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Topics - Dain

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Submissions / Interview with Ted Woolsey
« on: February 13, 2007, 10:57:50 am »
The February 12 Player One podcast has an interview with Ted Woolsey about the trials of translating for Square.  He talks about the difficulty of the translation process and the fans' reaction to his translation of games like FFIII (FFVI in Japan).  Of course he mentions Chrono Trigger--it was actually one his favorite games to work on. 

The interview is about 43 minutes into the podcast.

http://playerone.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=180834

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Characters, Plot, and Themes / Cats
« on: September 01, 2006, 01:55:15 pm »
This may be no more than a manifestation of Kato's preference for felines, but the cats in both CT and CC seem to hold a special place in the household. 
If you look at the three most important families of both series: Crono's, Zeal, and Serge's you might notice something strange and recurrent.  In each household the father has been lost, disposed, or possibly non-existent;  we never see nor hear of Crono's father, King Zeal's disapearance is barely mentioned, and I think we all know the fate of Serge's father. 

In each of these instances the father is gone, and what do we have but a cat taking up the space.  Crono's cat seems to be of the regular household nature, but Janus' and Serge's are both a little different, the father is explicity identified with them.  The name Alfador ("All-father", another name for Odin in Norse myth) seems to convey this rather strongly.  And in Serge's case he knows the cat Lynx to be his own father, Wazuki.

This led me to conjecture--though not strongly at the moment--that maybe Alfador is King Zeal (this is partly inspired by AuraTwilight's comment in another post, though the cat thing has been bothering me for a while).  Surely, it's not a far fetch to say that Queeny in all her Lavos-inspired might could replicate the side-show trickery of Sneff.  But why would she do such a thing to her husband?  To sush him up;  to take the crown;  to appease Lavos;  any one of these could be true.   Anyway, this is mostly hypothetical play, as we will never know.

This may have something to do with the status of cats in Egyptian myth, but then again, maybe Kato just doesn't like dogs.

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Other Topics and the Prerelease / That Unused Cross Character
« on: August 30, 2006, 06:39:54 am »
I'm not sure if anyone else noted this, but the unused character in the Chrono Cross portrait section looks to be a prototype (or a dummy) image.  The character to the left is yan (2nd tone) in chinese and means "face", which I assume means the same as its Japanese kanji counterpart. The developers probably used this as a note to designate the images included as character portraits.

Strange though, that does look like an ouroboros off to the right.

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General Discussion / Scars of Time
« on: November 08, 2005, 01:47:13 am »
I love the violin in this song and I was wondering if anyone had stumbled upon anything similar outside of Mitsuda.  The only other piece I found that compared was "Hot Dog Wolf" from the Wolf's Rain OST.

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While looking over some material in the Inferno of Dante's Comedy, I noticed some parallels that struck me as signifigant to Chrono Trigger.
In the last Canto of the Inferno, Dante and Virgil approach the Great Worm (aka Lucifer, Satan, Dis...), who is frozen in a huge ice sheet located where he originally fell, the center of all mass.  Lucifer's fall was so great that it pushed up a mountain on the opposite side of the world named Purgatory.  Although Death's Peak (wasn't created just as Lavos fell as we don't see it until 2300, it seems Lavos did eventually create it.
The sinners surrounding Lucifer are so frozen that they cannot move.  In CT, when the party is rescuing Chrono from death, they are teleported to a spot in time that has been frozen, and all who surround Lavos are frozen as well.
The Great Worm is depicted as having three faces as a hellish parallel of the divine trinity (Lavos core and the two bits).  Each of these faces eternally bites into the the three greatest sinners (Judas with the most punishment, and then Brutus and Cassius).  Remember that Queeny is the closest to Lavos in that frozen scene, and she is mostly to blame for Crono's death, as was Judas for Jesus' death.
As Dante and Virgil leave hell, they climb Satan's flanks to reach the island where Purgatory is located.  In CT, the party must climb the shell of a Lavos spawn (Lavos by proxy) in order to proceed further on Death's Peak (which is also located on an island).
Other various things I noticed which may be too much of a stretch:
 
Nine Circles of Hell - Nine Gates total at the End of Time
Dante and Virgil reach Purgatory by Easter Sunday (and so does Jesus) - the gang ressurects Crono using an egg (which Xathael notes in his Testament).
Magus joins the party right after Crono dies and helps the party on Death's Peak as well as against Lavos - He could represent Virgil (Virgil was widely seen as a magician and prophet in the middle ages, and Virgil assists Dante in his climbing Purgatory as Magus helps the party climb Death's Peak).
King Arthur's sword is described in the Inferno as cutting through the shadow of Modred (it's described this way in the Arthurian legend as well I believe) - Frog's sword cuts through Magus' shadow magic, leaving him vulnerable
At the top of Purgatory, Dante meets with Beatrice - At the top of Death's Peak, Crono is met by Marle.

As for any other parallels, I'll keep looking.

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Characters, Plot, and Themes / The "Chrono Trigger"
« on: April 06, 2005, 09:02:55 pm »
I'm not sure if this has been brought up in any of the forums, or if my question has more to do with semantics than any real difference, but here it is:

In both Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, there is something referred to as the "Chrono Trigger".   The use of the has always led me to assume that the Trigger from CT and the Trigger from CC were in fact the same thing.  But in CT the Trigger is an object that allows you to bring Crono back;  in CC the Trigger is a person, namely Serge ("the servant" in Russian, which may mean something more).  
Are these Triggers in fact the same thing?  If they are, then Serge somehow had a hand in saving Chrono as well as Schala--it may actually be that Crono went to the same Tesseract as Schala if we look at it that way.  Although I suppose it could be that any device that is able to retrieve a person from the darkness of time is called the Chrono Trigger, although they are not in fact the same object.

Any thoughts?

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The north is a frequently used theme in both CT and CC.  In CT  the Northern Ruins and the North Cape are places where good and evil seem to be ambiguous--both Magus and Cyrus seem to be both good and evil.  The Sun Keep is on an island that is furthest north. and Zeal is as far north (and up) as one can go.  
In CC the Porre Army and any mainlander come from the north to El Nido and cause all sorts of havoc.  Norris' name even means northerner in celtic (I think celtic).  
In Babylonian, Mithraic, Egyptian, and Christian traditions a common theme is that both the greatest evil as well as the greatest good both take their throne in the north.  People even pray facing north in some traditions, all the while knowing that the greatest evil is said to exist there.
Also,  the northern wind is frequently seen as evil.  Since it numbs the body with cold, it is thought to numb the spirit with evil.  The fact that Norris-- who's name means northener and who also comes from the north--is a member of the "black wind" lends further evidence to a connection. This could be a clue as to where the "black wind" has a real world reference, although I have only seen a few mentions of it in myth and dream analysies.
Anyone else who has noticed any other northern themes, feel free to jump in.

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