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thinkin-bout-milgram · 9 months

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Purge March: Initial Thoughts

Hello everybody! Sorry this took so long to get out, I got more distracted by real-life stuff than I expected since the drop. I made the decision back on the night of the Amane drop to wait for the audio drama and give myself time to think, and I'm glad I did, because in my opinion, Amane's case is really complicated.

I used the audio drama translation done by @/muu_kusunoki on twitter, which I'll link here, I'll also be doing a lot of referencing both the Purge March (PM) MV and the Magic MV. This is still going in as my Initial Thoughts rather than a synthesis theory, but it'll definitely be closer to synthesis than normal.

As usual, I'll be making bolded claims and then discussing them. Let's get started!

TW: Many kinds of abuse, indoctrination, murder, animal death suicide

The person Amane healed WAS actually a cat.

Truly insane. I'd assumed the whole time that the orange cat was symbolic for a human, but it's actually genuinely just a cat. That sort of throws out the whole theory from Magic that Riyone didn't have a role listed because their role related to the falling stage light, meaning that the injury on the cat was staged.

...Wait.

I think it still makes sense that the cat's injury was staged. Rather than being staged because the cat did something inherently wrong, though, I think it's more likely that the cat was staged to test Amane's belief of cult doctrine. She knows she's not supposed to heal using medicine, but here's an injured cat, just waiting for you. Amane takes the bait and heals the cat (the good thing to do), and as a result, she gets punished. Tased, it seems.

Riyone is the one responsible for electric torture. Because of that, I'm going to make the claim that Riyone was the one with the taser in the MV.

I've seen a couple different posts floating around say that they believe this is Amane's mother. The most convincing piece of evidence I've seen is from this alleged picture of the storyboards, but I have no idea how this was procured or if it's legit.

I think Riyone being Amane's mother makes a lot of sense, though. I mentioned earlier how Riyone doesn't have a listed role at intro like everyone else; that's probably because, to Amane, the role is just "mom." We know Amane's dad is frequently gone, so this probably isn't him. Additionally, it seems like Amane may live in this house we see in the MV, and as soon as she gets home, this other person is there. It would make the most sense if this person was her mother.

So, based on that, Amane's mother (Riyone) would have placed an injured cat right outside of their house to see what Amane would do. Amane heals the cat, and that results in Amane being punished for it. Punished, in this case, for interfering with divine will by using medicine to counteract fate.

Being the flag associated with destiny, it makes sense if Riyone is the one upholding the torture related to the cat. The cat seems to be dead and gone later, too, so it's likely that Riyone "fixed" destiny by killing it. But, in that case, who's that other guy?

Gozake is responsible for the water torture.

Safe enough claim. It's right there.

Anyways, the important thing is that means the hand you can see here is Gozake's.

This seems like it's in the same house as before, which I've theorized as Amane's house. If I'm right, that means that either Gozake is her dad, Gozake has access to her house despite not living there (the most plausible imo), or that all the cult leaders actually live here and it's more of a shared housing situation. In any case, what's important is that Gozake was in Amane's living space and tortured her there.

For what, though?

If I'm right that Riyone was the one handling torture related to the cat, that means Gozake was focused on something else. Let's check out those flags.

"Discard vulgarity" just kinda sounds like not swearing at first glance. However, vulgarity is defined as a more general lack of sophistication. I take this one to mean something like, "Behave in a way that is befitting of the cult."

Gozake seems to be in control of the cult's image and what they say to the public or something like that. So, to me, I think this means that Gozake punished Amane for outwardly doing something that the cult didn't approve of. Could also be the cat, could be something else. From Gachata flicking Amane at the beginning, it seems like the torture wasn't limited to "big mistakes" in the cult's eyes. Anything she did wrong could result in intense punishment.

Gozake is the one she killed.

If it's one, anyways. I'm still not fully convinced that she only killed one cult leader, but that's doesn't matter at the moment. Right now, my job is to convince you that Gozake is extremely dead.

The biggest point against him is the fact that Amane's prisoner card in UNDERCOVER shows that her murder took place in the shower.

It's kind of hard to see, but that's a bathroom. Based on the other prisoners' cards, it seems like the location on the cards is the location that their murder/related death incident occurred. Because Gozake was the one who tortured Amane in the shower specifically, that's a pretty bad look for him.

There's also plenty of reason to believe that at least one of the cult leaders is the one who died. All of Amane's lyrics about how she was sorry, but now the roles are reversed, makes total sense if a previous abuser of hers was begging for her mercy against being killed. Plus, there's the scene towards the end of Purge March where she's twirling her baton. It goes from clean to bloody at around 2:17.

Notably, this shot is taken from between times it shows the four cult leaders up on the cloud. We never see them again after this. (That's part of why I believe all four could possibly be dead, but I honestly don't consider it very relevant.)

We already know that Amane's murder weapon is a pole of some kind based on her kill shot of Es in UNDERCOVER.

She also uses her magic wand in Magic similarly. The point is, we know that Amane killed someone via whacking them with a pole. That's what we see in the end shot of Purge March.

That person? That's Amane's victim. Or, one of them, anyways.

Amane may have had multiple victims.

Again, I don't know how much it really matters, but it's definitely possible. That person looks like they're killed in the bedroom or something, right? And there's the light on in the bathroom.

I've seen some people say that they just think the person (Gozake) crawled from the bathroom to the bedroom before Amane finished them off. However... why?

What situation would that help in? I'm under the impression that the door out of the house is the other way, so if the victim crawled to escape, they'd likely head the other way. Additionally, Amane is still a twelve year old girl. If there were a prolonged fight, it seems like it would favor the grown ass man. So, this would have to mean that Amane would partially damage him before he crawled, out of the bathroom but AWAY from the front door. That doesn't make sense to me.

There's also the question of what Amane's murder weapon is. Let's look at that shower scene again.

A clothes washer (I think), a sink, some sort of pole thing (is that part of the clothes washer? Or is it more of a vacuum or something?), and some conspicuous bleach.

A big question for me is what that pole thing is. Could that be Amane's murder weapon? Is it detachable enough to bring to the bedroom? That's really relevant.

Basically, I think there's two options based on this.

The pole is detachable. Amane hits the guy's face with bleach and he tries to crawl away, but can't see where he's going. She then carries the pole over to the bedroom and finishes him off there.

Amane uses the bleach to kill him in the bathroom, leaving him there with the light on. Then, Amane uses either that pole or a different one and heads to the bedroom, killing whoever else is there (probably Riyone, if I had to guess).

I'm honestly kind of partial to 1 now that I've written it out. However, there is also this:

This is Amane's associated image from UNDERCOVER. We don't know what it relates to, exactly; we just know that it's something to do with her.

I would... assume that this is someone in the shower, based on the water torture. However, when I first saw it (and I know this is true for others, too), I thought it was rain. The way the water drops fall looks more like rain to me. And, based on what we saw, Amane was kneeling on the shower floor. That means that it should be Gozake in the shower, thus invalidating the theory that Gozake crawled out of the shower before getting finished off in the bedroom.

Except, what if it is rain?

If it is rain, that makes this matter a hell of a lot more. Because, if that isn't in the shower, that means that someone ended up on the ground like that outside of that house. Possibly someone who never entered the house, possibly someone who never entered the cult. Who knows!

...Possibly the little girl with the balloon?

Obviously if that's the case, it's someone related to the cult. Still, the sky is clearly the same sky, at least. There's the same rainbow despite the same clouds. Plus, we see the little girl's balloon wander off later in the MV. Maybe something happened to her?

I don't know what her involvement is otherwise. I don't know why she's important enough to be depicted. Interestingly, I believe Amane is the only one who hasn't gotten the reveal of someone important's actual face in the second round. We've seen a LOT of people with impact on her life, but none of them have been singled out with actual facial detail. Unless you count the swarm of Amanes, I guess.

Amane has or expects to take over a cult leader role.

She sees herself leading the Purge March. She seems to place herself in a position of authority. This, I'm sure, also relates to a very complex self image she likely possesses, but the fact of the matter is, she's the one leading it.

If she killed at least one cult leader (likely, Gozake is so dead), she might believe that she'd be the one to replace them. We don't know if this is true or not; Mu doesn't know what happened to her surrounding any legal punishments or authorities or anything, so it's possible that Amane doesn't actually know what the aftermath of her murder would end up being.

Still, it's something to consider. If Amane, unchanged, returned to the world, she could very believably recruit others into the cult and continue the cycle.

Amane wants to be innocent, but she has changed the meaning of what an innocent verdict is.

Amane is pulling a Trial 1 Kotoko. She's offered Es a deal surrounding verdicts. That makes it much harder for us to communicate with Amane, because she changed what the verdict means.

Much like Kotoko in Trial 1, Amane's Trial 2 audio drama is her guiding Es through the discussion she wants to happen. She tells Es that she wants Milgram's forgiveness so she can turn it into the ideal world for her cult.

That means that, if we vote Amane innocent, she likely will take it as Es approving Milgram for her cult. That's obviously bad, but the other prisoners (other than maybe like Haruka) are hopefully not impressionable enough for it to be a problem?

However, I still do believe Amane wants to be innocent. She asks Es to remember her pleas for forgiveness at the end of the Purge March MV. We all forgive Amane; the question is how to tell Amane that we forgive her disobedience and we're sorry for the situation she grew up in without approving the cult's beliefs.

It's wrong to torture a child in order to get them to conform to your beliefs.

This is what Amane's story is about. The cult leaders tortured Amane until she was brainwashed into their beliefs. Amane insists that, just because her beliefs aren't the norm, that doesn't make them wrong.

Arguably, a guilty verdict could be seen as doing the exact same thing. We'd be subjecting Amane to audio torture, at least, given that we know guilty prisoners are bombarded nonstop with the reasons why people voted them guilty. She would also be restrained, and due to Kotoko's attacks, we know it's at least hypothetically possible she could get physically injured from it to.

That's obviously not cool. Don't like that part.

Amane wants to kill Shidou.

Amane warned us that Shidou's actions (saving Mahiru's life and healing up Futa) disobey with her beliefs, and if we don't do something about it, she'll have to take action. It's not entirely clear whether that means she'll punish Shidou as she was punished, or if she'll attack Mahiru to kill her as God intended.

Either way, it's bad news for Mahiru if that happens. It's been directly stated that Mahiru is in a critical condition, and it's possible that the removal of Shidou as her doctor could kill her even if she doesn't get hurt again. If Amane killed Shidou, it could mean both of them could die.

However, Kazui has also promised that, if he gets an innocent verdict, he'll protect anyone he can from harm. Kazui could take Amane in a fight (I forget where but somewhere it's established that Kazui is the strongest in a fight, plus he beat Kotoko who I assume could easily beat Amane), so hopefully Kazui will be able to protect Shidou.

That also opens up the door for a weird possibility, though, which is the case of Haruka. Given that, in this case, Kazui would be focused on protecting Shidou and/or Mahiru from Amane, that means that Kazui would likely not have time to look after other prisoners, such as Haruka, who's threatened suicide if we voted Mu guilty. Which we did.

So, basically, the whole thing's a mess and voting Amane innocent makes it much more likely that someone dies, whether that someone is Shidou, Mahiru, Haruka or some combination.

VERDICT: ???

If you couldn't tell, the last four sections are me deliberating on which verdict to give her. In my opinion, there are a lot of arguments in both directions, which makes it difficult to decide. If I was ignoring meta voting, I'd obviously vote innocent, given that Amane is a highly traumatized child and she killed her abuser(s). That's forgivable. However, given other circumstances surrounding the dynamics of her vote, I have doubts on if it's really the "right" move.

I think that with Amane, there's no good option. To be clear, I don't regret the Trial 1 guilty verdict. I've seen a lot of people saying that this state of no good options is a result of stupid people thinking guilty was right last trial. I think that an innocent verdict would just mean that she'd be like Kotoko is right now, believing that she's right without a shadow of a doubt. Milgram is mean, intentionally. They weren't going to give us good options either way.

As a result, given that I can tell a lot of people have WAY stronger opinions on this one than I do, I'm currently not actually voting. If the margin gets close enough, I'll probably commit to a direction, but for now, I'm letting the rest of the fanbase steer the verdict. I was fully team guilty when I was worried about Kazui getting a guilty verdict. With Kazui innocent, I'm much more open to the possibility of forgiving Amane, because that verdict hopefully won't cost Shidou and/or Mahiru's lives.

If you have a convincing theory or argument in either the innocent or guilty direction, please let me know! If I'm ever convinced enough, I'll probably start voting, but for right now, I'm honestly neutral on the verdict.

NOTE: don't yell at anyone. Do not insult anyone else or get aggressive when pushing for a verdict. This is a fan blog for a fictional series that exists to have fun solving mysteries and calmly discussing ethics. Please, have fun and don't take this too seriously.

#milgram #ミルグラム #admin venus #amane momose #milgram theory #sorry this one is WAY late #i know i said that earlier #i'm glad i waited though i feel like i was able to get a lot better ideas in #i used to be a hardcore amane guilty truther #now i'm just kinda fine either way #it is what it is baby #anyways please enjoy #also they like SUPER changed the chorus lyric translation #if you go back to the song teasers the lyrics are very different #like “i will destroy you a distorted vision needs to be purged” instead of “i disavow you eyes corrupted must be crushed”#i guess it's largely the same thing but the intensity of the violence got lessened for the final version if anyone's curious

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firemama · 3 months

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If I had the power to become a Disney bitch that can just remake one of their classics because that's what Disney does these days, id remake Aladdin.

It'd still be animated and the goal would be a consistent style trilogy (without the sudden and sharp drop in animation quality preferably please god).

Completely scrapping the 'return of Jafar' plot line, I'd make the second movie in the trilogy about exploring the ramifications of aladdin's wish. He did not wish to *look* like a prince, he wished to BE a prince. Somewhere out there aladdin is the prince of some country or city or something and I would love to explore that as a technicality to aladdin and jasmine trying to get married. Especially if perhaps that kingdom is NOT on good terms with agrabah. They're trying to get all the arrangements done and theres a big joke about paperwork and getting the prince-requirment law squared away and then bam, the "well actually-" comes from genie and the rest of the movie is about exploring this new territory of aladdin. Who is marrying into Royalty and Politics, actually having to deal with some of that.

And then at the end of the movie, when all of that is sorted out, genie drops the second "well actually-" that aladdin was always sort of a prince anyway. Just not the inherited of any kind of land. You see, al, buddy, your dad's a king of thieves.

Movie three is that the wedding is once, again, delayed. Because now we have to deal with the fuckin ramifications of "what the fuck do you mean I'm the son of a famous criminal?" And the revelation that genie actually knows aladdin's parents. Movie three includes returning to the Magic Treasure Hoard where aladdin initially gets the lamp- "only One May Enter Here" being that aladdins father (deceased) left the cave as a sort of will of his treasure trove, a bounty worthy of a King Of Thieves. Including the most valuable artifact of the trove, the Genie In The Lamp, the most valuable treasure that was responsible for aladdin's fathers success as the king of thieves in the first place. We see some stories of Genie and Aladdins father- from rags to riches via crime, maybe the love story of aladdin's parents, (maybe some hints to why genie says "i dont like doing it" as to being able to bring back the dead rather than outright "i cant do it") and plausibly that the genie and aladdins father made the same deal, I'll use my two wishes and then free you, but (possibly following that failed attempt to bring back the dead as in trying to bring back aladdin's dead mother shortly after aladdin is born?) In the grief of that failure aladdin's father decides to use his last wish (possibly to arrange the Cave of Wonders for his sons inheritance or something) and ultimately betrays genies trust.

We get a little heart to heart with aladdin and genie- "I don't think your dad was a bad guy, per se, but-" and the classic Disney "what matters is that you kept your promise, and that's why I've stuck with you even after freedom, it's the magic of friendship"

and then once we work out reparations of the cave of wonders - using all of that stolen fortune inheritance to better aladdin's accidentally aquisitioned kingdom, and provide agrabah a stable fucking childcare system for orphans, and a whole other musical mintage of do-gooding, they FINALLY get their royal wedding- a unity wedding between these two lands and isn't it glamorous.

ON A COMPLETELY UNRELATED NOTE.

The whole big damb deal where Aladdin and Jasmines partnership is weighted against the genies freedom is so stupid when you consider. Aladdin could have just fucking handed the lamp to Jasmine? 3 more wishes. They solve the whole thing in movie one. Jasmine gets the lamp, makes a wish that Jafar will never escape the cave of wonders, wishes that there were bo laws restricting her personal freedoms any more than anyone else (marry who she wants AND go to the market) and then a third wish that argrbah under her rule will know ages of peace and tranquility. Then she hands that damb lamp back to Aladdin, Aladdin wishes the genie free, big happy celebration fireworks scene. (They do the heart to heart thing where they say they'll miss eachother after genie cuts himself off from talking about seeing the world. Obviously. That still needs to happen. They're friends, you honor.)

#Aladdin and the King of Thieves #aladdin #i have so many more thoughts about this than you think #munchatter #there was so much oppertunity for cohesion with aladdin sequels #and they just took NONE of the oppertunities #if you gave me a disney budget ibwould sit down and write out thr whole damn trilogy #after the first movie jafar at BEST maybe gets a haloween short come-back #but that is IT #he was an analogue for corruption and power and that worked for the first movie #he was facinating and scary in the first movie and then afterward fuckit #the only thing left in the cave of wonders is Jafar at the end of everything #and Only One May Enter There #so he will never see the light of day thanks #dbhxzhhs #demanding that my theoretical versions of the movie really highlight genie friendship #idk what the fuck i would do about not having robin williams do the voice though #who the fuck would play genie? not homer simpson #im a little bit obsessed with the idea of recreating aladdin as a trilogy but Good #cause lets face it everything after the first movie is kindaaaaaa :(

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