Newcomer to the series. Binged the anime in about 3 days, have yet to read the manga so please forgive any bad takes and hold the spoilers. So, at first I believed the nokkers were just keepers of the natural order which fushi violated by being immortal with God like powers, so they kept attacking him. Which turns out wasn't the case after they finally communicated their intentions. Now having seen the latest episode of season 3, I'm not sure what to make of the nokkers. Do they want to free people's souls? Or perhaps they're after something else now? I get the feeling they wanna live life for themselves now, preferably in a human body,especially after the way the nokker acted in the latest episode.
Welcome! I hope it's not too late to answer you. I've been incredibly busy these past few weeks (I'm a student and it's That time of year, you know how it is), but I've been turning this ask over in my mind. And now I finally have the time to sit down and properly respond to it.
At this point, several new episodes have aired since you sent this ask, which makes explaining the nokkers' whole deal a lot easier. But I don't know if you're caught up on them (I actually haven't myself). So, I'm going to avoid spoilers for episode 10 in this ask since it only came out yesterday, but I'm also going to make a separate post to discuss what we learned in episode 10 in more detail. Sound good?
Chapter #78: I'm using screenshots from the manga 'cause like I said, I still haven't seen the most recent episodes. Also, it doesn't take as long to find what I'm looking for ahahaha!
Let's debrief the previous era. Back then, nokkers made no effort to disguise their true objective and the reason behind it. Setting the left hand aside, they were almost like a hive mind. They had a shared goal and no individual characteristics. That's a huge departure from how closely they've been mimicking humans in the present era.
Your speculation that the nokkers might want to live for themselves now is an idea that's come up in the anime already, through other non-human characters like Fushi and the Beholder/Satoru (and even the left hand). The shape of the body changes the shape of the mind. We can see that even if the nokkers aren't necessarily living for themselves, they have become more individualistic: they've been acting alone instead of as a collective.
Chapter #131: For real, this is like one of the main themes of the story. It's definitely relevant here!!
The reason for the nokkers integrating themselves into human society can be inferred from Satoru and Fushi's conversation, and the Beholder's inability to shut up.
Chapter #131
Chapter #78: Dude, why did you just tell them that?!
The nokkers didn't just happen to shrink. Fushi beat the nokkers in the previous era, and they came to the understanding that "they couldn't win against Fushi—as they are now." So in order to survive they had to develop a new strategy, getting small so that Fushi couldn't sense them.
And they're not just puppeteering corpses anymore—even if its host dies and the nokker ends up with full control of the body, the body is still alive and will feel pain. As we've seen, Fushi couldn't kill a nokker even though they knew it'd taken over someone's body (and they could resurrect her if it turned out to be a mistake), so it's... pretty effective.
Chapter #130: Fushi can't bring themselves to kill Mimori's nokker.
Chapter #136
In addition to that, both of the nokkers we've seen so far (Mimori's and Izumi's) are improving the lives of everyone around them. Mimori's nokker is outgoing, beloved by everyone in its class, and doesn't worry its mom. Similarly, Mizuha's mom Izumi has made Mizuha's daily life like a dream. Mizuha thinks her new mother is better than the old one ever was.
Chapter #128
They're living as humans, yes, but they're not simply enjoying themselves; they're following unknown rules. Their behavior seems to be dictated by whatever would please the people around them. This is definitely at odds with the nokkers' former mode of operations. I mean, they're supposed to want as many people to die as possible. Why the hell are they actively preventing Mizuha from killing herself?
Odds are, this has to do with the the previously stated fact that the nokkers don't stand a chance against Fushi in a fair fight. Assuming their goal hasn't actually changed, they have no choice but to change the rules of the game.
It's not actually a bad thing for the nokkers. Because, as the Beholder oh so helpfully pointed out, they weren't ever going to be able to eradicate all of humanity at the rate they were going. Their strategy in the previous era was, frankly, kind of bad. Whatever they're doing now, they're using their newfound brains to be smart about it.
That's all for now. I hope you found this useful!
