Everything about me is borrowed
So, it's New Years, so happy birthday to Marie's voice actress, Eden Riegel! And happy early birthday to Johnny Yong Bosch, voice of Yu Narukami and Tohru Adachi, whose birthday is next Tuesday on the 6th!
As you all know Iām quite deranged about Marie, so I wanted to talk about her relationship with identity. Namely her wild identity crisis driven by her relationship with memory, and how it plays into her character.
Marie is amnesiac, and therefore, when she stumbled into the Velvet Room, knew nothing about herself. Itās implied she knew basic things from the outset, as shown by her explicit literacy, but herself? Nothing. And since sheās not actually a human, that makes life even weirder for her. She doesnāt know who or what she is.
She denies this is an issue initially, butā¦ itās fairly clear that sheās lying. During her Rank 2, she asks Yu whether she was ever a loud silly kid, with a hint of longing and worry in the wording, to which we actually find out about her amnesia.
Of course this is something that deeply troubles Marie. After all, memories are incredibly important to people, and are crucial to a person's identity. Stanley Klein discusses the relationship between memory and identity, and how memories help reinforce the person's identity, in his article Memory and the Sense of Personal Identity.
Strikingly, when episodic memory is partially intact, people retain a sense of identity even if there has been dramatic memory loss.
Consider the famous case of H.M., who had a large portion of his
medial temporal lobes surgically removed to alleviate seizures. After the surgery, H.M. could not form new episodic memories. But he reveled in telling a few stories about his childhood. One of H.M.ās biographers recounts: āHe tells of living in South Coventry, Connecticut, where he could go behind the house to shoot guns. He had a rifle, āOne with a scope!ā he says, always enthusiastic at this point in his story. āAnd I had handguns too! A .38 and a .32āā (Hilts 1995, p. 138). The difference here between the child and the man is profound. After surgery, H.M. was no longer capable of taking care of himself, he could not remember whether his parents were alive or dead, he did not know where he was living, and he was, as noted, unable to form new episodic memories. And yet he seems to take himself to be identical with the young man with a .38 and a .32.
[...]
Some psychological systems seem to be tied to very particular kinds of representations. For instance, the facial perception system simply cannot produce a percept of a frontal concave face. As the hollow-face illusion shows, if the facial features are present in a concave mask, it is inevitable that we see the face as convex. It is possible that something similar holds for episodic memory and the representation of the self.
One viable psychological hypothesis is that the retrieval of an episodic memory inevitably issues a representation of self-as-owner. On this view, one simply cannot get the content of episodic memory without also getting the āminenessā along with it (see, for example, Klein et al. 2004; Wheeler et al. 1997).
Even as HM cannot make new memories, he still identifies his past to be his own, and therefore that man with the guns to be himself by taking ownership of this knowledge. Marie, who has no episodic memory whatsoever, does not have this, minus the comb she brought with her. She has no episodic memory, so she could not even tell you her name--she states that she did not even have one before Margaret bestowed the name Marie to her. There is no "mineness" to what Marie knows at the beginning of her story, save for the comb. But she couldn't tell you why the comb is hers anyways. She doesn't recall how she got it.
This terror over her lack of identity is actually shown in her poetry that is unfortunately very awkward to read due to their lack of... flow? However, these poems are hugely important, and are repeated throughout her dungeon. Her very first one, Sea Foam, is a pretty good portrayal of her identity crisis. The last stanza of it details her fear.
I am the little mermaid...
Unable to return, the little mermaid...
Fated to foam, the little mermaid...
This poem has a couple meanings. The Little Mermaid is a Danish tale by Hans Christen Andersen, and it's about a mermaid who falls in love with a human. Marie compares herself to the mermaid because of how she is not human, and knows this makes her stand out and makes her feel like she doesn't belong. She states her belief that she is "unable to return," these being her memories of her past as this "mermaid."
Now, the "fated to foam" part is some foreshadowing, but we're getting to that later. For now, it portrays her sense that she will never be able to have a sense of identity, and therefore never deserve to be with humankind. As, in the original story, mermaids turn into seafoam when they die, and unlike humans, their souls are not immortal. However, for Marie, this also shows how memory can be attached to belonging. And furthermore, in the story, the mermaid became the first with an immortal soul thanks to her love of that human.
Subsequent poems, such as Sea Foam's immediate successor Fly!, shows Marie's relationship with connection and the Investigation Team, who befriend her throughout her social link. Fly! actually portrays her inner conflict over who she is.
Where am I going, you ask? Don't ask such stupid questions.
I don't need a map.
I throw away my compass.
My heart will show me the way.
Am I not lonely, you ask?
Yeah, right! I scorn the company of my own shadow.
Her opening lines not answering the question given to her portray that she does not really know where she is going, just that she wants to find who she is. She's looking for herself. With the line "my heart will show me the way," she shows that she truly does want to find her memories, and therefore find her identity But I want to note the last lineā¦ She says she scorns the company of her own shadow. But the Shadow is something important in Persona 4, and she, as a Velvet Room Attendant, is familiar with this concept. She is implying here that she is afraid to find out who and what she really is, wondering if it could spell disaster. This fear is first shown in Rank 2, but she thinks further about it in her Rank 4, where she discusses the idea of āyouthā with Yosuke, as the idea of facing herself is something that both intrigues and unnerves her.
But of course, as we know, facing yourself leads to a better understanding of who you are and your identity. And in Persona, can give you superpowers, which are based upon your personality and experiences. Itās a sign of Marieās fear of self-exploration, something we learn more about throughout her arc.
You Killed Me and Eternal Midnight should honestly be discussed as a pair. It's talking about the Investigation Team. Obviously Yu is most notable as he talks to her the most often and knows the most about her out of the group, but they represent her conflict over developing an attachment to the team. These two poems play a pretty big role in the development of her relationship with Inaba and the Investigation Team during her dungeon.
Marie's sense of self at this point is starting to develop as she gains this attachment. And though she doesn't realize it at this point, she's gaining memories that give her this attachment to the Investigation Team. And this is why sheās confused about āfacing herselfāā she doesnāt know who āherselfā is yet, and is apprehensive about knowing.
You Killed Me is about her fear of the attachment she's developing, which gets really contextualized when you find out who she really is and why she even has attachment issues in the first place. She feels abandoned, and she doesn't want to make that same mistake again.
You are a murderer.
By your silent smile, by your composed voice,
By your dark eyes, by your bashful fingers
I am slain.
The first stanza is about what she's convinced will happen--this connection will kill her, and she wishes she weren't so overwhelmed with loneliness and care for the person she's addressing. She deeply cares about this person and wants to stay with them. The reason for this is bluntly because she is Izanami, who was a deity that felt abandoned by her husband after she died, since he did not comply with her wishes to not light up Yomi to see her face and did not recognize her upon seeing the corpse she became.
So having taken and broken off one of the end-teeth of the multitudinous and close-toothed comb stuck in the august left bunch [of Izanagi's hair], he lit one light and went in and looked. Maggots were swarming. and [she was] rotting, and in her head dwelt [O-Ikazuchi,] the Great-Thunder, in her breast dwelt [Honoo-Ikazuchi,] the Fire-Thunder, in her left hand dwelt [Waka-ikazuchi,] the Young-Thunder, in her right hand dwelt [Tsuchi-Ikazuchi,] the Earth-Thunder, in her left foot dwelt [Naru-Ikazuchi] the Rumbling-Thunder, in her right foot dwelt [Fusu-Ikazuchi] the Couchant-Thunder:āaltogether eight Thunder-Deities had been born and dwelt there. Hereupon [Izanagi], overawed at the sight, fled back, whereupon his younger sister [Izanami] said: "Thou hast put me to shame," and at once sent the [Yomotsu-shikome] to pursue him.
But she's afraid of not being attached as well. She wants to get closer to the IT, and hates how she feels like she doesn't belong, as shown in the final verses of Eternal Midnight.
I can't catch up to your distant back.
Look! Twilight creeps upon us!
The distance to you is like an eternal night...
She's lonely, and hates that she doesn't feel like she belongs, even as she's scared of connecting. This is shown in the second stanza of You Killed Me, which contradicts the fear she showed in the first one.
I am a corpse,
Foolish, wretched, happy.
Surely, I'll simply rot away.
My last words?
Adieu, au revoir... mon cheri.
Marie is afraid to develop these attachments again, fearing it will hurt her in the process, but the last stanza states that she wants to love the Investigation Team, and is desperately trying to convince herself not to. She thinks being alone and detached is easier, but she won't stop herself from attaching even if it's dangerous.
(Also, note it's "mon chƩri," which is masculine as opposed to the feminine "ma chƩrie." It implies to me that the poem is addressed to Yu, in a sense, since he's the one who talks to her the most... which is explicitly confirmed by her after Yu reads it.)
That's so smooth, I'd say it was almost as smooth as sandpaper!
...Wait...
She wants to belong somewhere, she wants people to accept her with open arms. It's actually part of what influenced her character design and why she stands out so much, wearing so many odd garments compared to any other character in her game. She's desperately lonely and hates the feeling. She has no memories to truly connect her with anyone, so she doesn't know where she's supposed to go.
This wish to belong gets granted, as shown in her Rank 5 where the entire Investigation Team comes together to meet her and start cracking jokes. Marie joins in the fun, laughing with them about Kanji somehow having never heard the word āsubtleā out loud in his life.
My List is a bit of a weird one, instead covering her likes and dislikes. I don't know if you could call this a poem, but poems are inherently odd creatures, as I have read quite a few in my life, some better than others. I'm just going to drop the whole poem here.
The Hated:
* People who are all talk. Lying grown-ups!!
* People who keep up appearances. Hypocrites!!
* Myself. <- I hate myself!!! Dumbass!!
The Liked:
* Animals. Only cute ones, though. Like cats.
* Milk tea. I like lemon, too, though.
* Black. Blue. Grey, too... only dark grey.
And...Me.
Marie states here that she feels conflicted opinions on herself. She hates herself, she states it outright. Mainly because she doesnāt feel like she belongs. And I want to talk about the line āpeople who keep up appearances.ā I think Marie is one of these. Marie is someone who is very distrustful as shown through her poems, but itās been shown through her poems time and time again that she wants to connect and is listening to herself. A part of Marie is angry she canāt just easily pretend like nothing is wrong, and envies people who hide it better. Though, she does have some positive feelings towards herself, but the fact she separates it from the list makes it feel like a realization, like she's glad she's alive despite the constant crises she has.
The poem Fallen Angel is arguably the biggest giveaway to Marieās identity, since itās about herself. Albeit, sheās a fallen deity, not a fallen angel. To be honest, this poem is less about her identity crisis and more implying that sheās beginning to figure out who she is. Which is to say, she identifies herself in the poem.
The fallen angel is chained down.
Her wings torn off, eroded by prejudice...
This sounds a lot like Marie's dialogue during the ending of the game, where she explains that she is the shard of Izanami that had faith in humanity, even as humanity began to stop pursuing the truth. Her wings being torn off is the Izanami we see splitting away from her.
Will she eventually turn to nothing, forced into the realm of oblivion?
No!
Her requiem will become a roar and tear away the mask of hypocrisy!
This references her existential crisis that she has in her dungeon, before regaining a sense of identity after finding community in the Investigation Team, which I will talk about later.
I also want to talk about her Rank 9, my favorite rank, where she explicitly expresses fear over feeling like she has no identity. She talks about how everything she has was given to her, but she doesn't even word it like that--she words it as "borrowed." Like she owns nothing about herself.
But she acknowledges the impact Yu and his friends have had on her, later in the link, since she realizes thanks to them, sheās made new memories. Something to connect to herself as a person. She is genuinely grateful for the memories, and for the identity, being around the IT has given her.
Now here's where we get to her dungeon. This lack of a sense of self continues even after she regains her memories, since her memories are incomplete in their recovery. She also has new poems, which will be analyzed.
Her memory gained is a bit ironic, her "self" is that she in a sense does not deserve to have a self. She is a vessel, hollow. Furthermore, this incomplete memory reinforces the sense that Marie has of not belonging with the Investigation Team, which is what causes her to push them away, believing she does not deserve them, which leads to her deeply denying she needs anyone. If nothing belongs to her, she doesnāt need it anyway. She is trying to reassure herself that she is okay with death.
Marieās behavior of pushing others away is her completely internalizing her sense of not belonging, and it doesnāt have any helpful impact on her psyche as she fails to dull the blow of terror she feels. Her self esteem is at rock bottom, as she calls herself the IT's enemy.
This is reinforced by her divine name: Kusumi-no-Okami. A deity that does not exist in Japanese Shinto records. The closest known deity to her identity is the one of the sons of Amaterasu, who is named Kuma-no-kusubi. He is also believed to be the guardian of the Kumano shrine.
The fifth of five male and three female offspring produced as a result of the trial by pledge (ukei) undertaken byĀ AmaterasuĀ andĀ Susanoo, produced from the "seeds" (monozane) represented by the jewels wrapped aroundĀ Amaterasu's right arm. Some scholars have identified thisĀ kamiĀ as the central object of worship (saijin) at the shrine Kumano Jinja in Shimane Prefecture, but Izumo no kuniĀ fudokiĀ states that the shrine'sĀ kamiĀ is Kumano Kamuro noĀ mikotoĀ (another name forĀ Susanoo), while the Izumo no kuni miyatsuko kan'yogoto calls theĀ kamiĀ Kaburoki Kumano Åkami kushimikenu.
Which actually does fit with Marie, as she considers herself the guardian of the Hollow Forest. But there is so little information on Kumanokusubi otherwise, it feels like all he is. And that's all Marie feels she is.
And with this Iād like to cover a new poem, one exclusive to the Hollow Forest and which vividly colors her relationship with belonging. She describes herself as the queen of the Hollow Forest, and resigns herself to her perceived fate. Furthermore, she tells the Investigation Team not to go after her in this poem, as she is ānothing.ā
This was why she was unnerved by the idea of facing herself. This incomplete image she has is the terror of finding that she wasn't anything at all. In her eyes sheās just destined to die. I want to point out how Rise Kujikawa had a similar arc, in that she lamented feeling misunderstood before embracing the different aspects of herself, leaning on friends for help.
However, Rise at this point had accepted the trust of the Investigation Team, and therefore officially has a safe community. Marie, in contrast, has not embraced the IT yet, not completely. You Killed Me and Eternal Midnight prove that sheās still resistant despite not wanting to be, so in Marieās eyes she has no community. And the idea of lacking a sense of community can wreck someoneās psyche. She has nowhere she believes she deserves to attach herself to, which annihilates her self-esteem--a sense of belonging to a group is very much important to one's self-esteem.
Self-esteem was significantly and positively related to perceptions of belongingness, r(117)D.48, p<.001, the composite measure of worldview validation, r(117)D.48, p<.001, and each of its subscales: having oneās beliefs and values shared, r(117)D.19, p<.05, and fulfilling oneās beliefs and values, r(117)D.45, p<.001. Participants with higher self-esteem indicated having stronger perceptions of belongingness and worldview validation. These correlations confirm that both belongingness and worldview validation are related to self-esteem. In addition, belongingness was also significantly and positively related to worldview validation and its two subscales, rs>.25, ps<.001. These findings are a prerequisite for (and suggestive of) the view that worldview validation might account for the relationship between belongingness and self-esteem. If worldview validation accounts for the effect on self-esteem, then controlling for worldview validation should significantly reduce the correlation between belongingness and self-esteem ā indeed reduce it to zero in the case of a full accounting. This is not what we found. The relationship between self-esteem and belongingness remained highly significant after controlling for either worldview validation or the subscale measures, rs>.38, ps<.001. Moreover, the strength of the relationship between belongingness and self-esteem was not significantly different when controlling for either worldview validation or the subscale measures, zs<1.31, ps>.09, even despite the relatively large sample size and high power. This outcome suggests that the relationship between belongingness and self-esteem was not attributable to worldview validation. Rather, belongingness appeared to contribute independently to self-esteem. Perceived belongingness explained additional variability in self-esteem that could not be attributed to perceptions of worldview validation. Independence worked both ways, in the sense that the effect of belongingness did not account for full effect of worldview validation. The relationship between self-esteem and worldview validation was significant when controlling for belongingness, r(114)D.22, p<.01. The strength of this relationship, however, was significantly weaker than when not controlling for belongingness, zDĀ”3.20, p<.001. This suggests that belongingness might account for part but not all of the relationship between self-esteem and worldview validation.
Which is shown as she self-isolates here. So she reacts by suppressing a different side of herself. You remember how she realized she'd formed memories with the Investigation Team? Well, now she is trying to suppress those memories, in order to distance herself further from the Investigation Team in an attempt to protect both them and herself from grief, but it doesn't work. You see fully intact pieces of Inaba all over her dungeon. She loves the Investigation Team, and she loves Inaba, because she desperately needs that communityāand itās, in a sense, for her survival.
This implies she feels a sense of belonging to Inaba, something she is trying to get rid of, because she now has a sense nothing human deserves to belong to her. Actually, it's completely intensified. She has explicitly stated that she hates herself, and the incomplete memories she has convey that her life wasn't ever meant to be her own. This also contextualizes "You Killed Me" even more. She has a sense of Inaba being her home. It's not just about her new friend Yu anymore. It's about her joining with humanity when she gets violently reminded she isn't human. But, ironically, even though she asserts her inhumanity throughout this dungeon, her statements actually emphasize her humanity. Humans are social animals, something that is the entire point of Persona 4āisolation has a severe mental and physical toll on us, and we watch the toll it takes on her. She's an Inaban now.
I also want to point out that Marie states that the name she identifies herself as here, Kusumi-no-Okami, she calls her āreal name,ā rejecting the name Marie that sheās used to identify herself.
Names are pretty important to identity, as theyāre literal words used to identify individuals. In this situation, she implicitly identifies the name āMarieā to be an alias, and not her real name. Aliases are used in a number of situations, but she uses it to invoke the idea of being a criminal herselfāafter all, the group was formed to track down a murderer. After all, aliases and codenames are often used by spies to mask their identities and the natures of their projects so they do not get caught during acts of espionage. many examples can be pointed out in the nonfiction book Code Warriors, about codebreakers and spies in the Cold War. I'm going to point out one project's codenames since the author's note elaborates on it, and the case of William Weisband, a spy for the KGB.
At Arlington Hall the project was referred to only as the āSpecial
Problems Sectionā or by its designation B-III-b-9 on the organizational chart, which indicated only that it had something to do with Frank Rowlettās General Cryptanalytic Branch, responsible for every code other than Japanese military. The Navy at first called its Russian section Op-20-GZ, then it became the āForeign Language Research Section,ā or Op-20-GV; shortly after that the name was changed yet again, to Op-20-3-G-10, and the staff were issued new red badges bearing nothing but the number 10, which meant nothing to anybody.*
*A welter of code names further concealed the actual target of the projects. Following its standard practice of giving the codes of each country a color designator, the Army initially referred to the Russian systems as Blue. The Navy used the code name Rattan, sequentially designating each system it had identified with the letter R followed by a hyphen and a number. In June 1945 the Navy changed the code name to Bourbon and switched all the Rās in the system descriptors to Bās.
[...]
Notes made by a Russian journalist and former KGB officer, Alexander Vassiliev, who from 1994 to 1996 was permitted to examine files in the KGB archives, later confirmed that Weisbandāone of whose code names was ZHORAāwas, as many in NSA had long suspected, the source of the leaks that triggered the Black Friday code changes. Following Gouzenkoās defection, Weisband had been deactivated as a precaution along with most of the other Soviet agents in America, but in February 1948 the Soviets reestablished contact, and that was when Weisband passed word to Moscow of Arlington Hallās cryptanalytic successes against Soviet code systems.
In August 1948, Weisband asked to be given asylum in the USSR, but the MGB kept him in place, providing a steady flow of payments and vague promises of future assistance: he was too valuable an asset to give up quite yet.
At Arlington Hall he continued to supply documents, which he smuggled out under his shirt and passed to Soviet officials at rendezvous points around Washington. In July 1949, Weisband told his handlers he was worried that suspicions might lead to him, and asked that the Russians not be āoverly hastyā in introducing cipher security changes that might expose him. In fact, by then the deed had already been done, as a 1949 MGB report noted:
"On the basis of materials received from ZHORA, our state security agencies implemented a set of defensive measures, which resulted in a significant decrease in the effectiveness of the efforts of the Amer. decryption service. As a result, the pres. volume of the American decryption and analysis serviceās work has decreased significantly."
The reason she frames it like this is out of guilt, because she sees herself in a bad light for supposedly deceiving the IT. But I want to point out something about names and aliases. The first is that people can possess multiple ārealā names. To get anecdotal, I personally do, and these names carry many aspects of the identity of the wearer, even if the names are completely different.
For example, I have a name for two different languages, signifying my own connection to the cultures those two languages originate from. They are completely different in surname and given name, but they're both meant to be in reference to me. The names are used in different situations--namely, what language is being spoken. Another example is mentioned in the case of Misuzu Rebecca Abe, a Japanese-Scottish woman who has her Japanese and English names lodged within her name.
Ms Misuzu Abe was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and lives in Fukuoka, Kyushu. She was named Misuzu ē¾é“ (beautiful bell) by her grandfather whose family hailed from Nagano prefecture; the name appears in a local folk song. Her brother is Louis. This is a post-1990s bilingual name that works in English and Japanese unlike the āTakuyaā and āKentaā of the previous generation. The same principle works with girlsā names also: before, āKeikoā and āHanakoā now Anna, Yuna and Naomi. Misuzuās mother, a Christian, gave her a middle name, Rebecca. Easier to pronounce in some non-Japanese situations like shops and restaurants, Misuzu alternates between the two names, overseas. Her Scottish friends call her Becky.
Abe uses "Misuzu" and "Becky" in different social contexts, and they both function as her name. Furthermore, nicknames exist, and count as aliases. A person can have many nicknames throughout their life, whether itās given to them by their parents or friends. These arenāt really acts of deception. If Marie doesnāt see āMarieā as her actual name, she can still use it as a nickname if she so desires. A lot of people use nicknames throughout their life, and often use it as a sign of closeness, since I mentioned people can use different names in different contexts. Kusumi-no-Okami may be Marie's real name, but Marie is also a functioning name and something used to identify her by her friends.
As Daniel Vanderveken argues, different names may belong to
different worlds, for āthe sense of a proper name in a context is the sense of the bearer of that name for the speaker of that context. Thus, different names with the same bearer must have different senses in contexts where the speaker does not know that they name the same individualā (1990: 98). Nicknames are so embedded in social context as to be unreliable when dislocated. Also, as Searle has argued, it is not clear how the causal chain works, but itās not āpure,ā in the sense that causation alone accounts for onomastic reference (1983: 235ā236), nor is it clear how speakers know the right name for the right person at the right time (Evans, 1973: 194; and Searle, 1983: 241). In other words, semantics of naming, and, I will argue, especially nicknaming, is much more pragmatic than at first it seems.
[...]
The politics inherent in social contexts complicates matters further. If Lucy invites Pig Pen to her party, the illocution is more complicated, because pejoration is not the only connotation operating in her use of the nickname Pig Pen. Lucy may be disgusted by Pig Pen, and she may be willing to voice that disgust in the nickname Pig Pen, but Pig Pen is part of her social network, arguably even a friend, to the extent that Lucy is capable of friendship. Thus, when Lucy says, I assert the right to call you Pig Pen, she really means I assert the right to call you by the pejorative Pig Pen because we are familiar, where both pejoration and familiarity (as well as respect, for instance) are categories of evaluating, ranking, and judging. Such categories are not mutually exclusive, and because they are often combined in verdictive force, those hearing the nickname used (including the named) have many ways to interpret its illocutionary meaning. (Familiarity might be expressed in the strength of assertion rather than as a verdictive, such that the assertion by a namer unfamiliar with the named to a naming right might be taken as impolite assertion, rather than impolite evaluation.)
Through denying her nickname that the Investigation Team knows her as and asserting its status as a traitorous codename instead, Marie attempts to distance herself from the Investigation Team and antagonize herself in order to convince them that her death is necessary, and indeed to convince them to dislike her, frame her actions as a betrayal so theyāre willing to let her go. She even emphasizes over and over that if she lives, the world will most likely be destroyed.
However, the Investigation Team argues in favor of her staying alive, asserting that she does belong wherever she likes. Such as Inaba, which she fails to hide how much she loves by attempting to throw away her memories. Naoto in particular points it out, probably one of my favorite moments of hers in the game. And then Kanji adds more to it, pointing out that she canāt continue experiencing what she loves if sheās dead.
This ends up contextualizing her poem with the fallen angel as well, as she helps the Investigation Team tear away the lies by getting rid of the supernatural fog that would have allowed humanity to keep lying to itself. It also contextualizes her final poem before the Hollow Forest, titled Release Yourself!
RELEASE YOURSELF!
FROM DESIRE! FROM IMPULSE!
LOGIC AND RATIONALES ARE EXCUSES FOR THE WEAK!
RELEASE YOURSELF!
YOUR HEART'S VOICE! YOUR INTERNAL SCREAM!
IN EXCHANGE FOR A LOST VOICE
GRAB HOLD OF YOUR PROOF OF LIFE!
NEVER LET IT GO!
In this, she asserts that she has to stop everything from being bottled up, and she tells herself she has to face herself at some point. Her internal scream being her Shadow, which she technically doesn't have, but is portrayed as Kusumi-no-Okami, her divine form, who overtakes her temporarily, asserting she can't face the truth. The implication here is that part of her fears that her identity is built upon a lie, something Kusumi-no-Okami vehemently assertsāwhich is demonstrably untrue.
I make the assertion here that the "lost voice" she is exchanging is not just her self-doubt, but Kusumi-no-Okami. As Shadows are "lost voices" repressed by their full selves, and Kusumi-no-Okami repeatedly questions why truth is necessary. "Grabbing hold of [her] proof of life" is self-explanatory, she is afraid of dying, especially with all the love she holds for Inaba and her desire to be an Inaban.
This fight, the severing of her fate, is her "proof of life" to never let go. To identify her as a human and an Inaban, and someone who deserves to be around the Investigation Team. They love her, they consider her one of them, and are welcoming her with open arms. And Marie, after a moment of bewilderment, accepts herself as an Inaban, and as inextricably connected to the Investigation Team even if she is not technically a member. She is their friend. She even gets a job as a meteorologist.
And furthermore, she gets a much more complete picture of who she is at the finale, as she is actually a shard of Izanami. Namely, the piece of Izanami that loved humanity and believed in it.
Marie got more context to her identity, because she didn't deny herself aspects of her identity in the first place. "Human," "Inaban," "friend of the Investigation Team," these are all things that are deeply important to Marie. And if she chose to die that day, she would not have found out who she was. Marie isn't a borrowed name, it's a gifted name. Nickname or not, itās just as real a name as Kusumi-no-Okami, or Izanami, or Mariko Kusumi. Identity exploration helps people understand who they are, and if theyāre somehow different from their perceived norm, then it can help them understand they are still worthy of love even while operating outside of said norm. Names are a way to explore that, and community is a way to shape your identity and explore it safely.
