Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Kyubey is a single person just controlling many bodies. Kill Kyubey and the remote controlled bodies fall lifelessly to the floor.

A new piece of official art from Ume Aoki.◊ I wouldn't normally upload something like this but if you look closely Madoka's regular magical girl outfit got a bit of a redesign.

I don't remember Madoka's skirt being so short and not-poofy, for one.

Now this is old news, even though it hasn't been posted on the forum. This blog goes into more details. Madoka's new costume, in my opinion seems to show Homucifer's influence - the heart pattern, the ribbons, and the bracelet which I heard someone say is identical to what Madoka was using to braid Homura's hair in the flower field scene.

HOWEVER, I've also heard that Ume Aoki has an art exhibition running, so the pic could just be related to that. And an interview in Kirara Magica's April issue says that the creators want to do something but they don't have anything tangible yet.

Personally, I'm waiting for Walpurgisnacht to see if they announce something.

edited 10th Apr '15 10:35:21 AM by universalperson

There is no evidence that Kyuubey has a body that is any more important than any of the others. It's implied that it works like our lungs and kidneys. We only need one. Removing one of them is not a problem and it doesn't matter which one it is. If you destroyed every single Incubator body in the entire Universe except one, it doesn't matter which one is left, Kyuubey is still perfectly fine.

I mean that all the bodies are drones. He is just a brain in a jar somewhere safe. The bodies don't have brains and can't function on their own.

Honestly I think it's far less plausible that one Kyubey is manning this operation than them having a Hive Mind. We know for a fact that Kyubey is telepathic, species with a natural Hive Mind in sci-fi tend to maintain it with a telepathic network.

Kyubey isn't ever really present as a hive mind. He is killed and he comes back in a different body. In Rebellion he is shown controlling many bodies at once. They may be more than more incubator but there is only one Kyubey.

How do you know that kyubey actually has a physical body and he's not some disembodied consciousness thing?

Or.

See, most of matter is just empty space. Most of the gaps between cells in a human body is empty space.

It's conceivable that every single body of Kyubey's is simply a part of a larger organism. Like a bacteria colony, or a sponge, or something.

Each piece is part of the whole but doesn't need the whole to live.

And.

Funny thing, Kyubey outright called himself a "guardian of magic" early on. So if we assume that he never outright lies...

I don't think Kyubey's bodies are apart of him. They're just drones he controls remotely. He is either a brain in a jar or a soul gem with a larger range.

Where does the guardian of magic line come from? I don't remember it being there in the official release.

Right, I forgot, you take things you think as though they're fact and are unwilling to consider alternative possibilities. Gotcha.

No, clearly the idea of a species that can convert emotions into energy and manipulate the abstract concept of the soul in other sentient beings not needing a physical body of its own is just too absurd to consider.

So I'll be back to avoiding this thread again I guess. Toodles.

EDIT: Also, Episode 2.

edited 10th Apr '15 5:09:39 PM by unnoun

I didn't say there wasn't a species. Only that Kyubey is in control of the bodies that manage Earth's magical girls. In the rebellion story we see him control hundreds of them.

And my whole point is that Kyubey isn't the drones, but a single person who controls all of them and doesn't live in any of them. I even suggested he made himself into a soul gem.

edited 10th Apr '15 5:28:45 PM by higurashimerlin

Once again. Proof? We saw hundreds of incubators in Rebellion but that actually supports the Hive Mind theory more. If it was only one entity why do hundreds of them need to be in the same place. It makes more sense that a bunch of Kyubeys were syncing up to view the experiment at different angles, which a single person can't process at all.

Putting them together is to get more than one angle. A human couldn't process it but he could. After all he was working with magical girls in many different places in at least Japan at once. Kyubey explains it to Homura in episode 8 as him having spare bodies. In Rebellion as Homura destroys them one by one and they each pick off his monologue right where he stopped. And if he was a hive mind then having that many of his "parts" there would be a really bad idea as having that many destroyed could actually cause real damage.

Not to mention Kyubey's bodies seem to be mostly hollow as it would be impossible for him to eat one otherwise. This doesn't leave much room for a brain. And it would be smart to sent a remote controlled dummy in place of yourself when you are dealing with people who can tell the laws of physics to go away for a moment. Remember Kyubey can not use magic.

OK then if they have no brains then how the hell can these drones telepathically communicate? Last time I checked telepathy usually can't happen with a being that can't think.

That's not how a hive mind works.

edited 10th Apr '15 6:09:20 PM by HanabiraKage

What I am suggesting is they just have a receiver built in to make them controller from the outside. Either that or Kyubey made himself into a soul gem which seems like a pretty reasonable deal.

So I just watched Rebellion dubbed. It's... not great.

The dub or the movie in general?

The dub. Certain sections are ok, but overall I did not like it.

Isn't it Word of God that the reason Kyubey kept coming back every time he was killed was because he was creating spare bodies/respawning using the magic of the planet?

When Homura finally kills him he complains that she made him waste one of his "countless spares." He doesn't say anything about that being magical, though. Presumably it's just Sufficiently Advanced Alien technology. I'd be surprised if one of the creators said that was magic, because it seems pretty clear that he can't use magic, only activate it in emotional creatures. Otherwise he wouldn't bother with all this contracting business.

In any case, it sounds like Kyubey is a specific entity that's networked to all the other incubators, not just a cell of one great big being. Though the line between those two things is a bit fuzzy...

As for the "guardian of magic" thing, I just rewatched episode 2 and he doesn't say anything like that. Maybe that was from a weird fansub?

edited 11th Apr '15 12:53:03 AM by Kotomikun

I believe that came from a fake interview.

It may be possible for him to use the magic power left behind by magical girls and witches. After all it is possible to track them down using it. But the bodies are just spares that he can control all at once.

There is no evidence that Kyuubey needs a brain in a jar. Just like we don't need an extra kidney in a jar to have redundant kidneys. In his case, his entire body is redundant, including his brain. He doesn't have one brain in a jar, he has lots of brains that are redundant.