Spoilers for Jakuri's Cosmosphere, up to and including level 9, in the blacked-out text.
...So apparently Jakuri's dream is "all you can eat pancakes". In honour of this, we went out for pancakes the other day; they weren't supposed to be the all-you-can-eat variety, but in practice the servings were so large that a regular one ended up being all we could eat and then some, so there were leftovers for breakfast the next day too. Mmmmm, IHOP.
I've now cleared Jakuri's Cosmosphere-- with aquagon being an invaluable help in my quest to heal her heart, as I ran into sticking problems with acquiring several of the talk topics-- and I have to say that I'm surprised at how much I got right about her, in my reflections and in my various writings. I was pretty sure that most of the stuff I wrote about in the AT Whistleblower was going to be blown out of the water by canon, but they're really pretty compatible, and some of the coincidences regarding minor details I'd imagined being present in her Cosmosphere are downright spooky. It's heartening to see that I really have understood her, in some ways, all along.
I was also pleased to see the game acknowledge that she'd still have some reservations towards even a human who'd cleared her Cosmosphere. She couldn't bring herself to hug Croix at the end, nor could she guarantee that there wouldn't be times when she'd be angry at him for being what he was, when just seeing his face would remind her of all she'd been through and upset her. I thought that was a fairly realistic depiction of the troubles any relationship between her and a human would face, all said. I didn't feel like they forced her into being too OOCly fluffy in order to pair her up with Croix, which was my main concern; I felt like in AT1 the characters were often warped out of proportion and made to concede points they wouldn't concede so that they could be more amenable to a relationship with Lyner, and I feel like that happened a lot less here (probably in part since for the vast majority of people to consider a relationship with Lyner you'd have to warp them pretty badly out of character).
That said, there are a few things I would have liked to have seen in there that I didn't. For one thing, I wanted to know more about precisely what happened during her rebellion; what that was like for her, what she felt about fighting a war in which countless people died. Not just her guilt and her struggle to accept herself afterwards, but what, exactly, the experience was like at the time. I think I also wanted to know more about what humans were using her for exactly; we get hints that she was being used as a weapon against the rebelling Reyvateils, but I'd like to have heard more about that.
It would have been nice if Harmonious had got to be a spell, too, but that's kind of wishful thinking. XP
More thoughts on this later once I've digested the whole game, perhaps.
Also, if you're following the Reyvablog, you'll probably want to check today's post, as the plot is moving on in quite a surprising direction....
Letra - Eldharia ~Inori Saku Mori~
2 months ago
9 comments:
I was disappointed that there wasn't a level that took place in the Binary Field or in a set of small rooms. It was all so human-town-esque, when she's spent so much of her life not even having lived in a human town. But, like you, I'm glad that they didn't make her any more accepting of humans than she had to be in order to get the Cosmosphere done.
Q: How do you make the Jakuri Dinner?
A: First, ask her what she'd like. Then, go get some ingredients and take them to the kitchen...
Q: How do you make Jakuri Stew?
A: Just annoy her. It isn't hard.
Q: How do you make Jakuri Drink?
A: You can lead a mule to water, but you can't make her drink.
(ba-dum TSH)
...made of win.
Alternatively, "How do you make the Jakuri Dinner? Prepare the finest ingredients, cook them according to a gourmet recipe card, lay them all out on a silver tray, present them on bended knee... then watch as she tries to eat the silverware first."
Even if we didn't see everything that we wanted about her, we can hope that following games in the series shows more things about Mir.
Oh, and by the way, Ayulsa... Did you notice that in the Lv.8 Cosmosphere, Mir herself showed us what the Metafalica means to her, and some lines that could be the lines for the original Harmonious?
She did indeed... I recognised them as being from some version of Harmonious, but others seemed unfamiliar, and I didn't think much of it at the time, actually-- I thought it might just have been a poor translation. I'd love to see the original translation of those lines... are they actually different from every other Harmonious? If so, that's fascinating....
When we get the script dumps, I'll be sure to retranslate these lines. But it looks like it has lines from both Misha's version and the Fusion version, arranged in a different order and with some lines we have never seen before (*dies at the thought of hearing that sung*)
*dies at it too!*
And yes, I'm really looking forward to seeing them! Perhaps you could try putting them back into Hymmnos, too....
Once I retranslate it, you can be sure that I will retranslate them back to Hymmnos (maybe that will give us some leads to a future song in the series)
Wonderful stuff. ^___^ The idea that we can finally hold in our minds and hearts the lyrics to the original Harmonious is such a compelling one....
So, now that I've finished the game, I finally feel qualified to read the blacked-out text. I'm surprised that you were as surprised as I was about understanding Mir so well.
To be honest, as I played through At2, I was always worried about inconsistency... Inconsistency with the version of Mir I already knew and deeply appreciated from your writing. I was warned about that possibility beforehand, and I chose Jakuri's path fully willing to accept any such inconsistencies, but in the end, there was very little that needed to be accepted. It was as though I was hearing Mir's story a second time, told from a slightly different perspective.
It was a delight and a surprise to see elements in her sense of humour, in her syntheses, and in her song magic that seemed to make references to be finest details that we had discovered in the time before At2... And the story of her life felt so much more profound when augmented with the additional and uncannily accurate background that you had conceived.
I think I owe you a lot of thanks for helping me appreciate Jakuri's path as much as I did. ^_^
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