Betrayers Card Notes
For the last bit of my discussion with Brady, I asked him for some creative tidbits on some of the cards from Betrayers. His replies are in quotes below.
The Baku – “Baku are in Japanese folklore; they’re benevolent dream-guardians. They are chimeric creatures with aspects of lions and elephants, and they turn your nightmares into good fortune by devouring the bad parts. In our story, because they’re spirits, they turn hostile towards the material world once the war begins, becoming nightmarish creatures themselves. As a note, I got the idea for the art concept from the Dungeons & Dragons monster Intellect Devourer. It’s just a brain on lion’s legs, so for the baku I just replaced ’brain’ with ’a mass of candles’ or ’a pile of skulls.’”
Kentaro, the Smiling Cat – “This art was supposed to be used on Toshiro Umezawa [who was originally in Champions]. But Umezawa got moved [to Betrayers], and because Donato [Giancola] wasn’t doing the packaging images for Betrayers, we had to get new art.” All the ’packaging images’ for any particular set (that means the card art that also appears on the booster display box, the theme deck display box, and the tournament pack display box) are done by the same artist. John Bolton did the packaging images for Champions (Horobi, Uyo, Shisato, and Konda). Umezawa was in that set originally, but wasn’t slated to be used on packaging. When he moved to Betrayers, he became one of the central cards of that set, and the creative and brand teams wanted to use him on the packaging. The problem was, Donato painted it, and Chris Moeller was slated to do the packaging images for Betrayers. So Donato’s Umezawa was moved to Kentaro, and Moeller painted a new Umezawa.
Goryo’s Vengeance – Who is this Goryo person? Actually, he’s not a person at all. “Goryo, or ’onryo,’ means ’angry spirits.’ Specifically, those that died but did not have rites performed to let them leave the world. That Sarah Michelle Gellar movie ’The Grudge’ is about goryo—angry spirits of the unsettled dead. It’s actually a remake of a Japanese horror movie from a year earlier called Ju-On.”
Final Judgment – That seems to be a spirit invoking his wrath in the art, yet the card isn’t Arcane. What’s going on? “Yes, the card isn’t arcane, but that particular plot point (see Magic Arcana for an explanation) was too good not to use on the card. The spirit pictured is the O-Kagachi—the kami that embodies the difference and the veil between the spirit world and the material world. So there’s some justification for it not being Arcane; when the O-Kagachi is around, things just go haywire.” (In Brady’s defense, the creative team did ask development if Final Judgment could be Arcane, but their request was denied, mainly due to potential interactions with Hikari, Twilight Guardian.)
The Flippers – Many people believe these cards represent humans “betraying” their own side and becoming spirits. “That’s not what’s happening. The material-world creatures are vessels; the kami are bursting out of them. They aren’t transforming; the kami are already inside them. On some of the cards like Cunning Bandit, the presence of the kami within the human greatly influences the human’s behavior—the kami corrupt.”
引用元
THE CREATIVE SIDE OF KAMIGAWA Posted in NEWS on February 18, 2005
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/creative-side-kamigawa-2005-02-18
昨日の記事の続きです。
最後に、個別のカードについて語っています。
獏サイクルのアートコンセプトはD&DのIntellect Devourer (画像２枚目左)がもとになっており、脳みそでなく、蝋燭や頭蓋骨に手足が生えていること。
《笑む猫、憲太郎/Kentaro, the Smiling Cat》のアートは、元々《梅澤俊郎/Toshiro Umezawa》のアートになる予定だったこと。
「御霊Goryo」の意味の解説（※１）。
《最後の裁き/Final Judgment》が秘儀でない理由は、フレイバー的な理由（※２）に加えて、《黄昏の守護者、秘加理/Hikari, Twilight Guardian》とのシナジーが強すぎること、といったことが解説されています。
特に興味深かったのは、《狡猾な山賊/Cunning Bandit》などの反転サイクルのフレイバーです。
神（スピリット）でないものが、神になるため、彼らが神の方へと裏切ったと思われがちですが、それは勘違いだそうです。
神がすでに彼らの中にいて、それが肉体を飛び出して現れる様子を反転で表現しているとのことでした。
エキスパンション名が神河「謀叛」であるため、そのような勘違いも無理からぬことだと思います。
トップダウンデザインのセットでありながら、こうしたフレイバーが伝わらないのも、神河の失敗点の１つでしょう。
※１
神河当時 - CARD OF THE DAY 《御霊の復讐/Goryo’s Vengeance》
https://researchofkamigawa.diarynote.jp/202109012023414018/
※２
神河当時 - ASK WIZARDS 秘儀でない《最後の裁き/Final Judgment》
https://researchofkamigawa.diarynote.jp/202105152005573971/
補足
恒例のQ&A記事がありました。
記事として取り上げることはありませんが、付記しておきます。
BACK TO THE REAL WORLD Posted in Feature on April 9, 2005
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/back-real-world-2005-04-09
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