What better way to spend your afternoon than posting a meta right before the chapter drops and possibly destroys everything written in it?)
One of the many things about Father that the readers of Noragami find interesting is his eyes. Specifically how sometimes the shading on one of them is different from the other.
I’ve never really seen how that could be explained. The only volume cover with Father on it has him with one of his eyes closed. Luckily, I’ve recently started collecting all of the volume covers, including the inside covers. Now I know that Father is actually on TWO covers:
1) Volume 11 cover – you know, the one where he’s lying on a heap of newspaper clippings with the articles about the murders he had Yato commit;
2) Volume 16 inside cover.
And this is how he looks on both covers:
That’s it, everything’s clear now, nothing to see here anymore, everyone, go home.
Well, not really.
See, most of the time Father’s/Fujisaki’s eyes are actually evenly colored. They are dark, just like most of the other character’s in the series, regardless of whether he’s in the body of Fujisaki Kouto or out of it (you know, when he’s wearing that black yukata). That must be Fujisaki’s body’s eye color, the one that people who talk to him see. After all, not a single character has commented on this periodic heterochromia he has, so it probably doesn’t really manifest.
For the purposes of this meta I’ve looked at every.single.frame.with.Father.in.it. Also looked at some other characters’ eyes. My observations are listed below.
@night-diviner “I love this so much, thank you for this meta! I’ll just add that not only father’s eyes in Fujisaki’s form were ‘strange’ like that, but also in his original, first form! He seemed as if he was blind on that left eye– but there could be really something more to it and connected to his soul possessing perhaps”.
I have to admit, I ignored Fathers real appearance when making this, both because there isn’t much of him in the manga, and because his eyes are rarely seen. Here’s a bunch of them:
As you can see, in most cases only one of his eyes is visible, to varying extent. The fact that his right eye on the screen from chapter 60 is much lighter than the rest is notable, yes, but it could be the case of lightening darker eyes to show emotions (in this case it’s anger). The only picture where both his eyes are clearly visible has them evenly colored. That’s why I can’t with 100% certainty say that his real appearance has this trick as well. Still an interesting theory though.
What better way to spend your afternoon than posting a meta right before the chapter drops and possibly destroys everything written in it?)
One of the many things about Father that the readers of Noragami find interesting is his eyes. Specifically how sometimes the shading on one of them is different from the other.
I’ve never really seen how that could be explained. The only volume cover with Father on it has him with one of his eyes closed. Luckily, I’ve recently started collecting all of the volume covers, including the inside covers. Now I know that Father is actually on TWO covers:
1) Volume 11 cover – you know, the one where he’s lying on a heap of newspaper clippings with the articles about the murders he had Yato commit;
2) Volume 16 inside cover.
And this is how he looks on both covers:
That’s it, everything’s clear now, nothing to see here anymore, everyone, go home.
Well, not really.
See, most of the time Father’s/Fujisaki’s eyes are actually evenly colored. They are dark, just like most of the other character’s in the series, regardless of whether he’s in the body of Fujisaki Kouto or out of it (you know, when he’s wearing that black yukata). That must be Fujisaki’s body’s eye color, the one that people who talk to him see. After all, not a single character has commented on this periodic heterochromia he has, so it probably doesn’t really manifest.
For the purposes of this meta I’ve looked at every.single.frame.with.Father.in.it. Also looked at some other characters’ eyes. My observations are listed below.
A character’s eye color often changes to indicate some sort of emotion. Hiyori, for example, has dark eyes (brown), like on the picture of the left. On the other picture they are much lighter than usual. This is a moment from chapter 36 when she thought they have no way of getting Yato out of Yomi, seconds before Amaterasu shows up (the picture on the right is actually from the same chapter, a couple of pages prior).
Sometimes a character’s eyes go completely white, like in the case of Bishamon here. On the left you can see her normal eye color (purple), on the right – the eye color when she’s shocked that the seven gods of fortune are accused of taming ayakashi.
Father’s eyes sometimes become white to reflect two states – either when he’s shocked (on the left) or when he’s plotting something (on the right):
However, in most of the scenes he’s in his eyes are dark and evenly colored:
I’ve actually found only 12 moments when the shading on of the eyes is slightly different. Still, other characters don’t have this feature, so ignoring it is not an option. Adachitoka’s art is very detailed; it can’t be a simple mistake or accident.
Here they are. I’m not so sure about chapter 77 though, ‘cause the different eye color in that one could be attributed to lighting. That’s not the case with the other ones , especially when it comes to Father’s introduction – the darker eye is on the lighter side of his face.
From what we see here, Father’s right eye seems to be darker in most of the cases, except for chapters 63, 80 and 81. Since I don’t see a clear rule on which eye is supposed to be get the extra lighting, I can’t really suggest that one of them means one thing and the other one means something else.
Then maybe we should look into what happens in the scenes themselves?
Chapter 24 – Fujisaki prevents Hiyori from falling down the stairs and tells her to be careful. Father already knows who Hiyori is; according to him, he moved to Tokyo to get to her specifically.
Chapter 39 – Father is telling Mizuchi that Yato will return to them.
Chapter 40 – Father says that he will allow Yato to make a couple of good memories because he’s such a nice dad. Moments earlier he was conducting an experiment – he used the new kotonoha to control a person possessed by one of his masks.
Chapter 44 – Father is talking about gods and how the way their human creator manipulates them is no concern of theirs.
Chapter 45 – Father is watching Kofuku’s house. He then creates a mask that possesses a boy and infiltrates Tenjin’s shrine to get rid of Edachi.
Chapter 63 – Father watches how Bishamon is trying to get to him while thinking that this way she will turn the Heaven’s execution squad’s eyes away from Yato.
Chapter 68 – Father fakes seeing Kazuma to make Bishamon turn her back to him. However, he notices several gods approaching to them and fleets.
Chapter 77 – Father kills “Bishamon”, who is actually Edachi.
Chapter 80 – Father says there’s a way to come back to life/come back from Yomi (he uses both of these phrases in his conversation with Yukine; whether they mean the same thing for him or not is yet to be revealed).
Chapter 81 – Father tells Hiyori that Yukine has started wondering about his past.
Chapter 87, picture #1 – Father suggests that Hagusa searches for his human name around the house.
Chapter 87, picture #2 – Father must be thinking about his past (the first 19 pages of 87-2 are probably his memories that segway into Nora’s tale).
Again, I don’t see a clear pattern here. I could say that these are all moments when Father is plotting something. But there are other scenes in which he does the same yet his eye color is ordinary.
So yeah, failed to notice any correlation between Father’s eyes and his thoughts and/or actions. However, there is one more option left – the different shading on one of the eyes could be a hint that there are two souls in the body of Fujisaki Kouto – his own and Father’s. After all, he has red eyes on the cover of volume 11, where his physical body is depicted, and blue eyes on the cover of volume16, where he’s in his spirit form.
I have mentioned several times now how I believe that Father possesses not just another person’s body, but their soul as well. It’s mostly based on two things:
1) In chapter 80 Father says that himself – that he possesses the soul of the Fujisaki family’s eldest son. This wording always seemed strange to me – why not say that he possesses the body? Of course, Father’s words can’t be trusted without further proof from other characters. In this case, the proof is Thing #2.
2) In chapter 81 Hiyori noticed Father flying above her head on a giant ayakashi, but her friends didn’t. If there were still people left who thought that Father doesn’t actually leave Fujisaki’s body, this moment should have finally convinced them. And during the fight Father showed Hiyori his true appearance, just for a split second. And we know that it actually happened, because Hiyori remembers it happening.
Of course, it’s just a theory. However, it brings up some questions.
1) When does Father transfer to another body (and soul) – right from the body’s birth or later?
2) What happens to the soul he possesses?
Let’s focus on the first one for now and see how Father can hop from one person to another.
1) Reincarnation in an infant’s body
Judging from Father’s words, this seems to be the case – he says that he lives and dies in other people’s bodies ever since his return from Yomi, and that he doesn’t get to choose. So when his current body, he is simply somehow born in another person’s body. And he keeps his memories, personality, goals and motivation, which is creepy of several reasons. The idea of a thousand year old man being in a toddler’s body is deeply unsettling. But it’s very inconvenient for Father, too – having the mind of a growing while being confined in a body that for some time can’t sit, walk and talk every time he is reborn. After all. he doesn’t have the luxury of being able to think rationally and talk without any learning the way reincarnated gods do. His abilities are restricted to the abilities of a human body, and even if they aren’t, he will have to fake it if he doesn’t want to raise suspicions.
And there’s also a question of how Nora must be the one controlling Yato when Father is too small to do that. If we take into account volume 8 omake, then Yato worked as a magatsukami when Fujisaki was a toddler, so it’s unlikely that he was the one finding the jobs, so Nora had to take over. I’ve thought about it, and yeah, I think she could actually handle that. Yato admitted that one of the reasons he kept doing the jobs was because he still somewhat enjoyed I, even the most recent time he returned to being a magatsukami. If Nora waited for an opening when yet another shinki would leave Yato, he would probably agree to do the jobs even without Father’s influence.
2) Possessing an existing human
By which that I mean that Father doesn’t live his life in a new body from the start but rather starts possessing a real existing person. We do have to take into account that he really doesn’t get to choose the person. Why would he choose some random student who doesn’t even live in Tokyo and had to move there? If Father could choose the body, he probably wouldn’t even need Yato. There are many means of destroying humans as it is. If he wanted to use them, all he needed was possesses the right person.
If Father can’t switch bodies on his own volition, there must be some conditions that prevent him from possessing any human he wants. Maybe his soul can only transfer to another person when his body dies? Or maybe there are conditions regarding the person that can be possessed? Divine possession, for example, requires a human and a god to have a special bond:
Maybe not every person can host Father’s soul.
This kind of possession eliminates the whole “grown man in an infant’s body” thing, but it’s not without its cons. It means that Father has to substitute another human and he has to work to successfully impersonate the human he knows nothing about. That being said, there’s nothing stopping him from cutting all the ties this person had before being possessed and moving elsewhere, so there’s no need to pretend. Overall, I think that this option would be more convenient for Father.
If this is the case, I’m curious to know when exactly Father started possessing Fujisaki. Let’s examine some of the things he tells about himself to see if there’s anything in them.
We know for sure that Fujisaki Kouto transferred to Hiyori’s school at the start of the new school year. In chapter 30 he tells a little about himself:
The part about Fujisaki having a sister and nieces is true, but the rest is fishy. When Father stopped coming to school after the rebellion, Yama found out that he had lied about living with his father who moved to Tokyo for work:
Why would Father lie about Fujisaki-senior separating from the family and tell the he only moved for work is unclear. It’s also not clear when did Father get rid of him, if that’s what Yama’s words imply. I do believe though that the apartment where he lives in Tokyo really was Fujisaki Kouto’s dad’s place. After all, moving in with your father, even if he left the family, is easier than finding a place on your own.
As for when did Father start possessing Fujisaki: on the first glance, the sudden move to Tokyo does seem to be exactly what I said he could do in so that he doesn’t have to pretend to be someone else. However, some scenes suggest that he has lived with the Fujisaki family for quite a while. Like how he has to correct himself when he starts referring to Fujisaki’s relatives as if they were his own. SO he had to be Fujisaki Kouto for some time; maybe even his entire life?
BTW, unless Father is lying, he was still living with Fujisaki-senior in summer. So if he did get rid of the “dad” after all, it must have happened later.
Whichever way Father possesses people, from birth or not, there’s the question of what happens to the body’s original soul, i.e. if it has a consciousness of its own, independent of Father. As usual, we have to rely on Father’s information in this case, too. Except he is a very, very unreliable source of information. On the one hand, his words about transfer exam must be true, since no one questions Fujisaki going to Hiyori’s school. He visits classes like everyone else and even does some extra work after school:
Here Fujisaki is so… normal, at least compared to what he’s like in later chapters that it’s almost like he isn’t Father. On the other hand, the Father side manifests itself within seconds:
All in all, I can’t really recall any specific scene where I could tell Father and Fujisaki apart. Even when he acts quite normal it’s much more likely that it’s just Father pretending to be a kind person rather than the real Fujisaki showing through. I’m afraid that either from the moment he was born, or some time after that, poor Fujisaki Kouto is no more than a vegetable, and his soul is completely controlled by Father. I think that they sort of merge into one, to be honest. Whenever Father leaves the body of Fujisaki, he has the boy’s appearance, but wears his own black yukata, the one we see in Yato’s flashbacks. Unfortunately, we can’t compare his case with anyone, since there’s only one other character who is a human able to leave her body – Hiyori. Unlike Father, Hiyori in her spirit from look exactly like her body, clothes and all. Since she is the only one to do so, we don’t know if that’s the norm, but it seems more logical than whatever is going on with Father.
These were my thoughts on Father’s eyes. Whether Adachitoka will ever uncover the secret behind his eyes or let it remain a mystery is hard to tell, but one Father’s differently colored eyes sure make him even more memorable.
This was actually written a while ago but I’m posting it now ‘cause I’m bored.
When I first read chapter 79 from the official American release, I found three translation differences that caught my attention and made me think quite a lot. And no, this isn’t an attempt to find out which version is more accurate; believe me, I’m the last person who has any authority to determine that. What I can do is look at how they work in the context of Noragami and maybe make a couple of speculations about what each version has to offer regarding our understanding of the lore, the characters and the themes of the manga.
1. Commemorative ceremony vs wedding
I’m pretty sure I’ve had the same reaction to this particular part of the manga as everyone else who’s read both versions: “Wait, wedding? Where did that come from?” I know that the reason this difference even exists is because the Japanese word that is used here simply means both. So fast-moon chose the first one, and the official translators went with the other one. If I knew Japanese and had to translate this sentence, I probably would have opted for the broader term, aka “commemorative ceremony”, both to be on the safe side (after all, if there will be more Kazuma backstory and turns out it wasa wedding, the translation will still work perfectly - a wedding isa commemorative ceremony) and because it sort of works well with what was said a little earlier - that Kazuma was made an heir to his family’s business by his father’s decree, which sounds like a cause for celebration as far as I’m concerned. So why would the official translators choose a more specific term?
I started thinking around that, and to me, it all boils down to the purpose of this alleged wedding. If I had to guess, some people might have interpreted it in this way: Kazuma didn’t have the chance to marry the girl he wanted, so he decided to move on and marry someone else. But the way I see it, it’s far more likely - if it was a wedding - that it wasn’t his choice, but his father’s. After all, marriage was always tied to inheritance rights; in fact, the reason why it even came to be as a social phenomenon is because it allowed people to determine who could inherit their fortune and who couldn’t. I’m not saying that people who were married and in love didn’t exist back then, but the connection between romantic love and marriage definitely wasn’t as strong as it is now. So I can totally see Kazuma’s father making him marry some other merchant’s daughter both to increase the family’s fortune andto validate his second son’s position as the heir in the eyes of the society. After all, there are historical precedents for boys being forcefully married to a girl their family chose for them for exactly this purpose - like the first Russian emperor Peter I being married off at the age of 15 so that he could become a man, inherit the throne and succeed his older sister.
I don’t think we’ll see more of Kazuma’s past to know for a fact if it was supposed to be a wedding or a celebration of his becoming an heir though.
This is actually getting pretty long, so the rest is below the cut.
2. Yato’s thoughts about shinki
The next big translation difference comes right after the first one, when Yato starts thinking about Kazuma and Yukine both being murdered by their closest relatives.
In fast-moon’s version, Yato’s thoughts are limited to Yukine and how everything he’s done so far reflects on the boy. As a weapon shinki, Yukine was has been put in dangerous situations over and over. Now that Yato’s abandoned him, knowingthat Yukine is vulnerable, especially after his time in the box during the trial, to go and kill his father, his lifeline no less - that’s a “mutual destruction” alright. So the logical conclusion is that it can’t go on like this any longer, and that maybeif Yato was a different self, without all the baggage he had now, then Yukine wouldn’t have to live such a dangerous afterlife.
But man, the official translation… Yato doesn’t think just about Yukine here, but about all shinki, especially those who transform into weapons. While it was never outright said that a shinki is someone who’s necessarily died violently, all the shinki whose past has been revealed so far had very tragic deaths. And while gods don’t deliberately make their shinki into weapons, to know that, and to still use them in battles, making them kill each other a second time, is beyond cruel. The accompanying pictures here all have one thing in common: in all of these situations Yukine had to fight other shinki, not ayakashi. He was put in danger, but so were his opponents, too - all these people who’ve already died a horrible death once. And what drives it home even more is that literally a chapter prior Kazuma started saying how ungodlyit was of Bishamon to take an innocent girl, Nana, and to use her as a disposable weapon, and then he had to correct himself and say that that’s exactlywhat gods do.
And the saddest thing? There’s hardly any solution to this dilemma. Gods need shinki to survive, because shinki kill ayakashi. As powerful as gods are, it’s their shinki that enable them do their duty as gods - grant human wishes and protect people from evil thoughts incarnated.
3. Gods and “something irreplaceable”
The difference here lies in who waits for whom. And I have to say that I’m really biased in this particular case, because I really like how the official translation works in the context of what we know about reincarnations. While it is a mechanism that exists in Noragami, and we even have an example of a god who keeps reincarnating over and over - my poor boy Ebisu - I don’t think that multiple rebirths are a norm. Ebisu’s frequent reincarnations are actually frowned upon by other gods - Ookuninushi even commented how strange it was that his shinki kept allowing that to happen. And as we know, Takemikazuchi’s senior shinki had to hide the fact that he was replaced, because the death of a celestial deity is a disgrace (although I suspect that it was less about Takemikazuchi’s image and more about their own safety. After all, the best way to not let anyone know that they killed their own master is to not let anyone know that he died at all). So I imagine that for a god to find someone who will stay by their side, even if reincarnation is shameful and each time they (potentially) die, they aren’t quite themselves anymore, would be the best thing that could happen to them.
Also, I don’t know if the phrase for “irreplaceable someone” used here is the same one that was used in chapter 22, but if it is, then it’s a nice callback.
That’s really all I had to say about the thoughts caused by these translation differences. Also, it’s funny how the second one hits differently after the recent chapter.
These are my thoughts on the first half of 87-2. Spoilers ahead!
I really, really liked the second part of chapter 87. Adachitoka still refuse us Yukine’s entire past, but maybe that’s for the best. If what we’ve been shown so far causes this many emotions in the fandom, I’m scared to think what would have been if they revealed everything at once. But… this post isn’t about Yuknie. Not because I don’t like his character, but because I really want to discuss the first 10 pages of the new chapter.
As I expected, we got some of Father’s flashbacks this time. Except they were about the part of his life that had Yato in it, probably several years (?) after Sakura’s death.
Yato not wanting to kill people isn’t that strange, since he started “slacking off” because of Sakura’s influence, and we know that by this point Hiiro would take initiative whenever Yato wouldn’t put his heart in performing Father’s jobs, as shown in chapter 47. Interestingly enough, when Yato suggested that Father should kill people himself, the former answered that he “was killing gods, at least” – implying that he didn’t kill humans with his own hands. Father’s words about killing gods do sound sinister but as we’ve already seen and will see later in the chapter, not all gods are warriors like Bishamon, Takemikazuchi and Yato himself, so I wouldn’t be too intimidated by this phrase.
His line about the uselessness of killing gods without killing people though … The idea is obvious and logical, so I don’t see the point in developing it further, but even now I think that Father did not choose the most efficient way to do it. Even if Yato stayed under Father’s total control, one god of calamity doesn’t seem to be that big of a threat on a global scale, contrary to whatever Nora has to say later in the chapter.
The thing that caught my attention on these pages is Father’s words about shrines. Yato already revealed before that someone would always tell him he didn’t need a shrine, that someone being Father. Up to this point I simply thought that this was needed to cultivate Yato’s fear of being forgotten – if he doesn’t have a shrine, it’s all the more easier for him to disappear without any chances to reincarnate. The idea that Father actually thinks that shrines are useless somehow never crossed my mind, although now that I see it on paper it makes total sense.
And since Yato raised the question, I’ll take it from here. He said he didn’t understand why did needed to destroy humans if life would be boring without them. I’ve always asked this question in regard to any character whose end goal is total annihilation – what’s the point? Sure, Father isn’t aspiring to be an evil overlord as to ask him a question “who are you going to rule over if there’s no one left”. But his goal, apparently, is killing all gods and also all humans so that old gods can’t reincarnate while new ones can’t appear. But what exactly is he going to do if he succeeds? Die while feeling the satisfaction of revenge accomplished? It’s just so hard to understand someone whose views are so different than your own.
I wish I could say that the small local kami that attacked Yato proves that Father’s words about shrines are wrong, but what happens next actually corroborates his statement. Partially.
One the one hand, the villagers’ prayer was heard, and the local kami attacked Yato for destroying the village. But Father just crushed her. So in the end, the kami wasn’t able to so anything about these humans’ problem, so yeah, their wish wasn’t granted.
This scene also demonstrates that yes, Father can actually kill gods. The more important thing about it though is that Yato sees it. We have already seen just how much Yato used to fear death for the majority of the series. However, knowing that Father has the ability to kill Yato by forgetting him is one thing; but witnessing him kill a kami just like Yato really drives it home. And it’s all the scarier how Father simply intercepted Yato’s weapon – he just summoned Chiki, who moments earlier was in the boy’s hands. Just look at Yato’s face, you can see the terror.
And Father didn’t really have the need to kill that kami. What could they have done with a chopstick anyway? Maybe he god mad at this kami actually answering people’s prayer, disproving his point. Or maybe he just hates the gods so much he couldn’t stand even seeing one of them, so he just had to kill them.
(BTW, does anyone know what’s with the blindfold? I’ve tried looking it up but never found anything).
Nora and Hiyori’s dialogue is my favorite part the chapter, there are just so many things to unpack here. First, “Father would praise the god called Yato”. Is it just me, or is Nora jealous? We saw in Yato’s memories that Father actually praised both his children. Then again, we also saw that he punished Nora when he wanted Yato to behave. Considering that Yato grew increasingly reluctant to kill humans, and Nora had to take the lead and finish Yato’s work, this kind of jealousy is unsurprising. Nora was Father’s right hand girl and supported him all the way, but between the two of them Yato would receive more attention.
“But at some point,Yato started mourning the deaths of other people”. Yeah, we know at what point – Nora must be referring to the time when Sakura was still alive. I’ll just throw in a couple of pics from chapter 47 to remind you why Yato started mourning people.
“When calamity strikes, people always become more devout”. This must be one of the most powerful quotes in the entire manga, because it encapsulates one of the foundations of the Noragami universe. Gods exist to grant human wishes, but who would have more reasons to pray – someone who has it all, or someone who’s in trouble? Remember the main reason why people start seeing the Far shore and things that relate to it.
Of course humans would turn to gods if they can’t solve their problems themselves; that’s the reason they exist. I’ve already mentioned it in the post about memory and memories – the idea of a being that isn’t bound by human constraints, is immortal and can help out when there’s nothing else left takes shape of a person, and that’s how a god is born. Although there’s another reason, too – people hope that if calamity is sentient, you can bargain with it. That’s how people started worshiping Tenjin – not to ask for something they don’t have, but to beg him not to take something they already possess.
It may be that, by sending Yato to obliterate villages, Father was hoping not just for thinning out people, but for a somewhat different reaction from them.
“Thatboylovedpeople”. This line is just so heartwarming. And Hiyorialready said it before. She saw Yato’s past and how even back then he tried to help humans – like making snow shoes for people in need. She understood him and accepted him.
I don’t really have anything to add to Father wanting “to do something” though. I’ve already said before that Father is done with being the game master and wants to be an actual player. Apparently, he is waiting for Yukine to discover GGS completely before summoning him as a weapon.
The line about natural disasters having human faces caught my attention before the chapter was even translated. When people die because of natural disasters, it’s horrible, but there’s nothing you can do about it. We can say that “we need to build sturdier houses/dams/etc.”, “we need to take better precaution measures”, and we try, but you can’t possibly predict everything. But in a world where the sun, the moon, the lightning, etc. are personified as gods, a.k.a “have faces”, not only there’s a way for someone to direct their wrath at those faces, but there’s the question of why these sentient elements of nature do these things that hurt humans.
Let’s look at some of the examples of gods harming Nakatsukuni, the world of humans.
Chapter 7 – Bishamon cuts down a grove to get to Yato
Chapter 8 – Kofuku’s vent releases a horde of ayakashi, which results in rising crime rates in Tokyo
Chapter 60 – Bishamon causes a local hurricane to locate Father
Chapter 66 – Takemikazuchi transforms into lightning to fight Yato
The gods harmed the world of humans, but it wasn’t for fun. Bishamon was guided by her thirst for revenge both times. Kofuku was helping her friend. Takemikazuchi became angry because his guide was hurt. All of them felt very human emotions. Except, since they are gods and their power surpasses that of an average human, the result of their outburst is a dead grove, rising crime rates, a damaged school. They aren’t actually trying to purposefully hurt humans but for those who suffer from these actions that’s hardly a consolation. And like I said, it’s one thing when you don’t really have anyone to blame, because the wind that destroyed your house doesn’t hear you, and another, when that wind has a face.
I think that when Father sent Yato to destroy villages, he hoped that the calamities would make people turn away from the gods. After all, people don’t always become more devout during trying times, sometimes they turn away from religion, which is what happened with Father himself. There’s a phrase going around the Internet – it was allegedly written on the wall of a Nazi concentration camp by a Jewish inmate: “If there is a God, He will have to beg for my forgiveness”. I don’t know how true this story is, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s real.
And even with all this in mind, I still don’t understand Father’s logic. Suppose he doesn’t destroy all of humanity, but does manage to kill all gods. I don’t think it would change that much. Amaterasu, for example, is depicted as the sun incarnate, but… if she’s killed forever, will the Sun go out, too? I understand that I’m going off the rails and into the cosmogenic myth territory here, but I can’t help it. If there are no gods left, but the forces of nature continue to destroy human lives, then Father’s actions hardly change anything. (Look at me, trying to find a reasonable explanation for an unhealthily long revenge plan). Also, don’t forget that gods of other religions canonically exist in Noragami – what is Father going to do about them, I wonder?
As for “someone” being killed by the Heavens, I’ve recently made an assumption that the pock-marked girl’s death could have been a payment of sorts to bring Father back from the dead. I made this assumption knowing that Father’s words in chapter 60 imply that gods were more involved than that. What Nora said here about Father hating attributing gods’ actions to natural disasters makes it obvious that the girl died because of one of such catastrophes. I’ve looked some more at that page from chapter 60, and I still don’t see any visible damage on the girl. However, Adachitoka emphasize a skeleton lying in a field near a dead tree. Also, I’ve turned the page upside down to get a better look, and now this skull haunts me.
Was it a drought, a famine that killed her? Or the smallpox? If these are her remains, why didn’t Father bury them? Who then helped him return from Yomi? We know it was a soul summoning, after all. So many questions that are yet to be answered.
However, even if we didn’t get all the answers yet, these ten pages did reveal a lot.
- Nora knows Father’s backstory, but not all of it. Apparently, it’s a thing so painful that Father can’t tell everything even to his most devoted supporter.
- Sakura’s influence on Yato was even stronger than I thought. It’s possible that Father changed his course of actions and started giving Yato jobs that involved punishing criminals soon after the scene we saw in this chapter.
- Father, apparently, thinks of himself as some kind warrior of justice while ignoring the fact that he does as much harm as the gods, and that he is a calamity with a human face.
P.S. that page with the human faces of nature absolutely rocks.
For someone who supposedly hates Father, I sure talk a lot about him, huh
While I was flipping through the pages of the manga, I once again came to a stop at the soul summoning scene in chapter 37. Specifically at Nora’s tale about Father escaping from Yomi, which I, apparently, did not pay due attention to.
I’ve never had a single opinion on how Father got in and out of Yomi, so I toyed with a few.
1. When Father was still human, he was already interested in researching ayakashi (like Ebisu, for example), somehow learned about the kotonoha (the Word of Yomi) and decided to get one for himself. He voluntarily ventured into Yomi but asked the pock-marked girl to soul call him beforehand, and she did just that.
2. The pock-marked girl died, and Father got mad at the gods for being directly or indirectly involved. He went to Yomi to get her back, stumbled upon Izanami, saw the brushes in action, and either stole or wheedled out one of them.
3.Father was the one who died while the pock-marked girl lived. While in Yomi, Father encountered Izanami, learned about the brushes, and got his hands on one of them.
In this post I want to examine the last option – the one in which Father died and was resurrected by that girl of his through soul summoning.
First of all, let me remind you that soul summoning isn’t something Adachitoka came up with specifically for Noragami, but an actual Japanese tradition.
I think it’s reasonable to assume that whatever exists in our world is also a thing in Noragami universe. All the locations that we see in the series, specifically shrines, are real places (with the exception of the characters’ houses, Takamagahara and Yomi, obviously). This means that the tradition of soul summoning can easily exist in-universe.
Soul summoning is probably a Chinese thing since I came across a similar scene in the novel Chronicle of a Blood Merchant by Yu Hua. There, a child was asked to climb on the roof and call his father who was in a coma so that he won’t die. Therefore I would say it is an actual practice to keep a dying man from leaving this world, not a way to come back from death. So my doubt is still there: was father alive, was he dead or was he in between when he went to Yomi?
Besides, I like the idea of the twin sisters!
To keep someone from dying, huh? Interesting, especially considering that another thing that I’ve been told about Yomi is that some poeple think it’s not a place where people go to the afterlife but rather a place a soul can be lost in accidentally. Was Father in a coma or something and wondered off to Yomi, so that the girl had to bring him back? Beats me.
just… the fact that not even one day after knowing yukine, yato went to where his body was, read every single letter this little boy sent to his sister and decided his body deserved to be buried in a place that honoured him and his sister and the life they should’ve lived. he was so ready to do anything for this child to have a happier afterlife so fast after finding him idk it really just puts the beginning of the series in a new perspective for me i love them so much
Still can’t believe Yato went into those mountains, searched for him under the snow, read all of his letters in the cold while he was only wearing his tracksuit and scarf, took his body, and buried him close to his sister’s house under a sakura tree – all of that while being stung, all of that while those places were so far away, in the snow, in the cold- I’m so emotional, idk it’s just,,, Yato saw this boy and decided to do everything for him…
not to make myself extra emotional but yato burying yukine on a hill overlooking the house with sakura trees we know is both a reference to yukine + his sister AND sakura/tamanone BUT i can’t help but also think of suzuha and the sakura tree he worked so hard to keep healthy and his friendship with yukine around that same tree
![NrM [ノラガミ]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/avatar_6a9c9626ecbe_30.png){kind=avatar}
