P4 makes an epic card back…

On one hand, I didn’t expect this post for at least another week or so due to National Novel Writ­ing Month. On the other hand, I’ve given up on com­plet­ing 50,000 words on time, so I might as well fin­ish this.

Here’s the rest of the cards to the Major Arcana Moé Tarot project.

Key­words: Con­trol, Patience, Sta­bil­ity, Dis­ci­pline, Gen­tle­ness
My Choice: Shi­rakawa Kotori [Da Capo]
I Call This Card:
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Sak­agami Tomoyo [Clannad]

The strength arcana rep­re­sents the ideal, almost-perfect men­tal­ity that I wish I had. These are the char­ac­ters who have truly mas­tered them­selves, while main­tain­ing the sense of com­pas­sion and duty to make Con­fu­cious proud. Da Capo’s eter­nal god­dess Shi­rakawa Kotori comes in at the head of this cat­e­gory. Her one true love may not return her affec­tions, but Kotori’s care of Juu­nichi, fol­lowed sub­se­quently by her vol­un­tary step­ping down upon Nemu’s return, had cer­tainly touched the hearts of view­ers every­where. Yes, it denied a good romance-drama sce­nario, but it also gained the sym­pa­thy of the audi­ence (even the Nemu-followers) and pre­served her per­fec­tion for eternity.

Key­words: Accep­tance, Non­ac­tion, Con­formism, Con­tem­pla­tion, Sur­ren­der
My Choice: Matou Sakura [Fate/stay night]
I Call This Card: The Defeatist

The Hanged Man is the exact oppo­site of the Magi­cian. It is the pes­simist, the defeatist, the fatal­ist, who allowed them­selves to be taken by the worst of fate with­out fight­ing back. Sakura per­son­i­fies this trait in Fate/stay night’s truest and most touch­ing arc — Heaven’s Feel. The fact she sur­ren­dered to the dark­ness while Shi­rou was bet­ting his very being on the line may have made me rage, but her hor­rific past nev­er­the­less drew enough sym­pa­thy for me to for­give her.
At this moment, I’m really glad I did this card set on hero­ines so I didn’t have to rage over Shinji Ikari (Neon Gen­e­sis Evangelion).

Key­words: Con­clu­sion, Loss, Inescapable, Trans­for­ma­tion
My Choice: Chise [Saishuu Heiki Kanojo]
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Kamio Mis­uzu [AIR]

By far the worst card to draw, the death arcana rep­re­sents inescapable tragedy. Saikano is by far the sad­dest anime series I can imag­ine. Every episode, from the first to the last, was unde­ni­ably tragic. Every char­ac­ter was brought out with poten­tial, seiz­ing the audience’s hearts (be it a good or bad way), before being dragged to their tragic fate. They fought against it, they tried, and they failed against the inevitabil­ity. Chise fits the card even more than other tragic heroes/heroines as the story focused on her slow trans­for­ma­tion into a weapon and the grad­ual loss of her humanity.

Key­words: Equi­lib­rium, Har­mony, Syn­the­sis, Recov­ery, Tran­scen­dence
My Choice: Nun­nally Lam­per­ouge [Code Geass]
I Call This Card: The Peace­maker
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Mihoko [Saki]

The Tem­per­ance card rep­re­sents the saintly char­ac­ters capa­ble of link­ing opposed fac­tions by the vir­tual of their kind­ness. I’ll put Nun­nally up on this, for her blind­ness has given her the abil­ity to see into people’s souls, bring­ing forth the benev­o­lence that gave her strength. She became a gov­er­nor who strove to bridge the gap between the Bri­tan­ni­ans and the Japan­ese. She will­ingly sought mar­tyr­dom, tak­ing sins upon her­self, in order to return peace to the world. Then, thanks to her onii-sama, she man­age to become a sym­bol of global unity by the series’ end.
My first choice of this would actu­ally be Mihoko due to her het­er­chro­mia. But good, iso­lated art­works of her are hard to find.

Key­words: Obses­sion, Anx­i­ety, Temp­ta­tion, Pes­simism, Anger
My Choice: Fuyou Kaede [Shuf­fle!]
I Call This Card: The Yan­dere
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Ryu­uguu Rena [Hig­urashi], Kaname Chi­dori [Full­metal Panic]

The devil is a nat­ural card to describe the typ­i­cal obses­sion and/or para­noia that dri­ves a Yan­dere towards vio­lence. My selec­tion for this is dear Kaede. She’s almost the per­fect wife in a tra­di­tional social sense. Yet, she’s also laden with an exces­sive amount of bag­gage, includ­ing a full set of inse­cu­ri­ties, her obses­sive devo­tion to Rin, and her ten­dency for vio­lent out­bursts. All of this caused her to men­tally break down in the worst way pos­si­ble when her best friend Asa back­stabs takes Rin from her. Poor, poor Kaede.

Key­words: Chaos, Cri­sis, Down­fall, Dis­il­lu­sion, Rev­e­la­tion
My Choice: Tsukimiya Ayu [Kanon]
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Hayase Mit­suki [Kimi ga Nozomu Eien]

The Tower rep­re­sents cli­matic chal­lenges of the most dra­matic kind — when a well-crafted but illu­sional real­ity col­lapses, reveal­ing the dire cat­a­stro­phe hid­den under­neath. In a sense, it’s almost an abstrac­tion of the KEY Cry­ing Game for­mula. Ayu’s story from Kanon is prob­a­bly the best and most lit­eral exam­ple of this: when Yuuichi even­tu­ally finds out that Ayu is but a dream from a past cri­sis, it dis­il­lu­sions his joy on find­ing the love of his life and sparks a rev­e­la­tion which hurls his world into chaos.

Key­words: Joy, Seren­ity, Opti­mism, Trust, Gen­eros­ity
My Choice: Nia Tep­pelin [Ten­gen Toppa Gur­ren Lagann]
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Suzumi Tamao [Straw­berry Panic], Yumemiya Arika [Mai Otome]

The Star arcana is a wish­ing star, one that brings joy and hope. No one could per­son­ify this one bet­ter than Nia from Gur­ren Lagann. Kind and peace­ful by nature, Nia is an end­less opti­mist who pos­i­tively extrudes hap­pi­ness and has a pre­pos­ter­ous amount of trust in Simon. With some­one like that pour­ing self-confidence into him, Nia gives Simon the very boost he needed to not only to get over his brother’s death but lit­er­ally drills his way into the heav­ens. BEST. SUPPORTING. CHARACTER. EVER!

Key­words: Fan­tasy, Anx­i­ety, Decep­tion, Fear
Prime Can­di­date: Cross Yuuki [Vam­pire Knight]
Run­ner Up: Shin­dou Chi­hiro [ef], Ori­hara Kozue [Chaos;Head]

In many ways, the Moon card par­al­lels the Tower arcana, except it accen­tu­ates upon the illu­sion and the anx­i­ety that builds up before shat­ter­ing the mirage, rather than the dis­il­lu­sion­ment and rev­e­la­tion that comes after­wards. I picked Yuuki to dis­play its con­strast from Ayu’s Tower. Whereas Ayu’s arc in Kanon cli­maxed after Yuuichi’s rev­e­la­tion, focus­ing mostly on his emo­tion tur­moil, Yuuki’s story focused on build­ing up to the moment of awak­en­ing itself. In my opin­ion, it was Yuuki’s dis­tress and suf­fer­ing prior that seized the high­light of that par­tic­u­lar arc, as it slowly unrav­eled the lay­ers of con­spir­acy that grants Vam­pire Knight one of its finest traits.

Key­words: Joy, Opti­mism, Energy, Assur­ance, Splen­dor
My Choice: Takamichi Nanoha [Mahou Shoujo Lyri­cal Nanoha]
I Call This Card: The Mahou Shoujo
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Kurusug­awa Himeko [Kan­nazuki no Miko], Aoi Nag­isa [Straw­berry Panic]

Being “the Sun to another’s Moon” is an old lit­er­ary descrip­tion that epit­o­mizes the Sun arcana. This card embod­ies the class of Mag­i­cal Girl char­ac­ters with their defin­ing traits of being open, ener­getic, and opti­mistic — a bea­con of light and hope to every­one around them. Those of the Star arcana inevitably brings change for the bet­ter to other, defin­ing and bright­en­ing their lives just as the Sun does for the Moon. Out of all the Mahou Shoujo, I have to claim that Nanoha and her befriend­ing cre­ates the most per­fect anal­ogy to this card, as her will­ful but car­ing nature con­tinue to con­vert each sea­son of vil­lians to life-long friends and diehard comrades.

Key­words: Judg­ment, Rebirth, Abso­lu­tion, Rebirth, Hope
My Choice: Ichi­nose Kotomi [Clannad]

As one of the cards truest to its name, the Judg­ment arcana rep­re­sents a reset, typ­i­cally by aton­ing from a sin­ful past to face a brighter future. I could prob­a­bly have picked a more fit­ting char­ac­ter from Neon Gen­e­sis Evan­ge­lion, but I set­tled on Clannad’s Kotomi, as her entire story revolved around her mak­ing amends with a dread­ful past. Thank­fully, with the help of Tomoya and that old gen­tle­men, Kotomi man­ages to for­give her­self and bring both direc­tion and mean­ing back into her life.

Key­words: Ful­fill­ment, Accom­plish­ment, Inte­gra­tion
My Choice: Furukawa Nag­isa [Clannad]

This is a hard one to give to a char­ac­ter, as The World is a card for com­ple­tion. In other words, the char­ac­ter rep­re­sents a gain, or sim­ply one given life, only at the end of a story after accom­plish­ing all the chal­lenges. The only one my friends and I man­aged to think of is Nag­isa, whom returned for the true end only after Tomoya and Ushio man­aged to gather enough hap­pi­ness to grant a mir­a­cle and revert their tragic fates.

That’s all~ Will make ban­ners later.

Pos­si­bly Related Posts

• Moé Tarot! It’s seri­ous busi­ness time.
• Emo­tional Bank­ruptcy over Ten­gen Toppa Lagann-hen
• Recipe for Suc­cess: Rem­i­nisc­ing Gurren-Lagann thru the Buster Series

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 19:07 and is filed under Anime, Art, Project. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.