Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaijo
So show me WHY I should believe that this universe is so grim dark.
Hell, in Nanoha, there was blood and injuries were bad. But in Madoka, they have convenient bodies which can feel very little pain and be rebuilt easily! If anything, that makes Nanoha more threatening.
Maybe there is. The problem is we don't know. And my prediction is that the girls will never ask. Even after learning this, they won't think to ask, "What else aren't you telling us?"
The show is trying to tell us it is, through Sayaka's angsting over Kamijou. Also through the whole shock factor of last episode. This is falling straight into Cursed with Awesome territory:
"This trope is a major source of Angst Dissonance — if not used carefully, then a character being Cursed With Awesome carries the risk of plummeting straight into Wangst or Deus Angst Machina territory, as nothing is guaranteed to piss an audience off more than a character complaining about having abilities that are, on the face of it, utterly fantastic and that the audience would kill to have. This is especially a risk if a balance between the awesomeness of the powers and the suckiness of the consequences of possessing them is not maintained; if the drawbacks are outweighed by the benefits, then the character just looks whiny."
I'm reminded of that sword chick from Negima, the one with the white wings. "*sniff* Look at me, I'm a monster!"
That's why I'm not buying the "look at how awful and grim dark all of this is!" line of thought yet. |
Cursed with Awesome? This is
Blessed With Suck.
Magical powers, fast healing, death avoidance, sounds pretty good... oh wait, there is that little
having your soul ripped out and stuck in a gem thing.
What we have here is
Values Dissonance. You agree with Kuybee. "Who cares where my soul is, it's not like I can sense it anyway." Which by the way implies: "My soul is unimportant as anything other than a necessity for life." Which most people do not agree with.
Kuybee even identifies why it's important to people (although he misses the importance). Human souls are contained throughout their bodies. It's in their nerves, their blood, their skin.
Consider Sayaka's grief about how she can never kiss her love- because it won't be her. It won't be her lips on his. Her soul will not be intertwined with his. It will just be a lump of flesh, not a living soul, kissing her love.
To you that is unimportant. "Who cares as long as I can feel and touch, and sense things." But that is a very materialistic (in the philosophical sense) way of viewing the world. Most people have a more mystical way of viewing things, particularly things revolving around love.
Nor does this even get into the religious aspect, in that most religions identify life as a soul inside a human body. If you remove the soul from the body you are no longer alive. (I believe that Shinto holds this view too). This isn't some minor thing that has no importance, this is
Fate Worse Than Death territory. It's eternal damnation stuff.
Because your values about the location of souls are such an outlier compared to most people you simply can't understand the horror than other people are seeing.
That's not because the anime is poorly made- it's just not made for someone who doesn't care about the location of their soul.