#eiru

[waterpixelart]

new Eiru render found deep within Tetsura Nomura's file cabinet

[pazam]

Saw Cartoon Saloon's Eiru yesterday during a limited public release! Definitely one of my favorite short films of all time now thanks in part of its theme of unity, which is much needed in these times...

[ancientstone]

wake up babe the new trailer for the next cartoon saloon short film just dropped

[casualshardlegion]

Everyone go check out ERIU, the latest outing from Cartoon Saloon the studio that brought you The Irish Triloy (The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea & Wolfwalkers) as well as The Breadwinner.

[voraciouskingdom]

Long ago, when the land still spoke in the tongues of tree and stream, and the Tuatha Dé Danann walked freely across the green hills of Éire, there lived a goddess named Éiru.

She was one of three sisters—Ériu, Banba, and Fódla—each a spirit of the land, each a queen in her own right. But of the three, it was Éiru who walked the Beltane fields barefoot, laughing in the rain, weaving blossoms into her red-gold hair.

She was the land made flesh. The curve of her hip mirrored the soft hills of Connacht. Her breath was the wind that teased the barley. Her voice carried the rhythm of rivers.

Each year, on the first eve of May, Éiru emerged from her sacred hill beneath Uisneach, the spiritual centre of the island. The fires were lit high, and the cattle driven between them. The people gathered, hearts open, eyes shining with the promise of renewal.

And each year, Éiru would choose a king.

Not a ruler in the sense of iron or war—but a consort of the land, one who would walk beside her, tend the fields, and honour the sacred bond between earth and people. This was the banais ríghi, the marriage of king and goddess. Without it, the land would grow cold. The rains would withhold. The people would hunger.

The choosing was not simple. It did not depend on strength alone, nor wisdom, nor beauty. The goddess tested each suitor—sometimes with riddles, sometimes with a kiss that burned like the sun, sometimes with silence so deep it echoed eternity.

One year, no suitor pleased her. The fires smoked. The fields withered. The druids trembled. “Why do you not choose?” they asked.

And Éiru replied, “Because the men seek the crown, not the land. They want power, not partnership.”

She vanished into the mist, and the harvest failed.

The following year, a young man named Conall arrived at the Beltane fire. He did not wear jewels or fine cloaks. He came with dirt beneath his nails and sap on his palms. He had tended the sick sheep of a widow on his way and missed the first lighting of the flames.

Éiru saw him and smiled.

She approached in silence. The crowd hushed.

She said only this: “What do you love more than yourself?”

And Conall, not knowing who she was, answered, “The land that feeds the people. And the people who remember the land.”

She kissed him then.

The skies opened in a sudden rain—a sprinkling, soft and silver, washing over their heads as if the sky itself approved. The hawthorn tree bloomed out of season. The fire blazed higher.

And Éiru crowned him with a wreath of clover and rowan. The first Green King in three generations.

Together they walked the spiral of the Beltane rite. She, the May Queen, the spirit of the land in her full flowering. He, the willing guardian, humble and strong.

The crops that year were abundant. The cattle bore twins. And it is said that the rivers themselves sang his name for seven nights.

From that time on, no man was crowned without first kissing the earth. No woman wore the Beltane crown unless she had first dreamed of roots.

And Éiru?

She still walks the hills at Beltane.

Her laughter rides the breeze.

And on rainy spring nights, if you kneel in the grass and close your eyes, you might feel her fingers crown you in clover.

🔥❤️‍🔥

[monstermemories]

YALL OMG I JUST SAW EIRU

ANOTHER BANGER FROM CARTOON SALOON

YALL NEED TO WATCH IT IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY IT'S AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC FOR A SHORT TIME

[mageknight14]

I made a whole Twitter thread about this a few months back but I figured that I might as well bring it here as well.

Today I want to take some time to make another NEO TWEWY analysis post on the Identity Crisis sidequest revolving around Eiru and how it actually provides extra insight into Nagi and Fret’s characters.

Basically, the main gist of the sidequest is that Nagi and Fret are debating on how to imprint confidence onto Eiru, who’s suffering with his physical insecurities, and this is where we see the differences with Nagi and Fret's philosophies on life.

Fret's response is to tell Eiru to ignore the haters and even more so, ignore confronting the insecurities; life is better when you don't have to concern yourself with anything or try; don't take anything seriously. Nagi, however, believes that insecurities should be understood and harnessed so that they can ultimately be turned into a strength that can be used as a tool for success; accept your weaknesses and come to terms with them so that you can weaponize your strengths better.

On a surface level, these might read to be the same thing. Fret’s advice can be read positively as "don't let others judge you for something you can't control" and Fret certainly thinks so, hence why he thinks that he and Nagi are on the same page even though she disagrees.

However, when you read between the lines and think about it some more, there are notable implications that Fret's advice is more of a dismissive approach to dealing with emotional struggles as opposed to Nagi's own methodology. It’s no coincidence that Fret used to be a fan of the Eiji "the Prince" Oji in his ennui/apathy phase. The Prince in the original TWEWY was beloved for his “don’t give a damn attitude” and how he expressed that both in person and in his blog “F Everything.” Fret claims to have grown out of it but with certain reveals about his character later on, there are some implications that Fret latched onto the Prince and aspired to his attitude due to his own struggles with feeling genuine and wanting to embracing apathy instead.

However, if you recall in the original game, Neku and Joshua came around and helped the Prince sort out his own issues and in the process, helped him to become more genuine and true to himself in the process. With all of this in mind, you can interpret Fret’s response as him seeing the process of the Prince’s reconciliation with his genuine emotions happening in front of him and didn’t want to confront the possibility of that happening to him as well so he "grows out of it." It also acts as a neat parallel to Neku and his own thing with CAT. Whereas Neku latched onto his misinterpretation of CAT’s words in order to cope with his trauma, Fret turned away from the Prince changing so that he wouldn’t have to deal with his own trauma just yet.

To get back to the quest, if player had decided to choose Fret's philosophy, Eiru ends up doing just that, spinning Fret's stance on the situation into self-motivating positivity. However, there's a element of emotional responsibility lacking in Fret's way of processing struggles in that he doesn't seem to have the awareness to recognize the difference between overcoming adversity and just ignoring it (or maybe he does but refuses to confront that truth). In order for someone to truly not care what other people think, they need to do what Nagi suggested first, which is to find acceptance with their insecurities and build a stronger foundation for their character through that acceptance.

If the player chose Fret's approach to solving Eiru's issue, his dialogue afterwards shows how he feels about not having to face issues head on, with Nagi lamenting that her approach was not used despite being glad that Eiru's mood was visibily improved.

I also really like this moment here for how it subtly foreshadows what caused Fret’s attitude and way of thinking to happen in the first place.

Stuff like this is why I always tend to roll my eyes whenever I hear the claim that "Nagi is mean to Fret for no reason" when moments like these show why she acts the way she does towards him: their philosophies on life are complete polar opposites.

In Nagi’s eyes, Fret acting the way he did screamed to her that he seemingly had no regard for how his attitude and actions towards others made other people feel in service of his own self-interest and she fundamentally cannot get along with other people of that nature, as shown with how she dismisses Motoi entirely off the bat when the crew first meets him because she could tell that there was something off about his attitude. However, once it was revealed that Fret’s attitude was due to him trying to unhealthily cope with his trauma and not because he was seemingly unconcerned for the feelings of others, she’s far more understandable towards him and empathizes with his grief.

That’s when Nagi learns to understand that she does not need to dismiss people right away and that they, like Fret, might be going through struggles of their own and trying to cope with it via other means, even if she doesn’t agree with it at first. Hence the friendship they start up at the end of the convo.

The characters in NEO have a lot of internal flaws they need to work through, some that might not be immediate obvious at first compared to the original, but when you look back at it all, the game goes through a lot of painstaking detail to flesh out their struggles and mindset and aspects like these is what makes the game a joy for me to replay whenever I go back to it.

[jimforce]