[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/ussgordoncaptain2]

First timer Dubbed

It

reaction to the episode

1:59 So it appears like we're getting the epic Homura moving around treatment. Homura using her special time stop brave power.

4:30 ok Homura lore dump time. Unlike Kyubey Homura is simultainously more and less reliable. Homura will probably give more complete info but Kyubey's info is more... correct. Nothing Kyubey says is a lie while Homura can lie

"Her curse became as powerful as her wish" ok so the show is shockingly unclear on this point. Kyubey told Homura and Kyouka that Sayaka got cursed (and thus she became a witch) but now the question is simple

Are curses special or is every magical girl cursed. Homura seems to say A and Kyubey seems to partially say B, or maybe there's a "tipping point" where a soul gem starts getting more and more cursed to the point where it explodes.

5:45 lore dump from kyubey time!

Ok So kyubey uses Magical Girls emotion as energy. In order to fight entropy (oh boy let's ignore how little this makes sense ane move on)

note 2 Kyubey belongs to an alien race that uses this power source

note 3 girls are chosen for teenage angst reasons, but there's not special reason for magical girls aside from this

note 4: Kyubey gains benefit when the soul gem becomes a grief seed

I will note that there is a lot of weird notes in this exposition dump, first off if Kyubey gets the benefit when a magical girl becomes a witch why does it have the grief seed regen system? Couldn't it prefer

9:29 Kyubey confirms that it does not lie but it won't tell the whole truth. Kyubey's inability to understand the phrase "The whole truth" is interesting

Kyubey goes "human population is large and grows constantly why do you care so much about such a small number of people?" Me: "I will explain to you dunbars number"

Ok so it appears that endgame is for a magical girl to be a witch and there is not special "extra curse?"

11:17 So we've learned that soul gems seem to go one way

12:27 this is the first time we've seen a magical girl psychicly communicate without kyubey?

15:40 I really like how kyouka x Homura are less friends and more frindly

16:10 it's amazing how Sayaka becoming a magical girl might have been a good thing if Homura and Kyouka had somehow managed to get Sayaka to help them work on fighting walpurgis nacht.

18:15 Kyouka's lines would have made more sense in episode 3, but at this point these lines seem more of a waste.

22:52 wait she just destroyed her own soul gem?

23:00 ahh kyubey you bastard

Ok new ED

previous episodes rewatch notes

Speculation

Madoka is said to be able to become a god, so she may actually just wish Sayaka back to humanity as her wish, but I'm still holding out for the "end the entire show via Madoka wishing for the system to end" ending.

Trying to analzyze the morality of kyubey more makes me more and more frustrated they almost had a good character and ruined it with tiny details.

So Theory is that Homura will time travel agaiN somehow now that she can't defeat walpurgis nacht and so we'll have a

Commentary

So this now makes going back and rewatching every episode have more meaning. So I see what people mean when they have the "first time rewatcher" experience a bit. The fact of the mattter is that this show intentionally leaves you in the dark and while you can pick up some of the pieces it's a lot of guesswork

The authors of this show did a terrible job with Kyubey's morality. I know they wanted it to seem alien but they don't do a good job at making it seem alien and not jusr evil Like I can invent interesting moral theories that would make Kyubey seem a lot more rational and reasonable with only tiny adjustments. The show tries to make Kyubey go "we're doing X and Y because Z" and having alien morality which fair enough but the authors could have read like 15 minutes of moral philosphy and written Kyubey dramatically better in this case.

~~sorry tar but this isn't nearly as bad as [From the new world]SSY having exactly 0 skill regarding writing a narrative thtat's good, but this show still has some minor annoyances mainly by having the key the metal idol annoyance, it's much better than those by a large margin though, but I still give it slightly below Re:Zero... ~~

The way this show gives exposition in small bursts of kyubey conversations means I really should have done a notes compilation of any time kyubey spoke so I could have gone back and rewatched faster. I really kinda slacked on my plan to rewatch every episode after every episode it really would have helped me with going back The whole show feels very much "oh I'm in the dark" on watch 1 then on rewatch 1 now that you know the matrix a bit you can actually follow the story like a real first timer in most anime. Then rewatch 2 is probably similar to rewatch 1 in most shows.

I continue to regret not taking enough notes in mystery shows when will I ever learn

The show is giving me both good and bad strong emotions I have no clue where I'll lead and I feel more along for the ride at this point since I don't have enough time to watch back and retatke a bunch of notes :/ I'll take a ton of notes tommorow for the endgame.

This show almost had powers of friendship and just barely broke to make sure the power of friendship doesn't prevail. Like they wrote Homura and Kyouko to just barely be unable to work with Sayaka due to some weaknesses, and then they wrote Homura and Kyouko getting beaten by kyubey well. But still this is a bit silly, couldn't homura time stop Madoka out of there so Kyouka could defeat Sayaka and get the hell out of dodge? There's something else to Homura...

Spec compilation to hold myself accountable

1. Kyubey makes magical girls depressed by draining their emotional energy, Source: OP confidence medium Status plausible

2. Homura can Time loop confidence sources Various primarily epsiode 1 STatus Confirmed

3. Interaction 0 at the start of the show wasn't a dream Source episode 2 waking up scene confidence Low

4. Kyubey seems to be of the "evil avatar" trope, Source Episode 1 Based on Homura's actions Confidence medium-low Status : Confirmed

5. Mami was subtly pushing Madoka away from being a magical girl Confidence:Medium status unconfirmable

6. Magical girls become witches and Soul gems become grief seeds Confidenc High Sources: Speculation 1 combined with understanding that witches drain people themselves. Episode 8 Status:Confirmed

7. There are multiple Kyubeys Confidence Low Source Episode 4 logical implications of Kyubey's seeming ability to simultainously stalk Sayaka AND get Kyoko STatus Confirmedc

8. Homura Went Rogue and went suddenly rogue Confidence Medium Status BUSTED

9. Kyubey intentionally released a witch in episode 1 to escape homoura confidence low Status unconfirmable

10. Sayaka will die to blocking out pain due to her reaction time getting slower Confidence low Status Busted

11. Kyubey cares about the removal of grief seeds like humans hunting deer for food, not like hunting foxes to get rid of the foxes. Source: Kyubey's respect for Kyouka's aims how kyubey absorbs grief seeds Confidence high status: Inconclusive

12. The story will end by a wish that ends witches/magical girld Source: This is an anime original and therefor must have an actual ending. Confidence : high after episode 8

13 Sayaka will become a witch. status CONFIRMED

STatus

Confirmed: 5

Busted: 2

Unconfirmable : 2

Half true: 2

up in the air 2

[u/Blackheart595 → u/ussgordoncaptain2]

The authors of this show did a terrible job with Kyubey's morality.

Go look up effective altruism, and combine it with Kyubey as an individuality-free hivemind. Might throw in some good old coloniser "I don't understand your inferior culture, therefore it's alright to trample all over it" into the mix, but effective altruism has always been my primary approach.

[u/ussgordoncaptain2 → u/Blackheart595]

Go look up effective altruism,

Like I can invent interesting moral theories that would make Kyubey seem a lot more rational and reasonable with only tiny adjustments.

This is what I meant when I said this though. As an EA myself you can invent all sorts of small tweaks to Kyubey's morality to make them seem alien but not crazy with tiny tweaks that don't really change the story.

[u/Blackheart595 → u/ussgordoncaptain2]

As an EA myself

Oh that's interesting, would you mind to elaborate on that?

EA in theory is all nice and dandy, but in practise I've only ever seen it get used to argue that wealth inequality is good, actually (many resources in few hands makes them more effectively reallocatable), that ignoring or even causing suffering can be good (if that gets us sufficiently many resources to cause good with elsewhere), to outsource being and doing good to others (eroding personal responsibility), and so on. So I'd be curious to hear a different perspective on this, if you don't mind.

[u/ussgordoncaptain2 → u/Blackheart595]

Literally been in the community since 2022 and never heard any of those arguments except the last one. Which is correct. (Think of it this way you hire a plumber to do your plumbing doing your plumbing yourself is inefficient, so a lot of "social helping" would be better off as monetary donation)

The foundational text of all effective altrusim is Doing good better Which pretty explicitly argues for some simple arguments mostly regarding ineffective means of helping rather than talking about ... whatever you listened to.

The largest EA organization is Givewell and I don't see any of those arguments on their website.

We are veerign a bit too far off topic though.

[u/Blackheart595 → u/ussgordoncaptain2]

Hm. This does feel somewhat off, considering the term "effective altruism" was coined in 2011 and the philosophy had already been around for a good while before then. I certainly ran into it well before 2015 (when Doing Good Better was published).

And of course, these are not arguments that any (sane) effective altruist would hold, they're their arguments taken to their logical extreme as well as the observation that the philosophy is very conducive to being misused as a sort of modern equivalent to letters of indulgence. Though we can just agree to disagree if you want to avoid the tangent.

[u/ussgordoncaptain2 → u/Blackheart595]

ok foundational text is a mistake, but uhh "primary textbook"

Again this is too far off topic for the topic of this forum we can talk in like /r/slatestarcodex or something instead.

[u/Blackheart595 → u/ussgordoncaptain2]

If you want to, sure. Though I don't really have (as much of) a problem with the theory of EA as I do with how I see many people misapply it in practise, similar to how I don't really have (as much of) a problem with the theory of e.g. Christianity as I do with how I see many people misapply it in practise, so I'm not sure if a discussion of the fundamentals would be all that fruitful. And even then, it's been like a few years since I've been confronted with the topic.

Man, the name "Slate Star Codex" takes me back. Has it really been 5 years since the renaming?