Religion and deities in the setting (split from "Trace of Two Pasts novel discussion")

[waw]

I agree, well done! And I forgot about Shelke....

Looking at the other Final Fantasies, albeit briefly, it seems the Japanese never really uses Eidolon, does it? It's consistently "Genju" and "Shokanju," these sorts of things that just mean "Phantom Beast" or "Summon Beast." I took this, initially, as the Summons in FFVII would be less hallowed, but the terminilogy is striking me as the same, even when they are hallowed. From what I can tell it was just Genju up to FFX.

幻獣 - Genju, phantom beast, used in pretty much all of the FFs?
召喚獣 - shokanju -Aeon in English, X
召喚獣 - shokanju - summoned beast - xii
蛮神 - Banshin, savage gods, primals (ffXV)
六神 -Rokushin, six gods, FFXV

And literally "Guardian Force" in FFVIII.

Thoughts?

 

[ph14basicbitch]

Off the top of my head, FFVII, FFX, FFXII, FFXIII, FFXIV, FFVIIR and FFXVI use 召喚 or 召喚獣. For FF14 in particular, Yoshi-P has spoken about 召喚獣 and 蛮神. The little carbuncles are 召喚獣, but Ifrit etc are revered as gods, so they are 蛮神.

Typically, 召喚 is for summoning, 召喚獣 is the summon, and 召喚士 is the summoner. This isn't limited to Final Fantasy either. Iirc the usage of 召喚 in this context comes from western occultism, as 召喚 is otherwise like saying subpoena.

Also, しょうかん is hiragana, not katakana. Menu commands and related things in FF games tend to be written in something other than kanji. E.g. たたかう on the menu, but 戦う in game dialogue.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

It seems like as the FF series went on, the devs started giving the summons more and more personality of their own that was specific to the setting. They went from being just cool-looking spells (mechanically speaking) to being actual characters. So I think the name changes might reflect that.

FFXIV's term is interesting because we know from various dev panels that FFXIV's localization and world-building team are very tight. A lot of made-up world-building terms are actually made up in *English* first and then localized to Japanese (and French and German). So they could have come up with "primals/eikons" first and then thought about what JP term fit that best. Although given what primals actually *are* in setting... I wonder what the JP term for "concept" is... since that's the name the original creators of what are now called "primals/eikons" would have called them.

As... it turns out there's a branch of magic called Creation Magic in FFXIV that... pretty much can make anything the caster wants out of magic and that is the kind of magic that makes Primals... and a whole lot of other objects that have no sentience at all. And it's all the same kind of magic....

English
"You have heard of Ifrita, yes? The fire spirit?"
"Lahabrea's masterwork. An impressive concept, even for him."

JP
「君なら、火精イフリータを知っているだろう」
「……ああ。ラハブレアが創り出したイデアの中でも、傑作中の傑作だ」

*grumbles about why can't FFVII's localization be like this* And this is why I don't bother looking at the JP for a lot of FFXIV stuff when it comes to lore concepts. 9 times out of 10 its turns out to be what the English indicates it should be and vice versa.

The only *really* noteworthy term is.... [ イデア ] which is specifically "idea (in Platonic thought)" which gets translated as "concept". And it's exactly how "concept" is used throughout FFXIV...

Which is what a Primal really is... it's a Platonic Idea that people have created out of aether (FFXIV equivalent of magic energy). It's just... got a limited source of aether itself and keeps brainwashing people so that they give it more aether and keep it alive.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

By "idea (in Platonic though)" do you mean "form"?

 

[Clement Rage]

If Shelke ability was the same as talking to the Planet, why does Shinra need Aeris?

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Only Aerith knows where the promised land is.

 

[Makoeyes987]

I don't think Shelke's ability to SND into the Lifestream is something that's a normal function of that ability (nevermind it's single magical girl-esque use for that plot moment with Vincent). That seems like it'd come with obvious risks seeing as how Shelke described the process of acquiring data on the network as risky to her own ego and consciousness already.

Doing such a thing sounds like a one-way ticket to mako poisoning.

 

[waw]

I think Shelke dives into the sea of information, not necessarily talk to it. Question remains unanswerable yet if the ShinraNet even uses the Lifestream.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Her interaction with it puts a strain on her consciousness through maintaining her ego in a sea of information. Doing that in the Lifestream would be even more risky given the difficulties of SND on top of maintaining one's consciousness among raw spirit energy.

And again that seemed more like a plot thing given it was a way to get Vincent his protomateria back while having Lucrecia be the one to give it to him. Such a thing had never been done before until that moment, lol it was clearly a romantic deus ex machina.

 

[waw]

So changing directions a bit, I figure this is a good place to bring this in. The Cetra called Jenova: "空から来た厄災" This is the Japanese that we often see as "Calamity from the Skies" or "Crisis from the Skies." The last two Kanji is the "calamity" bit of this.

There's a god in Japanese mythology that's a god/kami of [厄災]. This is the thunder god, Raijin. Signficiantly, Raijin is born to a dead mother, Izanami. She died before he was born and so he came from a rotten corpse. Izanami's husband, Izanagi, was a bit appalled by Izanami being a corpse so he fled to the land of living and Raijin was sent to fetch him back. Since Raijin came to the land of the living after Izanagi, disaster came with him. One of the only times Raijin is defeated is when the God Catcher (one of the Emperor's minions) invokes Kannon, a Buddhist Deity that is also a water dragon. There is a Guanyin/Kannon statue in Wutai (the Dachao mountain).

This doesn't mean much in the overall mythos of FF7, but for me, I found it real interesting to see a god born from an undead mother bringing disaster wherever he goes. Before anyone gets too nervous about this "connection," these kanji are pretty common to just mean "disaster" and shouldn't be taken as a clear cut version of Jenova's Japanese name or something.