Entropy

So this week’s Madoka touched off another probably dozen by now threads of reaction and speculation into the final three episodes of the series. I thought I’d make a few points of my own very quickly here:

Things we learned in this episode:

• A MG’s body is not lost when they turn into a witch.
• Kyubey is in fact an “alien” from some other universe or dimension, his goal in making MG’s is to eventually make them into witches and feed off of the emotional “power” given off by them. More on this below.
• The “Time Travel” theory is looking promising as Kyubey mentions to Homerun-chan that she can’t handle Walpurgis Night on her own. See Madoka’s dream in Ep. 1

Fact is, Sayaka is now a witch, and Kyouko is likely dead, in her self-righteous suicide in order to mutually save the both of them. Sayaka being dead is subjective, some think she survived and others think she went with Kyouko. /a/ is taking Kyouko’s death a lot harder in some aspects than Mami, likely because we had more episodes and more of a backstory to connect with, some people found it to be a “cheap death” really because she and Sayaka had the most screentime and potential compared to whiny Madoka and silent Homerun-chan.

As for Kyubey and his revelations, well, I’m not really surprised, in fact, I expected him to be of some other power and have a hand in what was going on. His explanation of “entropy” as he explained it to Madoka, was that he uses magic to make magical girls, and as they encounter conflict and despair, eventually break down and turn into Witches. He then harnesses the power given off by their emotional discharges before they are wiped away by another MG and the pattern resets, much like ice in a glass, the glass “sweats” and after the ice is gone, you put more ice in, only Kyubey and his ilk are collecting the sweat. This presented a number of speculations, one of the top ones being “The Matrix” and how MG’s are essentially “batteries” for Kyubey’s race to live off of, similar to the machines in the movie. Madoka, who has a lot of emotional turmoil and thought before even contracting, leads Kyubey to believe that she will have massive MG powers, and become an even stronger Witch.

I don’t know what Urobochi’s intention is to end this series, most of the Faust-based scenes have remained true, and many are even aluding Kyubey to that of Maxwell’ Demon, but if you ask me, what is more likely to happen is we’re going to loop back around to the dream at the beginning of Ep. 1 and go back in time again.

Or Mai-HiME ending.