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Anime Adjacent (90's anime megacross!)

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zxzx24 said:
Intense eyerolling
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I would argue soul attacks are worse but he uses them fairly often
Could say he only uses it on those that deserves it but you could say same for mind magic, its all about responsible use or at least giving yourself rules for its use otherwise you will end up in a hammer and nail situation
Like that one Planeswalker fic where the MC got his own harry potter Azkaban dimension and began to spam teleport people there and eternally imprison them and replace them with completely loyal clones at the slightest of inconveniences, or if he did not like them at first glance, or if they disagreed with him

Literally one chapter he was going to buy a house came across a married couple the husband had a gambling problem and he immediately decided eternal imprisonment and replacing the husband with a clone was the go to
 
I was just about to go on an HP tangent rant about some of the fundamental problems of that world...but I can be distracted from that.
Elite_Noob said:
I would argue soul attacks are worse but he uses them fairly often
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Now, to be fair on this front...Areru has not regained any such abilities, and Alchemist has not used them. Soul damage, yes, but even that was mostly on non-sapient monsters or a by-product of other factors (like the Dragon-born have Eldritch draco soul cancer). And frankly, even then soul damage isn't much used for actual combat.

Outright destruction of a soul is an ability that Al only gained in the main story when he got an Angel blade (Hazbin Hotel) from Lucifer via his multiversal connections. And he only made that into a weapon in the literal last chapter. His only plans for it, hinted at or shown so far? Are using it on extremely powerful entities that he has no choice but violence (like gods like Zeus, whose Oversoul definitely will NOT be destroyed, though the local version may be damaged or lost), or particularly nasty demons (like Trigon, who was heavily hinted to be the primary victim of the blade according to time-travelers).

Ie, the only soul destruction going around is on targets that genuinely deserve it...or aren't going to get destroyed.

I guess arguably he destroyed Wotan's soul by trapping them in a universe succumbing to entropy on all levels...but they were also really high up on the 'evil' scale, and it's very indirect.

So this argument is NOT comparable.

Edit: I misread and thought you said soul destruction. For soul damage, there is the thing with Gendo...but that's frankly the only viable comparison I see here (might also be the only time he used that skill on something besides a Fog Demon). He rendered judgement for a wrong of some kind, neutralized Gendo's threat to others, and left him in such a state that he could be taken advantage of, most notably by Areru himself. In those ways sanctioned memory removal and targeted soul damage are similar...but the big sticking point is that you can hide the abuse of one by it's very nature. Not so the other.

Edit 2: This is not to say that Areru sill isn't being extremely irrational. He definitely is. He's got no actual evidence that the Kanto Association has been abusing memory modification like that, only the scumminess of the Kansai and his own experience with human nature. He's also not accounting for practical considerations on alternative measures for dealing with people that are trying to break the masquerade besides death, imprisonment, or grievous bodily violation (polymorphing). This is clearly one of Areru's hot buttons. He's got some valid reasoning for his reaction (and on some level, is probably right just going by statistics, even if institutional corruption is far from guaranteed), and he had a fairly irrational response. He's also a teenager and/or juvenile dragon. Those...are not historically the most logos focused of beings.

Elite_Noob said:
Like that one Planeswalker fic where the MC got his own harry potter Azkaban dimension and began to spam teleport people there and eternally imprison them and replace them with completely loyal clones at the slightest of inconveniences, or if he did not like them at first glance, or if they disagreed with him
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...what did I say about not wanting to go on a HP rant?
 
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Elite_Noob said:
I would argue soul attacks are worse but he uses them fairly often
Could say he only uses it on those that deserves it but you could say same for mind magic, its all about responsible use or at least giving yourself rules for its use otherwise you will end up in a hammer and nail situation
Like that one Planeswalker fic where the MC got his own harry potter Azkaban dimension and began to spam teleport people there and eternally imprison them and replace them with completely loyal clones at the slightest of inconveniences, or if he did not like them at first glance, or if they disagreed with him

Literally one chapter he was going to buy a house came across a married couple the husband had a gambling problem and he immediately decided eternal imprisonment and replacing the husband with a clone was the go to
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I think that a big part of the equation is the level of threat these desperate options are deployed against, what is trying to be accomplished, and at what organizational level.

In Negima, these desperate option spells are deployed against zero threat individuals all the time. It's also a pretty typical "hidden magic" setting in that they keep the magic secret but hand wave the moral implications of that - namely, that a small group of elites are hording power, pretty much however you slice it. The general "there would be chaos!" arguments don't really hold up. Finally, these spells are used at an institutional level, granting the tools to do this sort of thing to dozens or hundreds of individuals. The more people that have access to tools like this, the more dangerous they become. It strains credibility that these things are not abused by someone, even if strict checks are in place. It's not a setting where you are supposed to look closer, but this is a story where we throw out that attitude and really dive into things.

Alchemist uses spells that are arguably worse, but in all three points he's doing much better. Generally they are only deployed against significant threats, either to himself or others. He generally uses them only in service of specific goals that are by and large at least passably noble. And of course, the people he teaches these abilities to are highly restricted, consisting only of people he personally knows the character of and trusts, and even then I think the entire list might consist of only Jinx. I can't fully recall.

I'm sure that given the exact wrong situation where it was absolutely demanded for an acceptable outcome Alchemist would use memory modifying magic. But he wouldn't do so lightly, he wouldn't do so in order to monopolize institutional power to, lets be frank, a single racial group, and he certainly wouldn't be teaching the ability to do so to many enforcers to act on his behalf.

As for why he uses soul attack magic comparatively lightly, I don't really think he does. I think what's happening there is he made his decision on acceptable use case scenarios well in advance and he is such a heavy hitter that the problems he deals with are often within that set of acceptable use scenarios. He routinely fights gods, or at least things that call themselves gods. At a certain point you have to start using weapons that are effective against these things. Soul damage comes up as a necessary or just tool far more often than memory erasing, which is almost always about convenience. Seeing memory erasure talked about so casually already indicates there is a serious problem, at least in Alchemist's eyes, and he's got a good point no matter how emotional he is being about it.
 
Mister Ficser said:
That... those are ermines," Konoe said with a small cough. "And that is a punishment inflicted upon those who would reveal the secret of magic practiced by an associate school in Wales."

"That's... not great. But I suppose it's better?" Slightly? Somehow?

"I like to think so," Konoe agreed. "Here? We simply erase someone's memories."
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Actually these two practises aren't exclusive to each country/region so I don't know why the Headmaster said it this way like one side does it this way while we do it this way. During the school festival arc, the school staff on the magic side said they were going to be punished for failing to stop magic being exposed on a global scale.

So ermine punishment affects those on the magic side for failing to conceal magic in the Old World. Though only serious offenses it seems since Negi wasn't ever punished for his students finding out about magic (though to be fair, most of them ended up as mages so...)

Magic erasion is for the non-magical side...wait give me a sec.

30 minutes later.

Rereading some scenes in Negima, I can't actually find the source that says the magical community uses memory erasion to keep magic hidden. There's that gag at the start of the series where Negi is being a dumbass about Asuna finding out of him having magic. But beyond that, nothing I could tell as Negi from there on used pretty bad excuses whenever he's caught using magic and not one mention of memory erasion.

The only relevant part I could find about keeping magic secret is that the magic side school staff said they have contigency plans to keep magic secret and that it isn't hard to convince the average person that magic was in fact some weird phenomenon instead. Hell in the same arc, they use the 'it's cg' excuse and no one (openly) questioned it.

(It was practically a gag that the general public just accepts magic is this other thing when someone makes a vague excuse)

(Well considering giant mechs were walking around in the open during that part of the arc....)

(Advanced enough technology might as well be magic is actually a thing in Negima funnily enough. And martial artists openly doing superhuman stuff is also a thing which in hindsight makes it a lot easier to hide magic)

This fact that "magic isn't real" became a plot point in of itself where the antagonist in the School Festival arc used a Wish to cast a "force recognition spell" onto everyone to make them more inclined to believing magic is real. And then they started spreading videos on of mages using magic everywhere via an AI that blocked all attempts of stopping it to force the world to recognise magic is real to a timeline of roughly 6 months.

Anyway, since this is a crossover world, things might be done differently. But best to say that the source material for Negima doesn't have anything about using memory erasing spells on the public to hide magic. It's just using people's natural skepticism that magic isn't real combined with information control.
 
zxzx24 said:
Mind magic being inherently evil is something I think would be up for debate.
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I would argue no magic is inherently evil. For example a memory spell used to cover up a rape could just as easily be used with consent to help treat someone with PTSD by blocking a traumatic event. The issue is not the magic itself but the potential for it's abuse. In a way it's like drugs. Several A class drugs like Meth, cocain and heroin have been and still are used as medication in various forms, but their use recreationally can and does destroy lives.
 
Nalanaya said:
I was just about to go on an HP tangent rant about some of the fundamental problems of that world...but I can be distracted from that.

Now, to be fair on this front...Areru has not regained any such abilities, and Alchemist has not used them. Soul damage, yes, but even that was mostly on non-sapient monsters or a by-product of other factors (like the Dragon-born have Eldritch draco soul cancer). And frankly, even then soul damage isn't much used for actual combat.

Outright destruction of a soul is an ability that Al only gained in the main story when he got an Angel blade (Hazbin Hotel) from Lucifer via his multiversal connections. And he only made that into a weapon in the literal last chapter. His only plans for it, hinted at or shown so far? Are using it on extremely powerful entities that he has no choice but violence (like gods like Zeus, whose Oversoul definitely will NOT be destroyed, though the local version may be damaged or lost), or particularly nasty demons (like Trigon, who was heavily hinted to be the primary victim of the blade according to time-travelers).

Ie, the only soul destruction going around is on targets that genuinely deserve it...or aren't going to get destroyed.

I guess arguably he destroyed Wotan's soul by trapping them in a universe succumbing to entropy on all levels...but they were also really high up on the 'evil' scale, and it's very indirect.

So this argument is NOT comparable.

Edit: I misread and thought you said soul destruction. For soul damage, there is the thing with Gendo...but that's frankly the only viable comparison I see here (might also be the only time he used that skill on something besides a Fog Demon). He rendered judgement for a wrong of some kind, neutralized Gendo's threat to others, and left him in such a state that he could be taken advantage of, most notably by Areru himself. In those ways sanctioned memory removal and targeted soul damage are similar...but the big sticking point is that you can hide the abuse of one by it's very nature. Not so the other.

Edit 2: This is not to say that Areru sill isn't being extremely irrational. He definitely is. He's got no actual evidence that the Kanto Association has been abusing memory modification like that, only the scumminess of the Kansai and his own experience with human nature. He's also not accounting for practical considerations on alternative measures for dealing with people that are trying to break the masquerade besides death, imprisonment, or grievous bodily violation (polymorphing). This is clearly one of Areru's hot buttons. He's got some valid reasoning for his reaction (and on some level, is probably right just going by statistics, even if institutional corruption is far from guaranteed), and he had a fairly irrational response. He's also a teenager and/or juvenile dragon. Those...are not historically the most logos focused of beings.


...what did I say about not wanting to go on a HP rant?
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I was more thinking about him in main story ya and black fire that stuff was made to kill gods and in soul series black magic, well most magic really tends to be soul attacks unless they just really like tacking on the word soul to all their spell names
I think its a case of them trying to find a way to permanently kill the undead besides with another undead but i may be wrong
 
lin4t said:
Actually these two practises aren't exclusive to each country/region so I don't know why the Headmaster said it this way like one side does it this way while we do it this way. During the school festival arc, the school staff on the magic side said they were going to be punished for failing to stop magic being exposed on a global scale.

So ermine punishment affects those on the magic side for failing to conceal magic in the Old World. Though only serious offenses it seems since Negi wasn't ever punished for his students finding out about magic (though to be fair, most of them ended up as mages so...)

Magic erasion is for the non-magical side...wait give me a sec.

30 minutes later.

Rereading some scenes in Negima, I can't actually find the source that says the magical community uses memory erasion to keep magic hidden. There's that gag at the start of the series where Negi is being a dumbass about Asuna finding out of him having magic. But beyond that, nothing I could tell as Negi from there on used pretty bad excuses whenever he's caught using magic and not one mention of memory erasion.

The only relevant part I could find about keeping magic secret is that the magic side school staff said they have contigency plans to keep magic secret and that it isn't hard to convince the average person that magic was in fact some weird phenomenon instead. Hell in the same arc, they use the 'it's cg' excuse and no one (openly) questioned it.

(It was practically a gag that the general public just accepts magic is this other thing when someone makes a vague excuse)

(Well considering giant mechs were walking around in the open during that part of the arc....)

(Advanced enough technology might as well be magic is actually a thing in Negima funnily enough. And martial artists openly doing superhuman stuff is also a thing which in hindsight makes it a lot easier to hide magic)

This fact that "magic isn't real" became a plot point in of itself where the antagonist in the School Festival arc used a Wish to cast a "force recognition spell" onto everyone to make them more inclined to believing magic is real. And then they started spreading videos on of mages using magic everywhere via an AI that blocked all attempts of stopping it to force the world to recognise magic is real to a timeline of roughly 6 months.

Anyway, since this is a crossover world, things might be done differently. But best to say that the source material for Negima doesn't have anything about using memory erasing spells on the public to hide magic. It's just using people's natural skepticism that magic isn't real combined with information control.
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Didn't Asuna have her memory erased as a child? It's been a long time so I'm not 100% sure anymore
 
Squeeky602 said:
Didn't Asuna have her memory erased as a child? It's been a long time so I'm not 100% sure anymore
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Yes but that's a separate plotline only relevant near the end of the series so I didn't mentioned it.

Asuna's backstory is that she's a centuries old anti-magic living weapon in the form of an unaging child called the Twilight Princess. Erasing/sealing her memories was done so she could live a normal life and find happiness after an attack that killed her caretaker.

And yes, doing so essentially created a new person. The Twilight Princess exist as a separate entity while Asuna is the 'main personality'. This is shown with Asuna's ego personality almost disappearing after a century of sleep before the Twilight Princess kicked her and told her to keep her promise to meet her friends again.
 
Random832 said:
Removing a recent memory doesn't change the foundation of who someone is as a person any more than forming new ones does.
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Memory is the basic building blocks of a person. We are who we are because of the memories we have.

Sure, removing a recent memory isn't nearly as damaging as removing older memories, but you're still removing parts of who a person is, directly killing parts of their brain that form those new memories. It's a complete violation of a person's autonomy. Pruning parts of them away like you would a bonsai tree.

And if you're willing to remove a recent memory on an institutional level, who's holding you accountable if you decide to remove more memories or implant something else instead? This is easily ripe for abuse.

Memory erasure in fiction is often just used as a handwave to enforce a masquerade of some kind. It's rarely treated with the seriousness it should be. The few that do tend to make it the primary focus as well: i.e. Dark City.
 
Pinklestia said:
Heck Tom Riddle Father literally used magic to rape his mother, and then well Tom ended in an orphanage for a reason.
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It's the Mother, actually.

Merope Gaunt drugs Riddle Sr. with love potions for a while, and then stopped because she thinks that he will keep loving her.

This is done while she's expecting Tom, with obvious consequences.

He rejected her, she goes around being homeless and give birth in the Orphanage before dying.

I think.

And similar stuff also happen with Molly and Arthur, with Arthur the one getting drug, but then accept the relationship (?).

But yeah.

Witches and Wizard be crazy in the Wizarding World.

On both sides of the fence.
 
I would actually argue that Soulsucker, Areru's property ward, and the Zone of Truth he used on the Youma are either Mental Magic or so close that it becomes semantics.

Let me start with Soulsucker. This very clearly not only stole Genma's strength and speed but also erased his muscle memory and even his ability to get in or perform the correct actions. Yes for high level martial artists the last are part of the muscle memory, but Genma should be able to recognize that he isn't doing it right and thus be able to consciously correct himself. The fact that he is in danger of developing bad habits and must be retaught would mean that his actual memories of how it is supposed to go, and also how he trained Ranma to do it, were erased or messed with as well.

His property ward is Mental Magic because despite having a map of the area, his address and seeing the address on his mailbox Setsuna (I think that is her in chapter 4) could not realize that the place she was looking for was right in front of her. It couldn't just be invisibility or the like because otherwise someone should have at some point thought, "Why is there a mailbox in front of an empty lot? Let me check it out." It no doubt had some sort of barrier but he never mentions people running into it or being warped around it so that only leaves that it directly messes with their ability to mentally perceive that the place they are looking for is in front of them or it compels them to dismiss that it is in front of them.

Finally the Zone of Truth is, in my opinion, mental magic because it directly forced the Youma to tell the truth. It didn't stop them from saying a false statement (which some could argue can still be seen as a type of mental magic even if it isn't an invasive one) but compelled them to answer truthfully.
 
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I feel like he overreacted to Konoe, mind wiping is kinda gross but they don't throw it around as much as say Harry Potter-verse, I recall the mundane girls in Negi's class repeatedly running into supernatural events such as ghosts, seeing spells being cast, and more without getting mind whammied, they all just adjust without a problem. Toward the end of the first anime Negi even gives all the girls superpowers with Pactio magic.
 
I think it's only really used in Negima on people that can't keep their mouths shut or really as a way to make sure Negi is more careful with his magic. Not that he actually is and outside of flubbing it I can't remember when or even if they actually do erase anyone's memories
 
I suspect that having a lot of his memories erased may have given our protagonist some Very Strong Opinions about having one's memories erased.

Just a thought.
 
I mean, how hard COULD it be to put a ward over the entire planet to make mind magic so fucking hard that it is virtually worthless?
 
I am curious as to whether he's going to be challenged on that line in the sand he's drawn. Like others have mentioned Areru knows some equally fucked up soul magic.
 
Yeah Stuff like Mind/Memory Wipes and Love Potions are pretty much horrid when you think about it, Not to mention when you factor in Japanese Societies focus on Not rocking the Boat, and maintaining Reputation
 
Lycanthromancer said:
Feeblemind: Subject's Int and Cha drop to 1.
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Lycanthromancer said:
None of those are particularly objectionable,
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The fact that this spell with an instant duration (like permanent but can't be dispelled) snuck onto this cherrypicked list of not bad enchantment spells is quite telling about the enchantment school. There's a reason more than one setting has an organization that declared enchantment magic illegal.
 
green8751 said:
message system was part of his system
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How do you thing you things Gods from different universes comunicate with each other? By mail.

As the system was set when stone tablets were used, the weight limit is more generous that for paper letters on regular mail.

Washu's daughter feels enough like her that sending her letters would only be noticed by Washu herself .

Lucifer Morningstar has half the power of the local (dead?) Big G God of his universe Cluster so while it would take asking for a favor yes he can send a letter.
 
You know, Areru just erased a bunch of memories himself in the recent past (Genma Saotome). He's being an extreme hypocrite here.

Clearly there are times when messing with memories is apropos, else he wouldn't have done that.

[edit] Ranma'd.

[edit 2]

Bailey Matutine said:
The fact that this spell with an instant duration (like permanent but can't be dispelled) snuck onto this cherrypicked list of not bad enchantment spells is quite telling about the enchantment school. There's a reason more than one setting has an organization that declared enchantment magic illegal.
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Yeah, that was a mistake on my part. But still, there are dozens just in the PHB that are not innately evil or wrong to use. They are abusable, but the vast majority of abilities are abusable in one form or another, and they're not collectively evil.
 
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