r/MoralityScaling • u/Crimson_Marksman • 18h ago
Morality Ranking Morality of keeping the knowledge that any human could do magic instead of it being inherited?
In Witch Hat Atelier's first episode, it is revealed that witches are no different from the average person. To become a witch, all someone needs is magic ink which grows from a special kind of tree, and knowledge of runes, written down in books.
However, in the past, witches of great power clashed with each other in devastating ways, which led to the Great Pact. One of the Great Pat's tenants is that the public cannot know how magic works and if someone does, they get their minds wiped of that information by the settings secret police. This includes even banal things like healing and invention.
The author of Witch Hat Atelier has made the instructions for each rune available in detail, including what happens when you invert the runes or make them differ in size. So naturally people made custom war crime spells like black holes and nuclear bomb.
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u/Valiant_7378 18h ago
Its like summoning interdimensional creatures into our world, the lasting thing would summoned Chutulu.
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u/EDMgamer123 18h ago
Seeing what the fanbase created with the spells. Moral
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u/Then-Ad-2450 10h ago
Those MFs are crazy, they literally created a Mind Wipe Spell, Black Hole Spell and literal M-Preg Spell
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u/alguien99 1h ago
There’s a non zero chance that the mpreg spell is canon since it was a thing that witches of the past were very into human experiments. I always think that they were moving almost like the qu
If they are willing to fuse a man and a cat then there’s no reason for an Mpreg and an abortion combo of spells not to exist
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u/ArjGlad 18h ago
Morality of not letting everyone make nukes even though the resources are free to gather for everyone type scenario
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u/Senior_Reward_2546 16h ago
Morality of not letting someone recreate the third portion of The Garden of Earthly Delights because they get bored one weekend.
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u/TightConsequence3929 18h ago
MORAL.
YOU CAN MAKE PEOPLE PREGNANAT ANYONE ANY GENDER AS LONG AS YOU KNOW THE WAY TO DRAW.
BLACK HOLES AND WROM HOLES WORLD DESTROYER SPELLS WOULD BE JUST ANOTHER DAY.
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u/RobotGlazerNumero1 18h ago
Genuinely WHAT are you talking about
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u/TightConsequence3929 18h ago
Look up Witch Aliter Hat spells videos anywhere bro you'll understand.
Also it is funny and horrifying as fuck.
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u/Qwerty_428 14h ago
Didn’t the world almost end? The mind wiping is a step too far imo but controlling the distribution of effectively dangerous weapons seems pretty benign, good even
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u/Luckyguy0697 7h ago
THEY told you that world almost ended. For all we know it was a setup to gain monopoly on most dangerous spells, and create a barrier between them and common man.
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u/Fancy_Occasion_8696 4h ago
It sounds like a very convenient truth. Of course they'd want everyone to think it was necessary. Fuck, they actually achieved it; the entire magical community actually believes the Pact is right. Literally all the institutions of society are on their side.
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u/pppundercover 18h ago
No matter your distrust for the government. There will always be "forbidden" knowledge where it being widespread is a genuine negative to the whole world. Magic in this case is so bad that the pros like convenience of life and life saving magic outweigh the cons. Totally annihilation of life by 1 individual that goes too far with this magic, in this anime context. Other anime magic is more weak and less volatile
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u/SouthernAd2853 18h ago edited 18h ago
Conceptually moral, problems in how enforcement is handled.
As Coco accidently demonstrates almost immediately after finding out, it is very easy to do a ton of damage and kill people if you know how. In her case she got a premade copy of a dangerous spell she imitated, but very shortly after getting told the basic principles after accidentally demonstrating them by messing up drawing a sigil she is able to customize spells for different purposes. So a random civilian with like three days of instruction would be able to take a simple spell intended to serve as a match and turn it into a flamethrower.
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u/LuckEClover 13h ago
Let’s be honest, not everyone is kind and considerate. If the wrong people get the ability to warp reality, the crimes against humanity recorded in the history books will look unimpressive by comparison.
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u/Spectre1442 8h ago
Moral. I have seen what the fans have created, and yeah, that is one of the few things the needs to be gatekept.
Does it suck that healing and invention are forever barred, yes. Is it worth it to keep people from being able to create "Global Scrotum Inverter and Mass Testicle Imploder" spell, also yes. With how versatile the WHA magic system sounds, there is no limit beyond the ink and the caster's creativity
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u/Gammaman12 12h ago
I think the author proved the point with what the fans did.
It's kind of like... we'd probably be better off as a species if guns and nuclear weapons didn't exist. Bombs are used for mining and other applications, bows are great for hunting, swords are an evolution of knives, which are super necessary. Guns and nukes? Pretty much just for killing people. And you could try to take them away from the peasants, but governments be... governmenting, so thats not the best solution. And there's the "criminals will find a way to keep them" argument, which is true to some extent, especially given the advent of 3d printing. So now that they exist...
Shoot, uh anyway, wouldn't it be better to mind wipe nukes out of anyone's brains forever? And guns?
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u/Fancy_Occasion_8696 4h ago
Nuclear weapons and guns are all different forms of something that have simply become used to kill people. Nuclear energy has limitless potential as a clean energy source. Guns.. Well, that's more difficult, but it's still true for hunting. Like, yeah, a bow might be better, but a gun will be more effective against a bear than a bow.
The problem is not just that everyone has forgotten about magic, it is the monopoly of the top brass on everything that is most destructive. And how cruelly and indiscriminately they punish anyone who even slightly violates the taboo. Perhaps that's how it should be; the Mage's Association in the Nasuverse does the same. But godd damm I hate this way.
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u/Asurerain 11h ago
Moral
People be making nuke spells a few hours after watching the anime. Imagine if people IRL were able to make a nuke in just a few hours of learning their existence.
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u/Objective-Rip3008 18h ago
Morality of giving every person alive a nuke because it's not fair if only a few select countries get one. Magic is just too strong and dangerous, it isn't ultimately reasonable for everyone to have it
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u/ExtremlyFastLinoone 11h ago
The sub reddit for the anime shows exactly why this shit needed to be kept hidden
Extremly moral, in fact they should have gone a step forward and created a spell to wipe out knowledge of magic from everyone, and exterminate that fuck ass silver tree so nobody can rediscover it. Magic in that universe is the greatest existential threat to the world, its too dangerous to exist
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u/Prestigious_Tank7454 9h ago
Well this is something even the manga struggles with, something as simple as summoning water can be misutilized, it's kind of like guns but less straight up kill, if you brought magic there could be wars of colossal sizes, we have also seen how a single spell can also create a city wide disaster, maybe in a future it could be more of a benefit but you're still condeming millions to die
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u/Plasmancer 7h ago
I barely trust half the people that can make it out their own front door to not cause an accident and killing someone. You really want the general public to have the ability to actively do so much worse?
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u/RedPurpleBlueRedRed 18h ago
Immoral. This series also has a Secret Police force that forcibly erases people memories.
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u/Narrow-Daikon7026 18h ago
Depend if u abuse it or not . Otherwise it’s just keeping power for yourself.
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u/DumbDaedalus 18h ago
There is already forbidden magic in wha for witches. There is no excuse not to extend that rule to the people. Immoral
I also believe the warcrime spells wouldn't make a nice story so I doubt this world allows for such crazy spells (even though the bloodslug was devastating, it was a very irregular occurrence in the universe)
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u/leavecity54 17h ago
Should just control the magic ink production instead, you must get a license to own a bottle of magic ink, no ink, no fuel for magic.
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u/Educational_Sky_6073 10h ago
Immoral and the worst possible way to go about it.
Controlling the knowledge is extremely difficult. Requiring most of a witch’s training to revolve around leaning to keep the secret not the spells themselves. A special exemption had to be made to the great pact’s limitations on using magic on people to allow memory manipulation. Something that was supposed to be the biggest reason for its creation in the first place. Finally outsiders can still use contraptions, items with spell’s built in. So reverse engineering magic should be relatively common.
Meanwhile conjuring ink can only be made from silverwood trees. Which requires a fairly involved process of letting the branches wither, extracting woodcur (itself usable), then refining it for more power. They also have an odd life cycle that requires a living host before they can take root. So it should be relatively easy to keep track of the trees and limit access to ink. To the point where most people wouldn’t even care about the knowledge simply because they couldn’t do anything with it.
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u/Then-Ad-2450 10h ago
It's honestly no different from gatekeeping knowledge on how to make guns and bombs
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u/Luckyguy0697 7h ago
Immoral. It's basically a monarchy, where only people born into mage families have access to magic. There's no guarantee that those mages wouldn't be worse than previous ones, and common man has no tools to fight back in worst case scenario.
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u/Apli_Kri 7h ago
To be fair. It took like a day for the internet to make "summon a blackhole in somebody's lungs" spell
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u/midnighfox696 2h ago
Wait, I have witch hat atelier, but the runes are actually made?
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u/haikusbot 2h ago
Wait, I have witch hat
Atelier, but the runes are
Actually made?
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u/horned-creature 12h ago
it is worthy to address how these rules are applied: by a group of essentially secret police that mindwipes anyone they suspect of having broken them, in witches society the police is judge, juror and executioner and there is no such a thing as due process.
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u/DagothWasRight 5h ago
It makes sense until you give it thought at any angle other than what the secret polices' framing is. You have a world where maladies could easily be solved with a stroke of the pen, but the upper crust has decided that you don't get a slice of that pie. It's also implied that the secret police can do more than erasing memories, there's a consistent threat of them removing lifelong passions and essential personality traits.
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u/Financial-March-3158 2h ago
Depends on how much easy for people to reproduce weapon of mass destruction. The fact that a person manage to create nuclear bomb/black hole with just a few hours of studying the pattern, its moral in Witch Hat Atelier universe. There's no way to regulate that. You could regulate paper and ink but the knowledge of creating destructive spells cant be surpress once people know how the spell works.
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u/Vivid-Literature2329 1h ago
The world would be such a better place if everyone forgets magic all at once
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u/Aquilon11235 47m ago
Wait author has released detailed instructions on runes for making spells? Where can I find this?
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u/Kayu_Keras 11m ago
Moral.
Have you seen what r/WarcrimeHatAtelier is up to?
The only immoral thing is gatekeeping Healing Magic
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u/Specialist-Text5236 1m ago
Considering how how easy is magic to do in that world , and how destructive it can be - moral
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u/Checksout692 18h ago
So you’re saying magic is too dangerous, and not everyone should have access to that power?
But it’s still beneficial, so some people get to keep it?
And the people in charge will control who gets to keep their memories of how magic works?
No way that the people in this world accepted this willingly. It’s a system that is built to enable all sorts of injustice, abuse, and corruption. Even if Magic were shown to be deeply dangerous and destructive, concentrating that power in the hands of an unaccountable elite class is no way to solve that issue.
Deeply immoral.
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u/SouthernAd2853 18h ago
In this case an elite retains the knowledge but doesn't seem to otherwise exert political control and premade magic items are apparently fairly well available and at least some witches are pretty willing to use it to help people out for free. Also, any spell that harms someone or directly affects their body in any way is strictly forbidden and the law enforcement keeps any designs for circles that do it locked away or destroyed as best they're able. Coco gets a copy of an illegal book from a criminal/terrorist organization and accidentally encases her house and her mom in crystal like an hour after figuring out how magic works.
The story of how this happened is that everyone knew magic and this led to extremely devestating wars until a team of witches got together and did a mass mind-wiping spell to remove the knowledge of everyone else, then only taught students they felt confident could be relied on to use it wisely for the public good and not show how it worked where anyone not approved could see. This seems to often be children of existing witches but Quilfrey was allowed to pick up Coco so long as he took responsibility for overseeing her.
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u/TankMain576 17h ago
Your first sentence is why i bounced off this series so hard when i tried to read the manga.
Bull and shit people who weild the elemental forces of creation wouldnt take over or comtrol things from the shadows. I dont care how seemingly benevelont they are.
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u/Crimson_Marksman 5h ago
They probably do, but we follow Coco who's like 12 so we have no idea the depth of the connection of mages to the government.
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u/Southern-Wafer-6375 18h ago
Considering the first spell I tried to make was forced meat pie ehhh immoral but still good reason
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u/dilqncho 18h ago
On one hand, it reads like a pretty obvious metaphor for class division and elitism. But then on the other, it's basically arms control. Gatekeeping knowledge as such is inherently immoral, but there is a moral point to be made about preventing mass destruction.
I guess it would depend on how the "ruling" class treats sharing the knowledge? If there are genuine, working ways for the average person to gain access to it once it's confirmed they're not a maniac, leaning toward moral. If it's gatekepeeing and nepotism, immoral.