Here are some further wall of text posts :P.
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Originally Posted by ThereminVox
I see a lot of references to Sayaka "snapping" or losing her mind at the end. Was this an impression folks got from the raws, or am I perhaps seeing this differently?
I have to say, I'd be really disappointed if they had her snap, if only because it would be the obvious development. "Hey, we broke the cutie, now she's crazy and possibly turning heel." Man, I sure hope that's not where they're going.
My take would be that there's a subtle difference between losing your humanity and losing your mind. Sayaka's character arc foreshadowed that her morality would end up whiplashing on her, and creating a tragic antagonist. But even now, she's not giving in to her jealousy of Hitomi, or even abandoning her principles of protecting people as a MG. What she's losing her grip on isn't her idealism or her sanity; it's herself.
Consider that her breakdown in front of Madoka comes less from believing she's lost any chance with her love interest, or out of anger at Hitomi, and more out of her self-loathing for ever even considering that she could have just let Hitomi be killed by the witch. She hates what she's become, both figuratively and also literally, in the sense that she sees herself as a walking corpse who could never sustain a relationship with a human.
In her berserker moment at the end, she realizes that the pain goes away when she stops thinking of herself as a human being -- as represented by her body -- and instead gives herself over to being a MG. Of course, she's talking about physical pain, but one doesn't need a microscope to read between the lines. This to me is a MUCH more interesting development than another sweet-girl-tortured-until-she-goes-bats#*$. The differences may turn out to be subtle, but they made a big deal out of her remaining steadfastly principled throughout the episode, and Homura DID point out that as a MG, she's literally not human. We may be looking not at a distortion or destruction, but at a disconnection. And frankly, that could be much more tragic than violent insanity.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kagayaki
I think you mentioned somewhere earlier in this thread that you always have a choice whether to accept or angst about things. I agree, and I'm going to take this even further than you did, and say that tragedy has nothing to do with people or uncontrollable forces screwing with characters' lives. Tragedy always comes from the characters, never from the plot itself.
One of Nanoha's character traits is that she can deal with pretty much anything that gets thrown her way, which is why I never really feel sympathy for Nanoha. This is why there is no tragedy in Nanoha's life. Tragedy requires a tragic flaw. Nanoha has no tragic flaws. In her world, obstacles and enemies are there for her to overcome them, not for them to persecute her.
Sayaka does have flaws, which is why her narrative reads like an actual tragedy. Whether you think the things that are happening to her are bad or not bad, it's pretty clear she can't deal with them. That's what makes her life a tragedy, and that's what makes all this comparison between Nanoha and Sayaka off-base.
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These two posts do a great job of saying something I wanted to say. Sayaka's story is a tragedy, which means that her fate and her suffering will be the result of a flaw in her own character. However, it also means that she will always remain sympathetic to the audience--there will be no 'snapping' or psychotic breakdown which will allow us to alienate ourselves from her and subject her to judgement.
People need to stop taking the Soul Gem and Hitomi issues as the actual trigger for this episode's breakdown. Those merely represent external issues, personal difficulties with which Sayaka is struggling. The more relevant aspect, however, is a breakdown in Sayaka's character: in that she had always believed both her own and Mahou Shoujos' lives should be about righteousness. Driven by both her own justice and Mami's example, Sayaka wanted to see righteousness embodied, and it was
this desire that allowed her to take on a fate we all know is irreversible. As such, the Soul Gem and Hitomi's confession might have been what started Sayaka questioning, the former with regards to the cost to herself and the latter the extent of her altruism; but it was the way her reaction broke her illusion of herself that is the true source of her pain and suffering. In this episode, for Sayaka, both her own altruism and Kyouko's despicability came to be deeply questioned. As she was on the verge of feeling she has made a mistake she can never take back, the mad laughter she met the only escape she happened upon was heart-rending and powerfully in character.
Quote:
Originally Posted by creb
Btw, are we supposed to take Kyoko at face value when she said the world is balanced out. For all the hope (wishes) there needs to be equal despair brought into the world?
Or should we just take that as the lesson Kyoko took from her past (ie: while true to her perspective, might not be true in the bigger scheme of things).
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I'd like to comment briefly (or not so briefly) on people's fixations on evaluating this show as a 'grimdark' horror reel or mahou shoujo deconstruction. I really think if you're just looking for death and carnage or else a lambasting of a perfectly fine and audience appropriate genre of fiction, that would be totally empty and you probably won't be exactly getting it. On the latter point, I agree with some other posters and the statement from Shinbo which started this series in that “Mahou Shoujo series are fun”--that on some level show is being made and being watched because people like Mahou Shoujo in the first place. So I really don’t think this show should be evaluated on how well it provides shock-value gore and bloodiness or otherwise betrays genre conventions.
Instead, what I feel Urobochi Gen has brought and this show has excelled delivering is a fascinating juxtaposition of fiction with reality. On a principle level, one of the cold facets of our real-life existences is that intentions don’t always translate into reality. As Homura in this episode tells us, in the real world there are some things unreachable or unattainable which you could not trade even your whole life for. This is a contrast with one of the general escapist strengths of fiction, whose themes often include the idea that ‘anything is possible’. However, the juxtaposition which this show introduces is precisely a quantified, limited, contracted translation of the power of fiction into the context of reality—the chance to make, just once, something impossible (a wish/intention) possible. Under the defined terms of this limited opportunity, in the hands of adolescent girls who have just begun to see the world’s genuine reality--to what degree will they be able to take hold of these miracles and reach out to grasp genuine happiness?
Under these terms, I don’t feel the strength of this show will be its ability to displace escapist fictional conventions (friendship and idealism win the day, general happiness, everybody lives etc.) with further fictional (though negative) contrivances (i.e. endless deaths and unimaginable suffering lead down a path of psychological breakdowns and misery). I feel that instead the tone will be governed precisely by these intersections of intention with reality; because if positive, hopeful intentions (i.e. wishes) are translatable into reality, then it only stands to reason that this is also true for negative intentions—and then, however,
only to the extent that both of these intentions reasonably exist in reality! Thus the question of tone then becomes: if on some level real world intentions were quantifiable, how would things work out in the overall balance?—gaining contrast with escapist or horror fictions which ignore reality altogether. For the setting of adolescent girls living in a peaceful metropolitan city, while I expect a grimness or tragedy appropriate to modern reality, I do honestly think it would be out of place to expect something mindbendingly grotesque or terrible.
This finally brings me to the issue creb noted which Kyouko brought up in this episode. Due to the somewhat mechanical operation of Grief Seeds filling up and emptying, I have suspected for some time now that in the Puella Magi universe, feelings and intentions (at least of the negative kind; grief, despair, etc.) are a measurable and conservable quantity. If this is the case, it is then natural to assume that in a logical universe they exist in a natural balance or equilibrium. Moreso than saying that hope and despair must be distributed equally, it think it would be quite logical for them to exist in proportion to feelings from the general population fuelling them. Thus, a wish which consumes positive energy will leave more room for despair in the world; while Grief Seeds concentrating darkness which naturally arises from people cannot empty themselves without in some manner causing grief and suffering. Mahou Shoujos are thus fighting against a natural force or quantity which can only truly be destroyed by sacrificing positive energy; as it is, no perfect way to destroy darkness/despair or create hope/happiness can exist because they must remain in equilibrium.
This, too, is something I feel if true would be reflective of reality. In the natural world, you can neither create something out of nothing, nor reduce an existing thing into complete nothingness; in physical terms, changes are always affected by an equal loss in matter or energy. I feel, realistically, positive and negative intentions must exist in a balance naturally; and so, with regards to Kyouko’s statement, this is my interpretation.
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