It has to do with how the title that we've known her by up until that point is an abbreviation of her full title. In Japanese the title localized as Severing Chains is 死線, which is composed of the characters 'Death' and 'Line' (or 'Wire') but when combined they refer to being on the border between life and death. Her full title which gets revealed in CS3 is 告死線域, which means something like 'Herald of the Borderline of Life and Death' or as Kiseki Wiki used to unofficially translate it, 'Deathly Herald'. You can see how the early title is located squarely in the middle of the full title.

The same wordplay doesn't work in English, the meaning already got shifted a bit and trying to cover all the Japanese nuances is an obvious mouthful, so some of the relationship got lost in translation. The localized title 'Severing Eclipse' does at least make it clear that her full title and the one she went by previously are related and under the circumstances that's about as good as you can expect it to get.

What's the catchy piece of music that plays when you're travelling on the Bobcat to Crossbell? Couldn't find it in the soundtrack at all.

So, George mentions that he brought Crow back after his death and Alberich seems to imply he did the same for Rutger. On the other hand Lianne revived on her own. So what's the deal here? Did the Gnomes have access to some method of reviving Awakeners and, in Rutger's case, even just a potential Awakener? Shouldn't Crow have just revived on his own, too?

Rutger is a bit of a weird case because he wasn't an Awakener when he died as all the other immortals were, but Alberich set things up to enact a pseudo-Rivalry which did the trick. Kondo has said that Alberich 'chose' Rutger because he was easier to deal with, suggesting that if the Gnomes have access to one of the Knights they might have a means of tipping the scales in favor of an Awakener candidate.

With Crow, the Japanese is ambiguous on whether George actually did anything beyond recovering Crow's body and substituting the dummy in its place. If the Gnomes can tip the scales with a Knight as with Rutger vs. Baldur, it's possible they also could have broken the contract between Ordine and Crow, and George argued that it would be more efficient to have a known quantity than to reset the trial and wait for another suitable candidate to come around. In that scenario, Crow would have revived on his own and all George did was stop Alberich from interfering, or at the very least ensure that Crow woke up above ground instead of literally six feet under.

Regarding Rutger, he mentions that he thought it odd that he and Baldur were able to fight for as long as they did, which would imply something else was at play there. The curse? Alberich's interference? The pseudo-Rivalry itself allows them to fight until one falls? He's not even sure why he ended up fighting where he did, which definitely smells like Ishmelga's influence.

One thing that strikes me as a potential continuity error: When Zephyr mention bringing back the boss at the end of CS2, that's obviously a year or two after his death, but the scene from the Moon Mirror seems to imply it was fairly soon after the fight that Alberich approached them. I suppose you could argue it could have taken that long to prepare whatever was needed for his revival, but it just stuck out as odd. I always kinda got the impression there might have been some change of plans between 2&3 (remember the flaming butterflies?), but that's just wild speculation, of course.

Leo and Xeno may have been keeping quiet on Rutger's orders and the talk about 'bringing the boss back' was referring to a hoped-for outcome where Vita's plan would restore a reduced-power version of the Great One in a way that didn't require Rutger to die as part of it... or that's what the two thought at any rate. But that's just speculating.

And no, we never get a firm explanation on the flaming butterflies except that they're connected to the spirit veins. Maybe if we get an Erebonia Archive it would be one of the things that would get explained in the margin notes. Speculating again, I'm willing to bet that the plan for those was that they be similar to the Gospels and the Pleroma Flowers were for Aureole/Demiourgos respectively. That is, they were going to be an extension of Ark Rouge's power.

Saw this on twitter and I mean come on. COME AWN! Kondoooooo! They're not even being coy about it anymore.

I've got to put down all the notes I have on this in a more systematic way but I'm pretty sure we're not meant to think that Creha and the Grandmaster are the same person. Trolling about the relationship between the archipelago south of Calvard and the layout of the Scientia Sea in Nayuta aside, there's some really funky things that would have to happen to make the two worlds be the same and while the Grandmaster kind of resembles Creha and has similar fashion sense, they're not identical. Moreover, per McBurn's comments in the first of the 'White' Episodes, the woman we see isn't the Grandmaster's real appearance.

I suspect there is a connection but it might be more indirect, or perhaps if the theory that Zemuria is in a deliberately engineered eternal recurrence loop is correct (and the goal of Orpheus is to find a way to end it safely) perhaps there is a relationship but it has to do with multiple loops. Or, getting into a big endgame Nayuta spoiler:

Maybe the hyperlink didn't work, but it was that picture, juxtaposed with the Hajimari cover and they're basically the same lol. But yeah, I don't really think that the GM's Creha. I'll have to wait 'til I finish off Nayuta before I read the rest of that!

UHH THOSE WINGS ON CREHA AND CYGNA LOOK AWFULLY FAMILIAR

In all seriousness, I'm sure its appearance in CS4 was just a nod, rather than anything meaningful.

 

 

 

Right?

Ys IX's final boss got me thinking. Is there anything of note to take away from how Ishmelga Loge is made up of seemingly random monsters? Some kind of reference to some real world mythology?

I'm not sure if the patch now matches the script dump I have but in case it's still the same, the term that Zext uses to describe the ones to guide the Mythos' 'Second Genesis' plan? 執行者, which just happens to be the same word translated in Trails as Enforcer. But it's totes a coincidence, just like Asuka's profession in the organization Nemesis is one...

I was wondering about that and given the name (Loge coming from Wagner's Ring Cycle where he's a combination of the trickster god Loki and the fire god Logi) the obvious source for the design would be Norse and later Germanic mythology but I haven't found one story that accounts for all the features. That said, I've found things that the various parts of Ishmelga Loge could have been drawn from. The attack where the snake-legs breath fire at you which NISA rendered as Olm Flame could have been translated as 'Ormr's Fire', where Ormr is the Old Norse word for 'Serpent' or 'Dragon'. The ugly right shoulder Loge Ogre could be a reference to Otr, a shapechanger who Loki accidentally killed while he was in the form of an otter and skinned him. Likewise the left shoulder Loge Aura might be a nod to Thiazi, a giant who had a thing for transforming into a giant eagle who Loki had a couple of run-ins with.

The latter two aren't confirmed, just guesses at what they might be, assuming Falcom had the mythology in mind when they were designing the boss.

Ok, the GM's appearance kinda tips the scale in favour of the latter, let's be real.

Had CS4's normal ending happened, was there any chance that Ishmelga Rean would've made it back to Zemuria? It's hard to picture how, but I'm just trying to imagine what might've happened had Osborne's plan succeded and he was the one that had to spend his days in endless conflict with him. Could he have come back as Ishmelga Osborne (Osmelga? Ishborne?) and oh boy that's a scary thought.