Planning to read Ex 2 pretty soon, so I poked around to see what the character designs in illustrations were and uh… well. I have a lot of thoughts despite not having read one line of anything from these set of Novels.
First off, heeeey. I did say in Arc 3 that I might see a female Roswaal at some point when Otto was talking about Roswaal’s pervert reputation and here it is. That’s neat. What is alarming here though is what this version of Roswaal wears.
Roswaal is wearing crosses. Interestingly despite me peering at it closely these crosses do not seem to have those more sharp angular lines more in-line with the Iron Cross German medal shape the Karstens have. This does make the similarity in placement weird because Roswaal has one on the cuff & a section on her chest area, just like where Crusch & Meckart have it.
There is also the fact Roswaal blatantly has a star engraved unto their cape here. I have previously mused the OG Roswaal’s “A” middle name was a star/astronomy name (which I’ll put the link of the muse in the replies of this post for anybody who wants to check out why I came to that line of thought) so having Tappei blatantly include something like this in Roswaal’s design seems to be adding more evidence for me being correct in my thinking.
This Pivot dude also kinda looks like how Clind does in artwork I’ve seen of the guy if you can disregard the hair color? Not sure if Tappei specifically wanted Otsuka to have the guy look that though or if Otsuka just went off in his own creative direction.
Grimm’s design is also interesting to me. I know Reinhard said the Fauzens & Remedis families had served the Astrea for generations, but Grimm lowkey kinda looks like a Juukulius in features? The guy has the purple hair & golden eyes. Grimm’s hair color is darker them a Juukulius but is this perhaps implying the Fauzens married into the Juukulius’s at some point?
Smaller thing here, but Bordeaux looking so different with how happy he is here. Good grief… anyways unto image 2.
Rom just chilling as Valga, but something kinda concerns me here with his design actually. Look at his belt, specially the red eye design there. Compare it to this image:
Disregard the cross sword portion & look at the eye above the circle there. It looks DISTURBINGLY similar to what Rom is wearing here imo. Why is this the case when this symbol is Flugel’s? Fuck if I know, but it’s definitely there.
Let’s look at this Libre next. The guy is adorned with a 4 sided clove on the bottom of his clothing & also that golden clasp on the upper portion of his outfit. Clearly, this symbol is tied into the lizard pretty deeply.
Luck is distinctly not a good thing in this narrative with the clear associations it has with Fate, such as Priscilla running around with her absurd luck or Subaru who speaks of gambling adjacent verbiage by speaking of “chips” he has to put on the table to avoid getting gutted in the LN 2 Roswaal Dinner Intro scene.
Looking at this clove some more, it is associated with Christianity depending if you want to look at it that way. Having something blatantly associated with Religion in the story where I’ve pointed out how Religion is VERY bad is a major red flag.
Frankly, all these things on Libre make me think he’s gonna die in a nasty way that isn’t solely due to Lugunica’s actions against what is clearly a prominent leader in the demi-human faction.
Alright. Now I’ve had enough of analyzing everything else. The big elephant in the room must come up. Why does Sphinx look like a Ryuzu clone?
Sphinx here is clearly performing magic, so it seems her role on the demi-human side is a magic user. Oh so coincidentally in Ex 1 we have Crusch speak about the Sacrament of the Immortal King being used in the demi-human war prominently & we learn that a Witch was behind its creation.
I think it’s pretty clear Sphinx is the Sacrament user. Perhaps Echidna has enough of her essence into this Ryuzu that Sphinx here gets knowledge of how to utilize the Sacrament based on that even if Echidna doesn’t have enough to do a full revive leaving Sphinx with some of Echidna’s memories only.
The only real question with this line of logic I’m pursuing is how the hell did Sphinx get out of the Sanctuary barrier? Was she perhaps stored in an off-shored location that wasn’t within the barrier because Echidna wanted a body to try reviving into that wouldn’t be trapped by the barrier if she succeeded?
The name of Sphinx itself is very fascinating aswell given the clear Earth Mythos tie that has. I spoke of the Orthrus mabeast name in Bonds of Ice & that being indicative of Echidna potentially knowing Flugel to get that bit of Earth Knowledge to name Orthrus well.. Orthrus.
Having yet another example of Earth Mythos pop up & tied with something we canonically know is a major project of Echidna’s essentially confirms the Flugel & Echidna association to me despite not having even touched Arc 6 which is where Flugel is supposed to become plot relevant.
I went ahead to look up Sphinx curious to see what I’d get and here’s what pops up:
Lookie here. Tappei is once again having Arabic shenanigans leak into the narrative as is a common trend I’ve been pointing out. Of all countries it’s Egypt? The same Egypt I mused utilized hieroglyphs which looked weirdly similar to how the Gospel’s writing looked when the prose described it?
I don’t think that’s a coincidence. At all.
Anyways, yap over. My overanalzying brain has been satiated for now until the next intrusive thought barges in.