Incidentally, the artist for the A Certain Magical Index light novel, Kiyotaka Haimura is the artist for Deirdre, Legendary Deirdre and Julia in Fire Emblem Heroes.
It feels like you could turn this into a mystery podcast or climax of a detective episode. "There's just one problem professor, If you were an actual Norse Scholar you would know that the Ichaival never appeared in any myth"!
The funny thing about this story is that this is basically how actual myths work. One day, someone tells a story about the gods, inventing some embellishment wholecloth. That story is then retold, and more embellishments get added. Eventually, these embellishments become part of the greater body of works regarding this mythological being, and eventually become accepted as part of the canon. Thus, what is "canon" changes based on when and where you ask the question. Oh, and the wikipedia edit from Jakarta was likely from a proxy. Which means whoever made that edit really *could* have been from *anywhere.*
One japanese dev messes with the name of a Norse place and then we get gaslighted for ten years with the existence of a bow that was never meant to be.
Kaga also loved playing linguistic mind games with the fan base. Yewfell being japanofied as Ichibaru then being rewesternized as Ichaival is Kaga level trolling... And ambiguity is part of the narrative. Martsu is derived from Mars but translated as Marth... which was also how some cultures pronounced the name of the Roman god, Mars. (And during the Hasmonean period Jews all over near east were naming daughters Martha after the Roman god, Mars. Most female Jewish names were derived from pagan gods and goddesses... this is besides the point but bears mentioning because Kaga was trolling us when he named Marth) His consort Lady Caeda, is Shiida in Japanese but they insist it's pronounced Si-da. Which is a completely gibberish name and a pronunciation that also baffles the mind, But if Caeda is pronounced in ecclesiastical Latin you get the Pronunciation "Si-Da"... but if you pronounced that spelling in Classical Latin, the Latin of time period where some Greeks started calling the war god Marth instead of Ares and some Jews started naming their daughters Martha, then how would a 1st Century Roman pronounce the letters "Caeda?" They would pronounce it Kaeda... which is an actual Japanese name mostly found among the nobility. In other words Kaga, or whoever was in charge of naming people, places, and things, when Kaga ran the show, enjoyed running names through a filter of random corruptions... And he did it for two reasons. One was of course to troll us. But I think the main reason he did this was do make the story more mythic, the simulating the effects of the story being corrupted through different tellings and retellings. Through the same name passing through different cultures mutating its pronunciations, through different storytellers not agreeing who lives and who dies or if and/or when a hero fell. (Which is Kaga's stated reason behind the permadeath mechanic and route splits.) Thing of our own figures from Antiquity. We pronounce the name Julius Caesar as "Joo-li-us See-zar" when it was actually pronounced like "Yulius Kaisar" in Caesar's lifetime, because the "soft C" rules were simply different in the 1st Century, and we're far more stringent, and... yeah long story short is already making this too long. Or you have the Socrates gag in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures. This is where everyone gets a cheap laugh as Bill and Ted mispronounce Socrates's name as "Soh-Crates" but this gag works on 2 different levels. As we pronounce his name like "Saw-Crah-Teez" the typical viewer is getting a cheap laugh because "Haha, they mispronounced the name of this famous ancient philosopher..." the actual joke is our academies have corrupted the pronunciation over many tellings while keeping the spelling the same since the Middle Ages, resulting on uneducated bumkings reading the name "Socrates" as "So-crates" and getting closer the correct pronunciation than modern scholars do. (Because "So-crates" while slightly inaccurate it is close enough as the actual pronunciation is "So-crat-es" but not "So-cra-tes" and the bumpkin pronunciation would be recognized by the man, while the modern scholarly pronunciation would take the man longer to recognize at least.) Long story short and still too long for this comments section, our relationship to ancient stories and texts, myths, Legends, and even real people is jumbled through this game of Telephone that jacks with the pronunciation of literally every word and name. And Kaga wanted to simulate this is how he named various characters and other things to give a feeling of the mists of time actually obscuring the truth.... So a bow devised as having the name "Yewfell" gets Japanofied as Ichibaru, gets rewesternized as Ichaival.... something of real meaning Ciphered into gibberish, with its meaning obscured by the mists of time... Like literally every person's name that isn’t a specific word for a thing really. TL;DR: Kaga trolled us.
But really, this is a very interesting video. One localization quirk and one bad apple and history is changed. Goes to show how important proper documentation is, and it makes you wonder if anything else is out there now that has currently gone unnoticed.
I know that a lot of games feature a lance called Brionac that's allegedly the weapon of Lugh in Celtic mythology, but I can't find any decent sources on that. Lugh did actually wield a lance called Areadbhar (sound familiar?), but I don't know where Brionac came from, and it's a lot more widespread than Ichaival.
the funny thing about this is that while in the modern day, we can check sources to a great degree with edit history, in the past, say for example, if you were a 12-13th Century Danish Historian, if you just made something obscure up nobody would have no way of knowing
and then these days, we have everywhere from friends on discord to the wayback machine which can help us find these obscure fragments of internet history, though I will note that not everything from the old internet is even documented in the wayback machine but a lot of it is, thanks to those people for that work :D
List articles sometimes don't have sources (or didn't, anyway) for each individual entry, instead just having a list at the end. Technically it was bad practice even then, and I guess some editors started getting more scrupulous after this incident.
"Make something obscure enough for people to just believe you" is pre-modern Japanese motto, like there is just too much things and fate is responsible for half of it.
Are we talking Fates the FE game where women ride dragons, pegasi and horses without any pants or visible underwear, or Fates the anime where fictional characters are turned into anime girls or something (never watched it I don't have time I play too much FE)
Funnily enough, back when I first watched Symphogear and saw the many mythological and even biblical references (the whole series' plot is literally kicked off by the events way back at the Tower of Babel, holy shit), I couldn't find anything regarding Chris' Ichaival and only came across Fire Emblem posts and stuff like that. I didn't even think that the rabbit hole went this deep. Never let Fire Emblem devs make up fictional legendary weapons ever again.
Imagine editing the Wikipedia entry to say Yewfelle with the explanation "The new localization came out". You would technically be correct but it would be super weird.
You never know what you’re gonna get when Excelblem uploads. You might get an in-depth analysis on a piece of Fire Emblem history, or you might get a shitpost about a dozen skills activating pre-attack only for the attack to miss
i would like to mention kamachi has actually managed to write an entire light novel from scratch in less than 3 weeks, so it is actually entirely possible he may have sourced the Wikipedia article after the edit
next you'll tell me that owains and Ophelia's legendary weapons mistletane are just a sword used for housework and a normal fire book. that'll be the day
@@webbowser8834 I'm not talking about mystletainn I'm talking about mistletane the legendary sword held by the only and great owain dark and only few Weapons can have that title or ability in game.
@@webbowser8834 Yeah, simply put Baldrs death kicks off Ragnarör, so Odin made everyone - including animals and plants -promise to not hurt Baldr, but forgot the mistletoe. Then Loki tricks the blind god Hoder into shooting Baldr with an arrow made of mistletoe.
Ophelia’s Missletain is a Fimblveter I thought. Disregarding that Missletain is actually entirely unique and rare and powerful and nothing compares to it.
I've been playing an FE 4 emulator and I was disappointed when Brigid missed an 82 against a pegasus knight, they did have 3 leadership stars but I was iratated when it happened twice when I uploaded a savestate from the previous turn
Brigid singlehandedly wiped out Pamela's entire squad and saved my entire doomed run which was really close to seeing me reset the entire game, thanks to me being an idiot and not alternating save slots
on the grammaticus connection; it probably is odin. odin pretty frequently shows up, does some magic nonsense without any real explanations, and leaves. in the saga of the volsungs he waltzes in while sigmund and siggeir's families are eating, stabs the gram into a wall, explaining that whoever could pull the sword could keep it, and leaves, and it is not explicitly confirmed in the text that this is odin. norse myth is just like that
All the time. If you watch Overly Sarcastic Production, it comes very often. The main source we have for Norse Mythology, for example is not the most reliable, since it is from a secondary source. Syncretism in general is a thing. When Romans invaded Gaule, they assimilated Gauls Gods into Roman Gods, so afaik we don't have that much source on it. Teutates was assimilated to Mercury/Hermes, for example (and Also Mars/Ares early on apparently.
I mean, isn't all of mythology just stuff made up by some guy, which got widespread? If Saxo actually wrote that it was Odin, we'd call it canon today, but he'd have been doing the same thing as the wiki guy. We're still creating mythology, just via mysterious wiki edits today apparently.
Having spent entirely too much time on Symphogear, I can indeed confirm that no part (at least none that is available in english) ever references Odin in connection to Ichaival, before 2014 or after. However ironically, by Symphogear's own metaphysics, a myth perpetuating like this in the popular(ish) consciousness would suffice to make it hold actual power in the show's world
Funnily enough, as of about a month ago, Ichaival was removed from Smite. They didn't say why, it was a pretty iconic item in the game for like, *most* of the game's 10 year life span, but its effect got rolled up into another item and we can no longer purchase the Ichaival.
Excelblem: war criminal in broad daylight, teacher at night. Can I suggest a subject? I think there's a dummied-out weapon said to be from Celtic mythology, except it was from a Japanese game instead, I forgot the details but it popped up in other media such as Final Fantasy.
My inner fanboy was awoken when Chris from Symphogear was mentioned. She is pretty fun character too, who after season 1 is chill and tries open up to anyone. Plus big arsenal of mass destruction that is her suit.
I imagine the inspiration was indeed Ýdalir and that the original link to mythology doesn't go much further than that, as it wouldn't be the last time a Fire Emblem weapon got named after a mythological place rather than a weapon. The sword of the main lord in Heroes is named Fólkvangr, which in Norse mythology is a field ruled by Freyja where half of those who died in combat reside, the other half going to Valhalla.
Kind of reminds me of Brionac, which was supposedly used incorrectly as the name for the god Lugh's spear in a Japanese book about Gaelic mythology. Consequently the only places you see the word "Brionac" used is in Japanese media attempting to reference Gaelic myth. In the spirit of not playing the telephone game with questionable information, I'll admit I read the story on a TV Tropes article, but as someone who is quite knowledgeable about Gaelic myth and consumes a lot of Japanese media, I can tell you that Brionac is not a name I have ever seen used for Lugh's spear but that it is very commonly used in Japanese media when referencing either mythological weapons or Gaelic myth (for example Fire Emblem Three Houses had the Brionac Plateau in the Holy Kingdom of Faergus, which mostly draws from Gaelic myth for its place names) so the story checks out with my experience at least.
This is good to know, Berwick Saga also has a Brionac fwiw. The Wikipedia discussion cites a potential reference to a spear Bryionak, which features in the Eternal Champion series by Michael Moorcock dating back to the 1970s.
Brionac also appears in Yu-Gi-Oh!, as one of the dragons of the Ice Barrier. It implies the origin of the name is a lance because the other dragons are named Gungnir (Odin's lance) and Trishula (Shiva's trident).
It also appears in Final Fantasy XIV (dragoon weapon), alongside also appearing in the South Korean MMORPG Mabinogi, in the Generation 11 major content update. just some fun facts about that specific weapon name
Fancy seeing Brionac here, the name of a Mecha Sub-Boss in Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet, wherein a field boss of the same type is named Mjolnir. I would not have thought very far, it was just a pretty unique name.
So I did some digging in Japanese! From what I can tell, there doesn't seem to be any particular inaccurate Japanese source for an original Norse myth. Generally it seems to be known that "Ichaival" was a name created for Fire Emblem (though it also seems common to mistakenly think it's from actual Norse mythology). I did find two things of note, however! I saw several people saying "ichiibaru" comes from "ichii" (yew tree) and "barisuta" (ballista), which would make some sense! Though it might just be people taking random guesses; I didn't see anything "official" regarding the origins of the word. The other thing of note is that it DOES appear in another game! Specifically in Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl (not sure about other Etrian Odyssey games, I didn't check admittedly), though here it's spelled "Ichibal" instead of the much cooler "Ichaival" lol
The connection between fire emblem and one of my other favorite series, Index, was not one I was expecting. The author of index does a LOT of research into mythology so I imagine he got it from the same book you sourced rather than Wikipedia
Never would I have expected that Excelblem would utter the words Symphogear and try to actively explain the absurdity that it is, but yet here we are. Go watch Symphogear.
@@shytendeakatamanoir9740 Something I learned in college is that wikipedia can never be used as a source but the sites it references for its information can be.
I wonder what other made up weapons Fire Emblem has. I know Friekugel comes from a Germanic opera about a marksman who sold his soul to the devil. Somehow this translated to an axe.
Another interesting “adaptation“ of freikugel is in Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, where it’s a protagonist-exclusive attack that makes you shoot a giant eye laser. Being german myself, i can’t help but always smile at the fact that these incredibly powerful weapons/attacks are just literally called “free ball“.
The opera didn't invent the Freikugeln though, the archetype of the marksman selling his soul for the Freikugeln stems from folklore/fairy tales from atleast the 15th century. Still no axe though, that's just weird.
Well Othinus is the latin name for Odin, and yeah any modern references of the concept of the Othinus Crossbow was probably inspired by Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus as you brought up. Fun fact, Othinus Crossbow (オティヌスの弩) shows up in none other than Berwick Saga (2005), though it goes by 'Ollerus' in the translation patch. That said, lol at whoever combined this reference on top of the info on fake Norse bow Ichaival on Wikipedia.
@@aboriginite Shirabe’s voice actress Yoshino Nanjo plays the Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE character Kiria Kurono which is basically that, although then again that’s more Symphogear meets Megaten. In other news, all the 6 Symphogear users’ VA voice fire emblem characters in FeH Hibiki is Lysithea Tsukasa is Nott Chris is Dagr Maria is Fir and Athena Kirika is Gunnthra And Shirabe is again Kiria
Yoooooooo Symphogear is my jam! Never thought I'd see it mentioned by one of my fave fire emblem tubers. As a massive fan of the show, I think they likely didn't do alot of research for season 1, as they gave Ichiaval's wielder the name Chris, for a Japanese American girl.
I mean, Chris is actually a pretty common name for an American, and giving normal-ish people made up weapons is a pretty common fantasy trope... Wait, are we talking a Japanese American girl aka "Girl of Japanese descent living in America" or an American Japanese Girl aka "Girl of American descent living in Japan"?
@@webbowser8834 A girl of Japanese and American descent actually. Lives in Japan during the series, though I can't really say where she grew up. And while Chris is a normal American name, usually for girls it's short for an actual feminine name, and not just Chris
@@kanefetter3370 It's really not uncommon for American parents these days to give their kid the shortened form of a name as their full legal name. Never thought her name was unusual as an American myself.
I've heard several of the Symphogear staff were RPG fans which tbh just makes it even more likely they just lifted a weapon from FE4, especially as FE4 was actually a pretty successful game when it released
This is really fascinating and has been something bothering me for a long time as a fan of old FE games, Symphogear, and the Index-verse! Thanks for doing the research on all this! I'd offer to dig around with my professional-level Japanese skills some more, but unfortunately that would probably involve flying to Japan and digging out random old books on mythology to no avail, lol.
the thing is, wikipedia is a perfect source, just make sure that the wikipedia page actually has trustworthy sources listed, cause this one sure didn't
What I imagine happened, is after someone read that "an old man" shot an unnamed weapon that could string together 10 arrows, they decided they could get creative and took great artistic license. That's commonly what happens when reference material is so vague. Also, when something or someone gets a decent reputation in your industry it's not all that surprising that others will use your material to pull from. Fire Emblem is popular in Japan, as well as popular world wide, so it's not surprising to me that other developers and companies looked to them for weapon ideas without really double checking. And who can blame them? 😅
Glad to see you are doing random Wikipedia conspiracies. Seriously, this was fun to watch, and I'm left wondering how long it took to untangle all this.
Imagine someone figured out you played a niche strategy RPG series or you watched a certain weird anime because you decided to include a made-up name in your works that you didn't realise only has one traceable source
Symphogear is a bit of a confusing instance that seems to be halfway there and halfway not. It likely is something that got the name through a game of telephone but it was certainly trying to reference Ullr. In the opening of Symphogear G, you see the gods associated with the weapons in the background and Odin only appears alongside Gungnir. The English romanization they were certainly confused on, since in the TV release they do write "Ichii-bal" but changed it to "Ichaival" for the BD releases. The staff of Symphogear also aren't opposed to throwing stuff in just for a pop culture reference but the writer IS quite knowledgeable about obscure mythology if you've ever seen Wild Arms. He was knowledgeable enough to not put Odin in the opening, at least. Also smh talking about spreading unsubstantiated rumors but not knowing that Chris isn't an idol.
So on the same day I watched this for the first time I actually found a more recent game that uses Ichaival as a name for a legendary Crossbow. A rogue-lite know as Crown trick released in 2020 (developed by Next Studios and co-published by them and Team 17) uses it as the name for a Legendary "Rifle" (Crossbow but comes under the rifle weapon type) among other mythologically sourced weapons like Gungnir and Durandal. Doesn't really mean much, just found it a fun coincidence.
As a Symphogear fan I totally believe the theory that the Wikipedia entry was made by a fan. We are totally capable of doing something like that just to reference the anime
I just want to add that Gesta Danorum, the book with the old man with the crossbow is a sort of complete history of the Danish people written in the 12th century that literally spans from prehistory to the end of the 12th century. In it, the Norse Gods are described as, "old certain men versed in sorcery," who, "winning the minds of the simple, began to claim the rank of gods." Odin, being the leader and all, appears many times under different names and disguises to be exiled again and again. So, yeah, the old man who helped Hadding? The English translation specifically refers to this in the pre-explanation Supernatural Beings, Woden section. In other words, that's generally thought to be Odin. Or Othinus, since the book was written in Latin.
I know this already because in middle school right after my first FE4 playthrough I had an argument with a friend and embarrassed myself because I tried to prove it was a real thing
Huh, a few years ago, when me and some friends started playing Smite, I talked about some names I recognized because of the games I played. Some I knew a bit more than others, and I mentioned "there's an Ichaival in Fire Emblem, but that's the only thing I know about it... Also, old FE have fan translations only, so maybe the JP name is different, and both [FE and Smite] references something else, IDK", but now I know it was actually made up!
Interesting but not surprising. A lot of times people don't look for any kind of primary source. Reading the first page in Wikipedia is more than enough effort, especially when just wanting to find a cool name for a crossbow because mythological reference = good writing, apparently.
Definitely was not expecting Toaru to have a prominent role in this video lol. Actually, basically all content here was unexpected (though I will say that Ichaival always seemed a bit strange as a weapon name to me)
As a Symphogear enjoyer, I wondered where this relic came from. I just thought it was from a mythology I had never heard of, since I hadn't heard of the Ame no Habakiri either.
I knew about the basics of this before but I love the amount of research you put into this, it makes the whole story even better. Also I want it to be know that despite the fact that Symphogear was the reason why this weapon was popularized, it's actually an amazing anime that gets better every season. Watch Symphogear
I kept going through a roller coaster of emotions as Excel named thing after thing that I knew, no matter how niche. Literally the only thing referenced in this video that I didn't have any experience with is Smite, and that's a new feeling Every time Symphogear got mentioned, I struggled not to giggle, my feelings on that series are so complicated.
Wait wasn't this in awakening as well? How did they call it there? Wasn't it Yewfelle? Edit: he actually says so in the video, but I completely misheard what he was saying
Ah wait I completely misunderstood two phrases from the video, I literally heard the words wrong. I thought Excelblem was saying the fan translations called the bow yewfelle and in heroes it was called Ichaival, which seemed backwards to me. Now after re-watching those parts I can't believe how wrong I heard it both times
