Yo

Bro really reached out for the truth

Marsh's video has the highest number of views on YT and he went neutral, therefore neutral is canon.

@@sinklar7946 I just fell to my knees like Durk............

@@KidCapes I pictured this vividly.

Nice.

In the PC Engine version, the narration of Law and Chaos ending have the protagonist questions his two paths, while Neutral ending he's pretty resolute with the path he chose.

and lame, is the D&D trope of "rock falls"

If you had the chance to play imagine ( the mmo) they tell you more about the smt 1 protagonist death, since the game happens between 1 and 2, and one of the endings could "lead" to 2

@@sacrito123 Oh really? Could I have the source for that please?

sadly theres no source, I learned that reading the npc text that were in english while playing the game, but there are some gameplays with cinematic, Shin Megami Tensei IMAGINE - Act 17 No other Gods before me look for that videos, the Cerberus there is (pascal ) is the one from smt 1 prot, you guess that by reading the text@@michs7451

Sad to see that the Protagonist of SMT I won't be able to truly see the world that he has fought for... Which is attributed to his statue in Valhalla during SMT II crying bloody tears.

This is the most touching comment I've ever gotten, I really appreciate it

Appreciate it, same to you! I have a pretty long list of topics I want to cover, but next will either be angels or a short if... video.

@@KidCapes I am a big fan of the Digital Devil Saga games, any chance you might do some vids for those two games?

It's something I'd like to do in the future, but it's not a priority. I wouldn't expect it within a year tbh.

I've wondered about the tear as well, as at least in the fan translation, it is a moment that really stands out in its presentation. As the player, you know who you are looking at, and he is crying, like the statue is crying an actual tear. It isn't elaborated on at all, and I can't help but wonder why bother if it wasn't supposed to be meaningful? It isn't that I'm turned off by the idea that the hero could be sad about the state of affairs, it just doesn't make sense. He didnt cry when his mom died; he laid down a trail of ass beatings until he was unable to. And then he pulled himself up, left the land of the dead a pile of ethereal corpsed, and returned to the real world to continue the beat downs. I dont remember the dialogue, but at face value when I played the game (2) some years ago, I interpreted the scene as he was just mourning all the losses he endured, particularly Tokyo, but it's a really unsatisfying interpretation for a silent but decisive protagonist.

There's an interview (I think its in Kazuma Kaneko Works 2 but I don't really remember tbh) where it's explained that the statue sheds a tear because Beth died and she was the reincarnation of the SMT1 Heroine. That being why their outfits were so similar.

@@KidCapes That's crazy. It's a variation on the creation myths for amterasu susanoo and tsukiyomi then. Nice.

@@KidCapes Wow, that makes so much sense

Sorry about that, I've been scrambling all morning, but I updated it with Shioda's original text now. I will warn you that every translator I brought this to mentioned that they were having a hard time understanding what he was trying to say though.

@@KidCapes Thank you so much! Also, do you have a specific compilation for all the resources you use? Specifically, I was looking for those Steven comments on the SMT 3 Laptop, but couldn't find them anywhere.

No, I don't, but hopefully there will be a community one soon when the new wiki finds its footing.

Not really. They're generally treated as being separate parallel worlds, but SMT1 GBA does make mention of the MC getting Pascal from a man named Nakajima. I wouldn't take that reference too seriously tho.

it is, yea

Oh wait I misread. No, it's probably not specifically a reference to if... That's just kinda what characters generally refer to SMT1 MC across the franchise when they don't know him personally.

@@KidCapes when? where? i've played literally every main series smt game and that's blatantly not true?

In 2, if..., and Imagine he's referred to as a boy/young man. I'm assuming you're stuck on the high school part, which fair enough, but I'm pretty sure that's just supposed to be referring to his general age (especially considering that Japanese text also mentions that the kid is from Kichijoji). Besides, I don't think it would really make much sense for them to be referring to the if... MC in that context anyway considering they're talking about the aftermath of SMT1.

I do acknowledge that the games are very open about preferring Neutral ideologically, but imo that isn't the same as saying it's canon. In short, I think this situation is largely due to ATLUS trying to have their cake and eat it too with Neutral.

It's a foundational part of the later entries, particularly SMT5 where it's explained that it's a sort of pendulum ticking back and forth between order and chaos, too much order begets chaos and chaos inevitably over time ends up becoming a laddered structure, thus leading to order.

@@Vanity0666 I have to say that this seems like a completely wrong understanding of V. V doesn’t say they lead into each other. It’s just about how the rule of any socio-ideological paradigm is temporary and the gods not in rule will always want to take the throne of creation. Law didn’t fail because it led into Chaos. It simply failed because Lucifer beat YHVH, somehow.

I wouldn't exactly say they're wrong, it's more like they're describing a simplification of what you are. Law and Chaos going back and forth for eternity is a metaphor.

Ironically neutrality's biggest issue when conflict solving IRL is that most of the time you're not doing anything. Establishing peace between 2 extreme ends is pretty much impossible and Kazuya built the foundation for a society full of people with extremely different ideas of how things should be run, a society without an idea of what it wants to be tends to simply break apart eventually. SMT's neutral society could be considered as basically anarchism, a society like that needs serious psychological restructuring, the fact that messian and gaian ideas were still so prevalent even after Kazuya showed people they didn't need gods and life was a matter of balance shows that people would rather cling onto something or someone instead of living for themselves, this same exact thing happens in real life and well... It's quite a long topic to discuss and you could even bring Nietzsche's ubermensch in there. Point is that the idea of all endings leading to law is quite realistic really, specially when it comes to the cycle of humanity looking for order among chaos and chaos among order. It's happening IRL too with certain things that are a little too political to discuss but its the same idea. Edit: forgot to mention that your idea of neutrality being almost non existent among people sounds really accurate if you think about it, like it's simple logic: if one day we suddenly got nuked and god started sending angels and telling people it's the end of times and he's gonna save his followers I'm sure most people would either turn into believers (messians) or hold a grudge against god for thinking he can simply destroy us whenever he wants to (gaians) lol, like even I would probably turn christian if I saw a demon and an archangel right in front of me.

@@shadowmaster452 first of all your concept of neutrality is fundamentally flawed, it doesnt mean "middle ground" it means "not a fucking extremist terrorist doing Jihad in Japan" What you are literally doing in neutral routes is going up to the people who are causing bullshit unnecessary issues for humanity and telling them to fuck off and die while using whatever power you have to stop them even if it means you have to kill them. The simple factual context of the game is that all protagonist routes take place in a world out of balance to begin with, you kill Gotou who is responsible for putting up the barrier around Japan preventing the nukes, then Thorman dies in the blast while you're sent 30 years into the future. Thorman wins regardless. Tokyo gets nuked in every outcome. The outcomes where tokyo didn't get nuked end up becoming Persona and SMT If...

It's kind of complicated, but the gist is Devil Summoner 1 is set in a parallel world where SMT1's Great Cataclysm didn't happen and characters from it appear in Persona.

I think it's more like some world that end up similar to destroy the throne ending or world of humanity from SMT5 ending

SMT if was what could happen in the timeframe of the start of SMT1 in the Devil Summoner/Persona timeline.

​@@KidCapesraidou confirms smt1 and 2 and if are the same universe The events of Raidou 1 rewrote the future

I wasn't trying to say that the idea of a MegaTen multiverse itself is a fantheory, I was referring to how people connect games within it together.

1+2+if..., 3, SJ, 4+4A, and 5 are all set on different worlds.

@@KidCapes if and persona take place in the same general time and place

The commune isn't from IMAGINE, it's mentioned in the SMT2 timeline, so Kaneko would've had that context when making his comment.

I think you're making a huge assumption that ATLUS want to reboot SMT just because 1 and 2 didn't come out in the West. Seems more like they just like messing around with multiverses and referencing past games they worked on. You have to remember that most of the veteran staff at ATLUS now grew up playing the series. Not to mention that ATLUS has basically always played loosely with continuity, even before Nocturne came out.