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thyandrawrites · 9 months

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On (soccer) partnerships, commitment, and why Nagi and Reo are the poster children for always doing the opposite of what the series is about

Alright fellas, this started out as something completely different, so forgive me in advance if it feels disjointed, but.

Have you wondered why in chapter 18 of epinagi, Nagi’s inner monologue complains that his “heat is being stolen away”? Or why even in the main series Nagi can’t seem to win a single match even after he and Reo get on better terms? Well, if you have, this post might be a fun read for you. If you already have answers, I might sound like I’m stating the obvious because none of this is particularly subtle or particularly new. But since both series have hit the Nagi Flop Era, I thought it’d be fun to take a deep dive into his character and Reo’s, the themes of the story, and how their codependence contradicts the entire premise of blue lock, intentionally so. I’m going to go over why stagnancy is the entire point of their partnership, and why the fact that they keep failing and failing is instrumental to the type of story Kaneshiro is trying to tell.

So, without further ado. Get comfortable, this will get long.

So, as I anticipated, Nagi and Reo are very very often written to be at odds with the themes the story functions around, and I think their regression is another instance of that. In a manga that often underlines the importance of making soccer your “reason to exist” if you’re serious about it, Nagi and Reo are the only duo repeatedly singled out as more committed to each other than to the sport itself. This, the story tells us, being the root of why they so often fail.

The premise of blue lock is that you can’t become the best in the world until you dedicate your whole self to the sport. Only that egoism will push you in the right state of mind to go above and beyond for a victory.

Time and time again, we see the most outstanding goals happen in what gets called the hottest place in the field. This “center of heat” comes up a couple of times, and it’s usually represented by a person. According to Ego’s philosophy, the idea is that the world’s best striker possesses a soccer-specific kind of charisma. When he enters a state of flow and pulls off a world-class play, he’ll have a ripple effect on the players around him, pushing them to reach flow too and elevating the level of the game itself. We saw this happening in the U-20 match. Ego’s not really aiming to create a national team, or to foster the talent of the new generation. He only cares about nurturing one person into that role, betting it all on the fact that once that striker awakens from its “rough diamond” shell, they will fire up their teammates & lead Japan to victory.

Because of this, ideally, everyone aiming at becoming the world’s best striker should strive to be that center of heat. To an extent, even Nagi does. His motivation is spotty at best, but whenever a game heats up, Nagi’s ego gets tickled awake the same as everyone else’s. This is not limited to the times Isagi challenged him, by the way. He reacted to Rin’s skill in much the same way.

Problem is, neither Nagi nor Reo seem to know how to become that center of heat by themselves. They only react to someone else raising the stakes of a match. Even when Nagi feels fired up, his lack of creativity & playmaking sense fail him against any opponent who is more tactical than him. In a similar way, even when Reo starts going after goals alone in the wake of his split from Nagi, he still can't see his vision of a goal through to the end, or gets outsmarted and beaten to the punch by other playmakers.

The only times they really get their head into a game is when they're working as a duo. Compare for example Nagi losing grasp of his heated frenzy when he splits from Reo to how quickly he reaches flow when they go back to playing together.

So why is this an issue? If Nagi's limit is his over-reliance on instinct, and Reo's is the lack of self-centeredness that's key to scoring, then shouldn't teaming up solve the problem and make them a powerhouse? How come, even after somewhat resolving their communication issues, their soccer still is no match to that of the blue lock elites?

Well, before I can begin to unpack the answer to that… A big theme driving the soccer partnerships is that you won’t go very far if you rely too much on the other person to carry your weight. This is the reality Bachira faces in the 4v4, when he “disappears”, swallowed by everyone else’s growth. This is also the lesson Rin learns from Sae when his brother returns from Spain a completely different, overwhelmingly superior player. The series tells us that relying on others to pick up your slack makes you less sharp and prone to noticing your weaknesses because someone else will cover your back.

For a practical example of this, Rin's style when he played with Sae mirrors Nagi's around Reo: they both relied on instinct, trusting that the ball would always come if they just positioned themselves in the right spot to score. And for a time, it did. But that's not the level the rest of the world plays at. Nagi and Reo's winning streak ends when they face an unpredictable, explosive talent like Isagi, who doesn't operate according to any predictable patterns. Similarly, Rin's playstyle gets wrecked in a matter of minutes by a Sae who got to experience the "real" soccer played overseas.

The point, then, is that Nagi and Reo never really assimilated any of Ego's lessons, instead resisting his philosophy to a fault by choosing each other. From the start, they’re not very good at being apart, given how their strength draws from being a team. Both of them are noted to only ever increase the level of their plays when they are working together, but not as much when alone.

Nagi’s the brawn to complete Reo’s brain, and their dynamic too often falls back on that codependent partnership. In fact, they default to their roles even when they're not playing with each other. During the second selection, Nagi replaces Reo with Isagi, continuing to rely on someone else's creativity and game sense, while he just follows. And in the 3v3, we similarly see Reo fall back on playing the midfielder to Kunigami and Chigiri's forward, offering up the perfect passes to make them shine and get all the scoring options they want.

But what about when they're together? Aren't they strong then? Didn't Nagi score a crazy super goal thanks to Reo's assist? What do we make of that?

You'll probably remember how Ego got a sense of foreboding from Nagi's five shot revolver. Of course, you might say, Ego never liked their soccer! He was cussing them out for playing together since day one! Of course he's a hater!

Well… Yeah. But Ego's also an authorial insert, and he's there to tell us the themes of the story, and comment on the characters growth. Or in this case, their stagnancy. Nagi's returning to his reliance on Reo's brains and Reo's willingness to entertain it are both framed as a bad thing because it specifically contradicts the idea the series is based on: that a real striker is an egotistic, self-reliant existence that doesn't bend to other people's rules, but instead dictates their own, and makes everyone follow or fall through in their wake.

There are several players this definition already applies to. Rin, Barou, Shidou and of course Isagi all come to mind. Isagi's growth in particular has been rotating around this concept. Isagi not only believes in his (meta) vision, but he also possesses the sharp-wit and the cutthroat resourcefulness to see it through no matter the odds, at times even to the detriment of his teammates. Nagi and Reo, on the other hand, can pull off some incredible plays, but it’s never enough to land them a solid victory, especially in the NEL arc. Usually, in a story, when a character fails enough times to become stagnant, the author is making some kind of point. In this case, as the narrative itself points out through Isagi first and Agi later, it’s the concept that relying on their teamwork is actually making Nagi and Reo’s soccer worse.

Sure, Nagi might've caught Isagi off guard with those feints once and managed to score, but that's still him relying on instinct over brains. If you dissect that match, you'll see that aside from the fake volley itself, which is the product of a non-replicable state of flow, there isn't a single move Nagi and Reo made during that game that Isagi didn't see through, expect, and match their pace at. This is by design, of course. It's meant to indicate that while Isagi grew, learning from stronger players and assimilating new elements in his arsenal of weapons, Nagi and Reo are still stuck playing the same way they did in the second selection. With Reo as the heart, brain and anchor directing Nagi around, and Nagi as the leg kicking the ball into the net following a momentary burst of inspiration.

The fact that this is intended as a setback in their path towards a more egotistical soccer is made more obvious by the timing. It's not a coincidence that Nagi went back to Reo the moment he got frustrated by how hard creativity and tactics come to him when he's on his own, without a "handler" like Reo (and later Isagi) taking care of all the hard parts.

Nor is it a coincidence that Reo was faced with the choice to go back to helping Nagi out right when Reo was beginning to go after his own goals, without help. Nagi comes up to him and shakes him up literally one (1) panel after Reo's dramatic, resolute decision to prove himself alone.

Had they gotten anywhere in their quest to polish their individual skills during the split, maybe their partnership could’ve aspired to become more like Isagi and Bachira’s, eventually. However, they weren’t apart long enough to master their respective strengths, or to consolidate their egos as something separate from their status as partners. Thus, when they resume playing together, they instead hold each other back.

So is their ego the problem here, then? Ever since that five shot fake volley, we see Nagi’s dissolve, leaving him unmotivated again, grasping for answers he can't seem to reach no matter how many people he asks. And surely, its disappearance is significant, much like how Reo's ever changing definition of his own ego is also significant. But I think the real issue is something else. Egos can take many forms, and Nagi and Reo aren't the only players whose so-called “protagonism” isn’t rooting for their own success. Most recently, Hiori gained an ego too, and it was framed as a good thing even though it doesn’t strictly lead to him becoming the best striker in the world.

My idea, then, is that it's less that they lack the "correct" ego, but more like they lack the correct attitude towards soccer to begin with. From the start, they're both motivated by something that is not inherent to soccer itself, but only tangential to it: the World Cup—or rather, their promise to each other that they'd win the World Cup. Because of this, I think, they center their football more around their partnership & their shared dream than any genuine passion for the sport, unlike pretty much the rest of the cast (now including Hiori. Yay!). In other words, the problem is that neither of their egos is really about themselves, yet. So it fails them because it's not conductive to "protagonism", but centered around an "us" that drags them off course.

Let's go with Nagi first. On the surface, "commitment" and "Nagi Seishirou" don't seem to go well in the same sentence. Nagi doesn't do anything excessively. He's content to coast through life doing nothing more than he strictly needs to survive. As long as he can put in minimal effort and still have time to play video games and nap, he's happy. When his teachers asked him to fill a form about his future, he couldn't think of anything he wanted to do. He's the embodiment of living one day at a time cause it's too much work to figure out his life past that. Yet, he genuinely commits to soccer.

Or does he?

Sure, he agrees to not only playing the sport, but to dedicating several years of his life to becoming pro. That’s dedication, for sure. But is it really for soccer? I would argue that no, Nagi’s commitment is to his partnership with Reo, not to the sport itself. And okay, you can’t have one without the other, but the distinction is important to understand Nagi’s (and Reo’s as well) resistance to character growth.

So, Nagi had no passion for the sport until he saw the level some other elite blue lockers played at, and got curious and frustrated enough to put real effort in it himself. But until then, soccer was simply something he tagged along in. In fact, he was pretty unenthused with the idea of playing until Reo promised him an easy life and made it so Nagi wouldn’t have to work hard for it. Nagi signs up for blue lock with the expectation that he’ll be the one to flunk out first, without being too torn up about it. Clearly, it’s not a career as a professional soccer player he has an attachment to. I’d argue it’s more the fact that he feels comfortable around Reo, and he is invested in what only their agreement can bring forth. That is, a life more exciting than any nap or game.

The excitement part is the focus here. At their core, both Nagi and Reo’s characters are motivated by the wish to escape boredom. So much so, the epinagi movie made that its tagline. Thematically, dissatisfaction with boredom is the catalyst for every choice they make. While everyone else is motivated by an ambition that is inherent—that draws from their wish to excel—Nagi and Reo are more prize-oriented, lacking the conviction that they’re special on their own. It follows that the challenge of bringing home the World Cup represents just that—for Nagi, it’s the thrill of a final boss with the prospect of an easy life afterwards, and for Reo, something hard to obtain that he’d conquer by his own merit. In both cases, soccer for soccer’s sake is not the end goal. It’s just a tool to achieve what they really want.

Neither of them ever really dreams of becoming the world’s best striker, and neither swears their entire life to soccer, either. Not even Reo ever brought up a career in the sport, past winning for Japan for the first time. This is why I say their commitment is more to each other than to football, and also why they struggle to advance in the program.

Let's think about it. The Cup was never really Nagi's dream; beating Isagi was. Yet, when their partnership all but crumbles down, Nagi keeps making choices with the Cup in mind. The boy who never fought for anything becomes determined to honor his promise to Reo even if he's not certain that Reo still cares about it. By his own admission, he chooses Isagi and then England because both of those things bring him closer to their original goal, and Nagi's resolve for that has never waned, even if for a time he thought Reo's had.

It's like he clings to inertia to avoid thinking what the sport means to him. Despite how Reo seemingly turned his back on him, Nagi doesn't want to give up on what made them partners. To him, soccer never stopped being something they shared (to a fault). That's why, I think, when they make up, a big part of their reconciliation is going back to sharing a dream. This time, with Reo helping Nagi out instead of the other way around. And I'm saying that's a flaw because his subconscious need to seek answers and help from others made it so that whenever he's alone, he doesn't have a very defined idea of how to move forward. But again, a striker should be self-reliant, and have the capacity to evolve on his own even as the match is unfolding. But Nagi didn't even believe in himself until Reo convinced him he was special, so how can Nagi have the right mindset to seize his protagonism?

Similarly, Reo’s drive is also not based on anything inherent. From the start, he doesn’t believe he was “chosen by football” the way geniuses like Nagi and Rin are. Because of this, he never bought into Ego’s striker philosophy, nor has he been a very fitting candidate for it yet. Much like with Nagi, his set up as someone willing to step away from the spotlight positions him in defiance of the story’s themes. While Nagi has the talent and instinct to become a powerhouse but lacks conviction, Reo is a born leader outside of the facility, but within blue lock’s rules he can only make it to the U-20 bench, and so far no further.

The point here is that Reo’s readiness to be Nagi’s crutch is lowkey framed as a voluntary burden he places on his potential growth, a fact that the narrative condemns.

Reo was born for success—bred and raised with every luxury to make sure he'd step into his father's shoes and be one of Japan's wealthiest and most capable businessmen. And Reo takes obvious pride in his social status, too. We can see it in the flaunted wealth of his spending and daily habits, as well as in the way he interacts with his peers. He funds his Hakuho soccer team and easily seizes captainship. Blue lock teams don't have captains, but he still rises to a similar position even within an environment designated to promote violent competitiveness and a wolf-eat-wolf mentality. Heck, he asks Nagi to call him "boss" and demands Zantetsu recognizes him as "super elite". Pride in being the best and excelling at everything he does is written into Reo's code.

Yet, the moment Ego suggests that there is no such thing as cooperation within his training program, Reo is quick to bargain—take him, he’s the real star. I will tag along and ensure his success.

Ever the businessman, right? Problem is, renouncing his pride for someone else is the opposite of the attitude he should have. Same as Nagi, Reo puts a lot of weight on their shared dream. Too much weight. Somewhere along the line, “I want the World Cup” became “If Nagi’s at my side, we will win the World Cup”. Being partners until the end became so entangled with Reo’s dream that he can no longer separate the two. When Nagi leaves, Reo’s image of that finishing line crumbles. Iirc, he doesn’t even mention the World Cup as his goal anymore until Nagi comes back to him. When asked to put into words what he wants to achieve with his soccer, Reo tells Chris that he wants to go after goals alone. It’s only later, when Chris questions what happened to his solitary resolve in the wake of Reo’s restored friendship with Nagi, that Reo is like “well, my actual dream was the World Cup anyway, so this still counts.”

That is both true and a deflection from the truth. Yes, Reo’s real goal has always been the cup… but he also subconsciously sees it as something inseparable from his promise with Nagi. He can’t have one without the other. Or he thinks he can’t, is the point. Partly because of that, and partly because Nagi is his best friend, Reo is very resistant to Agi’s criticism. The story’s trying to nudge Reo towards personal growth, telling him that the only way out of this impasse is to quit what isn’t working. However, because Reo’s meant to resist the themes of the story, the choices he makes are rarely the right ones. That is, the choices a real egoist would make in his place.

This isn’t anything recent, by the way. For this same reason, for example, winning Nagi's trust back becomes his main motivation to survive past the loss in the 3v3. By his own admission, Reo is the only guy in blue lock who not only has a safety net outside the program, but a very comfortable life to fall back on if a career in football doesn't work out for him. But when push comes to shove and he faces the chance of dropping out, Reo resolves to improve by thinking of Nagi and their shared dream.

Let’s compare that to Barou, who was similarly broken down and had to crawl his way up again. Barou goes the egoist way and finds his resolve within himself, vowing to double down on his king shtick and devour Isagi back. To Barou, the simple idea of passing a ball is akin to defeat. When he envisions a future of normalcy, with football as something to only watch on tv, Barou’s hunger to reign the field like a king rears its head again and motivates him forward. Reo, instead, never reaches a point where he embraces the series’ trademark selfishness. In fact, he does the opposite. When he vows to step up his game, he doesn’t do it because he thinks he’s the top dog like everyone else. The root of his despair is not a wounded pride, or a desire to prove himself further, to “devour” others back and rise to the top, but just the loss of his fix against boredom. Remember, chasing an exciting life is both Reo and Nagi’s main motivator so far. To put it simply, Reo doesn’t want what awaits him outside of blue lock.

That’s the seed of his actual ego, by the way. Not the Cup, not making Nagi the best, but rather obtaining something by his own merit. But because of his reliance on Nagi (and Nagi’s on his), Reo hasn’t yet reached the point where he can realize this and use the knowledge to better his plays. In that sense, their partnership holds both of them back from exploring their inner motivations and individual strengths further.

And I said that this is instrumental to the kind of story Kaneshiro’s telling because it’s meant to show us all the ways a striker can’t be. This is not a manga where the power of friendship will get you anywhere. No matter how stubborn you get about having it your way, obstacles will materialize in your path and set you back the longer you refuse to play for your own sake.

Yet, Reo doesn't want to advance in the program for the sake of becoming the world's best striker. He never did. He wants to move forward because Nagi left first, and he wants to meet him on the other side (quote, "beyond our dreams"). In other words, to return to being friends, even if he fears that Nagi might've replaced him with Isagi and "forgotten" about him. It doesn't have anything to do with soccer per se. It's more like Reo sees soccer as his chosen tool for self-determination. It was the trial to prove to himself, as well as his father, that his "worth" wasn't handed down to him by circumstance, but was inherent. He could achieve something worthwhile thanks to hard work, and not just reap the benefits of his last name.

And the thing is…If he were literally anyone else, at this point he would’ve already channeled that into individualism, but because it’s Reo, he doesn’t. Despite possessing that seed of egoism, Reo doesn’t water it. His ambition doesn't make him an egoist in the way Ego Jinpachi intended, but instead becomes something that's meant to be carried by two people, contradicting the story.

Reo’s resolve is then always a bit off from falling in line with the rules of blue lock. Even when he gets something right, he does it for the wrong reasons, stumping his development. For example, his resolve after the 3v3 is both a step forward and two steps back. The positive is that he "engraved despair". He faced his shortcomings, realized his powerlessness, and took measures to improve to avoid being left in the dust again. The negative part is that being on his own should've given Reo a taste for real egoism, a hunger for self-reliance, but it does the opposite instead: it makes him long for what he had, and put all his willpower into restoring that partnership however he can. If the issue was that Nagi's improved enough to no longer be satisfied by the level of Reo's plays, then Reo's solution is to make his soccer exciting again in Nagi's eyes to, quote, "be enough to satisfy" him.

Because of that, however, the moment he has Nagi's trust back, their partnership back, Reo pretty much stops trying to improve. His chameleon style is still a go, but it becomes yet another tool to assist in Nagi's goals. It didn't start that way.

Initially, it was what Reo intended to use to score alone, remember?

Yet, even after coming up with a style that's solely his, that focuses on his strengths and brings no value to Nagi's, Reo keeps committing to stagnancy. In different but similar ways, both do.

Teamwork and passive codependence are the two things Ego asked all the blue lockers to leave behind, but Nagi and Reo make it their job to bring typical shonen manga dynamics into a series that sets out to break from the norm. And that’s the point!

In this sense, Reo is more at fault than Nagi, who instead realizes that sometimes being apart makes you better, and doesn’t mean the end of your friendship. If I were to pin down Nagi’s role in the narrative, then I’d say he’s meant to show that talent doesn’t equal success without discipline, self-awareness and determination. So the world’s best striker can’t just be good. He needs to know what he’s doing, and when and where he can do it to make the most of every play, since nothing happens by chance on the field. Whereas Reo’s role is that of showing us the mindset of a real striker. Because Reo enters the program without accepting or even understanding Ego’s rules, Reo’s faulty beliefs get challenged at every turn, with the author basically spoonfeeding us the correct path to soccer stardom.

So in the end, since they struggle so much to even understand what they should be doing, their fumbling around makes it so the story goes more into depth about its own themes. Their job is to be incompetent, basically, but in a way that doesn’t rule out eventual growth. They just need to come to terms with the rules of the competition they entered first. So far, they’ve been content to just live in a bubble and coast through the increased stakes of the selection. If they’re serious about their dreams, however (and we’ve established that they are!), they will have to make a choice between what’s comfortable and what’s necessary. Cause, to quote Ego from epinagi chapter 2, in blue lock there’s no place for self-conscious babies who don’t want to ever get their feelings hurt.

So what will they choose? Each other again, or the only way they can make it past blue lock and thus actually chase their dreams?

#Blue lock #Blue lock spoilers #Nagi seishirou #Mikage reo #Seishiro nagi #Reo mikage #Bllk thoughts #And here it is! Sorry for the wall of text. I might go back on this and add more pictures later but rn I'm toast #I need to get this out or else I'll add 4k more lol #I am very normal about those two yes #Nagireo #Reonagi

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pathetic-gamer · 2 years

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I'm really surprised yall liked that costume breakdown so much! Glad it wasn't a waste of time lol By popular demand, I'm back with more unnecessary analysis, this time of the lettuce fam (and the church as a whole).

I bring you:

Fashion in Fódlan part ii: a very long, still not comprehensive, but this time solicited analysis

FYI this post is way more detailed and is significantly more focused on the relationship between the Adrestian Empire and the Church of Seiros, especially relating to politics and power, rather than the clothes.

The Curch of Seiros: tradition!

The reason I didn't originally include these babies is simply that the pool seems at first to be very small. Besides, Flayn is in an academy uniform, and Sothis is a god, so there's really only two outfits and it's kinda hard to get a real feel for it overall.

Fortunately, I Am Very Smart (jk) and was able to gather a sizable amount of material by broadening my horizons a little

Statues from left to right: Macuil, Cichol, Indech, Cethleann

Trends:

The very first thing you will notice is that, unsurprisingly, there are a lot of similarities with the generic clergy outfits, and the Saints are just in regular class uniforms rather than unique clothes. You can actually see a sort of evolution from Sothis's dress (the og) to the generic female bishop and priest, and a sort of similar silhouette between the male monk and Seteth:

Also, Rhea, dead Sitri, and the mural version of Sothis are all wearing the same white dress but with decreasing amounts of embellishments :) dragon ladies :)

Flayn's version of the academy uniform actually keeps a couple of these influences, as well, primarily the center-front embellishments and the dropped shoulder bows.

Enlightened!Byleth, on the other hand, is a bizarre hodgepodge of stuff that doesn't immediately seem related to anything else.

The Saints being depicted in generic clothing makes sense, because the statues were probably erected after they had all "died." It is odd that Cichol, despite being a wyvern lord in game canon and a formidable warrior in CoS canon (whoa, so meta), is shown in the male bishop uniform in his statue. I think it's because they needed to differentiate between Cichol and Emperor Wilhelm.

The statue in the imperial palace of Wilhelm Paul Hresvelg, the first emperor, is in full armor, but the statue of Cichol is not - the years Cichol lived in Enbarr may have overlapped with Wilhelm's rule, so Cichol, despite being as much (or more) of a warrior as Wilhelm, held a more spiritually significant position. His association with Cethleann likely reinforced that, thus leading to the badass warrior-priest depiction.

*pointing at myself in the mirror* don't draw warrior-priest seteth on a wyvern don't draw warrior-priest seteth on a wyvern don't dr

"But pg," you say, "of course they all look like the monks and priests, they're literally the church. What does this have to do with the empire?"

Analysis:

The church and the empire grew hand-in-hand for a very, very long time, and that shows in lots of ways, including the prevelance of magic in the empire. I actually believe that the way the clergy dresses now is actually somewhat similar to how a lot of people used to dress, or at least influenced it. (Note that TWSITD, a group that has been around for longer than the empire and is separate from the church entirely, still wears their variations of clergy clothes, and Arval/Epimenides even have a similar silhouette to Sothis. That suggests that the styles are indeed very old.)

Now that more than 1000 years have passed, the Empire has continued to develop new styles and fashions, while the church, being a church, has maintained their ceremonial outfits. That being said, some similarities remain. I want to take a look at two of them:

Most units have outfits that draw from their canon classes, so that's not unusual, and all the magic classes are clearly influenced by the church, but what we should consider here is why the fashion aesthetics lean toward the faith classes when these two characters in particular are clearly specialized in reason and dislike the church.

Dorothea's dress is elegant and fashionable and also happens to bear a shocking resemblance to a generic priest outfit (outlined in red the points of interest on Dorothea). The sleeves are also similar to the mage outfit, of course, but it's the cut of the skirt, the thing at her neck, and the waistband that make it a priest.

For Lord Arundel, I'm mostly saying the general *shape* of the thing is similar, but there's also the deep round collar and the strong vertical lines, but only on one side instead of both.

As a side note, I'll argue that the military jackets we discussed in the last post are actually related to the church too, since the Officer's Academy (which is of course founded and run by the church) uses the same button styles, and we don't see it in the other two nations. (If this all seems like a stretch, that's because it is <3 a thousand years have passed, okay, things have changed.)

Besides just the practice of magic in general and some of the styles, the ceremonial importance of wearing some kind of uniform to show your role also remained, imo. We have two clear styles of uniform in the Imperial nobility - robes and jackets (it's unclear exactly what determines who wears which - I would think it's based on military roles vs political roles, which would explain the strike force being in jackets, but Jeritza is heavily involved in the military and he wears the robes. Possibly the exception that proves the rule?) - which are of course related to the two styles we see the most of at Garreg Mach, those being the clergy's robes and the officer's academy students. They may have evolved pretty substantially by this point, but I'm inclined to say the robes worn in the empire are related to the clergy robes, especially if they're meant to be associated with the people in more politically-oriented positions rather than soldiers.

We see the importance of these uniforms in the fact that they actually supersede armor/class uniforms. Hubert (canon class dark bishop), Ferdinand (canon class paladin), and Lord Arundel (canon class dark knight), all wear outfits that aren't actually related to their canon classes at all, and they still keep those outfits when in combat as enemies.

One more similarity I'd be remiss not to point out:

Love to be a bisexual God-King and wear a big tall collar and shoulder embellishment and gold stuff around my neck and a gold crown with a little dangly pearl thing on my forehead~

More analysis:

So, we've established that there's a connection between the clothes worn by empire nobility and church leadership, as well as the nature of those clothes. Cool. Now let's talk $$.

I'm not going to consider Sothis's outfit here, because she's a god and I don't think she's going popping into shops to buy ribbons. Likewise, I think Byleth's enlightened one outfit is more of a divine creation than an actual outfit that cost money.

Rhea's costume however, which as we discussed earlier takes inspiration from Sothis's, definitely did cost money, and a lot of it.

On the inner layer, we don't have a ton of excess stuff going on, as far as the cut of the clothing goes - the white dress is very simple, pretty fitted, not extravagant in any way, but we do have those extra gold details and the headdress, which is honestly a work of art.

What I want to pay attention to is the cloak in particular. That fabric with the beautiful, intricate repeating design of the Crest of Seiros is almost certainly a white and gold brocade (not only is that what it looks like, but it's also a typical fabric for liturgical vestments).

Brocade is a very expensive type of fabric that's woven to look like it's been heavily embroidered, example above (fabric plus a painting of somewhere wearing it). High quality, 100% silk brocade, especially hand woven and using precious metals like gold, costs literally hundreds of USD per yard, and a cloak of that size would be multiple yards (4? 5 maybe? idk I can't actually sew). That's a lot of money.

You'll notice that Seteth has a similar pattern on the inside of his cape, but I highly doubt it's a brocade. It could be damask (similar to brocade but cheaper and easier to take care of - example shown below), but I think it's just a patterned silk.

I think his main garment - cape included - is meant to be a play on a cassock, so it's probably a lightweight, soft wool with the decorative facing only on the cape part, possibly not lined at all in the rest of it. The details around his cuffs and shoulders and the back of the cape are probably embroidery or applique, I'm guessing the same as the academy uniforms, whatever those are.

It's definitely nicer than what most of the students or everyday people wear, but not nearly as extravagant as the jackets in the Empire. You'll also notice that Flayn's officer's academy uniform is a little fancier than the regular students, but not enough to be worth investigation.

The blue is probably a pretty expensive dye color, and you'll note that Rhea has it too. (The black of the academy uniforms would be similar in cost...)

(Speaking of blue dye, I did more research while writing this post and it turns out that the dull blues most of the folks in the kingdom have are actually some of the cheapest and easiest colors to get and maintain! Woad my beloved... Indigo is still extremely expensive, though.)

So anyway, as we can see, the issue of excess is really just Rhea. Being the Archbishop, it's understandable in the exact same way that Edelgard's outfit is - they're both trying to show their legitimacy as a sovereign, in part through their clothes.

However, I do want to point out something extremely important: Rhea didn't drop a shit ton of money on a fancy cloak any time in the last few centuries. When you observe her headdress during a tea party, she has this to say: "This crown is rather elaborate, but it has been passed down through generations of archbishops." So it was almost certainly created hundreds of years ago, likely during the early and much more prosperous years of the empire before the kingdom was a twinkle in Loog's eye. I think the cloak is probably the same way, created around the same time as the crown.

So, is she wasting a lot of money to make herself look powerful? Probably not. Is it still a little out of touch to be dressed so extravagantly? Yeah, on a social level. On a political level, she's reinforcing the idea that she's in control, especially while groups like the Western Church are acting up.

Because that's what this is all about: Control.

Conclusion

The church still has a significant impact on the culture of the empire, but it's more than just an old and famous church building still standing in the heart of Enbarr or the gown of an opera diva. It's explicit.

As our very last exhibit, I present a crown.

The crown Edelgard is given at her coronation is not the same crown she wears during the war, and - though we can only see the tip of the little spire in the front - it bears a striking resemblance to the crown worn by Sothis/enlightened!Byleth. (Using the Sothis regalia to show it bc it's a better image lol.)

I believe this crown may have been crafted at the same time as the Archbishop's, though you'll notice it's quite a bit smaller.

That's because the church and the empire didn't just grow up together - the church was the empire. Seiros named the capital, chose and crowned the first empire, and gifted him her own blood to give him power. The Adrestian Empire exists because Seiros wanted it to, but the church was the higher authority.

The Archbishop traditionally witnesses the coronation of each new emperor not as a show of friendship or an alliance or whatever; it's to remind everyone that originally, the Emperor served at the grace of the Archbishop, not by virtue of their own authority.

Edelgard wears a different crown when she declares war on the church, because she can't have anyone questioning her authority, especially not the church. That means all remaining influence the church has over the Empire and Fodlan as a whole simply must be destroyed. Unfortunately, it runs far too deep. What's she going to do, make Dorothea wear a different dress?

-fin- (lol)

working on a much more lighthearted part iii, which will literally just be ranking the outfits on how expensive I think they are lol no promises on that one though

EDIT: someone pointed me to an item description from FEH that confirms Edelgard did *not* have a new crown designed, it's just a different crown that already existed. Here's the ask where we talk about it a little

#fe3h #fe3h analysis #church of seiros #adrestian empire #fe3h spoilers #silver snow spoilers #might edit this later to add more pics but I'm posting it from my phone and the mobile app still limits to 10 pics per post lol #fashion in fodlan

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