Madoka Magica - Spoilers & Speculation

[Seihai]

I disagree. 9 lives don't neccessarily equal to 9 souls. I see it as a control room/connection point system. There are several connections (lives / bodies) but only one control room (soul).

[aeriolewinters]

9 threads, 1 soul. The cat has hyperthreading.

[Seihai]

Well, 9 lives don't mean a lot if you can regenerate as long as you have the magic capability. Futile especially for Sayaka. They'd be big extras though. And even with 9 lives and regenerating abilities you can still screw up like Mami did.

Btw. why I think Mami will never be able to return as the Mami we knew:

She got her head bitten off. Let's assume her soul gem was actually not in her hair (which would nutshell the thesis that Mami is truly dead). So according to Kyubei, you're (not literally and 100%) "invincible" and with enough magic you can go back to life. Let's assume Mami had enough magic and her soul gem was near her, unharmed by Charlotte. But so what? The revive-effect, let alone the head re-attaching or whatever procedure would be needed to heal your body and come back to life, would take its time depending on the level of injury. But during the procedure, she is technically still dead, and shortly after Homura defeated Charlotte to protect Madoka and Sayaka. Even if Mami was able to somehow heal, she would be trapped in the witch's dimension forever. And that's probably worse than dying.

[Jimmy C]

If every magical girl can regenerate using their magic, then there should have been nothing special about Sayaka's regeneration ability.

[Seihai]

Mami healed Kyubei in episode 1 so it's not an exceptional ability. It just means Sayaka excels at it, and she can heal fast in a passive way, too. Note how Kyoko found it weird that the first blow she gave her was supposed to hospitalize Sayaka for about three months (or at least for a while). So adding to the regeneration ability her general health receives a great boost. As a gamer would say, a tank.

[scr]

I just figured out something horrifying (not like this show isn't full of horrifying things already). If your soul is in your Soul Gem, ain't you're going to be in an And I Must Scream situation if it's permanently separated from your flesh body?

To make it worse, if Witches are really the final stage of magical girls, ain't it an And I Must Scream situation to the maximum degree possible if _you_ are made into a tampon for future magical girls' to shove their darkness, and then you're eaten by QB? *shudders*

[Seihai]

Regarding the soul gem I wouldn't call it And I Must Scream because you don't actively suffer from it. A double-edged blade is what it is. You receive supernatural capabilities but in return (including other things) your soul becomes a physical form, the soul gem. The physical form itself is another double-edged blade because the plus is that your body can take damage to the extent of death with being able to revive as long as the soul is preserved. The minus is that the soul itself becomes vulnerable at least in the sense that if it's too far away your overall being loses its 'life value' and you then die.

About the MG -> witch thing. It's more of a food chain cycle and you don't actually suffer from it either. Except special circumstances you only suffer once, that is, when you get killed. Well, I hope I actually understood that And I Must Scream trope right anyway.

[scr]

Duh. That's why it's an And I Must Scream. If your soul is in the Soul Gem, you won't actually die when you're killed (insert Emiya Shiro pic here). Your soul (or the faint remains of it) will mutate into a Witch whose sense of values (if you can call it that) will be very different from normal people, since you essentially will only try to repeat, in a very twisted way, the way you lived (i.e. you "love roses" or "love cheese"). And since you _are_ a magical girl even in this state, you can warp reality around you, creating Barrier.

[Seihai]

But for the trope to be valid one has to suffer while being conscious and alive, no? I don't see how they suffer from anything permanently. Not dying when killed only makes you suffer physically if the death progress takes a long time. And even then, none of the characters are yet in a state where they wish they could die. And if one wanted to die, you can just die if you really wanted to (as long as you're not a witch). And again about the MG -> witch assumption, the actual MGs are the ones who free the witches from the And I Must Scream in the end, or that's what their purpose is anyway.

[scr]

Um, i don't see how being trapped in an immobile vessel not being a bad thing. In fact, it will cause you to be full of despair real soon, which is what Witches are all about.

Try googling "sensory deprivation tank".

[ahelo]

I repeat! Madoka will not become a puella magi. I can just see it.

[Seihai]

Originally Posted by scr

Um, i don't see how being trapped in an immobile vessel not being a bad thing. In fact, it will cause you to be full of despair real soon, which is what Witches are all about.

Try googling "sensory deprivation tank".

The soul gem has its positives and negatives. But no one suffers directly from it. Which the trope is about, suffering. Sayaka looks the same to me before MG and after she turned MG. All that changed are her situations and circumstances. Which effect her personality and emotions of course, I don't deny that. And Homura is the living proof that Sayaka won't neccessarily has to turn into a full of despair witch soon, though it's probable given the story and its twists. But as I said, the vessel (soul gem) itself doesn't harm unless it's 100 meter away from you. Which by then you don't suffer, because you're literally dead.

And even before we knew that the soul is 'trapped' inside the soul gem (I personally think the 'vessel' / soul gem is the soul itself, according to how Kyubei addressed it), the MG-> witch with lots of despair thing was theorized upon. But like I said, when the time comes Sayaka (or anyone for that matter) turns into a witch and the And I Must Scream trope might kick in, it's only temporary because MGs purpose are to kill the witches which means destroying the trope.

[BaKaBaKaOtaKu]

as somebody had alrdy mentioned, the thought of being trapped forever in the witch world is worst than dying.*shudder*

just poor mami (if ever she's still alive) DX

[cat_monster]

I tried to sum up the analogies between "Madoka Magica" and Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There" but I'm afraid this seems like a bit of stretch....


CHAPTER I. Looking-Glass house
・There is a coupled mirror in Madoka's house.
・Madoka's school looks glassy.

CHAPTER II. The Garden of Live Flowers
・Seeing Madoka and Sayaka, Anthony yells "Those are unknown flowers to me. Yes, they are unknown to me too. Let's cut them off. Yes, let's just cut them off. We present the roses to our queen."
* However, this is not ep2 but ep1 in Madoka Magica.

CHAPTER III. Looking-Glass Insects
―'you may observe a Bread-and-Butterfly. Its wings are thin slices of Bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump of sugar.'
'And what does IT live on?'
'Weak tea with cream in it.'
A new difficulty came into Alice's head. 'Supposing it couldn't find any?' she suggested.
'Then it would die, of course.'

・Charlotte(the sesond form) and Pyotr are (like) insects.
・A teacup which is broken.
・Mami died.

CHAPTER IV. Tweedledum And Tweedledee
―This seemed quite natural (she remembered afterwards), and she was not even surprised to hear music playing: it seemed to come from the tree under which they were dancing, and it was done (as well as she could make it out) by the branches rubbing one across the other, like fiddles and fiddle-sticks.
―'There's only one sword, you know,' Tweedledum said to his brother

・music, fiddles ― Kamijou
・sword ― Sayaka

CHAPTER V. Wool and Water
???
(As for Ep5, I failed to find out analogies that make sense.)

CHAPTER VI. Humpty Dumpty
・Sayaka(Sayaka's SG) had a great fall like Humpty Dumpty.
・Humpty Dumpty is pictured as an egg and Sayaka's SG is egg-shaped.

[Kanon]

Originally Posted by Kazu-kun

IMO it's short range teleporting. With cool down time, say, of 5 second. That's why she keeps running while "jumping" every few seconds.

It's impossible to tell for sure at this point. The way her ability was portrayed on screen, it's either teleporting or time stop (for a couple seconds). At the moment, I'm more inclined to believe it's the latter since it fits with the time traveling theory (who's pretty much confirmed now). Also, one little thing: if Homura has the ability to teleport, she could have teleported on top of the truck instead of going through the trouble of climbing (she had a hard time doing that too). Of course, it's possible she simply ran out of juice or that the truck was too high.

Originally Posted by ahelo

I repeat! Madoka will not become a puella magi. I can just see it.

She won't make a contract with Kyubey, yes. But not become a magical girl at all? I doubt it. That would be quite a troll.


________

Now that we know for sure soul gems contain the souls of magical girls, I've been thinking they might be able to switch bodies. If we assume the Madoka = Homura theory is correct, then the reason Homura doesn't look one bit like Madoka could be that she lost her body at some point. It's possible her original body was destroyed beyond salvation and that she had to use a body lying around as a substitute. If things got so bad she had to resort to time travel to fix them, I assume there was no shortage of corpses...

[Seihai]

Originally Posted by Kanon

It's impossible to tell for sure at this point. The way her ability was portrayed on screen, it's either teleporting or time stop (for a couple seconds). At the moment, I'm more inclined to believe it's the latter since it fits with the time traveling theory (who's pretty much confirmed now). Also, one little thing: if Homura has the ability to teleport, she could have teleported on top of the truck instead of going through the trouble of climbing (she had a hard time doing that too). Of course, it's possible she simply ran out of juice or that the truck was too high.

And if she could teleport, she could have escaped Mami's bind, too. But if we assume her ability is time manipulation, then no matter how much time she had, escaping from the bind would have been simply too hard. (or at least even if it was possible to escape the bind, Mami would have been dead by then either way)

Now that we know for sure soul gems contain the souls of magical girls, I've been thinking they might be able to switch bodies. If we assume the Madoka = Homura theory is correct, then the reason Homura doesn't look one bit like Madoka could be that she lost her body at some point. It's possible her original body was destroyed beyond salvation and that she had to use a body lying around as a substitute. If things got so bad she had to resort to time travel to fix them, I assume there was no shortage of corpses...

How do you explain it chronologically? If the body switch was possible, in order to do it, you have to be an MG already. But to turn into an MG, you have to make a wish. And if we assume the wish was to time travel, then she switched body after the time travel? So in the current past that was unchanged, where two identical Madokas exist, the MG one that time travelled had to switch bodies through some circumstances?

[Hmm....]

Originally Posted by creb

I think the real question is whether the Soul Gem even requires the original body or if any body would do.

Makes the cat make a lot more sense if the latter.

This is exactly my thought. If it's true, Homura wouldn't need to wish to become human. She can just move her soul to more "comfortable" body later on. That would also be why QB didn't recognize her at first. He seem to get a clue this espisode though, same as Kyouko.

EDIT: This also explain Madoka's case. If she was a powerful MG before, why nobody know her in her current form.

[erneiz_hyde]

It is hinted that when the body separates from the egg, that particular MG doesn't have any recollection on what was happening during all the time their link with their Soul Gem was apart. Suggesting, the Soul Gem as it is, is incapable of doing anything (because the MG wasn't conscious). And yes, I think that means they can't even feel or realize that they are in a dire situation if the link is to ever disconnect.

However, it might be possible to consciously 'change' your body while the link is still there. However, since there's still no proof to this theory I wouldn't hold my breath.

[Kanon]

Originally Posted by Vanish

And if she could teleport, she could have escaped Mami's bind, too. But if we assume her ability is time manipulation, then no matter how much time she had, escaping from the bind would have been simply too hard. (or at least even if it was possible to escape the bind, Mami would have been dead by then either way)

Hmm, I was under the assumption Mami's bind prevented her from turning into a magical girl. Speaking of which, it really pissed me off that Madoka didn't manage to tell such a vital information to Sayaka.

Originally Posted by Vanish

How do you explain it chronologically? If the body switch was possible, in order to do it, you have to be an MG already. But to turn into an MG, you have to make a wish. And if we assume the wish was to time travel, then she switched body after the time travel? So in the current past that was unchanged, where two identical Madokas exist, the MG one that time travelled had to switch bodies through some circumstances?

Actually, I was thinking she used her own power to travel back in time. We don't know the limits of magic... it's possible that by stocking up or harnessing enough power (maybe by killing Kyubey?), she could expand her abilities and go back in time.

If we assume Homura is Madoka, then it's highly likely she contracted with Kyubey early, since there was no "Homura" to dissuade her from doing so in the original timeline. Sayaka might have taken her place in the current timeline (it seemed like Homura didn't expect her to become a MG).

[BaKaBaKaOtaKu]

Originally Posted by Hmm....

This is exactly my thought. If it's true, Homura wouldn't need to wish to become human. She can just move her soul to more "comfortable" body later on. That would also be why QB didn't recognize her at first. He seem to get a clue this espisode though, same as Kyouko.

seems like the cat theory is going strong. but i'm still quite torn with this and the homura=madoka theory. DX