One of the ideas that Jeremy Bentham and John Stewart Mill originally brought up in their philosophical musings was the idea of Utilitarianism, and one of the defining actions of such a philosophy being that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome. While much of the school is thought is spent talking about the place of things in our world that bring us pain or pleasure, it brings up an interesting point when it says in quite a Machiavellian fashion that the end can possibly justify the means to any action.
So, if someone was doing something that was ultimately benefiting the universe, could they and their resulting actions could be considered evil?
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Part 2 of my magical girl extraordinaire! Today's focus will be on this little guy:
Kyubey, as I explained earlier, is the alien being that ultimately sets the plot of the show in motion. He comes from an alien race that has chosen particular girls of Earth as the perfect hosts to create and then destroy these beings they called "Mahou Shoujo" and "Witches". So, here's how it works.
The ORIGINAL Story was that when Kyubey "chooses" a girl to make a contract with, they will get to make any single wish of their choosing while in exchange spending the rest of their lives fighting witches and living as magical girls. The concept is simple enough. So, what are witches?
Witches are these Eldritch Abominations that the girls are forced to fight. There mere existence on the human plane is a blight to society, and from behind the supernatural barriers that separate them from our world, they go about causing the death and grief that fills the world. Everything from mass suicides to murders can be blamed on the witches' influence on society.
As magical girls, a girl's power can manifest in whatever way they want, and is often reflective of their inner spirits. Mami, the yellow-haired magical girl for example, took up guns as her primary means of fighting witches, and is able to use the power granted to her to fight witches however she pleases.
All of those magic guns DO pack a wallop, you know.
When a girl successfully defeats a witch, a "Grief Seed" drops in it's place. This special item can be used to cleanse a "Soul Gem" of it's taint, which it collects naturally over time with use. A grief seed can basically be seen as the egg of the witch, and the Grief Seed can be seen as the source of a magical girl's power. Both are very, very important items.
Don't worry, the text isn't important here. But this is just to show how exactly the Grief Seeds and Soul Gems interact with each other.
So, in Summary (and feel free to watch the video below too). Now that we're familar with how the system is supposed to work, we can get into the really nitty-gritty of this post.
2. Girl makes a contract with Kyubey
3. Girl fights witches in exchange for having her wish granted
4. Witch dies and drops a grief seed, which cleanses the magical girl's soul gem
5. Rinse, wash, and repeat from step 3.
However, what Kyubey failed to mention was how dangerous being a magical girl really is. Mami Tomoe, the first magical girl introduced and the girl who acted as a mentor to Sayaka and Madoka, was brutally killed by having her head chewed off by a witch, as seen below:
This obviously sends all of the girls (except Homura) into quite a shock, and causes all of them to reevaluate why they wanted to become magical girls in the first place. While Kyubey doesn't take any blame this time, he had already made it quite clear to both of them that being a magical girl would mean lots of pain and suffering to follow. However, then continue to spiral out of control...
It was about now when everyone started to realize that Kyubey failed to mention...a lot of things.
After Mami's death, Sayaka made her wish to Kyubey, which I will be covering in the next blog post. But as soon as she makes her wish, a new magical girl named Kyoko appears on the scene and instantly tries to take Mami's place in the town. Offended that anyone would try to be so selfish, Sayaka quickly moves into conflict with Kyoko, and in an effort to stop the fighting, Madoka tried to throw Sayaka's Soul Gem away. But instead of simply being unable to transform, it literally knocked the life out of Sayaka, and it's at that moment when everyone realized there was more to being a magical girl than Kyubey was letting on.
What's worse is that witches simply didn't appear and disappear with the tides, nor were they just nameless beings of rage and hate.
Witches are actually the souls of girls that end up succumbing to depression and giving in to despair (more on this in the next blog post). And this was Kyubey's full intention all along.
Kyubey (clearly) has an agenda. His alien race is trying to save the universe from the effects of entropy, and is using teenage girls as the vehicles to do it. Why? How could anyone possibly justify such a horrendous act?
This video is kind of long, but it frames Kyubey's frame of mind perfectly.
Kyubey is part of a class of beings called the Incubators, a species that was sent to Earth nearly 4,000 years ago. The universe is revealed to slowly be dying by way of entropy, or heat forever lost to the reactions of our heavenly bodies, and it is the Incubator's job to continually collect energy in order to stave off the literal end of the universe. His species hadn't figured out a good plan to combat the end before they came across the human girls of Earth and the raw emotional power that every girl contained. It was at this point that they decided to infiltrate Earth and change history forever.
He bases all of his decisions off of completely logical arguments and his species has completely ostracized the place of emotion in the making rational judgments. He even comments himself that "In my culture, emotion is seen as a disease" and is thoroughly confused at points throughout the entire series when the girls get emotional over the "completely rational" decisions he has made. From his point of view, human were like the animals they themselves capture and eat; what's the effects of the death of a few hundreds or thousands of girls going to have on a planet where the dominant species numbers in the billions? He could not only be considered the ultimate rationalist, but he could be considered the ultimate modern utilitarianist as well. A being who has shed all emotion and works not for himself but for the greatest good in the entire universe easily fits the bill of both of those classes of philosophy, although obviously taken to it's extreme.
With this in mind, let's try to figure out Kyubey's intentions. The Incubators seek out young, emotional girls (usually in times of great need or peril) and ask them if they want any single wish granted. The girls, in their various emotional states, are very likely to agree, and when they do, the Incubators separate their soul from their body by placing it into a soul gem. By separating the soul from the body, not only does this show confirm John Locke's belief that the soul and the body are two separate things, Kuybey is able to create a Lich of sorts that's able to withstand the magical pressure of the witches. The girls, who use their wish to wish for ultimately wish for things outside the realm of rationality, have their wish come flying back at their face when it appears to them in a negative form and causes them to despair. Their despair turns them into witches, and new magical girls take the place of the ones who have fallen to repeat the process. Highly efficient, very cheap, and in the end for the benefit of everyone.
From a human standpoint, the entire process, the entire process is quite sickening, but from Kyubey's standpoint, humans are expendable. Furthermore, every girl who dies is devoted towards saving the universe, and what could be more noble than that?
For everyone who got this, congratulations! For everyone else, this will make sense when we start reading Faust later this month in Humanities.
The fanbase of Puella Magi Madoka Magica have widely received Kyubey to be an evil character. And while I do agree that at the hands of him and the rest of the Incubators many people have suffered across history, I can't bring myself to call him evil because he physically cannot comprehend the meaning of the words and the emotional implications of his actions. He manipulated everyone he's made a contact with, sure, but he's done it because he's probably learned by now that if you come out and tell a girl "I'm planning to take your soul to save the universe!" she's most likely going to say no. So in a way, he was simply doing what he had to do in order to complete his job.
"Evil" is a term very closely tied to the emotions and morals of the culture it is being used in. And while Madoka accepts what Kyubey has told him, the world is eventually changed so that the process the Incubators has put into play is much less cruel than it was before. But the ideas of "Good" and "Evil" while not questioned or diluted in this series, are definitely forced to be looked at in a different light when examining the characters in this show. After all of this, can we truly say Kyubey was truly evil?
If you like what you've read so far, feel free to join me in Part II as I discuss Homura Akemi and the failure of her struggle of Fate vs. Free Will!
"Everything from mass suicides to murders can be blamed on the witches"...
ReplyDeleteOh how I wish it were so. I'm afraid it's the non-magical humans who bear responsibility for that.
I don't know about Kyubey, but I hope you're not asking us to assent to the proposition that nothing is "truly evil". But in any case, this is a fun way to approach the issue.
I believe that he's still speaking about the realm of Madoka Magica when he makes that statement, and as per the show's explination, that is the case and he is 100% right in making that statement.
DeleteHe's also not saying that nothing is truly evil, but simply that Kyubey is not, and asking you to question what defines evil in a literal sense.