Anime Discussion Thread - Page 714

Half of this stuff is standard nasuverse, which was explained briefly above but I can try to get into a bit more. The other half is the psychology/philosophy beauty that draws people to the novels, and what makes it really stand out from other standard-fare LNs IMO.

With regard to the nasuverse, to expound on the above, magi don't really... use the akasic record. From her own words, what they do is more comparable to using a lighter to create a flame - they just "fake" how the world works.

In 6, whether you've seen it or not, one of the crushing things personally was that one of the characters got shanked in the transition from the LN - realistically his claim to fame (aside from being a major plot device for Shiki) is how central a figure he is in the magus world, in that he's not a sorcerer, nor magus, and on top of that he has direct access to the akasic records. This is a rare, special gift, and is why this character was originally "taken in" by the church despite his lack of magical prowess, intended for "safe-keeping" (ie. eternal storage like storage of tissue samples for drug testing in sports), and then subsequently hunted down like crazy when he went on the run.

Each magus though has a "speciality" for trying to get to the Akasic Record. Touko, for example, is a puppet master, and tried to reach it by creating complete and utter copies of herself. This is ridiculous! you might think. Yes, but much to her chagrin (as she mentioned to Cornelius) multiple copies of herself didn't speed up the process. As she decided the pain in the ass of having to manage multiple copies of her own very awesome personality was too much, she sealed them away and set up a process where only one of her would be around at any given time. Her limits reached, she gave up on the hunt, which is again what shocks Cornelius, who cannot fathom (coming from an aristocratic, long lineage of magus with a proud history of Record Hunting). From a grand scheme of things, she tackled it from the "mind and body" angle.

In Araya's case, coming from his Buddhist background he tackled the soul of every person. He analyzed it, touched it, played with it, and got to the point where he could even discern the originating point from which each soul comes from. This is extremely, extremely close to the Record, you might even think. But this was his limit. And realizing his limit was reached, he grew desperate and depressed, and concocted one final plan, to try to grab the one lead he had - Shiki. Because as you know, the Shiki hunter bloodline does the taboo, and actually tinkers with the traditional formation of mind, body, and soul. Unbeknownst to them, what ends up happening is that they really fuck around with the Record, and come unbelievably close to the Record. For more, See Epilogue! But their lineage is quite famous in the magus circle. Araya puts one and one together to come to the logical and correct conclusion - that if he can access Shiki's soul, then can he access the Record.

His plan is incredibly thought out. He breaks Shiki's psyche, helps lead to SHIKI's death, strengthens the allure of her origin (nothingness - the want of destruction), and then captures her to take over her body and tap into the Record. He's agonizingly close. But what does him in are three hilarious coincidences.

First, despite being a renegade magus and monk, he's so brainwashed by magus "standards" that he decides entrapping Shiki in a magical field would be sufficient. Hence, "if you want to catch Shiki, you should imprison her in a block of concrete!"

Second, the conclusion isn't exactly correct. See Epilogue. His plan was set up for the wrong conclusion; it would never have worked.

Third, and somewhat more debatable, is that Shiki woke up, for reasons that are slightly... amusing. There's no admission of this, but See Epilogue and you'll probably get what I'm implying.

The end result is that Araya's plan gets foiled. The counterforce was at work. Touko then sadly remarks that maybe it was destined for Araya to forever fail, because he was named after a major buddhist principle... that runs counter to all of his staunch beliefs. Maybe, she remarks, the counterforce was in place ever since he was born.

His staff is more spread around than it is sparse. It was about that same size during Season 1 as well.

I watched the first two eps again.

And wtf. Merkatz was one of those retarded old admirals under Reinhard's command? And Fahrenheit was one of the admirals under Reinhard's command? And Reuental, Mittermeyer, and Oberstein were all in the same bar on Iserlohn?

And I thought it was funny how during the whole first episode, the Alliance is getting raped, and Yang and Attenborough are just like "This could have been avoided if you had just listened to us "

lol, IIRC I made some comment about that when I rewatched the early episodes back when you guys started as well. I was like "wtf Merkatz and Fahrenheit were there?" They actually get a few lines in Overture to a New War.

If you guys rewatched it now, you would be like "Hey, there is Count Marindorf!" or "Sup Hilda, cool subtle intro", and things like that.