#Eastern Kingdom of Mikado

[sl33py-g4m3r]

Rinnosuke's Stage Theme: Curious Old Shanghai Tile

I do hope I got the information for this relic correct henceforth

twas incorrect last entry~~

are these “tags” to leave signs should someone find this ? bookmarks perhaps? i doth believe so~~~ let thine “tagging” be correct this day~~

quite unlike any music that I’ve heard before.... so very rapid in pace~~~

does this rinnosuke fellow study relics as well? I would most certainly like to meet him and discuss my findings should the monastery allow it~~~

i quite fancy his appearance~~~

what of this “shanghai” and “mahjong”  do they involve tiles ? the long nights of research continues still it would seem~~~

[alephskoteinos]

It's actually weird in this light that Yascony Hill doesn't have a much larger role in SMTIV's shenanigans, but then again leaning too much into the significance of Yasukuni Hill would have been too risky, being a rather divisive subject in Japanese society.

What is Yascony Hill?

Yesterday a new comment on Identity Crisis 3 clued me in to something I'd never heard before about SMT4: The name "Yascony"--and that it's mentioned in a strategy guide. Obviously meant to evoke "Yasukuni", it's where the game begins with the protagonist and Issachar just chilling near its lake. Sure enough, the guide in question that contains it is the mini-guide that was included with the US first edition of the game; I could find no mention of it in the Japanese guide, artbook, or World Analyze tomes, though it's totally possible i overlooked it (check them out on Vesk's archive if you want!). Without corroboration from a Japanese source, it makes the authenticity somewhat hard to gauge, but the name itself is localized in English in the same style as the other areas of Mikado (a deliberately askew romanization as an attempt to match that the familiar Tokyo districts' names are rendered in Katakana in Japanese):

キチジョージ, Kichijōji = Kiccigiorgi

シンジュク, Shinjuku = Shene Duque

....et al. I honestly forget the others. But it should then follow:

Yascony = Yasukuni, ヤスクニ

Since the name follows that pattern, I find it hard to believe it would have been invented by Atlus USA. And, then, why would the American branch name a location after the controversial Yasukuni Shrine? Something is obviously missing here, or I missed a mention of it in JP. It fits the game's Japaneses nationalist themes all too well. Weird.

[high-metafive]

when tumblr dies im going to start posting from the eastern kingdom of mikado

[cake-apostate]

An idea I think would be fun is that centuries after the events of SMT4, Blasted and Infernal Tokyo both become evil empires. They idolized their version of King Akira, and took their stated ideologies to the limits with neither nuance nor restraint.

That's not to say that either Akira did a bad job; they did what was necessary at the time to save their people from disaster. It's just that if you took their actions without knowing that context, they would look incredibly evil.

So I think that their kingdoms would become evil empires if their future rulers continued their policies well beyond the states of emergency that spawned them.

Infernal Tokyo

Infernal Akira would seem like a cartoonishly evil overlord if you didn't know where he was coming from. Under his rule, humans are cattle to be eaten and bred, demons run a kind of protection racket, and he calls this equality. He even killed the previous king! And given that he's a coward and a weakling at the top of a society that values strength above all else, he'd seem a massive hypocrite.

Except most of the problems with Infernal Tokyo aren't his fault. Kenji was the one to start the demonoid/neurisher system; the worst you can say about Akira is that he didn't abolish it. And he couldn't. The obviously good step of freeing the neurishers would be disastrous; either the demonoids comply and starve, or they'd rebel openly, which would leave Akira powerless and the neurishers right where they started.

Akira found and enforced the minimum level of cruelty required for his current society to function. To many outsiders, that level is shockingly evil, but he's loved in his time because it's so much lighter than before.

Future generations would idolize King Akira, not unjustly, but it's easy for them to miss the point. He didn't draft a blueprint for some ideal society; he wrote laws and regulations to deal with the current disasters plaguing his city. Let's look at the specific orders he gave, and how future generations can screw them up.

Every district takes a census, and if they need Neurishers, more are sent there. That is how he ended both famine and war; districts fought over and hoarded Neurishers until he distributed them equally. It also sets up precedent for future kings to arbitrarily separate families or rip people from their homes.

Neurishers are mandated to be drank from every other day. In his time, that's a huge load off because they were drained every day, all day. But in the future, there might be so many Neurishers that forcing all of them to work half the time is seen as gluttonous, or maybe there's a future where Neurishers are required to work on top of providing Magnetite ever other day.

Some Neurishers are assigned to breed and make as many babies as possible. It's to ensure the survival of humanity, but even Akira's sorry about it. If the population stabilizes within his lifetime, I can see him easing back on this, but if he doesn't...

This isn't necessarily an order, but Akira's subordinates from Kasumigaseki wound up killing Demonoids who refused to follow him. That can easily turn into death squads killing those suspected to be disloyal.

Blasted Tokyo

Blasted Akira doesn't do anything evil. It wouldn't help his situation. But he does give Flynn and co. a speech about how he's going to use the demons from the Expanse to rebuild the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado; judging by the DLC, he did a good job building cities before the Ancient of Days blasted it back into desert.

Enslaving demons to build your city isn't any more morally objectionable than what your average SMT protagonist gets up to. What might get spicy is if future generations start seeing that anyone who comes through the portal is a 'demon' to be enslaved, even if they're human.

So this hypothetical evil empire would be, well, an empire. It rules over vassal states that are forced to give tribute, regards noncitizens as nonhuman, and the central state contributes nothing of value.

In King Akira's time, there was nothing they could produce. They lived in a desert and burned Pluto corpses for fuel. If they didn't steal, they'd have nothing. By the time the land is arable once more, agriculture might not be as easy or profitable as piracy, so the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado continues as an interdimensional demon summoning pirate state well beyond its need to be one.

On a semirelated note, Blasted Akira only gets a speech about his ideals and how he's going to reform the city, while Infernal Akira gets a whole bunch of NPCs saying what he already did and how. I think it's because we need a lot more assurance that Infernal Akira is doing the right thing, considering both his personality and the whole 'demonoid and neurisher' thing.

King Aquila of Mikado

Now let's reverse it with King Aquila. We know how Mikado turned out after 1500 years after he created the country, and we see his orders, but why did he make them? What context was lost to time?

Let's start with the part of the Samurai Code that forbids them from entering Tokyo, and how Aquila assigned the Minotaur as gatekeeper. From Nanashi's flashbacks, we know Aquila always intended for Mikado to unite with Tokyo, so why stop them?

Look at the plaque in front of the Hall of the Minotaur. It says, "Those who serve God Almighty: Thou shalt not proceed beyond this door." It sounds like Aquila isn't necessarily trying to stop the Samurai, but those who would follow the Monastery's orders. My guess is that he suspected that some fanatics would try to purge Naraku of the Unclean Ones, and the sign is for them.

I've heard a theory that the stark Luxuror/Casualry split was deliberately created to foster dissatisfaction, so that the Casualries would eventually rebel.

I also think that Aquila tried to amp up Mikado's food production to be much greater than their current population, to feed the future Tokyo emigres.

On a semirelated note, for fanfic purposes, I like the idea that Aquila was basically so terrifying that nobody wanted to speak ill of him after his death. He's honored as the ideal king because everyone's scared to write down his less than savory moments.

[shephar]

Samurai's of Mikado backgrounds for the Samurai of the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado fans.

Sorry to all my followers who followed for SMT content, I still love the series I'm just not interested in playing Vengance atm

[parasitoidism]

Also I’m glad it confirmed what I already knew which was that Jonathan absolutely is constantly haranguing Walter about the Samurai Dress Code

I did fujo tf out btw

[thonkphonk]

AU where after shit goes down with the Black Samurai, the young samurai are sent down into the Underworld to retrieve the Once and Future King, who had been hidden away at his birth to prepare him for the day he'd have to save the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado.

OK tbh this AU was mostly thinking how funny it'd be if someone came down the Sky Tower and handed baby Nanashi over to Fujiwara and Skins. "This is the reincarnation of the first king of Mikado, who I'm told was a friend of yours. We need you to raise him. No, we can't do it in Mikado, prophecy says we need him hundreds of years in our future. We'll come back for him eventually. Yes, this was in his will."

[sainthermelin]

if you say eastern kingdom of mikado one more time I swear to god

[where-is-mirabelle-isat]

Oh goodness me! What is she doing in the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado in Shin Megami Tensei IV?

Mirabelle is in the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado from Shin Megami Tensei IV! Looking for Isabeau, I assume.

[veskscans]

"Collaborative Illustration Drawn by Tomomi Kobayashi" from Shin Megami Tensei IV. Scanned at 800 DPI, 6592x9380.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CYWp6uEEvnFRXZYgOhyQXhLM8AaZfr_2/view

Kobayashi is largely known for her work on Square Enix’s SaGa series, which was initially released in English as Final Fantasy Legend. This piece was drawn as part of a collaboration with SMT IV and prominently features the samurai Flynn and Isabeau, both wielding their katanas. Despite being swords, they’re still referred to as katanas, even though the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado's technology isn’t advanced enough to produce a katana (Source: SMT IV Art Book). Aside from those observations, I couldn’t find any commentary on this piece.

P.S. Kobayashi also appeared alongside Kazuma Kaneko in a 1996 interview.

[gefdreamsofthesea]

Spot the lie: Shin Megami Tensei edition

Note: I'm including everything under the SMT label in English except the Persona games. No I don't care if they're technically part of another subseries in Japan. Also, these apply to the original releases. I know some have been updated but I haven't played them.

I especially want to hear from people who haven't played them because this feels too easy for a veteran.

Poll results are in and I'm very disappointed that only 3.7% of you got it right.

I will now reveal the correct answers:

1. TRUE - The first major boss in Devil Survivor, Beldr, can only be killed by mistletoe, a mistletoe-shaped cellphone strap is just as effective.

2. TRUE - Yggdrasil is sapient and steals time warping powers from the Disir. The protagonist has to go back in time to save themselves with the help of the Norns (who have evolved from the Disir who gave him the quest, you know like Pokemon)

3. TRUE - Dante made a guest appearance in the original release of SMT Nocturne. Later versions replaced him with Raidou Kuzunoha, the protagonist of two games in the Devil Summoner spinoff series

4. TRUE - It's ordinary literature, there's nothing wrong with it the citizens of the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado are just that brainwashed

5. TRUE - The entry is in Strange Journey. "Originally, he looked like an abominable snowman, but perhaps he changed form to more efficiently freeze people."

6. TRUE - The bondage angel design debuted in SMT 2. Here's a screenshot of SMT 1 showing its original design.

7. TRUE - A lot of people voted for this one but it's actually true. Cerberus' single head is a reference to the original novel the series is based on (Digital Devil Story). He is depicted with three heads in SMT: IMAGINE, Soul Hackers, and Digital Devil Saga.

8. TRUE - I did not know the origin of David's name myself so I looked it up. His design is possibly a reference to the poem Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens.

9. FALSE (ish) - It's actually the reverse: Astaroth wishes to become the goddess Ishtar (technically to return to being Ishtar but in game terms Ishtar is treated as his "evolution"). He is usually required in order to fuse her. In some games, the two don't appear to be connected at all.

10. TRUE - As the accuser, Satan is part of the Law alignment (and therefore on YHVH's side) against Lucifer, who (usually) represents the Chaos alignment. His role in SMT IV Apocalypse is more complicated.

Anyways good job everyone. Everyone gets a cookie.

[sl33py-g4m3r]

deleted the sleep schedule complaining cause I've been complaining about it too much~~ based on the way things work with me tho I'll work my way back around eventually~~

sorry for complaining about it so much~~

thought of deleting the magnetite question post but that was for a bit of fun thinking and (hopefully) didn't show incompetence with a series I hold so dear~~

or the before bed (what do these skills do) post where I rant and looked them up anyway.... i deeply worry about coming off as stupid

I now worry I've ether revealed too much information or have made myself seem incompetent to some degree~~

now anxiety is gnawing at me trying to complete a stupid cycle I'm trapped in~~~ I'd often delete my blog cause I feel like I've revealed too much personal stuff~~ but I always come back after a while anyway, different username, same walpaper, theme, and icon... so realistically there's no point in nuking it~~~

I wonder if there are people at the monastery that get too distracted studying relics that they also lose track of time and do what i do? and are constantly backwards sleep schedule wise as a result?

of course anyone of any alignment could probably get their sleeping patterns weird; and to be honest it's probably tied more to morality than anything else tho..... begs the question, which alignment would be more likely to constantly flip flop their sleeping schedule?

I'm assuming the day/night cycle is normal in smt iv? in mikado at least perhaps.... Does Mikado have seasons? I'd like to see winter~~~ Lake Mikado frozen over~~~ snow and ice everywhere~~

if you hide in a pile of snow to scare someone what's the likelihood that you'll die? fun isn't worth death methinks~~

Would the samurai uniforms change for winter in that case? Or is it just one standard all purpose one?

I bet I’m so short that if I wore a coat, it would drag the ground… unless they’re fitted per person. Kinda doubt it tho. Cause it seems they get the outfits immediately after the gauntlet rite…

Now imagining that the town would be decked out for whatever holidays they celebrate in Mikado~~ but what holidays would that be? Christian ones? Do we ever get any info on things such as this?

Interesting ~~~

From an anxious rant; into ‘that would be neat if we got more elaboration on this’

Idk how my mind works am sorry~~~ least I’m not anxious in this moment anymore ~~ lol.

Samurai training in the middle of a blizzard? If they train in places on the surface and it’s not just excursion into naraku…

I’ve somehow fused the anxiety with ‘this’ll be neat’ and am not anxious anymore what happened here?

Idk what this post is am sorry, lol. Stuff lately has just been ‘stream of consciousness with updates’

[oozmium]

Gaston Character Page Translation

Translator: VerdantGrove

ENG Proof/Typesetting: Elegy

Reposting is discouraged, but if you choose to do so, please keep the watermark in the image.

—

Gaston Introduction

A samurai from the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado, he is the junior of Flynn and his friends. He is the true younger brother of Navarre, evidenced by his excessive pride, but he holds something of a grudge against his older brother for dirtying family name. Although he has come to accompany Nanashi and the others, he cannot see his brother's astral body, so he often criticizes his brother before his very eyes.

Commentary by Masayuki Doi

When I first heard that Navarre's younger brother would actually make an appearance, I laughed… No, I meant to say that I was surprised. The hairstyle and facial expression associated with that family were a no-brainer (laughs). As he's one of the (newly) established samurai elite, we made him wear more period-advanced clothing, like those of medieval musketeers, over his samurai uniform undergarments. The mark of the Cross represents God and the four archangels. The Spear of Michael was the item that originally felled Lucifer, so we laid out some of the same design motifs that we used for Lucifer.

[parasitoidism]

I love the passage of ethics esp the last question about if you would stay by a loved ones side forever if they were in a coma and would never wake up because like yessssss of course Jonathan says yes the guy is absolutely married to his completely unjust society that’s currently falling apart at the seams. Me and the rotting corpse of the eastern kingdom of mikado 😋 ✌️

[alephskoteinos]

Let us see the terror of heaven

I was thinking a while ago today about the way angels are consistently designed in Shin Megami Tensei vs the way the Law alignment is sort of steadily portrayed in later games. It's a weird trip but hopefully where I'm going will become clear.

Most of Shin Megami Tensei's angels actually hue fairly close to the "traditional" image of angels, as fair-looking winged humans. We see this for instance in Shin Megami Tensei's Angel.

In nearly all of the angels in the Tenshi clan:

And of course, the Four Archangels/Seraphs/Heralds. Let's just use Uriel as an example here:

There's also Haniel and Kazfiel whose designs both follow traditional Christian depictions of seraphs. We'll bring up Haniel's art here:

But then we get to Shin Megami Tensei II where we really start to see the "Biblically accurate angels" trope emerge in earnest, where we see the more human/Hellenistic-looking angels alongside some pretty eldritch entities in the Daitenshi clan. For example, Tzaphkiel:

Or how about Ophanim, which seems to be based around Ezekiel's vision of the cherubim:

And then of course there's SMT 2's Satan:

Devil Summoner and Soul Hackers can be seen as developing the inhuman aesthetic of SMT's angels as extending from the "Biblically accurate angel" trope. Let's start with the Tenshi clan in Devil Summoner:

And some of the Daitenshi:

Then Soul Hacker's Tenshi:

And Daitenshi:

With Shin Megami Tensei IV it seems that one of the guest artists, Keita Amemiya, took the inhuman direction for angel design to the nth degree in terms of his approach to demon design in general as reflecting the idea of angels and demons as artificial beings.

At this point I should get to where I'm going here. For a while, at least a decade ago, I might have favoured the idea of the angels as strictly inhuman, or even artifical, possibly to convey the externality and alienness of the repression of the order of God. Keita Amemiya seemed to really lean on that idea, though the designs were certainly rather poorly executed at least for the Four Heralds. But thinking about it, I think the older designs for the Four Seraphs appeal to me for more than just being the classic designs from SMT 1 and 2.

Even though the "Biblically accurate" design direction is very suitably weird both for SMT's context and the linking of the strange and alien to representation of dreadful aspects of divine awe, I find that the more humanlike representation of angels in the context of the Law alignment works better for what, in my mind, I prefer to see. To understand where I'm going, let's look at SMT IV and Apocalypse. Here, the Law alignment is much as it is in SMT I and II, in that it can understood in terms of a single-minded devotion to the order of God, and to the extent that the forces of Law are ruthless in their actions, willing even to wipe out all of Tokyo in order to preserve the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado. In Apocalypse, you see YHVH's "true form" as a monstrous chimera the likes of which, as I remember Eirikr noting, you would probably see as the formulaic final boss of literally any JRPG.

To my mind, it serves to very obviously signify YHVH as unambiguously evil, which, oddly for SMT, is represented as similarly unambiguously demonic. Of course it might be argued that the conceits of Sethian "Gnosticism" are also in play. I think that the opposite approach would be better. SMT IV's approach seems to tie the order of God and the atrocity that the forces of Law undertake to uphold as, all along, the manifestation of a demonic will. But the better idea for me is that all of the same atrocity is done not by monsters but by the traditional figures of light.

Every scheme to dominate the universe, and every massacre that follows to support it, every terror that befalls mankind for its perceived failure, I prefer that we see all of it under the auspice of the traditional figures of light. That would be a far more fitting adage of the inversion that SMT is known for. As Valerio Mattioli said of Rome as portrayed by Luchino Visconti, hell lies in the celestial vaults. And what better way to illustrate that then all of the violence and terror of Law being the instrument not of monstrous chimeras but of celestial form. Of a "beauty" that hides unfathomable violence within itself. And I don't want SMT to be the only place where you can find this idea. Oh no no no I think more media should play with that idea, more art should go all in on this kind of aesthetic-moral inversion.

Update: it occurred to me that I've forgotten something. I forgot to talk about SMT V.

When it comes to SMTV, we see echoes of SMTIV Apocalypse's handling of Law and the violence of order, in that it both reasserts its treatment of that as the affect of an actually demonic will and presents Abdiel's desire to reassert God's order as a plunge to towards the demonic. Hence you see the angel Abdiel transform from sort of an angelic Princess Padme in gold armour into an actual fallen angel, who even gets reclassed as the only Law-aligned member of the Fallen clan.

Not to mention her attempt to become a Nahobino resulting in a transformation into a giant demon centaur whose design seems to recall Sirene's fusion with Kaim in Devilman.

Of course, in context this is all supposed to emerge from the premise of God's death, Abdiel's denial of that death, and the resulting desperation to restore order. But, again, that desire as strictly the affect of the classically demonic to me misses the point. Yet, given the obvious resonances with Nocturne, where three of the main characters merge with their demonic sponsors, it's worth pointing to an obvious contrast: Baal Avatar.

And moreso, the fact that before you see Baal Avatar you witness Chiaki slaughter the Manikins, ramble about how the strong deserve to crush the weak, and then in a flash of light three out of the four archangels (namely Raphael, Gabriel, and Uriel) appear as her allies, which you fight.

Now there's a setting where the representatives of Social Darwinist violence and atrocity also make no bones about what guides them: the idea that they're making the world beautiful and promoting the ultimate good. Their radiant appearance is not to be understood as a deception covering up some inner demonic nature or demonomania but instead only reflects their seemingly divine conceit. It's not only that they believe they are paragons of virtue. Everything they do, they do as figures of light. And you, a monster among monsters, a cursed being in the world of demons, might oppose them and might just stop them if you choose to. It's really hard to think of anything else that has that angle. It's also somewhat concerning to think that future games might miss the mark.

The development exemplified by Abdiel's transformation into literally a fallen angel ultimately lends not only to certain ideas about the hope that there might be something "unambiguously good" about Law, but also the idea that all the bad things about it are all about concert with the demonic, which is ultimately familiar to the conceit that all of the negative aspects of Christianity are simply the manifestations of a falsification of Christianity, that the "real" blasphemers, heretics, and demons are actually just Christian fundamentalists. But I'm not interested in that idea. I'm interested in the worst that humanity has to offer being contained in its loftiest aspirations of order and in turn represented in the figures of light, because I'm interested in the idea that it is in the name of "the Good" that atrocity always manifests, and for which we cast it into a shadow of the human, in evil.

What we are striving to forget is that the worst deeds in the world are always either utterly human or surely the work of God. Nothing demonic could come close. So let us see more inversion that reflects that insight. The insight that, so far, SMT is among the few media to portray, let alone portray as brilliantly as it often has.

[neomedievalist]

i want to drop shirou emiya in the eastern kingdom of mikado and study him under a microscope. see how he copes in there