#this probably seems like total crazy speculation for a character with .4 seconds of screentime and 0 lines

[gadgetcheat]

[rejuv spoilers, crazy ramble, again]

re: risa and eden. i said this topic was for another post and that post is now! it's um... kind of long!

so i noted in a previous post (kind of a prequel to this one, that i'm still proud of, go check it out) how the parallels between Risa and Eden are totally not a coincidence, and i've been wanting to elaborate on that especially given... new insight we have ^_^

so there's the obvious fact of both characters being, well, dead. and their association with XJ / KC respectively. but beyond that, there's possibly something to be said about the parallel of both characters being associated with joy and happiness, but in opposite ways. Risa who sacrificed her life to continue bringing joy to people VS Eden who's signature trick was making people so happy they could literally Die. even if this is a coincidence it's an extremely interesting contrast...

so it's not a stretch to say they could be related in some way, and as i've been racking my brain trying to think of how...

you know how in renegade Talon says how he "didn't exist in his past life" (the old earth)? and how he was put into the new world as an "afterthought"?

my idea: i think Risa was created for the new world to replace the human Eden. to fill the void left by a person who no longer exists. it would explain the total absence of Eden's supposed counterpart, why risa is familiar with XJ but not KC (the XJ from the old earth)

the only limitation of this is that i have no clue what that would mean for Texen and in-game Zumi. i honestly don't have a real answer for that, but Texen does have a piece on the nightmare chess board, so we'll definitely get more of him in the future... interestingly, his piece is labeled "A shadow of a greater purpose"... how greater of a purpose are we talking :D?

also, if you've seen that collage Zumi posted of all the character's eyes, in an eye, ignoring the obvious new artwork in the bottom right for a second-- i really wasn't paying much mind to the placements of characters but it caught my eye (heh) the four specific characters perfectly lined up in the dead center of the pupil:

(archetype) Melia, Variya, Crescent, and... whatever Risa is doing here? she's the odd one out considering the other three are very important characters and have obvious ties to zeight/the core/etc. this is rejuvenation, i don't think they would put someone there just for vibes 0_0

actually, in the dead center of the eye... could you say they're at the Core of it? ehhh :D? you know, as in the system responsible for recycling souls and stuff?

also also, in terms of "things that aren't unusual but that weirdly fit in the context of this theory of mine", Risa has a banner outside the GDC stadium that reads "2FCE" (two-face) with the caption "In our soul there are two faces... One is beautiful, and the other is gorgeous!" possible that this is a reference to Clear acting as her, or maybe its something else? or maybe it's nothing at all shrug. just thought that was interesting

my impatient brainrot is leading me to reverse engineer the hell out of Eden because there is, again, literally almost nothing about them anywhere right now. can i prove their relevance? can i provide a definitive explanation for their existence? no, but i think that's kind of the point...

it's like they were hardly even there in the first place. no lines, no real screentime, no direct counterpart, dead long before the story takes place... i've said it before, but for a trio of characters notorious for being weird and mysterious, Eden is particularly strange and different in ways that haven't even been acknowledged in game. like i feel like we should look into this

from a coping narrative perspective this could be a way to make eden relevant without just using flashbacks or time travel (the latter of which i'm not certain would even work with her), if they were destroyed but there's still a trace of them in the new world... i don't expect them to come back to life or anything, but even ignoring my favorite character bias i don't think it's unreasonable to expect him to have at least some influence on the current story. the mysterious figures are important characters, i feel like Eden wouldn't be in the game if they didn't have some big underlying significance to the lore that is just being very well kept under wraps...

regardless of if i'm totally and hilariously wrong on all of this the big idea is that if Risa ends up being more important than initially thought, then i'd wager Eden has something to do with it… and it seems like Risa's show isn't quite over yet...

"Risa... Who are you?"