I strongly disagree that Bloodborne’s use of blood marks it as “western” - the Shinto ideas of blood, death, childbirth and decay being polluting run very strongly in Bloodborne’s themes, with the use of blood ministration being the cause of the beast scourge.
I've always read Marika more as someone who came to realize what St. Trina says about Miquella when she asks you to kill him: that divinity is a prison. I think she just wanted out in the end. Why else would she task Hewg with smithing a weapon for the tarnished to kill her?
Whatever they do, don't f'ing change. They're literally delivering the best this industry is capable of producing. Miyazaki and his amazing team of artists better be around 20 years from now, or game will be nerfed.
Has anyone made any connections between the Gloam Eyed Queen and Marika?? Because I think Marika betrayed the GEQ and took something that was in a godskin swaddling cloth. Just wish we knew more 🫤
Got cool new bosses. Whole new names and mechanics of them to learn. Then we see a name we've already before, in a body of someone else we've killed. Ds3 ended much better
I am a super fan of Japanese mythology. It interested me so much, I searched up, Japanese mythology movies. I mean not animated that is very popular. I watched birth of japan 1959 The three treasures, Orochi the Eight headed dragon, 1990 idk. But cool!
I greatly enjoyed your video. Miyazaki and FromSoft definitely used a lot of mythology as inspiration for this tale and you relate those clearly and concisely. I wonder if you are going to revisit the Babylon medieval picture and how the beast is a horned one....
Your channel is absolutely fascinating, engrossing, insightful and enriching. Have you had the chance to go over Tarnished Archaelogist's interpretation of world and story through the lens of the history christianity and the roman empire and it's neighbours?
Thank you very much! I know of it, although my own reading is that ER is based on Norse mythology and to an extent echoes Ragnarok with the Gods destroying each other, the only difference being that the fighting has ground to a stalemate so that we the player can take on the Gods as bosses (otherwise there'd be no game to play and they'd have made a film instead!)
i have never agreed with a critique of the game more than this video(maybe the joseph anderson video but that is a different story) its amazing that miquella is still on my mind regulary when thinking about elden ring in general, he really was cursed with nascency both in the story and in the development, given how much of him was reworked in both the base game and in the dlc. your criticism from 7:20 to 11:50 encapsulate most of my frustrations with the story so well; not enough room for the characters to breath in, not enough meat (in some cases) to chew on, not enough reasons to hate the antagonists* (quite the opposite in my case), no reason to go to the shadowlands for the righteous tarnished, and no satisfaction in the end considering who the final boss was or how he was balanced really. Ansbach and mohg's "retcon" kinda irked me aswell. The Dynast's are one of the more antagonistic factions, filled with insane murderous characters like varre that turn you and other tarnished into bloody fingers, the same yura warned us about in his questline. And yet here is Ansbach proud dynast the most sane of all the miquella scooby-gang wanting to save everyone and heralding you as some kind of lord for all humanity in the end, as if he wasn't worshipping an outer god a few moments ago. His character doesn't make any sense for the faction he is in, and that puts the validity of mohg's character in the base game in question, wich to me is much more frustrating honestly. *im sorry micheal zaki if you wanted for me to have a good reason to kill miquella you need to give me more than a single voiceline from st. trina "godhood is a prison", yeah okay, can you explain like???? And also sure its absolute tyranny for everyone to get mind-controlled but have you looked outside? Or anywhere? If causality made the world as fucked as it is then im fine without it honestly, much rather drown myself in compassion and kindness at this point, and what the fuck is up with torrent and miquella micheal why isn't anything regarding torrent in the dlc micheal in need ANSWERS-
While in most any other situation I'd completely agree with you, like say if you were talking about Nioh 1 and/or 2, but in the case of the Soulsborne games by FromSoftware, Miyazaki himself has stated that his games are basically Berserk fan fiction. This becomes apparent when you compare the Souls games, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring directly to Berserk. Basically everything in these games has an identical copy of it in Berserk.
I myself hated all of the DLC except for the Bayle quest stuff and fight. I got tired of fighting wickermen so much for next to no reward and Rhadahn as the end boss made me uninstall. I won't ever play ER again and I refuse to play another from soft game until they fix multiplayer. No reason it's been over a decade and it still plays so buggy.
Very salient point at the end there, which I think a lot of folks in lore-diving circles could do with internalising. It's not just that it's more compelling to have some questions unanswered, but nothing is worse than if the answers turn out to be disappointing.
My beefs: - The imbalance between Faith and Intelligence continues. - The Finger Ruins lacked boss fights - The final dungeon was super lacking - WAAAAY too many features that had no payoff whatsoever.
Nothing against focusing only on their recent soulslike games, but looking at Fromsoft _actual_ game library let's not forget Kuon and Otogi that showed how much Fromsoft embraced Japanese mythologies.
This kind of thing is often overlooked in the community. Good video. One thing: I know Imperial Japan made efforts regarding shintoism that changed codified or emphasized certain aspects for their own purpose. How prominent are they in modern shinto ideas? That is, how well does post-war shintoism compare to pre-Meiji variety? Or pre-Tokugawa?
State Shintoism was a pretty ahistorical attempt to produce a rarified "pure" Shinto as a nationalistic state religion. In reality, Shinto and Buddhism are hopelessly intertwined but it remains in use for main ceremonies concerning the Imperial Household.
One thing to note is that the space within the gate itself resembles Marika's rune of life, and the brand that appears on the forehead of the jar shamans, presumably by their Hornsent captors, resembles the rune of life overlapped with the rune of the death. This goes along with the description of the Greatjar helmet which describes the jarring practice as "the cycle of death and rebirth, taken into the hands of mortal men." Moreover, the Hornsent's ascetic practices are said to be attempts "to ascend from their mortal flesh into tutelary deities of the land." They transcend their mortality by being inhabited by the eternal life of the divine beasts. Would it be surprising then that Marika would use this gate to both separate life from death and become the vessel for the Elden Beast?
The whole bit about the scadutree avatar was wonderfully informative and I am in love with the pleadian star system and now I know a little more about them
great video. I've played alot of the pre-souls From games recently and since this kind of stuff is a blind spot for me, it was always hard to tell when similar themes/designs came up if they were calling back to themselves or if the inspiration went deeper than that. From is such an interesting company the way they've put a western spin on so many of their own country's stories
Any chancenthat the divine gate was Marika's self-made "Two Fingers" which allowed her to contact the Greater Will and obtain the power of the Elden Ring
While mirrors aren’t as big it’s worth noting that moon viewing (gazing at the moon on a reflected body of water) is both in Bloodborne and Elden Ring and moon viewing often is paralleled with mirrors in Japanese tales. Great work btw!
If you could, please do a part 2!! I love mythology and i noticed you somewhat skipped past sekiro, despite it having a decent few characters, bosses and elements based on folklore. I will say that i am impressed at some of the connections you made though!! The gwynyvere gwyndolin and nameless king correlation to the children of izanagi made me smile as i had not noticed it before. Great video!
Interesting video, but I think certain liberties are taken and stretched a bit. Tibia Mariners, for example, are not based on Gashadokuro, but Charon, the ferryman of Greek myth. They are not even large like Dashadokuro. Wolnir makes more sense, though he also mirrors the Witch-King in the LOTR (enchanted jewelry, desert kingdom, black breath, etc.)
Great video. As Japanese, I think the Cthulhu Mythos and Shinto mythology go hand in hand. The Cthulhu Mythos is based on the horror of pagan deities being scientifically real, otherworldly monsters. In Shinto, there are many horrors in which the revered rural deity is a scientifically real and terrifying monster. Marika = Amaterasu.
I always thought Bloodborne's Healing Church was interesting. Visually it looks like Catholicism, with priests and saints and enormous cathedrals... but there's no Christ figure or God. It treats the beast hunts as a ritualistic cleansing of the impurity that threatens Yharnam, and considers the Great Ones aspirational figures that humanity may one day stand alongside, rather than beings to be worshiped. So despite appearances its actual doctrine is kind of Shinto-Buddhist! Its holy symbol is even a great wheel.
I suppose we'll never know, and the line is blurred since they were working together throughout. I'd say the Norse inspired parts (Erdtree, character structure, Ragnarok-inspired storyline) were Martin and the rest is FS. I also think a lot of the lore criticisms come from the fact that their perspectives don't always line up very neatly so there are a lot of compromises.
@@jsullivan2112 I think you've just recounted everything there is to know! To my knowledge, they've never broken down in any great detail who invented what and how FromSoft played around with it.
