Well, I loved Sigma yelling at Phi. You’ll have to
refresh my memory regarding any yelling at Diana, because I’m not
remembering anything like that off the top of my head – though I could be wrong.
In any event, it’s not like I liked it ‘because I don’t like Phi’, or anything
like that – allow me to explain.
I was really concerned for Sigma’s characterization before
this footage dropped. His arc is one of the most interesting in ZE, if not the most interesting, at least to me.
VLR shows us Sigma as a classic hero
character – heroic, brave, repeatedly self-sacrificing. He’s far from flawless –
I’m not inclined to sweep his fuckboi tendencies under the rug – but he’s
repeatedly established as a martyr figure. Dying for Quark, for Phi, staying
behind for Luna twice, never even considering saving himself before Phi or Kyle, etc. “Others before self” is kind of his gimmick.
In and of itself, that’s not especially interesting. Hero
characters are a dime a dozen – but we rarely see interesting consequences for
that sort of behavioral pattern. What is interesting, then, is his development
into Doctor Klim – Zero Senior. It’s brilliant continuity… we see someone with
the exact same set of virtues applying them to an exponentially broader scale. He
keeps up his established pattern of sacrificing himself, and his happiness, for
other people. And it doesn’t come cheap, or easily, or without consequences.
Instead, his characterization is believable. He’s old, he’s bitter and tired
and not painted as a perfect person. Does he tell Phi to shut up? Yes, he
does, but only in the context of trying to save her life. His interaction with her here bears some similarity
to his relationship with Kyle.
Dr. Klim is completely focused on the objective at
hand, which is (once again) trying to optimize his present circumstances to create the
best possible outcome at his own expense. He’s consequence-oriented. Is yelling
at Phi ‘nice’? No, but is it more important to be ‘nice’ than it is to intervene in her impending and hideous death by flame? What if shouting Phi down pulls Diana’s decision in favor of pulling
the trigger? Is it still the wrong decision?
Dr. Klim is once again creating a lesser evil to mitigate a larger one. Am I happy he yelled at Phi? Yes, I am – not because of
anything Phi ‘did’ or ‘deserved’, but because it’s a sign of good potential continuity
of his established character.
To Dr. Klim, being ‘good’ is more important than being ‘nice’. And, anon – I’m sorry if you find it upsetting, but I’m both inclined to agree with his philosophy and excited to see where his character arc will take us. Regardless, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Okay, we all know that century-spanning multiple-timeline time-travel stories can get confusing. And ZE is no exception. And with ZTD coming up, I’m guessing most people will be wanting to brush up on the intrigue that ZTD will almost certainly plop us down right in the middle of. A little while ago, I put together a timeline of all the major events in ZE (and in real life referenced in ZE) for my own reference – but now, with ZE relevant again and building hype, I thought I’d share!
April 14, 1912 – The Titanic hits an iceberg and sinks.
1912, later – Lord Gordain buys the Allice mummy on the black market in New York.
February 1914 – The Gigantic is launched.
December 1915 – The Gigantic is put into service as a hospital ship for WWI.
November 1916 – The Gigantic hits a mine and runs aground; she is decommissioned. Lord Gordain buys the Gigantic.
1920 – Glycerin crystallizes for the first time en route to England.
1923-1943 – Brother is born in this range, probably?
1931 – Lord Gordain dies.
late 1970s – EDT crystals start to form hydrates.
1977 – Gentarou Hongou is born.
1981 – Rupert Sheldrake publishes A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance.
1982 – Seven is born.
– Teruaki Kubota is born (probably).
1987 – Hazuki (Lotus) is born.
1991-2001 – The last of the Gordanian Games (with Hongou as a participant) happens somewhere in here.
1996 – The first mammal cloned from an adult cell, Dolly the Sheep, is made.
1996-2006 – The first generation of Left clones are born around this time.
2003 – Light Field is born.
– Aoi Kurashiki is born.
2006 – Junpei Tenmyouji is born.
– Akane Kurashiki is born.
– Sigma Klim is born.
2007 – Nona and Ennea Kashiwabara are born (most likely).
2008 – Phi is born, probably, if she’s telling the truth.
November 2009 – Clover Field is born.
2012 – Junpei and Akane begin elementary school and become classmates.
2012-2015 – The accident that leaves Light blind, and the deaths of the Kurashiki parents, happen somewhere in here.
June 2018 – The last time Junpei and Akane got to see each other and just be friends together like normal people.
November 2018 – FIRST NONARY GAME
2018-2027 – Seven tangles with Free the Soul and gets those scars on his face somewhere in here.
2023 – Aoi turns 20, the age of legal adulthood in Japan, and is legally able to trade bonds and be a stockbroker and earn real money. Presumably this is also when the Crash Keys are formed, and Akane and Aoi start putting together the second nonary game.
April 2024 – Junpei enters college and moves into that apartment.
November 2027 – SECOND NONARY GAME (EVENTS OF 999)
2028 – Clover and Light join the SIOS.
December 2028 – Alice and Clover are kidnapped.
– Sigma and Phi are “kidnapped”.
December 31 2028/January 1 2029 – Nevada test site disaster; Radical-6 outbreak (EVENTS OF ZTD)
April 13, 2029 – Antimatter reactors are detonated; apocalypse proper begins.
2038 – Axelavir is developed.
2044-2054 – The generation of Left clones that includes Dio is born somewhere in here.
2051 – Kyle Klim is born.
2060(?) – Kyle asks for a mom, gets Luna, and rejects her. 😦
There is a special deal with “Q” in Japanese regarding Zero Escape series. I made a screenshot of ZE wiki page:
I don’t know Japanese, so asked my fellow Google Translate to voice me a “9″ in a pleasant female voice. It sounded rather curious.
So everyone agrees that “9″ = “kyu” = “q” = “Q”.
I went further and made yet another screenshot of a ZE wiki page – it was a search result page for “Q”. Here it is:
They only used “Q” to name objects and locations in previous games. But now we have a whole living character named after a series most prominent symbol. And for some reason he is not even a Participant 9. He is a Participant 4. And Participant 9 is Sigma.
My brain was fried by Zero Escape plot twists long ago, so I can’t make any conclusions from this. Help?
midnight-in-town 