#csm 122

her scared reaction is scaring ME

Chapter 122: “The Prophecies”

I see many people suspecting this new primary fear demon as the fourth knight of the apocalypse: the death demon. After all, death is a fear that transcends all humanity, but also all species on earth, it does not have to be contextualized like the car demon with accidents as Makima had explained. Obviously there are too few elements to already guess what will happen (we don't even know the motivations of the knights of the apocalypse). The fact that it is the demon of death is correlated by the fear of Yoru but also by the mention of Yoshida who is very informed when he asks Denji to "erase" the demon of death. But... I am suspicious. Why? Because I rarely predict Fujimoto's writing correctly. The more obvious something looks, the more I'm tempted to question it. Especially another theme seems more and more omnipresent in this part 2 but also in part 1 and may seem incongruous.

But it is the economic context.  To guess the primal fear that this demon embodies, I paid special attention to what this couple said before they committed suicide: their last conversation revolved around buying a new car. And the last thing this guy said was literally "nice car".

If we go back a bit further, the economic context around the characters is constantly reminded: whether it's Denji telling Yoshida he's broke when Yoshida invites him to a coffee, Denji ripping off homeless people to pay for Nayuta's education, Denji making the chair for an absurdly small amount of money, Asa not wanting an expensive date. Not to mention part 1 in which poverty was a very important feature for Denji's development.

In short, I throw it out there: but aren't we facing the demon of the economic crisis? This new chapter is literally called "Prophecies". What today can't be predicted better than economic crises? The beginning of the chapter opens with Fami ordering a multitude of dishes symbolizing opulence (surely more a nod to the fear she represents as a demon since making the demon of famine a glutton is particularly funny). 

But what I find most interesting is that Fujimoto relies on a French prophecy (which I am honhonhon), which may facilitate the exact understanding of his text. In the French imagination, Nostradamus is a thinker strongly associated with the apocalypse or the end of the world. The demon of the apocalypse could be this demon but... I don't think it's that simple. The demon of the apocalypse is already represented through the 4 figures we know: famine, war, conquest and death. It is the addition of these four demons that form the apocalypse. Moreover in this chapter, Yoshida mentions that this threat of Nostradamus is mostly used to amuse young people, and is not taken too seriously in the current context except for the anti-demon public agents. The future of a demon is correlated to the fear that humanity has towards it. In 1999, humanity is no more afraid of the apocalypse than in any other year. In fact, they rarely think about it, being more focused on the near future like buying a car. 

Anyway, Nostradamus is controversial and his predictions are more the source of speculation than of proven predictions. The most rational commentators have even seen in it the announcement of an eclipse rather than the apocalypse, others the already visionary materialization of this new millennium. But I am surely mistaken but even if everything coincides with the prophecy of Nostradamus with these 23 agents who will surely die soon... The fact remains that I have the impression of facing a Trojan horse. Even if the prophecy explicitly mentions the arrival from the heavens (sypmbolized by those people jumping out of the windows) of the demon of terror, therefore of fear (the fear of being afraid), it remains that it would be great to sweep away this medieval prophecy. 

First of all because I think it's too early to put the demon of fear in place, or else the fourth knight of the apocalypse (death). I repeat, for me the demon of death does not have as an objective to be a smuggler, since it will always scare humanity no matter what happens. The fear it generates is a fact. What tickles me more is the year 1999: a year of economic crisis for Japan (here we go again!!! you see that I know how to return to the subject). I speculate obviously but while the West gets out of its crises this year, Japan sinks, it is the fall of the real estate. I still speculate, but people who literally fall from a building? The real estate sector collapsing? One could very well say that the fear of an economic crisis is not primary, since it is in itself a product of civilization. But the definition of a demon representing a primary fear does not hold in this: a primary fear of an element exists when this element does not need to be re-contextualized to frighten. An economic crisis does not need to be recontextualized to scare? What is common to Nostradamus or to our heroes of the 1999 generation is the rise of capitalism, whether Nostradamus was at the beginning of the Renaissance era and mercantilism, or the 90's with the brutal loss of the former communist blocks, including alternative systems to capitalism, just before the second millennium. 

The prophecies of Nostradamus break down into four verses even though they are in old French, as a French speaker, I will translate them as follows "In July 1999, a great and terrifying leader will come through the air to revive the great conqueror of Angoumois. Before and after, war will reign happily". Everything has been read in these four verses, whether it be the announcement of a third world war, the arrival of extraterrestrials, the return of the monarchy in France, the end of the world in the year 2000… The more "strict" and less sensationalist interpretations reveal that Nostradamus did not aim at a particular date in his predictions. This may seem contradictory but these predictions are in fact enigmas to be deciphered. In his introduction, Nostradamus specifies two principles of reading:

"non eft noftrum nofcere tempora, nec momenta etc": "it is not possible for us to know the date, nor the moment" in other words, one cannot fix a date with certainty to a future event because of "free will": "le libre arbitre".

The second principle is stated by Nostradamus, who specifies having written everything "in a nebulous form" and who will remain faithful to his other warning: "Let those who will read these verses study them carefully, let the profane and ignorant crowd not manipulate them and let all (…) the fools and the barbarians stay away from them". In other words: if a date appears in clear, it is to mislead the less informed readers.

Above all, according to the commentators, Nostradamus speaks especially about his time: "This quatrain of the most famous has been commented a thousand times, and presented, wrongly, as announcing the end of the World for the Year 2000. Passing under silence of historical references, however clear, like this "king of Angoumois", which place it in a very precise time, one often misses the significance of the "king of fright" known by the ancient astrologers. It is Saturn, the god who ruled on Earth, according to legend, in Latium, but whose planet carries the most ominous omens. He is represented in the iconography as an old man armed with a scythe. He is thus opposed to Jupiter, god of the benefactor gods, and logical "scepter bearer" in the Centuries" - Jacques Grancher, 1998. What this author sees in this prophecy is actually the death of the king in 1559.

Thanks to these often misunderstood astronomical precisions, we can therefore give a date to the central events of this quatrain: the year 1559, and not 1999. That said, we can also reconcile the different points of view by considering that the quatrain evokes 1999, but reminds us of the time of Nostradamus, thus making a link between the two periods. Indeed, Mars is understood as the Greek god of war (hi Yoru!!). 1999 is a year rocked by it, whether for the Kosovo war or the resumption of the war by Russia in Chechnya.