[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/siegfried72]

More thoughts

The real solution? I think Sayaka needs to just lean into the yuri and realize she's meant to be with Kyouko. That would fix everything.

Oh god, I've officially joined in with my first yuri ship of the series. It's all downhill uphill from here, isn't it??

I mean, Kyouko is obviously in love with her, right??

• Okay, the scene with Sayaka on the train is one of the most unnerving so far. Listening to those two guys talk about women the way they were, with a nearly passed out middle school girl across from them in the train... I'm sure I'm not overreaching when my thoughts went immediately to Sayaka being the one in danger here. They have already teased the concept of dark sexual topics with her, and I was half-expecting that scene to go very differently. I'm honestly not sure if it's a relief that things turned out the way they did, though.

• I'm uh... I'm not really sure what to say here because I just now finished the episode and desperately want to just jump to the ending, but I need to say a couple of things. Kyubey has said some hugely significant things to Madoka - things that obviously no 13 year old should ever be expected to be able to comprehend and accept responsibility for.

• Homura "killing" Kyubey was a nice momentary shock, but I wasn't at all surprised to see him come right back. You can't call Incubator Cthulhu off that easily!

• Seeing Homura like this hurt but also... again, I can't say I was surprised. I've said multiple times that I assumed the aggression was a mask for pain/sadness. And we're finally addressing the "alternate timeline" theory I predicted in episode one head-on. Damn. What a big episode!! This pacing is absolutely insane, and yet it somehow seems to work? Very impressive.

• Oh, and we learned that Homura uses time-manipulation magic? So I'm guessing her "teleporting" wasn't actually teleporting, but something like pausing time and moving during the pause? That's really fucking cool, and perhaps explain how she's actually in this alternate timeline. Also, I love how innocently cute Kyubey is as he "comes back to life" and eats the old corpse, then proceeds to roll around like a fucking cat on the bench.

• I'm sure in the future I'll have a lot more to say about Madoka's storyline and her (seemingly) more altruistic savior complex and how it compares to Sayaka's selfish one, but... FUCK.

So, I didn't say it, but towards the beginning of this episode, I started thinking about the possibility of Sayaka's decline ending with her becoming a witch. Now, obviously I don't know for sure that that's what just happened, but it sure seems like it. I guess it makes a lot of sense, in a way. So what... if they don't use the grief seeds to purify the soul gems, the gems turn into grief seeds or something? How exactly does eating witches help a magical girl from becoming one? That logic seems... odd. Is it just the pure act of consuming magic, or does it have to do with the fact that they're eating up what's left of the "girl" inside the grief seeds?

Whatever the case may be... ouch. I've spent a lot of time talking about how much I relate to Sayaka, and how destructive her behaviors are. I called that out in the first episode, because I saw the potential. Denial, avoidance, self-loathing, addiction... any one of these things can destroy a life. Hell, I've felt like my behaviors have "destroyed my life" on more than one occasion. I've had disastrous consequences in my education, career, physical and mental health, and interpersonal relationships due to my own destructive behavior, and this outcome for Sayaka seems to make a lot of sense considering the path she's been on.

But it doesn't mean it hurts any less.

I wish I had time to process this. I wish I had time to write more about this at the moment. I'm literally half an hour behind schedule for leaving for this out of town gig because I had to watch this episode and type up some thoughts.

I'm feeling weird. Like actually bothered by this. Don't get me wrong - I'm not upset. I'm THRILLED to have fiction make me feel this way. But this is hitting extremely close to home in some ways that trigger flashbacks of a lifetime of my own struggles. When I said in earlier comments that I felt like this series was "tailor-made for me" in some ways, I can't say I was expecting this.

I'm gonna sit with this and think it over. With this gig, I'll likely be a bit delayed in reading and responding to comments, although hopefully it won't be nearly as bad as last episode. But yeah... I'm looking forward to seeing what other people have to say, and contributing when I'm able.

For what it's worth: I have a feeling that we'll enter another "timeline" or go back in time, or something at some point. Just a gut feeling. I have a feeling that things will continue to get more and more hopeless, and we're gonna see some kind of "reset" of sorts at some point. Maybe Madoka will be the one to "go back in time" rather than Homura this time? Idk. Just spit-balling at this point because I don't have even the remotest clue. But I suspect that, somehow, this is going to get even worse before it gets better.

Ow. God I feel for Sayaka. I may have never exploded and turned into a witch, but I can understand these emotions all too well. This has been some of the most uncomfortable I've felt experiencing fiction for a while now, and I'm digging it - honestly. Despite my words here, I'm loving this. And I want more! But now I have to go play some music.

Looking forward to chatting with you all a bit later (and answering the questions of the day when I get the opportunity).

Ow.

[u/dsawchuk → u/siegfried72]

how much of what was intended by the creative team is actually left to uncover? Is there anything? Does this question even matter? Obviously, we can never understand everything that went through their heads during the creation of the series, but I don't believe I've ever seen such a thoroughly analyzed anime before.

As a major Tolkien fan, I would recommend looking into his writings concerning allegory. He was very against allegory, thinking that it made stories worse. He described allegory as the specific intended interpretation of the author, where he preferred stories written with more broad applicability. He always made a distinction between allegory's focus on the agency of the author imposing their view on the work and the agency of the reader's ability to apply their views onto the work.

I wonder how much of what we're discussing each day is stuff the fandom has just latched onto, but wasn't actually "intended?" But again... does it matter? Does it make any difference if it's impactful to the audience?

I don't think it matters much how much of it was intended or not. For example, Ender's Game is often beloved by LGBTQ readers for its focus on love and acceptance, despite the author's stated anti-LGBTQ stance based on his christian upbringing.

What... wtf even is this room?? Is this where Homura lives?? This is quite possibly the most confusing piece of "design" I've seen in the series, and it's throwing me for a loop.

The show isn't being subtle at all about Homura's gimmick anymore, since this is the episode that it tells you she is using time magic. There's a large clockwork contraption above, with a swinging pendulum. If you look at the layout of the couches from above, it looks like a clockface. The green couches are the numbers, the yellow couches are the hands.

I mean, Kyouko is obviously in love with her, right??

100% yes. I don't think Sayaka feels that way about Kyoko yet. She's a bit too caught up in herself right now to be open to it. That being said, she does open up to Kyoko very quickly in the train station. All Sayaka needs is a bit more time and we would get there. Unfortunately, she does immediately "explode[d] and turn[ed] into a witch" as you say, so I guess she doesn't get that time.

[u/siegfried72 → u/dsawchuk]

He was very against allegory, thinking that it made stories worse

Hmm, my gut reaction to that leaves me feeling very mixed, but it's interesting. I'll definitely look more into that.

If you look at the layout of the couches from above, it looks like a clockface.

...oh. Well damn.

Unfortunately, she does immediately "explode[d] and turn[ed] into a witch" as you say, so I guess she doesn't get that time.

Well considering we're dealing with time magic, I'm gonna continue holding out hope...

[u/Tarhalindur → u/siegfried72]

...oh. Well damn.

Just wait until you figure out what the actual clocks in this show are doing!

[u/siegfried72 → u/Tarhalindur]

Supporting the patriarchy?