Mir's "180".

Something I've been musing about.... (Spoilers for AT2 will follow.)

I've seen a number of fans, in various place, evince surprise at Mir's appearance in her Cosmosphere Level 8, going as far as to say things like "I can't believe Mir was really like this" and "she doesn't seem anything like the Mir we know". For the longest time, I never really understood what these people were getting at. As someone who's immersed myself in Mir's story since AT1, her appearance in her Level 8 didn't just seem congruous with her personality; it seemed almost mandated. I didn't find myself surprised by it in the slightest.

In fact, that was perhaps the one big downside of AT2 for me (or, perhaps, the downside of my immersion in Mir fannishness); practically nothing that came to pass regarding Mir surprised me at all. With the exception of a few odd little details of correlation between my internal concept of Mir and the game's concept that I couldn't have ever expected would be represented so accurately, I remained largely underwhelmed, because I'd thought about all of this, and retrodden it in my mind in painstaking detail.

I suppose the fact that it was all so accurate in itself should have surprised me, but... it didn't. I didn't feel like I was seeing anything I hadn't already seen in my mind. I worried a lot before playing AT2 that it wouldn't match up with my internal image of Mir, and I was glad that it did, yet the downside of having my mental image of the game match so well was that I didn't feel like I was playing a new game, but one I'd already played. The idea that Mir was really just a fragile, caring child inside, who wanted to build a better world... that seemed evident from Harmonious, from "Reyvateilia" (which always seemed such an explicitly childish name that I was sure that either she must have come up with it as a child or just had a very naive mindset), and, in AT2, from her various costumes and actions leading up to that. There are plenty of clues that Mir is awkward, naive, vulnerable, and socially undeveloped, that she was kind as a child and then lost her mind, and that what was being restored when Harmonious was sung was her innocent, pure way of looking upon life. All of these things, in fact, were what made her stand out to me as more than just a typical "abused villain" character. Yes, she fits the trope, but she's also so much more than that. The interesting part of her is that she's always been purehearted, and she's always held onto that dream.

But I guess the key phrase in all of this is "as someone who's immersed myself in Mir's story". If you don't think about Mir very much, you won't notice these subtle developments, this buildup to her character. You have to analyse her to see it. And the fact that she is so analysable, that AT2 was capable of presenting to me an image identical in almost every respect to the Mir I'd been imagining, despite the fact that basically all we ever see or hear of her is a voice roaring and screaming about wanting to destroy all humans... the fact that there were so many little clues there, from her shield-encased graphic in the final battle to the hymn Harmonious, and that they all did lead exactly where they looked, with enough thought, like they were meant to lead... I don't know. Something about that impresses me, in retrospect, even though it seemed so obvious at the time that it oddly didn't impress me at all.

You can analyse a piece of literature, and come up with elaborate, intricate theories about what the authors might have been trying to invoke with the symbolism, what was really underlying each and every scene, the deeper message that's being told. And while these theories are useful in examining what readers get out of a text, one gets the feeling that they don't often correlate with authorial intent. A simple piece of literature can suggest a million complex things, and yet these complex patterns are largely in the eye of the beholder. A good work will generate them, but they tend to have little bearing on the author's conscious intentions. That Tsuchiya and co. were conscious of all these little things, to the point where the sequel explicitly spells them out, seems impressive.

I remember people saying, back before AT2 was out in English, that Mir's heart wasn't something I understood, because I'd only played half the series. I understand what they meant, and yet at the same time, it makes me smile, a little, to look back and see people saying now how right I was all along, and realise that I did, always, know her heart. Not out of any smug feeling of "haha, I was right and you were wrong"; that's not it at all. It's simply that it makes me happy to realise that I did, after all, truly comprehend my favourite character, even without all of the extra information.

Mir's shaping up to be the most interesting character in AT thus far, and-- again, not in a smug way, just in a sort of... satisfaction-of-having-solved-the-puzzle way, I guess-- it's nice to be able to say "I knew she was interesting before it was cool".