@Yumekichi11, amazing post, as usual. You asked about runes few times - their readings are available here - http://wiki.puella-magi.net/Runes:Episode_9 - the Puella Magi Wiki is a good resource overall, be sure to read - and edit if you feel like it.
Anyway, I watched it live, but didn't really understand much. Just rewatched with subs, and... well, to be honest, it was one of the worse episodes so far to me. Don't get me wrong, it was still amazing, because of the enormously high level of the whole series, but, you know, after episodes like 8th, your expectations wind up quite.
So Kyubey is not a devil, he's an alien... he's confirmed to be amoral (at least by himself) and he's using our little girls to produce energy so that the universe won't die. Oh well... it's (almost) the only logical explanation, and the fandom predicted much of it already, but still it sounded quite cheap to me. Probably just because now he lost all of his mystery, built so carefully through the previous 8 episodes. It was... kinda like the midi-chlorians talk in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. But anyway, quite interesting point is that he's the Big Bad from the human perspective, but the Big Good from the universe perspective. Will someone (Madoka?) have to decide for all the humanity about sacrificing our kind (or part of it) for the greater good? It may get interesting if played right.
His "amorality" shows up in quite tremendous way when he's dodging Kyouko's question about whether Sayaka can be saved ("none, as far as I know", "nobody has tried it yet", and all the similar bullshit), but said straight "it's impossible" to Homura. That bastard is manipulating those girls to achieve what he wants to achieve... though he probably doesn't understand that's evil. It's kinda coarse, but I believe that Urobuchi really wanted to portray him as truly amoral. One evidence of that is his apparent inability to straight-out lie, as he was dodging the question instead of saying "it may be possible if you tried" or something like that.
Kyouko's and Madoka's desperate try to save Sayaka (or should I say, Octavia von Seckendorff) with Kyouko sacrificing herself in the end was definitely the highlight of tonight's episode. But it was also depressing like hell. They were trying so hard, but genuine and pure human emotions seem to be essentially powerless in the end. Is that how Urobuchi sees the world? It's cruel, but (sadly) true, to some extent. The BGMs in those scenes were building the atmosphere really great, too. Kyouko had the purest intentions, but in the end, all that Kyouko achieved was fulfilling Kyubey's plans... Could there be anything more sad?
Oh, I almost forgot: Does that mean that Kyousuke actually got kissed by Sayaka? I hope not... It would be too sad to have yet another character dead...
On a side note: does anyone else think that Madoka calling Kyouko "Kyouko-chan" sounded somewhat strange? Well, we have rarely seen her being addressed directly to begin with, and the "-chan" honorific just didn't seem to suit her. It was totally like Madoka, but still it was strange to hear Kyouko being called like that.
And after seeing the credits scene... to sum things up, Kyubey desperately wants Madoka to become a Puella Magi, which would be the greatest Puella Magi to date, then turn into a witch (again, the greatest one) and give the universe a tremendous amount of energy. In other words, Madoka is like a massive oil field to Kyubey's society, which is under a petroleum crisis at the moment. That's depressing like hell... Madoka is the kind of person who may happily take that position, though.
Hopefully, she's got quite angry at Kyubey. Keep it up!
I'm not hyped up as much as I was a week ago, but still I'm looking forward to the next episodes. It's interesting how things will eventually wrap up. |