2011-06-13, 16:25 | Link #61 | |||
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Except... Madoka never killed herself?
It's not even like she tried to kill herself to escape the system and inadvertently became God in the process. Her intended solution was "Fuck the rules; I wanna be God." Quote:
Prior to episode 12, it didn't matter how carefully you thought about your wish. It didn't matter how selfless your intentions were. Having Kyubey grant your wish always backfires and always brings some form of harm to the people you're trying to protect. That's the entire thesis of the Magical Girl system. The only possible way out is death, and if Shadow Mami and Shadow Kyoko are any indication, apparently not even that can save you in the manga's universe. You even have the scene where Mami explains using your wish for someone else is the worst thing you can do, and the Sayaka scenario pretty much proves her hypothesis. Saying "Well no one else thought about their wish carefully enough before" is not only insulting to eons of previous Magical Girls (i.e. it implies they were all shortsighted idiots), it completely contradicts the story's primary theme. The show even openly admits that if Madoka had used the exact same wish in some other universe, it would have been too ridiculous for Kyubey to grant if it weren't for the random Karmic Destiny clause. Quote:
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And those people used wild speculation. I've been saying that since episode 10 aired. What Madoka-Becoming-God-Makes-Sense supporters don't realize is what they perceive of episode 10 and what's actually shown in episode 10 are radically different things. |
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2011-06-13, 17:01 | Link #62 | |
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"Not even tried to kill herself" ummm... yeaaaaahhhhh
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2011-06-13, 17:17 | Link #63 | |||
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So none of the wishes "backfired". They left the girls in the same state they were before. Mami was lonely before, and she was lonely afterwards. Kyousuke wasn't in love with Sayaka before, and he wasn't in love with her afterwards. And Homura was literally in the same time and place she was before. Mami, of course, doesn't realize that her own wish is just as ineffective. What was rigged was that these girls were now in the dead-end existence of being a magical girl. Which was a complete dead end, as you could not avoid using up your magical power and becoming a witch. Quote:
Her world still has an equal amount of despair (the monsters) in order to balance out the despair she got rid of via her wish. Nothing rules out the chance that there was some other magical girl who changed the system "before" Madoka or that some other magical girl will come along later and change the system "after" Madoka. I use "before" and "after" in quotes since these sorts of wishes are retroactive. The magical girl process is still rigged, even in Madoka's new world. It is still a dead end. You're still destined to die, it's just that the despair you take with you in your death is dispersed as miasma (and later manifest into monsters) instead of turning you into a witch. Quote:
This is not a particularly convincing sentence. I could just as well say, "What you don't realize is what you perceive in the series and what's actually shown in the series are radically different things." And I imagine that that would be equally unconvincing to you.
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Last edited by Kagayaki; 2011-06-13 at 17:30. |
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2011-06-13, 19:20 | Link #65 | |||||
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I'm guessing you're referring to the omnipresent suicide scene with Good Madoka blowing up Bad Madoka. In that case, I'll retort with this: That event never would have happened in the first place if Madoka hadn't been suddenly capable of becoming God. Quote:
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It's same logic as Johnny Depp warning beforehand that he's going to do an awful, out-of-place breakdance at the end of Alice in Wonderland doesn't change the fact that it's an awful, out-of-place breakdance. Last edited by Hagoshod; 2011-06-13 at 20:43. |
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2011-06-13, 21:46 | Link #66 | ||
The Spear of Destiny
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You can't compare a magical girl's life to a normal human. They still go through all the suffering of the original system, with the exception of becoming witches.
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2011-06-14, 01:07 | Link #67 | |
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Last edited by MartianMage; 2011-06-14 at 01:29. |
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2011-06-14, 01:33 | Link #68 | ||
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If you want to claim that individuals are somehow responsible for any of their actions, then you have to believe in free will. If there is an entity formed out of materials that previously were a part of you, but does not share your free will, then that entity is not you. Clearly, the girls don't have free will anymore once they become witches. Alternatively, their personalities and thought patterns are unrecognizably altered. Either way, there's no way you can say that the witch and the girl were the same individual, or that the girl is responsible for anything the witch that came from her does. If I were killed in a zombie apocalypse, and my corpse came back to life as a zombie and ate your brains, I don't think anyone would say that I had any moral connection to your brains being eaten. It doesn't matter how many of my outward traits the zombie retains. I didn't want to die and become a zombie, and I would never willingly kill you and eat your brains. The same amount of despair that would have created a witch is now just going into creating monsters, which are still going to be equally dangerous and kill people. So the girls weren't responsible for what the witches did before, and they're still not responsible for what the monsters do afterwards. It's the same, although it's easier to fool yourself into thinking it's better. Madoka using happy looking disney fairy dust to make this change doesn't alter the fact that she hasn't created a world that's objectively better. I completely agree with this, but I fail to see how it connects to what we were talking about. Please explain.
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Last edited by Kagayaki; 2011-06-14 at 04:14. |
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2011-06-14, 10:21 | Link #69 | ||||||
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I like this meme to an extent, but the whole Godoka thing gives life to a lot of misconceptions. Quote:
While Kyuubey's talk about wishes bringing distortions to the world may have a point, the corruption thing does not seem written into the system itself. It's mostly that wishes are made without considering the whole situation (Kyouko speaks on it, too). And before you say that proper wish consideration didn't matter before ep 12, let's try and count all the wishes we've seen that were made with actual consideration. Er... I've got zero. You're dying, your friend has just died, your love interest is having a BSoD, your family is starving because nobody wants to give the slightest damn about your father's well-meaning words. What's not to hurry with a wish about? Quote:
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- had learnt about this concept - hated it - had all the reasons to - and had the power to do at least something about it. So she did as much as she could in this situation. Madoka of ep 12 doesn't believe in hope painted pink - she chooses to believe in it despite what's happened, because the alternative is more than she could ever accept. Her "hope" speech delivered to Mami is, well, as much a "***K THIS SYSTEM" message as a kind and polite Japanese schoolgirl can word it. Btw, are we starting the speculation reminiscence again? It's never too good to take the show's predictability seriously, especially if this show causes WMG that randomly hits the bullseye. Hey, Sayaka's witchdom was predicted from ep 1 - but should I remind you what that prediction was based on?
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2011-06-14, 13:02 | Link #70 | ||
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AFAIK, there’s no official interpretation of the show’s ending, and I doubt there ever will be, so pretty much anything you say about it is your interpretation. I’ll try to explain why I think this one is the only one that makes sense though.
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There are two possible cases here. Despair is either coming from magical girls or not coming from magical girls (or some combination of the two): 1) Humanity as a whole created the despair that fed the witches, so magical girls are fighting to protect humanity from its own evils. They're doing something good here, whether or not they become witches, since if magical girls didn't exist, there would just be demons instead of witches, but there would be nobody to fight them. 2) Despair in the world (and hence the demons) comes from the hope that magical girls create, so magical girls are the source of what they're trying to protect humanity from. Their existence is bad, even if they don't become witches, since if magical girls didn’t exist there would be no demons. This is what I was talking about in the part you quoted. In both cases, or in any combination of the two, Madoka's wish isn't making magical girls fundamentally better or worse for the world. Unless she got something she didn't wish for, in which case I would agree with Hagoshod that the ending is inconsistent and poorly written.
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2011-06-14, 15:10 | Link #71 | |||
Twilight lander
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So the biggest ink blob in that picture is really the witchdom issue that means you pay the price of gradual becoming monster unless you die before that. The life you accepted suddenly loses the meaning that might get you through even when all else in your life was failing (known to work for Mami to an extent, but sadly not for Sayaka). All the possible good you bring by fighting witches means significantly less as you've got all chances to become one and happily wreck all the havoc you managed to prevent before. Take away this issue, and a Puella Magi's fate looks a bit better. There's also the soul gem issue, of course... but the white twerp is right, it's not too easy to find out by oneself. We don't even know if Mami, Kyouko and Sayaka know that in TL6 (Sayaka might have simply confessed to Kyousuke and get rejected, dangit ). But if what you suggest is true, magical girls are REALLY in the same pile of euphemism-requiring substance as they were before (becoming miasma that will become a demon and hunt people is a witchdom with more stages involved), meaning WE WERE ULTIMATELY TROLLED AGAIN. Quote:
In fact, getting more than you wish or not in Madoka's case is the main question to solve in the whole Madokaism thing. But the show doesn't really give us evidence of powers underivable from the effects of her wish (although I wonder why we'd mind if it did - come to think of it, don't all magical girls get some magical gimmick based on the nature of their wish?) so far. Madoka's main achievement in this field is defining her wish well and getting exactly what she wished for, any subtext aside. And she confirms it herself that she considers her wish granted.
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2011-06-17, 15:55 | Link #72 |
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Join Date: Jan 2011
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Finally got translated scans of Chapter 11: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0XN5GOBI
Manga is more or less the same as the anime. Sayaka's funeral was omitted. The coolest change to me was in the Walpurgis fight. Dark familiar versions of Sayaka, Kyouko, and Mami were summoned.
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2011-06-17, 18:06 | Link #74 |
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Homura in the Manga version looks like Erika Furudo.
Also, WN is sort of the despair part of everyone, from her "uselessness" spreading towards others. Basically, Mami, Kyouko & Sayaka were dead 'cause of Homura's presence, basically making it "useless" to save them. :P |
2011-06-23, 00:30 | Link #78 | |
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See how she's wearing leggings and a black turtleneck/something underneath the main dress? Those are taken from the design of her own MG form. |
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2011-06-28, 03:00 | Link #80 |
エーレンフェストの聖女
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Dollars
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Chapter 12 finally got translated
There's not much different than the anime, but there's an additional scenes right at the end. Just like what my friend told me once, 'friend is code in mahou shoujo for yuri :P'. One thing I realized from reading this chapter is that during Sayaka and Kamijou scene, Madoka state that she made it (the event) this way so that she can save Sayaka from turning into a witch. The event that she changed was probably how Kamijou never hurt his hand to begin with and thus making his relationship with Sayaka not happening... ....Still, this is pretty stupid considering that I can't think of another Sayaka's wish anymore other than saving Kyousuke
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