beingdeveloperissuffering

[beingdeveloperissuffering]

Reblog for anime version!

Sayonara, Washii. Genki de ne.

[beingdeveloperissuffering]

princess_principal_irl

It is the turn of the 20th century. Despite the revolution, our H. G. Wells-inspired Cavorite monopoly is intact, so the antigrav is taken care of; what our steampunk spy anime needs is a posh-looking school.

The London wall restricts us to the east side of the city, and various shots of driving on the steampunk aerial expressways suggest that we’re south of the Thames, quite possibly at an elevated location. The name “Queen’s Mayfair School” is not helpful: Mayfair is too central (just west of Piccadilly Circus) and seems perilously close to the wall. While the school must be fairly convenient to central London, where various Action happens, it needs to also stand on its own private patch of green land, uncrowded by the city.  

Conclusion: Queen’s Mayfair is located at what we would today call Dulwich College. It’s not an exact copy of our world today, but the key features of the college match. Pictures after the break.

People commenting on Dulwich say that visiting there is like you’ve left London. The tree-lined streets are lined with low fences, iron chains hanging between whitewashed posts. College Road itself is kept quiet with London’s only operating tollbooth. And here, with plenty of open space, we have a fancy school. With a tower. Let’s check it out on Google.

Embellish this with a few gardens and the style matches episode 1 exactly.

How about the college’s Great Hall?

Things are admittedly imperfect. This particular building doesn’t exist, but vaguely resembles the residence halls just down the street, if they were scaled up several stories.

Nor is there a church just off campus to watch the Morse code signals from the window: it appears they have taken liberties with the school’s clock tower:

They used a different tower, which does not exist, for this scene – presumably to project a rather different aesthetic:

On the whole, the architecture of the central building matches quite well, and the location is fairly compelling, especially considering that the Kingdom of Albion’s territory seems to be squarely focused on the southeast anyway:

Dulwich Academy is nestled up against that solid line, a location that can be seen just to the north of Sydenham Hill and east of West Dulwich on the blue (Southeastern) franchise on the London Connections map here, and west of the Brighton Mainline which can also be seen there:

That rail line is currently operated by the Southeastern franchise as far as Tulse Hill and the Thameslink franchise into London afterwards (observe the awkward crossing at Tulse Hill in the current service pattern; trains through this station are often forced to wait and it’s rather annoying).

Past Ashford, the route mostly follows the southern branch of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway, which takes you into the terminal at Holburn Viaduct:

which is just on the other side of Smithfield Market from the modern day Farringdon station, which was also once the terminal of the Metropolitan Railway. (Through service to the north via King’s Cross was available from the nearby Snow Hill station, built only a few years afterwards.)

Whilst I’m not aware of any single-track or historically-single-track portions of the railway between Maidstone and London, they do sillier things as an excuse for dramatic tension in that episode. 

In conclusion, there is an anime, presently airing (one of approximately four I’ve ever watched this way), and its primary setting is just over a mile away from my house, in a random zone-3 suburb of London. That’s ... a pretty weird thing to randomly happen in life, I’ve got to say.

Cc:  @dulwichcollege, @dulwichdiverter.

[beingdeveloperissuffering]

Sayonara, Washii. Genki de ne.

[beingdeveloperissuffering]

Magical Slayer Mamika’s “Magical Splash Flare” scene is a Revolutionary Girl Utena reference

I don’t hold that this is super mega ultra insightfulness, but I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere else, and I have heard hat some people were calling it a Fate reference (Gilgamesh or Unlimited Blade Works). Granted, a lot of the series is obviously a knockoff of loving homage to the Fate franchise, so I feel compelled to observe this special exception for posterity.

Mad mad mad mad mad mad mad spoilers for Re:Creators (episode 8) and Utena (episode 38-39) below the fold. (I’ll try to keep them from being complete-and-utter spoilers but we are talking about them being literally a frame away ...)

So let’s see what we’ve got here!

pink haired protagonist

on a mission to save her ally

getting stabbed by a sword from behind

with several swords, which may be said to symbolize human hatred, present in the scene

with these swords of hatred being of consistent and uniform design

with these swords of hatred forming a circular shape

with the stabbed protagonist turning to the viewer’s left with an open mouth and wide-open eyes

and then proceeding to a brief moment of injured glory

And while the Utena franchise isn’t a magical girl franchise per se, the paths which it forged have been followed by such shows as Princess Tutu and Madoka Magica. It is a beacon of influence, lending its dramatic import to many shows in the magical girl genre.

For a magical girl to die in an homage to Utena is a high, high honor.

.gif comparison available on imgur (they don’t work in this text post)

[beingdeveloperissuffering]

Sleepover Night at the Trope Warehouse

The story, as far as I’ve been told, is that once upon a time there was an animator on Toten Tengen Gurren Lagann. He was captured by Space Dandy, but escaped, and made his directorial debut.

Your author has never seen either of these, so went for advice. The summary I received was that TTGL is “Neitzsche”, and that 

if you thought firefly was a creative product and not just a stumble through the trope warehouse, space dandy might be really good for you! :P

(For reference, I think this is a little unfair. Firefly was not entirely uncreative in the space-western department. The rest of the tropes it dragged in sort of did it as much ill as they did good, though.)

Flip Flappers is no mere stumble through the trope warehouse. It was born there amongst the boxed-up props. It knows every nook and cranny of every box and every aisle. It will dump entire shelves full of tropes in an avalanche of joy; with its left hand it will reach for the Swimsuit Episode and with its right hand for Giant Robots, and as they careen towards the ground it will deftly combine the two in mid-air, assembling them into a masterpiece of entertainment. What chaos-magic is this??!

Nobody has any idea what’s going on, and it’s wonderful.

As of this writing, we are on episode 8 of 13, and we just had the swimsuit episode (yes, with giant robots). With that in mind, it’s time to serialize all the crazy theories about what the hell is happening so I can look back later and either feel good that I was right, or laugh at them. Wild speculation (and spoilers) after the break.

Theory 0. Pacing.

I’m cheating by being meta, but I think we are on the same basic schedule as Chuunibyou and Yuki Yuna Is A Hero. I call this the Baker’s Schedule, to contrast it with the Butcher’s Schedule that Urobutcher uses. It’s a slow start with lots of happiness and brightness and magic and sugar. Then somewhere around episode 7 of 12 or 8 of 13, there’s a gloriously happy beach/swimsuit episode, but sometime before the episode ends you realize that things have just got way too serious to handle: you will be baked, and then there will be cake!

(Or, with reference to the ending sequence: crawl into the oven, Hansel, and see if it is hot enough!!!)

There have been enough hints dropped throughout the series that (a) all is not right (dreams, possibly-dead-girl in ep1 at Flip Flap, the mysterious Flip Flap agenda, “world conquest”, etc). On top of that, the first episode showed us Cocona’s grandmother, and she was Way Too Real of a character for this not to be an emotionally serious anime. So the forecast is for dangerous drama and heavy Feels.

Let’s go again, Mimi!

Theory 1. Papika is a dog.

She goes ‘sniff sniff sniff’ (well, ‘kun kun kun’) everywhere. She keeps putting strange things in her mouth, including electrical cables. She does not conform to human expectations, inhibitions and values, and does not understand at all what is considered appropriate. She’s not stupid, but she’s clearly not experienced at rational reasoning or explaining things. She’s incredibly curious, but it’s not an intellectual curiosity. She is simple and pure. She love love love love love LOVES Cocona but hasn’t shown an ounce of actual romantic/sexual interest. Her eyes go wide chasing Uexkill and the creature is terrified. We’ve heard it explicitly mentioned by our mad scientist friend that Pure Illusion is not just about humans, but all kinds of existences - this isn’t just a callback to Uexkill’s world, it sets the stage for the future. And, most tellingly, there’s that line in Episode 3. “It sounds like Puppy-chan!” You thought that was a throwaway line? There are no throwaway lines, there is only secret foreshadowing.

This would also be a callout to magical girl anime Princess Tutu, where our redheaded protagonist is a duck who is literally named Duck, or “Ahiru”.

Confidence level: 80%

Theory 2/3. Homeworld is Pure Illusion, Cocona is not real

I’m not exactly sure what she is, but she’s clearly got some embedded amorphous in her and is the same sort of existence as other creatures.

Homeworld is Pure Illusion: 80%

Cocona is not real, at least not in her current form: 60%

Cocona is explicitly Papika’s imaginary friend and is not anchored in another form of real existence: 10%

Theory 4. Mimi is the boat-girl

If so, Cocona is somehow Mimi, or an artifact of Mimi.

Confidence: 50%

Theory 5. Zearth

Theorized: The enemy robot-thing in Episode 8 has Zearth’s right arm and that this is an explicit Bokurano reference before everything goes to Hell. In support of this, we see that the Pure Illusion experience may be harmful to your existence as an organism (Episode 1 flash of girl on floor). We see that no one is filling in the protagonists on the details and implications of what they’re doing, especially not the guy with Kokopelli-like glasses who actually knows what’s up. We see that the thing powering the robot and the thing inside Cocona’s leg are of the same sort. We have no confidence in the long-term existence of any universe we’ve visited (some of them explicitly seem to melt away). We see that there’s an insidious organisation bent on using these strange energies for presumably nefarious purposes which could be an analogue for the mysterious Founders.

Confidence: 25%

If this is the case, Papika will die to protect Cocona.

Long shot theories

These are all too much of a long shot to deserve a confidence rating, but detailed here for completeness sake.

It’s possible Mimi is the blue-haired girl who’s about to appear in episode 9 gone over to the dark side. (Cocona may have to fight her for the right to exist.)

It’s possible Yayaka is the real protagonist here. She’s been friends with Cocona far longer than Papika, she’s worried about the girl and her involvement in these matters. Like early-Cocona, she seems to suffer from an achievement and self-value deficit.

Cocona is actually dead and the risk getting stuck down a portal to “Hell” (as episode 7 joked about episode 6) is all too real. Pure Illusion, including the homeworld, is a sort of limbo state between proper reincarnations. (This fits quite well with Papika being a dog.)

Combination theories

Papika was said to have a wish that she wanted the amorphous to grant:

If Cocona is a dog, Mimi is boat-girl and Cocona is not real, then Papika has been sent into Pure Illusion to sniff out Mimi and bring her back, and this is the foundation of the plot. Computer-guy-hiding-behind-tree from ep7 may be the instigator here. Papika’s wish is to get Mimi back or to be a real girl.

If none of this is the case, the wish is something about saving Mimi from certain death, or terminal illness, or something along the lines.

Conclusions

Best anime I’ve seen in a long time.

[beingdeveloperissuffering]

In which I spoil Madoka 2017

Warning: This post will spoil Madoka, Rebellion, the Madoka concept film, Madoka 2017 (whether that’s a movie or a series) and other animes. You should probably stop reading now. (And if you keep reading, at least proceed slowly and with caution so you can change your mind.)

Spoilers!

But first, the plot so far.

Part 1

We are introduced to a bunch of teenage kids at play. Their biggest problem right now is that they have it too good; their lives are too simplistic. They frolic among themselves a little and try to have some fun.

Soon, however, they meet a small white mascot-type character and an older, mentor type character who introduce them to a world beyond their imaginations, a world in which hideous inhuman monsters menace the peaceful inhabitants of their city. Using the promise of a fun experience, these kids are enlisted - contracted - to fight the monsters and save the day. But the mentor-type character knows just a little bit too much, and soon dies in the line of duty.

Our protagonists find themselves in over their heads and have difficulty coping as a series of further revelations shock them to the core. When you have entered into a contract, there is no way out except your own doom, which is certain. And the mascot character is not at all harmless - he is the representative of an alien race beyond human comprehension, a race which seeks to use humanity as an energy source. They’re so advanced they’re doing universe-engineering stuff, and if everyone on the planet had to die to get what they want, they really wouldn’t care. Moreover, the hideous inhuman monsters which the characters are fighting are just others in the same position, leading to some serious and paralyzing self-doubt (and at least one on-screen freakout / suicide incident).

As we approach the end of the series, a shy quiet girl who escaped from being contracted (mostly through a fluke) is pressured by this mascot character to enter into an eleventh-hour contract. Her friends and family are at stake - as is the future of humanity itself.

Intermission

Let’s skip some irrelevant stuff and jump into a different universe for part 2.

Part 2

Here we see a happy school in a happy city. Actually... it’s a little too perfect. Artificial, even. This environment is being subtly manipulated by a certain character who can control people like puppets - and whose mysterious powers include stopping time with a flurry of gears. It’s not clear that the situation is stable. It’s not even strictly clear that anything else exists outside this town.

We have some new motifs here - in particular, ballet. The music is quiet, and a little on the eerie side. And there are a variety of characters here, but for the moment let’s leave aside the knight and some other friends - our main focus here will be on two magical girls.

The light magical girl is an ordinary enough girl, sweet and innocent, warmhearted, a little awkward, quiet, shy (though when empowered as a magical girl she is confident and capable). She is willing to experience pain, and even to sacrifice herself to do the right thing and move the world forward. She wields the power of Hope. She’s a redhead. Her costume features a red gem - the source of her power - just below her neck. (Let’s not get into the specifics of the emotions which power that gem just yet.)

The dark magical girl is evil! She is dark! Her costume... well, the important one is this crazy black dress without any shoulders. It’s made of dark feathers.(Individual feathers can be found floating around where she has worked her magics.) She claims that she is doing her evil for the sake of Love, and just wants to be with her love, though the relationship is clearly not a healthy one. 

But... we’ve seen enough of her past that can understand her, and sympathize a little. She was an orphan, she had low self-esteem, her life so far has been traumatic... and the one she loves protected her, so she’s doing her best to return the favor. And the person she loves is kind of storybook perfectly-nice, willing to risk life and limb and do really stupid things just to save defenseless and injured animals (like, say, small birds or kittens).

Stop reading before it’s too late seriously

Part 1 is a plot summary of Bokurano. You know, the one with all the chairs that show up in Madoka’s bedroom for some reason? The monsters are robots. The older mentor character is Kokopeli. The public actually knows about the monsters and there’s a couple of subplots involving the government and the Yakuza.

It’s not a bad show, and if you’ve seen Madoka before Bokurano, you already know too much, so hopefully I haven’t given you too many net spoilers. (Besides, its focus is on exploring the humanity of the various characters as they face certain doom.) As far as summaries go, it’s reasonably accurate and representative. The main difference is that we have robots instead of witches, and Dung Beetle isn’t nearly as fun as Kyubey.

Before I tell you what anime Part 2 really is, have some Bokurano images for spoiler space.

Last Chance To Turn Back

Part 2 of the summary is Princess Tutu.

found at http://www.zerochan.net/696920

Granted, the correspondences aren’t exactly 1:1 here. Besides Homura combining Drosselmeyer and Kraehe, we see that Madoka has to be both Princess Tutu and Mytho at once. Exactly how that works out will be interesting. Kyubey would make a good analogue for the raven but he’s working for Homura instead of the other way around.

But we can still see where Princess Tutu goes.

First, at some point, there’s a strong likelihood Homura will attempt to corrupt Madoka with some dark blood magics. It will hurt her. She will come to regret it.

Second, just like our anatine protagonist Tutu, Madoka should be expected to put her own life on the line and be attacked by her own friends and neighbors who are attacking her because enchantment and mind control - bereft of all magic powers, her only weapon hope itself - hope which she must somehow maintain despite there being no place for her in the world which she is hopes to restore. In this fight she will is defenseless, and she will be bodily battered, bruised, and broken.

tl;dr Madoka weighs the same as a duck.

[beingdeveloperissuffering]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Puella Magi Random Building Exterior Shot Magica!

[beingdeveloperissuffering]

My local headcanon has some ideas on this. Probably too many ideas. But…

Among other things, incubators have never once been observed contracting boys. Incubators do not seem to be resource-constrained, and possess an insatiable lust for energy (which must be especially acute in the relatively energy-poor post-Madoka world, where we also have better records), so even if boys were an inferior source of energy and magic potential, they would probably be worth tapping sooner or later, and we’d have heard about it. It would show up in the organizational politics of the MSY, which are presently 100% girl-centric.

This suggests that there may be something special about girls beyond their emotional vulnerability - perhaps they have a different relation to the fate and karmic destiny which contribute to potential. If we interpret the wish process as a karmic-destiny transformation operation, we can consider that any human with the potential to reproduce is tied to the fate of many generations to come, in a process which I will refer to here as The Circle of Life and treat it as a fundamental, ancient force of destiny. We will also note that females could be interpreted as much more strongly tied to the circle of life than males. Perhaps this contributes to their potential. Note is that the typical magical girl is on the edge of puberty, when the nature of the relationship between the girl and future generations is just turning on and is very much in flux, still very much a potential.

Furthermore, Governance suggests that vat-grown girls have potential much less frequently, and declines to clone its top heroes. If your people are grown in vats from computer-programmed genetic sequences, they’re poorly connected to the ancient circle of life and what could be a strong component of karmic destiny. We also can see that no AIs have ever contracted, though they seem to possess emotion as well and can certainly influence the future, including designing AIs: perhaps this is simply too indirect a relation to accumulate karmic destiny from descendants, or perhaps these processes are too deterministic and the messiness of natural biology actively helps somehow.

In light of this, and because the circle of life is circular and thus connects to a life in both directions, I also wonder - can karmic destiny and potential be transmitted from the past as well? Some heritable component of potential above and beyond just emotional predisposition. If I told you that a certain girl was the last survivor of an ancient royal family, descendant of queens, upholding ancient traditions… would you believe she’s also more likely to be magical? She’s certainly more likely to be the protagonist of a story, so it’s not implausible. In that case, it would mean that having a real past - human parents, not just genetic-sequence-machine parents - could contribute to potential. 

Finally, note that we’re dealing with creatures called Incubators who have an outline of an egg-like shape on their back and a character design that supposedly suggests fallopian tubes. Soul gems are pretty little eggs as well. Is this coincidence, or does forming the Incubator in this shape provide a better connection between the Incubators and the magic they perform? If magic is more about the philosophical than physical it makes sense - Oriko demonstrated to Yuma that human magic cares about symbolism and appearances enough to care about making magical objects look fancy and ornate, and the magic is even aware of traditions like the crystal ball. The young female body symbolizes fertility and the circle of life in a way that the male body doesn’t - perhaps this is important to the magic as well.

The way Kyubey describes it in the show, the reason the Incubators only contract adolescent girls isn't because those are the only possible producers of emotional energy, but because they're the most efficient demographic for the Incubators' purposes. But that seems like something it would have taken them a while to figure out? So how long has it been that way?

Who knows? One would assume starting very early in human history (which was, after all, mostly without civilization)

[beingdeveloperissuffering]

Yuki Yuna soundtrack titles

The Yuki Yuna soundtrack is full of songs whose title are either made out of Lucky Charms (e.g. ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸) or, worse, Japanese. If you use the Amazon music player, which is otherwise handy for streaming stuff without keeping it on your phone, you just see a lot of ?s instead of stars, and even if you can see the stars and asterisks just fine, good luck counting them! In light of this confusion, I have compiled the following table of translations for the titles for the intrepid soundtrack explorer.

Hoshi to Hana - COLORFUL

Hinagiku - POSTMERIDIE

Cosmos - SCAENA FELIX

Yuugao - AMICA CARA MEAE

Sumire - CLEMENTIA

Jukai no Nakae - QUAMOBREM

Kurotanesou - YOU ARE HERE

☆🌸 - COR DESTRUCTUM

2☆2🌸 - GRADUS PROHIBITUS

IFUU DOUDOU -  ONE FOR ALL

3☆3🌸 - WE'RE HERE FOR YOU

4☆4🌸 - VENARI STRIGAS

5☆5🌸 - PUELLA MAGI HOLY QUINTETU

Fuuin No Gi - NOI!

Senninsou -  NICE TO MEET YOU

Erica - CONFESSIO

Allium - SERENA IRA

Usuyukisou - TAENIA MEMORIAE

Fukujusou - CONTURBATIO

Honkinsenka - PUELLA IN SOMNIA

Tampopo - DECRETUM

Mandarge - TERROR ADHAERENS

6☆5🌸 - NIGHTMARE BALLET

7☆5🌸 - ABSOLUTE CONFIGURATION

MANKAI - CREDENS IUSTICIAM 

8☆5🌸 - NUMQUAM VINCAR

9☆5🌸 - THE WORST ENDING

10☆5🌸 -  MISTERIOSO

11☆5🌸 - MAGIA

12☆5🌸 - SURGAM IDENTITAM

Aurora Days - IN YOUR SILVER GARDEN

Hana to Hana - SALVAE, TERRAE MAGICAE

Inori no Uta - SEE YOU TOMORROW

Buy these for realz like I did; here’s some Amazon links: main soundtrack, Aurora Days, Hoshi to Hana (incl. Inori No Uta, because Itsuki is the bestest)

Please let me know if any of these links are wrong/broken/duplicated by mistake. Lots of URLs to copy/paste.

[beingdeveloperissuffering]

An Infinity of Limitations: Towards a Grand Unified Theology for TtS/Madoka

This is a speculative theological/metaphysical theory for the Madoka Magica universe as interpreted in @ttshieronym​’s To The Stars. It will attempt to describe most of the story’s interesting phenomena with a few related principles. (My first efforts towards this live on Reddit.)

A nonexclusive perpetual irrevocable transferrable sublicensable license to the use of these ideas is hereby granted to @ttshieronym, just to make it 100% clear that no one’s interested in pulling any copyright copywrongs. :P

The Physical Realm

There exists a physical universe, governed by certain laws, the likes of which you may find in a physics textbook. It contains things like Matter and Energy in a spacetime matrix. These laws describe the way one configuration of matter and energy in spacetime is related to another at a different part of spacetime. This universe is for the most part unremarkable except for the existence of faster-than-light travel, which is only really interesting if we can see someone using it to violate causality in creative ways, which hasn’t happened.

It is proposed that there is only one physical universe that is real. While chapter 54 introduced us to many universes, it seems clear many of them did not exist as reality, and Madoka says nothing to suggest she is pursuing plans for more than one real universe.

The Metaphysical Realm

The metaphysical realm is a sort of philosophy-space, without time or space or distance - as unphysical as a mathematical set. This realm contains timeless entities. (Afterlife-Mami refers to Madoka’s fate among these entities in Episode 12). Some of these entities are souls; Clarisse reports that Madoka reports that souls are timeless [TTS Ch. 45]. 

Souls are one type of timeless entity. Potential-states of physical reality and its constituent component are another. Concepts are proposed as a third. The states of physical reality which we are not merely potential but also “real” are defined as those related to the concept of Existence.

Entities may have relationships to other entities, and to the physical universe. Indeed, a timeless entity’s primary observable property is the way that it affects relationships. Relationships are not timeless, or at least not all timeless - they may be placed in an ordering relationship with each other. 

Timeless entities are unchanging by definition, always the same, like a mathematical function. However, the way that they interact with each other and with reality is affected by the relationships they are in, and since relationships are related to time, the entity’s behavior may change over time.

Relationships between entities are thus of utmost importance to metaphysics. This may be why Madoka likes to give relationship advice.

Souls & Their Bodies

A soul is related to a certain collection of matter located in the physical universe. In the case of things which we call “human souls” this is usually this is a human body; however, magical girls find themselves related to a soul gem instead. This relationship is not always an exclusive relationship, but usually has been, with a few magical-girl exceptions. Version 2 TacComps illustrate non-exclusive relationships [TTS ch45] and these can be expected to proliferate in the future.

A soul is a discrete, unique entity. There may be many like it, perhaps even so close that you could hypothetically exchange them and get identical results, but only one of them was connected to Miki Sayaka, and we can be confident that it’s the same one in the grief-cube-and-demon universe as it was the first time Madoka met her in a witch-universe because what kind of Madoka would leave her friends behind?

A soul's relationship to the body is a substantial one. A soul's behavior changes depending on events which the soul’s body has experienced - or, to put it another way, “the soul remembers”. This is one of the primary behaviors associated with a soul. When these memories are faked, they fail to make an impact on the soul (see: Sacnite).

When the soul’s relationship to its body is interrupted by Incubator contracting, the interruption is painful. When the soul is placed in a relationship with a different body, it endeavors to reshape the body to what it is familiar with, as demonstrated in early revivification procedures. When that reshaping is partial or incomplete, the results are unpleasant. When the memories of the host are altered or the host “reformatted”, the soul attempts to bring them back (see the presumed flashbacks of Mami). Note that no reincarnation has been observed in the universe; if it does occur we will need to look for new metaphysics to explain the encapsulation of previous lives.

It is not known what force assigns souls to particular bodies. However, it seems likely that some souls are not suitable for some bodies, because a hypothetical situation in which we placed the soul we call “Sayaka Miki” in the body of a bloodthirsty Viking war-prince doesn’t intuitively make a lot of sense. It is proposed that one immutable property of a soul is a manner in which it constrains relationships to other entities.

Constraint & Afterlife

If concept-space contains an infinitude of entities, many of which are not real, then any action which selects one set of potential events to be Reality over another is fundamentally an exercise of constraint. The known laws of physics are one type of constraint. The force corrupting soul gems when they have not balanced hope and greif is another. Madoka the Law of Cycles is a third. There are probably many.

Human souls attempt to constrain reality. Most simply do so by being connected with a mind in a body, and affecting the universe through that body’s physical interaction, but souls which are able to work Magic can constrain reality according to their likings. The typical use of magic is the trivial use of this power. Akemi Homura’s theatrics while redirecting a particle beam that could have wiped out Europe are a more extreme use [Ch. 4].

Madoka differs from most human souls in that she is able to observe all potential realities - perhaps all entities - while still applying constraints on reality. Other human souls appear to interact with infinitude only once they are dead (e.g. Sayaka). It is not clear that all souls have this opportunity, but it is consistent with notions of a transcendent afterlife. They may also interact with one another.

Note that love is observed to affect souls very powerfully, and as Kirika observed in Oriko Magica chapter 3, “Love is an infinity of limitations.”

Destiny & Contract

We observe that good wishes and Potential come from a very intense emotional state, a girl who really wants something, and the girl gets what she (thinks she) wants, not just what she says. Incubators do not offer advice on wishes, either. In general, the wish-granting itself is a fairly abuse-resistant system. This suggests that the contractee’s soul actually effects the change, not an Incubator, and that its emotion is directly involved, precluding the likes of the Incubators from making their own wishes directly.

We observe that the wish made during the contract and the powers one gets as a result of the contract are thematically similar. This points to a common mechanism. It is proposed that the incubator contract creates a new relationship between the soul and the universe, one which permits the soul to effect one substantial constraint on the universe immediately (and smaller constraints afterwards, especially if they’re similar to a constraint it just practiced). 

Incubators have said that the strength of a girl’s potential is related to the karmic destiny that her soul bears; rulers of nations and the like are known to have more. A destiny is a relationship of the soul to potential future events. This destiny is stronger when there is more influence and stronger connections. The incubators’ contract somehow connects the soul to this destiny in order to achieve the contractee’s wish.

There may be reasons besides emotion middle-school girls are particularly suitable for contract. Their destiny is still substantially undecided, but it is just becoming clear. This suggests a v2 TacComp like Clarisse will have difficulty contracting even if she retains her own soul - her destiny is already tied to Ryouko.

Other properties which result in a gender-specific result may exist, but we lack the corner-cases which could nail them down.

The incubators claim to use the contract to reduce entropy. Perhaps the incubators’ technology places an additional entropy-reduction constraint on the contract, one which requires the contractee’s soul to actually apply it to the universe. It seems likely to be at the time of contract, in any event, as it is usually spoken of in the sense of happening instantaneously (”your wish has overcome entropy!”). There may be additional energy related to the grief-harvesting process, but it is clearly less important than the energy from the wish itself (see the events surrounding the unkillable Kreimheld Gretchen). 

The contract places an ongoing burden on the soul: grief cubes will be required regularly. It is not clear what the nature of this burden is exactly, but it does not seem to be an ongoing entropy-reduction, because the incubators really don’t seem to care how long an individual magical girl survives.

We see that stealing a magical girl’s powers, as Oriko experiments with, is not possible without death - essentially the soul surrenders its ability to constrain the universe, and it can have no further impact on reality.

Balance & Grief

Souls appear to require some form of balance: hope and despair balance out to zero. Each exercise that places a soul in a relationship with Hope (a wish, magic, or entropy-reduction - which is fundamentally an exercise in hope for the universe) places it in relationship with grief, sufficient to maintain the soul’s balance.  

Akemi Homura & Kaname Madoka

Homura interacts with the usual rules in special ways. In particular, she gets to rewind time.

We have noted that “the soul remembers.” Madoka, however, does not remember rewound time. She has undergone substantial trauma, time and again, and it has not meaningfully impacted her in the penultimate timeline (the main timeline of the animated series). She is just an innocent middle-school girl. 

Madoka does not remember because those things never happened. Homura’s rewinding of time removed them from Reality and they are no longer in a direct relationship with Madoka’s soul. However, they are in a relationship with Homura’s soul, which distinguishes them from other events that are not real.

Madoka does, however, sorta-dream about these events in episode 1 and there is a moment of static in episode 8. It is proposed that Madoka’s relationship with these events is indirect, through Homura. This indirect relationship could make Homura special in surprising ways. In particular, one notes that Kyubey predicted that Madoka would not be able to interact with the rewritten universe, no longer having a first-class relationship with Reality, but this wasn’t exactly true. Her relationship to Homura serves as a bridge. If Madoka would like to maintain the bridge’s connection and possess metaphysical resonances connecting her influence to more distant parts of spacetime, she may need Homura, and every moment she stays alive in the universe Madoka’s connection to the universe is stronger. This is why she can’t just pick another prophet to do her will.

Homura’s rewinding-time stopped many events from happening, because Madoka kept dying. This means that Madoka’s life or death decided the ability of any event in the future to exist at all. It’s not just 20 years of rewinds: 240 times an ordinary middle school girl’s destiny is achievable by accident of birth, but Kyubey doesn’t chase after every princess like they’re going to fulfill his quota once and for all, and Madoka is clearly unprecedented. Rather, Madoka has the entirety of humanity’s future on her shoulders, and that is what it takes to be a god, or humanity’s doom. Note that this implies Homura was in error when she thought additional rewinds would make Madoka substantially more powerful, and that Kyubey’s theory of Madoka’s potential was slightly imperfect.

Madoka’s enormous soul gem reflects the scope of the constraints which she has placed on the universe.

Open Questions

There are many open questions in this theory and further study is required. Many relate to the dynamics of Balance. Is balance a property intrinsic to the human soul itself, or of the contract? Or perhaps an extrinsic principle has been placed in a relationship with all contracts? Why do magical girls continue to need grief seeds? And why is grief in a grief cube special - why can’t a magical girl cleanse her soul gem by hanging around in a hospital or war zone? Are grief cubes artificial, perhaps of Incubator design like the soul-gems-turned-grief-seed that preceded them? How about the miasma? The incubators may have experience with pocket universes and isolation fields (Rebellion is non-canon here but suggestive). What is the relationship between Homura’s grief and her crazy-powers? If Madoka saves magical girls from despair how does that interact with the balancing principle? What other principles besides Balance constrain relationships in the metaphysical realm? 

[beingdeveloperissuffering]

Madoka 2.6% Magica

I undertook an analysis of Puella Magi Madoka Magica to determine just how much Magica there actually is. Spoiler: It didn’t take too long.

Methodology:

I used the Hulu stream, rounded all timestamps to the nearest second and, to be generous, determined that once Madoka Magica appeared in a scene the clock would continue to tick until seeing a different scene, or Madoka physically left the location - so even if the camera switches over to Octavia for a few seconds those seconds still count. (This should easily make up for any small errors.) The ascended Madoka counts as magica; flashbacks in Homura’s room don’t. I measured a total 7 minutes 24 seconds of Madoka being magica in the series itself. By comparison, the intro sequence has about 56 seconds of magica, which is 10m11s total if I’ve counted it right. (Episode 12 ends with credits rolling over a plain white background, but I believe the sequence plays in all the other episodes.)

If each episode is 24m24s (4h53m48s series total) and we omit the opening credits, then Madoka is approximately 2.6% magica - rising to 6.3% magica if we count the credits.

Future work in this area is planned, including Puella Magi Random Building Exterior Shot Magica.

(Edit: An earlier version of this post had a minor math/transcription error regarding the total magica including the credits. It has been corrected. The 2.6% value remains accurate.)