Episode 259

Episode 259: 妖虎 - Demon Tiger

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Walter

Administrator
Staff member
TheSkyTraveller said:
Freaky. What's that in his mouth? His tongue?
Looks like entrails. Hence my toothpick comment :guts: Check out the lips. There's blood.

As for the Guins saga reference... well, maybe? Personally, I think a tiger just makes sense to be a Kushan familiar. And the eyes do confirm that it's a familiar, btw.
 

SaiyajinNoOuji

I'm still better than you
Hmm this over grown cat me just be able to lure the Beast out from guts! It would be like some wacky zany fun with Guts in beast form chasing this cat all over the place! :guts:
 

SaiyajinNoOuji

I'm still better than you
docster said:
Come here! Kitty! Kitty! Kitty!

Why does all the Kushan's monsters have similar teeth?
Cause of their leader Ganishka (sp?) He has the same type of teeth and as Walter has stated, the cat is a Familier of his.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Yukimura said:
Remind you of something? After all The Guin Saga is a major influence.

I don't think so honestly, it really wouldn't be much of a reference... Guin's mask doesn't even represent a tiger, but a leopard.

Walter said:
Looks like entrails. Hence my toothpick comment :guts: Check out the lips. There's blood.

Yeah, looks like entrails to me too.

docster said:
Why does all the Kushan's monsters have similar teeth?

As Saiya said, it's because they're all creations of Ganishka and his priests. The Daka also sport similar teeth.

That's an early preview anyway, because of the break I guess. All for the better though. The title appears to be something like "magic tiger" or "evil tiger", etc. I'm not sure what to expect in this episode, 20 pages about a familiar? :schierke: I'm pretty sure Farnese will reintegrate the group at least (well I hope).
 

Mizar

Œ©‰Ž•·‚©‰ŽŒ¾‚퉎
Nice early preview. :badbone:

But I think I would translate the title rather as 'Menacing/Threatening/Sinister/Suspicious Tiger' or something. 'Magic Tiger' sounds a bit weird imho.
 
Aazealh said:
As Saiya said, it's because they're all creations of Ganishka and his priests. The Daka also sport similar teeth.

Yeah, and they were also using other apostles for the familiars too.
Ganishka's type teeth are always present to some of those though (makara, daka and tiger)
Elephants and crocs haven't.
Oh, wait, elephants have their husks at least.
 
I thought that was Zodd at first. Speaking of Zodd, I want to see him square off with Guts now that he has the Berserk's Armor. I wonder if Guts could take 'em now.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Mizar said:
But I think I would translate the title rather as 'Menacing/Threatening/Sinister/Suspicious Tiger' or something. 'Magic Tiger' sounds a bit weird imho.

Well, there are different ways of interpreting the word, I just put up "magic" this morning because the familiars are created from sorcery by Ganishka's priests. I think I'd go with "Demon Tiger" or "Evil Tiger" myself rather than sinister or suspicious though, now those sound weird to me. :guts: It's open to suggestions anyway, not set in stone or anything...

xechnao said:
Yeah, and they were also using other apostles for the familiars too.

We saw them using a bunch of sewn apostles to create the Daka, not the familiars (Pishacha). And yeah, the crocodile and elephant based ones don't have Ganishkan teeth.
 
Aazealh said:
We saw them using a bunch of sewn apostles to create the Daka, not the familiars (Pishacha).

Aren't the daka considered familiars too?
If not who are the pishacha? Crocs, makara, or nobody?
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
xechnao said:
Aren't the daka considered familiars too?

Nope, they're apparently different, hence the different name. They're "Demon soldiers". :SK: To know for sure we would need Schierke to meet some of them and explain what they really are.

xechnao said:
If not who are the pishacha? Crocs, makara, or nobody?

Pishacha is a Sanskrit word describing some man-eating demons, in Japanese the kanji mean something like "demon beast soldiers" from memory. It's applied to the transformed Elephants and Crocodiles in Wyndham. The same crocodiles are called familiars by Schierke when Guts' group get attacked on the beach, so we can safely assume that the Pishacha are familiars. As for the Makara (word comes from Sanskrit too), it's a mythological sea monster, created the same way the Pishacha are (transforming an animal using some sorcery and having "priests" monitoring it), so it's also good to call it a familiar (Schierke says so, too), even if it's in a different league than mere Pishacha.

Daka are created a different way from all of these monsters, using apostles and human seeds, that's why they're special. We'll probably get more details about Ganishka's powers and his methods later on in the story, but for now they aren't confirmed as being familiars. Actually Rakshas and Ganishka speak already quite a bit about this in past episodes anyway, I think you could check them to get some details if you want.

Anyway, seeing how the tiger was transformed from an animal and is probably remotely controlled by someone, I think it's fitting to call him a familiar, there's not a lot of doubt about his origins.
 
Aazealh said:
Nope, they're apparently different, hence the different name. They're "Demon soldiers". :SK: To know for sure we would need Schierke to meet some of them and explain what they really are.

Pishacha is a Sanskrit word describing some man-eating demons, in Japanese the kanji mean something like "demon beast soldiers" from memory. It's applied to the transformed Elephants and Crocodiles in Wyndham. The same crocodiles are called familiars by Schierke when Guts' group get attacked on the beach, so we can safely assume that the Pishacha are familiars. As for the Makara (word comes from Sanskrit too), it's a mythological sea monster, created the same way the Pishacha are (transforming an animal using some sorcery and having "priests" monitoring it), so it's also good to call it a familiar (Schierke says so, too), even if it's in a different league than mere Pishacha.

Daka are created a different way from all of these monsters, using apostles and human seeds, that's why they're special. We'll probably get more details about Ganishka's powers and his methods later on in the story, but for now they aren't confirmed as being familiars. Actually Rakshas and Ganishka speak already quite a bit about this in past episodes anyway, I think you could check them to get some details if you want.

Anyway, seeing how the tiger was transformed from an animal and is probably remotely controlled by someone, I think it's fitting to call him a familiar, there's not a lot of doubt about his origins.

We have seen apostles (the count, roshinu and the egg apostle) to create some powerful creatures from humans. Those come from apostle inbred power, not magic they studied I guess. How do we call those?
 

Mizar

Œ©‰Ž•·‚©‰ŽŒ¾‚퉎
Aazealh said:
Well, there are different ways of interpreting the word, I just put up "magic" this morning because the familiars are created from sorcery by Ganishka's priests. I think I'd go with "Demon Tiger" or "Evil Tiger" myself rather than sinister or suspicious though, now those sound weird to me. :guts: It's open to suggestions anyway, not set in stone or anything...

That's true of course, but I thought maybe a different word could be used this time instead of always using standard vocabulary with words like 'Evil' and 'Demon' again. :puck:
But 妖 here gives definitely the feeling of something dark, sinister or evil. And perhaps Miura also chose 妖 here to hint at the fact that we're talking about something under the control of a magical spell. "Bewitched Tiger" would maybe be a possible attempt to catch that meaning in English? But whatever, just 'Demon Tiger' is fine too if you don't want to think too much about it all. :serpico:
 
Mizar said:
That's true of course, but I thought maybe a different word could be used this time instead of always using standard vocabulary with words like 'Evil' and 'Demon' again. :puck:
But 妖 here gives definitely the feeling of something dark, sinister or evil. And perhaps Miura also chose 妖 here to hint at the fact that we're talking about something under the control of a magical spell. "Bewitched Tiger" would maybe be a possible attempt to catch that meaning in English? But whatever, just 'Demon Tiger' is fine too if you don't want to think too much about it all. :serpico:

"Possesed" tiger ?
But this what it is used by those possesed by ghouls
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
xechnao said:
We have seen apostles (the count, roshinu and the egg apostle) to create some powerful creatures from humans. Those come from apostle inbred power, not magic they studied I guess. How do we call those?

Quasi-apostles, according to what Miura said (prefix quasi is my take on the English version, however I think it fits the best to convey the original meaning).

For those interested in Berserk fandom history, for long (well, still nowadays) people used terms Griffith had selected to discriminate these guys, and as always, Olivier's thoughts on it were suspiciously close to Miura's own intention. Here's a link to the thread in question.

Mizar said:
That's true of course, but I thought maybe a different word could be used this time instead of always using standard vocabulary with words like 'Evil' and 'Demon' again. :puck:

It's true it's been used a lot, especially concerning Ganishka and his minions, that's actually one of the reasons I'd go for it, uniformity and all that. :void: Anyway as you suggested I'm not going to go on thinking about this, different interpretations being possible, I'd rather let the translators and fluent Japanese speakers do their part. :beast:
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
xechnao said:
So who of Ganishka's monsters can we consider of that kind?

How about none of them? They're all created by magic from what we know, not by using some kind of special apostle power, and they don't have apostle features or abilities. Specific terms are employed to describe them too, I don't think it's fortuitous.

xechnao said:
And what about the Daka?

Though the creation process of the Daka involves apostles, it's not like humans receive some power from an apostle in particular, it's more complicated than that. In episode 233, Rakshas comments about it, he says that the inside of an apostle's body is connected with the astral world, so that if you throw a pregnant woman in there (using their creepy system), the offspring receives a demonic spirit.

As you can see, it's more like they corrupt embryos into developing as Daka by exposing them to a "dark part" of the astral world, and all the Kushan "priests" gathering there and the similarity between all the Daka also imply that strong magical powers are needed in order for this practice to succeed. Just throwing a guy in apostle bowels wouldn't work.

If anything, amongst Ganishka's monsters the Daka would be the only ones that you could somehow relate to "artificial" quasi-apostles, due to the way they are created, but I don't think it's correct to call them like this. To me they're just a different thing (hence the different name and description once again), an abomination somehow even less natural than apostles. They don't have any personal features, no apparent mind either (unlike quasi-apostles, even Rochine's fake fairies talk and have different personalities, they're individuals), they're just magically animated puppets, clone-like monstrosities born from the darkest sorcery and using a grotesque mass of captive apostles to pervert them before their birth.

Like the familiars, I don't think they'd be able to live outside of Ganishka's fog. We know what happens when the casters controlling Pishacha die, they revert to their original form and behave like normal animals, same when the familiars themselves die, they don't keep their monstruous appearance (the Makara regressed to a whale). So I wonder what would happen to some Daka if their source of power disappeared, would they just die instantly? I personally think they could, they'd just fall on the floor inarticulated and start rotting.
 
I wasn't confident about this but now I am much more positive I guess.

And that answer was the best analysis I hoped I could have.
I wouldn't have bothered to answer this so thoroughly myself.
Thanks
 

nostyleart

Quixotic
that looks sick.  new spokesanimal for mac os x tiger, although, its probably not a tiger, anyone?  i cant wait, i wanna see guts go berserk, armor berserk, again..  but doubt thats gonna happen now as previously stated.   and thats a nice coloring job blue..  so, im not really sure if this has been stated already, but im lazy today and forgetful, i think that tigerthing is a scout like the one person who scouts the next battlefield.. :beast:  [sorry for my offtopicness]
 
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