Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Well what I mean is that all those Kyubey bodies seem in Rebellion all seem to share the mind. So it seems more likely it is a single brain controlling all of them, than them all having brains that contain the same mind link to each other.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

Why? Your assumption requires extra complexity. We already know that he has redundant bodies. Having redundant brains just makes sense. He also suggests that no part of him is any more important than any other when he talks about individuality. Why assume that he has this weakness when the evidence suggests otherwise?

The extra bodies are not pointless. He needs to work with magical girls across the world after all. Extra brains that don't contribute to his intelligence are pointless. In the rebellion all of his bodies speak the same words and at least seem to possess the same mind. By controlling many bodies he can do many things at once in many different places while being one single person.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

I forget if we mentioned this on the forum, but here's an interview from the Apirl edition of Manga Time Kirara Magica.

If we're going by Hive Mind, individual Kyubeys are like neurons. They don't need a separate brain controlling them all because, collectively, they are one giant brain. They seem to have individual conciousnesses, but since they lack emotions they don't really "argue" over the megabrain network, and they don't understand why humans care about individuals because all Kyubeys are pretty much the same and expendable. The "master" Kyubey is the result of them all linking together, not a specific one of them.

If the bodies are like neurons then it would be bad to have too many together at once like he did in Rebellion. Losing a single neuron won't hurt you but losing a few thousand can. What I think Kyubey is, is that he is a single person controlling a few thousand drones across the world from a safe distance. He may not even be apart of a social species like humans at all.

Likely what his talk about individuals is about is that they don't have a range of personalities like humans and they only value their species as a whole which is a different concept from a hive mind.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

And how can an intelligent species not have individual personalities unless there's some kind of Hive Mind going on? And don't forget that Kyubey is a species that has colonized multiple planets and one that likely needs less resources than humans do. There are likely quadrillions of incubators, losing a 100 is small potatoes at that scale.

The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.

To my knowledge most species don't have unique personalities. The incubators don't have emotions and have the same prior knowledge meaning with the same information they would believe in the same things.

If the incubators are a hive mind then that hive mind still couldn't be that big. It is said his telepathy has a range limit and he isn't capable of magic due to his lack of emotions. His hive mind couldn't even cover all of Mitakihara. This means losing a thousand of them would be enough to damage his hive mind if he really did work like that.

edited 11th Apr '15 12:53:39 PM by higurashimerlin

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

What is the evidence for the latter? And simpler animals debatably have personality, but sentient creatures definitely SHOULD have different personalities due to different experiences and natural inclinations unless they have a means of sharing said experiences (AKA a telepathic Hive Mind).

The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.

Never claimed they were. I said that giving him a weakness of a main brain in a jar is pointless.

What part of "redundancies" don't you understand? They are there so that he is unharmed if a galactic supercluster blows up because f some girl's wish and he loses a few septillion brains

Which s evidence of a Hive Mind. It is not evidence of your claim 'at all''.

Which is evidence of a Hive Mind. It is not evidence of your claim 'at all''

Also, if you think that every member of a species has the same personality, excluding humans, you know absolutely nothing about animal behaviour. This is stuff people specifically breed for. That is how much we know about differences in animal behaviour.

You're missing the point. If Kyuubey was controlling his bodies from somewhere, that would be more important than his other bodies and So every body is controlling every other body and it doesn't matter which one you kill. It doesn't affect him at all. If he only has one brain, that's a weakness. Redundant brains make him harder to kill.

That point still remains that Kyubey's bodies have telepathy that only works over a limited range. All his bodies are control by the same mind which mean what controls them has more range than the bodies have. His bodies ability range doesn't even cover the whole school let alone the whole world.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

I don't know why we're still arguing about this when there's a Word of God explanation right in the trope list:

"There are many bodies, but only one consciousness. Therefore, even if you kill the body, there isn't any sort of damage. Killing one is just like pulling out a single strand of hair. The scene where Kyubey eats his corpse was a scene that came in after the early stages of the script; I was trying to write Kyubey as something that humans can't relate to. Imagine what your response would be if one of your compatriots had just died."

He doesn't care much about losing a few thousand bodies because he has a presumably ridiculous number of clones wired together, and all the important information is shared throughout their network. If one of the Kyubeys was more important than the others, he wouldn't have so much trouble understanding why humans care about specific other humans instead of just the whole of humanity. So I see no reason to believe there's an "overlord."

There's no proof that the limited range issue applies to incubator-to-incubator connections, and even if it does, they just need to line themselves up like cables to carry information over longer distances. Anyway, how would a lord-of-all-Kyubeys solve that problem?

edited 11th Apr '15 2:30:47 PM by Kotomikun

I thought he'd said something like this. So, I was right. Thanks.

EDIT: Also, there is no evidence that Kyuubey's telepathy has limited range anyway. "Withing range" (range being infinite) is exactly the kind of technical truth Kyuubey uses all the time. As is letting others assume that he's too powerless to help them (in episode 3)

edited 11th Apr '15 3:21:37 PM by Sereg

"There are many bodies, but only one consciousness" I am pretty sure that is what I've been saying.

And Kyubey has to have a range given once again he can't use magic.

edited 11th Apr '15 3:27:25 PM by higurashimerlin

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

How do things follow? They are completely unrelated to each other. Even if he does have a range, that range may be "One billion light years" and therefore irrelevant. Actually, the range is irrelevant no matter what it is to this discussion, because your alternative is no better at dealing with range problems (in fact, it's worse as it prevents chaining)

EDIT: Also, that wasn't the relevent part o the quot. This is:

"Therefore, even if you kill the body, there isn't any sort of damage. Killing one is just like pulling out a single strand of hair. "

So, killing any of Kyuubey's bodies is equivalent to pulling out a hair. He doesn't have weak points.

edited 11th Apr '15 3:48:56 PM by Sereg

Kyubey can't use magic so he is bound by the laws of physics limiting the range that the signals from each body can travel. If the source for the signals is not apart of any of is bodies then it can be built to have a stronger signal and the bodies can still be used as routers. His range could be a billion light years but it couldn't form a hive mind as it would take billion years for the signal to reach if it was traveling in a vacuum the whole way.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

Ever heard of Quantum Entanglement? Basically it's a real phenomenom where changing one aspect of something instantly(ignoring lightspeed) changes that things counterpart. Perhaps Kyubey have managed to connect such a system to their nervous system via cybernetics of some kind.

The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.

Even I know it doesn't work like that. Quantum Entanglement does not allow faster than light signaling. This is brought up every time a scientist talks about Quantum Entanglement that this doesn't work.

edited 11th Apr '15 4:36:21 PM by higurashimerlin

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

Maybe they send messages through wormholes or pass notes in little Alcubierre drives. All we really know about coobie technological capabilities is that they're advanced enough to set up the meguca system and send representatives to other planets but can't push back the heat death of the universe without magic.

Calling it advance technology doesn't make it not magic. If it can explain anything besides not solving heat death it might as well still be magic.

A strong enough signal can reach all of Earth surface. If a machine can be built to do that, it would benefit from not being in all of Kyubey's bodies and it would be easier to built one rather than a few thousand for all of the bodies. And the bodies can still act as routers anyway if need be. This would explain Kyubey being completely unaffect by any number of his bodies being destroy and Kyubey being smart, we would predict him handling the whole thing from a safe distance. It is cheaper than building wormholes or using other hacks to get past the faster than light problem for each and everyone of his bodies.

edited 11th Apr '15 5:07:27 PM by higurashimerlin

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

I think its clearly obvious that however the Incubators operate it was not, in any great detail, considered by Booch, Shinji et all. My take is they're a hair away from being relativistic Gods, so attempting to use human scientific knowledge to conceptualize them is silly.

In bleaker news, at least in my opinion, Shinbo has reiterated that Rebellion is indeed intended to be the definitive end to the mainline Madoka saga, and all the ideas they've been mulling over have been AU/spinoff stuff. Like, I do *get* how Rebellion is supposed to be, from a certain point of view, definitive, but from another angle its rather infuriating, you know?

edited 11th Apr '15 5:13:46 PM by ScherzoPrime

Given that the original anime was supposed to be the whole story once upon a time, I'm taking the thing about Rebellion concluding the main story with a bit o' salt.

Calling it advanced technology in a setting where there is a separate thing called magic makes it not magic. It's like how Reed Richards isn't making anything magic, because Doctor Strange can confirm that it's completely different. The system would also benefit from phlebotinum redundancy, by having a machine in every coob body. I'm not sure how you can speak with such confidence on the economics of hella advanced aliens?

edited 11th Apr '15 5:21:08 PM by rikalous

Seems like the author wants to do more work oh boy. Also heard yandere Homura dubbed :3

Mileena Madness

When I read, I don't just read. I think about the story, shape it in my own head. I stopped liking bad stories and fine more meaning in good ones. Apart of that is not just allowing everything to happen just because. Kyubey's actions in story aren't consistent with him being apart of an alien species capable of space travel. His nature isn't that of a hive mind but of an single person.

So what if not a lot is "said" about the incubators or the witches? I'll look and think about what I see. What is "shown" even if it goes against what is said. although it is not said that Kyubey is a hive mind.

edited 11th Apr '15 5:56:49 PM by higurashimerlin

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

Well, I guess they could say the three movies create a sort of 'arc' of their own, and the new movies would be their own stories. I just can't believe they'd really think there'd be much interest in a So L Madoka anime. I could see a one-off OVA, but I think they'd end up spinning wheels trying to fill out 12 episodes.

I think to me 'Magic' to the Incubators is sort of like Quantum Mechanics to us; they know, in a very general sense, how things work, but not really why things work. They have enough understanding of Karma though to recognize that it's a universal force that governs the fate of sapient beings that experience emotions, so I feel their understanding of 'magic' is scientific, they're just dealing with something that is to them extremely counterintuitive. That's the issue with logic, it's only as good as the axiomatic paradigms on which it's based. If it's outdated or outright wrong it's a case of "Garbage in, Garbage Out".

edited 11th Apr '15 6:27:55 PM by ScherzoPrime