Alright, let’s ramble about Pandora!
Akira actually talks about Pandora this episode, which was a pleasant surprise.
Not exactly how I would word it, but they’ve got the gist of it there.
That is exactly how I would word it.
Pandora was created by Zeus and the other gods to be the first mortal woman, specifically intended to exactly as Akira stated. She was given by them to Epimetheus.
Everyone knows vaguely about Pandora’s box. However, the exact nature of the pithos Pandora received, aka Pandora’s Box as people know colloquially, is actually argued by some poets. Many argue that her pithos is what carried the plagues, but others argue that in fact, her pithos carried blessings, and it was Pandora herself, not the pithos, that contained evil. Lots of Greek poets were raging misogynists and insisted that women, the first among them being Pandora, were the root of all men’s suffering, not the pithos specifically. Pretty much all ancient versions of this myth either direct state, or imply, that women were created to punish men, as Pandora was created to punish Prometheus and his brother. To punish, specifically, the sons of Iapetos.
I’ve talked before about the possibility of Yusaku actually being Iapetos, not Atlas, and this development does fall in line with that, with Ai being Yusaku’s “son” who is being punished by the gods for his transgressions against them. That brings about its own dangerous implications, Iapetos representing the end of everything and all.
Back to the matter of Pandora, if her pithos carried blessings, then when she opened it, all the good spirits besides Hope abandoned humanity and fled back to the heavens.
Interpretations of Pandora and her pithos vary; some claim she was innocent and curious and didn’t mean to bring the doom of humanity, others claim she did so deliberately and maliciously, and even others claim she was the literal doom of humanity, which falls in line with Akira’s dialogue above.
One thing is certain: Pandora was always going to open the pithos and bring doom to humanity. That was the gods intentions from the start, her fate. Some of the myths portray this by specifically stating that the god filled her with curiosity, so that she wouldn’t be able to resist looking inside the pithos they told her to never open. This next scene seemed something of an allusion to this.
Pandora, whether you view her as the literal calamity or not, never really had “free will”. Even if she was genuinely malicious, it was her fate from the start to do as she did, and fate isn’t something that can be fought or avoided in Greek myth. From the moment she was created, humanity was doomed.
Or at least, that humanity, because the myth doesn’t end there.
It was Pandora who mothered Pyrrha, who went on to mother the rest of the new humanity, post their decimation. This new generation was more “hardy” and resistant to the evils unleashed upon them. Being made of rock and all, instead of clay.
Pandora may have been the bane of Prometheus’s humanity, but she was the ancestor of the next.
So, as for season 3, Ai and Pandor starting a new generation of AIs together… could be a very real possibility?
Ryoken has previously drawn comparisons between his father and Prometheus, who was punished separately by being strung up and tortured for eternity, and creates this version of Pandora to punish his father’s creations, the Ignis. Which would make Ai Epimetheus in Ryoken’s interpretation, aka the foolish son of Iapetos.
But I doubt that will work out well for the actual humanity in Vrains. After all, Pandor isn’t being gifted to the Ignis, she’s being gifted to Akira, who is a reckless guy with a lot of regrets and talks often about feeling bad about what he does in hindsight. Which is literally Epimetheus’s whole deal.
Ryoken literally gave a “foolish” man a creation named after Pandora. There’s no way that can end well for Akira, or anyone else.
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