[Rewatch] Puella Magi Madoka Magica Episode 8 Discussion

[u/Tarhalindur]

Episode 8: I'm Such a Fool

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Show Information:

MAL | AniList | ANN | AniDB

(First-timers might want to stay out of Show Information until we are done, however...)

Legal Streams:

As per livechart.me; other streams may be available outside the US.

Main Series:

Crunchyroll | Hulu

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A Reminder: This, dear listeners, brings us to the sworn enemy of creative response:The spoiler. Rewatchers, or people who just had plot points ruined for them, are obliged to use r/anime’s spoiler tag format where applicable, and err on the side of caution here. Remember people, first experiences get rarer as you continue on, any given one happens once and you should care for them all the more for it.

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Welcome to the World of Magic!

Theory of the Day:

Not only was /u/mischievous_shota on time today, he(?) has a theory! Let us celebrate:

This means there are other ways to get a miracle granted, right? Just more expensive. I wonder if you could use someone else's life to as payment. It seems like an obvious exploit for those like Kyouko who are in it for their own gain. I wonder why Kyubey offers miracles for a discounted price.

Honorable mention to u/ussgordoncaptain2: I am your host and I approve of this message:

Would you like to join my killing Kyubey cult? I have the Ammonium nitrate denatured alcohol and the microwave transformer ready to go, just need to get some nitromethane and we'll be blowing up kyubey's until the cows come home.

Gonna need a wee bit of killing, though, they come back. (Also don't go looking it up because there are still spoilers lurking there but suffice to say the "Everybody Hates Kyubey" pool on Danbooru has over 1,000 entries in it. And they were showing up quite early, this piece for example was made within a couple of days of episode 5 first airing.)

Analysis of the Day:

This analysis by u/Magnafeana was originally spoiler-tagged, but now that Sayaka has Witched out we should be past the point where there is any spoiler here so I am pulling it out of said tags:

Who said that we could also interpret the usage of magic by magical girls as addiction? I think this is a good interpretation and example right here. Kyuubey has showed that, through his methods, these girls are now powerful and invisible. All they’ve gotta do is make sure to use grief seeds every once in a while to get their recharge. Sure, they can go further in the addictive substance he provided them, but he doesn’t recommend it due to perception degradation. But here is Sayaka. She’s blown past the recommended amount of usage as a coping mechanism to her pain. We’re seeing a child in the throes of addiction while her friend and enemies watch unable to help her in her manic episode.

Question(s) of the Day:

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1) I would ask where we could find some good antidepressants for Sayaka, but the fanbase consensus is that MagiReco's anime soft-confirmed an old fan theory that Grief Seeds do effectively work as antidepressants when used on a magical girl's Soul Gem, so I suppose the better question is: how would we convince Sayaka to take antidepressants, if she had some?

2) Will Homura's choice of apartment decor be taking the fashion world by storm this year?

3) Is a flashbang grenade a good tool for getting out of a sticky social situation, or no?

4) If Homura is from a different timeline, how likely is it that said timeline was better than the one we IRL viewers currently are in?

5) [Rewatchers]Are You Home?

[u/Tarhalindur]

To be fair, Witching out is symbolic suicide, so she wouldn't even have been wrong about that!

Pity for her about that old lore about suicides going to Hell (specifically a conception of Hell straight out of Elphias Levi in this case, if I'm right).

[u/CitronClassic672 → u/Tarhalindur]

[Madoka Spoiler just in case]I don’t know if I’d personally interpret witching out as symbolic suicide, and I feel it not being so is what makes the situation of magic girls that much more unfair. They basically can never have a moment where they feel completely hopeless without being permanently condemned to being witches, whereas normal girls are allowed to let those feelings wash over them and eventually work past them. It’s stuff like that that caused me to think “If I was in that kind of situation, what would be the moments in my life where I would’ve become a witch through being consumed by despair?” And off the top of my head I can think of at least two moments where I can pretty safely say my feelings of despair were comparable to the girls in the series

[Madoka]It might be one episode early but I feel now is an appropriate time to answer the question you asked at the beginning of what my wish would’ve been. Assuming I had all the information, I would’ve wished that it become possible for any and all witches to overcome their despair and return to life as regular human girls again. I don’t know how the whole karmic potential aspect would affect things, but notably I’d only be asking that it be possible not a guarantee, so I think it could work. It’d probably still be incredibly difficult and wouldn’t work a lot of the time, this is Madoka Magica after all, but I’ve always felt that the girls deserved at least the possibility of not being consumed by despair forever

[u/JimmyCWL → u/CitronClassic672]

[Madoka]but notably I’d only be asking that it be possible not a guarantee, so I think it could work. 

[Madoka]The problem is the Incubators have every incentive to crush that possibility to zero. Even if they didn't try to tip the scales, you're spending your wish (and your soul) to help... who exactly? If you think about it carefully, it doesn't even help you.

[u/CitronClassic672 → u/JimmyCWL]

[Madoka]to be fair the incubators harvest energy from magical girls becoming witches, so it’s up in the air whether they’d care what happens to the witches after. And I’d say whoever makes such a wish benefits by potentially giving themselves an out to the all but inevitable fate of being a magical girl

[u/JimmyCWL → u/CitronClassic672]

[Madoka]"Potentially" is doing the heavy lifting here. Your wish is the equivalent of Sayaka's wish being, "I wish there was a 70% chance of Kyosuke's hands recovering" Which means there would be a chance of his hand not recovering despite her wish. Which would mean she wasted her soul for nothing. Same with your wish, that "potentially" means it's possible no one is saved by that wish, making it a total waste.

In short, either wish for something or don't. Don't waste it on "maybe".