Eusis=Yushisu=Japanese cognate of Joshua=which is in itself

Eusis=Yushisu=Japanese cognate of Joshua=which is in itself an English Cognate of the biblical character and Hebrew name "Jesus."
---Which begs me to ask, is Rolf/Yushisu, meant to be seen as a savior in this game?
I would think so by context and I truly do mean the text of the game, and his ultimate sacrifice of what we find out is a suicide mission, much like Jesus.

However, the counter argument to this is that Zio knows no Japanese, and Yushisu actually means something in japanese, other than a misconstrued cognate, or at best, doesnt mean "savior" in japanese and does have a real meaning.

Also supporting the counter argument is the lack of statues and items referencing him or his team's sacrifice, and only the seen statues and items referencing Alis, of 1000 years earlier, and her sacrifice, which was short of a permanent death (unlike Yushisu by a consensus,) by the hands of, Dark Falz, or one of his/her affiliates.

This makes Zio's head spin going through the family memoirs, and pondering the endless possibilities of exactly why Yushisu is scrapped from all Algol history, and what his name ever was, since he is forgotten by the masses but not his teenage ancestor, Alisa----whose name, does not mean, savior, or any related religious name, of earthmen or algolian note.

Discuss please.

I'll keep my answer short and simple:

Christianity = not popular in Japan (Less than 1% pop)

Cute idea, but it sounds far-fetched and over-thought for me.

Aeroprism wrote:

I'll keep my answer short and simple:
Christianity = not popular in Japan (Less than 1% pop)
Cute idea, but it sounds far-fetched and over-thought for me.

there is sure a few, quite a few, of biblical inspired anime and manga out there. and games, even from that era. like unpopular japanese games "bible story" and its sequel. Not to mention that game Xeno-something years later among others.

Maybe not the hottest religion on the block to practice, surely one of inspiration for artists and game designers.

Considering I just played through three Shin Megami Tensei games, I can certainly confirm what you just said. But PS2 was made in 1989. I'm not sure it was that hot back then.

As I said, I find your idea interesting but I still think that like most PS theories that came out in the last say, five years, it's far fetched.

The last classical PS game came out almost 20 years ago. It's been heavily scrutinized by fans and enthusiasts ever since. It's fair to say that of all that's contained within the classical PS games, all that had to be discovered and realized was done so already.

Kenshiro, was crucified, called savior, among other references several times on televised and theatrical media between 1984 and 1987.and before then, in print.

This is quite the coincidence, I was actually wondering what in the world Eusis was supposed to mean after the name was mentioned in the Japanese/English name preference thread. Yushisu, to me, as someone who studies Hebrew and Greek, certainly looks like a possible Japanese approximation of the name Jesus. In Hebrew and Aramaic Jesus's name is, as Zio mentioned, cognate with Joshua's, and both appear as Yeshu'a and Yehoshu'a, respectively. Of note here is that in their original language these names are nearly identical, and share the "sh" sound.

But anyway, from what little I know of Japanese, I could easily imagine the name is an attempt at Jesus/Yeshu'a, but it may have some other meaning or derivation in Japanese. In any event, I do think it's possible some faint connotation was meant to be imbued to the character, maybe even something messianic. Remember that the vessel at the end of PS II (itself an ominous and perhaps ironically named one) is named Noah. Noah is seen as a prefigure of Jesus in Christianity, Gnosticism, and Islam, alongside the name's other apocalyptic connotations.

The problem is that, like Aeroprism pointed out, Christianity isn't as widely accepted in Japan, and there seems to me to be less scrutiny of the religion there. The popular culture there seems to love to throw around crazy Christian phraseology and ideas without really understanding them. I think a part of this is because in the Western world we tend to have, even if more passively, a closer relationship with Greek and Semitic culture and language, and thus sort of intuitively pick up on things in the religious culture that Japanese pop sensibility doesn't.

A good example to me is Neon Genesis Evangelion. The name is a grammatical mishmash and makes little sense from a structural standpoint. "Neon" is an adjective meaning new, in the neuter nominative singular, presumably modifying "Evangelion", or "good news/Gospel", and "Genesis" means "birth" in Greek (again in the nominative singular). So the title literally means "(New) Birth (Good News)" in Greek. Homer or Aristotle this is not. Admittedly, because Greek is a synthetic language grammatically and has extensive clarifying endings the structure is clear enough, but the language doesn't normally sandwich a noun with an adjective and accompanying modified noun in that way; apposition of this sort is pretty rare. In any event, the idea is clear enough, "Birth that is new good news", but, well, it doesn't look as exotic and alluring when you look at it that way.

That sounds like a nice idea, but I think it's a little bit overthought. Only 2.3% of the Japanese population is Christian, and Japan is one of the least religious countries in the world.

In religious countries (e.g India, Indonesia, Thailand), names relating to religious figures are very common, but in countries like Japan, such names are not common, and that goes for characters in Japanese media.

Me too, I think that christian names are not used very often in Japan !