Yeah, that final exchange is my favorite part, oddly enough. Seeing us finally get through to her, especially in such a horrible manner, stuck in my mind well enough that I went hunting for that scene to reread it after I was done. It's stellar quality.
I've seen many, many antagonists do a heel-face-turn or get redeemed without any of the necessary buildup to make it believable. Starlight Glimmer is the most egregious example, but not the only one, and that failure is why she works better as a villain than a hero. Screwing up this kind of character arc can even ruin a story as a whole, that's how important and tetchy it is.
Here, however? Oriko's change of heart is not even remotely dubious or unjustified. We rubbed her face in what had to be her worst nightmare, told her we'd make it happen if she didn't stop being so stubborn, and it worked. The QM managed to strike the perfect balance between, "Oh God what have we done," and, "Finally, it's about time!" and the end result is a scene so good I'm having trouble describing it. The only thing I can do is stare in open awe. That, and be happy that Bestbuddy! got to live and brighten our days going forward.
Yeah, it was very tense. It's important to remember that the quest updates on IRL time, while in-quest time tends to travel far, far faster. Thus, while the hunt had seemed long to Homura and Mami, to Sabrina, the entire thing had been going on for weeks, and every time Oriko was being her mysterious, uncooperative self, everyone's patience frayed further and further. Then there was the fact that Homura was 100% for executing Oriko and Kirika, and we knew that the only way we'd be able to convince her to allow a different outcome would be if Oriko actually cooperated and dropped the mysteriousness. In an act of desperation, exasperation, exhaustion, frustration, and anger, we went "enough with this bullshit--if she doesn't drop the act with this, then there's no chance she'll ever be straightforward and cooperative, and we can move on from this mess for good". And Oriko was reminded, rather pointedly, that a common fate of Magical Girls is something
far worse than death, and so her martyr complex and suicidal tendencies got a cold, hard slap to the face about the reality of the situation. Any notion that she and Kirika would get a quick, dignified death with Oriko having the last laugh (well, by appearances, anyway) was shattered, because the one girl that Oriko could not predict at all reliably had the power and the motivation to inflict a fate far worse than death on the one person she loved while forcing her to watch.
Of course, there is quite a bit of irony involved: Sabrina never even considered following through with the threat, no matter what Oriko said or did, and yet, because Sabrina was the only one Oriko could not really predict, she had no way of knowing that (especially because Sabrina had only existed for a few days at that point, and so had no real history to draw upon for her character). It would be Sabrina who would treat her and Kirika the best and most sympathetically--from the get-go, too. Indeed, Sabrina would be the one stubbornly trying to help Oriko and shake her out of her suicidal outlook and fatalism.
And though Sabrina sincerely apologized for what she threatened to do that night, she never (despite my vote on the matter...) explained that the threat had been a bluff all along--our last, desperate attempt to get her to speak straightforwardly and cooperate so that we could convince Homura to spare them. But there is, at least, the consolation in the fact that Oriko got to see repeatedly that Sabrina would, time and again, directly intervene in the problems and conflicts of others to help them or save them, even when it put herself in danger. And how Sabrina would be rather shockingly merciful to her defeated enemies, even the ones who had tried to kill her. Indeed, Sabrina's experimentation into de-witching magical girls (and desire to prevent the witching-out of other magical girls, even ones she doesn't know) illustrate how she really feels about magical girls becoming Witches.
Both Oriko and Kirika are very awesome and memorable characters, and this quest has by far the best rendition of them I've ever seen.
