Xenogears: PERFECT WORKS~the Real Thing~

This is a book made by the developers for fans of Xenogears that tends to get cited a lot. It has art and illustrations in color and sketches of character designs for almost every character, along with cities, townspeople, and Gears. A lot of the book is devoted to in-depth information about the game's history, characters, science, world, and story. Soraya Saga also made a story called Dark Summer which is featured in it and there is a comic about the Elements girls at the end of the book.

This study guide have no plans to translate this book, but you can find other peoples translations if you search around on the net. What this page offers is a second opinion on some of the translations.

Translated by Gwendal, Jinx and others

[Page 171] * From Elehayym to myyah... The Final Awakening Elehayym (Elly), who had continued to protect the Contact as the Anti-Type, awakened as the "Final Myang" at the time of Deus's resurrection. In order to return to the Zohar as an offshoot of the main element Persona, it is absolutely necessary to be the primary body rather than a supplement.  The Urobolus Ring is written into Elly's intron information. When this ring is connected, she is in a non-awakened state, but when the ring is severed, she awakens into Myang. The "Urobolus Ring" symbolizes the process of establishing an Ego, and another term that signifies nearly the same idea as this is the "Great Mother". As the Great Mother, Myang obstructs the formation of a person's Ego. A person who has been allowed to develop a conscious world (Ego) begins to act according to his own wishes. This is nothing but a hindrance to Myang's goal of leading people to a perfectly complete body. Therefore, Myang became the Great Mother, and eradicated any civilization too advanced (people with a sense of self). The fact that the Anti-Type Elehayym had not awakened until the time of Deus's resurrection may have been to watch over, as a "mother", the establishment of the consciousness of the Contact. Once Deus's resurrection had been achieved, it was necessary to leave what could and should be done up to the judgement of the Contact's own will. Conversely, Myang saw the Contact as the one who would destroy Deus. That's precisely why she could not allow the Contact's Ego to develop. The Contact was a vital piece of Deus, but being the "Destroyer of God" was unnecessary. So, Myang became the Great Mother, and manipulated and guided the Contact's Ego. ...And then, when the integration of everything is achieved, Elehayym herself would grow as well... Urobolus Ring The "Urobolus" refers to the snake that devours its own tail. That image, of something feeding itself, psychologically indicates the state devoid of conflict before an Ego is established-- the Collective Unconscious. It is a state in early childhood where a person cannot yet discern things himself, where there is no conflicting difference between reality and his sense of self. Once the Ego forms, it produces a necessity to sever this circle in order to break away from the unconscious. This is the establishment of one's own conscious world. The basis on which to discern things is born, and there begins to be conflict towards reality that goes beyond that basis of discernment. "Great Mother" is a name that symbolizes a mother who hinders her child's process of breaking away from this circle (from developing an Ego).

[Page 185 - Margie/Chuchu] Translated by Spherix: Anyway, the blurb about Chuchu's race in PW on page 185: "The Wookii race has its origin in the native creatures, but they came to posess advanced intelligence after the Zeboim era. From the genetic research facilities, on the surface destroyed by nuclear warfare, surviving experimental animals escaped. And so the creatures that would become mothers of human subspecies were born. That foundation included mutants of the native creatures, and the Wookii race is their evolved form. At the time, they had quite enormous bodies, and so Solaris's Limiter measures were established to miniaturize them." [Spherix's comment: Whew. That was rough. It's written in strange style, mixing abrupt, spoken sort of speech, and literary formalisms... Anyway, just compared my work against Ichiban Manten's, and while mine may still be a little clunky, I'm confident that it's an improvement. And "Wookii", written {} is really very similar, though not identical, to how Star Wars Wookies are written in Japanese: {}. Seems pretty deliberate.]

[Page 226] Myyah Hawwa [...] Contradiction - Calvin Klein This fragrance feels good and fresh with a modern flavor, while also living up to a somewhat classic standard. You could possibly say that it feels like [lit.: has the image of] being somehow familiar, but different from anything else you might think of... Miang leads a solitary existence, taking on the burden of a destiny flowing through an eternity of time without being able to turn to anyone else for support. This [fragrance] is a good match for her image. It takes its name from the English term for "contradiction", a fact that also echoes with deep meaning.

[Page 237 - Fei] FROM DIRECTOR When Xenogears was in the early stages, while it included all sorts of different situations, it was actually a work with a [rather] pastoral atmosphere to it. That goes for Fei too, and the design I ordered for him had the feel of a [rural] martial artist...living in a temple near the village. However, as I went ahead with the script work, I found myself more and more tempted to get rid of the pastoral elements, until I couldn't resist anymore, and several script revisions followed. (Honestly, I don't really care much for pastoral settings. That's because I'm mentally more of an "underground" type of person with a preference for the grotesque and muddled personally.) [Slightly unsure about the exact word "grotesque", but I think that's what he's getting at] As you might have noticed, Fei's design ended up being a bit out of place compared to the atmosphere of the game (especially the second half). But there wasn't any time to revise it, and in the end we decided to go with it as it was. To be honest, Fei is the character whose design I'd like to refine the most. Sorry, Tanaka. [Gwendal's comment: About [my translation]...first of all, just so that's clear: my interpretation isn't that Fei actually lived in a temple at any point, but rather that he should have the look and feel of a typical martial artist monk you'd find living in a temple outside a village. I should probably have worded that better. As for [UltimateGraphics' choice of] "doom and gloom", I guess that's a bit smoother than my version. And he did leave out a few bits, it seems, yeah. And "as the script was being written" (or "as script work proceeded" if you want to be literal) is technically more accurate, but since Japanese often omits the pronouns, I just assumed he was talking about himself writing the script. So unfortunately there's no way to tell for sure, at least as I'm reading the text. Maybe a native speaker or someone who's 100% fluent could, I don't know.] [Second opinion from Lugalbanda: Takahashi is clear that when he first filed an order for Fei's design, his backstory was that he was living in a temple out of the village. I think saying that his design was meant to look like someone who lived in a temple as opposed to actually being in a temple is reading too far into a simple sentence, and I think Occam's razor would say the early conceptualizations of Fei had him living in a temple. Now [about the word "grotesque" that Gwendal was unsure about]. The reason why the line is hard to translate is that he's kind of freestyling with Japanese and coming up with a word to explain himself. UltimateGraphic's translation [of "gloom and doom"] is pretty meh, and Gwendal's is better, but Gwendal actually crucially misses the full meaning of the line as well. So I'm just going to do a translation myself: "(I'm honestly not too fond of pastoral settings. I like the psychologically grotesque and messy; I identify more with underground and niche subcultures)." To explain why I came to this translation, a few things. The part in which Gwnedal translates as "mentally" is fine in terms of a literal translation, but what he's describing here is not his state of mind, but a state of mind you would see in works of fiction that portray the grotesque and messy. The "grotesque" comes from グロ 'guro', which is just the Japanese way of saying grotesque. He says グログロ　'guroguro', which is a made up word, to mirror phonetically what he's about to say next. In the next part he says ドロドロ 'dorodoro', which is literally something like "viscous" or "thick". The Japanese use this word to describe human relationships in soap operas a lot, or relationships that might as well be from a soap opera. Emotionally intense, kind of slimy maybe, and hard to get out of. Finally, the "underground" is just an identity Takahashi ascribes to. He's just saying he identifies more as a part of the darker, more niche parts of pop culture as opposed to whatever he considers mainstream.]