Today I want to write a little bit about the parting words of yet another video game character I like.
Parting words, of course, are pretty important. It's the note you go out on, so you want to make sure it's a good one! Everybody will remember if the last thing you say is something stupid. You have to say something cool and memorable.
The Final Fantasy series has a lot of recurring characters. Mog the moogle, for example. But it's generally understood that it's a different Mog every time you meet him, in the same way that it's a different Cid. Similarly, it's generally understood to be a different Shiva, though she's always a big ice woman. Odin and Ramuh might even talk to you in FF4 or FF9, but I think most people understand that the Odin and Ramuh you meet in FF6 are different characters entirely who happen to share the same names and similar character designs.
There may be multiple exceptions to this rule, but there's only one whom I, personally, care about: Gilgamesh, from Final Fantasy 5.
Gilgamesh is a boss character you fight multiple times in Final Fantasy 5, but you don't meet him until you're quite a ways into the game. Still, he's instantly memorable. He's a big, goofy brawler of a man who rushes into battle because he's employed by the game's big bad and he's going to stop you from doing whatever it is you're doing. Your first battle against him takes place on a big bridge. The song that plays when you fight against him is called ビッグブリッヂの死闘, or "Biggu Burijji no Shitou," and if you didn't catch that, "Biggu Burijji" is just the English phrase "Big Bridge." "Shitou" means "life or death struggle," so the song is generally called "Battle at the Big Bridge," or "Clash on the Big Bridge," or something like that.
That's Gilgamesh's song. It's been remixed and rewritten and performed a hundred different ways, all of them phenomenal. When you hear that song, you know Gilgamesh is coming. You're going to have to fight him.
Gilgamesh is defeated multiple times in FFV, and eventually the big bad decides that it's time to throw Gilgamesh into the void between dimensions. But that's okay. Gilgamesh won't let something like that stop him. He comes back for one final scene shortly before the end of the game.
But in the meantime, Gilgamesh explores various worlds. Gilgamesh shows up in other Final Fantasy games. It's not really necessary for me to list all of his appearances, and I'm honestly not sure that every single appearance of his is "canonical," that is, if they're all meant to be this same guy. His appearance in one of the rereleases of FF6 as an Esper, for example, doesn't really square with what we know about him in FF5. Dude isn't an Esper. He's just a dude. Magicites are made of dead Espers. Gilgamesh isn't dead.
But I think it's safe to say that, when he made his first appearance outside of FFV in FF8, that's meant to be the same man. I like to think it's the same man in FF12 (voiced by John "Jake the Dog" DiMaggio, no less), as well, but, again, I can't really prove that. I can't prove anything.
And I don't have to. It's not really the point.
The point is that, eventually, no matter how many games he may or may not have shown up in before making his way back to FFV (and the list can only grow from here), he does make his way back.
He interrupts a battle against a boss called the Necrophobe, or Necrophobia, if you prefer. I kind of do, since that's what it's called in Japanese, but it's possible that the one who named him didn't really know what that word meant. I've heard that the summon spell Odin got its name almost entirely at random, for example, and it wouldn't shock me if the same were true of a lot of other things in Final Fantasy. Gilgamesh himself, for example.
Gilgamesh doesn't have to interrupt the fight. You can avoid this scene if you play the game the right way, but I would call that playing the game the wrong way. You should see Gilgamesh's final appearance.
He makes it clear that this is his big return, and that he couldn't let himself go down in history in such an uncool way as simply having been banished. The Necrophobe says he'll deal with Gilgamesh, and Gilgamesh taunts him, saying something like "Do you really think you can defeat me, Gilgamesh?"
But then he speaks to each member of the party. He tells Krile that her grandpa was strong. He tells Faris that he thinks she should try falling in love and be more feminine (which is a really weird thing to say, I think). He tells Lena that he hopes she never forgets her kindness to animals and her gentle heart. And he tells Bartz that he wishes he'd been able to have a one-on-one fight against him, and that Bartz has some good friends.
The Necrophobe ends this farewell speech by shouting at Gilgamesh to die. Gilgamesh replies with his final words:
And then he casts the Blue Magic spell, Self-Destruct, killing both himself and the Necrophobe. And that's that. That's the end of Gilgamesh.
Now, I'm willing to give my own half-assed translation of most of Gilgamesh's dialogue, but not his final words. So here's the detailed translation, instead:
それ: That. Pronounced "so-re." Companion of "This" and "That over there." Refers to something a little far away from the speaker, for example, something that another speaker has just said.
は: Years ago, a Japanese tutor of mine referred to words like this as "postpositions," but they're usually just called "partciles." This one, pronounced "wa" even though it uses the letter for "ha," marks the word that came before it as the subject of a sentence. So now we know that the previous "That" is the subject of Gilgamesh's final sentence.
！: An exclamation mark. Despite it generally being used to end a sentence, here, Gilgamesh is just using it like a very loud comma. He's pausing mid-sentence. He's shouting.
こっち: Pronounced "ko-chee," with a glottal stop where that hypen is, so it's romanized as "kocchi." Means "this direction," and is companion of "that direction" and "that direction over there." Generally, "this direction" means "towards the speaker," so if you were to tell someone "Come this way," you would be telling them to move towards you, the person saying it. In this case, it refers more abstractly to Gilgamesh's side of the conversation, rather than to his physical location.
の: Another particle, this one, "no," is a marker of possession. That is, "this way," or "my side of the conversation," owns the thing that is going to come next in the sentence. See also "Biggu Burijji no Shitou" and how I seem to be implying that it means "Big Bridge's Life or Death Struggle." Let's not dwell on that, because the finer points of why it doesn't really don't matter here.
セリフ: "Serifu," which is a Japanese way of writing the word "serif," which means "line." While in English, this refers to little markings on written letters, in the Japanese language, it also refers to lines in a script, or lines of dialogue. "こっちのセリフ," then, means "my line."
だぜ: Pronounced "da ze," this is a verb followed by a particle. The "da" part is a short form of the verb "to be," conjugated to refer to "my line." The "ze" part is just something to add emphasis. We use phrases like "the heck" in English to do the same thing.
！！: Not just one, but two exclamation marks end this sentence.
If you put it all together, what Gilgamesh is saying before he blows up, his response to the Necrophobe shouting "DIE!", is:
This is actually something of a set phrase in Japanese. You can find it easily in many places if you Google it. I know, because I did! And you can, too! It's easy! Easy and cool, and you should do it!
So Gilgamesh isn't saying anything unique here. Or special. It's something that lots of folks have said. But it doesn't change the fact that he said it. And then he stuck around in the zeitgeist of Final Fantasy for decades. People love this goofy bastard, and I'm one of them.
When I hear the song "Battle at the Big Bridge," I'm known to sometimes tear up thinking about just how cool Gilgamesh is. That's not even a joke! I love this silly sometimes-multi-armed guy! I didn't even get into that part of it! Sometimes he has extra arms just so he can hold more weapons! AND I love his song!
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the best thing you can ever do, as a writer, is to write as hard as you can. Write something sincere, and earnest, and don't apologize or hold back. You've got a joke character? A recurring minion of the big bad who has no plot significance beyond being a guy you fight several times? Write that bastard for all you've got. Give him everything. Don't back down. Don't make it multiple characters for all those boss fights, even though you could have. Don't worry about overdoing it. Overdo it.
