Gehenna and the Demon Kings

[NeeNee]

Thats an idiom.
"dishonor the lowest seat" means its insulting for the lowest seat to have him above.

I dont know what's exactly in the official translation, but believe me, I'm right.

Oooh! So that explains everything, then. Amaimon is the seventh and second lowest, and apparently Mephisto has more respect from the last in row since he's saying Amaimon in an insult to him.

I wonder who that last king is.

[Wikkelsoee]

^ Wasn't that Lucy? Or are we not convinced he's a King yet?

[weazulgrl]

I think the question being asked is who the 8th ranked king is, if Amaimon is ranked at 7 out of 8.

[Wikkelsoee]

^ I seem to be misunderstanding everything lately... Thank you ^^;

If that's what we're talking about, I'm guessing Egyn. Water just doesn't seems very scary compared to the others.

[NeeNee]

^ You've never been at sea, have you?

But if we're placing bets, hm... I'll take Azazel. Air sounds like something Mephisto could get along with, even if he's not very strong.

(Btw, aren't there any female 'kings'? I'd love it if Egyn was a girl.)

[MetallicArcher]

Thanks Chino!

katagiriishida@*** is my email... but I PM you through the forum, how comes my username didn't show up to you?

^ You've never been at sea, have you?

But if we're placing bets, hm... I'll take Azazel. Air sounds like something Mephisto could get along with, even if he's not very strong.

(Btw, aren't there any female 'kings'? I'd love it if Egyn was a girl.)

While I agree (and I remember a teacher at secondary school teaching it to me this way) that water is one of nature's most (if not actually the most) destructive force and the element which can alter the landscape the most, according to the "Demon Elemental Chart"



Earth outdoes Water, so Given Amaimon's seat, I would expect Egyn to be under him (even if the chart is circular and you can start counting from anywhere you like).

Well, since I'm on the Chart,  a possible (but as likely wrong) order for the Kings could be:

1 - Light
2 - Time
3 - Insects?
4 - Fire
5 - Decay
6 - Air
7 - Earth
8 - Water

As for Queens, I would say Egyn or Azazel could be used as female names. I actually find the sense of gender in Japanese names very... "ambiguous"... I recall in Black Lagoon, the name Yukio used as a girl name.

There is also that the Kings are likely to have a mother (unless Satan can generate kids spontaneously).

I hope Kazue picks Lilith for Satan's wife/Kings mother. Going by myths, Lilith can make for a really good antagonist or ally depending on how she is written.

[NeeNee]

^ I hid part of your e-mail since it's generally a bad idea to put such addresses online on a public forum (you can allow people to e-mail you through your profile if you want).

Their mother, eh? I never thought of that. I'm not really expecting to see her (assuming they even have the same mother).

I'm looking forward to the other kings/queens though. Do you think we'll eventually get to see all of them?

[Paradox]

Their mother, eh? I never thought of that. I'm not really expecting to see her (assuming they even have the same mother).

I would be glad about more informations. I never heard about Lilith. But I'm sure we have to wait for a Gehenna arc.
Oh, there is one demon I want to see. Amaimon's crazy cousin who collects human eyeballs (he mentioned him in the Fun Camp arc).

I'm looking forward to the other kings/queens though. Do you think we'll eventually get to see all of them?

Oh, yes. I hope we don't have to wait another 30/40 chapters. (I didn't count Mephisto because he was there all the time).

[MetallicArcher]

Their mother, eh? I never thought of that. I'm not really expecting to see her (assuming they even have the same mother).

I would be glad about more informations. I never heard about Lilith. But I'm sure we have to wait for a Gehenna arc.
Oh, there is one demon I want to see. Amaimon's crazy cousin who collects human eyeballs (he mentioned him in the Fun Camp arc).

A quick summary on Lilith (she is a very complex mythological character, you can read most of the many versions about her in her Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith )

She comes from Mesopotamian tradition and appears in the Jewish old Testament (not the Christian Bible) as Adan's fisrt wife before Eva.

God made her from dust and breathed life into her, just as Adan, upon Adan's request of having his own mate just like all the other animals God had created (some versions say he came up with that request after trying the females of the other species to see if any of them suited him... don't think to much about it, ok?)

The problem was, Lilith though of herself as Adan's equal and requested to be treated as such. While Adan though of her as inferior to himself and wanted her to submit to him (I think the actual scene is that Adan wanted to have sex with Lilith under him and Lilith said no of them should lay under the other).

Thing is, Adan asks God to speak with Lilith and  Lilith ends up getting God to teach her his "Secret Sacred Name" in exchange of trying to be more tolerant and understanding of Adan's needs.

But, things didn't go well, she got into an argument with Adan, he cornered her (some versions say he tries to sexually force her) and she pronounces God's name, which grows her a pair of wings and flies away from the Garden of Eden.

She lands at a cave near the Red Sea along the recently fallen angels who had defied God (aka, Satan and his merry band).

She sympathizes with them and feels they respect her more than what Adan did so she tags along.

Adan asks God to bring her back and he sends three angels with unpronounceable names I'm not even gonna try to remember, she refuses, so they threaten her to kill a hundred (the number varies among versions) of the children she had with the fallen angels (those children are known as a race of demons called lilim) every day until she returns to Eden. She refuses once more and says she will take revenge killing human children (I don't know how that works, Adan was the only human alive back then, I will just roll with it you just do it, too) but that she will live alone those mothers and houses who are decorated with a talisman with the name of the three angels.

After that, God creates Eve from a rib of Adam so she is more, errrmmm, "obedient".

Since Lilith's name can be translated as "night" she is often associated with vampires and succubus.

Legends tend to diverge about what happened to her after the angels left.

Some say she married Satan. Other that she would have sex with any demon around. There is even a version that says the ANGEL Samael, who reigns over the Fifth Heaven and lives in the Seventh (once again, I don't know how that works, just roll with it) fell for her or something and asked God to allow them to marry and they did but God castrated them to prevent Lilith's offspring to spread.

If you go with that she married Satan, a versions says that Satan tempted Adan and Eve to help her get revenge on Adan. Lilith was the snake and Satan the voice.

Here you have some good compilations of the different versions of the legends around her: http://judaism.about.com/od/jewishculture/a/Where-Does-The-Legend-Of-Lilith-Come-From.htm http://www.unicorngarden.com/bkshe4.htm http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1513/whats-the-story-on-lilith-adams-first-wife

PD. It just landed on me, if Kazue is making Mephisto out of a mix between ANGEL Samael and the Demon Prince Samael  (as someone said somewhere in this forum before) Mephisto's statement of liking hot-devilish women can turn into him having a hot-devilish wife (I mean, if option 1 of the poll is the right one, he needs  someone of trust to keep his kingdom in check when he can't be there).

[weazulgrl]

PD. It just landed on me, if Kazue is making Mephisto out of a mix between ANGEL Samael and the Demon Prince Samael  (as someone said somewhere in this forum before) Mephisto's statement of liking hot-devilish women can turn into him having a hot-devilish wife (I mean, if option 1 of the poll is the right one, he needs  someone of trust to keep his kingdom in check when he can't be there).

I actually mentioned similar in another thread. and when you think on the fact she even had Ucchusma say that terms like angel and devil are just things humans came up with it's possible she's indicating demons and angels are basically the same thing that does show that it is very possible she is combing the demon and angel Samaels into one. of course, as I said in the other thread, this could also mean she could take the same kind of thing from Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne where Satan is basically a darker aspect of God as well.

[earthforge]

I think the King of Insects will be weaker than Amaimon because insects are so specific and the introduced insect demons have been fairly weak.

As for all the kings between Mephisto and Amaimon, I have no clue. They all could be equal for all I know.

The best representation I've seen of Lilith was in Frasier tbh.

I don't think that demons should have a concept of wife. Remember how dismissive Mephisto was of "love"?

I also would hate if god gets introduced because he'd only be a dick at this rate. The implication is also that demons aren't exactly evil, but that they can be good (angels) or evil (classic demons). They are better describe as beings from a parallel dimension that can only enter ours by a few methods.

[weazulgrl]

if you want to get technical the idea of demons as specifically evil is more recent than you'd think.

the root of the word demon is the Latin daemon/Greek daimon, words which didn't carry a connotation of good or evil but covered a wide variety things from genius loci/guardian spirits, nature/elemental spirits, muses, and so on all the way up to lesser deities. it's actually kind of interesting that she's inferring that the root meaning is technically more correct than the modern meaning.

[MetallicArcher]

I don't think that demons should have a concept of wife. Remember how dismissive Mephisto was of "love"?

Marriage =/= Love

For all it matters, marriage is a legal contract. He might just want that "legal" contract to vinculate him with a person to cover his back.

if you want to get technical the idea of demons as specifically evil is more recent than you'd think.

the root of the word demon is the Latin daemon/Greek daimon, words which didn't carry a connotation of good or evil but covered a wide variety things from genius loci/guardian spirits, nature/elemental spirits, muses, and so on all the way up to lesser deities. it's actually kind of interesting that she's inferring that the root meaning is technically more correct than the modern meaning.

Kazue wouldn't really need to have investigated the root of the word demon to get that concept. The way she portrays demons is very "Japanese" or "Oriental" if you want to be more broad.

The equivalent of a what we would call "demon" in Japanese myths would be "Yokai" and a quick google search will show you that Yokai covers a variety of supernatural beings and that even the more scary and violent of them can be appeased if treated correctly.

I mean, even the concept of god is totally different to Japanese. They have what they call "kami" and while the might use the expression "kami-sama" as speaking of a higher entity, even the foundation myth speaks of 2 gods working together to create Japan.

As for Amaimon's eyeball collector cousin:



According to the Spanish Fansub of the anime, it might be referring to Azrael.

[earthforge]

I don't think that demons should have a concept of wife. Remember how dismissive Mephisto was of "love"?

Marriage =/= Love

For all it matters, marriage is a legal contract. He might just want that "legal" contract to vinculate him with a person to cover his back.

But law is a human construct. I didn't get the feeling that demons were bound by any ruleset whatsoever. Satan's all-powerful. He'd probably eat any demon consort he'd have.

According to the Spanish Fansub of the anime, it might be referring to Azrael.

Never trust fansubs. There was no mention of "Azrael" in the manga.

[MetallicArcher]

But law is a human construct. I didn't get the feeling that demons were bound by any ruleset whatsoever. Satan's all-powerful. He'd probably eat any demon consort he'd have.

I didn't mean it's necessary for it to be that way.

We were discussing about the Kings mother (if they share the same one) and then it crossed my mind that it would be very hilarious if Mephisto's comment of liking "hot devilish women" turned into him having a "hot devilish stable couple" (I just used the term "wife" arbitrarily to save up wording) who helps him cover whatever affairs he might have in Gehena (since he himself said he didn't know everything) , if Kings really have some sort of responsibility towards their subordinates (as suggested in option 1 of the poll).

According to the Spanish Fansub of the anime, it might be referring to Azrael.

Never trust fansubs. There was no mention of "Azrael" in the manga.

Nor the manga, nor the anime give Amaimon's cousin's name. What I meant was that, if someone wanted to search for a demon with that characteristic, maybe the fansub note could be a lead of where to start.