Chrono Trigger: An Existentialist Reading (Part I)

[ideas]

You know, when I sat down to write a series of articles about my Existentialist reading of Chrono Trigger, I initially started out with a bunch of explanatory text, background information and disclaimers. About a page into that mess, I decided that my efforts were futile. I am writing to an almost comically tiny audience with this series, and

Comments

Kevin's Comment

[anonymous]

You do a good job staying behind the ever so popular "author's intent" line by instead framing the entire thing as inherent in the material, but ultimately a matter of opinion.

You also get 1 point for using the ugliest, cat-with-a-hairball sort-of word ever: Diegetically.

Re: Kevin's Comment

[ideas]

As we spoke about in person, Chrono Trigger is an ideal work to approach from this perspective because it contains so much pastiche. Authors who patch whole chunks of popular culture into their work are bound to unwittingly import meanings that they never considered. You know those urban legends about finding a burned scuba diver in a forest fire, and then discovering that he got scooped up by a firefighting plane and dumped in the forest? The existentialist message in Chrono Trigger is sort of a charred scuba diver, if you take my meaning.

I suspect that this series will have a high ugly-word quotient. And ugly analogies, too, as we have just seen.

Kevin's Comment

[anonymous]

P.S. me likey pictures!

Re: Kevin's Comment

[hermesbirkinbag]

excellent idea!
I know someone like you!

[arklan]

i found this from a google search on the signifigance of chrono trigger, which i have to write ap aper on for my degree (nice degree, eh?) and i just wanted to say... hoyl crap this is impressive!! absolutely fascinating reading.

[ideas]

Thanks for the feedback! And good luck on that paper. Feel free to leave more comments if you have any insights into the game that you want to throw in.

I enjoyed your piece, I wrote something a similar vein recently

[arklan]

I ran into a book called "Final Fantasy and Philosophy: The Ultimate Walkthrough" which attempted to analyze the themes of the characters and stories of the Final Fantasy series in the light of different philosophical traditions. The chapter I found most interesting was analyzing the ethics of the characters from the various games from the viewpoints of different philosophers, so I attempted to write something similar for Chrono Trigger: The Philosophy and ethics of Chrono Trigger

The one thing I would change about your site incidentally would be to make it easier to go back and forth between the entries in your series, following the next/previous entry buttons doesn't always work.

Meaning

[anonymous]

The meaning is inherent in story telling itself. Author's intent is a misnomer. Any intended meaning generally falls flat next to that implicit within a retelling of the human condition through reality, for if the meaning itself exists in reality so must the meaning exist in an accurate retelling. However, intention tends to mask reality behind bias and interpretation.

[madapan]

Whenever we're talking about a time travel based game I remember the best of them which is (without a doubt) Braid; aside from its certain time travel theme it's a great puzzle game too.
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