In Y4. The Dance on the Hurricane the Galaxy Zephyr cuts the Enemy Hurricane into a bajillion tiny little specks, then brushes those specks away. This is the penultimate section. Next week is the last update! It’s been a long time coming.
In this penultimate section, I want to wrap up some longstanding images and themes. Let’s talk about it.
The Galaxy Zephyr is still humanoid. It’s got four arms and legs in a sort of Vitruvian-Man design, but it’s still humanoid. It’s also got horns, because Lucille is a stand-in for Lucifer; the split-open heads on its horns are a direct reference to Dante’s vision of Satan with three faces.
Modern Satanism is, uh, interesting. It’s not really a religion as much as a secular social movement. On one hand, it denounces religion’s interference with government and promotes rationalism, which is neat. On the other hand, that wikipedia page says it emphasizes social darwinism and anti-egalitarianism, which is a recipe for “our slaves should thank us, they’d never make it on their own” and “don’t blame us, those minorities brought that genocide on themselves.” Plus, one satanic “rule of the Earth” is to abstain from sharing opinions unless asked, but one “satanic commandment” is to indulge rather than abstain, so it’s really just a hodgepodge. What can you expect from a group which self-identifies as intentionally provocative?
But Lucille is a Lucifer who’s not cast away from the godhead. Her Galaxy Zephyr’s version of Satan is more like Shiva the destroyer than any western interpretation of the devil. Lucille probably gets this from DanJay, who’s spent the whole book transcending duals, being masculine and feminine while straddling the mortal plane and the afterlife.
Meanwhile the Enemy Hurricane devolves from a human, to a scorpion, to a snake, to toads, to powder. It forms humanoids again, but soon the expansion of space-time will smear them into snake-shapes once more, as in the ending of Paradise Lost. I want this decay to contrast the Galaxy Zephyr’s growth: the Enemy Hurricane will do anything to achieve power, even discard its humanity; the Galaxy Zephyr achieves power by retaining its humanity, and as a result, its power is leagues beyond what the Enemy Hurricane even imagined possible.
A rationalist who uses physical determinism as a dogmatic excuse to be a self-interested dickhead will have only physical determinism to blame for their failure to compete against rationalists who work together for mutual benefit. The Enemy Hurricane discards morals because Might Makes Right, but the Galaxy Zephyr grows mightier by upholding its morals and fighting for Earth. The Galaxy Zephyr recreates Earth from dust and harvests power from it; the Enemy Hurricane is demoted to dust by its hubris.
This leads to Akayama DanJay‘s principle theme on identity. The Enemy Hurricane calls itself the sky-bearer, demanding respect for the position it pilfered and the identity it assigned itself. When it asks “who the hell do you think you are” (echoing Gurren Lagann and, interestingly, the penultimate episode of Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood, when an evil scientist demands answers from the God called Truth), Lucille answers with a line which I’ve repeated a few times elsewhere in the text: “call me what you want.” True power isn’t controlling what other people think, say, or do; true power is being yourself regardless of what other people think, say, or do. At the end of the day, all we can chose in this life is which hill we die on.
As much as the Enemy Hurricane would like to imagine it controls itself, it only ever morphs its shape in response to the Galaxy Zephyr. The Galaxy Zephyr’s self-determination dictates the flow of battle. Now the Enemy Hurricane can be, think, say, and do whatever it likes—far, far away from everyone else.
In light of all this, the Dance on the Hurricane is modeled after the Nataraja, an iconic Hindu sculpture of Shiva dancing on the demonic dwarf which represents ignorance. Not every aspect of the sculpture is accounted for, but some have shown up in previous sections: the mandala of flames is here, for example.
Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed my explanation of whatever pretentious bullshit I’m on about this time. I’ll see you next week for the final chapter of Akayama DanJay!
Ted Writes 