#smt5

[kexiu-0415]

fight again

[shikakan0903]

brothers

[kx0e]

they're best friends

[demifiendrsa]

Official character/demon renders for Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance 

[inafieldofwhitelilies]

🐍Congratulations on the release of Shin Megami Tensei V Vengeance!!! The original game is one of my dearest, can't wait to play the new one! Hope you enjoy this piece I made celebrating it.

(Here's the version with text, and the one without!)

🐍 #AtlusFaithful #真・女神転生VV #真VV #メガテン #SMTVV

[abgemeldet]

Broken Mirror

[otanvisky]

[fuchsiamilk]

👁️👁️

[eirikrjs]

Amon’s and Khonsu’s Bizarre Comparative Mythology Adventure

[I’m cleaning out some old drafts--this post began life just weeks after SMT5 released in November 2021: it’s still kinda rough and I’m not going to put any major work into finishing it, sorry to say, but there are some interesting bits here, particularly about Khonsu Ra, that should have been shared far sooner than now. But, uh, you know, 2022 tried to kill me and all.].

Here’s a LONG OVERDUE (to the point of feeling irrelevant) edit of a post I made on Resetera detailing how SMT5 (or do I not need the “5″?) is so confused over basic details of gods and demons via the late game quests featuring Amon, Khonsu, and other familiar faces. It’s PACKED with SCREENSHOTS and OPINIONS! Importantly, it features a Khonsu-Ra redemption story. (Yes, Khonsu-Ra actually exists!)

Honestly, it’s mostly a way for me to come to terms with how Amon is depicted. Really fond of that guy normally and this time it’s not just the design that hurts. Plus some other ideas about mythological archetypes the game throws around that could have actually been an interesting avenue to explore! (I now have no idea what I meant by that.)

It begins with Khonsu, a moon good, having a red sun crest on his headdress. This blatantly wrong detail is important, of course, and we’ll come back to it later.

Via his sidequest introduction, he doesn’t want to be a Nahobino because he found a new purpose: underaged Japanese girls, as we’ll come to see.

Cut back to Taito. Amon declares himself "the former sun god," so here we see Atlus equate him not just with the Egyptian Amun (who is not a sun god by himself) but the combination Amun-Ra, or, really, just Ra. It's a very circuitous path to get to this conclusion, as is usual with SMT's attempts for comparative-mythology-linguistic-throughlines that assume all similar names mean a direct relation.

Amon wants you to retrieve the Winged Sun Crest to become the sun god again and though we never see it, it's presumably exactly the common sun imagery it suggests. Wikipedia is a terrible reference at times, but think of the Egyptian, Zoroastrian, and Assyrian examples on that page in particular.

Guarding the crest is none other than Asura and Mithras; the same Asura(-Oh, specifically) who typically thinks he is Ahura Mazda only demonized and Mithras who is likely assumed to be the same as Zoroastrianism's (or just Persia's) Mithra. So, they already have that "winged sun" connection... by SMT's logic. You beat Asura and Mithras and return the Winged Sun to the requester.

Amon and Atlus getting meta here! Then he wants to fight.

After beating Amon, Khonsu shows up to say Amon is ‘no different than the old Persian gods” (presumably referencing Asura (who, by the game’s logic, is Ahura Mazda) and Mithras (who is Mitra/Mithra) and that he has been condemned to be a Tyrant (proving the game thinks our Amon is just a fallen Amun [Ra]) and that he had forgotten his true name of Ra.

Short intermission: Isis wants you to kill Horus and retrieve his head:

Uh oh, Horus lost the power of the sun! Is this a “God’s Condemnation” thing or not? Because if you get Horus in your party (and you can do so well before you can encounter him in Chiyoda for the quest) he’s perfectly capable. This game has pretty severe ludonarrative dissonance in that regard.

Anyway, you kill him and give Isis her son’s head. Lovely! But not before she tells you some story about a prince sacrificing his blood for a girl that’s a pretty elementary allegory for what’s immediately to come.

Khonsu then steals Horus’ head because he cares about his sick Knowledge bearer: Yuzuru’s sister, who otherwise does nothing in the game.

Afterward, Khonsu takes the Winged Sun Crest and Horus' head to become... Khonsu Ra, a syncretic deity that doesn't exist but was teased in Khonsu's base design; it's the Mitra-Buddha of this game (or so I thought back in 2021).

If they had just called that design Ra it'd be great, but they like to just make things up now

Okay, here’s the proof for Khonsu Ra (All of the sources below were provided to me by @yamayuandadu​)::

Khonsou-Rê homme ou enfant? (Khonsu-Ra: Man or Infant?), by Jean-Claude DÉGARDIN:

https://api.nakala.fr/data/11280%2F0b59e75b/db288ec5aa9ad3b731833ec9f8915c3e44719967

This is a relatively brief academic paper that’s almost entirely in French, and, since I’m not a Francophone, it’s precisely why this line of inquiry into Khonsu-Ra languished in my drafts until now. Thankfully, the paper ends with a paragraph in English, with enough details to confirm that Khonsu-Ra seems to actually exist--and according to a scholar, at that:

In the Lexikon der Âgyptologie, H. Brunner indicates that the assimilation of Khonsu with the sun always corresponds to a juvenile form of that divinity. In his study of Coptos, C.Traunecker, as a logical continuation of Brunner's article and when questioning the identity of the divinity who benefited from the offering of Maat (in scene no.58 of the temple),and taking into account its hieracocephalic (Falcon-headed) aspect, hesitated to recognise the divinity as a form of Khonsu.The instances of Khonsu-Re' from the temple of Khonsu and from the Gateway of Evergetes at Karnak establish that, in this form, the divinity manifests itself equally weil with the characteristics of a juvenile god as those of a hieracocephalic  divinity, with the hairstyle being either solar or lunar. This allows one the infer that, for the Coptos scene, the divinity receiving the offering of Maat may perhaps be considered as being a hieracocephalic Khonsu-Re '

There’s certainly a lot more detail to be found in the full paper, but that can be  someone else’s job, lol. I’m content merely being the messenger here.

This book with reproductions of the reliefs on the aforementioned Gateway of Euergetes may also be useful: MIFAO 84 Clère, Pierre - La porte d'Evergète à Karnak 2eme Partie (1961)

And,lastly, from The Routledge Dictionary of Gods and Goddesses, Devils and Demons by Manfred Lurker:

Another source that names Chons-Re! That’s good enough for me. It’s looking like Khonsu-Ra is legit, albeit pretty damn obscure, especially for an Egyptian deity.

Khonsu's is honestly a meaty questline but... it's all predicated on research and information you just know Atlus didn’t do or have. So how did they do it? Were they just lucky? 🤷‍♂️Could be.

Rethinking Amon

With all the evidence at hand, I have to conclude that aspects of the design like the owl portion's outspread wings and Megido Flame are because Atlus always interpreted Doi’s Amon as Amun(-Ra)*. Megido Flame is even animated in SMT5 like Khonsu's Karnak (or Heliopolis Dawn); it's more a meteor than solar sphere but it's also a far cry from the “real” Amon's fire breath description. Doi Amon is basically just Atlus’ fetish for similar names, Devilman, and vestiges of the Goetia and Le Breton smashed together. I of course never liked the design but It's even more disappointing to me now knowing all of this, lol  *Think about it, Doi Amon is already kind of a “Winged Sun” himself.

But it's not like SMT if... didn't do the same Egyptian thing with Amon (its scenario is filled with Egyptian deities as a nod). But when you have a neutral design (Kaneko's Amon sprite is just a copy of the Dictionnaire Infernal ilustration), you can do anything with it. It's the opposite of the Mara Problem, basically, in that Mara is not design-neutral-- as-is, he can only ever be a penis-joke-thing, whereas if he looked more like Buddhist demon art Mara, he could more reasonably represent Buddhist evil as well as spout bad dick jokes, because those would be well within the “real” Mara’s wheelhouse. Doi Amon is similar in that he’ll probably only ever represent a bad Egyptian comparative myth demon, making the attempts to also frame him as being from the Goetia seem ludicrous.  See also: what SMT does with Asura/Ahura Mazda and Baal/Beelzebub, or, to a lesser degree, Astaroth/Ishtar.

There is a case to be made that the demonic name “Amon” itself was inspired by appearances of the Egyptian god’s name in the Bible. .But otherwise, the Goetia demon Amon has naught to do with Egypt, as there’s absolutely nothing in the Goetia that equates Amon with Amun. Think of it like this: Are Baal and Beelzebub identical? SMT would want you to think so, but they aren’t. Baal is a legitimate-though-nglected deity; Beelzebub is a character that only arose out of polemic and fear/insecurity over said deity. They each have their own roles and places; I’d argue. SMT is going to treat Amon and Amun the same forevermore, only SMT does not have an Amun (technically they do but it’s likely not going to reappear if it hasn’t yet), so I think with Amon they want to have their cake and eat it, too. And that bums me out.

[kexiu-0415]

3rd anniversary！

[kastillia]

[kivaember]

[aokozaki]

One thing that's kinda neat about SMT5 is that, as with other SMT games, the setting is modern day Japan, 20XX (following in the tradition of the first game being set in 199X).

And what that means is that SMT5 has something the previous games haven't had, due to accurately reflecting a new trend in Japanese highschool uniforms:

Gender free uniforms!

Much like real life Japanese Highschools, the Jonin School in SMT5 no longer determines the student dresscode by gender. It's neat.

[eerieayres-smt]

Sovereigns

My painting in personal tribute to the SMT 30th Anniversary Band of Shadows Live concert this year!

I was lucky enough to meet the 4 featured English VAs: Nahobino, Aogami, Demi-Fiend, and Fairy Pixie.

Shin Megami Tensei © Atlus Artwork © EerieAyres