Yeah, but I mean, Mami won that one time in the Rebellion. Sorta.
Actually, I still can't understand wholly what the fudge happened when Homura and Mami fought.
Personally, I felt like the fight made no sense at all. I mean, think about it:
1) Mami somehow had laid out invisible ribbons throughout her apartment, or at least one that sneaked its way onto Homura's leg and tied itself there. And yet, this ribbon could not even be sensed or heard by Homura, a veteran meguca. Mami, for some reason, was so paranoid and suspicious of Homura
despite having no reason at all to be such, and giving no indications of it at all to someone who knows her better than vice-versa.
2) When Mami first revealed the ribbon she'd tied to Homura's leg, Homura did the obvious and tried to break the ribbon off from her leg. Except it didn't work; the ribbon was apparently indestructible. I'm sorry,
what? This is even more egregious, because near the end of the fight, Homura
easily breaks that same ribbon with a single shot from a small caliber pistol.
3) Mami had been fighting with a full-body ribbon clone the entire time, apparently doing
everything remotely and from a distance.
4) Mami had been matching Homura's rate of fire from submachine guns with muskets. This is definitely not the kind of skillset she showed in the anime, where her style was more about huge volleys or making set of muskets and firing them manually (by hand) while maneuvering. And not only was she doing that, she was
literally hitting each of Homura's bullets head on, individually.
While in timestop, which she has no experience with.
5) Mami's ribbon clone was frozen in timestop. Homura shoots it in the leg. Then she unfreezes timestop, and the clone promptly explodes into ribbons, which tie up Homura. Question: why didn't she fight like this in
every fight? Not only is it
massively safer, it's not like she cares much about efficiency in the first place, given her tendency to use Tiro Finale on a single goddamn weak familiar.
6) Why didn't Mami just use the ribbon she'd already attached to Homura's leg to throw her off-balance and drag her over into more ribbons, where she'd be secured easily? Why bother with the huge gunfight? Why was Mami even trying to match Homura's gunfire with her own, when she could have just thrown massive numbers of ribbons at her to tie her up instead?
7) Why would Homura bother with shooting at Mami while in timestop when Mami is also in the timestop? The bullets wouldn't reach her anyway, because they'd freeze in the timestop, by which point Mami would already have moved out of the way.
8) Why would Homura bother interrogating Bebe when Bebe clearly couldn't even talk at all to begin with?
Yeah, it was a cool fight scene and all when you didn't actually think about it, but the whole point of Homura's power is that there
isn't a fight unless the enemy is capable of surviving whatever firepower Homura throws at it/her and she isn't expecting that to be insufficient--or the amount of firepower she can bring to bear in total isn't enough (like Walpurgisnacht). Oriko is kind of an exception because she could see the future
and had the advantage of Kirika's selective time-manipulation employed liberally all over the place.
In my opinion, Sayaka stabbing her sword into Homura's shield lighting-fast to jam the timestop mechanism was far cooler (and didn't make me scratch my head in confusion).
But yeah, Homura is generally far, far more dangerous and scarier of an enemy to have than Sabrina. Because while Sabrina is like The Juggernaut, Homura is the kind of assassin that could be pointing a gun at the back of your head at any given moment, anywhere. She could be planting explosives all over your magical building. If you are vulnerable to her for even an instant, she might just utilize that instant to kill you without you even seeing it coming.
Frankly, Homura and Kirika make for a
terrifying combination, since the only thing that could really protect you from the former would be strong, omnipresent defensive magic, which is exactly what the latter can hard-counter.
