Kousojin Maria & Shin Megami Tensei NINE

It took more than a week in customs, but I'll count myself lucky she wasn't stuck there longer! My deluxe pack of Shin Megami Tensei NINE arrived late Thursday afternoon and I was ecstatic to find it still sealed, untouched since it first left the factory in December 2002. Although maybe that's just testifying to how hard the Xbox flopped in Japan...

Kousojin Maria appears!

This figure is pretty hard to find, as she only came with the DX edition of NINE and doesn't turn up very often on auctions. Searching for her figure in Japanese even leads to search corrections for Mara. There are apparently a lot of unsold copies left over in Japan selling for ~1000 yen, but on eBay DX NINE tends to run for $50 shipping inclusive. I deliberated a bit over whether or not to go ahead and get her, but I decided I probably wouldn't get this chance very often.

Face detail.

Figures are something of a minor hobby of mine, and I'm making an effort at establishing an object biography of each figure I collect. It's an art thing--something that enters my collection will someday be inherited, so I maintain information about the figures that helps with their upkeep, including material composition, place of origin, nature of transaction, price I bought it for and an identification number. Maria here traveled all the way from Toyama prefecture, measures 9.5cm and (near as I can tell) is made wholly of PVC plastic, although I don't have much to go on for production history. Many figures produced prior to 2007~08 were made entirely of PVC to reduce production costs, while following an industry shift it became standard to use supporting material like ABS to avoid defects and leaning in figures, but I suspect Maria is among the ranks of pure PVCs. Fortunately the climate in my area demands conditioning such that she'll practically be living in the Santa Maria delle Grazie, so there's little to no danger of leaning.

Foot detail, showing crack.

There are two minor imperfections in the figure I received, a crack in Maria's right foot, and a spot on the left side of her head where the paint is worn. As she's been suspended in plastic for twelve years, I suspect these are due to age. A transparent piece of plastic holds her halo aloft her head coverings, borrowing the Christian iconography of the holy family and giving the illusion of it hovering above her as a symbol of divinity; we are not meant to see it, but to deny the supporting piece and envision Maria's halo as floating. Having the opportunity to see it as a sculpture in the round, I think the hijab is the most interesting aspect of Kaneko's design, because it points to the acultural roots of the clothing prior to the emergence of the major branches of Abrahamic religion, and tears away at the preconceptions of her legend that have been built up over the years. The holy mother is such a common icon even outside of Christianity that seeing her in period-appropriate dress, rather than through Renaissance or Byzantine conventions, appears startling and artistically provocative.

Rotom (Takara Tomy, BW2 Series) for scale. Rotom is ~4 cm.

The golden chain in the figure is not glued to the statue, but her hands are shaped around it and the chain falls freely into its natural position. My comprehension of NINE is fragmentary, based on dialogue that I kinda-sorta understood, but using what I've seen as a starting point I believe the chain was chosen as a symbol of how Maria, being the directing force behind Idea Space, imprisons mankind within the limits of a virtual world and ushers in the Neo Messiah Project, a path to salvation through technology. Granted, Idea Space is not exactly Matrix-level stuff, but the real world in NINE barely exists. There is an inscription on the underside of Maria's stand which reads ©ATLUS 2002.

Of course, the figure is my focus but she's hardly all that came in the DX package. There was also a binder, keychain and ID card set themed after the in-game Central Bureau of Administrative Services. If I'm reading the box and manuals right the ID was once connected to an online portion run by Atlus similar to Square Enix's old PlayOnline service. The figure even came with a free video game!

Joking aside, it's one of my long-term goals to translate NINE, perhaps in another Let's Play for the far future, but that requires a Japanese Xbox to bypass the region locking. As far as I'm aware there's no issue with connecting an Xbox's AV cables to my Dazzle equipment, so recording should be a sane procedure. The game is not exactly a graphical powerhouse beyond its prerendered backgrounds and character customization options, and battles move at the same pace as an old core SMT, so the screenshot format I've been using would suit NINE just fine.

Fun fact: The boss races in NINE are extremely obscure, most fansites don't list them. I actually don't know if you can get them to display in-game or not, but Maria's race is given by a few limited sources as 高祖神 (Kousojin) "Founding Divinity." I presume this information comes from either the Perfect or Master Guides. Founding here means to found a religious sect, the deity around which the religion develops, and also corresponds on Maria being the pillar around which Idea Space is built. To fit with the conventions of SMT's English race names I would translate this as any of Hodegetria, Anointed or Apostolic; the first translation is borrowed from a common iconographic depiction of the real Virgin Mary as "showing the way" through Christ, as Maria analogously shows the way to the Millennium Kingdom through Idea Space. Anointed is a common term for those consecrated by oil to do God's will in Judeo-Christian tradition, and these days is often applied to Christ as the "anointed one," but the process of anointment was integral to many founding figures in Judeo-Christian tradition. Apostolic is a descriptor taken from the Apostles, Jesus' disciples who were instrumental in the spread of the early church teachings. In this case I chose the term because of its connotations with foundation of a church, describing Maria not as an apostle but as someone with qualities similar to one. By dropping the spiritual implications as a compromise the race name could also be simplified down to just Foundation.

I'm not exactly sure if English race names are capped at eight, nine or ten characters by this point, but Hodegetria is definitely my preferred translation given that Kousojin is currently Maria's exclusive race. On the other hand, if it were ever reused it would create problems to give it such a specific translation. She would probably be Godly/Shinrei (神霊) if she were ever reused though. For the curious, her in-game skills were Trinity (shared with Yaldabaoth, Raguel, Sariel and Morrigan), Divine Light (shared with Lucifer), Immaculate Glow (exclusive), Megido Fire, Water Wall and Bufudyne.

A note--my universal tag for Megaten figures of all kinds on both blogger and tumblr is #mgtn.