It is genuinely kinda hilarious that we only know for sure I think like two characters' age in Black Lagoon, namely Rock and Yukio, who are 25 and 18 respectively. Everyone else is a guess, amd for some we can have very good guesses based on context clues (we can safely assume Balalaika is in her late 30s, and that the twins are around 10-13, for example) but others we just do not have much information.
How old is Revy? She could be 20 or 27, we don't know, just that in between the period of 1986 and 1993 she first killed a person (most likely her father, but we don't know for certain), went to prison, escaped prison, ended up in Thailand and joined Dutch's crew. How old is Eda? Old enough to be a CIA agent I guess. How old is Dutch? Not old enough to be a Vietnam veteran I guess. Huge portions of the cast are just ambiguously in the "mid 20s to mid 30s" kinda range.
Everyone is just so fucking mysterious, it's a significant departure from a lot of animanga where you can easily find out every character's exact date of birth, blood type and favourite food and drink, I love it. What's Chang's zodiac sign? Dude I don't know, I don't think we've even seen him without his sunglasses on.
Nos vies en Lumière: The Musical Brilliance of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
The reason why I continue to think about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 months after I played the game is because of how eloquently the story is told through three different forms of art: creative writing, visual arts, and music.
Now, I’ll be honest: I can’t draw to save my life.
However, I do know a bit about writing and a fair amount about music. So as I played, I found myself in awe at how the music shaped the structure of the story. Not only in terms of appreciating the melodic beauty and creative brilliance that Lorien Testard wove into each piece, but in realizing how the placement of each song functions as a narrative technique.
A while ago, I posted about how Clair Obscur has this subtle theme of terrific threes and terrible twos, and how it manifests throughout the story:
“Three endings. Two offered, and one denied.
One choice, two options, three wishes shown.
A Life to Love (Une Vie à T'aimer) for some.
A Life to Paint (Une Vie à Peindre) for others.
A Life to Dream (Une Vie à Rêver), forgotten by Act 2's close. Because Verso threw a letter into the water dockside.”
One song reinforces this structure with surgical precision. A song that, coincidentally, also happens to be exactly 33 minutes and 0 seconds long: Nos vies en Lumière.
Split it into three equal parts, and you get, in order:
Each 11 minutes long. You would think that the game would place the same amount of narrative value on each song?
No. That's the fascinating part.
Three songs, each played during boss battles. Two are mandatory, but one is missable.
Une vie à t’aimer is played during the mandatory fight against Painted!Renoir in Act 2.
Une vie à peindre is played during the mandatory fight against Real!Renoir in Act 3.
Une vie à rever is played during the optional fight against Painted!Alicia in Act 3.
Here’s the kicker: the only time Une vie à rever is ‘required’ listening is during the credits.
By then you've already chosen between the two endings the game offers, and you're dreaming of the third one that Verso threw into the water.
The sky meets the moon at night. Lune and Sciel stargazing scene analysis. Part 4.
Hello new readers and HELLO REGULAR READERS!! This analysis is finally back! If you've been so patiently waiting (and hoping) for the next update, THANK YOU SO MUCH!! I'm planning to finish it this month, so the following updates won't take long.
This is the last part of the analysis that I'll post on this blog. Part 5 and 6 will be posted on @blue-and-amber. That will be the side blog where I'll start posting all my scielune related musings. (The idea for the user name comes from this analysis. Can you guess the reference?)
The juiciest parts of the scene are coming from now on so buckle up and enjoy the ride!
⋆.˚⭒.˚⋆.˚ ☾⭒. ˚ ⋆.˚ ⭒.˚
The music box. That’s where we left it in the last post. There are quite a few tracks in the game that have a music box version. This specific instrument is used in different contexts and it adds different layers of meaning to each one of them. However, its distinctive sound always seems to convey a sense of tenderness, nostalgia, intimacy...
Music stored in a box. Like a memory chest. Open the box and all the memories pour out. If I’m not mistaken, you get Lune and Sciel’s music box themes after you maximize your relationship level with them. After they open their chests to you so you can learn the most intimate things about them.
When the music box starts playing in the stargazing scene, Sciel and Lune are about to take out a shared memory from their chests. But why does the music box play Lune’s theme? I believe that the main reason why they chose it is simply because it fits the scene’s mood better. It’s calmer and steadier than Sciel’s, more laid-back and contemplative. However, there might be other possible reasons we’ll see later.
After a little moment of silence, in which only the music box can be heard, Lune speaks. “I like that”. She sounds like she’s moved by Sciel’s habit of talking to the stars. Like she thinks it’s a great idea. Like she could try it herself.
Finally, Lune closes the journal and stands up to fully face Sciel. Now she has her whole attention. As Lune stands, Sciel’s face appears in the frame too. I feel like this shot mirrors the one we saw in the last post, the one where Sciel seems to be looking at the moon. She shares the frame with a different moon now.
“I talked to the stars a lot after he was gone”. This makes me wonder something: did Sciel have no one else to talk to? What about her mother? Did she gommage the same year as her father? Sciel never mentions her. Maybe after she lost her family it was too hard to talk to anyone else, so she chose to talk to the stars instead.
“I remember”, says Lune as she looks at Sciel and starts slowly approaching her. She remembers?
“The night we first met”, she smiles as she says this. It seems to be a fond memory from her chest. “At the Crooked Tower”. Was Sciel talking to the stars when Lune found her there? Maybe when Lune got there, she stumbled upon a stranger who was voicing out her pain. A girl her age, who had just lost her parents, like her. Maybe Sciel didn’t tell Lune what she was doing back then, so Lune just found out now. Now she understands. Now she can make sense of what she witnessed that night.
“Right” Sciel answers with the slightest of smiles on her face and voice. “After the Gommage”, her tone grows somber with this, and so does her expression. The duality of that moment is painted on her face. The dark part seems to weight more on her in this moment.
The monolith appears in the frame after a long while. The Paintress’s presence can be felt again. This wider frame breaks their intimate bubble, reminding us where Sciel and Lune are and what their lives are defined by.
“I was surprised to find you there”. Lune redirects their conversation. She chooses to focus on the good parts of that day. As she kneels next to Sciel, the monolith leaves the frame. “I thought I was the only one who knew about that room”. Was the Crooked Tower Lune’s secret hideout? Maybe that’s where she went when she needed to be alone with her thoughts, where she could put her walls down and be vulnerable. But that night, as she climbed towards the sky, instead of silence and privacy, she found Sciel.
“I had to get away from the harbor. And those damn petals everywhere”, Sciel keeps her eyes fixed on the stars as she says this. The petals are beautifully twisted remains of those who gommage. Remains you can step on, remains that could land on your hair or your clothes. Remains that mingle with each other on the floor, dissolving those who once where people into a red mantle.
“So I climbed up”. As high and away as she could. The Crooked Tower looks like the tallest architectural structure of Lumière. It’s a place where Sciel could feel closer to the stars and her father.
Silence. Only the music box can be heard. Lune presses her lips together, looks towards the ground and, finally, she lies down next to Sciel. It took her a while to get there. She approached Sciel slowly, carefully, step by step: first getting up and standing still for a bit, then moving towards her, after that kneeling in front of her and, at last, lying down by her side. Could it be that Lune is a bit shy about it? This is the first time we see her approaching Sciel first.
However, it could actually be the second time. What if this is exactly what she did that night at the Crooked Tower? Approach a hurt stranger shyly, wanting to comfort her, but not really knowing how?
Sciel’s reaction to Lune's closeness is very subtle: her eyes slightly move to the side, away from Lune. This is probably me overanalyzing every single tiny gesture as usual, but what if Sciel is a bit shy about it too? Maybe she’s surprised that Lune is giving her this much attention.
Sciel probably didn’t expect that she would stop working to listen to her and much less that she would even come to lie down next to her. That’s a lot coming from Lune. (Also, it’s Lune, I would get nervous too if she came to lie down next to me. We got you Sciel, you are a strong warrior, but not THAT strong).
As Lune lies down, the monolith slowly exits the frame once again. The closeness they share makes the burden of the monolith lessen. They create their own bubble again.
Now we see Lune in the same frame as Sciel. She is no longer above her. The moon came to lie down next to her.
The following wider frame shows us how Lune fills the empty spot left by Sciel’s father. Just like the night they met: she was there to fill the void left by him. Her company made his loss more bearable for Sciel.
Lune barely lands on the floor when Sciel takes a step further: she places her hand next to Lune’s. Close, but not touching. Not like at the campfire, when they held hands and embraced as they grieved Gustave.
The stargazing scene takes place the night after they burry Gustave (I didn’t remember that when I started this analysis and it’s pretty important). They are still grieving, but the shock’s worn off a bit. They still try to comfort each other, but their affection is not that open and direct here. Could it be that the context doesn’t justify their affection that much in this moment? Maybe they're not sure how to interact outside of those hopeless contexts that seem to reunite them every time.
With her hand, Sciel silently tells Lune “I’m here” without overstepping. Or, actually, she replies to Lune: she also said “I’m here” when she landed by her side. They found each other again, after so long. At the edge of the cliff, in the last chapter of their lives, but still.
The music box stops right as Sciel places her hand next to Lune’s. We hear what they hear: a gentle breeze, crickets, the flow of water. Then, we see what they see: the night sky, once again.
This night under the open starry sky feels a lot like the night at the Crooked Tower. Same same, but different. Sciel and Lune reunite, reconnect and remember. But they also have the chance to talk about things they didn’t voice out at the Crooked Tower.
Sciel explained why she talked to the stars and what it had to do with her father. And Lune will look towards the sky, as if talking to the stars, as she opens up about her parents too. As she speaks, her theme starts playing again, this time with vocals in it.
Tandis que la lune se fond dans l'aube / Ton cœur se pose /Dans l'obscurité dessinée / Vers l'éternité
Overheard in a manga store yesterday: "we need more yuri in here. I've had at least 5 girls coming up to me last time asking for yuri. Everyone wants yuri now". The world is healing
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