Mechanical aides: some speculations
Oct. 13th, 2009 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasseThanks to the Russian Trinity Blood fandom, which always seems to be rather more organised than the English one, I’ve come across this image. I’d seen glimpses of it before elsewhere but hadn’t yet stumbled upon a flat version of the whole image which may or may not again be due to greater industriousness on the Russian fandom’s part.
It’s a fairly straightforward image at any rate. Abel versus Cain, lacking clothing in the process. Crusniks seemingly adhering quite strictly to that non-blended fibres business though Abel may be a bit of a heretic on that front. Cain and Abel being naked at each other seems to be a theme as far as Trinity Blood artwork goes. There’s the famous fanservice image of the pair of them out there which pairs nicely with the Isaak & Dietrich fanservice piece. So the nakedness isn’t really illustrative of anything other than that fact that I really didn’t need to see Cain’s nipples in official artwork. Even Cain reaching out to Abel isn’t anything new: his mission, aside from total world destruction, seems to be trying to get Abel to join in with him. And considering that Abel is the one who expressed a discontent with humanity beforehand it makes sense enough.
So the setup for the Crusniks isn’t really indicative of anything even if Cain gets his Seraph’s wings while Abel’s sans wings and instead surrounded by rather expanded Crusnik weapon. And while Cain’s wings surround Isaak too, Abel’s weapon loops round Tres as well so that’s not indicative of anything other than some artistic framing. Even the cable sticking out of Tres’ neck and arm aren’t really anything new since it’s no secret that he’s an android. But in the midst of a lot of the obvious what does interest me is the juxtaposition of Abel and his semi-mechanical companion and Cain and… well, whatever it is that Isaak really is.
I’ve said before that I’m quite convinced that Isaak was a nod to the lich archetype in typical fantasy settings and that the only way to create a character that would come close enough to fulfilling that archetype in a technology based setting was to turn him into a machine. And while this may well be biasing my view already this current image certainly does make me wonder. The juxtaposition of Isaak against Tres might just be a stylistic issue since otherwise you’d have to have Esther backing Abel and Dietrich with Cain, or maybe Helga if you’re going for a Crusnik’s with dubiously plausible love interest if by ‘love interest’ you mean someone who’s probably that little bit more interested in the Crusnik part than the human façade. Who knows? Maybe the point of the image was Crusnik and mechanical boyfriend because they’ve both taken a page from Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s book and I’m just overanalysing this.
Still, since the choice of characters caught my attention I did what I usually do with most Isaak images: studied his hair. And what struck me was that his hair really isn’t behaving like human hair at all. Part of it’s hanging straight down while an adjacent section seems to be blowing forward which really doesn’t make sense when you think about the physics. If there’s meant to be some breeze then all his hair should be moving, if not so dramatically, at least in some fashion to indicate a reaction. Instead most of his hair is just hanging limply while the front portion seems to have swung forward, and not just swung forward slightly: it’s spanning quite a distance. That’s not to say that his hair might not swing forward that much ever but it just seems to be doing that on its own. In fact the section past the point where Cain is grasping his hand seems to have taken on a life of its own and be actively reaching across the space, lifting upwards quite drastically, towards Abel. I can’t quite tell where Isaak’s hair ends but it certainly looks like the end point reaches Abel’s expanded weapon, almost as if it’s attempting to attach to it, like cable. Granted, the line of his hair may stop there because it looks better in the image like that or for any other number of artist reasons but to me it certainly manages to convey the impression that that so called hair might just be some kind of mechanical wire.
The only problem I’m running up against here is the fact that Isaak apparently bleeds at one point when that confounded chip is deactivated, though even that could be written off as a malfunction in some semi-organic engineering. After all, if he’s going to pass as at least remotely human that overlay of skin could probably do with a little blood injected into it. And Dietrich’s already clearly shown that even human beings can be turned into quasi-machines with the application of a little lobotomy so it’s still possible that parts of Isaak could be essentially human pieces of a mechanical system.
Of course beyond the above consideration there’s the part where I’m inferring an awful lot just from the bend in his hair which could just be reacting to Abel giving off a static discharge. It does look to me as if Isaak’s hair is reaching across that gap between them but it might not be doing that of its own accord if Abel is crackling with his usual electrical build up the static pull could easily be enough. Or… perhaps there is something there, some slight suggestion that Isaak’s hair is just as mobile as any of his other limbs. After all, if Ninja Scroll had Yurimaru’s electrocution wires I don’t see any reason why Trinity Blood couldn’t necessarily incorporate something similar.
It’s a fairly straightforward image at any rate. Abel versus Cain, lacking clothing in the process. Crusniks seemingly adhering quite strictly to that non-blended fibres business though Abel may be a bit of a heretic on that front. Cain and Abel being naked at each other seems to be a theme as far as Trinity Blood artwork goes. There’s the famous fanservice image of the pair of them out there which pairs nicely with the Isaak & Dietrich fanservice piece. So the nakedness isn’t really illustrative of anything other than that fact that I really didn’t need to see Cain’s nipples in official artwork. Even Cain reaching out to Abel isn’t anything new: his mission, aside from total world destruction, seems to be trying to get Abel to join in with him. And considering that Abel is the one who expressed a discontent with humanity beforehand it makes sense enough.
So the setup for the Crusniks isn’t really indicative of anything even if Cain gets his Seraph’s wings while Abel’s sans wings and instead surrounded by rather expanded Crusnik weapon. And while Cain’s wings surround Isaak too, Abel’s weapon loops round Tres as well so that’s not indicative of anything other than some artistic framing. Even the cable sticking out of Tres’ neck and arm aren’t really anything new since it’s no secret that he’s an android. But in the midst of a lot of the obvious what does interest me is the juxtaposition of Abel and his semi-mechanical companion and Cain and… well, whatever it is that Isaak really is.
I’ve said before that I’m quite convinced that Isaak was a nod to the lich archetype in typical fantasy settings and that the only way to create a character that would come close enough to fulfilling that archetype in a technology based setting was to turn him into a machine. And while this may well be biasing my view already this current image certainly does make me wonder. The juxtaposition of Isaak against Tres might just be a stylistic issue since otherwise you’d have to have Esther backing Abel and Dietrich with Cain, or maybe Helga if you’re going for a Crusnik’s with dubiously plausible love interest if by ‘love interest’ you mean someone who’s probably that little bit more interested in the Crusnik part than the human façade. Who knows? Maybe the point of the image was Crusnik and mechanical boyfriend because they’ve both taken a page from Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s book and I’m just overanalysing this.
Still, since the choice of characters caught my attention I did what I usually do with most Isaak images: studied his hair. And what struck me was that his hair really isn’t behaving like human hair at all. Part of it’s hanging straight down while an adjacent section seems to be blowing forward which really doesn’t make sense when you think about the physics. If there’s meant to be some breeze then all his hair should be moving, if not so dramatically, at least in some fashion to indicate a reaction. Instead most of his hair is just hanging limply while the front portion seems to have swung forward, and not just swung forward slightly: it’s spanning quite a distance. That’s not to say that his hair might not swing forward that much ever but it just seems to be doing that on its own. In fact the section past the point where Cain is grasping his hand seems to have taken on a life of its own and be actively reaching across the space, lifting upwards quite drastically, towards Abel. I can’t quite tell where Isaak’s hair ends but it certainly looks like the end point reaches Abel’s expanded weapon, almost as if it’s attempting to attach to it, like cable. Granted, the line of his hair may stop there because it looks better in the image like that or for any other number of artist reasons but to me it certainly manages to convey the impression that that so called hair might just be some kind of mechanical wire.
The only problem I’m running up against here is the fact that Isaak apparently bleeds at one point when that confounded chip is deactivated, though even that could be written off as a malfunction in some semi-organic engineering. After all, if he’s going to pass as at least remotely human that overlay of skin could probably do with a little blood injected into it. And Dietrich’s already clearly shown that even human beings can be turned into quasi-machines with the application of a little lobotomy so it’s still possible that parts of Isaak could be essentially human pieces of a mechanical system.
Of course beyond the above consideration there’s the part where I’m inferring an awful lot just from the bend in his hair which could just be reacting to Abel giving off a static discharge. It does look to me as if Isaak’s hair is reaching across that gap between them but it might not be doing that of its own accord if Abel is crackling with his usual electrical build up the static pull could easily be enough. Or… perhaps there is something there, some slight suggestion that Isaak’s hair is just as mobile as any of his other limbs. After all, if Ninja Scroll had Yurimaru’s electrocution wires I don’t see any reason why Trinity Blood couldn’t necessarily incorporate something similar.
