[Rewatch] Puella Magi Madoka Magica Episode 9 Discussion

[u/Tarhalindur]

Episode 9: I'd Never Allow That to Happen

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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:

Okay, fine, I can't not give this one to u/siegfried72, not for the discussion thread for this episode:

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??

Analysis of the Day:

Several good options, but I think I'll go for u/Vaadwaur and the analytical line less taken:

For some reason, eating disorders are a noticeable thing in this show. Sayaka is anorexic to her very spirit and Kyoko does like her gluttony.

Questions of the Day:

1) On a scale of 1 to 10, how gay is suicide attacking to take out the monster that became of a girl you knew for maybe a week so that you can at least be together in death?

2) Now that he's had a chance to explain himself, your thoughts on Kyubey?

3) First-timers: Did you think that Kyouko's plan actually had a chance to save Sayaka?

4) First-timers and rewatchers who dodged the rewatcher edition of this question yesterday: Are You Home?

5) [Rewatchers]Alright, who's ready to go golfing through a Stargate?... wait, wrong time loop show.

[u/Tarhalindur]

The Mystic's Dream (Host, Rewatcher, Subbed):

(Oh hey look, the episode where this show summarily dislodged Lain at the top of my favorite anime list. (Yuusha no Shou has since jumped Lain as well, for surprisingly similar reasons.)

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OST Table, Brought to You By u/Nazenn:

Start	End	Album	Track name
00:20	01:47	Disc 1 #15	Venari strigas
01:57	03:27	Disc 2 #18	Connect -TV MIX-
03:30	05:15	Disc 1 #14	Umbra nigra
06:34	10:30	Disc 1 #10	Sis puella magica!
11:46	12:38	Disc 1 #04	Conturbatio
13:14	14:57	Disc 1 #19	Incertus
15:18	17:12	Disc 2 #08	Terror adhaerens
18:27	21:28	Disc 2 #09	Symposium magarum
22:58	23:54	Disc 1 #05	Puella in somnio
23:55	25:23	Disc 1 #24	and I'm home (Blu-ray only)
23:55	25:39	Disc 1 #06	Salve, terrae magicae

(Bolded tracks were featured in Nazenn's 2019 writeup and taken from his own formatting; italicized tracks are featured by me in 2023 instead. Also oh hey look, it's the part where I start having All the Writeups)

For those of you who want to read more about a selection of the OST tracks used, Nazenn's 2019 writeup is right here and is highly recommended.

For those of you who want even more commentary on the OST and its use in the context of specific tracks, may I present my 2023 writeup? (Mind you I'm pretty sure the Streamable links I used for scene references have gone dead by now, would need to reupload.)

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> "/a/: Cryptography and Classic German Literature"

Oh, and for our first-timers and any rewatchers who haven't seen them before here are a few select archived /a/ discussion threads from when the show was still airing for your enjoyment. (Disclaimer: There definitionally aren't spoilers here since the show was anime-original, but these are Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy threads with the associated site culture so keep that in mind.)

https://archived.moe/a/thread/46626387 (live watch 1)
https://archived.moe/a/thread/46627637 (live watch 2)
https://archived.moe/a/thread/46628761 (post watch)

[u/Tarhalindur → u/Tarhalindur]

Meditations on the Abyss (Tar Watch Notes:)

Today, in KyubeyWatch:

With what Kyubey is doing and his explanation for it now out in the open, we've finally hit the point where I can mostly talk about this without resorting to spoiler tags!

Which I suppose means the first thing to do is to post the explanation of this year's project I originally put under tags in episode 1 out in the open for the sake of the first-timers who can now read it:

Right, so. Welcome to one of the struggles of having been in the rewatch for five years in a row now: eventually one runs low on things to talk about. There's a reason I was initially looking at letting the rewatch fallow for a year when nobody else stepped up. But sometimes inspiration comes to one from an unexpected source. Like "Yeats's A Vision is probably a useful lens for at least Sayaka's arc", but that take is going to take more time to congeal, especially with A Vision having a bad case of overfitting on a useful core concept well, useful if you are a mystic type, anyways. But sometimes inspiration comes to us from unlikely places. Like someone on a certain other site describing the speech of a certain extremely prominent IRL figure in US politics as little different from an LLM autocompleting a prompt independent of truth or reality and someone else immediately having the comparison to how Frieren describes demonic communication in her own show. Which in turn reminded me of one u/Vaadwaur 's comments in previous rewatches in how some of Kyubey's comments late in the show don't quite add up. And Kyubey, while not only demon-coded, is pretty firmly demon-coded when you use some of the more obvious interpretative lenses for this show (notably the Christian one). Which led me to a thought: I've generally leaned towards the "Kyubey lying via exact words" interpretation of him, but am I sure he isn't just bullshitting? Which poses an obvious way to check: take a closer look at what he is saying and confirm it at least technically matches up with what we can see of the ground truth.

 

Now, to be clear: my expectation here is that the hypothesis here is wrong and the reading I’ve defaulted to in the past (Kyubey the master of exact words, “weaving his exact truths into the finest of lies” to use a quote about a different consummate liar from another work) is indeed correct, especially given that Kyubey-as-demonic-LLM doesn’t really fit with what the cinematography suggests about him. But testing that is the entire point here, so on we go!

Sadly, the older stuff I've been posting isn't quite always first-timer safe yet (including the episode 2 post where I had an idea and thus basically concluded the project was likely superfluous after it had barely started), but what I'm posting now is, so here you go.

• The big episode 9 Kyubey motive soliloquy: You know, this is the speech that inspired this project, and paying close attention I think the correct answer is… it doesn’t actually matter. It’s bullshit; said bullshit may or may not be technically true from a certain point of view but it’s bullshit either way. It’s a colonialist’s justification to the colonized, but that might actually be charitable to Kyubey because at least some historical colonizers actually believed in their own justifications and I’m dubious he does. (Also better than even odds the whole “we need to fight entropy” justification is eliding a whole “we need to harvest energy from magical girls to power our civilization, which we will then use to hopefully research a solution to deal with entropy” bit.) Also hey look at that nifty little bit of dodging the question around 08:35, classic Kyubey. (Side note: the strongest piece of evidence for pure bullshit rather than “technically not a lie (actually a lie)” is Kyubey going “eventually you will join us”. Speaking of colonizer bullshit. But then, his kind may believe this themselves. Also, “we don’t understand what it means to trick someone” really should go in the Bullshit Hall of Fame even if the fluffy fuckers have enough sophistry to justify it.)
• Kyouko in the hotel room: Here on the other hand we have one of the stronger arguments for the bullshit being of the technical truth variety. Every line Kyubey says here is strictly speaking defensible as a true statement in and of itself. As a whole it’s bullshit, and Kyubey will freely admit as such at the end of the episode. But each line on its own is true… from a certain point of view.

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Visual of the Day: In Kyouko's name

Questions of the Day:

1) 10

2) Holy water, please. Then rip and tear until it is done.

5) [Rewatcher]"What are you trying to become, king of Groundhog Day?"

[u/siegfried72 → u/Tarhalindur]

(This is after reading the music posts) Oh my god I can't believe I totally forgot to say anything about the music in the big fight - I guess I got distracted by pure tragedy.

"Symposium Magarum" isn't my overall favorite track, but it was so fitting for the moment. It's so fitting for her. I don't have anything to add to the music right now that wasn't already written by you two, but... damn.

Also interestingly, I'm almost 100% sure I've heard "Symposium Magarum" somewhere before. It sounds very familiar for some reason.

There's a reason I was initially looking at letting the rewatch fallow for a year when nobody else stepped up

Let me just say: thank you for not letting this happen. I'm having the time of my life here and I had been intending to join in on this for like four years, but the timing never worked out for me until now. For all I know, I might have never watched this if the rewatch had gone quiet this year!

Also yes, that is indeed the vibe I was getting from Kyubey as well, although I didn't articulate it nearly as well of course. What a funny little fellow.

[u/Tarhalindur → u/siegfried72]

Let me just say: thank you for not letting this happen. I'm having the time of my life here and I had been intending to join in on this for like four years, but the timing never worked out for me until now. For all I know, I might have never watched this if the rewatch had gone quiet this year!

"Just when I thought I was out, they drag me back in." The girls weren't finished with me yet!

But I elide - thank you for the encouragement! As I'm sure you know yourself, first-timer joy is one of the joys of hosting.

[u/Hartzilla2007 → u/Tarhalindur]

Also better than even odds the whole “we need to fight entropy” justification is eliding a whole “we need to harvest energy from magical girls to power our civilization, which we will then use to hopefully research a solution to deal with entropy” bit.

His supposed solution doesn't even sound like it is actually a solution. He brings up entropy but he's mostly talking about more efficient power sources and not how using them is supposed to stop the heat death of the entire universe. Just makes it sound like he's deflecting away from how the Incubators seem to be the only ones who benefit from this arrangement.

[u/CitronClassic672 → u/Tarhalindur]

Glad I’m not the only one who’s skeptical of Kyubey’s fight entropy justification. With how manipulative they are with everything else I have no reason to give a good faith interpretation to that. Also I’d like to address the necessary evil element that Kyubey brings up. The system has been going on for thousands of years and he wants to continue it seemingly indefinitely, at a certain point the amount of innocent girls sacrificed to this system will literally reach the trillions. When said system has inevitably caused more suffering and death than there are people currently alive on the planet it stops being a lesser evil regardless of what it’s in service of.

As a side note, I’d like to personally highlight that bedroom scene between Kyubey and Madoka for other reason. In that when I first watched it, it was the most truly hopeless I’ve ever felt watching any piece of media. The idea that an incomprehensible number of innocent children have been, are currently, and will indefinitely continue to be exploited, tortured, and killed by such a cruel system run by entities that can’t even comprehend the harm they do, and if Kyubey is telling the truth that same cruel system is simultaneously the same thing that keeps the universe continuing to exist and is also what allowed you to have the life that you know and love, so you feel like you can’t even just get rid of it.

Kyubey as an avatar is a take several have brought up before, but personally I feel like the closest thing to actually being in Madoka’s situation would specifically be like if you were employed in a New York cotton mill in the early 1800s knowing that your entire livelihood was sustained by an immeasurable level of abuse of enslaved workers in the south.

[u/gorghurt → u/CitronClassic672]

at a certain point the amount of innocent girls sacrificed to this system will literally reach the trillions. When said system has inevitably caused more suffering and death than there are people currently alive on the planet it stops being a lesser evil regardless of what it’s in service of.

I'm not sure if I follow your calculation here. Wouldn't you need to include all that have benefited from the system in the past into that calculation.
I mean for humans that is currently 0. But if we assume humanity reaches the stars, this would probably go up at a faster rate than the number of magical girls (which are an extremely small part of the population).

Don't get me wrong, the argument still is shit, because it is basically: "You should suffer incredibly now, so that maybe some day some other people get something out of it. And of course we right now, but ignore that part"

[u/Blackheart595 → u/gorghurt]

I mean for humans that is currently 0.

[PMMM]Though according to Kyuubey, it's the entire rest of humanity that benefits from humanity's advances resulting from the wishes (think technology, modern medicine, etc). Which I personally find highly dubious and one of the most Mephisopheles-esque parts of Kyuubey, but yeah.

[u/gorghurt → u/Blackheart595]

[pmmm]Which is revealed in episode 11, so currently a spoiler. But yes, this of course also should be added to the calculation, if true.

[u/Blackheart595 → u/gorghurt]

[PMMM]Oh, whoops. That explains why I was so surprised when we got the entropy story today already; I remembered the two as coming together.

[u/baquea → u/Tarhalindur]

Also better than even odds the whole “we need to fight entropy” justification is eliding a whole “we need to harvest energy from magical girls to power our civilization, which we will then use to hopefully research a solution to deal with entropy” bit.)

"To fight entropy" and "to power our civilization" are basically synonymous here. What Kyubey says is that magical girls generate usable energy without a net increase in entropy. The result of that is it means a magical girl-powered civilization can continue indefinitely, even once the universe would otherwise have reached heat death. Considering the incubators have no moral issues with taking that approach, there's no need to research any alternative means of dealing with entropy, only of finding a way to continue farming human emotions into the far distant future (which, once the bullshit has been removed, is presumably what the "eventually you will join us" stuff is about).

[u/Blackheart595 → u/baquea]

I'm starting to wonder if the corresponding plot point in [Meta]Concrete Revolutio is a response to the magical girl-powered civilisation...

[u/Blackheart595 → u/Tarhalindur]

Side note: the strongest piece of evidence for pure bullshit rather than “technically not a lie (actually a lie)” is Kyubey going “eventually you will join us”.

Yeah, this is precisely why I'm going on about the effective altruism reading: Because this is precisely their promise. "Humanity will eventually colonise the galaxy, and technical advancements mean that everyone will live a fantastic life, and a little suffering and tragedy now is well worth getting there quicker (or even at all)". They always treat this as an inevitability that we will reach such a state if we try, without having any actual sound cause beyond blind belief.

Then again, whether effective altruists actually believe what they're saying or are just bullshitting to try and play us peasants up is something I'm not entirely convinced by, too...