Puella Magi Madoka Magica

I guess you could say the witches are sapient but insane.

Candeloro was separate from Mami for a bit in The Different Story. Preincarnate.

Now who's ignoring the evidence of others.

edited 20th Jan '15 4:22:09 PM by unnoun

She hadn't become a witch yet so those thoughts still felt out of place. But your idea contradicts the entire show.

...How?

I'm not sure I like how you keep acting like your interpretation is the only one, and all others are unreasonable.

If you want my actual opinion, I'd say that there is enough ambiguity built in to offer multiple viewpoints room to stand on.

I despise single vision.

edited 20th Jan '15 4:38:32 PM by unnoun

Well where is your support? Where is the support that the witches magically(irony not intented) gain new instincts out of nowhere that create behaviors that just happen to match a people at the despair event horizon and corrupted by power?

First of all, they don't specifically match the psyche of people at the despair event horizon and corrupted by power.

There are a lot of things they could match.

The fact that you think that's "obviously" what that behavior seems like does not, in fact, actually mean that's what everyone thinks that behavior seems like.

I think it seems like the behavior of a monster formed out of manifested insecurities. A nightmare, a curse, brought to life.

I think you're also a bit hung up on "evidence" when. Well. It's fiction. Fiction works however the creator says it works. No amount of logic can change that.

Ignoring the creator, there's the audience, and audience interpretations.

I interpret the behavior and "mindsets" of the Witches as being reflective of the girls when they became a Witch.

But.

See, funny thing about reflections is, they're inverted, and they can only copy.

And, finally. See, one of the things of the series is that Kyubey doesn't technically lie, and doesn't say things that are literally untrue. And he does say that Witches are born from curses, and spread curses, and spread negative emotions around.

edited 20th Jan '15 5:00:11 PM by unnoun

Not gonna lie, Sayaka's transformation is my favorite scene in the anime. Powerful stuff.

edited 20th Jan '15 5:07:36 PM by asterism

And, well.

Rebellion has Homura not aware she's in a labyrinth until she transforms.

When she does transform, she starts tripping balls.

Her familiars are mourners that constantly insult and demean her. And throw tomatoes at her.

And Sayaka says that she's the worst one off.

Homulily does not seem like Homura's actively in control for most of it. At the very least, she's not able to change her mind until Madoka releases her.

Frankly, Elly's smarter than a Magical Girl because she knows they're in a television show.

Witches are the result of applying entropy from the universe to the emotional states of the girls instead.

An endless cycle of self-flagellation. An act of rebellion.

That can mean a lot of things. It is Kyubey being unhelpful again. Magical girl are born of wishes in the sense that they need to make one to become a magical girl. It becomes their power as a magical girl.

A witch is born from a curse. Sayaka started to curse the world around her soul gem started to corrupt on its own. When she gave up on everything(not literally) she became a witch with her curse becoming her new power. The emotion of despair transforming her soul into a form that doesn't need a body. A form that relies on taking in other people's despair to sustain.

On a different note. I wonder how much Kyubey actually knows about what he is doing? He knows enough to make magical girls and figure about how powerful they will be, but he doesn't seem too bright. I mean he encounters a race that can break the laws of physics with what his race considers a mental illness and decides that he is going to poke it with a stick.

edited 20th Jan '15 5:30:34 PM by higurashimerlin

I figure if you encounter a phenomenon that seems to violate the laws of physics, the appropriate response is to do science at it until you've determined whether the laws of physics needs to be updated or it wasn't actually a violation, or what. And if in the process you find a way to use the phenomenon to extend the life of the universe, then great! I love having a universe.

I think it's best to think of it like when a magical girl becomes a witch, she dies. That's basically what happens. What's left behind is a shadow of their grief and hatred, a mindless monster that spreads despair to others. While witches have different appearances and mindsets inside their barriers, on the outside they all do the same thing: mark people with their kiss and make them kill themselves. Suicide is the ultimate expression of despair.

And before you start blathering on about Walpurgisnacht or Gretchen, they are explicitly extremely abnormal witches.

As I explain earlier. It is impossible for the witches to be mindless as that have way too much intelligence for that. Hell most of the witches are smarter than the actual main cast.

How are they intelligent? They're mindless predators. They hunt and kill. They're shadows, reflections of what they were when they were alive. They mimic the behaviours of their past selves because that's all they know.

The very first thing Candeloro does when she appears is attack Madoka and Homura. Why would an intelligent being born from Mami hurt people close to her? Mami didn't die hating them, she died hating herself.

Them still being intelligent is the simpler answer to them building labyrinths that optimize human aesthetics. Mami's power and labyrinth is about trapping her friends inside her labyrinth out of loneliness and is even describe by her card as "kind-hearted".

Sayaka recreated her best memories in her labyrinth and attack Madoka and Kyouko for disturbing her. Sayaka was already losing it before becoming one and it just got worst.

Just a note but, there is a bias towards explaining things by thinking of it as a fundamental trait while thinking of your own as the conditions. To Sayaka, Mami, Madoka what they do as witches makes perfect sense given the conditions.

Does the fact that people's faces optimise human aesthetics mean that they were were highly intelligent in the early trimesters of development in the womb?

Their labyrinth is effectively part of their body. They didn't build it. They grew it.

That.

They show to build it. It is shown in episode two Getrud's minions working at it. The familiar's card says that is what they do. And we see this with Homulilly. The witches aren't design. They are simply something the incubators learn humans could become. Considering that witches can't form naturally since people can't become Magical girls on their own, there can't have been any evolutionary pressure for them to conform to human values and aesthetics the way human faces do.

If you abandon anthropomorphism and stick to probability theory, it seems more likely given the evidence that witches are expressing an aspect of human psychology rather than being broken humans. If the witches had random defects then maybe it would work, but they too many similar traits in the right areas to be simply be damage minds.

So let me get this straight. Your idea proposed that humans have a inherit trait that when their magical powers are awaken and they cross the despair event horizon that their mind breaks and a complex machine in them(instincts as you call them) tells the familiar and resulting witch to build a labyrinth that just so happens to 1: Match human thought patterns 2: reflect their memories without having any from before becoming witches 3: Be design in a way optimize to trap their enemies without any evolutionary process or intelligence to build it?

You're talking about creatures that, sapient or not, are still formed out of human despair.

Maybe seeming like something created by a human mind is simply because they are?

Yeah the things is the human mind doesn't have built in "build a human like monster" machines in it. If Kyubey had design magical girls to become witches then it could possibly work although having a lot of burdensome details to it, but he didn't.

Do you have any idea how complex those evolutionary adaption would be? And how unlikely given that there was no conditions for them to ever be used into the incubators showed up?

Why are you wittering on about evolutionary pressure? We are talking about fantastic monsters born from the misery of teenage girls.

What I mean is that given that people don't know about magic, and where able to predict the worlds workings correctly enough to built technology that the laws of physics are for the most part the same and the laws of probability still apply. With that in mind it is too great an improbability that humans could just become have adaption that make them into mindless monsters that know how to hunt and feed on peoples despair, as well as built labyrinths well optimize for trapping people and conform to human aesthetics. Those adaption would never activate until the incubators arrived on the scene.

My point is that since the incubators had no role in designing witches and their workings, that those workings have to already exist in humans. This is a problem with zombies as there is no simple change that makes people into man eaters but this is a lot worst. Given that the show as I have pointed out a million times already shows evidence that the girls retain their humanity as witches and are acting out of human emotions and the rebellion movie confirming it that the improbability you are suggesting is not the case.

I guess what I am saying is that even if you confronted by magic, the laws of logic don't go out the window.

edited 21st Jan '15 6:19:34 PM by higurashimerlin

Well zombie movies actual say the virus or whatever makes them mindless eating machines and Madoka doesn't. Hell Rebellion says otherwise.

Man, are we still debating this show's mythos and the like? It really is anime's equivalent to The Matrix!

edited 21st Jan '15 7:54:01 PM by LDragon2

Just like how you keep comparing it to the Matrix.