2012-07-26, 15:44 | Link #361 | |||||||||||||
The True Culprit
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If you're going to LIVE TO SEE THE HEAT DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE, it's a pressing concern. Quote:
After all, the only reason they involve other races at all is because they have no emotions. It doesn't matter what moral standards they apply to themselves because they can't complete the task they feel morally obligated to do. Quote:
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Not a perfect metaphor, yes. They take actions and make choices, but without the ability to empathize with other living beings and understand what they are doing to others in a way they can relate to, they cannot understand what they are doing wrong. Given their severe handicap, I can't fault them for the actions they have taken. Their logic is consistent, practical, pragmatic, and iron-clad, given what they have to work with. Our ability to understand how others feel blows several holes in it, but I can't fault them for not accounting for it any more than I can fault a middle ages serf for thinking a modern day flashlight is a magic wand. Quote:
And Madoka Portable reveals that extraterrestrial witches DO exist. Better not give her ANY reason to leave the planet. Quote:
Oops, now Kriemheld is attacking a planet that never got involved with Puella Magi. Great going. Quote:
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Because the girls need to be stupid in order for the script to work out how Urobuchi needs it to. It's not Kyubey's fault. He doesn't lie, and he answers questions when he's asked properly. He has no incentive or motivation to withhold information except for the short-term gain, such as trying to corner Madoka near the end of the series, and that's painted to be a unique circumstance in every possible respect. Quote:
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2012-07-26, 16:49 | Link #362 | |||||||||||
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But we do know some actual facts about them. We know that they claim to be collecting energy to combat entropy, and we know that they take actions that cause severe harm to innocent people. Quote:
Emotional or not, Kyubey is extremely manipulative, and is willing to trick people into harming themselves if it serves his purposes. That's hardly what I would call "willing to work with humanity to create minimal harm". Quote:
So no, combating entropy is not a pressing concern (presuming, of course, that entropy operates the same way in the Madokaverse as it does in the real world, and Gen hasn't given us any concrete reason to think otherwise). The Incbuators have extremely ample opportunity to try to find less harmful ways of combating entropy. Quote:
Like I wrote before, you're obviously very biased in favor of the Incubators, and are throwing out all sorts of wild and convenient speculations to try to cast them in a more positive light. It doesn't make for a fair or intellectually honest discussion. Quote:
Then, to make their stance even more ironclad, they carefully make a point to avoid stating complete falsehoods so they appear more trustworthy when and if the key falsehood is needed to be said. See? This speculation game can work both ways. It's very possible to hold viable speculations on the Incubators that cast them in a decidedly villainous light. Quote:
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Last edited by Triple_R; 2012-07-26 at 17:19. |
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2012-07-26, 18:07 | Link #363 |
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Be careful of the next post because it contains kazumi spoilers
Spoiler for kazumi magica c 19:
It's difficult to argue when you take one's example and change it's meaning, it's either straw doll technique or just putting words in someone else's mouth. |
2012-07-26, 18:36 | Link #364 | ||||||||||
The True Culprit
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Kyubey is an expositional device. If he lies and it's exposed, that's one thing, but he is our insight into the Puella universe. We shouldn't doubt his word if we want to have common ground on anything. Quote:
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2012-07-26, 21:28 | Link #365 | |
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I'll admit that "brutalized Kyubey" is one of the Madoka image memes that I've grown a bit tired of. It seems to me to come up as much as "panties-on-head Homura" and "no-head-at-all Mami". That's partly why I have no desire to see the Incubators get brutalized in the third movie - Fan-images alone is enough of that. For what it's worth, I don't think that Kyubey is evil, per se. I see him more as an implied metaphor for nature, if not the universe itself - With all of its abundant potentials ("magic" in place of "oil"), and all of its harsh downsides ("witches" instead of "natural disasters"). I still think he is (or at least was) an antagonistic figure (largely because even the titular lead herself seemed to view him that way in Episode 11), but in the same way that a storm at sea is an "antagonistic figure/force" in a classic Man vs. Nature story about a guy trying to guide his ship through an awful sea-storm. In a way, it's fitting that Kyubey fights entropy, because it might reflect how nature can be brutal in its own self-preservation, in its seasons and natural forces and abhorring of vacuums. And I think I'm going to leave it here.
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2012-07-26, 22:26 | Link #366 | ||||||
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I'm not saying whether or not they would do that, or even if it was really an option at all, but it's highly possible they had a lot of other options, in all honesty (whether or not they wanted to take them). Quote:
He also exploits them when he knows they'd have the worst chance of thinking of the ramifications (ie, Mami was dying, Homura just lost Madoka and Mami, Sayaka was very upset about Kyousuke, Kyouko was living in a very bad situation/starving, etc.). Quote:
That's sort of like comparing a child to a sociopath. I don't dislike Kyuubey, but I can see why people do and why people call him evil. From an actual storywriting standpoint, he would be considered a villain, since he causes harm to the heroes, indirectly but knowingly. From a real-life standpoint, it's too subjective to say. |
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2012-07-26, 22:59 | Link #367 |
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From a storywriting standpoint, Kyuubey is an antagonist. Direct authorial statements such as Yukihiro Miyamoto's as the director of the series to the effect that "Kyuubey is still Kyuubey in the end. Personally, I'm satisfied with that" reflect the legitimacy of the Incubators' motivations from their own perspective, as a matter of the series' creative intention.
By concluding the story the way they did with Kyuubey still present, unchanged, and even cooperating with the Puella Magi, the creators basically went out of their way to say that Kyuubey was not a villain. |
2012-07-26, 23:29 | Link #368 |
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Correction, Kyubey is no longer a villan after Madoka's last wish. They are now motivated to keep magical girls alive and able to hunt demons as long as possible, because they cannot collect any energy if a soul gem shatters anymore.
However, this is irrelevant to the question of whether Kyubey is a villan or not prior to Madoka's last wish. |
2012-07-26, 23:46 | Link #369 |
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What defines a villain? What makes them different from an antagonist? I'd say antagonism is merely a question of opposing the hero/protagonist of a story. However, villainy is dependent upon the content of the antagonist's character.
If Kyuubey's character does not change, then neither should his status as a "villain". This is concurrent with an understanding of Kyuubey as representative of an antagonistic force of nature/reality, rather than a force of evil. |
2012-07-27, 01:15 | Link #371 | |
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How Kyubey would read this: The point is that when establishing morals, perspective matters. It's evil to me. Not evil to you. Right and wrong, good and evil, justice and revenge, all of these things are more than words, they are perspectives. Kyubey is utilitarian in his view of the world to the point of appearing amoral. He does care, because he has a goal: get energy. But that's his only concern. Everything to that end is a cost benefit analysis. If saving a magical girl earns more energy than not, he'll do it. If not, harvest time. We all do this. We just have this pesky thing called emotion that make it more difficult to make judgments that aren't influenced by "gut feelings" of right and wrong.
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2012-07-27, 02:25 | Link #372 | ||||||
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Also, if Kyubey didn't intervene, Kyouko and Mami would be dead. Probably Homura too because it's not clear if Walpurgis was properly defeated or not. Even if we assume it was, and Homura was fine, bitch woulda been Witch Kissed in NO TIME. That aside, they need to be emotionally vulnerable to even qualify for a contract. He doesn't do it to optimize his chances with them, it's how the magic works. Your wishes don't have a magical payoff of any kind if they don't come from the heart. Quote:
This is a much, much, much huger gap than anything the human experience can metaphorically apply to. This isn't like a sociopath who is just broken. This is like meeting a creature that knows OF the concept of sight, but has never had eyes. Or, to be frank, it's like sex. You can't understand how mind-fucking, life-changing, heart-racing it is until you actually DO IT. No textbook, anecdote, romanticization, masturbation, or pornography can deliver that experience in a way that lets you cross the gulf.
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2012-07-27, 04:01 | Link #373 | |
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I don't think he's evil, so there.
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2012-07-27, 10:26 | Link #374 |
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contracting an adult in midst of an emotioanl turmoil would be interesting, but since a lot of the contract details are left to "magic" that not even the incubators understand as well as statistics it's difficult to get an explanation on why adults can't be contracted, maybe they did so before and the results sucked, just imagine contracting a n adult who fights witches and never fails to despair, or even the fact that finding an apropiate adult is much more worth than finding an apropiate teenager.
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2012-07-27, 10:41 | Link #375 |
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I'm willing to believe that, in PMMMverse, teenagers really do have higher emotional/magical potential than adults do. It's not really that silly an idea to me.
One analogy that could be helpful here is one between magical potential and athletic potential. In most sports, the "prime" of one's athletic talents and career is in the late 20s (and early 30s). I know that most NHL players (and I think most NBA and NFL players) retire around the age of 40 (give or take a couple years), and they start to decline markedly in their mid-to-late 30s. Generally speaking, a pro sports player's best years are 25 to 32. Perhaps magical potential is much the same. Perhaps "the prime" of one's magical potential, in PMMMverse, is in the teens (13 to 18). Once adulthood is reached, magical potential declines just like athletic potential declines for real world adults in their mid-to-late 30s. If so, Incubators are merely like pro sports teams that emphasize youthful and "prime" players over people nearing "retirement". That being said, the female gender targeting is a bit trickier to explain, at least in an in-canon way. Maybe this is something that the third movie will expand upon, although I'm not going to get my hopes up too high.
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2012-07-27, 11:29 | Link #376 |
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Yeah, I can buy the age of puella magi, but the gender part is kinda iffy, now I hope the third movie is not based on the existing spinoffs, as good as they are the movie deserves to be something new, though it would be cool to have the spinoff characters as part of it.
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2012-07-27, 11:31 | Link #377 | |
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2012-07-27, 15:14 | Link #379 |
The True Culprit
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I just want to point out that in neurology, the onsets of puberty and such do make teenagers more emotional than children and much older people. The thing is these emotional changes don't settle down until the mid 40's. But if Urobuchi didn't KNOW THAT, I can give him a pass.
Also, the genre is magical girls. The only reason for the Incubators to contract teenage girls and no other demographic is for the meta-reason of deconstructing the genre. Spoiler for On Oriko:
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2012-07-28, 12:34 | Link #380 |
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The discussion that's been going on for the past two pages leads me to subscribe to the theory of the Incubators being artificial creations. Explicitly, I'll take Kyubey's word of them being emotionless. Implicitly, their capacity to withhold information suggests conscious manipulation instead of automated actions but not necessarily by their own volition. The Incubators are pre-programmed with a set of "facts" that they cannot deny. Maybe it's not that they don't state falsehoods but rather they're incapable of lying; if I "knew" the earth was flat and I told you it was flat, I would be telling you a falsehood but I wouldn't be lying. Likewise, if the Incubators are built to think the destruction of an entire planet is irrelevant so long as they get the energy they need then it would theoretically allow them to remain honest but not necessarily truthful.
At least, that's as far as I can guess anyway.
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madoka magica, movie |
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