Skogsrå – the fatal nymph of the Scandinavian forests
The Skogsrå (Swedish: lit. 'the Forest Rå'), Skogsfrun ('the Mistress of the Forest'), Skogssnuvan, Skogsnymfen ('the Forest Nymph'), Råndan ('the Rå') or Huldran, is a mythical female creature of the forest in Swedish folklore.
It appears in the form of a small, beautiful woman with a seemingly friendly temperament. She appears like a woman from the front but seen from behind she often has a tail and a hollow back or skin like tree bark.
Those who are enticed into following her into the forest are never seen again. It was said that any human man who had intercourse with the Skogsrå became an introvert, as his soul had remained with her. If the seduced man is a hunter, he may be rewarded with good luck in the hunt, but should he be unfaithful to the Skogsrå, he will be punished with numerous accidents. He may put an end to a stormy night caused by her vengeance by firing a shot against her. Late folklore in Nyland, Finland describes silver bullets as effective means of killing a skogsrå.
Tolkien describes the Old Forest, a space filled with deep-rooted mysteries and danger in Middle-earth, as follows:
“The ground was rising steadily, and as they went forward it seemed that the trees became taller, darker, and thicker. There was no sound, except an occasional drip of moisture falling through the still leaves. For the moment there was no whispering or movement among the branches; but they all got an uncomfortable feeling that they were being watched with disapproval, deepening to dislike and even enmity. The feeling steadily grew, until they found themselves looking up quickly, or glancing back over their shoulders, as if they expected a sudden blow.”
HASE: Since the bond between the two symbolizes the coexistence of humans and seraphim, there were many ideas on how to put a conclusion to their story.
Those two.
I know I have talked a lot about Sorey and Mikleo, but at the same time, I feel like I haven’t talked enough about them yet. It is certainly one of the relationships that is often talked about in the fandom, but for how much they’ve been brought up, there is surprisingly not much effort to actually analyze what makes them work in the context of Zestiria.
I would like to begin this with bringing up the core themes or ideas underlying Zestiria as a story: the specific genre name, “Passion will light up the world” (“情熱が世界を照らす”), and “Legends will someday become ‘Hope’” (“伝承はいつしか「希望」になる”). I want to keep these in mind when talking about Zestiria as a whole.
The idea of “passion” being the heart of Zestiria actually came up when the creators wanted to incorporate the “passion” of Sakamoto Ryouma, a Japanese historical figure, a low-ranking samurai in the late Edo period, as revealed by the director, Hase Yuuta, and producer, Baba Hideo. They were enamored by the fact that he was a low-ranking samurai, yet through his deeds, managed to indirectly change Japan. It was his passion and love for Japan that exactly made him think that Japan could not remain the way it was. Then, intertwining in various ways with people in various positions, the world moved on. He didn’t try to move the world, but the results of his actions moved and changed the world.
Elements from Sakamoto Ryouma’s life and personal figure can then be found in various aspects of Zestiria. We do things because we want to do it, not because we have to do it, yet both of those things are important, so how can we realize both of them without sacrificing one or the other? Sakamoto Ryouma also left his small hometown, out to the vast world. The part where he originally did not want to change Japan, but ended up changing Japan while he was pursuing his own dream. The part where Sakamoto Ryouma was thought to be able to see things “differently” from others who had lived in the same era, as well, like how Sorey is able to see the seraphim.
HASE: It is not possible for Sorey to have all the elements of Sakamoto Ryouma, so actually, Mikleo has some of them. Sorey is surprisingly calm and composed, as too much emotional behavior could lead to a disconnect with the player’s feelings. If anything, Mikleo, who seems cool, is the more emotional one.
Which might seem familiar, since the head writer also said the same thing, and I see this quote being thrown around a lot anyway:
YAMAMOTO: [...] In that sense, [Sorey] may seem like a calm protagonist, but he has passionate feelings, yet does not try to solve problems by shouting or just going with his spirit or momentum. Instead, we made Mikleo a character who expresses his emotions in a straightforward manner, so that the two of them act and speak as if they are one protagonist.
So they were concerned about Sorey being too unrelatable if he is fully modeled after Sakamoto Ryouma, who seems like someone bigger than life when you look at him throughout the history, as such, they divide the elements inspired by the figure into two characters, Sorey and Mikleo. This is because despite the fantastical framework they worked with on Zestiria, they also wanted to convey that the legends also lived in us all. That the characters that lived through those legends, were also just like us. That point is important.
――Every character has a strong personality.
YAMAMOTO: The scenario team had a major theme, “Rather than a drama based on certain things, let’s create a drama that connects the emotions of the characters.” We do not want the characters to only act because of the momentum, but to realistically and carefully depict what kind of words the characters would say depending on their emotions and how they care for one another at the time.
――Please tell us if there were any particular challenges in creating the story.
YAMAMOTO: That emotional drama was very difficult, after all, that I had to revise it many times. As an RPG, it is easier to present a goal, and write based on “this is what it is all about.” Something like connecting the story beats with certain incidents. This time, however, I rewrote it many times, focusing more on consistency with the characters’ personalities. In the recording of the dialogue, we asked the voice actors to record their lines with the importance of the detailed feelings of their characters, and in the latter half of the production, the voice actors instead would suggest, “This line would be said differently by this character, wouldn’t it?” It may be a small difference in nuance, such as whether to say, “Let’s go ahead then!” or “I don’t think we should stay here,” and even in such a single line, we focused on the character’s personality.
I know it seems like I’m not getting anywhere with this, but bear with me. So we have both Sorey and Mikleo sharing parts of Sakamoto Ryouma, but what I personally find interesting is that Sorey takes the parts of Ryouma that are more “legendary” about him (e.g. he brought upon a huge change without meaning to, he was believed to have seen something invisible that couldn’t be seen by his contemporaries) and Mikleo takes the parts of him that are more mundane (e.g. that he was full of emotions, very expressive). On the outset, Sorey as a human is regular-looking, and Mikleo, as a seraphim, has ephemeral, otherworldly qualities to his appearance... but even in the game, Sorey is the one depicted as being a child of miracles, the only human amongst the seraphim, someone who keeps going against all odds, the one Shepherd with a special end to his journey, and Mikleo is “merely” a young seraph who doesn’t even know a lot of things about his kin.
(Just like how we see things through Sorey’s eyes, and how he learns from the various humans he met and parted with along the way; when it comes to how seraphim work, we usually learn about it because Mikleo, the youngest seraph he is, is curious enough to ask about it from his seniors. You can see it in the skits in-game.)
伝承はいつしか「希望」になる
Legends will someday become “Hope”
I’ve talked about in detail how Zestiria is hugely inspired by Shinto, and, subsequently, places a great importance on legends and history just like Shinto as a religion. The catchphrase of the game nicely illustrates this. However, one thing I’d also like to point out is that it’s easy not to think too deeply into “legend” as an English word, we tend to take words for granted after all. I don’t know if what I’m saying is making any sense, but Zestiria is a work that chooses its words very carefully and you’re supposed to read between the lines.
In the Japanese word for “legends”, “伝承”, lie implications that might not be immediately obvious to people who can’t read Japanese: that legends are transmitted, imparted, handed down (伝える), and that legends are received, taken in, accepted (承ける). There is a give-and-take relationship here, it’s not a one-way road.
The epilogue in the novel, focusing on Mikleo like in the game, emphasized more on this:
In the time that flows eternally, a human’s life is like an instant flash. However, the will that gets handed down and inherited transcends the long time. As long as we want to pass it on.
The young man believed that ruins are also a will that can continue to get passed on. Transcending time, leaving behind a shape of thoughts that they want to convey to the future, waiting for the right person to accept them someday.
Always and forever.
The young man, wanting to take in [to accept] all of this will thoroughly, revisited this place alone by himself.
Humans and seraphim are fundamentally different beings: time flows differently for both, humans accept external changes, seraphim stay the way they are due to their nature as incarnations of the purest hearts. To Mikleo, whose passage of time is comparatively stationary, seeing Sorey, a human, who keeps changing (growing; maturing) just makes their fundamental differences even more obvious, so of course it gives him complicated feelings on the whole matter.
Just before, they were the same height, then Sorey grew even taller than he was, as highlighted in the manga. However, the Sorey that has lived up until now, still lives on inside Mikleo anyway. After all, they’d been together all their lives up until then.
…陪神になってスレイと同じ使命を感じてなんとなくあの時僕を拒んだ理由がわかった
導師の使命も世界も知らないただイズチにいた頃のままの僕らをスレイは残しておきたかった
…As I became a Sub Lord and feel the same calling as Sorey, somehow I understood why he refused me to become one at the time.
Sorey wanted that that part of us, that didn’t know of the Shepherd’s calling nor of the world, just staying the way we were in Elysia, to still remain.
But Sorey’s core―the reason for why he is who he is―it’s Mikleo, the one who has come to share his dream and time, who has it. To Mikleo, a seraph who will continue to be for a very long time as an untainted and unchanging heart, Sorey entrusts his dream. So that after this journey ends, he can walk with himself again.
Sorey, the childhood friend who holds the dream of seeing a world where humans and seraphim could coexist, won’t go anywhere, as long as Mikleo is there, even if Sorey changes. Even Sorey, the one who carries on the Shepherd’s burden, isn’t going anywhere, because that will is carried on to the next generations, by Rose and the succeeding Shepherds.
Speaking of Rose, I think her role in the story as Sorey’s foil will highlight Sorey and Mikleo’s relationship even more (this is not saying that Sorey and Rose’s relationship is any less important, just that it’s a different form of relationship). Even from the character design perspective, Sorey’s gold/orange (the image color that is used for him in both the World Guidance and the manga) and Mikleo’s teal are complementary colors, their eye colors (green and purple) are also complementary colors, and they share the color blue as well, whereas Sorey’s blue and white contrasts Rose’s red and black. I believe this is deliberate, as deliberate as Rose and Lailah sharing the color red yet contrasting black and white, because from the information that has been revealed, Fujishima and Inomata as the veterans of the series were asked first to design two humans and two seraphim respectively, based on their styles, and that their characters would be the main focus of the work.
(Which I also believe is the basis for why it is Sorey [Fujishima] and Mikleo [Inomata], Lailah [Inomata] and Rose [Fujishima] in the night before final battle scene, a scene that has held importance in the entire Tales of series.)
Also, I want you to pay close attention to the key visual for Zestiria above. I will also bring this up again:
右手は身・体の、左手は霊・心の在処
The right-hand side is where the physical body is, while the left-hand side is where the spiritual heart is.
To his left, Mikleo, the Sub Lord, and to his right, Rose, the Squire. Lailah, the Prime Lord, on the far back, evoking that distant feel of the mystical, of the legendary, in the same center as him, the Shepherd. Sorey and Rose actually have a lot in common that are easy to miss... they both grew up with seraphim, sort of, and it cultivated in their pure hearts and high resonance. They’re both humans. But it is with Mikleo, the one who’s decidedly different kin from him, that he has complementary relationship with.
Maybe Zestiria wants us to focus more on their similarities, than their differences, when it comes to Sorey and Mikleo. However, humans don’t grow if they only hear what they want to hear; they have to be challenged, and besides, if you’re going to step into the world out there, there are many kinds of people, people with different views and approaches from you. This is what is needed for Sorey to meaningfully grow. So despite the similarities, Rose is the one human who Sorey knows, outside from himself, that lives with a seraph yet rejects them vehemently at first. That each of them has their own role, to give life and to take life.
This is getting more and more about Rose instead, but I promise I have a point to make here. Besides, it was also Mikleo that managed to convince her to join, for Sorey’s sake.
MIKLEO: We seraphim are indeed Sorey’s friends.
MIKLEO: And yet we cannot say for sure if Sorey sees and hears the same things we do.
ROSE: Because he's... the only human out of all of you?
MIKLEO: Yes. Sorey has no human compatriots who can truly understand the burden he bears as the Shepherd.
ROSE: You want... me... to join him.
MIKLEO: It's ultimately your call.
Pay attention on the camera positioning, on how Mikleo is on the left on the screen talking to Rose on the right of the screen. It’s not enough for Sorey as a character who has been surrounded by seraphim his whole life, to just be surrounded by a party of seraphim, yet it was Mikleo who first realized this instead of Sorey himself. Also, it wasn’t just in the way he didn’t force her to join Sorey, but the way he was also so gentle in his word choice, even telling her that it was okay for her to be scared of him.
This is why I like how the English trailer dubbed Mikleo as Sorey’s “voice of reason.” Sorey isn’t exactly unreasonable himself, but I think this fits nicely with the designation that in the end, Mikleo chooses to act as the “spiritual heart” to Sorey’s “physical body.” I deliberately use the word “choose” here, because, just as it was Sorey’s choice to be the Shepherd, it was also Mikleo’s choice to fight alongside him.
天族とは誰かの想い、誰かの祈りから生まれた露な<人の心>そのもの。
執行者の名を持つ天族は、その心の最も純粋な形として生まれた化身。
Seraphim are born from someone’s thoughts, someone’s prayers; they are the very bare “hearts of humans” themselves.
Seraphim bearing the name “Enforcer” are incarnations born as the purest form of those hearts.
It was implied that Mikleo, the seraph, was born from the thoughts of Michael that were paradoxically both his hope and his despair. And I’m sorry for repeating myself here, but these pages of the manga really spelled it out (I have an entire post on Sorey, Mikleo, and Growth here and here):
SOREY: …I never… want to forget this pain…
SOREY: It’s exactly because I felt pain that I was able to continue this journey.
SOREY: We’re grieving, suffering because of the reality across this world… and that’s why we are able to rise up for hope.
ROSE: !
SOREY: Many feelings even beyond that I had never known before were shining through! That being case, we—
MIKLEO: (Humans accept [receive] something, and with that, they change their way of being.)
SOREY: We’re not afraid to go down this road!!
MIKLEO: (With time, you grow taller. With your calling, you don the mantle. If you, with all that, are willing to accept the pain that tries to dye you…)
MIKLEO: (Then I, the seraph that resides within you, as the thought that you are who you are, will draw the bow together with you.)
(Another neat detail is how on the first page above, the paneling positions Mikleo on the left and Rose on the right.)
So Mikleo was born as Michael’s hope and despair, but decides he will act as the thought that Sorey is who Sorey is. The left to his right. The spiritual to his physical. The seraph to his human.
Choice indicates agency here. I will always remind people that Zenrus has never raised both Sorey and Mikleo to be the Shepherd and his Sub Lord, even though Muse did suggest that idea to him when he took them in. No, they came to accept these roles themselves. The one thing they learned from Zenrus was the dream of coexistence between humans and seraphim, basically the core idea of Zestiria itself.
And their bond is conceived to symbolize the possibilities of that coexistence.
(Speaking of Muse, I want to bring up that there are only two story-related weapons in the game (as in, weapons used/obtained through story and not by loot): the first is Lailah’s Sacred Blade, used by Sorey when fighting the hellions during the Sacred Blade Festival, and the second one is Muse’s Staff, used by Mikleo. I feel these weapons nicely represent Sorey’s connection to the seraphim and Mikleo’s connection to humans outside of each other.)
If such seraph and human—heart and body could exist together, if the physical body could not lose sight of its own heart, could listen carefully to its voice, and could feel its presence, then humans should be able to live the way they want to live, without being tainted. Sorey, who has lived with the seraphim, is that proof.
I won’t let you carry this by yourself.
They share their passion together, they share their inherited will together; for that, they share the burden needed to get there. Personally, despite what I might seem like, I’m actually detached when it comes to liking characters... I don’t really care about the characters individually themselves, and this might make me seem like I don’t care about them personally, but it’s more like that to me, characters cannot be divorced from the narrative and context they’re supposed to work under. Sorey and Mikleo are obviously intended to be the symbols representing what humans and seraphim (the right and the left, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the heart) can do for one another, and legends are full of those symbols. Their unspoken, unseen bond, often described as something like tacit understanding/heart-to-heart communion (以心伝心) also contributes to that feel of seeing something transcendental you often find in legends and folktales, because even words are not necessary anymore, it’s shown in every step they take for themselves and for each other.
Yet at the same time they’re also depicted just as boys. They can get to be happy over the smallest things, they get into heated arguments, they tease each other, they get worried about each other, they don’t want to lose to each other... they are so normal, despite what I’ve said about them before. They’re both symbols and realized characters that I can relate to on a more personal level, and there is multiple facets to both their characters and relationship. I think that’s the best way to show what living in harmony with the world, with the history, with everything that has been there all along without us immediately realizing it, means. They really are there to embody the themes and messages of Zestiria together.
MIKLEO: Both iris gems and ruins are just fragments of the past. What’s important is what you get out of them.
MIKLEO: “Because history is the architect of our hearts.”
SOREY: Whoa, Mikleo! That was a sweet quote!
MIKLEO: You think so? I’m planning to put it in the book I write one day.
EDNA: Well, aren’t you full of surprises.
MIKLEO: I mean, don’t you think it'd be a waste not to pass on our tale to future generations?
Yes, the details and nitty-gritty are important, but above everything, it’s the bigger picture. What you get out of them. And what I get from them is that hope is not created but inherited. Their journey, their tale not only carries on the hope from the previous generations, but to the next generations as well.
This tale begins with them and ends with them. It is their tale after all.
MAY 10, 2024 (FRI) Okubo Hikarinouma
open 19:00 start19:30 door 2500yen+drink
Albedo Gravitas
Delphine Dora solo
Delphine Dora, 秋山徹次, TOMO
MAY 11, 2024 (SAT) ASAGAYA YELLOW VISION
open 19:00 start19:30 door 2500yen+drink
Delphine Dora solo
Delphine Dora, 福岡林嗣
浦邊雅祥、福岡林嗣、南部輝久
Delphine DORA
voice, keyboard instruments, etc(FR)
デルフィーヌ・ドラは、フランスの作曲、即興演奏を共に行うミュージシャンであり、主にピアノ、パイプオルガン他、アコースティック、エレクトロニクスの区別なくキーボードを使用し、近年はフィールドレコーディングも作曲に取り入れている。声もまた彼女の音楽を構成するのに欠かせない要素で、神秘的かつ古代的元型と触れ合うが如くフラジャイルでイマジナリーな言語の詩を「歌」として描く。その音楽性は、異なったフォーク、ミニマル、即興音楽と通底し、英語、フランス語、ドイツ語を駆使し、その言語的元型を交錯させる。15年以上に渡り、フランス他各国のレーベルにてソロ、コラボレーションを問わず30以上の作品にレコーディング参加し、彼女自身の”ワイルド・サイレンス”レーベルの創設者でもある。
Delphine Dora
Delphine Dora is a French musician, composer and improviser. Working mainly with keyboard instruments (piano, pipe organ, electronic keyboard…), her music has been enriched in recent years by the addition of field recordings to her compositions. The voice is also one of her favourite instruments, at times drawing on the language of poets, at other times on an imaginary language, a language freed of all signifiers, a voice that is fragile and embodied, archaic, mystical and free, but also plural and mutant voices that are embodied in her. On stage, she uses instruments such as the piano, organ or keyboards, and her voice, loops, various effects and mysterious sounds. Her performances are usually improvised, using voice and acoustic or electronic instrumentation, depending on the context and the place.
Her iconoclastic music can be read as a work of personal cartography, based on an intuitive approach to composition and nourished by numerous approaches. For more than 15 years, she has been developing an intimate and plural musical universe, in perpetual metamorphosis, situated at the crossroads of different musical genres (folk music, minimalist music, improvised music, electroacoustic music, etc.) and languages (english, french, german, imaginary languages, etc.). A prolific musician, she has taken part in more than thirty recordings (solo and collaborations) in a variety of aesthetics on numerous french and foreign labels (Recital, three:four, Feeding Tube Records, Okraïna, By The bluest of the seas, Morc, fort evil fruit…). She is also the founder of the Wild Silence label.
TOMO hurdy gurdy / vielle à roue
ハーディーガーディー奏者。東京都出身。14歳の時にギターを始める。
17歳で単身渡米。8年間米国で学生時代を過ごす。帰国後、ルーツ・ミュージック/トラッド/古楽のエッセンスと、共鳴や倍音を意識したドローン・ミュージックを軸に、ギターをはじめ民族楽器など様々な楽器で創作を行う。創作活動の過程で、千年以上の歴史をもつメカニカルかつユニークな機構の古楽器「ハーディーガーディー」に出会い、関心を持つことになる。以後、ハーディーガーディーをメイン楽器として、その楽器の可能性と独自の奏法を探求しながら、作品の制作・演奏活動を行っている。