[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by Solace

He honestly didn't know. He's smart, and able to adjust his plans on the fly, but he isn't omnipotent. Somewhere buried in this thread I said Kyubey was operating a Xanatos Gambit. I wasn't kidding. If Sayaka could be revived, that's just another opportunity for her to fall and harvest her energy again. It doesn't matter if a Witch can be brought back or not, as long as Kyubey can eventually find an opportunity for Madoka to contract.....and then it won't matter anymore.

Agreed. Very interesting points, and well-put.

If anything, it should be surprising that someone like Kyubey would dismiss the possibility so readily, however he also seems to be surprised at a number of other things in the show, like Madoka's potential and Homura's time travel abilities. If there's one point in the show that demonstrates to me that he didn't create the Magical Girl system, but merely subverted it, it's his conversation with Kyouko and his reply to Homura in episode 9. He may know some things about it, but he doesn't know everything. He only knows enough to manipulate it for his own gain, but he's confident that his manipulations will prevent the girls from figuring out and defeating his plans before it is too late.

My own view is that Madoka, Homura, Kyouko, Sayaka, and Mami all had magical potential inside of them before meeting with Kyubey. Kyubey simply uses his advanced alien technology to unlock that potential, and does so while focusing that magic on a specific wish. In the process of unlocking that magical potential, Kyubey is able to harness a form of energy from the teenage girl that he contracts with.

If and when a magical girl turns into a witch, then more energy is released, which Kyubey can further harness with his advanced technology.

So I don't think that Kyubey understands magical energy much at all. He just understands it enough to know how to tap into it, and harness it.

If I'm right here, the way to defeat Kyubey is for Madoka to find a way to tap into her magical potential without having Kyubey unlock it for her.

I sometimes wonder if his "we have no emotions" statement is yet another lie.

I'm of two minds here.

On the one hand, it's very difficult to portray a non-emotional being, and yet for that being to have some sort of personality that can be interesting to the audience. This is a problem that Star Trek sometimes ran into with Data, as in the process of making Data's personality interesting, it became harder and harder for the audience to swallow that he had no emotions. So it could be that Kyubey is a non-emotional being, but it's difficult to portray that well while keeping his character interesting.


On the other hand, Kyubey does seem to have some intrinsic sense of pleasure and displeasure to him, and it can be hard to see how that arises with out emotions. He clearly takes satisfaction in getting his energy quota, and he also showed slight dissatisfaction in Episode 4 when he temporarily had to give up on Madoka and Sayaka.

Hell, his whole "entropy" speech screams bullshit, imo.

Maybe. But unless something different is revealed as Kyubey's true motivation, I'm going to stick with entropy for now.