Puella Magi Madoka Magica

It's heavily implied that if anything, the girl is the genie and Kyuubey is the lamp. (Okay, that's a stretched metaphor, but still). The girl grants the wish. Kyuubey just gives her the ability to do so. The wish is granted exactly as the girl wanted, up to the limits of her power, but is bound to what she envisioned at the time of her wish. Mami's wish never saved her parents, because she only realised with hindsight that she could do that. At the time, in her desperation, the thought never occurred to her. The wishes grant exactly what the girl thinks she wants and thinks she's asking for, but does not prevent unforeseen consequences or change the fact that what you want and what you think you want, are usually slightly different.

You mean the VN/dungeon crawler (Is it just me or do those two genres seem to be combined a lot recently?) for the PSP that wasn't released in English and the fan translation still isn't finished? I want to play that so bad it hurts.

Also, your right about Mami's wish. She got exactly what she wanted at that period of time. It wasn't until later that she was like "Oh shit, I should have also wished my parents survived."

That's basically what I said a few posts ago.

edited 29th May '15 1:36:45 PM by Zelenal

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Puella Magi Madoka Magica Portable. Thought the translation was done a while ago.

The route in question is a joke route that also involves Mami solving her loneliness issues by becoming an Idol Singer.

Nope. The site for the project currently lists the release date of the finished patch at December 22nd of this year. Despite not being finished, the patch is somehow past version 1.0.

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And Kyubey never thought to explain any of this to the girls that had the luxury of enough spare time to listen to the whole lecture, why exactly? Or explain all the details that come with being a Puella Magi, like the Equivalent Exchange between wish-generated Hope and Despair that should befall a Puella Magi, becoming a de facto lich, or that the darkening of a Soul Gem is actually a sign of how tainted it's becoming, that the taint can easily come from despair, and that a Puella Magi's only possible fates are either death by mortal injury or transforming into one of the very monsters that she's fighting?

Kyubey had years to tell Mami any of this. He could have taken his time, revealing the "smaller" facts first and let her absorb them properly, before proceeding to the bigger ones. He has, in his own words, millennia upon countless millennia's worth of empircal data on the average human being's psychology, which should be more than enough to make a very accurate judgment of how fast or slow, blunt or subtle he should be in his explanations, even if he doesn't understand why humans tick the way the do. Yet he did not. He never does, not unless he's directly confronted about an indiscrepancy. And the consequences of his reticence mesh too well with the fact that it's always to the benefit of his whole energy-collection scheme. Thus it's all too reasonable to assume that he's lying by omission on purpose for that very motive, even if he is incapable of comprehending that deliberate omission of important facts still counts as lying.

So yes, I think that he believes himself to be a Literal Genie and is somehow justified in being so (as well as employing Metaphorically True statements), but that the end result is that's actually being a Jackass Genie.

edited 29th May '15 2:01:04 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Let me answer all of your questions with another question: Why should he? Kyuubey is under no obligation to explain absolutely anything to magical girls other than what they need to know to hunt Witches. He has no reason to explain anything else if not asked about it and especially not before they make a contract. You seem to be trying to apply human morals to a species that sees emotions as a mental illness and is closer in functionality to a highly advanced AI. I seem to recall Kyuubey outright stating that human morals confuse him.

To put it another way, Kyuubey doesn't tell them all that stuff because they didn't ask. If they did outright ask him then I believe he would tell them the truth since he also has no reason to lie. He may construct his sentence in such a way to make people believe something that's wrong (see what he told Kyouko and Madoka about turning a Witch back to normal) but I can't recall him outright lying.

Also, he has no more reason to understand humans than we do to understand cattle. He makes the comparison himself when Info Dumping all over Madoka.

As for the whole "lie of omission" thing, I don't see that as lying since nothing you said is false (at least, as far as you know). He certainly does withhold information on purpose since he knows how most people would react to learning about it, though. I wouldn't be surprised if he did explain things in more detail at first but stopped after he had one too many Third Timeline Mami's and magical girls that just kinda holed themselves up and didn't nothing or people who just never made a contract to begin with.

Now go watch The Rebellion Story.

edited 29th May '15 2:15:24 PM by Zelenal

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Kyubey withholds pertinent information, yes. That doesn't make him a literal or jackass genie. He (or whatever actually grants the wishes, but for simplicity I'll assume it's him) doesn't deliberately misinterpret said wishes. He doesn't inadvertently misinterpret the wishes either. You make a wish with Kyubey, you get exactly what you meant when you asked for it.

Look at the page picture for Literal Genie. If that guy got a Kyubey-wish, he'd end up agile and attractive to women and capable of flight, just like he wanted. Now, maybe he's going to end up the center of an appalling clusterfuck of jealous rage from all the women who don't want to share him and all the men whose significant others have left them for the wisher, but that's not a case of Literal Genie or Jackass Genie. Bad things aren't happening because anybody misinterpreted the wisher's desires, but because the wisher didn't think through the logical consequences of getting those desires fulfilled.

And yes, Kyubey could take steps to reduce the likelihood and severity of such failures to think things through. And yes, he probably doesn't because such failures benefit him. And yes, that makes him a dick. But he's a dick in a fashion distinct from being a literal or jackass genie.

This too.

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Fair enough.

I'd say beat him to death, but I'm sure Homura is trying her hardest in our place.....

Though the way she's doing it has got me worried.

One Strip! One Strip!

Beating Kyuubey to death would have the exact same effect as when Homura filled him full of holes in Episode... 9, I think. Kyuubey is really more of a "then" (plural) than a "he."

Relevant.

edited 29th May '15 3:58:36 PM by Zelenal

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Kyubey is obligated, because obligation is a moral concept. But it's silly to expect it.

edited 29th May '15 4:34:58 PM by supermerlin100

Kyuubey pretty much only asks himself this one question when it comes to his decision making: "Will this action lead to results that I want?" If yes, he does it. If no, he doesn't. We've seen what happens to people when they learn the whole story (sure, we only have a sample size of four but it's likely a lot of people would react similarly to Madoka, Sayaka, and Mami).

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Where is that from?

It's awesome.

One Strip! One Strip!

It's a fan made animation pulled from the MadoMagi wiki.

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Wrong.

It's clearly a gift from Godoka god.

Or Homucifer Satan.

And I accept it whole heartedly.

One Strip! One Strip!

Punching Kyubey silly never felt so good.

Makes it a bit better, I think.

edited 29th May '15 7:09:04 PM by Diamite

Try watching it while listening to this.

"But if that happened, Melia might actually be happy. We can't have that." - Handsome Rob

I have been debating with someone on Screwattack Forums about this question - Is Homura a villain. I argue yes and he argued no. What are you guys thoughts.

My take on that is this: Homura was an Anti-Hero in the show proper, and went on a Protagonist Journey to Villain in the Rebellion moive.

No, not at all. Give me a moment and I'll find the giga post I made explaining Homura.

Here we go. Homura is very tragic and her actions might not seem morally sound but they were basically the only way to reliably protect Madoka. If she had just left things as they were then the Incubators would have definitely captured her eventually. Outside of that, we don't know enough details as to how Homura's universe works to make any other judgments.

edited 30th May '15 8:36:53 AM by Zelenal

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What rikalous said. As I've tried to explain before, there are many ways of being evil. Accusing an evil individual of being evil in a different way from the way they actually are evil is unhelpful.

As for Homura, what Very Melon said.

EDIT: The Incubators would have never captured Madoka. They were attempting the completely impossible.

edited 30th May '15 8:41:55 AM by Sereg

How so? Madoka was effectively captured during about half of The Rebellion Story but the problem was that they didn't fully know it. Given how persistent they are and the fact that they already have a way to block off Madoka's omniscience (since she didn't foresee Homura's actions), their success is inevitable.

For the record, I'm not calling Homura a hero, I'm just saying she's not evil. The world isn't just black and white seeing as how not even the Incubators are fully evil.

edited 30th May '15 8:49:42 AM by Zelenal

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Besides the whole Homura did nothing wrong meme, have we actually seen Homura do anything "villainous?" Yeah, she hijacked the Law of Cycles but she did that to protect Madoka, and we don't know how the Homuverse works so we don't know if anything else has changed. She calls herself "evil," but so far her "villainous acts" amount to incredibly petty things like breaking a teacup (and my interpretation is that she did those things to alienate herself from the other girls). She took away Sayaka's role as an agent of the Law of Cycles, but Sayaka might've gone and broken The Masquerade and put Madoka in danger.

Sex-negative outrage culture and the Illuminati are real

We have not. You also can't take any opinion Homura has regarding herself seriously. Refer once again to my long post on that topic.

Maybe I should do a full character analysis on Homura.

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The only way Rebellion makes sense given Madoka's canonical abilities is that Madoka is engaging in a Memory Gambit.

Madoka knows everything the Incubators plan to do before they do. What's more, she has the ability to erase their memories and their plans retroactively. She has omniversal omnipresence, meaning that not only can she not be blocked in any form whatsoever, not only does she exist everywhere simultaneously, on both sides of every barrier, but she is also in fictional universes and can alter fiction, dreams and imagination. Her strength and power is literally infinite, so she can lift, crush or break anything she wants and her speed is not only infinite, she can time travel as well. She is timeless, so even if you could harm or trap her in any way, which you can't as she's omnipresent and incorporeal, the fact that there was a time in the past where she was not harmed or trapped means that harming or trapping her fails to take effect. even if you were somehow able to freeze the entire omniverse simultaneously, her past self could hop over that instant, skipping it entirely, and continue with the future, rendering your efforts futile. She has the ability to erase witches even in fiction and minds, meaning that she can remove the knowledge of witches from the Incubators' brains whenever she wants or even before she decided to. She can change history so that Kyuubey didn't hear a word of his conversation with Homura or even remove Homura's ability to say "witches" or to even describe witches (or even erase Homura's memories) and again, she can do this retroactively. In Madoa's world, it's completely impossible to say, type or think the word "witch" or to describe or imagine them in any way without express permission from Madoka who knows every possible and impossible consequence of doing so. Madoka knows everything that will happen and even everything that is impossible to happen and can control all of it. Madoka is has access to everything she will ever know and will ever be able to do and has had full access to all of that since the beginning of time. She is perfectly capable of interacting with every version of herself from the past, present and future from the start of time until eternity beyond. She knew all the events of Rebellion and every possible and impossible variation of them and has known all of that since the dawn of time. Madoka knows every plan the Incubators will ever think of and every plan they won't think of and how successful they will be and can instantly change history so that they never made the plan in the first place. Madoka knows knows every thought that anyone will ever have and has dealt with everything that has ever been or ever will be imagined. She is completely impossible to out-think, surprise, evade, harm or capture in any way, whatsoever.

So, no. The Incubators' plans have always been and will always be impossible.