[Triple_R]

Response to Shadow5YA in spoiler space below...

Spoiler for Manga and anime spoilers:

Originally Posted by Shadow5YA

Killing Kyubey is a separate issue from wanting to hog all the Grief Seeds to herself. Even if Mami distrusts Homura being around Kyubey, that does not logically lead to believing Homura is after Charlotte or any other Witch's Grief Seeds for herself.

Ok, and... ?

In any event, Mami wanted to tie Homura up to ensure that Homura didn't attempt to kill Kyubey while Mami was preoccupied with fighting a witch. Homura had very recently attempted to kill Kyubey, and Homura had rejected an olive branch offering from Mami. So Mami's actions here make perfectly good sense.

Homura explicitly stated "this witch isn't like the others!".

Only after she had already been tied up by Mami. Mami could quite reasonably believe that Homura was just BSing her in an attempt to persuade Mami to release her.

Your premise is flawed.

No, it's not flawed. Who's to say that Sayaka wouldn't spread to Kyouko's territory in time?

Kyouko and Sayaka had good reasons for being at odds with each other, and getting into fights with each other.

There was no need for Kyouko to talk about Kyousuke the second time she confronted Sayaka. If removing the hindrance was Kyouko's true motive, then she could have made the first move and attacked Sayaka without a word, but she didn't.

So Kyouko choose instead to ham it up a bit. Big deal. That simply reflects her flashy personality.

To Sayaka, Mami would have never taken as much damage as she did if she wasn't covering for Sayaka's mishap.

Mami could conceivably be damaged like that in almost any witch fight. Sayaka should want to be there in case that happens.

There's no good reason, none whatsoever, for Sayaka to fail to see how she can be useful to Mami. It's plainly obvious.

It makes sense for Sayaka to feel badly over what occurred here. But I would argue that the more in-character response for Sayaka would be trying to make it up to Mami by being a better partner, not severing their partnership hence leaving Mami to fend for herself which is obviously the more dangerous alternative.

Sayaka did not do anything this stupid in this source material. At least not until she felt overwhelmed by enemies with no good allies to turn to. Sayaka does not have that sort of justification in this manga, and that's a big part of the reason why I think the way she was wrote in this manga was a caricature of how she normally is.

Kyubey encouraged her to decrease her sensitivity to pain, which is fair advice for any fight.

You're forgetting a key detail here. The tradeoff is less sensitivity to pain in return for slower reaction speed. Kyubey made this clear early in Episode 7.

That slower reaction speed means Sayaka can't evade attacks as well as she once could. So in exchange for trying to evade attacks (but risking them being debilitatingly painful), Sayaka becomes a slower fighter but is able to endure direct attacks without feeling pain.

It's a debatable tradeoff, of course, but I don't think it's a clear-cut matter, given Sayaka's regeneration abilities.

Anyone would be disturbed by the sight, and it was fairly obvious SHAFT intented to make Sayaka look as disturbing (and as disturbed) as possible during that scene.

It's disturbing because it means that Sayaka's body isn't normal any more. The fact she can endure numerous cuts without feeling pain is indeed a bit creepy, contributing to Sayaka's breakdown at the end of Episode 7.

Sayaka respects this idolized image of Mami as a hero protecting the powerless, so she wants to become just like her.

Which is another reason why Sayaka severing her partnership with Mami felt so very wrong to me. Sayaka is essentially abandoning her hero, and over so very little.

Almost all of anime!Sayaka's questionable actions/decisions that you've pointed to happen after the "I'm a zombie" reveal, which clearly had a huge impact on Sayaka, and understandably so I think.

Sayaka had nothing that severe in this manga, which is why I don't think she should have been that self-destructive.

It makes perfect sense to young teens to distance themselves from others because they feel that they don't belong or live up to their self-imposed standards.

That doesn't make any sense when you have clear-cut evidence of being useful to others, and helpful in ensuring their physical well-being.

Considering Kyouko has been criticizing Sayaka all the time, it should be easy to see why Sayaka doesn't believe she is up to the task.

The words of others should mean less than what you can observe with your own eyes. Kyouko's criticisms of Sayaka were baseless. They were based on one mess-up that Sayaka quickly made up for by healing Mami.

Care to explain which part was "much worse" than the source material?

I already have, extensively. I think that Sayaka's decision to severe her Puella Magi partnership with Mami is much worse than anything she did in the source material. I think that decisions had much less basis than any of Sayaka's decisions in the source material. So naturally, it does not sit well with me.


You obviously don't like Sayaka as much as I do, so I can understand you not having the same problems with this manga as I do. So there's also no need for you to continue defending how Sayaka is wrote in this manga.

We've debated this pretty exhaustively now, and my opinion hasn't changed at all. If yours also hasn't changed at all, then we should probably just agree to disagree when it comes to this manga.

However, one last point...

Are you really telling me Sayaka is that much worse from what little she did do in a couple of chapters before it shifts focus back to Mami and Kyouko again The way you talk about it, you make it sound like it drags on for several tens of chapters. It almost makes me forget that the manga is only 12 chapters

Actually, for me, the rapidness of Sayaka's change towards Mami is part of the problem. Like I wrote in a previous post, there's no real buildup here. There's no sense of Sayaka at least trying to work through her issues, and overcome Kyouko's taunting in a productive way by being a better partner to Mami. Sayaka doesn't even try that, which is naturally disheartening and upsetting to me as a big Sayaka fan.

While Sayaka's decline in the anime was not exactly slow, at least it was a bit gradual. At least it didn't look like Sayaka completely gave up until she saw Kyousuke and Hitomi hanging out together, that being the proverbial final straw after many more before it (Mami's death, getting dominated in a fight by Kyouko, being continually at odds with Kyouko and Homura, feeling like her body is a zombie, etc...). I felt that anime!Sayaka at least had some resolve.

Here in this manga, one moment of weakness, and Kyouko taunting her a bit, is enough to completely destroy Sayaka's resolve. I found that pathetic.