I’m sure we all remember these words uttered by protagonist Fei Fong Wong at the end of Xenogears, right? The final, let’s say, dialectical confrontation in between Fei and Karellen is one of the most memorable moments in the entire game, taking place after the final boss (climax boss Uroboros aside, which is a worthy topic of discussion all by itself), and having the honor of being one of the first times in JRPGs in which the main antagonist doesn’t have a boss battle all to himself, being confronted with words instead.
However, the exchange features a certain contrast in its dialogue that I feel worthy of note, especially given I speak to a Western audience, who most definitely lost this nuance in translation. I do not blame Richard Honeywood for it, given it’s for sure difficult to convey in English. In fact, I don’t think you can convey this with singular words alone. But let’s get to the meat of the issue:
Here, as you can see, Fei does refer to himself as “human” with the kanji人 (read as hito), one of the most common ways to refer to an individual person in Japanese. However, the interesting part comes out of the contrast with the way Karellen utters the very same word:
Instead of using the kanji 人 like his antagonist does, Karellen refers to humans as ヒト. And he does so invariably. What’s the difference? It’s the very same word, but written in katakana, instead of kanji. Yet in Japanese these nuances hardly mean nothing at all. And there’s a certain piece of material for Xenogears that suggests this was not a stylistic choice left to chance, but rather a meaningful concept for the story that was left in the dark, lost in translation. I’m speaking, of course, of another, in my opinion, highly overlooked text, relative to its importance to fully understanding what the game is truly about, and where it was headed: the Afterword to Xenogears: Perfect Works-The Real Thing. Regarding the goals of Emperor Cain in the game, the Afterword has this to say:
For Cain, thinking along these lines, the abilities demonstrated by humans such as Citan and his peers as representatives of a new seed were a source of hope. As the resurrection of God, Deus, drew closer, Cain knew there was a high probability their appearance was not due to chance. He entrusted them with everything. He decided that ruin would be a result of the curse of the system, a massacre committed by the weapon Deus, and he hoped for Man to become humanity by growing out of their collective childhood and ridding themselves of the shackles of God.
The translation of this part of the Afterword was done by Gwendal. UltimateGraphics’ scanlation of Perfect Works is the only one that translated the Afterword, but the translation is horrible, and butchers the meaning of many important sentences. Though rather than “seed”, I’d translate 種 here as “kind” or “variety”, as I think that is what this is trying to convey.
The important part regarding the topic we are discussing is the bolded one. Here, we are presented with the exact meaning of what the difference in between 人 and ヒト signifies (yeah, it’s the part about “Man becoming humanity”, I know it sounds weird, but translating this to English is a royal pain in the ass). It’s the difference in between humans shackled to the Deus System, that is, humans dependent on God and stuck inside a kind of “childhood” as a species (ヒト) and humans who’ve gotten rid of those very shackles, deciding to live through their own will, carving their own path (人).
Tracking the very specific times ヒト had been used across the script of Xenogears proved to be a difficult task, however, the very first instance in which it’s used is a very particular scene near the beginning of the game, in which Emperor Cain appears for the first time, speaking to Shitan. A scene we won’t be seeing for the last time in this article just now, for the matter:
Here, he uses the katakana to refer to those humans cast away from Paradise into the cruel, harsh surface of the Earth (a metaphorical way to refer to the crash of the Eldridge), left quite as if they were orphans, a return to God and Paradise being their only source of salvation (we’ll cover this again later). Humans here appear connected, dependent on the Deus System. Aside from a single mention of the word from Shitan to Sigurd, we spend a lot of time without hearing of ヒト up to the raid on the Church’s headquarters by Stein’s assassination squad. Here, it is Verlaine who uses it:
Again, the context very much indicates humans controllable through faith, clinging to God to ameliorate the grief created by their war-torn continent. After this, the uses of ヒト are too many to count, but they remain in the very same context without exception. This way of writing “human” will be used by Stein, anytime they speak by the Gazelle Ministry (who obviously see humans in this light), Ramsus, Myyah and Karellen. Surprisingly, Emperor Cain too continues using the term even in the scene of his death. And finally, let’s talk about the paradigmatic use of ヒト in Perfect Works:
Namely, that it is used, all the time, in the context of referring to the humanity born from Kadmoni in the planet the game takes place, in their predetermined fate as parts for “God”. In the History section, the original humanity originating from Lost Jerusalem will never be referred to as ヒト, 人類 (read as jinrui) is the most common denomination for them, meaning literally “mankind”:
I’ve done my own investigation into possible differences in the use of 人and ヒトoutside of the context of this game, and the results have been pretty satisfactory, to say the least. As I’ve found out, while the kanji 人appears to refer to individuals and, given how usual it is to see it in common speech, is rather generic, when seeing ヒトwritten like this, we are before a way of refering to humans from a biological, perhaps even zoological point of view. That is, humans as animals, instead of as people (contrasting with 人). It makes sense, given it meshes up pretty well with the idea of a species still in its childhood.
As I see it, this way of referring to humanity as it exists during Xenogears is a more literal application of the idea of “Lamb” that Solaris applies to surface dwellers, but far wider: it refers to humans shackled to and dependent on Deus, destined to become parts for it, kept in perpetual childhood. Lambs belonging to God, managed by Shepherds (of which there are multiple, hierarchically ordered). In turn, 人, when treated as distinct from the other way to refer to humans in the game’s text, speaks of a new stage that’s free from the shackles of Deus, capable of creating their own fate. And what is the harbinger of this change, of this childhood’s end, that humans on this remote planet experience at the end of Xenogears, as well as the prime example of this kind of human? That’s right, Ahnenerbe:
This is the first time we hear of this word… and the last time we do so as well, in game at least. The Gazelle Ministry find the belief in “Ahnenerbe” (misromanized as “Anonelbe” in the US version) an explanation to Emperor Cain’s behavior. In fact, the “still” (which is also present in the original Japanese here) implies it is something that Cain once believed in (and is perhaps a nod to what happened in what Perfect Works calls Episode II), but which was proven to be nothing more than delusions. In fact, the Gazelle Ministry’s current form is pointed out as being proof of such an ideal being nothing but bullshit.
Xenogears: Perfect Works-The Real Thing, in Emperor Cain’s character section, elaborates more on what Ahnenerbe means:
Aside from noting that ヒトis used in this paragraph, it says that Ahnenerbe means “the coming God in the flesh who’ll walk and advance towards a new horizon, alongside with the humans born in this world”. Cain, according to the book, identifies the Contact Fei as Ahnenerbe because he’s a person with the power to grant both salvation and destruction to humans, implying this is a characteristic that defines Ahnenerbe.
In fact, the destructive side of the Contact has already been proven more than enough, as the incomplete contact during “Episode IV”, 500 years before the game starts, led to the birth of Grahf and to almost the total annihilation of humanity, including the deaths of the Gazelle Ministry’s physical forms, which we already talked about earlier. And in this incarnation, his alternate personality Id has already caused more than enough destruction and grief as Grahf’s assassin.
And this is Cain’s dilemma during basically the entirety of Disc 1. Using Shitan as his agent, Emperor Cain is trying to gauge whether or not to believe in Ahnenerbe once again. If Fei proves to be an ally, someone who’d grant salvation, he’ll start believing once again, and would entrust all to him. However, if the opposite is proven true, he’ll stay his hand as Fei perishes, suffering humanity’s preordained fate at the Time of the Gospel (whatever this might be, if I may add).
However, as we saw before with the Afterword text, it seems Cain came to recognize not only Fei, but the entire party (who didn’t undergo mutation into Wels) as being “Ahnenerbe”, identified as a new “kind” who’d take humanity out of its childhood through the destruction of Deus:
In Cain’s view, the entity who was supposed to cut the chains of God and to become a new seed at the heart of humanity would be Ahnenerbe, the coming god in the flesh.
He believed that Man would find salvation through this Ahnenerbe. And then, God, Deus, was destroyed by Fei and his friends, deemed to be Ahnenerbe, coming god in the flesh by Cain. Through their victory in the battle to refuse a ruin of the flesh by massacre, or a ruin of the mind through unification, Man was freed from their predestined destruction and managed to become humanity.
This essentially shows that not the Gazelle Ministry, or Myyah, or Karellen were the true winners of Xenogears: the true “ideological” winner of the whole thing was Emperor Cain, even in death. As Cain hoped for, Ahnenerbe freed humans in the planet from the shackles of Deus, from their preordained fate as parts for it, and from their dependency on God. Fei himself, in the very image which heads this page, affirms his humanity before Karellen’s disdain, as well as his free will and the suffering being human implies.
Now, was the “new horizon” Cain wanted Ahnenerbe to take humans towards simply “somewhere beyond Deus’ shackles”? Is it really that simple, or is there more behind it than it seems at first glance? Most people who’ve played the game to completion, from my experience, believe that is all, and that Deus itself was the only problem present in the game. Nothing else to take care of for Ahnenerbe and the new, freed of their collective childhood humans beyond a simple, omnicidal weapon that had gone out of control.
However, multiple moments throughout the game imply otherwise. Why was the Gazelle Ministry so frantic to carry out the resurrection of Deus, why did they pursue their return to God (of course, meaning their becoming gods themselves through this, with the authority to rule the universe) with such zeal in the game, up to the point they decided to kill Emperor Cain? Why were Karellen and Myyah sure this Contact/Counter-existence pair was the final one?
In fact, what we need to analyze with utmost care is what’s known in the game as “the Time of the Gospel”, its true meaning and the phenomena that were going to accompany it. When playing the game, and reading certain parts of Perfect Works, most people just simplify its meaning to “the time of Deus’ resurrection”. Simplifying being an apt word, because it’s not just that, and the Afterword to Perfect Works is dedicated to ruminating on all these hinted at aspects:
Perhaps you recall these words that were spoken by Cain? In the story, they provide an interpretation of how Man is endowed with eternal life through the resurrection of God. As I’m sure the more perceptive of you have noticed, no clear and specific explanation of the true meaning behind the words the Time of the Gospel or the three mysterious phenomena bound up with it –
why was it absolutely necessary for ‘God’, Deus, to restore itself within the long span of 10,000 years?,
why was there a time limit to this process?,
why would mankind be destroyed as a result of this?
– was ever provided, to the very end. In addition, the interpretations themselves given by the characters who navigate these phenomena vary tremendously based on their individual perspectives.
What the Afterword is doing here is clarify several implications found in the game itself, which were also elaborated upon in the History section of Perfect Works, which likely means, and this is important, that these were questions to be solved in a hypothetical Xenogears Episode I, which didn’t happen due to a plethora of reasons. The Afterword dwells, first of all, in an issue already touched upon in the History section of Perfect Works: that it just doesn’t make sense for the restoration program of a simple weapon to take up a time of 10,000 years. It’s not a cost effective move, simple as that, and the creators of Deus sure thought like that, cause the restoration program the game presents itself as wasn’t programmed by human hands. Even assuming that 10,000 years were just an instant to Deus, if it were restoring itself for the sake of continuing the “Interstellar War” mankind was involved in, who knows what’d have become of its pictured enemies by then. The sourcebook goes on to say that, perhaps, the resurrection of Deus was something that had to be absolutely carried out, no matter the time required. Sounds quite urgent:
Plus, I believe it is significant that the History section questions why specifically humans as parts. Thinking about it, other organic materials might as well do, such as animals, which would be far more controllable. Yet this didn’t happen. The History section offers the explanation that using humans as parts allows Deus to simulate the coming battle in outer space, which is plausible enough, yet it sounds as if that’s not the entire truth either. What this does confirm, and this meshes well with what the Afterword goes on to say later, is that Deus still had its sight set on annihilating human targets across the universe:
The second remaining question outright confirms something that’s subtly hinted at across the game, and something which most gamers who’ve played Xenogears miss entirely: the fact that Deus’ resurrection has a time limit. A time limit set in 10,000 years, incidentally. This is first hinted at in the very first mention of “The Time of the Gospel”. Here, Emperor Cain tells Shitan that, once humans have filled the land, they must resurrected God and join together in Paradise to achieve “eternal life”:
If this weren’t to come true (and this is better seen in the original JP), then the fate determined at their genesis (this is important as well) would cause them all to perish. This is something lost in translation in my opinion, as Richard Honeywood changed the scene to flow in a different way:
In the original Japanese, the flashback to Emperor Cain’s talk about the Time of the Gospel ends before he can finish the last sentence. After the flashback ends, Shitan’s words hint at the fact that the Emperor revealed to him that humans would all perish if the resurrection of Deus doesn’t come to pass by the “Time of the Gospel”, the time limit:
And this takes us to the 3rd question: the reason why the Time of the Gospel results in the annihilation of humans. This is linked to many issues, including the above time limit, the theorized destruction of humans if “God” isn’t resurrected, and the purge of the remaining humans of the planet that Deus sets out to do after it is resurrected. And it is, of course, the question the Afterword ends up dealing with the most… ultimately only doing exposition of facts seen in game that must be taken into account, but without actually answering any questions:
With this in mind, I’d like to begin by considering the true meaning of the Time of the Gospel as seen from the Gazel Ministry’s point of view.
Their main interpretation is as follows: if the resurrection of God does not come to pass, Man will also be brought to ruin. This conveys the true purpose for the existence of the Gazel Ministry itself, created as an instrument of the weapon Deus. In becoming part of Deus God – they will live forever. Further, to them this is life, while anything that prevents them from becoming one with God and returning to the restored system consequently takes on the meaning of death.
Shackled to the system, the Ministry simply desired the resurrection of God, nothing more. They brought about the resurrection of God only for the purpose of being able to return to the restored system. They effectively met their end at the hands of Krelian, being erased by him. However, their Animus essence was propagated into the genetic code of mankind, the resurrection of God came to pass, and in truth, many humans became part of God, experiencing a return and reunification being endowed with life. Consequently, at this point in time they were able to escape the approach of the day of ruin they’d forseen.
This here is the logic the Gazelle Ministry follows through the game, and which can be seen in many instances:
The Afterword here posits the narrative that they, shackled to the System as they are, and pursuing unification with Deus in a single minded way as their purpose in life, would interpret their inability to do so as a “day of ruin”, as “death”. In fact, this is the view that Cain apparently conveys to Shitan in the scene we’ve talked about. However, and this is me theorizing here, I’d say this falls flat when considering the issue of the time limit, which is not discussed in the Afterword in its entirety. In fact, the Afterword seems to discuss the 3rd question in isolation, up to the very end, and we’ll see what results of that soon.
Still, if the same kind of phenomenon were to be seen from a different point of view, the resurrection of God would indeed be linked to the destruction of mankind. So let us take a look at Miang’s (Elly’s) point of view next.
From the words of Elly after she became Miang, the following can be inferred: A being with the ability to create a ‘God’ will sooner or later become a hindrance. These words refer to the final course of the Deus restoration program, but as for becoming a hindrance…a hindrance for what, exactly?
Taking these words at face value, this would seem to refer to the people of the civilization that created Deus. Since it was made to be a weapon, Deus becoming a hindrance to its creators would be sufficient to pose a dire threat to their entire civilization. So the creators of this weapon included a safety precaution the capabilities of this program can easily be surmised, and in actual fact Citan also states this in the story.
There is one more think I’d like you to consider. At the time of Deus’ birth, its proper creators from this ancient civilization would also have been in the same kind of situation. This is probably the reason Deus was analyzed, sealed away and being transported [on the Eldridge].
Was what happened just a simple case of the system going out of control?
Who exactly were these creators [it refers to]?
And were Fei and his friends the actual targets for elimination?
Here the Afterword ruminates on the very opposite view, held by someone even more intimate to the “consciousness” of Deus itself, Myyah, just after she awakens in Elly’s body. Though apparently not knowing all the details and following a mere programming, she only gives a reason about why Deus must end human civilization: that beings with the ability to create God would eventually become hindrances:
This sentence was mistranslated in English, so most gamers missed its true nuance, which actually fits what’s said in the Afterword. The main question is “a hindrance for what?”, which isn’t actually answered. The Afterword at first takes the stance that it might be a hindrance to the human civilization that created Deus, but Deus’ behavior towards its creators should make us discard this hypothesis, especially given the Afterword points out that Deus’ creators were in this exact same situation: they were beings that could create “God”. And so, it seems likely that’s the reason Deus turned against them in the first place. The next questions are not answered, but they cast doubt on certain details: that Deus was nothing more than a system going out of control, that Fei and company were the true targets of elimination, and about the identity of Deus’ creators in the first place.
Both of these views seem contradictory at first glance, however, the Afterword presents a compelling view to reconcile both of them:
Be that as it may, it is obvious that there exists two contradictory views surrounding the interpretation of the Time of the Gospel, namely without the resurrection of God, mankind will be brought to ruin, and through the resurrection of God, mankind will be brought to ruin.
What could explain this contradiction? They could just as well be seen as a result of differences in subjective actors’ individual points of view. In addition, it might not be unreasonable to limit the definition of mankind to simply those who are destined to become parts of Deus. Humans who become part of Deus and join with it this way attain life, while those who never hoped for that kind of unification, those who intended to break out from under God’s protection, are given a divine punishment bearing the name of ruin. On this point there is no contradiction between the Gazel Ministry’s interpretation and Miang’s (Elly’s) words.
As presented, per the Gazelle Ministry’s interpretation, humans would receive “life” by merging with Deus as its parts, while, following Myyah’s interpretation, all those humans who’ve rejected God and unification (those that haven’t mutated into Wels, it seems) would be expunged through Deus’ “divine punishment”. Cain, however, still saw a contradiction here. He didn’t see anything Deus could grant as salvation, but only as annihilation, either of the flesh through “divine punishment”, or spiritual, through unification with it. Therefore, he sought Ahnenerbe as an alternative that would save humans by taking them, as we’ve said, out of their collective childhood and breaking Deus’ shackles. According to the Afterword, Cain would see Deus as being the only source of human destruction in the Time of the Gospel:
However, Cain was different. He took this as a contradiction.
Cain was born as part of the Deus system, and stemming from his being shackled in this way, he fervently wished for Man’s liberation from the bonds of God, in stark opposition to his colleagues in the Ministry. Thus, Cain was desperately looking for a solution. If ruin is taken to mean a return to God, without unification, then its opposite would naturally be life, attained through preventing such a unification.
In Cain’s view, the entity who was supposed to cut the chains of God and to become a new seed at the heart of humanity would be Ahnenerbe, the coming god in the flesh.
He believed that Man would find salvation through this Ahnenerbe. And then, God, Deus, was destroyed by Fei and his friends, deemed to be Ahnenerbe, coming god in the flesh by Cain. Through their victory in the battle to refuse a ruin of the flesh by massacre, or a ruin of the mind through unification, Man was freed from their predestined destruction and managed to become humanity.
Nearly closing off the Perfect Works sourcebook, the Afterword confirms that the phenomena we see in the game are not those that were expected to accompany the Time of the Gospel, simply because Deus was destroyed:
However, if one works with the hypothesis that this destiny is indeed unavoidable, it becomes clear that these events could not have been the phenomena expected to accompany the Time of the Gospel. The reason for this is that the phenomenon of God’s destruction does not have a place here.
In addition, does the concept of God here really refer to Deus? If we assume it does for the sake of argument, the question why would mankind be destroyed as a result of this? can be given a satisfactory answer, as per the interpretation in the text above. However, it does not give us a meaningful answer for the two other questions, why was it absolutely necessary for ‘God’, Deus, to restore itself within the long span of 10,000 years? and why was there a time limit to this process?.
This being the case, it follows that we should probably see the true reason for the ruin of mankind and Ahnenerbe, the coming god in the flesh as being one and the same. The reason for Deus going out of control during the opening sequence is still unclear, though.
Finally, the Afterword questions if “God” refers to Deus, actually. I have no theories on that front, because I can’t think of an alternate answer to the question (and the same goes for some others the Afterword presents). The interpretation of the Afterword so far, as I said, seems to focus on the 3rd question, regarding humanity’s destruction, in isolation, as the text acknowledges that, since there’s no omni-comprehensive answer that allows to solve the 3 questions (regarding the 10,000 years time period and the time limit) at once, it’s suggested that not even the 3rd question has been accurately answered, and the same goes for the true meaning of “Ahnenerbe” (I know the translated text implies another thing, but that’s a disagreement I have with this translation. The original text is not saying that Ahnenerbe and the true cause of humanity’s ruination are the same, but rather, that they should be considered not cleared up enough, just like the 3rd question is suggested to be).
This is the biggest mystery left by Xenogears. Of course, I do not claim to be able to solve by myself a riddle that was left obscured until a new game in the series appeared of course, but I have a few pieces of my mind to give, in terms of where this was going.
First of all, the Afterword seems to focus on answering the 3rd question in isolation, taking sides with Cain and seeing from that perspective those of the Ministry and Myyah. Yet, as I said, the theory that the Ministry’s only “interpreting” the failure to resurrect Deus as being “death” due to how shackled they are to the System seems rather lacking. Mainly, because it doesn’t take the issue of the time limit into account, due to trying to answer the question regarding mankind’s destruction in isolation. It’s, if you’d allow me, an answer reached through assuming that Deus is indeed the only source of destruction present. The Afterword implies the 3 questions are linked rather strongly, and might share a single answer, perhaps. Whenever Cain speaks of “the people perishing” or “extending humanity’s life”, perhaps he’s not referring to just freeing them from Deus, but also to save them from this “day of ruin” the Ministry themselves foresee? This, in fact, would mesh well with the Ministry considering Ahnenerbe a delusion: they just wouldn’t believe this “new kind” can prevent this predetermined ruin, unlike resurrecting and unifying with “God”, their personal delusions of grandeur in considering themselves “God” playing a part of course:
So, let’s work off the hypothesis that there’s indeed something that would befall humanity once the 10,000 years time limit hit, which would mean their total destruction. Such a fate was predetermined at their genesis, according to Cain. And what genesis is he talking about? The Eldridge’s fall unto the “harsh, cruel surface of the Earth”, the metaphorical Fall of Man which the opening of Xenogears depicts:
The Afterword says that “the reasons Deus went out of control in the Opening are still unknown”, and given it is said there, it is set up as another mystery and something relevant to this. However, we have certain clues regarding what this might be… wouldn’t it be related to the true implications of the Time of the Gospel as well? According to the Opening itself and the History section of Perfect Works, Deus was trying to reach “Lost Jerusalem”, considered by spacefaring mankind as being a “holy land” and a “forbidden place”. The History section does hint that there’s a “secret” hidden there, linked to why the planet even became considered Holy Land, and that this “secret” is the reason Deus wanted to reach it:
Then, the self destruction of the Eldridge completely ruined the plan, crippling Deus and leaving it stranded on a backwater planet, having to undertake a program to resurrect itself. Now, let’s think of this: let’s propose that the time limit is something in place regardless of whether Deus had reached Lost Jerusalem or not. Wouldn’t crash landing and getting damaged in the process be a huge setback, in terms of accomplishing whatever mission it had? This matches up pretty well with what Cain tells Shitan: this predetermined fate of having to resurrect God, lest all is lost, was born at their genesis, at the metaphorical “Fall of Man”, when they were expelled from “Paradise”. Then, what we see in Xenogears proper seems even more desperate, as Deus’ resurrection will take up basically every single time unit up to the time limit. Reaching Lost Jerusalem to find whatever’s hidden there is simply not an option anymore, plans have changed. And this is corroborated by the fact that reaching Earth is never once mentioned in game after the Opening’s failure, because it doesn’t enter the plans any longer.
Whatever the actual goal of Deus was, what we see in the game seems not to be what was initially planned, but more of a desperate measure forced upon everyone involved by circumstances. The new plan? To use humans as parts, humans who desire unification with Deus to boot, in order to reconstruct Deus as the “perfect weapon”, and then proceed to eliminate all those “existences with the potential to create God”. And who are these? Precisely, the humans who reject the aforementioned unification:
And who do we know for sure “created God”, that is, Deus? The original humanity that appeared on Lost Jerusalem, and who’ve long since sailed forth into outer space. Humans who, we assume, were unshackled since the start, with no fate as parts for any sort of machine. That is, they’ve long gone past the childhood stage Cain wanted to leave behind. They are 人, as opposed to ヒト. And in fact, not only does the Afterword point that spacefaring mankind is in such a state Myyah talked about, but Perfect Works hints at numerous places at the fact that Deus plans to take the battle into outer space once the resurrection is complete. That’s why it needed the best of parts (which is, among other reasons, why Myyah regularly purged humans on the planet, and why Karellen’s nanomachines were an important asset).
ヒト, meanwhile, seem to be the perfect material as parts for Deus, the Merkabah and as the basis for the former’s Terminal Interface Weapons, the Aeons. That is, humans carefully managed by their shepherds, shackled to their fate as parts for the Deus System, who desire unification with God to escape their grief and suffering. Humans carefully kept in a sort of collective childhood, without a real sense of self. This is, in fact, closely related to a certain Jungian archetype, the Great Mother. “Mother God”, Deus, is refered by Shitan as if acting like the Great Mother, hampering her child’s growth and leading them back to the womb, so that they might become one:
This conception of the Great Mother is heavily related to Erich Neumann’s work regarding this archetype, something reinforced by the references found in Perfect Works, which complements what Shitan says in the game:
The Urobolus Ring is written into Elly’s intron information. When this ring is connected, she is in a non-awakened state, but when the ring is severed, she awakens into Myang. The «Urobolus Ring» symbolizes the process of establishing an Ego, and another term that signifies nearly the same idea as this is the «Great Mother». As the Great Mother, Myang obstructs the formation of a person’s Ego. A person who has been allowed to develop a conscious world (Ego) begins to act according to his own wishes. This is nothing but a hindrance to Myang’s goal of leading people to a perfectly complete body. Therefore, Myang became the Great Mother, and eradicated any civilization too advanced (people with a sense of self).
The «Urobolus» refers to the snake that devours its own tail. That image, of something feeding itself, psychologically indicates the state devoid of conflict before an Ego is established– the Collective Unconscious. It is a state in early childhood where a person cannot yet discern things himself, where there is no conflicting difference between reality and his sense of self. Once the Ego forms, it produces a necessity to sever this circle in order to break away from the unconscious. This is the establishment of one’s own conscious world. The basis on which to discern things is born, and there begins to be conflict towards reality that goes beyond that basis of discernment.
«Great Mother» is a name that symbolizes a mother who hinders her child’s process of breaking away from this circle (from developing an Ego).
The Great Mother archetype is linked to the Uroboros Ring, which is taken as a symbol of the primordial unconsciousness in Neumman’s work. That is, the state before the establishment of the ego, the individual sense of self. Perfect Works, at the same time, equates this state of primordial unconsciousness with another Jungian idea: the Collective Unconscious. Myyah, in her aspect as the Great Mother, appears as a figure that culls entire civilizations to prevent them from “escaping the ring”, from developing a sense of self. This is all done for the sake of creating a cohesive body for Deus, for the sake of conditioning all humans to accept unification. And this is the same thing Deus is doing at the end of Xenogears: either by absorbing or destroying all those humans who have managed to establish a sense of self, who reject unification with it and desire to carve their own path, under their own will.
And who is the vanguard of these new, unshackled humans? Ahnenerbe, those Cain deemed a new kind to usher in a new era for humanity. In fact, what Fei tells Karellen during their final conversation could be considered to be the prime example of a human (人) that has developed such a sense of self and escaped from the Great Mother’s grasp. If Deus’ new objective after resurrection is to eliminate these “posible hindrances”, whom we have managed to identify, I believe, with “unshepherded” humans, couldn’t they be surmised to be the actual cause of whatever’s gonna happen after the time limit’s done for, and which the resurrection and actions of Deus afterwards are trying to prevent?
According to Cain himself, one of Ahnenebe’s characteristics was to “carry the power to both bring salvation and destruction to human beings”. Taking this into account, perhaps Cain’s bet is more of a gamble than previously thought. He’s chosen to entrust all to Fei and the others, making the ideas Abel once had his own and, without a proper sequel to the game, we might never find out if something was indeed going to happen by the time limit’s end, and whether or not the main characters of the game will manage to overcome it. And this might be, although not entirely complete, an approximation to the true meaning behind “Ahnenerbe” that the Afterword speaks of.
However, given the questions brought by the Afterword, I think we can lay down to rest the common notion that Deus was just a weapon gone berserk, going on a misguided omnicidal mission. Both the game, when taking the adecuate hints, and Xenogears: Perfect Works-The Real Thing, point to another direction. In fact, by putting in question who the creators of Deus were, isn’t the Afterword kind of foreshadowing the possibility that, in a hypothetical Xenogears Episode I, we’d find that there was more to the creation of this Interplanetary Strategic Weapon System than previously thought?
The History section of Perfect Works does point in this direction, by revealing that main computer Kadmoni is actually composed of pieces of “Overtechnology”, whose origin is unknown. In particular, Persona, main element in which Anima and Animus (whose origin is also left unexplained) are loaded, and which makes up the basis for Elly and Myyah’s main body, as well as the closest thing Deus would have to a brain, is said to be of unknown origin. There’s also, of course, the matter of just what Uroboros, the final boss of the game, was, which is left entirely unexplained:
Let’s just end this long blog post by saying that I think this might help people realize that the storyline depicted by Xenogears was by no means complete: it was a game designed to fit into a series that never saw the light. Most people I see talking about the game only speak about it with the information clearly revealed within, acting like there were basically no knots left untied, or simplifying several implications of the plot a lot. The mystery behind the true meaning of Ahnenerbe, and the true implications of the Time of the Gospel, are still left hanging over this game. As the Afterword says:
The true meaning of the Time of the Gospel. This enormous mystery enveloping the world of Xenogears is still not resolved.
Still this big mystery unsolved, and I see little discussion about it, or even awareness of its existence. Hopefully I’ve made a worthwhile contribution ruminating about this issue, with lots of theory involved, and by no means with a complete, compelling answer (but again, given the nature of this plot point, that’s a given). I think I could use other, relevant stuff to widen the scope of this post by a fair bit, however, I don’t think today’s the time to do it.
Thank you all for your attention, see you next time!
Overthinking Media 