Kyoko Sakura's lightsaber, whose entire hilt was built from Electrum-plated Phrik), giving it a highly decorative, shiny, white gleam while also protecting it from enemy lightsaber blades, while the rear half of the hilt, where the primary handgrip was, is encased in a beautiful natural ivory shell with intricate hand-carved details. A stylized version of Mami Tomoe's Soul Gem, visible in her hat when she has transformed into a Magical Girl, completes the ensemble; it is seen on the right side of the weapon in the first version of the design and centrally located on the rear "hump" of the weapon in the second, finalized version.
From an "in-universe" standpoint, the final disposition or "fate" of this particular Jedi lightsaber remains unknown. As mentioned previously in my design for Kyoko Sakura's long-handled Jedi lightsaber, the yellow Adegan Kyber crystal that Kyoko uses as the primary focusing source for her weapon was taken from this one at an unknown time, implying that this lightsaber is currently inactive and may have been disassembled or destroyed. Furthermore, close scrutiny of Kyoko's and Mami's weapons will reveal that although the two lightsabers look nothing alike superficially, there are actually quite a few similarities between them.
1.) Both lightsabers have the yellow blade of a Jedi Sentinel, although in this case, that's because they use the same yellow Kyber crystal.
2.) Both lightsabers have multiple blades pointing in different directions, allowing for greater flexibility in close combat; Mami has 2 lightsaber blades pointing at angles from one another, while Kyoko uses 2 sets of Phrik blades, with 2 blades facing the same direction as the lightsaber blade and the other on the other end of the hilt.
3.) Both lightsabers possess unusually long hilts, classifying them as "long-handled lightsabers."
4.) Both lightsabers use the lightsaber-resistant metal alloy, Phrik, in at least some part of their construction.
5.) Both lightsabers have the ability to trigger a Dual-Phase setting, overextending their primary blades from one to three meters in overall length, a feature generally used as a sudden, decisive strike or a long-range surprise attack.
However, there are significant differences in the fine details of the two lightsabers' designs. Mami's lightsaber achieves its Dual-Phase mode through an elegant combination of a primary focusing crystal, a specially made glass prism, and two smaller secondary crystals modulated through delicately tuned microcircuits, while Kyoko's instead channels extra power from its additional fourth power cell into the Kyber crystal, then modulates the beam through a pair of glass shards and specially-built micro-machinery. Kyoko's concern over increasing power output to the blade also caused her to adjust the output of the Kyber crystal to the point where her lightsaber generates an unstable blade that fizzles, crackles and hisses instead of steadily buzzing and humming, but is significantly more powerful than Mami's more "standard" lightsaber blades, and incorporates one extra power cell to enable these modifications - as well as make Dual-Phase mode last up to 30 more seconds than Mami's lightsaber can accommodate.
Furthermore, Mami's lightsaber was only partially built from Phrik, and its hilt isn't designed to be an "active" part of the weapon, but Kyoko, who was concerned that situations may erupt where she couldn't use her lightsaber blade to fight, decided that she wanted to make sure that all parts of her own lightsaber could be used as active parts of the weapon. Therefore, her entire lightsaber is built from Electrum-plated Phrik, making her entire hilt - as well as the blades attached to it - lightsaber-resistant. She can consequently wield the lightsaber in combat even when its energy blade is not ignited or has shorted out, by using the metal Phrik blades on either side of the saber hilt as melee weapons and transforming the lightsaber hilt into a sort of double-ended axe weapon; Kyoko notably chose to use this design in place of the distinctive forked cross-blade of Mami's lightsaber, which Kyoko never developed the finesse and focus to master; in fact, she seemed to find the cross-blade disconcerting; to her, it was more of a nuisance than an advantage, so she decided to find a way to give her lightsaber some of the same advantages it offered while otherwise eliminating it entirely.
With all of these factors considered, it could be said that to at least some degree, Kyoko Sakura's long-handled lightsaber could be considered to be, essentially, a sort of crude, brutish, overpowered "copy" of Mami Tomoe's forked lightsaber in terms of functionality. The two weapons don't look the same, and they don't behave in quite the same way, but they do many of the same things. It was often observed during the heyday of the Jedi Order that in many cases, Jedi Padawan learners tended to copy the designs of their masters' lightsabers when building their own, so perhaps this may suggest that Kyoko Sakura might have, at one point, been Mami Tomoe's Padawan apprentice. For now, though, their exact relationship - and the circumstances underlying the connection between their two lightsabers - will remain a mystery.
May the Force be with you, Mami-san! 
Yield not to despair, for that is the first step toward the Dark Side...
