[OOC] blah blah blah
Holy hell guys, I love my wolf. :( SO MUCH THAT I THINK TOO MUCH ABOUT THESE THINGS ha ha ha. |D So have an essaythingit.
SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE GAME WITHIN
DIVINE ORIGINS
Okay so--one of the things I truly love about Okami is that pretty much every single major character is, in fact, someone from Japanese mythology. (You even meet Momotarou as a little boy in Sei-An, and he gives you his millet dumplings after you recover them from the thief for him.) Granted, the majority of them have had their names chopped up for the English. This actually makes things a bit interesting in terms of the mythology, since Nagi-->Izanagi and Nami-->Izanami, and depending on what version of the story you're hearing, they're her parents. (One version says that Izanagi and Izanami decided to create a god who would rule over the world they'd made together, and thus Amaterasu was born. The other--more well-known version--says that she and her siblings, Tsukuyomi and Susano'o, were born from Izanagi's body as he purified himself after fleeing Izanami in Yomi hell.) SO THIS MAKES THINGS A LITTLE WEIRD IN THE GAME TERMS. XD
In some ways I think the game parallels the more well-known story, as Nami was the chosen sacrifice for Orochi who lurked in the dismal poisoned air of the Moon Cave, in the same way Izanami died and descended to Yomi--though obviously Nagi didn't see her rotting face and flee from her wrath the way Izanagi did, ha ha ha. At the same time, there are parallels to the mythological Orochi's defeat that was reflected more with Nagi and Nami than Susano and Kushi. (The legend of Orochi originally had Susano'o--it was after he was banished from heaven for pissing Amaterasu off yet again, he met a family with a beautiful daughter, Kushinada-no-hime. Her six elder sisters had already been devoured by Orochi, and the father promised her hand to anyone who could defeat the creature. So Susano'o dressed himself in women's clothing as a disguise and got the creature drunk, then cut off all its heads. DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR, PEOPLE WHO PLAYED THE GAME.)
Essentially, the game plays fast and loose with mythology (and I love it for that), and gives no firm answer on Amaterasu's origins. The Celestials and the brush-gods (as well as Waka) don't cast a whole lot of light on this; it's implied that she's always been there, ruling over Takamagahara (the Celestial Plain), which--to me--seems to follow the first origin story for her, that she was deliberately created/born as someone to rule over the heavens. If there was a divine Izanagi and Izanami in Okami canon, then they left the world to her long ago. Since I am playing from the translated game, I am rolling with the idea that Nagi and Nami (the hero and the maiden) are names she would recognize as separate from Izanagi and Izanami (her parents), rather than the two sets being one and the same--the same for Susano the hero and Tsukuyomi the sword, versus her brothers Susano'o and Tsukuyomi.
AWARENESS
This part is a bit trickier, since Ammy doesn't talk, and all dialogue/communication comes filtered through Issun. And even though he's the Celestial Envoy even before he acknowledges this, it's established that the Poncles (including Issun), who should be able to understand her, as an animal--can't! The guards outside of Ishaku's house comment that it's strange that they can't tell what she's thinking, and both Ishaku and Issun make assumptions of her. They're very good at guessing what she thinks/wants, and I suspect that being the Celestial Envoy helps with this--but they're also essentially unreliable narrators. Issun in particular (since he's the one who is her voice in the game) is good at expecting what he wants Ammy to do/think when speaking for the both of them (he's surprised every time that Ammy chooses to do the plot-advancing right thing and help people).
In replaying the game, I get the impression that Amaterasu (especially as she recovers her brush techniques) retains more than appears--part of it is the format of the game, since it's not strictly an RPG in the same sense that, say, the Final Fantasy games are--it's more like an action/puzzle RPG, than a straight-up in-the-silent-protagonist's-head kind of thing. In a lot of ways it's more plot-driven than character-driven, but I, personally, think she's recalling more as she regains her powers than Issun, in particular, gives her credit for. (Granted, a lot of his prompting is basically for the player to figure out what to do for new brush techniques or when to use them, but the game's not particularly difficult, even without the prompting.) Each god you meet, brush and Celestial alike, greet her as mother and protector and purehearted, which is--kind of a fault of the game, since they're telling more than showing, BUT. Feeding animals and purifying patches of land--beyond just restoring the Konohana trees scattered across the country--are a big part of the extra stuff you can do in the game; you bring medicine to sick people and help a woman believe in the gods again by performing little miracles for her. They're all things you can choose to do and they're fun, so I always do |D and like in any video game, it's the player projecting onto the character they control, but given that these are the major extra things you can do in the game, and one of the things that doesn't carry over (you have to refeed/repurify) in a new game plus, I think of them as things Amaterasu would do anyway.
Also, in the beginning of the game, she starts out with only Sunrise as a technique, the one that's inherent to her as the sun-god. By the time she recovers Blizzard, she's--still not 100%, but she's very close to recovering herself. I think she's quite aware of herself as Amaterasu, Origin Of All That Is Good And Mother To All, there's--just not much she can do to express that, because the power of the gods in general has weakened (covered in the next section!), and her Envoys are snipey know-it-all Poncles. PS someone app Issun.
DEATH
So, here's the thing--I don't think of "Shiranui" and Amaterasu as two different beings, like the whole "reborn" thing implies. It's not like, say, Mikage and Burupya, where one died and was then reborn as the other--Shiranui was the name humans gave to Amaterasu a hundred years previously, but Ishaku, Mrs. Seal, and Sakuya all only refer to her by her true name. And on top of that, when she was killed, the sun didn't completely vanish from the world: there were a hundred normal years of peace before Orochi was unsealed, and no one particularly is like ZOMG THE SUN HAS COME BACK TO THE SKY!!1!1 or anything, and if you had several generations born in a world without the sun, you'd think that would be important! I sort of think of it as a revival, rather than a rebirth, and it is my headcanon that certain characters were terribly relieved by the sun's continued rise and set, even after Amaterasu died fighting Orochi. She wasn't really dead--she was just resting. >:
COMMUNICATION
So, as previously stated, even Poncles can't understand Amaterasu! Camp being what it is, though, there are several characters who would, by their nature, be more able to understand her (Yuuko and the Wolf's Rain wolves, for starters, as well as the Young Wizards cast). When threading with these people, I will include a small description of what the body-language is saying, since I have limited icons--not everyone will be able to hear her, and I don't expect that everyone will even be able to see her as anything but a wolf. SHOULD PEOPLE WANT TO START, THOUGH, I have canon for how this can be done, and they can ping me whenever. \o/
HEADCANON LIST THAT HAS NOT YET BEEN COVERED
subject to additions
* Amaterasu does have a human form (it is commented upon, even if it's never seen). Due to her circumstances, she will never have this form in camp unless I can get fanart icons somehow, and even if she does, she still won't be able to speak. It's less that she can't speak and more that people can't hear her voice.
* She is, in fact, the actual mother of her brush-gods (minus Kabegami, whom she adopted). They had no father.
* Even if she uses another weapon in battle, she always has the mirror. The Yata-no-Kagami, translated for the game as Solar Flare.
* Actually, she has a number of direct children; not all of them are fatherless.
* She was courted by the Yami-no-Sumeragi at one point, and rejected it entirely.
Also, man, guys. I really wish I could use fanart for icons, because holy hell does my fandom have some truly gorgeous art on the J-fandom side. :(
Questions/comments/TALK TO ME ABOUT THE GAME I LOVE IT AND WILL BABBLE ABOUT IT 8(/etc. go here. \o/
ETA: Zidane points out that Capcom is selling both the PS2 and the Wii versions of the game for $20. BUY MY GAME. 8D 8D 8D
SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE GAME WITHIN
DIVINE ORIGINS
Okay so--one of the things I truly love about Okami is that pretty much every single major character is, in fact, someone from Japanese mythology. (You even meet Momotarou as a little boy in Sei-An, and he gives you his millet dumplings after you recover them from the thief for him.) Granted, the majority of them have had their names chopped up for the English. This actually makes things a bit interesting in terms of the mythology, since Nagi-->Izanagi and Nami-->Izanami, and depending on what version of the story you're hearing, they're her parents. (One version says that Izanagi and Izanami decided to create a god who would rule over the world they'd made together, and thus Amaterasu was born. The other--more well-known version--says that she and her siblings, Tsukuyomi and Susano'o, were born from Izanagi's body as he purified himself after fleeing Izanami in Yomi hell.) SO THIS MAKES THINGS A LITTLE WEIRD IN THE GAME TERMS. XD
In some ways I think the game parallels the more well-known story, as Nami was the chosen sacrifice for Orochi who lurked in the dismal poisoned air of the Moon Cave, in the same way Izanami died and descended to Yomi--though obviously Nagi didn't see her rotting face and flee from her wrath the way Izanagi did, ha ha ha. At the same time, there are parallels to the mythological Orochi's defeat that was reflected more with Nagi and Nami than Susano and Kushi. (The legend of Orochi originally had Susano'o--it was after he was banished from heaven for pissing Amaterasu off yet again, he met a family with a beautiful daughter, Kushinada-no-hime. Her six elder sisters had already been devoured by Orochi, and the father promised her hand to anyone who could defeat the creature. So Susano'o dressed himself in women's clothing as a disguise and got the creature drunk, then cut off all its heads. DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR, PEOPLE WHO PLAYED THE GAME.)
Essentially, the game plays fast and loose with mythology (and I love it for that), and gives no firm answer on Amaterasu's origins. The Celestials and the brush-gods (as well as Waka) don't cast a whole lot of light on this; it's implied that she's always been there, ruling over Takamagahara (the Celestial Plain), which--to me--seems to follow the first origin story for her, that she was deliberately created/born as someone to rule over the heavens. If there was a divine Izanagi and Izanami in Okami canon, then they left the world to her long ago. Since I am playing from the translated game, I am rolling with the idea that Nagi and Nami (the hero and the maiden) are names she would recognize as separate from Izanagi and Izanami (her parents), rather than the two sets being one and the same--the same for Susano the hero and Tsukuyomi the sword, versus her brothers Susano'o and Tsukuyomi.
AWARENESS
This part is a bit trickier, since Ammy doesn't talk, and all dialogue/communication comes filtered through Issun. And even though he's the Celestial Envoy even before he acknowledges this, it's established that the Poncles (including Issun), who should be able to understand her, as an animal--can't! The guards outside of Ishaku's house comment that it's strange that they can't tell what she's thinking, and both Ishaku and Issun make assumptions of her. They're very good at guessing what she thinks/wants, and I suspect that being the Celestial Envoy helps with this--but they're also essentially unreliable narrators. Issun in particular (since he's the one who is her voice in the game) is good at expecting what he wants Ammy to do/think when speaking for the both of them (he's surprised every time that Ammy chooses to do the plot-advancing right thing and help people).
In replaying the game, I get the impression that Amaterasu (especially as she recovers her brush techniques) retains more than appears--part of it is the format of the game, since it's not strictly an RPG in the same sense that, say, the Final Fantasy games are--it's more like an action/puzzle RPG, than a straight-up in-the-silent-protagonist's-head kind of thing. In a lot of ways it's more plot-driven than character-driven, but I, personally, think she's recalling more as she regains her powers than Issun, in particular, gives her credit for. (Granted, a lot of his prompting is basically for the player to figure out what to do for new brush techniques or when to use them, but the game's not particularly difficult, even without the prompting.) Each god you meet, brush and Celestial alike, greet her as mother and protector and purehearted, which is--kind of a fault of the game, since they're telling more than showing, BUT. Feeding animals and purifying patches of land--beyond just restoring the Konohana trees scattered across the country--are a big part of the extra stuff you can do in the game; you bring medicine to sick people and help a woman believe in the gods again by performing little miracles for her. They're all things you can choose to do and they're fun, so I always do |D and like in any video game, it's the player projecting onto the character they control, but given that these are the major extra things you can do in the game, and one of the things that doesn't carry over (you have to refeed/repurify) in a new game plus, I think of them as things Amaterasu would do anyway.
Also, in the beginning of the game, she starts out with only Sunrise as a technique, the one that's inherent to her as the sun-god. By the time she recovers Blizzard, she's--still not 100%, but she's very close to recovering herself. I think she's quite aware of herself as Amaterasu, Origin Of All That Is Good And Mother To All, there's--just not much she can do to express that, because the power of the gods in general has weakened (covered in the next section!), and her Envoys are snipey know-it-all Poncles. PS someone app Issun.
DEATH
So, here's the thing--I don't think of "Shiranui" and Amaterasu as two different beings, like the whole "reborn" thing implies. It's not like, say, Mikage and Burupya, where one died and was then reborn as the other--Shiranui was the name humans gave to Amaterasu a hundred years previously, but Ishaku, Mrs. Seal, and Sakuya all only refer to her by her true name. And on top of that, when she was killed, the sun didn't completely vanish from the world: there were a hundred normal years of peace before Orochi was unsealed, and no one particularly is like ZOMG THE SUN HAS COME BACK TO THE SKY!!1!1 or anything, and if you had several generations born in a world without the sun, you'd think that would be important! I sort of think of it as a revival, rather than a rebirth, and it is my headcanon that certain characters were terribly relieved by the sun's continued rise and set, even after Amaterasu died fighting Orochi. She wasn't really dead--she was just resting. >:
COMMUNICATION
So, as previously stated, even Poncles can't understand Amaterasu! Camp being what it is, though, there are several characters who would, by their nature, be more able to understand her (Yuuko and the Wolf's Rain wolves, for starters, as well as the Young Wizards cast). When threading with these people, I will include a small description of what the body-language is saying, since I have limited icons--not everyone will be able to hear her, and I don't expect that everyone will even be able to see her as anything but a wolf. SHOULD PEOPLE WANT TO START, THOUGH, I have canon for how this can be done, and they can ping me whenever. \o/
HEADCANON LIST THAT HAS NOT YET BEEN COVERED
subject to additions
* Amaterasu does have a human form (it is commented upon, even if it's never seen). Due to her circumstances, she will never have this form in camp unless I can get fanart icons somehow, and even if she does, she still won't be able to speak. It's less that she can't speak and more that people can't hear her voice.
* She is, in fact, the actual mother of her brush-gods (minus Kabegami, whom she adopted). They had no father.
* Even if she uses another weapon in battle, she always has the mirror. The Yata-no-Kagami, translated for the game as Solar Flare.
* Actually, she has a number of direct children; not all of them are fatherless.
* She was courted by the Yami-no-Sumeragi at one point, and rejected it entirely.
Also, man, guys. I really wish I could use fanart for icons, because holy hell does my fandom have some truly gorgeous art on the J-fandom side. :(
Questions/comments/TALK TO ME ABOUT THE GAME I LOVE IT AND WILL BABBLE ABOUT IT 8(/etc. go here. \o/
ETA: Zidane points out that Capcom is selling both the PS2 and the Wii versions of the game for $20. BUY MY GAME. 8D 8D 8D