Before I say anything, remember: we already know clearly that human souls can be assimilated by Festum. They lose individuality, but who they were is still there, just now, well, assimilated. but the point is that Mir can touch human souls, and not necessarily with a need for the body. Remember the radio messages.LightningCount wrote:The one thought I had about the Walter and Hiroto bus scene when I watched it was...maybe these are spirits leaving the human realm and going to heaven. That was the only sense I could make of it. But then, that sort of goes against the Island ghost concept of every good fallen Islander dwelling there in essence. Very confusing.Areku wrote:Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of Hiroto and Walter's ghosts...
I'm curious, LightningCount, how do you feel about Yumiko? She's alarmingly similar to your Shouko example, but you haven't mentioned her by name. How do you feel about Yumiko getting crushed, immediately getting revived, and then fading away when Miwa accepts her death?
(Speaking of Miwa, if these ghosts are the real deal, it seems to me that we should have had a Miwa and Michio scene at some point. Another victim of the pacing, or a conspicuous absence?)
As far as Yumiko, I wasn't 100% happy with the resurrection, but I saw it as an avatar of the Ashoka Mir to continue the dialogues with Miwa and Emery. It wasn't really Yumiko. It was a Mir playing a "mother" role. That's how I justified that. It was clearly never the real Yumiko after her death. But then, yeah...what happened to the REAL Yumiko's ghost, and where was Michio? I didn't even think about that.
I just realized, I'm not clear on what happened to the Ashoka Mir. It survived, but did it merge with Altair, or just set up on another of the ALVIS Islands?
First, about Yumiko: we often don't like to think about it, especially us people with spiritual beliefs, but the fact is, people have been brought back from clinical death minutes to hours after their hearts stopped or were proclaimed deceased. I would tend to classify such actions as miracles, but in the context of the story let us suppose Ashoka was watching and guarding them the whole while and saved Yumiko's life within this still clinically unexplained "resuscitation zone". Furthermore, let us also recall that Ashoka might have already been worming its way into Yumiko's mind before then, possibly allowed it. After all, Soushi returned in a human body fully equpped with human faculties, unlike the ghosts. I tend to see her as like him. After all, her death and resuscitation happened within minutes, and we truly can only speculate about how much real damage her body suffered. sometimes there's not as much squished parts as you'd think. It's rare, but sometimes the body doesn't deform the way it should, even after suffering equivalent damage.
On Ashoka, yes, it set up at the Third Alvis. It wanted to contact Altair, but Miwa is still too young and growing her up further would damage her mentally, as Emiry stated.
Speaking of the Urd cyrstal entities, I feel like they were meant to show that the Festum are clearly becoming more like human beings. They are reaching understanding, but their way is frightening in a fundamental way to humanity. Also, it appears Vagrant and the Third Alvis Mir fragment created a their own Gordion Crystal ghost...place...as well, only based on hatred. I feel there is a lot of meaning behind the crystals, how it's part of the information Mjolner sent in the original series. We're just not seeing the final product yet of a very long-term plan. Maybe.
Areku's suggestion is frightening, in spite of all I've said. It is VERY likely to me that the Mir is indeed just using the masks of the dead to manipulate the living. That, or it could be the "souls" themselves are actually going to the afterlife, and what is preserved in the Well is just a "death echo", the imprint of a the people who pass on, not the soul itself. If so, it explains why no one has been revived a la Koyo or whatever-the-heck happened to Soushi. It also gives us a more clear picture as why they gave us a scene of Akira's vision. He was experiencing the real thing, while his echo remained behind, the Mir using it to direct actions he would have taken in life, based off that echo's personality quirks.
Should also be stated now that the three new pilots, Mimika, Sui, and Leo ARE cured of death by assmilation. They become Festum-like entities, but their minds and souls remain. The older generation are the only ones we see who actually die from their assimilation phenomenon. Sure, its different for them, but its not a significant enough change to save their lives.
I also feel the lack of Fumihiko in the epilogue to be...morbid at best. I don't think the old Alvis generation will be in the next series. Or if so, not for long.
