[A portrait drawing of Phosphophyllite from Houseki No Kuni. Their face is split in two, with gold alloy stretching out from their neck, arms, and the split in their face; the left side shows post-winter phos with a blank expression, the right shows laphos, or moon phos, smiling and looking creepily at winter phos. In the middle, where their heads split, a little baby phos emerges.]
Winter Phos serves as the middle ground between the emotional and reckless OG Phos and the cold and hyperrational Moon Phos, jumping between kindness and utilitarianism and failing miserably at both, because he's approaching it from a place of overcompensation.
Self-Imposed Burdens
I’d say that the word that defines Winter Phos best is “burdens”, because that’s how he acts in regards to every single one of his decisions from now on. He just keeps piling them on—the burden to redeem himself because of what happened to Antarc, the burden to find out Sensei’s secrets in order to protect the gems, the burden to not be responsible for anyone’s (Ghost) disappearance anymore…
Despite his best intentions, all these endeavors end up in failure, all because Phos keeps trying to compensate for his mistakes by immediately going to extremes instead of actually achieving any semblance of balance in regards to his reasoning and his emotions, which as you will see later on, are always at constant odds with each other.
Because the things Phos wants to do aren’t things he *truly* wants to do or feels as much as it’s what, logically, should be done—AKA, burdens.
Even if he was happier idling away before, now he must fight alongside everyone else even if it’s meaningless.
Even if he loves Sensei deeply, he must discover his secret for the sake of the gems.
Even if it’s not his fault and he’s only a small piece of a whole array of events and circumstances outside of his control, he takes responsibility all by himself, claiming that it’s only his fault when things go wrong—that all his thoughts lead to are mistakes.
Winter Phos abandons OG Phos’ pettiness and laziness, which from one perspective are seemingly bad—but from another it allowed him to at least appreciate things for what they were, while now he keeps favoring soulless tasks such as staying awake in winter.
In this sense, I’d say that the winter symbolizes not only growing up, but also duty—doing the things you don’t want to because it’s your task. That’s the lesson Antarc teaches Phos through his philosophy:
Overextend yourself. Even that which you can’t do, do, no matter how much you break.
Once Antarc dies, Phos takes after him in his self-demand, once more casting away what actually makes him special in favor of an imitation that ignores his actual strong points. In this sense, we see less and less of the empathetic and naive Phos that could reach out to Cinnabar (which is also signified by the latter’s more sparse appearances in this part of the manga), replaced by Winter Phos, who is colder, more reserved, and always tries to be up to the task— inspired by Antarc’s diligence, but even more importantly, by his courage.
Courage
This word is repeated constantly throughout this part of the manga, in reference to Antarc every single time.
But why? What is courage?
Usually, it means to act despite being afraid, right? Well, I’d say Houseki no Kuni more or less agrees with that definition, with the twist that it’s constantly used in contexts of Phos’ burden—Phos is pushed to act by the illusion of Antarc (his guilt), pushed to stray away from the things that he actually finds meaning in or that he actually cares about (Cinnabar), in favor of the lonely duty to find out the truth, as unfulfilling and harmful as that task may be to him.
Phos is doing something SO uncharacteristic of him, that it eats him away from the inside— it makes him forget what he actually desired (to be understood and appreciated) by focusing on the future and the problems it may hold instead, looking for acceptance by being useful and yet also realizing that everyone’s admiration isn’t worth much when he can’t even accept himself.
In this sense, Winter Phos is the ultimate soulless employee—the slave to a self-imposed burden so typical of the current capitalist society, the man who forgets what he wanted in the beginning favoring complicated matters that place him further and further away from his happiness.
Phos following Antarc’s philosophy seemingly makes him stronger and more capable, but it also discards his individuality. He is simultaneously and paradoxically the perfect dehumanized soldier for Kongo, while also the only one with enough humanity to question the status quo and deviate from the rest. It’s a paradox, a constant battle between reason and duty vs emotion and empathy.
And this is Winter Phos’ tragedy.
Because the winter symbolizes maturity, growing up, losing your childlike innocence and starting to think and reason, and the trap that comes with it.
Reason vs Emotion
We are introduced to Winter Phos with this scene:
All Phos needed to save Antarc was to use his head more—to act not out of instinct but using his abilities logically in order to reach the right outcome. This scene tells the reader that reason, rather than raw feeling, is fundamental in actually changing things meaningfully, while at the same time questioning the need to take on that burden to begin with—after all, doesn’t he look miserable?
Because of his trauma and the pain of being out of control due to not being strong or smart enough when Antarc was taken away, Winter Phos starts to process things much more rationally than OG Phos, while still having so much empathy that he can’t handle the way his decisions seem to affect others—he grew up, in the sense that now he can’t afford to not make rational decisions anymore, and that weighs heavily on his shoulders.
It’s a constant clash between knowing what “has to be done”, or rather, what Antarc would have done vs how much acting that way actually hurts Phos because of his sensibility.
He has a kind heart underneath the cold exterior that pushes him to act for the sake of others, while, paradoxically, his methodical actions to save them also hurt them the most—because instead of acting with discretion, Phos overcompensates by acting uncharacteristically rational, to the point of abandoning his empathy and paying the consequences because of it.
His true wishes don’t align anymore with what Phos has actually been doing—he’s kind inside, and yet he was cruel enough to abandon Ghost just to confirm his suspicions regarding Sensei.
It really is the opposite from what he wished to achieve.
I’d argue this tragic chain of events occurs because Phos’ biggest issue is that he looks at his rationality and his emotions as if they were in conflict with each other, which leads him to be reckless when he feels as if he’s overcompensated more in one area than another. In every version of Phos, he tries to be rational and discreet, but paradoxically, his feelings always get the better of him and he ends up messing everything up.
Maybe, just maybe, emotions and feelings come together, and it's all about a balance. Phos doesn't need to be less rational or less emotional... he needs to be more rational AND emotional. That is what it means to be composed.
To have the balance Padparascha is talking about, to be discreet enough to know when the truth (reason) will result in feelings being hurt (emotions) and whether that is worth it or not—to distinguish between the two and use them accordingly, is what Phos doesn't do, because he always overcompensates and goes from one extreme to the other instead of finding balance and discretion.
Whatever the case, due to Winter Phos choosing the facade of cold rationality, he even abandons Cinnabar, the person who before he spent hours thinking about how to help. He doesn’t pay attention to his words carefully anymore—He disregards Cinnabar's wishes, and even when the gem is begging for emotion, all that Phos can offer him is the stressful job of finding out Sensei’s secret, forgetting about the “fun” of it.
And of course Phos doesn’t remember about the fun part—fun is the last thing in his mind, unlike the original Phos.
Despite Cinnabar’s expectations to partner up, the key that could solve many of these two gems’ self-inflicted problems, what Phos proposes instead is cold, rational utilitarism. If Phos was connected to his emotions, then this wouldn't have happened—if he was connected to what he truly wanted, he could have paired up with Cinnabar, and perhaps, found happiness.
It’s stupid, but it’s these small, seemingly mundane moments, that held the key that could have changed these two’s fates for the better—together, rather than apart.
The worst part is that Phos is still thinking about Cinnabar even while partnering up with Ghost—he knows what he craves for, what he wants, but he doesn’t stop and think about it enough to actually pursue it due to being too much inside his head, too caught up in what he has to do rather what he wants to do.
In fact, I’d say Phos’ overcompensation through following a self-imposed duty is perfectly reflected in the main source of his internal conflict in these chapters—the suspicion of the parental figure who represents unconditional love, Kongo-sensei.
Suspecting Love
I’d say it’s no coincidence that Winter Phos’ character is so closely related to a breaking point in his relationship with Kongo. It’s this suspicion and paranoia of the person who raised him that pushes him to start dancing into immorality (and let’s not even mention what he does as Moon Phos because of this same suspicion afterwards), which I would say is a fundamental part of growing up.
Because Winter Phos has grown up, now he questions the love that his parental figure gave him, and where every gem chose to trust him, Phos chose to shatter that trust into pieces.
Why? Is Phos just built diffy?
Of course not. It’s because he’s now acting rationally—he’s becoming human, and that means realizing that your parent isn’t the perfect figure you thought it was.
The issue here, though, is that Phos faces extreme pressure after realizing that he’s the only one going so far with his distrust—if even Cinnabar and Antarc, the two most rational and discreet figures in Phos’ eyes, chose to trust him, why the hell shouldn’t he?
There’s this constant sensation that the more Phos pushes to try and find out Sensei’s secret, thus undermining his relationship with him, the more he strays away from what’s actually meaningful—from the affection he truly wants. This idea is repeated in Moon Phos’ arc, too.
Maybe, just maybe, Phos should have gone with his gut, and valued the fact that, no matter how many lies, the fact that Sensei loved him was indisputable.
His suspicion of the one person who loved him unconditionally sends Phos into a downwards spiral he can’t get out of, and doing so alone eats away at him.
However, after finally accepting to share his burden with Ghost, Phos pays the consequences of his overthinking and lack of being in the moment by being cut in half due to not paying attention.
And because of this blunder, Ghost is taken away.
Repression
Of course, Phos loses his mind after this fact, and he overcompensates once more by shutting off the two main factors that contributed to his mistakes—his rational suspicion of Sensei, and the fact that he opened up to a person.
This is tragic, because while the first factor is clearly showcased to be the right choice, and Phos seems to truly enjoy the company of others for the first time in ages, the fact that he also closed his heart off means that it’s just a facade. He can’t truly experience the love of the people that care for him, and it doesn’t help that he hates himself too much for it to make a difference.
In the fight with the board pieces, Phos is too hard on himself due to his past mistakes, despite the fact that he constantly tries to make the best calls—to call Bortz, to regain the pieces they were losing... He was trying, but instead of acknowledging that, he chooses to attribute everything that goes wrong to his flaws, further isolating himself into his self-hatred and immensely high expectations.
At this point Phos has just changed too much to pretend he hasn’t, and sealing away his problematic thoughts and feelings only causes them to explode once they do come out.
I’d argue this is why he loses his head.
Literally but also metaphorically, he risked everything because his self-imposed burden and guilt were too heavy, and that caused him to try and redeem himself instead of accepting that he can’t save everything and everyone on his own.
But to actually practice what I preach, I’d argue we should look at it in a deeper manner, because I actually think that saying that “Phos should have done x, y, z”, is missing the point and further pushing expectations of perfection onto the gem.
Phos is not Perfect
Yeah, Phos lost his head because he cared too much, but should he have cared less? Should he just let the Lunarians steal away the people he loves and have blind faith in Sensei? The answer isn’t a simple yes or no, because Phos wasn’t in a simple situation.
Expecting Phos to achieve a perfect balance between his emotions and feelings considering his context and lack of support system is impossible, and not only that, but Phos should be allowed to make mistakes without it being a death sentence.
By asking of Phos to be perfect, to have the existentialist truth that “he already had what he needed” at this point of the story, would be foolish, and it wouldn’t respect the process of Phos’ transformation, that, if you remember correctly, does end up with him in a better place overall.
So maybe Phos shouldn’t be perfect, and that’s okay, too. Maybe, despite all the mistrials and tragedies, the happy accidents should be celebrated, in order to be grateful for both the good and the bad at the end of it all.
