I saw This Confession today and it inspired me to make a thread about this.

One of the things people get out of Madoka Magica is a question of morality. Is the behavior of the Incubators justifiable given their overall goal?

First I would like to say, in my honest opinion, this is not a question that should have been posed in a Magical Girl show. Regardless the intent by putting our protagonists in this situation, you're automatically designating Kyubey the antagonist.

Kyubey is supposed to be a higher intelligence, blind to the concept of emotion and value of individual life. He doesn't understand why it's cruel for a single human to die if it means saving the entire universe.

The problem with this, in my opinion is, Kyubey's not the protagonist. We're not rooting for him to overcome the trials set before him. Madoka and the Lich Brigade are our "heroes". We're not supposed to be okay with sacrificing them even if it's for the good of the universe.

Even in the finale the concept of entropy is never really addressed. Instead the Incubators are cited as necessary for the personal development of the Earth itself, and Madoka changes the system not because she's concerned about the heat death of the universe, but because she doesn't want the courage of Lich-people past to be rewarded with misery.

In the end, it feels like the goal of preventing entropy is really just an excuse to stave off the hatred you'd be feeling for Kyubey at the moment. By this point you're not gonna be cheering "Yea Kyubey! Harvest that energy! Save our universe!" if it means killing off the main five we'd been following this whole time. Too much emotion has been invested in those characters for it that to be the intent.

As for whether Kyubey is in the right to be doing this... I think the confession post I linked answers that well enough.

He KNOWS. He knows that if he tells these girls up-front what making a contract with him entails, they won't want to do it. He purposely withholds this information so that they'll do what he wants them to.

And he acts surprised when they accuse him of tricking them? Either he doesn't understand the concept of deception despite clearly doing it, or he just doesn't know the word for it.



Let's see what the definition of the word "Negotiate" is...

"Try to reach an agreement or compromise by discussion with others."

Let's see what the definition of the word "Compromise" is...

"An agreement or a settlement of a dispute that is reached by each side making concessions."

Kyubey's thought process just doesn't work on a human level. This is more complacency than a compromise. "As long as you don't know any better, it's a fair compromise." And Kyubey doesn't see anything wrong with this because despite his words he does view humanity as mere livestock.

It's clear that Kyubey doesn't give a hoot about humanity so long as he gets what he wants. In episode 9 he tells Madoka that the actions of the Incubators will benefit humanity, but the very next episode, we see the end result of what he's trying to do, set off a witch that can destroy and will destroy the entire planet (and all of human kind with it) and of course he doesn't care, he got the energy quota he wanted.

Then of course there's that movie... Rebellion Story.

In which Kyubey is shown to be no less an amoral prick in this universe than the last. He demonstrates his unwillingness to compromise with these girls by conducting an experiment on Homura for the purpose of "observing Madoka" and once again he's not being telling the whole truth. Homura has to spell it out that he wants to control Madoka in order to bring back the witch system.

So rather than take a good thing that's a little inconvenient for the sake of truly being fair to these girls, he's willing to throw them under the bus just to be greedy. This is why people call Character Derailment on Kyubey in this movie, because his dickishness is much more blatant in this one. But to me, it's just the logical conclusion of a character the writers tried to portray one way, but shot themselves in the foot.

Yeah, its pretty clear Kyubey is our antagonist.

I mean if we go by classic literary tropes, we've got our protagonists Madoka (and arguably Homura)
, the mentor Mami, and the peanut gallery Kyoko & Sayaka (joking, but I forget the other roles characters have in classic storytelling) 

Every story needs a conflict, and Kyubey and his adorable alien race that all look like him is the biggest thing that stands between Madoka and Homura's goals.

People are welcome to have their own opinion of Kyubey's morals. If they think cattle rancher Kyubey is right then kudos to them.   

But I'm pretty sure the shaft staff went in trying to make Kyubey as eerily repulsive as possible. I see people with giant kyubey plushes and I still don't want that in my house. Good job Akiyuki Shinbo for making me not want to buy the mascot.


----
In rebellion, I didn't see Kyubey's experiment as that much of a derailment (I saw it like 8 months ago so my memory's a little rusty) Kyubey's motivation has always been about "what will make it better for ME"


Using the cattle rancher analogy. What cattle rancher will let their cows wander around, eat all kinds of weird grass, mate whenever they'd like, and just let the cows do willy nilly on their own terms. Sure they'd give 'em a little bit of slack to make sure they're happy and healthy, but when its time to graduate from Bovine University (please tell me someone here gets that reference) you put them in their place. 

Who says Kyubey's being completely honest in his monologue with Madoka either? He may say "well we're really just trying to help" but maybe thats just what he thinks she wants to hear.

If he's been doing this since the stone age, pretty sure he's got the 14 year old girl down to a science and he can just recite the lines and do what he thinks will make them happy to get things done.


the lesson of the day: Just say no to crafty sociopathic aliens with superiority complexes kids!