#druj

Navarr: We were also going to play Snap.

I would love to ask this to a Zoroastrian! But, you know, there are just not that many of them around. It's pretty absurd to compare what's been a religious minority for over a thousand years to a cultural majority religion such as Christianity and its hundreds upon hundreds of years if not near-millennia of evolving-but-consistent art and imagery. I personally don't even know where I would need to go to find modern Zoroastrian depictions of Sraosha or Armaiti. I would imagine they'd just be conceived as humanoid, like the biblical messengers.

I also think these kinds of comparisons between Kaneko and the guest artists/Doi are false equivalences to begin with. Kaneko didn't design Sraosha and Armaiti in a vacuum, he was at that point already responsible for dozens of angel designs--as of Soul Hackers, 45 Heralds/Divines (almost entirely Christian), which alone almost match Doi's current career total of 52 demons overall. Amemiya is on the record stating his six angels are entirely from his own imagination (as they consist largely of his own brand of design tropes like pointy bits abounding, faces galore, and elephant heads). But Kaneko had to make Sraosha/Armaiti's stand out in a crowd of his own making due to their non-Christian origin, just as he did with the first Islamic angel, Azrael (he wears a turban!). And there is a line to Sraosha/Armaiti and it begins at Satan:

Kaneko's never said this as far as I know but Satan's bug-like wings/carapace had to have inspired some of the if... daeva designs, not just Angra Mainyu but Druj and even Bushyasta.

You can practically see Bushyasta's ribbon torso informing Vohu Manah's arm and leg and the further abstraction seen in Sraosha and Armaiti. Kaneko has also stated that this Angra Mainyu was ultimately the template for S&A. I've always guessed that they have that "primordial" quality to them because they would have been seen by Kaneko as older than the Christian/Jewish angels.

ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴏʀ ʀᴇʙʟᴏɢ, ᴛʜᴀɴᴋꜱ