he has to make sure his sneakers don't get creased

But Sol is the Guilty Gear, he literally says so after defeating Justice. Thats why its called Guilty Gear because Sol is the gear who defeated the first gear. In the first guilty gear story its literally the joke because he literally says after beating Justice "I am the Guilty Gear."

amazing

the sol proceeds to strive all over asuka's back

@@mr.minnesota2560 He probably got excited too 😩

His sneakers are what absolutely sold me on the character ngl

His cape containing the universe is probably another nod to the album cover of Helloween, the Keeper of the Seven Keys. THAT MAN always resembled him in a way or another.

He got the GOT DAM KICKS YO

@@emryscaster7332 he and faust probably have entire collections of them and fight for the best ones

"We have Drip the likes of which God has not seen."

@@TyrannicalUser bit a banter between mates innit

​@@palkia001right on

​@@TyrannicalUserwe do a little trolling

weren't they, like married already?

@@DissedRedEngie yes

"A person who thinks all the time, has nothing to think about except thoughts" That Man probably

His podcast must be trippy

​@@longbeing Thought the starting lines from his trailer are supposed to be from his podcast? Child slavery is one hell of a start, I tell you that

Meaning have a meaning because daisuke write tracks on japanese and translate them to English by worst version of Google Translate

As a philoaophy teacher in the making, i see what he is trying to say. "Does meaning have meaning" in this contest probably mean "is there even a point into looking for a meaning in the first place"? I am not an expert of GG lore, but Asuka sound very tired of all that shit that happened, so i can see why he goes from questioning if there a meaning to it, to ask himself if it's even worth to keep asking themselve those questions.

That man, not this man.

"Be sure to avoid them..." "...Feel the steps."

@@EripmavsDYraid Yeah I'll take the L on this one

everybody gangsta still Asuka casts Obama Prism Metron

The cosmic cube can do anything

WE ARE CASTING SPELLS WITH THIS ONE 🔥 🔥 🔥

WE ARE GOING TO KILL CHAOS WITH THIS ONE 🔥🔥🔥

@@lovultdeus4316 WE OPENING THE TOME OF ORIGINS WITH THIS ONE🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

JAPAN WON'T SURVIVE WITH THIS ONE 🔥🔥🔥

SHADOW👤WIZARD🧙🏽MONEY💸GANG💯 WE LOVE CASTING SPELLS🪄

We also bout to wreck Japan 🔥🔥🔥

he literally has a book

Thats so cool ! 😄

my guy there are pages online where people post the lyrics to these songs, or the parts they decipher beforehand, and that's probably what this other dude uses

God*

@@melian2593 you Know the comment is going to be contrived and annoying as fuck when it starts with “my guy”

@@ChillestForm do you like know what franchise the video you’re commenting on is or

He like Van Hohenheim for real

The whole "there are actually 2 That Man" can feel a bit cheap though. I don't know how much Chaos was teased in games previous to Strive, maybe he was always there.

⁠@@AofCastle Happy Choas has been teased since Xrd

@@AofCastle Happy Chaos was fine. Happy Chaos actually being the one who committed the crimes blamed on Asuka was not

@@gontagokuhara5262 The Happy Chaos in Xrd is not the same one in Strive, actually.

I spit my cereal out of my mouth when I read this, thanks a lot💀

Fucking character assassinations up in here... 😂 🔥

Hey hey hey he was trying to save aria

Asuka didn't know he could change society so instead of saving his friend's lover, he committed warcrimes

The meaning of meaning is meaning itself

mean·ing /ˈmēniNG/ noun what is meant by a word, text, concept, or action.

​@@badinga508I can't believe you found the meaning of meaning so quickly

​@@badinga508does meant have a meaning

That lyric hit hard

It is canon like Happy Chaos nerf with a gun, Asuka nerf himself with limited usage of spell in his disposal

@@lavenkaser we have no idea. HC nerfing himself by just using guns isn't even confirmed, it's just speculation from the players.

​@@cooperlittlehales6268 happy chaos is the god of magic and like 90% of his moveset is either him just flailing his arms and legs and him using his gun

He's also a bad shot according to himself that's why he has all these specials to help him shoot

@@cooperlittlehales6268 my man he snapped his fingers and evaporated a building,think a bunch of pew-pews are a downscale

ON THE MOON

Mooncast Kitty XD

I'm going to the one place that isn't corrupted by Capitalism: S P A C E

@@EripmavsDYraid Ok Tim Curry

We are putting others into the spell blender with this one

HAHAHAHAHAHA no we're not 💀

🔥🔥🔥We really ain't

No you aren't. Now block this overhead.

​​@@EripmavsDYraidno **uses dp**

i thought it was knocking, which gave me the feeling of paranoia or someone tapping on the world from outside it

Jack-O: this clock is running a bit fast... Asuka: it's... Just decorative. Sol: then why is it running? [It hits 12 o'clock] I have heard that tune before -- Asuka: ANYWAY! XD

That’s ridiculous level of detail lol

I was about to say you must be trippin but then I finally found where it is, the ticking is in the center of all the other sounds and very faintly but it does follow a rhythm with the bassline (until the baseline changes)

It took me forever to hear it, but eventually I did. For those also struggling, it's specifically the sound an analogue clock makes when its hands move

"The Utsuho Reiuji Galaxy Cape" God forbid Asuka whips out the control rod arm and fires suns at the enemy

@@junkoxeno_7734 random shit sign “test case 3”

The cape went to Asuka's head and he decided to make everyone else play hisoutensoku

Touhou reference ! Love it !

Lets be grateful Asuka doesn't have any of the spell cards Utsuho have

Out of 10, all the way to 7

outa floor 10. back to floor 5

back down to 5, yeah

If we can even make it online 😭

The Backyard ain't got shit on GRAVITY!

Oh, definitely. This is, in my opinion, the Bohemian Rhapsody of Guilty Gear.

also, sun in spanish is sol so I really like that line cuz its like "did Sol Badguy ever defy fate?" then right after the line "beyond it all, do you recognize me?" which is Asuka asking sol if he still recognizes him after everything that's happened. peak storytelling in music

@@ninBENdotaking it a step further, one of the laws of gravity states that particles are always attracting each other, so when he says “Beyond it all, do you recognize me? The gravity holds all the answers” he is essentially saying that Sol must recognize him because they’re always coming back to each other.

@@ninBENdo maybe its on purpose, with "sun" referring to sol

JUSTICE GUILTY GEAR??????

Always their friend, in spite of it all. A normal man, facing impossible, inconceivable realities. Who always meant for all the suffering and horror to *mean* something. "Frederick? Aria? Despite it all, it's still me. It's still me."

​@@Pyre *Asuka looks into the mirror* *despite everything you've been through* *it's still you*

I feel like it's quite likely

And Latin as well XD

of course he did he killed himself and continued living because he wanted to say fuck you to some hoe

​@@Ramsey276one and portuguese

@@user-ow2rd9wc9s thanks!

Wait, how did we get them back?

@@silkghost93 sheer willpower... and mods

Mods I'm assuming

The strive community knew that they couldn’t change the designs. So instead of reflecting on themselves, they blamed Daisuke Cat ears or hell

​@@colboy123 Round 1. LET'S ROCK!

I guess you can also see Daisuke's vision. Dope.

Can't believe I didn't think of "Did the Sun ever defy fate" being about Sol. Thanks for the interpretation

"Beyond it all, do you recognize me" that's probably him asking Sol and Aria if they still see him as a friend, even after all his mistakes the song's definitely about repentance

@@tsugu9146 I think it's about gravity.

Repentance and redemption being major themes also synergizes with his priest-like outfit very well.

I’m glad I’m not the only one that noticed it. When I heard this theme I immediately thought of Dream Theater😅

@@Keima_Katsuragi. it’s more on a composition level with the time signature changes and riff structure than on a sonic level

@@drainer983 Ok, I understand. Thanks

Definitely sounds like DT, amazing. This track has some vibes from Octavarium record !

He loves his belt buckles

Same for the moon They both have deep meaning in GG world

Jojo brainrots preventing me from reading into this

While implied to have more meaning than the physical real gravity, I think gravity means something slightly different between songs. Requiem seems to liken gravity to fate, that we are all moving in the same direction, fated to death. The word requiem can mean: "A hymn, composition, or service for the dead". Tying into the song's themes of death and rebirth with a pessimistic view on life - given how I-No doesn't know what her past is. This view of gravity = fate doesn't really line up with the themes of Smell of the Game and "The Gravity". Gravity in these songs might be more like friends, community or connections with other people - reading the lines Cornin33 highlighted: Our connections/friends keep us on the ground, keep us grounded and real, keep us on the right path. Gravity holds the answers, and our connections to other people hold the answers to what life is about or the meaning of life - as "The Gravity" seems to be Asuka's philosophical musings on reality and society ("Does meaning have a meaning", "what truth should we accept?"). Going back to Requiem, gravity's use in this case seems more metaphorical as a whole statement that doesn't hold up to dissection.

@@chester1882 Interesting thought! I'd have to re-examine the story to see how much the theme you mention shows up, but I could absolutely buy that Gravity, Smell of the Game and Requiem all show different opinions and interpretations of gravity-as-mortality/fate: - Asuka, in Gravity, sees mortality as the thing that gives life meaning: the reason we look for the answers is because one day, we won't be able anymore. The meaning of life, therefore, is to look for meaning. What makes this interpretation even stronger for me is how Gravity repeats the line "does meaning have meaning" several times throughout the song, but saves the line "Gravity holds all the answers" for last, which almost makes it sound like an answer to the question: yes, meaning has meaning, and that meaning is "gravity". - Smell of the Game (which is strongly implied to be Sol's perspective) sees mortality as something that humbles us: just like gravity literally keeps grounded, the reminder that we will all die one day figuratively keeps us grounded. It's very "memento mori", in that sense. Where Asuka and I-No failed to defy fate through godlike acts of defiance, Sol is the one who succeeds, just by staying humble and true to himself. - You've already talked about what Requiem (and thus I-No's) view on gravity/fate/mortality is, but I'd like to bring the conclusion of that song into this as well: I-No begins with the viewpoint that life is inherently without meaning because it must one day end ("I can't feel it", "none of this is real"), but by the end of the song, I-No seems to accept her mortality ("if I am to be swallowed by fate, I must have fought well") and finds her own meaning in her ultimately futile struggle to defy fate, or in other words, gravity. The underlying theme in Requiem of flying above the clouds and falling down slowly make the metaphor even clearer.

@@FanFavoriteToasted Tell me... Do you believe in gravity?

The heart of the cards summon him already

Ah! Impossible!

That's the insta kill (if they ever add them)

​@@MeatOfJustice I think they might add them once every character is added.

@@thevoiceinyourhead7215 Im able to hear his voice just by reading these words!!!

We making it outta tir na nog crossing Mexico’s border with this one

U good?

i love this one lol

this will make me do crazy shit!

I like to think that it's to avoid a situation like Twice's from MHA Basically a way to "mark" his clones as, well, clones, and not have a possible psychological breakdown in the future, just in case. It's probably more for the playerbase to distinguish between them in game tho.

​@Absolutely Not Griffith a good idea but he has stated that it doesn't matter to him which one was real in the first place as they all share and accumulated knowledge they are all equally him to him

Think he just likes blue and pink better.

I think it's less of an intentional thing and more a product of the magical process, kind of like how the more copies you make of a paper the more washed out the color on the copies will be.

@@neverseemstoAsh And how they seem to develop new personalities (See his Arcade Mode)

I got goosebumps only a couple seconds in lol

Hi jimothy

U everywhere

I love this interpretation

They both reached different conclusions when faced with the same thing. HC's theme says "I don't want any conclusioms" and he tells I-No that "If all we know of the universe is, say, 4% of it, then I'm really not interested in knowing the other 96%" or something like that in Story Mode. So HC saw that existence is much greater than he thought, and decided "Well, everything that exists has a meaning, so I can do whatever I want, and even though humanity is small in the great scheme of things, I can make it thrive in my own way because it won't matter in the end anyway" Meanwhile Asuka's conclusion would be along the lines of "Things are as they are, I shall make sure they continue like that without interfering, so that existence runs it's course naturally", though I don't think he quite reached the same point as HC in his journey.

Fuck it we ball vs It is what it is

The line "No, it is not truth that you divine" could quite possibly be directed at both himself and Happy Chaos, admitting to himself near the end of the song that he does not know everything and sometimes feelings must come before facts (pretty prominent part of arcade mode as Asuka). In the case of it being directed to Happy Chaos, it's a total rejection of his worldview, the thing that makes him act as the main antagonist of Strive. Asuka is denying his former teacher, now a broken husk of a person, and his shattered psyche any hold over "all things that stay alive" which could easily mean both humans and gears. Asuka isn't here to finish what he started, he isn't here to ask for mercy, he isn't here to make a final plea to those who he has wronged. He's here to do what he feels needs to be done to atone, what needs to be done to preserve life, and what needs to be done to help all people. This leads him to conflict with Happy Chaos's methods, as he views the best way to get humanity to progress is through terrible strife. In Drift, the lines "When the violent storm is over the blue sky is more beautiful than ever" is a perfect example of this. In summary, Asuka and Chaos both started from the same place, reaching for answers and ways to make the world better and people happy. While Asuka came to the conclusion that this should be done by reducing suffering, Chaos came to the conclusion that such joy could only be brought about through grief, and so both naturally oppose each other philosophically and morally despite their similarities and shared desire. Truly a wonderful dynamic.

A cool complement to this that I have been thinking about, is the fact that their movesets/fighting style are fundamentally the same. Shoot, recharge "ammo", recharge "mana". It's really cool to see the mirrors bewteen them, being student and master and both being that man and all.

Yeah, I get that too. It's going to feel weird not having this as the final song in the playlist.

​@dapugloaf5999 tbh I kinda think the best song to end a gg strive Playlist is smell of the game

Don't worry. Daisuke will never stop cooking

I think having it at this length was intentional. The entire song is 6.66 minutes long

Fitting for the guy people called the devil

@@ezrel6477 Didn't catch that. That's actually pretty cool.

really? you think this is better than circle?

@@erfaniom9576 I LOVE The Circle but this has such a final boss/world ending feel to it which I'm a sucker for. Doesn't help that Asuka's design is the coolest thing I've ever seen and the song, design and character fit together in one villain-seeking-redemption package so well.

​@@erfaniom9576I am a Bedman fanatic and even I have to admit Asuka's theme is better than Bedman?'s. I still adore the circle but if I had to pick which song would go it'd sadly be the circle.

And what’s funny is that at 2:53 a faster version of The Circle’s beginning riff that transitions into a less acoustic version, so it sorta reprises Bedman?’s theme.

People actually like the circle? I don't find it very interesting at all.

Chaos is not the hero or the villain. He simply exists. He is whatever you want him to be. As for Asuka, I'd say he is an Ex-Antagonist.

asuka was the villain until he wasn't

in a sense yeah till we got the full picture from asukas side of thing that made him not be the big bad but his teacher filling in the role of it just to lead humanity into the correct path

​​@@Varesparda he does some verry evil shit and gets a ton of inocent people killed he is definetly a villain

And touhou fighting game mechanics

*C U B E*

Atonement of the gear maker

Asuka R. Kruetz

That's kinda funny😂

And they all sound great

​@@Davoxyxtestament Bridget and bedmans kinda suck ngl, Sin's is mid but the rest for strive is good aside from may

​@@justagamethrower ain't no way you said testament theme sucks bro- 💀

@@justagamethrowerbedmans????

Bedmans theme is in the top 5 for me Jacko sin bridget and may themes are in the bottom 5

Love circle but this one's a bit weird imo. Nice to see Daisukes more experimental music getting positive reception though!

so real. the circle is too close to my heart to be surpassed by this personally but it’s necessary discrepancy levels of good 👍

He’s bad guy, but that doesn’t mean he’s bad guy

felt like I ascended ngl

ok so first I cast Sol Metron and tap for two colorless to play Arcane Signet-

​@@Brass319 I play ulamog the ceaseless hunger and mill for 20 on you

This song is sponsored by The shadow government

Legalize nuclear bombs Bees make honey

Swag messiah

and to accept himself with how depressive he got in just wanting his clone to end him till it saw that its stupid to want to die for stupid mistakes you can just accept and move on

ALL THINGS AS THEY ARE !!!!

AS THE UNIVERSE TURNED BLACK

DID THE SUN EVER DEFY FATE?

BEYOND IT ALL, *DO YOU RECOGNIZE ME?!?!*

It's kinda jank, yeah. I hear it as: Innocents lied to, just to spare them? As if! A divine truth seeker arises

First, it's not a flower, those are wings, it's a biblically accurate angel-shaped eyepatch. And second, it happens with all characters who are not perfectly summetrical. This is because there is a single model for the characters, and it's mirrored whenever they are on the right side of the arena, to ensure the model is equally readable independently of the fighter's position relative to each other, but it does cause some weird effecys when you pay attention to it, most notably with Baiken's missing arm.

@@totallynotavoyeur6977 Oh actually? I’m slightly new to the series so I never noticed the switch with other characters but that makes a lot of sense. Also the fact that the eyepatch is a representation of Angel wings is so sick, that fits his character so well I feel, thanks for letting me know 👍

​@@totallynotavoyeur6977It IS designed to look like a rose though. He's not called Asuka Rosen Kreutz for nothing.

@@totallynotavoyeur6977one correction. Not every character is designed to be left side and mirrored on the right. Maybe in some games/some companies but Aksys has been pretty consistent in their other series. They tend to alternate.

You know what else-

i can do that with my pinky finger

@@Dm0pt cool

Macubedyne! XD

Metron Arpeggio ;)

Certainly not for the accuracy of the lyrics 😂

​@@cooperlittlehales6268 the lyrics are accurate though.

"Asuka Is not that of an asshole". My brother in Christ he destroyed the entirety of Japan

@@enricodesantis1236 your Honor, my client would like to plead “Oopsie Daisy” to the charge of making Japan past tense

SHADOW WIZARD MONEY GANG

Ayyee, real ones know him as clouddrop

Don't introduce him to (de)buffs and INSTAKILLS, please... XD

​@@Ramsey276oneHe probably already has them, considering he's JUST BARELY below his teacher ins magic prowess.

​@@Ramsey276onehama/mudo in fighting games is a bad idea, we know this from P4A naoto

​@@AllisterAkaikiP4Au Naoto is simultaneously one of my favorite and least favorite characters in a fighting game lmao. The absolute shenanigans you can get up to when playing as/against her can be hilarious or ruin friendships depending on the situation.

I thought it sounded more like a modern version of Golden Sun music boss themes

Not again 😭