2023-7-20 MED'S AWESOME END SKY CELEBRATION POST
Warning for talks of suicide, cults, and doomsday-related concepts! You've been warned!
Hello, all, and happy End Sky day! For those not in the know, the "End Sky" is the day where the "world will return to the sky" in Tsui no Sora and Subarashiki Hibi, and it's July 20th.
Since the storm has managed to completely miss us and we're likely not to lose power, I figured I'd write up a blog post! My URL is literally tsuinosora, how could I not? Like, c'mon, it's kind of my brand!
But then I was like "oh shit what do I even write about for this post." So I stared at a blank screen for ten minutes. Until I realized, I could type up a post talking about the different things The End Sky, as a concept, likely took inspiration from.
This post will be about SubaHibi specifically, as it's been a while since I've played the original Tsui no Sora and I have yet to finish TsuiRe. Also, spoiler warning up ahead!
Probably the most obvious inspiration, at least to me, is the Heaven's Gate mass suicide. Essentially, in March of 1997, a group of cultists killed themselves to ride away from planet Earth on the Hale-Bopp comet. (I'll get back to it being in March, give me a few paragraphs.)
At face value, we have some obvious parallels. We have mass suicide, an astronomic phenonemon, and the concept of leaving Earth to go to the sky. But if you look into the cult itself, you'll notice that the cult Takuji makes in SubaHibi shares a lot of common threads. Both cults are heavily inspired by Christian theology, as well as New Age religion, and deeply rooted in technology. There's also something to be said about the deep connections to science fiction both cults had. Sure, there are other cults like it, but I personally think a lot of the inspiration for Takuji's (and by extension, both the White Lotus Association's view and his own cult's view) on the End Sky were from Heaven's Gate.
In regards to the March thing, maybe I'm just insane, but during the ending End Sky 2, Yuki says it's July 20th. Ayana then gets called by Miu and told it's time to go graduate. But graduation ceremonies in Japan don't happen in July. They usually happen in March. Maybe I'm seeing symbols where there aren't any, though.
Now, I don't know enough about the White Lotus Association's views on their own doomsday to say whether or not they were fully inspired by Heaven's Gate. There was the Web Bot project, sure, but it feels a lot more similar to Japanese new religions in general. One could probably draw a connection between Aum Shinrikyo and them, but I just don't know enough about them to say for sure! It seems almost like a combination of Aum Shinrikyo, the Unification Church, and Shincheonji Church of Jesus, but I'm not as familiar with cults in East Asia as other people, so take that with a fistful of salt.
As far as aethetics go, I think it's safe to say the End Sky in general was heavily inspired by The Book of Revelation, Norse mythology, and Lovecraft, especially in regards to the giant eye in the sky. I don't think I really need to get into that too much.
Lastly, the ending video in the End Sky 2! A mixture of a lot of different things already talked about above, but I wanna drag your attention to Ayana specifically, or the glyph we can assume is meant to represent her, since this video also seems to be a depiction of the End Sky, and I am also incapable of not making everything about Ayana Otonashi.
Most obviously, she's an angel. She has a halo and appears to have wings. There appears to be a glow behind her, as well, or at least that's how I interpe it. Now, look at her torso. At first glance, one might think that's the dharmachakra, or wheel of dharma, an important symbol in Buddhism and Hinduism, among other religions. Copied off of Wikipedia: "The Buddha is said to have set the "wheel of dharma" in motion when he delivered his first sermon, which is described in the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta. This "turning of the wheel" signifies a great and revolutionary change with universal consequences, brought about by an exceptional human being." However, it has six spokes instead of eight, and looks more similar to a character in the Indus valley script because of it. Maybe it's inspired by the Multiocular O, a rare Cyrillic character only used in a single 15th century script for the phrase "many-eyed seraphim"? But that was implemented into Unicode incorrectly to have seven eyes, when it actually has ten. Her torso almost reminds me of a lotus pod, somehow. It's hard to figure out what exactly it's meant to be, but those are just some things I'm tossing out!
Anyways, that's just my thoughts on it! You might have different opinions lol but yeah happy July 20th!!! :D
I also started playing Muv-Luv! I love how aggressively mid it is.