Because this vampire and her little sister completely wreck my theories I’ll choose to ignore them until someone points it out.

Part 3 de fin, intensely late because of the tests that inhabit the last week of school before Christmas holidays.

If your memory (or my writing) serves well, you would remember that the first possible outcome of extensive age to be enlightenment – atonement of previously incomprehensible knowledge. But is that really plausible? For the constant maturation of the mind the thirst for knowledge is required. It is truly realistic for a humanoid to maintain curiosity in the world and its functions for thirty thousand years? It’s hard to believe that a finite being can infinitely pursue an infinite amount of knowledge.

I believe that the aforementioned characters that fit under this category are romanticized to a rather large degree; possessing an astute, curious mind after such an immensely long time. I just don’t see it as very likely – we don’t normally see such acuity in the elderly of very great age around us. This is, of course, because their minds have likely deteriorated to a point where they do not possess the clarity of thought they once had. But what if they did? Would they still, after year after year, decade after decade of experiences and seeing humanity in all its hideous drawbacks, and all its glorious altruisms, be curious about what more there is to see? This is possibility two of three, sinking into a dead state of lethargy.

Part III – ‘Old’ People Can’t Exist

In short, old humanoids, like Yakumo Yukari old, cannot possibly exist. I may just as well be scandalously wrong about this, but I believe that life will become stale in such a great amount of time. A normal (normal in the sense of without worldly boundary powers) humanoid cannot freely pursue boundless intelligence like the gap youkai can. Their range of possible experiences are limited by their immediate environments. Though the universe is infinitely large, the world around oneself isn’t. Meaning, though the sights and people one can see in the entire world is near infinite, the sights and people accessible to one in one’s present environment is limited. Once you’ve seen everything around you, however long that takes, you’ll inevitably get bored and lose interest.

Boredom degenerates the mind as effectively as insanity; for that reason cabin fever exists in the north. Thus I believe I’ve exempted Yukari from sinking into lethargy. Kaguya is a borderline psychopath, and I hope Eirin is smart enough to keep herself interested.

Yes, this person is a medical genius of prodigious intelligence. Stop asking questions and just open wide.

But instead of defending Zun’s creations, why not bash them for once? Eirin is most suspect in this case. Are we supposed to believe a woman well over thirty thousand years old never became bored of life? True, she was master of a country, and then fled from said country and all the people who devoted themselves to her, hand in hand with the royal princess. Most dramatic, and certainly enough excitement to last a lifetime. A human lifespan, that is. But one civilization, one otherworldly experience, isn’t enough to maintain a vivid, exciting life for thirty thousand years. To illustrate, recall how many civilizations have risen and fallen over the course of humanity. Yes, that’s why I say Yagokoro Eirin is over thirty thousand years old; because that is how long humans have been the dominant species on earth. All those civilizations, from ancient Mesopotamia to Egypt, and Eirin never experienced any of them. In essence she has only been in the midst of two – the lunar peoples’ and whatever small culture there exists in the vast Gensokyo.

The grand wizard Merlin in the Arthurian Chronicles oversaw the upbringing of a civilization himself – one alone was enough for him to grow tired and seek eternal imprisonment in a cave from Nimue (yes, that’s the version I read), and he was nowhere close to thirty thousand years.

And indeed, our third possible outcome is very Arthurian related.

Not becoming uninterested and jaded means having something to do – a directive, and the urge to complete it so strong that a ridiculous amount of years still do not dull the character’s senses: King Arturia Pendragon is the perfect example of this (Though even if time hadn’t managed to dull her blade, the immortal Emiya Shirou sure did).

I’m sorry if this spoiled you, but personally, by now you really should know that Saber is the legendary English king – Nasu Kinoko’s work is so overwhelming now that it’s quite difficult for one to near anime and not have been spoiled already.

Assuming it’s true that King Arthur ruled England in the early fifth century, Saber would be presently about one thousand five hundred years old. Yet Shirou is able to communicate with her, understand her humanity and in the end even change her worldly outlook – I believe anyone would be hard pressed to do the same to Eirin or one such character. How did Shirou do this? Do we have an explanation besides the innumerable protagonist shields erected around him?

No, it isn’t because she technically hasn’t aged; her consciousness being beamed back and forth between the wars and her dying self in Arthurian times – she receives the memories of her participation in the wars. Because so many billions of alternate timelines exist, who knows how many Grail Wars she’s been to? She many not have lived the years in time, but she did in experience.

Saber’s one goal was the reverting of the chronology and the saving of England; she had no desire to seek knowledge. Indeed, it’s almost as if ‘time’ never passed for her; instead simply more and more passing moments of longing to realize her dream. Pathological, yes, but that’s exactly why it works; the mind itself is what governs the development of these elderly ladies. If the mind is so devoted to a single ideal that it cannot even consider descending into lethargy or insanity, possibility two of three will never befall the character – maybe because such devotion is insane enough already.

Another example can be seen in the Hakuman, who spends circa ninety years in The Boundary, a black void where to him existed nothing but himself and his own thoughts. I’m fairly certain most would go crazy in under ten minutes. In perspective, Hakumen sits through around four million, seven hundred thirty thousand four hundred times that amount. Did he end up at a loss of his marbles? Well, the flaw of past pathological definitions was that everyone’s definition of ‘crazy’ is different. He maintained a determined, rationalizing mind through sheer force of will – his unrelenting desire to mercilessly enforce undiluted justice on the entire world kept him sane in a void of nothingness for ninety years. For those that say that he IS pathological in the first place, well, he was like that before he got imprisoned. The time meant nothing to him, hadn’t changed him at all, and that’s why I give props to Hakumen – But not too many, because he’s not a lady.

If only he turned out like this. Wait, that would make him Justi-

If all this sounds unclear, it’s probably because I’m trying to imagine something much beyond the scope of human imagination. Truth to be told, I can’t really judge how accurate or inaccurate designers are at realizing these characters – after all, I’m not three thousand years old, I don’t actually know what it’s like to be, and personally, I never want to grow to that age. Along that train of thought, one can really half-sympathize with the likes of Houraisan Kaguya; immortal, destined to never die. Insanity may really be the best thing that could happen to you if you knew that even at the end of the world you would regenerate indefinitely. Regardlessly, I still believe that the younger than three thousand one is, the more capable one is at dreaming. If that makes any sense at all.

Ningyo

Related posts:

1. She’s Three Thousand For A Reason, You Know. Pt 2
2. She’s Three Thousand For A Reason, You Know.