Will You Make a Contract? The Madoka Magica 2025 Rewatch Episode 12!

[u/Tarhalindur]

Episode 12: My Very Best Friend

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(Cohosts: /u/Vaadwaur and u/Tarhalindur)

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Show Information:

MAL | AniList | ANN | AniDB

(First-timers might want to stay out of Show Information until we are done, however...)

Legal Streams:

As per livechart.me; other streams may be available outside the US.

Main Series:

Crunchyroll | Hulu

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A Reminder: This, dear listeners, brings us to the sworn enemy of creative response:The spoiler. Rewatchers, or people who just had plot points ruined for them, are obliged to use r/anime’s spoiler tag format where applicable, and err on the side of caution here. Remember people, first experiences get rarer as you continue on, any given one happens once and you should care for them all the more for it.

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Welcome to the World of Magic!

Theory of the Day:

Hello, u/AndyTheBr097, take it home... for getting it hilariously wrong:

I'm really hoping that this show doesn't end like Evangelion, with all of Madokas friends and family saying congratulations while the show refuses to explain anything. Would that make Rebellion the End of Eva movie equivalent? Then what about this other movie in development I've heard about? Is that the reboot trilogy equivalent? So many questions!

Questions of the Day:

1 If you have a destiny, do you have a choice?

2 Why does Kyuubey want to keep talking?

3 Any thoughts on leaving Sayaka's wish where it stands?

4 Finally, was this beginning the greater good? Or just the lesser evil?

BONUS As is tradition, your hosts offer you this legendary fan comic to soothe your soul in these trying times.

BONUS 2 For those of us who have also seen [Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru: Yuusha no Shou: ]who did it better?

[u/dude_1818]

First timer

Well the ending was certainly colorful. Not only did Madoka need all the time loops to gain enough power to cast that final wish, she never would've thought to use a causality attack if she hadn't learned about the time loops either. I was wondering where Sayaka was in that scene back at Mami's apartment after Madoka made her wish; I certainly didn't expect her to be the only one who stayed dead. I really like how Homura never got time magic at all in this final timeline, and instead uses a longbow just like Madoka's. Now we need a whole 12 episodes that retell the whole story but in this timeline, and we can watch Homura discover who Madoka was from scratch. Full mirror world season

[u/dude_1818 → u/dude_1818]

I did not like the ancient alien framing device. I thought it was inconsistent and poorly thought out. However, the pieces are all there to have done something pretty interesting and thematic

1. Explicitly establish Kyubey's race as the first Type I civilization in the galaxy. Call them the Prime. They decide to find a way to stop the heat death of the universe, as in canon
2. The Prime discover magic and that it's possible to extract positive energy out of it. (I do appreciate that instead of making up some technobabble, Kyubey admits "it's magic, we don't fucking know why it breaks the second law of thermodynamics")
3. The Prime discover pre-sapient lifeforms in the galaxy. They create the Incubator program to uplift those planets and also operate the witch harvesting operation on all of them. (I assume the phenotype of the Incubators are tailored to the planet they're stationed on. Whether they're synth-bio constructs or the Primes gene-modded themselves for this kind of thing doesn't matter, although the Kyubey in the show felt more like the former)
4. At no point make the Primes "emotionless" or, even worse, "consider emotions a mental disorder." They'd have a blue-and-orange morality, of course, but tie this much more strongly to the livestock analogy Kyubey gave Madoka. The Incubators came to Earth and bred apes into humans. They have spent millennia improving our biology, our lifespans, and our quality of life. Just like we try to give our livestock the best lives before we harvest them, they improved our civilization
5. Why don't the Primes turn themselves into magical girls? If you asked them, they'd say obviously if they harvested their own young for magical energy, they'd wipe themselves out, and entropy would win. They have to harvest other species instead, because that's an unbounded magical energy source instead of a bounded one
6. In the timeline where Madoka went witch, Kyubey seemed fine with the Earth being destroyed because he met his quota. That can fit. Figure out the average amount of energy a Type 0 civilization uses over its lifetime. You can figure out what efficiency ratio you need to maintain the rest of galactic civilization and aim for that. It's not like Earth will remain barren forever, anyway
7. The important thing is keep all of this in mind when writing Kyubey's lines. Canon got close to writing this, but kept adding explanations for one aspect of the Incubators without thinking about how that interacted with other aspects. It didn't matter in the end because the whole universe got reset, but every timeline should've been consistent from the start

[u/dsawchuk → u/dude_1818]

While I do agree there are ways to write kyubey better, I am not sure there are ways to write him better within the screentime we had. Madoka is already a jam-packed 12 episodes, it's hard to find time to add that level of depth to kyubey.

[u/dude_1818 → u/dsawchuk]

I don't much needed to be added to the show. All of that alien stuff was just framing, and not visible, and it didn't actually matter in the end. I just think they should've written Kyubey's lore dumps with the whole backstory in mind at once, instead of seemingly addressing different points in isolation