Guide to Orion (LONG)
David C Blume
replies I have received about Orion. I am submitting this for anyone
why may be compiling a Guide to Orion.
Only the questions are mine. The answers come from three sources:
Patrick Yip, and two others, one who lives in Japan. I foolishly erased
their names, and don't have their permission to post this. I hope they
don't mind.
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GUIDE TO ORION
ORIGINAL SUSA-NO-O MYTH
-----------------------
Susa-no-o is the younger brother of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu.
They were born when Izanagi, the male creator god, tried to purify his
body in a river after running away from the Yomi (hell). The story of
Izanagi's visit to hell is interesting, though irrelevant here.
[He went to Yomi to visit her wife and sister, Izanami, who died when
giving birth of the fird god. Unfortunately Izanami has eaten food in
Yomi and her body is decaying. Izanagi was told not to look at her, but
finally he was so tempted... Unlike the story of Orpheus, we have Izanami
getting so angry by Izanagi remarks about her decaying body that she
sent those ghosts to go after him!]
Susa-no-O means "The Impetuous Male" (the original name is not written in
the Chinese character you read in the manga! that has something to do with
why the manga is called ORION!! Stay tuned) is a very undesirable deity
because he always disturb and tricks other deities. And he has a bad
temper, often resulted in cruel and harsh acts. It was he who played such
a horrible trick to Amaterasu that Amaterasu decided to hide in a cave,
thus making the world fall into darkness (another famous story)
Yet sometimes Susa-no-O would display some knight-errantry.
** that's what's relevant to ORION now **
The story tells that Susa-no-O ,having descended from Heaven, arrived at
river Hi in the province of Izumo. He found an old couple crying bittering,
and there was a young girl sitting in their arms. When asked why they
cried, the old man said "I am an Earthly Deity whose name is Ashi-nazuchi
(Foot-stroke-elder) and my wife's name is Tenazuchi (Hand-stroke-elder).
This girl is our daughter whose name is KUSHI-NADA-HIME (Wondrous-Inada-
Princess) [** Note that this is the name of the beautiful goddess sitting
on a lotus in ORION, with a slight change: It's KushinaTA-hime in ORION, and
note that the name is written differently in ORION. In ORION her name is
a name of sword :p **] We had eight daughter before, but they are devoured
year by year by an EIGHT-FORKED-SERPENT [** the 3rd parody in ORION!
although it's said 9-headed-dragon in ORION, in fact the creature looks
like a 8-forked-serpent with a big base at the center, just like what
the charm-equation (the pac-men figures) depicts **], and now the time
has come for this girl to be devoured."
Either because the HIME is very beautiful, or Susa-no-O was touched by
the old man's story, he decided to help with the condition that Kushi-nada-
hime would be his bride. This request was readily granted.
Susa-no-O now changed Kushi-nada-hime into a many-toothed comb and
stuck it in his hair. He asked for a quantity of sake and poured it
into eight tubs. After that, he simply awaited the coming of the serpent.
The serpent finally came, with red eyes glowing in each of its eight heads.
And it has eight tails, and firs and cypress-trees grew on its back.
Its length lies along eight hills and eight valleys. It found the sake
so tempting that it drank them all and fell asleep. Then Susa-no-O drew
his ten-span sword and chopped the monster into small pieces.
When he struck one of its tails his weapon was notched, there he discovered
a sword called Murakumo-no-Tsurugi [** wonder whether it has anything to
do with the big sword in ORION? **] He later gave the sword to the
Gods of Heaven, thinking it's a divine item.
Susa-no-O then changed the comb back into Kushi-nada-hime again. And in
Suga in the provice of Izumo, they married.
The whole story was told in NIHON SHOKI, the ancient record of Japanese
mythology.
******
Now that you see there are 3 things in ORION, all critical to the story,
are actually parody of Japanese mythology. Let's go to the issue WHY THE
MANGA IS CALLED ORION.
WHY MANGA "ORION" IS CALLED ORION?
----------------------------------
Actually when you invert the Chinese characters of SUSA into SASU, we have
what the constellation ORION is called in Chinese astronomy. SA is the
name, while SU means constellation in old Chinese. SaSu is one of the
28 Major SU in Chinese astronomy. It seems to me that Shirow tries to
fit a parody name to Susa-no-Oh and came up with the inverted CHinese name
of Orion.
NOTES ON THE MANGA ITSELF
-------------------------
The name of heroine is Seska. Her father's name is Fuzen.
The story begins (before the book) when Professor Snake-Eye was
sent to make Ku-to-ryu, a dragon that is created out of people's
desires through the galaxy, then destroy it, so bad desires
cease to exist. That's good, the only mistake was that the
equation was incomplete, and Fuzen realized it will have someone
as a head of dragon, and will have its intention (bad intention
of course, easy to understand considering the nature of his
constitution). That `someone,' by chance, turned out to be his
daughter Seska.
>What is the role of the Seska and Susa-no-o?
Seska was working as a navigator of the ship, a ship that
sails through some kind of sea of psycho energy. Dont' ask
me what it is. Anyway it's not important; no connection to
the story afterward.
Susa-no-o is a legendary brutal god with no good or bad
intention. He calls himself as a god of destruction. Fuzen
has been working hard to summon him and he finally succeeds
(though Susa-no-o wasn't very happy because there wasn't
enough offerings) and asks him to save the planet from Ku-to-ryu
(nine headed dragon).
He's supposed to be really strong, but Fuzen summoned him in
inferior `mode' so he couldn't show his power enough, until
Seska sent him back and he came back to the earth again in the
`mode' of his choice (that's the bit he appeared from heaven) so
that he could show his real power. Fuzen chose inferior mode
to avoid a total destruction of the planet.
Almost at the end he says, that he's been wondering why a god
like him exists, and he finally understands that he's another
half of Princess Kushinada (Kushinata?). That's the part he's
talking to the princess.
> What are those pac-men with curlique tails?
They're `thoughts.' In this world every thought has a psychic
power and they can be used like visible equations of magic,
stored, activated, so on. Words can be turned into them too.
Not an original idea in eastern area. It's got a head and tail
with it's spiral body because every equation has a direction.
They are charm-equations. That paricular figure (pac=men with tails) signifies
dragons. BTW all "fantasy" creatures in ORION are explicable by the "science"
in the ORION world. They call the "science" "false-science" :)
So the dragon is somekind of an energy substance with certain strength and
complexity in its structure...
>What is the role of those octopus-things?
Octopus that captured Seska is just an animal, low intelligence,
hated. Octopus that sprayed out of dead Ku-to-ryu are `desires' that
Ku-to-ryu corrected.
>Why was Seska's body transcribed with the charm-equation? Why did the
>equation disappear after Susa-no-o had "stolen" her?
Fuzen tried to hide the whole equation of Ku-to-ryu on her body,
but it pulled Susa-no-o's attention and he swallowed the equation
(not knowing there's a human's body stuck on it). Afterwards he
felt uneasiness in his stomack during fighting with giant monkey
(god) so he throwed her up, equation still remained in his stomack.
It doesn't matter anyway because the `real' equation was kept in
the castle.
... The pattern disappeared because the
charm equeation of the 9-headed-dragon has already started!! Susa-no-O
explained that due to various reasons (complicated here to explain) Sesuka
has become the 10th evil element (besides the 9 in the 9-headed-dragon) of
the started equation. Notice that after Sesuka waked up when Susa-no-O
spit her from his body into a sea of mud, her forehead showed a dragon
equation which changed into a 3-fork mark later. This mark sticks to her
forehead until almost the end, when the dragon-incarnation got destroyed,
thus returning Sesuka to her original status.
>What is the role of the Emperor, and Princess Kushinada.
Emperor has no role. He's got a power, that's true, but he doesn't
mean much because he's rather fool. You can see that as he gave
his sign to Seska just because she asked for it.
... Princess Kushinada is a human
being but her race has a god-like power. She was asked to be the
core of Ku-to-ryu. But she couldn't tell Ku-to-ryu was a bad
dragon as she was blind.
In the story (not talking about the original Japanese mythology here),
Kushinata-hime is a GOD in disguise of a princess (or Kannon from her
appearance). She was invited to be somekind of "sacrifice" to initiate
the incarnation of the 9-headed-dragon. She was convinced by the people
in the Yamata (obviously a parody of Yamato) People's Empire that the dragon
would devour and absorb all the EVIL KARMA (get a good dictionary and look
up the word Karma) of its people, thus purify the country (or the
planet). She did that with good intention, unfortunately things didn't
work as they had planned. It's exactly because it's Kushinata-hime who
initiate the process that the dragon was so difficult to stop. Different
sacrifice has different power, you see.
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--David
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+-----+
| <:-) -Manga fans, | David Blume | "..." -Anime fans, | o |
| reading KOR #18 | d...@wdl1.wdl.loral.com | viewing the KOR movie | ^ ^ |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+-----+
Patrick C Yip
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>GUIDE TO ORION
I want to do some correction and addition after I checked the manga last night.
>NOTES ON THE MANGA ITSELF
>-------------------------
>
>The name of heroine is Seska. Her father's name is Fuzen.
>
> The story begins (before the book) when Professor Snake-Eye was
>sent to make Ku-to-ryu, a dragon that is created out of people's
Ku-to-ryu == 9-headed-dragon
>desires through the galaxy, then destroy it, so bad desires
the "desires" here is the closest word to Karma, the word I used in last
post.
>half of Princess Kushinada (Kushinata?). That's the part he's
I checked and I can confirm it's KushinaTA, a small change from the
original mythology.
>So the dragon is somekind of an energy substance with certain strength and
>complexity in its structure...
Actually all deities, devils or magically summoned creatures are all
explicable by "science" and are measurable in quantitative units.
While the two huge guys summoned by Seska to oppose the approaching Imperial
troop climbing the hill have a strength of 80, Susa-no-O has strength of
580 MILLION!!
>>What is the role of those octopus-things?
>
> Octopus that captured Seska is just an animal, low intelligence,
>hated. Octopus that sprayed out of dead Ku-to-ryu are `desires' that
>Ku-to-ryu corrected.
ANd Kuo was right: the creatures eat meat and the reason why they kept Seska
chained without eating her is to keep her fresh while removing the metal
smell on her body (A good idea offered by the child creature to its mom :)
Since they can talk and think, I don't consider them low intelligence.
>>Why was Seska's body transcribed with the charm-equation? Why did the
>>equation disappear after Susa-no-o had "stolen" her?
>
> Fuzen tried to hide the whole equation of Ku-to-ryu on her body,
>but it pulled Susa-no-o's attention and he swallowed the equation
>(not knowing there's a human's body stuck on it). Afterwards he
>felt uneasiness in his stomack during fighting with giant monkey
>(god) so he throwed her up, equation still remained in his stomack.
>It doesn't matter anyway because the `real' equation was kept in
>the castle.
>
> ... The pattern disappeared because the
>charm equeation of the 9-headed-dragon has already started!! Susa-no-O
I was incorrect here. What's said above was right. The charm-equation
disappeared because Susa-no-O got it. Later he displayed it to explain
the idea to Fuzon.
BTW the giant monkey came from a Chinese literature "Journey to the West"
in which the main character is Sen Goku. Sen Goku seems to be very popular
in Japan too. At least we have Goku in DragonBall and Midnight Eye too.
The 8 trigram burner that sealed off Sen Goku was a direct parody from
the literature "Journey to the West" where the gods in the heaven tried
to stop the naughty monkey from wreaking havoc in the heaven.
On the other hand, Goku is one of the deities in Taoist religion too.
>>What is the role of the Emperor, and Princess Kushinada.
>
> Emperor has no role. He's got a power, that's true, but he doesn't
>mean much because he's rather fool. You can see that as he gave
>his sign to Seska just because she asked for it.
And see the girls surrounding him.
> ... Princess Kushinada is a human
>being but her race has a god-like power. She was asked to be the
I would say she is from a clan of gods though
>core of Ku-to-ryu. But she couldn't tell Ku-to-ryu was a bad
All the evil Karma would be brought to the core and burnt, presumably
along with the consumption of Kushinata-hime as well?
>dragon as she was blind.
She's blind? At p.246 I see her eyes open though...
>In the story (not talking about the original Japanese mythology here),
>Kushinata-hime is a GOD in disguise of a princess (or Kannon from her
Her pose looks like the Kannon in Buddhism.
<<Self-appointed High Priest of the Cult of Urd, Belldandy and Skuld>> :-)
Patrick YIP (a.k.a. YO^SHIGO^) **the one who's more into MANGA than ANIME**
pc...@melange.lcs.mit.edu -<-r- - | | |
pck...@athena.mit.edu + + X /T. E+B X = I I
@ @ , / \ | | \ & * *
=====>> "AH, MY GODDESS!!" ======>> a a me gami sa ma
Yamashiki Tsuyoshi
>In article <1992Apr23....@wdl.loral.com> d...@wdl1.wdl.loral.com (David C Blume) writes:
>
>ANd Kuo was right: the creatures eat meat and the reason why they kept Seska
It's not her meat they're after....read carefully and you'll
find out. I can't write it here. (Got the idea?)
>BTW the giant monkey came from a Chinese literature "Journey to the West"
>in which the main character is Sen Goku. Sen Goku seems to be very popular
Son Goku in Japanese pronounciation. It should be pronounced
different in the original Chinese story.
>>mean much because he's rather fool. You can see that as he gave
>>his sign to Seska just because she asked for it.
Signature, I meant.
>> ... Princess Kushinada is a human
>>being but her race has a god-like power. She was asked to be the
>
>I would say she is from a clan of gods though
I'm not sure here; I don't think human can summon god just to
make it a sacrifice. Susa-no-o said she is of a clan of some kind
when he saw her first, but whether it's a caln of god or human
isn't apparent.
>>dragon as she was blind.
>
>She's blind? At p.246 I see her eyes open though...
Now I might have been wrong since it's never mentioned in the
book that she was blind; but she never open her eyes until the very
end of the story, and it seems to me that it simbolizes Susa-no-o
opened her eyes by telling the truth of Ku-to-ryu.
>Her pose looks like the Kannon in Buddhism.
I'm sure that's what Shirow tried.
--
Tsuyoshi Yamashiki, lost boy in cyber space.
Sophia University, JAPAN