Magical Girl Madoka Magica 9 – A Rare Misstep, but Since it Involves Yuri, I’ll Allow It
After last week’s intense reveals and Sayaka’s quick spiral into despair, we were treated to an episode that was decidedly more relaxed in its pacing. The reveals came calmly this time instead of as big hits, with Kyubey finally explaining his motivations to Madoka and Kyoko rediscovering herself in the face of Sayaka’s transformation. As usual, the pacing was spot on, and the development of Kyoko’s character was handled wonderfully, but the way the climax played out left a bad taste in my mouth, ending an otherwise good episode on such a sour note that this may be the worst episode in the show so far.
It’s not that Kyoko’s sacrifice was too predictable. It was predictable, but that in itself is not a problem, as the show wasn’t playing it as a twist. Nor was her decision to do it unbelievable. The show did a fine job of turning villain into heroine through bits of character development in the past 3 episodes. Her wistful comment this episode about why she became a magical girl to begin with – and how Sayaka reminded her of that – had impact. It was just as clear to her as it was to us, the audience, that she was Sayaka’s foil, and seeing that girl’s downfall made her regret the loss of her innocence. Her desire to find redemption by saving Sayaka felt genuine.
Rather, the trouble was that what should have been a crowning moment of glory turned not to be, due to the poorly directed action of the climax. The necessary sense of danger and urgency just wasn’t there. I was ready to believe that Kyoko would give her life in this battle, but it should have been done under a truly dire situation, when no other option presented itself. Though the battle did a good enough job of showing Sayaka as dominating over Kyoko, there was no immediate sense of danger at her moment of sacrifice. It could have been a dramatic, powerful moment, capping off Kyoko’s journey for redemption with a truly selfless and needed sacrifice. Instead, we got a bit of yuri subtext which (though pretty damn cool) framed her death as one out of romantic love for Sayaka rather than of out of a desire to redeem herself for her crimes by aiding Sayaka. As I mentioned above, the latter was very well developed over the past few episodes. The former was jarring and, more importantly, unnecessary for justifying her sacrifice. There was a perfectly good reason to have Kyoko sacrifice her life! Why not use it!?
As for Kyubey’s reveal of his origin, I don’t like it, but I’ll allow it. I’m wary of stories using science fiction mumbo jumbo – especially “fancy” things like quantum mechanics, chaos theory, or, in this case, thermodynamics – to explain its fantasy. It’s just magic; by watching this show, we’ve already accepted a certain level of suspense of disbelief, and trying to rationalize it further just takes away from the mystique. And, as was the case here, when the science is wrong, it flat out sounds stupid.
To be fair, the science wasn’t completely wrong. Kyubey was conflating entropy (loss of usable energy) with the actual loss of energy (which is impossible), but perhaps he was simplifying things to explain to a middle schooler. Even so, the time scale he’s talking about – the point at which the universe will be so dominated by entropy that energy might as well not exist – is just too damn long to care about. Even if Kyubey’s race is as old as the universe, the time it would take for this to happen is several orders of magnitude longer than that. It’s a bit ridiculous to accept that his race thinks in that long a time scale.
Of course, Kyubey’s race is supposed to be unfathomable to us. Their inability to have emotion, I thought was good enough to explain his manipulative and disattached personality up to now. I don’t think the show was trying to use it as an excuse to forgive him for his actions, because it doesn’t. He’s still a psychopath. It merely served as an explanation of his reasoning, which will help us understand his moves in the future.
For example, his manipulation of Kyoko to kill her and Sayaka at the same time. His giving Kyoko false hope was a really clever move to set up the situation to force Madoka to become a magical girl. The kind of cold and calculated move fitting for such a villain. Given that he’s the villain, of course, it’s also probably a good idea to take what he says with a grain of salt. He might not state outright lies, but there are ways to lie without doing that.
So with 3 out of our 5 heroines disposed of, all of the pieces are in place. Walpurgis night looms ahead, which will be a challenge too much for Homura to handle alone, and the only possible source of help being Madoka. This should remind you of Madoka’s dream in the very first episode, in which Homura was shown fighting alone against… something, with Kyubey telling Madoka she could help her by becoming a magical girl. Was that dream indeed a glimpse into her future? I didn’t like that conjecture from the beginning, and I still don’t, but it seems quite likely to come true. But excepting the little misstep at the climax of this episode, this show has proven that it can execute on its story very well, regardless of its contents. After all, 2 very early conjectures came true in the previous episode in a truly awesome way. And when the show finally got around to character development the last few episodes, it has done it incredibly well. We’re entering the final act now. Madoka is still not a magical girl. I wait anxiously to see what comes.

















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