Mobius strips of death
Alternative title: “Why I think Kyubey should find a new job.” This post is going to be one huge spoiler, so don’t read on if you haven’t watched up to episode 9 of Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
I’m sure the latest episode has blown a few minds here and there. I thought it was an interesting development, but I always feel that trying to stick a half-baked science-y explanation onto what is essentially a standard fantasy setting tends to open the writing to unnecessary critical analysis that distract from the actual storytelling. And as much as that is a bad thing, people like me can’t help but run with it. So here’s my take on the subject.
Entropy
Entropy is one of the basic tenets of modern physics and chemistry. Often called the “arrow of time”, it embodies the irreversible passage of time.
Water goes down, vapour goes up. Never a miscommunication.
The general idea is that all chemical and physical processes in the universe have a natural tendency to become more disordered over time. Order and complexity such as stars, planets and life require energy to sustain against the flow of entropy, and the total mass-energy in an isolated system (i.e. the whole universe) is constant but entropy is increasing continuously.
Eventually, the universe goes into heat death unless someone/thing figures out how to either reverse entropy or introduce a source of energy that exists beyond our universe, both of which are improbable within the frameworks of modern physics.
Isaac Asimov, one of my favourite authors ever, wrote a thought-provoking short story about entropy titled “The Last Question” in which he imagined humans of near and distant future pondering the question of entropy as each successive generation draws closer to the universe’s final deadline.
The Loli Solution
In Madoka Magica, the solution to the ultimate question is pubescent girls, whose oestrogen-fuelled emotional turmoils apparently draw upon energy from a source that lies outside the universe. Dozens of physicists commit mass suicide because the ultimate solution to one of the greatest questions of science apparently lies in Twilight novels.
Kyubey can be thought of as the intergalactic equivalent of an oil field surveyor. Magical girls are precious resources, more literally than lolicons think. The battle between Puella Magi and their elder counterparts can be seen as a refinery process in which the full energy potential of crude emo is realized after being subjected to pressure and heat.
Madoka Magica is really an allegory for the monolithic energy industry and its apparent contempt for, and inability to comprehend, all things good and pure. But I digress, if that is even possible in an analysis such as this one.
They should figure out how to harvest tsundere energy
In any case, Kyubey’s people aim to combat entropy not by reversing it but by introducing energy from an unspecified plain of existence (“emoland”) and the gateway to this magical energy happens to be (emo) little girls.
The Other Solution
However, at this point in the story it is quite clear that the technology to travel back in time is apparently within the capabilities of Kyubey’s people. I say this because Homura travelled back in time and this was performed by either future Kyubey or one of his peers. (If he has any. FOREVER ALONE.)
The problem with travelling back in time is that it defies the natural progression of entropy, which is to say that it suggests (or perhaps requires) that entropy can in fact be reversed.
Given that Kyubey’s people have the ability to travel back in time, it should be possible for them to reverse entropy without the need for an extra-dimensional source of energy. In fact, directly addressing the problem in this manner should prove to be much more effective than using little girls like AAA batteries.
Alternatively, just use magnets
We know for a fact that the extra-dimensional energy produced by each Puella Magi is of a certain finite amount because Kyubey is constantly on the lookout for new recruits. This means that the net amount of energy Kyubey can generate at any time is limited by the total population size of human lolis and those of other suitable alien species.
If however entropy can be reversed, then unlimited energy is one of the guaranteed outcomes. For example, a suitable star can be harvested for energy and returned to its prior more-energetic state for as many times as required.
If such local reversal is not possible, then instead of sending a little girl back in time, Kyubey’s people can construct giant hydrogen bombs capable of creating stars and send them back in time, then harvest the resulting stars for energy to create twice as many giant hydrogen bombs and send those back in time again. This should be possible given that the feasibility of sending matter back in time has already been proven. And if they can also create wormholes, then a more direct radiation-based energy feedback loop can be used in lieu of the matter medium.
The Power of Wishes
In my brainstorming of this subject, it was suggested to me that perhaps Kyubey’s people are not actually capable of time travel but merely possess the unspecific “power” to grant wishes. My immediate feeling is that this is a cop-out since it basically goes back to the “a wizard did it” explanation which defeats the point of even coming here, assuming that such a point exists somewhere in the space-time continuum.
On QB’s planet, this is their version of Where’s Waldo?
After some thought, my refined conclusion is that Kyubey’s people are not capable of granting wishes; they merely possess advance technology capable of performing deeds that fulfil the requirements of the wishes requested by the girls.
For example, they have the ability to remotely manipulate matter, which they used to provide medical treatment to Mami and that guy whom Sayaka likes. They also have a sufficient understanding of human neurology to brainwash people into listening to Kyoko’s father speak.
Therefore, they must already be in possession of time-travelling technology or they would not have been unable to grant Homura her wish of having hawt yuri sechs with saving Madoka in the past.
The reason why I came to this conclusion is very simple. If their wish-granting ability were truly magical, omnipotent and capable of accomplishing deeds they themselves are not capable of performing, then it ought to be trivial for them to convince a random pubescent human girl to wish for a device capable of reversing entropy at the operator’s will or a truly limitless source of extra-dimensional energy. QED.
The Farm
Finally, if for some really good explanation I cannot think of there is a perfectly rational reason why harvesting lolis is a more effective solution than my proposed alternatives, then it stands to reason that it should be conducted in the most efficient and organized manner possible.
I am, of course, speaking of loli farms. Think Matrix but with arrays of lab-grown lolis instead. This can be done at a far lower unit cost than having Incubators finding and harvesting lolis in the wild, as demonstrated by humanity’s early and rapid transition from nomadic hunter-gatherer to agricultural and finally industrial societies.
An artist’s depiction of such a loli farm
Conclusion
The solution employed by Kyubey and his advanced intergalactic civilization, which I estimate to be at least Type III on the Kardeshev scale, appears to be ad hoc, rudimentary and a mismatch to the level of technological sophistication they have demonstrated.
Instead of addressing the issue of entropy directly, the use of extra-dimensional energy merely delays the eventual inevitability unless the supply of energy is limitless. Given that the nature of this mysterious energy source is unknown, it is entirely possible, if highly improbable, that this is true, in which case the solution may in fact work indefinitely with continuous eternal maintenance.
But if such is the case, reliance on a ready supply of young pubescent girls is nevertheless dangerous due to falling birthrates, erratic biological behaviours that may lead to species self-destruction and unpredictable cosmological extinction level events.
If alkaline batteries had feelings
It is recommended that Kyubey’s people explore a non-biological long-term solution based on the exploitation of either localized reversal of entropy or the feedback nature of time travel that is within their scientific capabilities. Should a biological solution be unavoidable due to other circumstances, a more scalable and systematic industrialized loli farm would be a more suitable alternative to insure against market fluctuations and sudden spikes in demand.
I submit this to the Internet for its kind consideration. Please forward any honorary doctorates and Nobel Prize nominations to my email. Thank you.
Can’t believe I never made the mental connection between QB-House and Madoka until now. v.v
I love how this show has taken a SF bent.
I’ve also come to the same conclusion about Kyubey’s powers when I remembered Arthur C. Clarke’s famous Third Law – “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Man, this is why I can’t accept the ridiculous entropy explanation thrown out by Kyubey.
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I loled at QB’s thermodyanamics. As a scientist myself (sort of), I find that incredibly disturbing.
Well, since when has proper physics worked in an anime?
It is mentioned by QB that the existence of Magic girls, is an impossibility unexplained by the laws of nature known by their culture. They know how to harness this byproduct energy, but have no idea how emo energy is formed. As such powers that Homura has does not mean that QB’s people also have. I think a good comparison would be spiral energy from TL. Also about multiple QBs, I’ve always assumed that QB was more like a mass produced robot rather than an actual alien. Anyways these are how I see things at least.
I’m going to rehash the same objection I have with your explanation as expressed through twitter.
1. You are assuming that Homura traveled back in time via QB. I can accept this but it is not the only possibility.
2. You are further assuming that the wish granting or other high-flutin technological feats QB does can be accomplished using “normal” energy. I cannot agree with this. In fact all signs point to that QB uses this so-called “magical” energy to do exactly that. I think this is where it doesn’t work. I mean for all we know, the mechanism could be exactly this: use magical energy to send things back in time, to reverse entropy.
I think a better objection would be to consider Homura–is she an attempt at creating “infinite” loli energy? Right now we don’t know for sure but if that turns out to be the case and the story doesn’t acknowledge this, then it might be a better objection.
Second, a much better, ecologically sustainable solution is the one found in Monsters, Inc.
Hmm. I suppose it is possible that wishes are not granted by Kyubey but are the result of a loli’s inherent loli energy being channeled in a manner consistent with her conscious desires and facilitated by Kyubey.
This scenario would be only slightly different from “a wizard did it”. However, if the loli’s wish-making power is capable of what Kyubey’s people are not, this again begs the question: Why doesn’t Kyubey simply manipulate a loli to use her magical wish to directly address the problem facing the universe. In this manner, the loli-energy is channeled directly to where it is needed without the need for a clumsy refinery process.
As for the distinction between normal and magical energy, I’ll accept the possibility of that just as much as I would have accepted “a wizard did it” in the first place. But that’s just boring…
Have you guys not watched Star Driver 22 yet? Those people who seriously fell for the entropy BS have been trolled. QB is no entropy-worrying alien, he was simply lying.
I’ll simply quote what I wrote on Animesuki:
“You really don’t get the joke? Then I’ll try to explain it – on the risk of being wrong. But I don’t think I am.
In the _original_ unedited ep9 version, QB will most likely have stalled and stonewalled just like before, with some random Cover Your Ass story. But then, Urobuchi (who’s a fairly social guy and mingling with alot of colleagues) will have heard about the Star Driver twist, and thought “awesome, I can use that, we have some fun and free marketing along with it”, and changed the ep9 script to let QB tell the hair-raising entropy alien story. He read the boards and KNEW that people would gobble it up like manna from heaven (since we “knew” that QB never “lied”), and that they’d start to speculate into a completely wrong direction. And then he can enjoy the faces who go “WTF, the same happening in Star Driver??” – Shinbo confirmed that there were some last-minute changes to ep9. It must have been just that.
Result: Lots of extra buzz for Star Driver, which gets linked to the hot Madoka franchise, and extra mentions for the latter, too. And Urobuchi Gen gets another total kick out of the joke, watching people go mad out of the initial misdirection of the trusting sheep. He LOVES to do that. He’ll rather go “amazing what you can make people believe, isn’t it?”
Alternatively, feel free to believe that the SD scriptwriter and Urobuchi came to exactly the same story background idea independently. I don’t. “
First, the time travel issue can be easily resolved thusly: it’s not QB’s original timeline. The method of “time travel” involved could have dumped QB into a separate space-time a la Sliders, which would make screwing around with the upstream time a lot safer. There’s no reason to believe that QB’s tunneling would take up more energy from the original line than would be captured.
Laws of thermodynamics are also not broken if you take the system as a whole to include Emo Energy Land. THERE IS NO OUTSIDE. Once you assume that it is simply one plane of the multiverse, the overall entropy will still increase. Also, to call stars “giant hydrogen bombs” is to make a gross understatement (I struggled to think of a suitable comparison but couldn’t come up with any). Though hydrogen may be the most plentiful element in the universe, the energy required to gather a quantity of hydrogen sufficient enough to collapse upon itself – well, consider that human-generated fusion reactions can be measured in fractions of a second. Then consider that Sol has already been burning for billions of years. That is before one considers the amount of energy required to transport it upstream (for example, if it took one star-unit of energy to transport QB’s mass…), whether they have the capability to transport an object that massive, and whether it would end up in the same line with their technology.
Finally, regarding the loli farms: first, it’s already been established that the human batteries in The Matrix are thermodynamic impossibilities, so we’re chucking that out the window. Setting aside any ethical issues that QB’s race might have about penning up a lolicon’s heaven’s worth of emo little girls (the same sort of ethics that lets some humans be okay with the idea of eating grass-fed freely roaming cows while shuddering at the notion of feedlots), it may be that QB and his mates are simply incapable of replicating the conditions required to run a lolifarm. If it really were that relatively straightforward to gather together a bunch of magical girls… how come there aren’t more of them in the timeline of the show?
No, the most basic issue is why you would accept that emotional “energy” can be converted to physical energy in the first place when in real life so-called energy is merely metaphorical in nature, or that the otherworldly energy can somehow be conveyed into energy accessible to organisms in “normal” space-time via some reaction catalyzed via little girls. Once you accept that is realistic you have already left the bounds of reality that can be explained by normal physics.
The point that I’m most uncertain on is the “contract”. What if they weren’t really able to grant wishes (seeing how necessary he makes it sound to grant a wish in order to “magify” the “puellas”) but they were just using the little girls’ own powers to grant their wishes? After all it’s the type of wish that generates their different powers, and it isn’t really clear, anyway, what kind of energy/power is that. The power’s within!
Being able to de-age objects would work.
Sending back energy-rich objects doesn’t work in a single timeline; using energy in the past is no better than using energy in the present. You’re still using energy, and the resources used to generate it. You can’t, because of those pesky first two laws of thermodynamics, create a star the output of which will allow you to create two stars with output that matches their ‘parent’ as you suggested.
With multiple divergent timelines you can create a scheme where you continuously create newer, more energy-rich timelines, but they all have to die eventually; it is only true that there will be another which succeeds them, which will be a cold comfort to observers from any given timeline.
I guess you could send your people back in time with the resources and continuously re-harvest the same resources but eventually you’ll either a) run out of unoccupied stretches of past or b) have to massacre your own past selves and steal their resources. And then we’re in paradox territory and I don’t want to think about it anymore.
Wait I don’t think that second one even works, shit.
@marvelous stan: you’ve actually hit upon the ultimate chain of foosl/Ponzi scheme: once you allow multiple time lines, what would constrain you to having 5 as opposed to 5,000? Or 5 billion? Or… an infinite number of them?
Ignoring the technical and scientific aspects of your argument DM, I think you have one major thing wrong with your premise. Kyubey specifically mentions in an earlier episode that the powers that each magical girl manifests is actually entirely a mystery and up to the specific abilities of each magical girl.
Thus, Homura’s time travel ability is merely a manifestation of her own powers. Her ability to travel back in time is actually powered by the same emo magical power which is a mystery to Kyubey’s people, and was merely activated as a byproduct of her abilities being activated.
So your assertion that Kyubey’s people actually know how to initiate time travel is actually false.
Hmm, who knew the world ran on lolis.
Epi:
Again that is the “a wizard did it” argument, which as I said is quite boring.
Also, it is true that the power of each girl is related to her wish, but my assumption is that the wish itself is granted by Kyubey’s people. The power that the girls get is merely a byproduct of the wish-granting process.
If a wish is indeed granted by the girl’s own internal magical powers and therefore capable of accomplish feats that Kyubey is unable to, which I admit is a possibility, then my suggestion to Kyubey is to trick a girl into wishing for a perpetual energy source, which would be a much more elegant and direct solution.
DM:
If Homura is part of the same timeline as everyone else present in this show (QB excepted), her existence is pretty much “a wizard did it”.
Unfortunately this discussion isn’t going to get much further until the nature of the witches and familiars, and how the alien races came up with the notion that the emotional energy from girls can counter entropy are more fully explained. Haven’t been paying attention to the commentary on the show as I hadn’t watched more than the first two episodes until just this past hour, but: if magical girls are required to fight witches, and magical girls can become witches if they don’t use the grief seeds to purify themselves, from whence did the need for the first magical girl arise? The language so far suggests that if a magical girl doesn’t use magic, their soul gem does not become tainted.
1) IF that’s true, then
a) There has to be some other method of witches to come into existence, which does NOT contradict with what QB has stated so far, b) The magic from magical girls have to have some tactical purpose besides fighting witches, at least initially; otherwise, without (a) and without some other use, there’d be no need for magical girls to exist in the first place, which leads to the final possibility
c) The very first magical girl was an accidental creation, one that the alien races have been trying to put back into the bottle ever since. This leads to some further interesting questions, but before I branch too far off in that direction…
2) IF soul gems can become tainted with time (QB hasn’t explicitly stated that they can’t, and this would play nicely into the notion of entropy)
a) There remains the question of what would happen if a magical girl lasted long enough to become an adult. Would the end of the psychic whirlwinds cause one to revert to a witch, kill them immediately, or free them from the contract? Or do they even age? Homura probably knows and QB would have to know, purely from experience.
b) Eliminating all witches is fundamentally impossible. There would need to be a constant feedstock of witches to keep the soul gem of interest pure. Even then, there has to be some other ways for witches to come into existence, due to the presence of familiars. Familiars may be associated with witches, but nothing has been said about how they come into existence and why they power up in the presence of human death. They can’t be a natural consequence of people killing themselves, or else the magical girls would be overwhelmed when you take the suicide rate into consideration.
c1) The TRUE goal is to CREATE WITCHES to serve as sinks for entropy and the magical girls are merely the cleanup squad. AND/OR
c2) The aliens are still fighting a losing battle, since on the whole the magical girl/witch situation can never actually decrease entropy.
3) This plot feels tainted, like some goddamn metaphor for the story how first humans (normal people) were thrown out of the Garden of Eden (normal lives) after having partaken of fruit from the tree of knowledge (forming a contract) on the insistence of the QB (snake). And, oh hey, bag full of apples!
4) It’s pretty clear at this point that QB is some sort of metaorganism. QB is not omniscient since it didn’t know how the first body was destroyed until after the second body’s destruction. The third body was already present, to keep an eye on the second one. And there ought to be multiple QB bodies as it would be highly inefficient to recruit one magical girl at a time. That QB3 can converse with Homura AND Madoka would indicate that it has the information from QB2. Thus: single mind, multiple bodies. Conveniently explains why QB doesn’t understand the attachment of humans to other individuals.
Questions that will probably never be answered:
1) Normal people cannot see QB, or witches – but can they see someone in magical girl mode? What is the method by which QB is cloaked from normal humans, or is it some mental deficit that prevents them from perceiving its presence? If QB3 had not consumed QB2, could a normal human have seen the corpse?
2) By what method does the presence of QB facilitate telepathy? There is some suggestion from the first episode that it’s limited by distance, hinting at some electromagnetic force.
3) How does QB sense whether one is suited to become a magical girl?
The thing about the devil is that he doesn’t need to lie. He just simply needs to set down the possibilities and let you trip over yourself. If QB was lying about entropy, then he could have picked a much better lie. Up to this point QB has committed only lies by omission. This further leads me to suspect that the goal is not to produce magical girls, but witches instead.
As for why they didn’t ask anyone to simply wish a perpetual energy source into existence, clearly the answer is such a thing couldn’t exist.
Kind of explains why I absolutely refused to go to the barber nearest to by house for a haircut…
Kyubey’s enthropy theory=lie. He just said that while betting that Madoka doesn’t know enough science to know that he’s wrong.
Or Gen Urobuchi doesn’t know his science.
…why does the talk of loli farms remind me of “Melody of Oblivion”… oh, right…
Anime Science and Logic: Srz bznz.
Madoka is now a sci-fi alien zombie mahou shoujo anime. We have aliens, time-travelling, esper abilities, and normal. That covers just about everything.
All it needs now is a beach episode. Totally.
I’d like to bring up a point.
What is to say Earth is not already a loli farm?
Merely look at how artificial their world is, especially the school, which is literally a series of glass cages.
Rogue girls travel between cities without worry of interruption from the law.
Perhaps the way girls are being raised and harvested, as portrayed so far, is what QB’s race has found to be the most efficient ratio of yield in quantity x yield in quality so far?
Or perhaps, looking at the different situations embodied by each girl (girl in poverty, girl in love w/ tragedy victim, girl before death, girl living in perfection and forced through suffering), this is actually all an experiment by QB conducted to find the highest yield girl (as the existence of Madoka proves, energy yields vary, potentially by very large amounts, between individuals) with the minimal energy input.
Not to mention, since the energy apparently is born of fluctuating emotions, in a realm where the “soul” is quantifiable, there may be yet grounds to simply say that “organically grown emotions” are better yield than artificially (chemically?) induced ones. Since there is room for metaphysical variables, at this point.
Plan Magical Girl may only be high yield enough to effectively stall the issue only if the emotions are nurtured in at least a seemingly “natural” environment. Which, along with the highly artificial and oppressive architecture, in addition to the massive void of strong parental input (outside of Madoka’s parents, and Kyouko’s parents of past who are best cariacuture, parents essentially don’t exist), could suggest what we see is literally the loli farm version of a free-range chicken farm.
I never really thought that far. Seems like much ado about nothing when after all, you’re watching a show with magical girls in it, to be writing about physics and science.
The show looks like its has a deus ex machina ending written all over it. Besides the overuse of memes (rule 1 and rule 2! this is not facebook!), nice article and something I can ponder about/use to show that current anime series are strangely thought-provoking beyond the scope of the obvious.
I’m still willing to give Shaft a good chunk of suspension of disbelief… I like very much the series as it is standing right now.
Found this on another site.
“Assume Incubators are trying to sustain the entire universe using the misery of little girls. According to data gathered by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotrophy Probe (WMAP), energy density of the universe comes down to roughly 9.9 x 10^-30 g/cm3, or 0,889767627 joules/km^3. The expansion rate of the universe, again as determined by WMAP observations is roughly 71.9 (km/s)/Mpc, ignoring other studies. The minimum radius of the universe, as determined by cosmic microwave background radiation data, is 12 gigaparsecs. Consequently, the universe gains at least 862800 kilometers of radius per second, which comes down to a volume gain of 1.48656647 × 10^54 kilometers cubed per second.
Thus, in order to maintain the energy density of the universe (admittedly, though, there are better ways to preserve life) 1.32269872 × 10^54 joules is required every second. Let us use high estimates and say that there is one magical girl for every 1,000 people. As of now, there are roughly 6,9 billion living people, so there are 6,900,000 magical girls across the world. Assume that every magical girl defeats a witch every two days, and hands over her Grief Seed to an Incubator for its energy to be collected. This comes down to roughly 40 witches being defeated every second. Therefore, if the energy density of the universe is to be maintained, every Grief Seed needs to have an energy output of at least 3.31249766 × 10^52 joules. What can you do with this sort of energy?
a. Supply the Earth’s energy needs for roughly 8,6 octillion years, a timespan 6,2802117 × 10^17 times the current age of the universe.
b. Create 3,68565071 × 10^35 kilograms of any matter (except cheese.) This comes down to about 184027 sun-sized stars, 61 billion Earth-sized planets or a single supermassive black hole with a radius of 547298,036 kilometers, roughly 1,4 times the distance between Earth and the Moon.
c. In a single year, enough energy is collected to create roughly 10 galaxies the size of our Milky Way.
d. Create a single explosion a few hundred thousand times stronger than any gamma ray burst we’ve observed so far. This would end most, if not all life (at least carbon-based life as we know it) pretty much everywhere from Earth to Andromeda galaxy.”
Personally, the only reason I can muster for this bizzare turn is that the writers want to change the setting. In the previous episodes, QB has become a bit too obviously antagonistic, making him a villain of sorts. But this development changes things, making QB not a villain but an act of god. Something outside human power. So the objective here becomes not “winning,” but rather “surviving”
One interesting conclusion to all this analysis is that since Kyubey’s society has sufficient understanding of human neurology to brainwash people (as in Kyouko’s wish), then how come they are not capable of understanding human emotions?
It seems suggested that (at least in the Madoka universe) emotions are something extradimensional, because otherwise it would be impossible for emotions to trigger extradimensional energy. Even so, emotions can be at least observed by monitoring human neural and hormonal systems. Heck, they can even be observed by looking at human behavior with a “naked eye”… Even if the model built from such observations doesn’t have a chance to be complete, it should be sufficient to understand concepts such as “tricking someone”.
In any case, Kyubey’s doings are full of holes when interpreted with hard science, even with the willing suspension of disbelief for the outright supernatural stuff.
Not that it ruins the show, but Urobuchi should’ve thought of somewhat more believable explanation, especially because those explanations, apart from being full of holes, destroyed Kyubey’s mysteriousness. And good mystery is good. Classic example of ruining good mystery: Star Wars – The Phantom Menace, midi-chlorians.
The Universe is powered by Lolis. You deserve the Nobel Prize
strangely enough, this talk about granting wishes and time travel made me think of quantum physics @_@
this is all too mindfraking for me XD
Just a thought (forgive me though, I may be half asleep while thinking this LMAO);
On creating “loli farms”:
> Since the Magic is influenced by the strength of the Soul Gems and that the Soul Gems are powered by their souls, and that souls are affected by what a person believes, feels and dreams with, we could say that a person with an intense feeling of loving care for her family, friends, and the world will be a powerful magical girl/witch.
It may be within the power of QB’s society to be able to create a simulated environment that they can grow out their loli’s and harvest as they go, nothing beats the experiences, emotions, beliefs and wishes of the souls of the un-simulated and natural environment; hence the higher value of free-range grown chickens as against the ones that are grown in the coops…
On granting wishes (maybe not related to this post, but I think I read something somewhere up there):
>Maybe granting wishes for the girls to become puella magi is just an initiation or just the move to activate a girl’s magical power; The power to grant wishes comes directly from the soul of the girl, in which the incubator is just the catalyst (this may be the reason why a magical girl’s ability/magic is related to her wish). The process would have been violent, as sundering the soul from the initial container (body) would have been violent; the wishes granted are from the energy burst from the process. With her wish initiating the removal of a person’s soul (something that might function as an out of the body experience– well humans doing out-of-the-body experiences tend to do things that are beyond any explanation anyway LMAO) and the initial energy burst transformed into her wish, the Soul Gem is then formed. That is “Forming the Contract”– another name for “Let me Sunder Your Soul, and the Excess Power be your wish granted!” So QB doesn’t necessarily expend (his) energy to grant wishes. LOL.
*Goes back to sleep*
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The main problem is that even if he were to create the strongest witch, there would be nobody strong enough to harvest the energy…
about the farm thing: its more a point of view. the entire planet might be considered a farm, a self sustained one, if you consider that there’s a lot of people out there and we are only being shown whats happening in the madoka-sphere.
also, considering that the energy collected comes from a converted form of existence, it might be not possible to store them in an array-matrix-like structure. its easier just to go and find some kid in a distress situation where QB can just forcefully induce them into becoming puella magi.
ah wait, i got confused about one thing:
wheres exactly is the so called “source” of energy?(he said emotions and all but)
-a. emission from the puella magi
-b. emission from the witches
-c. from the puella magis/witches during battle.
-d. from whats left of the grief seed(QB eating the grief seed, processed energy, considering that witches are raw material and puellas are the processor)
-e. from a puella magi tuning into a witch?
there could be also other possibilities but all those i`ve mentioned are in fact emotion related. (witches can be just a pile of emo-rage lol)
also its not stated how much gain in energy can be yielded from a single entity, they might be getting already enough energy in their system to even need a matrix-farm-like structure.
A thoroughly unmerciful dissection of a somewhat unsupportable interpretation of the meaning of ‘entropy’. I applaud.
Well, certain aspects of the explanation could be hand-waved by a sufficiently ungracious author; but personally I think that Kyuubey (that spelling being my preference) was more likely, for some unfathomable purpose, lying his cheap synthetic fur off; perhaps it is some obscure sort of sarcasm among his species. I also consider his denial that they “hold a grudge against humanity” a suspiciously precise one, particularly considering the astounding amount of evidence to the contrary.
As to the actual harvesting, we may safely suppose that (inexplicably) ‘grief’ is the only tangible energy source that Kyuubey’s race can contain and use; the only time we see Kyuubey absorbing energy in any way is when he swallows a Grief Seed. If he is telling the truth (a far more precarious assumption) in its entirety and without embellishment, then we can postulate that, according to his word in ep. 9, he has no real intelligence of how the system works, but the energy yield for each Grief Seed must be very, very great or else it would not be worth bothering with – far greater than the amount of energy spent on the ‘magic’ the mahou shÅjo employ and the wishes they are granted. Perhaps ‘grown’ humans do not have souls or meaningful emotion?
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The premise is bad and any extrapolation based on it is worse.
Or QB is lying. Or telling Jedi Truth. Really, considering his track record, it wouldn’t be surprising.
I am glad that people seem to have enjoyed this article. I wrote it mostly for the lulz. It’s quite clear that there are insufficient parameters to come to any meaningful conclusion and the writers probably don’t care either way.
Actually my point, if I had any, is not so much that the science is bad or that magical girl shows should be consistent with physics. I am just trying to point out that none of this magic would have warranted any discussion if it were left as magic. It’s when the writers try to introduce scientific terms into a magical show that makes it interesting to consider the somewhat amusing implications.
I mean it’s kind of like discussing Evangelion. It’s a fun if somewhat meaningless exercise.
Also, explosions increase entropy, while QB was talking about reducing entropy in the universe (at least that’s what the fansubs said).
I’m not too sure about your scientific explanations, but I totally agree that it totally ruins fantasy if they try such crappy explanations.
And I totally agree that QB is acting ineffectively xD
It is a farm and QB *are* using Homura’s time travel to generate energy, just not conventional energy, and not really farming lolis plural.
More like farming Madoka.
In episode 10, Madoka gets more powerful with each successive leap. The previous iteration would have seen Madoka wipe out the planet rapidly, and QB has stated that Madoka could become a god in the current iteration, so eventually, Madoka turning into a witch will net enough power that QB can effectively remake the universe like in The Last Question. Probably the energy gain up to this point was a delaying tactic, with the appearance of the Madoka/Homura combo a welcome surprise.
All QB has to do is omit Homura to make sure she doesn’t reset it again.
Like a couple of people said before, DM, the magic produced by the emo lolis does not follow the laws of physics at all. Kyubey said so himself. They have advanced technology, but even they cannot grasp what Puella magic truly is. They have no idea how it works, where it comes from and have no hand in producing it. Kyubey said so himself in episode 9.
All the abilities, powers, wish granting, all of it is done by the loli’s own spiritual power, literally the power of the soul or power of emotions. Kyubey’s race only has the technology to pull out souls and fabricate them into a Soul Gems. The lolis subconsciously do the rest. Homura’s time traveling, Sayaka’s healing, Mami’s revival, all of it was done by their awakened power based on their wish.
Souls in and of themselves are believed to not be ‘real’ when put in scientific terms. They wouldn’t follow the laws of physics. That means if you manage to physically manifest one it can fuck around with reality all it wants. They wouldn’t channel energy from another existence but produce their own energy. Considering the defeat of Walpurgisnacht in episode 10 released enough energy to fulfill Kyubey’s ‘quota’ one can conclude that Soul Gems produce unfathomable amounts of energy out of emotions.
Emotions aren’t a physical thing and are created by humans millions of times a day, so turning that into physical energy grants far more energy than you need to input. Eventually a Soul Gem-turned-Grief Seed would be full of emotional energy, allowing it to be swallowed by Kyubey (explaining why a single Grief Seed can’t be used infinitely to purify a Puella Magi).
It’s more of a ‘science and magic go hand in hand’ thing but more ‘science vs magic/religion’ thing. No matter what science does, it can’t fathom, explain or control magic. Same goes for deities. Souls come from religion in the first place, something which science can’t explain. The very concept of an almighty being doesn’t abide to physics, so souls wouldn’t abide to physics either.
Yes, this is all ‘a wizard did it’ explanation, but that’s because the show itself explicitly states ‘a wizard did it’. There’s no way around it. Kyubey can explain entropy, but he can’t explain magic since it goes against science entirely (that’s why it’s called MAGIC).
Also, regarding the ‘wish entropy away’ part, remember, these are teenage girls. This entropy deal would go way beyond their heads. At that age kids tend to put their own issues in front of everything else, so most of the time the girls will only make short-sighted or selfish wishes. It will be very hard to find a girl who wants to end entropy, or manipulate one in doing so. Besides, would you believe a small, creepy furball that he’s helping prevent the heat death of the universe?
This series of discussions have certainly given us a good idea of the kind of crowd lurking here.
Physforum, anyone?
Very well thought-out and entertaining article. I suppose we can only conclude that QB is a dick.
A thorough analysis of the plot, though it churned out some lolwhat conclusions.
Meh, being trained in physics myself, I’ve given up trying do analyse the physical relation on animes involving physics. Think the closest an anime could get to accurate physics is Haruhi S2 (and that’s only because they’re using some ACTUAL physics equations in their OP animation instead of some random complex-looking mathematical equations).
PS: I swear I could almost hear Urobochi and Shinbo are gloating their asses of with “Keikaku doori”
http://www.clan-rain.co.cc/2011/04/indefinite-madoka-less-thursdays-look.html
My long-ish counter argument to your post.
~Pearz
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Couldn’t the whole time travel thing be negated if you think of it as Kyuubey making an alternate reality within our universe for Homura to redo her meeting with Madoka? I don’t know much about science, but if you think about it that way, wouldn’t it work?
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