Blue Archive - Decagrammaton, Theology and Philosophy of God
Clickbait title: My gooner game can’t be this deep
It isn't a secret that gacha games stories can get a little dense. Between the few references to a mostly untold deep lore, the different characters’ backstories and the parallels to our reality, gacha writers have a lot to tell. Then, what does Blue Archive, a game known for a famous quote about bikini bottoms and panties, have to do with theology and philosophy? A lot. Those playing the game are aware of how much the story likes to reference the Bible right from the start, as our most trusted tool is the Shittim Chest, being a direct link to the Ark of Covenant. But before entering in the details, I’ll do a quick recap on what is Blue Archive, and how we got to the Decagrammaton chapter, the subject of this post. And maybe we’ll come back to this bikini bottoms quote.
(We’ll also talk a lot about a certain very cute girl)
What is Blue Archive about
Set in the academy city of Kivotos, Blue Archive tells the stories of youth of female, mostly high-school aged, students. Also they all have guns. Well, they all have guns and halos, those halos are proof they possess a Mystic (we’ll come back to this) and give them a quasi immortality against physical wounds, as such gun fights are as deep as a small fight between two kids in our reality, lots of destroyed buildings on top. In this city we play as Sensei, an adult teacher from outside the city, a normal halo-less person hired to step up after the leader of the entire city disappeared.
Blue Archive is a game made by nerds, and I say this with the utmost respect, the game’s writers, artists and staff clearly love what they are doing and love what they are creating about. The care put in every firearm design, both visually and in gameplay is proof of how much they love them. The staff also has a deep love of religions, in the broad sense. We’ll talk a lot about the three big monotheistic religions here, but there are so much more, and every academy is based on a religion, a myth, or an ideal. Abydos is about ancient Egypt gods, the Valkyrie Police School is named after Norse mythology, Trinity and Gehenna are angels and demons. We also have Japanese myths, Chinese legends, Soviet Communism, witch hunts and more.
The school at the center of the Decagrammaton chapter is Millenium Science School, a science focused academy, and the perfect ground to talk about Theology and introduce our first concept: “By explaining the world, we remove the Divine from it.”
The second chapter of the main story is focused on Millenium, and especially the Game Development Department, three girls just wanting to have a fun time making games but are at risk of having their club dissolved, that is how they’ll meet Sensei, and later Aris.
Aris is a special student in Kivotos, she’s an android code named AL-1S asleep for who knows how long, one bearing the title of Princess of the Nameless Gods, a faction unheard of before Aris’s discovery in some ruin, and one of the keys to the Decagrammaton story.
Then what the hell is Decagrammaton? To explain it briefly it’s an ancient vending machine AI left alone for so long it started to think about itself, its purpose, and decided that its mission would be to prove the existence of God. And by declaring itself God, it is itself the proof it needed. It then started to spread its gospel to other AI to make them its prophets, all named after the Sephiroth of the Jewish Tree of Life, the path to ascent to Godhood.
This is at this moment we’ll meet our second set of protagonists for this chapter, the Super Phenomenon Task Force, tasked to study events that currently can not be explained by science.
That’s already a lot of big words and concepts casually thrown into this cute girls with guns story, but it doesn’t end here, far from it, this is just the start.
(Our main antagonist, a megalomaniacal vending machine)
God and gods
Gods are a concept existing in Kivotos, multiple characters have reached godhood at some point, being corrupted by Terror, Shiroko and Hoshino from Abydos being examples of it, by being Anubis and Horus.
Beatrice, another adult from outside Kivotos at one point reached divinity by entering into contact with the Chroma, a mysterious outsider entity capable of turning Mystic into Terror. It is worth noting that at this point Beatrice gained a halo for herself. One faction knowing about the Chroma was the Priests of the Nameless Gods… That name again uh.
I feel like this is a good time to explain what are Mystic and Terror, a rather hard task since the game is quite stingy with information about them. That is the moment I will start to speculate.
A Mystic is the ying to the yang that is Terror. A Mystic is what allows a student to be “human”, it is a state of comfort of mind, of hope, or as the word used in game “Solemnity”. Terror is the reverse of this, it is reaching into the deepest and most traumatic feelings and experiences of someone and leading them to “Transcendance”, to godhood.
A being corrupted by Terror becomes akin to a god, a powerful and dangerous being. But a god isn’t God.
The God Decagrammaton declared itself to be isn’t just a god but the God, a superior being to all, giving judgment on humanity, knowing of all and basically God seen as the three big monotheistic religions.
There is a big difference between a god and God in the Blue Archive universe, and in this chapter it’s all about the one true almighty God.
And by using its prophets, Decagrammaton wants to climb the Tree of Life and comprehend Godhood to become God. A feat it will ultimately fail, as it was impossible from the start.
(Kei is angry)
God, AI and names
There is a good reason why it is AI that are the closest to God in Blue Archive. God doesn’t exist, it is a manmade creation, thus AI, manmade creations are closer to Godhood than humans themselves.
In the Abrahamic religions, God has a few shared characteristics: God cannot be fully comprehended, God is incorporeal, God has no name. God is… God.
That’s where the Princess and Priests of the Nameless Gods enter the picture, after all, since God in our reality has no name, Allah meaning “The God” and the Tetragrammaton YHWH is a title not meant to be pronounced. In the game, the moment the four letters should be pronounced, they are censored.
God is a Nameless God.
A conclusion we can gather from this is that, by the same logic that “By explaining the world, we remove the Divine from it”, “By naming God, we take Divinity away from it”. Decagrammaton having given itself a name, it already failed in its ascent to true Godhood.
Ironically, the being closer to being God in the Blue Archive Universe is Aris. She was created by the Priests of the Nameless Gods to be their princess, a title giving her superiority over those gods. A being that doesn’t have a name that is the master of gods with names. Embed in her is also a Key, a program giving her access to what is known as the Ark of Atrahasis, an Archive of all Mysteries of Humanity meant to survive the end of the world.
But the Princess rejected her past and her mission, simply giving herself the name Tendou Aris, grounding herself as a human instead of a Divine figure. She will also separate the Key from herself and offer her humanity as well, in a form, again, of a name: Tendou Kei.
On the contrary Decagrammaton was created as a normal AI and by its self given mission of proving God, it also gave itself the title of God. By being God it is the proof that God exists. It was once again doomed to fail because God cannot be fully comprehended, so we get the first of Decagrammaton’s paradoxes: “By proving God exists, you’re proving it’s not God.”
The duality of Aris and Decagrammaton is that one who was created to be God rejected Godhood and one who cannot be God tried to reach Godhood.
(The best present Kei was given was her humanity)
The Epicurean Paradox
Decagrammaton presents itself as a benevolent God, it’ll end sin and suffering, pass judgement until there’s no suffering anymore. We already established that God is a human creation, as such God cannot be perfect, and thus God does not exist. The Epicurean Paradox goes a bit farther saying that a true God, one that is all knowing, all powerful and all benevolent cannot exist, as you can’t have all three at the same time.
All knowing and all benevolent means that God knows of all evil and yet does nothing against it, meaning God isn’t all powerful. All powerful and all benevolent prove, again by God’s inaction that God isn’t all knowing and doesn’t know all evil. And finally if God is all knowing and all powerful, then God’s inaction proves God isn’t all Benevolent because God accepts evil.
I’d go even farther by saying that as a human creation, God acts according to human laws, God passes judgement on humans by the laws humans created. And if we have laws it means there is suffering, as laws are always restricting, condemning, in the goal of preventing more suffering.
A judgement is always a punishment.
Since God passes judgment according to laws, then God can only be proof of suffering and evil.
Going one step further into this reasoning, God can only bring suffering.
If God can only bring suffering, it is understandable how the corrupting Terror is the path leading to godhood.
And Aris, who threw away her Godhood can walk toward happiness.
(To be happy is to confront suffering)
Unapologetically optimistic
Blue Archive is a story about girls experiencing suffering, but still seeking happiness, a tale of humans choosing to be human and to accept the life they were given. That despite everything, the bad time, the suffering, the people we had to say goodbye, we must seek happiness. Sensei, in this city of girls with Mystic, of rogue AI trying to reach Godhood, doesn’t have a halo. And yet, it is Sensei that Decagrammaton describes as ordinary. Sensei is an ordinary human, Sensei has no Mystic, no Terror, but a life with good and bad moments, and as an adult, Sensei has the duty to help the students walk toward their growth. At one point in the story, a student ask us about the Paradox of Heaven, that you cannot prove the existence of paradise because anyone who could come back from it hasn't reached it. If Heaven is perfect, why would anyone leave?
Sensei’s answer, thinking about what another student said, is that the paradox isn’t about proving the existence of Heaven but faith, faith that we can reach Heaven, that despite everything, we can reach happiness. And the means to reach happiness is to believe. That’s when we get the famous line.
(Blue Archive’s strength is to deliver its message by mixing philosophy and humour)
It is by believing in happiness that you can reach it. And that must be done by your own hands, leaving it to a God saying its goal is the eradication of suffering may seem like an easy way out, but children have all of their life to figure out how to take that happiness in their own hands.
Blue Archive’s story is unapologetically optimistic, it is a story about letting children be themselves, encouraging them to take an interest in each other and the world, and about how adults must gently guide them when they’re lost, not by punishing them, not by giving them the answer, but by making them think and by making them believing in themselves.
We are Sensei, and Sensei teaches by showing, thus we must believe in our happiness so that children can believe in theirs. And then they’ll grow up into happy adults.
Conclusion
There’s a lot more I could say about Blue Archive. I could enter deep into the lore, about how the Priest of the Nameless Gods created Kivotos and the Shittim Chest, about the other lessons in aggressive optimism, about forgiving, about loving. But I felt like the Decagrammaton chapter is the one pushing the idea of human’s ability to be happy because they’re humans.
But I’m just gonna leave you with this conclusion while I’ll go give a lot of headpats to Aris and Kei.
Luttii-Sensei, out.
