Incidentally, the artist for the A Certain Magical Index light novel, Kiyotaka Haimura is the artist for Deirdre, Legendary Deirdre and Julia in Fire Emblem Heroes.
It feels like you could turn this into a mystery podcast or climax of a detective episode. "There's just one problem professor, If you were an actual Norse Scholar you would know that the Ichaival never appeared in any myth"!
One japanese dev messes with the name of a Norse place and then we get gaslighted for ten years with the existence of a bow that was never meant to be.
Kaga also loved playing linguistic mind games with the fan base. Yewfell being japanofied as Ichibaru then being rewesternized as Ichaival is Kaga level trolling... And ambiguity is part of the narrative. Martsu is derived from Mars but translated as Marth... which was also how some cultures pronounced the name of the Roman god, Mars. (And during the Hasmonean period Jews all over near east were naming daughters Martha after the Roman god, Mars. Most female Jewish names were derived from pagan gods and goddesses... this is besides the point but bears mentioning because Kaga was trolling us when he named Marth) His consort Lady Caeda, is Shiida in Japanese but they insist it's pronounced Si-da. Which is a completely gibberish name and a pronunciation that also baffles the mind, But if Caeda is pronounced in ecclesiastical Latin you get the Pronunciation "Si-Da"... but if you pronounced that spelling in Classical Latin, the Latin of time period where some Greeks started calling the war god Marth instead of Ares and some Jews started naming their daughters Martha, then how would a 1st Century Roman pronounce the letters "Caeda?" They would pronounce it Kaeda... which is an actual Japanese name mostly found among the nobility. In other words Kaga, or whoever was in charge of naming people, places, and things, when Kaga ran the show, enjoyed running names through a filter of random corruptions... And he did it for two reasons. One was of course to troll us. But I think the main reason he did this was do make the story more mythic, the simulating the effects of the story being corrupted through different tellings and retellings. Through the same name passing through different cultures mutating its pronunciations, through different storytellers not agreeing who lives and who dies or if and/or when a hero fell. (Which is Kaga's stated reason behind the permadeath mechanic and route splits.) Thing of our own figures from Antiquity. We pronounce the name Julius Caesar as "Joo-li-us See-zar" when it was actually pronounced like "Yulius Kaisar" in Caesar's lifetime, because the "soft C" rules were simply different in the 1st Century, and we're far more stringent, and... yeah long story short is already making this too long. Or you have the Socrates gag in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures. This is where everyone gets a cheap laugh as Bill and Ted mispronounce Socrates's name as "Soh-Crates" but this gag works on 2 different levels. As we pronounce his name like "Saw-Crah-Teez" the typical viewer is getting a cheap laugh because "Haha, they mispronounced the name of this famous ancient philosopher..." the actual joke is our academies have corrupted the pronunciation over many tellings while keeping the spelling the same since the Middle Ages, resulting on uneducated bumkings reading the name "Socrates" as "So-crates" and getting closer the correct pronunciation than modern scholars do. (Because "So-crates" while slightly inaccurate it is close enough as the actual pronunciation is "So-crat-es" but not "So-cra-tes" and the bumpkin pronunciation would be recognized by the man, while the modern scholarly pronunciation would take the man longer to recognize at least.) Long story short and still too long for this comments section, our relationship to ancient stories and texts, myths, Legends, and even real people is jumbled through this game of Telephone that jacks with the pronunciation of literally every word and name. And Kaga wanted to simulate this is how he named various characters and other things to give a feeling of the mists of time actually obscuring the truth.... So a bow devised as having the name "Yewfell" gets Japanofied as Ichibaru, gets rewesternized as Ichaival.... something of real meaning Ciphered into gibberish, with its meaning obscured by the mists of time... Like literally every person's name that isn’t a specific word for a thing really. TL;DR: Kaga trolled us.
The funny thing about this story is that this is basically how actual myths work. One day, someone tells a story about the gods, inventing some embellishment wholecloth. That story is then retold, and more embellishments get added. Eventually, these embellishments become part of the greater body of works regarding this mythological being, and eventually become accepted as part of the canon. Thus, what is "canon" changes based on when and where you ask the question. Oh, and the wikipedia edit from Jakarta was likely from a proxy. Which means whoever made that edit really *could* have been from *anywhere.*
But really, this is a very interesting video. One localization quirk and one bad apple and history is changed. Goes to show how important proper documentation is, and it makes you wonder if anything else is out there now that has currently gone unnoticed.
I know that a lot of games feature a lance called Brionac that's allegedly the weapon of Lugh in Celtic mythology, but I can't find any decent sources on that. Lugh did actually wield a lance called Areadbhar (sound familiar?), but I don't know where Brionac came from, and it's a lot more widespread than Ichaival.
the funny thing about this is that while in the modern day, we can check sources to a great degree with edit history, in the past, say for example, if you were a 12-13th Century Danish Historian, if you just made something obscure up nobody would have no way of knowing
and then these days, we have everywhere from friends on discord to the wayback machine which can help us find these obscure fragments of internet history, though I will note that not everything from the old internet is even documented in the wayback machine but a lot of it is, thanks to those people for that work :D
i would like to mention kamachi has actually managed to write an entire light novel from scratch in less than 3 weeks, so it is actually entirely possible he may have sourced the Wikipedia article after the edit
Imagine editing the Wikipedia entry to say Yewfelle with the explanation "The new localization came out". You would technically be correct but it would be super weird.
List articles sometimes don't have sources (or didn't, anyway) for each individual entry, instead just having a list at the end. Technically it was bad practice even then, and I guess some editors started getting more scrupulous after this incident.
I've been playing an FE 4 emulator and I was disappointed when Brigid missed an 82 against a pegasus knight, they did have 3 leadership stars but I was iratated when it happened twice when I uploaded a savestate from the previous turn
Brigid singlehandedly wiped out Pamela's entire squad and saved my entire doomed run which was really close to seeing me reset the entire game, thanks to me being an idiot and not alternating save slots
You never know what you’re gonna get when Excelblem uploads. You might get an in-depth analysis on a piece of Fire Emblem history, or you might get a shitpost about a dozen skills activating pre-attack only for the attack to miss
Funnily enough, back when I first watched Symphogear and saw the many mythological and even biblical references (the whole series' plot is literally kicked off by the events way back at the Tower of Babel, holy shit), I couldn't find anything regarding Chris' Ichaival and only came across Fire Emblem posts and stuff like that. I didn't even think that the rabbit hole went this deep. Never let Fire Emblem devs make up fictional legendary weapons ever again.
"Make something obscure enough for people to just believe you" is pre-modern Japanese motto, like there is just too much things and fate is responsible for half of it.
Are we talking Fates the FE game where women ride dragons, pegasi and horses without any pants or visible underwear, or Fates the anime where fictional characters are turned into anime girls or something (never watched it I don't have time I play too much FE)
next you'll tell me that owains and Ophelia's legendary weapons mistletane are just a sword used for housework and a normal fire book. that'll be the day
@@webbowser8834 I'm not talking about mystletainn I'm talking about mistletane the legendary sword held by the only and great owain dark and only few Weapons can have that title or ability in game.
@@webbowser8834 Yeah, simply put Baldrs death kicks off Ragnarör, so Odin made everyone - including animals and plants -promise to not hurt Baldr, but forgot the mistletoe. Then Loki tricks the blind god Hoder into shooting Baldr with an arrow made of mistletoe.
Ophelia’s Missletain is a Fimblveter I thought. Disregarding that Missletain is actually entirely unique and rare and powerful and nothing compares to it.
Having spent entirely too much time on Symphogear, I can indeed confirm that no part (at least none that is available in english) ever references Odin in connection to Ichaival, before 2014 or after. However ironically, by Symphogear's own metaphysics, a myth perpetuating like this in the popular(ish) consciousness would suffice to make it hold actual power in the show's world
on the grammaticus connection; it probably is odin. odin pretty frequently shows up, does some magic nonsense without any real explanations, and leaves. in the saga of the volsungs he waltzes in while sigmund and siggeir's families are eating, stabs the gram into a wall, explaining that whoever could pull the sword could keep it, and leaves, and it is not explicitly confirmed in the text that this is odin. norse myth is just like that
All the time. If you watch Overly Sarcastic Production, it comes very often. The main source we have for Norse Mythology, for example is not the most reliable, since it is from a secondary source. Syncretism in general is a thing. When Romans invaded Gaule, they assimilated Gauls Gods into Roman Gods, so afaik we don't have that much source on it. Teutates was assimilated to Mercury/Hermes, for example (and Also Mars/Ares early on apparently.
I mean, isn't all of mythology just stuff made up by some guy, which got widespread? If Saxo actually wrote that it was Odin, we'd call it canon today, but he'd have been doing the same thing as the wiki guy. We're still creating mythology, just via mysterious wiki edits today apparently.
My inner fanboy was awoken when Chris from Symphogear was mentioned. She is pretty fun character too, who after season 1 is chill and tries open up to anyone. Plus big arsenal of mass destruction that is her suit.
Excelblem: war criminal in broad daylight, teacher at night. Can I suggest a subject? I think there's a dummied-out weapon said to be from Celtic mythology, except it was from a Japanese game instead, I forgot the details but it popped up in other media such as Final Fantasy.
Funnily enough, as of about a month ago, Ichaival was removed from Smite. They didn't say why, it was a pretty iconic item in the game for like, *most* of the game's 10 year life span, but its effect got rolled up into another item and we can no longer purchase the Ichaival.
I imagine the inspiration was indeed Ýdalir and that the original link to mythology doesn't go much further than that, as it wouldn't be the last time a Fire Emblem weapon got named after a mythological place rather than a weapon. The sword of the main lord in Heroes is named Fólkvangr, which in Norse mythology is a field ruled by Freyja where half of those who died in combat reside, the other half going to Valhalla.
Kind of reminds me of Brionac, which was supposedly used incorrectly as the name for the god Lugh's spear in a Japanese book about Gaelic mythology. Consequently the only places you see the word "Brionac" used is in Japanese media attempting to reference Gaelic myth. In the spirit of not playing the telephone game with questionable information, I'll admit I read the story on a TV Tropes article, but as someone who is quite knowledgeable about Gaelic myth and consumes a lot of Japanese media, I can tell you that Brionac is not a name I have ever seen used for Lugh's spear but that it is very commonly used in Japanese media when referencing either mythological weapons or Gaelic myth (for example Fire Emblem Three Houses had the Brionac Plateau in the Holy Kingdom of Faergus, which mostly draws from Gaelic myth for its place names) so the story checks out with my experience at least.
This is good to know, Berwick Saga also has a Brionac fwiw. The Wikipedia discussion cites a potential reference to a spear Bryionak, which features in the Eternal Champion series by Michael Moorcock dating back to the 1970s.
Brionac also appears in Yu-Gi-Oh!, as one of the dragons of the Ice Barrier. It implies the origin of the name is a lance because the other dragons are named Gungnir (Odin's lance) and Trishula (Shiva's trident).
It also appears in Final Fantasy XIV (dragoon weapon), alongside also appearing in the South Korean MMORPG Mabinogi, in the Generation 11 major content update. just some fun facts about that specific weapon name
Fancy seeing Brionac here, the name of a Mecha Sub-Boss in Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet, wherein a field boss of the same type is named Mjolnir. I would not have thought very far, it was just a pretty unique name.
So I did some digging in Japanese! From what I can tell, there doesn't seem to be any particular inaccurate Japanese source for an original Norse myth. Generally it seems to be known that "Ichaival" was a name created for Fire Emblem (though it also seems common to mistakenly think it's from actual Norse mythology). I did find two things of note, however! I saw several people saying "ichiibaru" comes from "ichii" (yew tree) and "barisuta" (ballista), which would make some sense! Though it might just be people taking random guesses; I didn't see anything "official" regarding the origins of the word. The other thing of note is that it DOES appear in another game! Specifically in Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl (not sure about other Etrian Odyssey games, I didn't check admittedly), though here it's spelled "Ichibal" instead of the much cooler "Ichaival" lol
The connection between fire emblem and one of my other favorite series, Index, was not one I was expecting. The author of index does a LOT of research into mythology so I imagine he got it from the same book you sourced rather than Wikipedia
I wonder what other made up weapons Fire Emblem has. I know Friekugel comes from a Germanic opera about a marksman who sold his soul to the devil. Somehow this translated to an axe.
Another interesting “adaptation“ of freikugel is in Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, where it’s a protagonist-exclusive attack that makes you shoot a giant eye laser. Being german myself, i can’t help but always smile at the fact that these incredibly powerful weapons/attacks are just literally called “free ball“.
The opera didn't invent the Freikugeln though, the archetype of the marksman selling his soul for the Freikugeln stems from folklore/fairy tales from atleast the 15th century. Still no axe though, that's just weird.
Yoooooooo Symphogear is my jam! Never thought I'd see it mentioned by one of my fave fire emblem tubers. As a massive fan of the show, I think they likely didn't do alot of research for season 1, as they gave Ichiaval's wielder the name Chris, for a Japanese American girl.
I mean, Chris is actually a pretty common name for an American, and giving normal-ish people made up weapons is a pretty common fantasy trope... Wait, are we talking a Japanese American girl aka "Girl of Japanese descent living in America" or an American Japanese Girl aka "Girl of American descent living in Japan"?
@@webbowser8834 A girl of Japanese and American descent actually. Lives in Japan during the series, though I can't really say where she grew up. And while Chris is a normal American name, usually for girls it's short for an actual feminine name, and not just Chris
@@kanefetter3370 It's really not uncommon for American parents these days to give their kid the shortened form of a name as their full legal name. Never thought her name was unusual as an American myself.
@@shytendeakatamanoir9740 Something I learned in college is that wikipedia can never be used as a source but the sites it references for its information can be.
This is really fascinating and has been something bothering me for a long time as a fan of old FE games, Symphogear, and the Index-verse! Thanks for doing the research on all this! I'd offer to dig around with my professional-level Japanese skills some more, but unfortunately that would probably involve flying to Japan and digging out random old books on mythology to no avail, lol.
Well Othinus is the latin name for Odin, and yeah any modern references of the concept of the Othinus Crossbow was probably inspired by Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus as you brought up. Fun fact, Othinus Crossbow (オティヌスの弩) shows up in none other than Berwick Saga (2005), though it goes by 'Ollerus' in the translation patch. That said, lol at whoever combined this reference on top of the info on fake Norse bow Ichaival on Wikipedia.
the thing is, wikipedia is a perfect source, just make sure that the wikipedia page actually has trustworthy sources listed, cause this one sure didn't
I've heard several of the Symphogear staff were RPG fans which tbh just makes it even more likely they just lifted a weapon from FE4, especially as FE4 was actually a pretty successful game when it released
Never would I have expected that Excelblem would utter the words Symphogear and try to actively explain the absurdity that it is, but yet here we are. Go watch Symphogear.
What I imagine happened, is after someone read that "an old man" shot an unnamed weapon that could string together 10 arrows, they decided they could get creative and took great artistic license. That's commonly what happens when reference material is so vague. Also, when something or someone gets a decent reputation in your industry it's not all that surprising that others will use your material to pull from. Fire Emblem is popular in Japan, as well as popular world wide, so it's not surprising to me that other developers and companies looked to them for weapon ideas without really double checking. And who can blame them? 😅
Glad to see you are doing random Wikipedia conspiracies. Seriously, this was fun to watch, and I'm left wondering how long it took to untangle all this.
So on the same day I watched this for the first time I actually found a more recent game that uses Ichaival as a name for a legendary Crossbow. A rogue-lite know as Crown trick released in 2020 (developed by Next Studios and co-published by them and Team 17) uses it as the name for a Legendary "Rifle" (Crossbow but comes under the rifle weapon type) among other mythologically sourced weapons like Gungnir and Durandal. Doesn't really mean much, just found it a fun coincidence.
Imagine someone figured out you played a niche strategy RPG series or you watched a certain weird anime because you decided to include a made-up name in your works that you didn't realise only has one traceable source
As a Symphogear fan I totally believe the theory that the Wikipedia entry was made by a fan. We are totally capable of doing something like that just to reference the anime
I know this already because in middle school right after my first FE4 playthrough I had an argument with a friend and embarrassed myself because I tried to prove it was a real thing
i think everyone liked fire emblem and just took the name, i mean, it's possible, who would forget that specific weapon of one of the first games of a series almost dead years ago
Symphogear is a bit of a confusing instance that seems to be halfway there and halfway not. It likely is something that got the name through a game of telephone but it was certainly trying to reference Ullr. In the opening of Symphogear G, you see the gods associated with the weapons in the background and Odin only appears alongside Gungnir. The English romanization they were certainly confused on, since in the TV release they do write "Ichii-bal" but changed it to "Ichaival" for the BD releases. The staff of Symphogear also aren't opposed to throwing stuff in just for a pop culture reference but the writer IS quite knowledgeable about obscure mythology if you've ever seen Wild Arms. He was knowledgeable enough to not put Odin in the opening, at least. Also smh talking about spreading unsubstantiated rumors but not knowing that Chris isn't an idol.
I just want to add that Gesta Danorum, the book with the old man with the crossbow is a sort of complete history of the Danish people written in the 12th century that literally spans from prehistory to the end of the 12th century. In it, the Norse Gods are described as, "old certain men versed in sorcery," who, "winning the minds of the simple, began to claim the rank of gods." Odin, being the leader and all, appears many times under different names and disguises to be exiled again and again. So, yeah, the old man who helped Hadding? The English translation specifically refers to this in the pre-explanation Supernatural Beings, Woden section. In other words, that's generally thought to be Odin. Or Othinus, since the book was written in Latin.
Huh, a few years ago, when me and some friends started playing Smite, I talked about some names I recognized because of the games I played. Some I knew a bit more than others, and I mentioned "there's an Ichaival in Fire Emblem, but that's the only thing I know about it... Also, old FE have fan translations only, so maybe the JP name is different, and both [FE and Smite] references something else, IDK", but now I know it was actually made up!
@@aboriginite Shirabe’s voice actress Yoshino Nanjo plays the Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE character Kiria Kurono which is basically that, although then again that’s more Symphogear meets Megaten. In other news, all the 6 Symphogear users’ VA voice fire emblem characters in FeH Hibiki is Lysithea Tsukasa is Nott Chris is Dagr Maria is Fir and Athena Kirika is Gunnthra And Shirabe is again Kiria
Yeah can confirm that spelling would not work at all even ch only appears in words that are borrowed in its origin 😅 and there is literally only 2 words that even contain ich nether is Scandinavian to say the least
I kept going through a roller coaster of emotions as Excel named thing after thing that I knew, no matter how niche. Literally the only thing referenced in this video that I didn't have any experience with is Smite, and that's a new feeling Every time Symphogear got mentioned, I struggled not to giggle, my feelings on that series are so complicated.
I knew about the basics of this before but I love the amount of research you put into this, it makes the whole story even better. Also I want it to be know that despite the fact that Symphogear was the reason why this weapon was popularized, it's actually an amazing anime that gets better every season. Watch Symphogear
i really like these new style of videos talking about random obscure things in FE, this and the vulnerary video were both very entertaining, and helps fill the gap between jitaroquest streams. keep up the good work excelblem!
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Incidentally, the artist for the A Certain Magical Index light novel, Kiyotaka Haimura is the artist for Deirdre, Legendary Deirdre and Julia in Fire Emblem Heroes.
Oh my God! Everything is connected!
📋
Damn didnt know . On best girls too !
It feels like you could turn this into a mystery podcast or climax of a detective episode.
"There's just one problem professor, If you were an actual Norse Scholar you would know that the Ichaival never appeared in any myth"!
big columbo moment
And so the fake professor was unmasked revealing a fucking weeb
One japanese dev messes with the name of a Norse place and then we get gaslighted for ten years with the existence of a bow that was never meant to be.
Kaga also loved playing linguistic mind games with the fan base. Yewfell being japanofied as Ichibaru then being rewesternized as Ichaival is Kaga level trolling... And ambiguity is part of the narrative. Martsu is derived from Mars but translated as Marth... which was also how some cultures pronounced the name of the Roman god, Mars. (And during the Hasmonean period Jews all over near east were naming daughters Martha after the Roman god, Mars. Most female Jewish names were derived from pagan gods and goddesses... this is besides the point but bears mentioning because Kaga was trolling us when he named Marth) His consort Lady Caeda, is Shiida in Japanese but they insist it's pronounced Si-da. Which is a completely gibberish name and a pronunciation that also baffles the mind, But if Caeda is pronounced in ecclesiastical Latin you get the Pronunciation "Si-Da"... but if you pronounced that spelling in Classical Latin, the Latin of time period where some Greeks started calling the war god Marth instead of Ares and some Jews started naming their daughters Martha, then how would a 1st Century Roman pronounce the letters "Caeda?" They would pronounce it Kaeda... which is an actual Japanese name mostly found among the nobility. In other words Kaga, or whoever was in charge of naming people, places, and things, when Kaga ran the show, enjoyed running names through a filter of random corruptions... And he did it for two reasons. One was of course to troll us. But I think the main reason he did this was do make the story more mythic, the simulating the effects of the story being corrupted through different tellings and retellings. Through the same name passing through different cultures mutating its pronunciations, through different storytellers not agreeing who lives and who dies or if and/or when a hero fell. (Which is Kaga's stated reason behind the permadeath mechanic and route splits.) Thing of our own figures from Antiquity. We pronounce the name Julius Caesar as "Joo-li-us See-zar" when it was actually pronounced like "Yulius Kaisar" in Caesar's lifetime, because the "soft C" rules were simply different in the 1st Century, and we're far more stringent, and... yeah long story short is already making this too long. Or you have the Socrates gag in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures. This is where everyone gets a cheap laugh as Bill and Ted mispronounce Socrates's name as "Soh-Crates" but this gag works on 2 different levels. As we pronounce his name like "Saw-Crah-Teez" the typical viewer is getting a cheap laugh because "Haha, they mispronounced the name of this famous ancient philosopher..." the actual joke is our academies have corrupted the pronunciation over many tellings while keeping the spelling the same since the Middle Ages, resulting on uneducated bumkings reading the name "Socrates" as "So-crates" and getting closer the correct pronunciation than modern scholars do. (Because "So-crates" while slightly inaccurate it is close enough as the actual pronunciation is "So-crat-es" but not "So-cra-tes" and the bumpkin pronunciation would be recognized by the man, while the modern scholarly pronunciation would take the man longer to recognize at least.) Long story short and still too long for this comments section, our relationship to ancient stories and texts, myths, Legends, and even real people is jumbled through this game of Telephone that jacks with the pronunciation of literally every word and name. And Kaga wanted to simulate this is how he named various characters and other things to give a feeling of the mists of time actually obscuring the truth.... So a bow devised as having the name "Yewfell" gets Japanofied as Ichibaru, gets rewesternized as Ichaival.... something of real meaning Ciphered into gibberish, with its meaning obscured by the mists of time... Like literally every person's name that isn’t a specific word for a thing really.
TL;DR: Kaga trolled us.
Now I want a game to make a bow called "Ichaival" that has a legendary description but is just a Japanese bow with middling stats
The funny thing about this story is that this is basically how actual myths work. One day, someone tells a story about the gods, inventing some embellishment wholecloth. That story is then retold, and more embellishments get added. Eventually, these embellishments become part of the greater body of works regarding this mythological being, and eventually become accepted as part of the canon. Thus, what is "canon" changes based on when and where you ask the question.
Oh, and the wikipedia edit from Jakarta was likely from a proxy. Which means whoever made that edit really *could* have been from *anywhere.*
Including Indonesia
Yep! Which is why Ichaival is now a canon norse weapon~!
But really, this is a very interesting video. One localization quirk and one bad apple and history is changed. Goes to show how important proper documentation is, and it makes you wonder if anything else is out there now that has currently gone unnoticed.
I know that a lot of games feature a lance called Brionac that's allegedly the weapon of Lugh in Celtic mythology, but I can't find any decent sources on that. Lugh did actually wield a lance called Areadbhar (sound familiar?), but I don't know where Brionac came from, and it's a lot more widespread than Ichaival.
TBF, this is usually how folklore & mythology works. It's a long game of Chinese Whispers with slight tweaks here 'n' there to make it flow better.
the funny thing about this is that while in the modern day, we can check sources to a great degree with edit history, in the past, say for example, if you were a 12-13th Century Danish Historian, if you just made something obscure up nobody would have no way of knowing
and then these days, we have everywhere from friends on discord to the wayback machine which can help us find these obscure fragments of internet history, though I will note that not everything from the old internet is even documented in the wayback machine but a lot of it is, thanks to those people for that work :D
@@Excelblem exactly. Like the name saxo grammaticus. That CAN’T be a real guy. Can it?
To whoever tried to edit the Ichaival artucle: Yewfelle off.
"Symphogear took it from FE4" is *entirely* likely since Symphogear was written by the same guy behind Wild Arms who is a huge JRPG nerd
I love how this channel has gone from shitposting to deep dives into history/etymology to dispel rumors. Keep up the great work.
I feel like this is still kind of a shitpost
@@Excelblem that's fair, lol
*It went from a channel about statistically good units in fe8 (or something like that, I forgot) to shitposts to this
@@Excelblem *Thoroughly documented shitpost
Kaga: I need a name for a bow but I can’t find any good bows in Norse mythology?
Also Kaga: Guess I’ll just edit Wikipedia to make one.
I was not mentally prepared to hear a Fire Emblem UA-camr talk about toaru
The venn diagram of those two fan bases is just two separated circles.
Look at least both have a problem with 1000 year old gods that look suspiciously like 12 year old girls
@@randomtree0770 Yeah, but so dies every single anime.
Thousands years old gods apparently just love that form from some reasons
@@shytendeakatamanoir9740 Human culture has always worshipped age in some form, the desire to be youthful or the perceived wisdom of the old.
Yewfelle in FE4 also gives 10 strength, so that could also be the reason for the 10 arrows
“my source is that i made it the fuck up”
i would like to mention kamachi has actually managed to write an entire light novel from scratch in less than 3 weeks, so it is actually entirely possible he may have sourced the Wikipedia article after the edit
that's surprisingly credible considering how quickly those books get pushed out
I thought I was joking when I said that he made up powers after finding out some random fun fact
Imagine editing the Wikipedia entry to say Yewfelle with the explanation "The new localization came out". You would technically be correct but it would be super weird.
All of this could have been avoided if anyone involved in this debacle checked the damn wikipedia sources
Well, they couldn't since there was no sources, unless they linked the fire emblem/symphogear wiki as a source (which would have been hilarious)
I don't think they really cared about historical accuracy. They just wanted cool names for their weapons.
List articles sometimes don't have sources (or didn't, anyway) for each individual entry, instead just having a list at the end. Technically it was bad practice even then, and I guess some editors started getting more scrupulous after this incident.
Normally Wikipedia is anal about sources for a reason.
Wikipedia has a ton of false information though
Unlike Ichaival, you never miss.
I've been playing an FE 4 emulator and I was disappointed when Brigid missed an 82 against a pegasus knight, they did have 3 leadership stars but I was iratated when it happened twice when I uploaded a savestate from the previous turn
Brigid singlehandedly wiped out Pamela's entire squad and saved my entire doomed run which was really close to seeing me reset the entire game, thanks to me being an idiot and not alternating save slots
@@Dankboi68 Brigid is definitely one of the best foot units but that doesn't change the fact that Genealogy rng can be really dumb
You never know what you’re gonna get when Excelblem uploads. You might get an in-depth analysis on a piece of Fire Emblem history, or you might get a shitpost about a dozen skills activating pre-attack only for the attack to miss
Or a recap of him losing an ironman
Or optimizing the most inefficient way to play a game
Or marth with a gun.
"can you create a cool norse-inspired name for this bow?"
"Sure!"
*accidentally creates fake Norse mythological weapon like a boss*
Funnily enough, back when I first watched Symphogear and saw the many mythological and even biblical references (the whole series' plot is literally kicked off by the events way back at the Tower of Babel, holy shit), I couldn't find anything regarding Chris' Ichaival and only came across Fire Emblem posts and stuff like that.
I didn't even think that the rabbit hole went this deep. Never let Fire Emblem devs make up fictional legendary weapons ever again.
"Make something obscure enough for people to just believe you" is pre-modern Japanese motto, like there is just too much things and fate is responsible for half of it.
Are we talking Fates the FE game where women ride dragons, pegasi and horses without any pants or visible underwear, or Fates the anime where fictional characters are turned into anime girls or something (never watched it I don't have time I play too much FE)
Well the nasuverse is a textbook the size of a Bible according to nasu. So yeah it has quite a lot of fake mythology
@@gaspardp7314 Fate the series, not FE:Fates.
next you'll tell me that owains and Ophelia's legendary weapons mistletane are just a sword used for housework and a normal fire book. that'll be the day
IIRC there was a Norse myth where literal Mistletoe was used to assassinate a god, it was one of the events that kicked off Ragnarok.
@@webbowser8834 I'm not talking about mystletainn I'm talking about mistletane the legendary sword held by the only and great owain dark and only few Weapons can have that title or ability in game.
@@webbowser8834 Yeah, simply put Baldrs death kicks off Ragnarör, so Odin made everyone - including animals and plants -promise to not hurt Baldr, but forgot the mistletoe. Then Loki tricks the blind god Hoder into shooting Baldr with an arrow made of mistletoe.
@@AtomTomZeitalter That sounds about right, yeah. Thanks for chiming in.
Ophelia’s Missletain is a Fimblveter I thought.
Disregarding that Missletain is actually entirely unique and rare and powerful and nothing compares to it.
i hope that now writers will not use Ichaival as a godly weapon but as a weapon made by man, to spite the very gods
Damn, Fire Emblem really gaslit so many people into believing an entire mythological weapon existed in Norse mythology
Having spent entirely too much time on Symphogear, I can indeed confirm that no part (at least none that is available in english) ever references Odin in connection to Ichaival, before 2014 or after.
However ironically, by Symphogear's own metaphysics, a myth perpetuating like this in the popular(ish) consciousness would suffice to make it hold actual power in the show's world
I can't wait until nohr shows up on a Wikipedia article under ancient kingdoms and jitaro showing up in smite
on the grammaticus connection; it probably is odin. odin pretty frequently shows up, does some magic nonsense without any real explanations, and leaves. in the saga of the volsungs he waltzes in while sigmund and siggeir's families are eating, stabs the gram into a wall, explaining that whoever could pull the sword could keep it, and leaves, and it is not explicitly confirmed in the text that this is odin. norse myth is just like that
this really makes me wonder how much of any mythology got altered because of some weird guy who just added stuff because he felt like it
All the time. If you watch Overly Sarcastic Production, it comes very often.
The main source we have for Norse Mythology, for example is not the most reliable, since it is from a secondary source.
Syncretism in general is a thing.
When Romans invaded Gaule, they assimilated Gauls Gods into Roman Gods, so afaik we don't have that much source on it. Teutates was assimilated to Mercury/Hermes, for example (and Also Mars/Ares early on apparently.
I mean, isn't all of mythology just stuff made up by some guy, which got widespread? If Saxo actually wrote that it was Odin, we'd call it canon today, but he'd have been doing the same thing as the wiki guy. We're still creating mythology, just via mysterious wiki edits today apparently.
Lancelot
My inner fanboy was awoken when Chris from Symphogear was mentioned. She is pretty fun character too, who after season 1 is chill and tries open up to anyone. Plus big arsenal of mass destruction that is her suit.
@@TARDISES She and Heavy from TF2 would be friends.
Hello fellow Symphofans I assume we gathered here because of ichaival and hoped somehow Symphogear is mentioned
@@moltencheese I came her for Excellemblem's new video and ended up on this comment I wrote.
@@moltencheese Symphogear is mentioned and we come pouring out of the woodworks
It’s like a hidden activation code. Speak it and we all come running.
Excelblem: war criminal in broad daylight, teacher at night.
Can I suggest a subject? I think there's a dummied-out weapon said to be from Celtic mythology, except it was from a Japanese game instead, I forgot the details but it popped up in other media such as Final Fantasy.
Excelblem is Byleth confirmed
Funnily enough, as of about a month ago, Ichaival was removed from Smite. They didn't say why, it was a pretty iconic item in the game for like, *most* of the game's 10 year life span, but its effect got rolled up into another item and we can no longer purchase the Ichaival.
I imagine the inspiration was indeed Ýdalir and that the original link to mythology doesn't go much further than that, as it wouldn't be the last time a Fire Emblem weapon got named after a mythological place rather than a weapon. The sword of the main lord in Heroes is named Fólkvangr, which in Norse mythology is a field ruled by Freyja where half of those who died in combat reside, the other half going to Valhalla.
Kind of reminds me of Brionac, which was supposedly used incorrectly as the name for the god Lugh's spear in a Japanese book about Gaelic mythology. Consequently the only places you see the word "Brionac" used is in Japanese media attempting to reference Gaelic myth. In the spirit of not playing the telephone game with questionable information, I'll admit I read the story on a TV Tropes article, but as someone who is quite knowledgeable about Gaelic myth and consumes a lot of Japanese media, I can tell you that Brionac is not a name I have ever seen used for Lugh's spear but that it is very commonly used in Japanese media when referencing either mythological weapons or Gaelic myth (for example Fire Emblem Three Houses had the Brionac Plateau in the Holy Kingdom of Faergus, which mostly draws from Gaelic myth for its place names) so the story checks out with my experience at least.
This is good to know, Berwick Saga also has a Brionac fwiw.
The Wikipedia discussion cites a potential reference to a spear Bryionak, which features in the Eternal Champion series by Michael Moorcock dating back to the 1970s.
Brionac also appears in Yu-Gi-Oh!, as one of the dragons of the Ice Barrier.
It implies the origin of the name is a lance because the other dragons are named Gungnir (Odin's lance) and Trishula (Shiva's trident).
It also appears in Final Fantasy XIV (dragoon weapon), alongside also appearing in the South Korean MMORPG Mabinogi, in the Generation 11 major content update.
just some fun facts about that specific weapon name
Incidentally, Dimitri's lance Areadbhar is an actual name for one of Lugh's spears
Fancy seeing Brionac here, the name of a Mecha Sub-Boss in Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet, wherein a field boss of the same type is named Mjolnir.
I would not have thought very far, it was just a pretty unique name.
So I did some digging in Japanese!
From what I can tell, there doesn't seem to be any particular inaccurate Japanese source for an original Norse myth. Generally it seems to be known that "Ichaival" was a name created for Fire Emblem (though it also seems common to mistakenly think it's from actual Norse mythology).
I did find two things of note, however! I saw several people saying "ichiibaru" comes from "ichii" (yew tree) and "barisuta" (ballista), which would make some sense! Though it might just be people taking random guesses; I didn't see anything "official" regarding the origins of the word.
The other thing of note is that it DOES appear in another game! Specifically in Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl (not sure about other Etrian Odyssey games, I didn't check admittedly), though here it's spelled "Ichibal" instead of the much cooler "Ichaival" lol
The connection between fire emblem and one of my other favorite series, Index, was not one I was expecting.
The author of index does a LOT of research into mythology so I imagine he got it from the same book you sourced rather than Wikipedia
Teachers be like « I told you not to use Wikipedia as a source »
This is such a banger video for a really odd and specific tidbit
I love it
"Anime Corrupts History" is the kinda quote I need on a shirt.
1:31 "The answer... Is Nothung."
Ah, yes, me and my hearing problems creating very confusing situations.
Genealogy of the Holy War and it's consequences have been a disaster for Norse mythology
So basically Kaga did it first, again.
this is a really good case study and example on why you shouldn't cite wikis... as well as how often they are edited. often without basis...
I wonder what other made up weapons Fire Emblem has. I know Friekugel comes from a Germanic opera about a marksman who sold his soul to the devil. Somehow this translated to an axe.
Another interesting “adaptation“ of freikugel is in Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, where it’s a protagonist-exclusive attack that makes you shoot a giant eye laser.
Being german myself, i can’t help but always smile at the fact that these incredibly powerful weapons/attacks are just literally called “free ball“.
They could make it a 2 range axe
The opera didn't invent the Freikugeln though, the archetype of the marksman selling his soul for the Freikugeln stems from folklore/fairy tales from atleast the 15th century. Still no axe though, that's just weird.
It is a Bow, Hilda is just too lazy to arm it and rather just bonk people with it.
@@Artorias1234 So it stems from Faust?
that time fire emblem time traveled backwards to change north mythology
Yoooooooo Symphogear is my jam! Never thought I'd see it mentioned by one of my fave fire emblem tubers. As a massive fan of the show, I think they likely didn't do alot of research for season 1, as they gave Ichiaval's wielder the name Chris, for a Japanese American girl.
I mean, Chris is actually a pretty common name for an American, and giving normal-ish people made up weapons is a pretty common fantasy trope...
Wait, are we talking a Japanese American girl aka "Girl of Japanese descent living in America" or an American Japanese Girl aka "Girl of American descent living in Japan"?
@@webbowser8834 A girl of Japanese and American descent actually. Lives in Japan during the series, though I can't really say where she grew up. And while Chris is a normal American name, usually for girls it's short for an actual feminine name, and not just Chris
@@kanefetter3370 Ah, right. I know a couple of gals who go by "Chris", but I guess that is less common.
@@kanefetter3370 It's really not uncommon for American parents these days to give their kid the shortened form of a name as their full legal name. Never thought her name was unusual as an American myself.
A lesson learned.
Look for sources on Wikipedia articles and always look for other websites or sources before confirming.
Really, that's Wikipedia's main goal.
It's a fantastic starting point if used correctly.
@@shytendeakatamanoir9740 Something I learned in college is that wikipedia can never be used as a source but the sites it references for its information can be.
This is really fascinating and has been something bothering me for a long time as a fan of old FE games, Symphogear, and the Index-verse! Thanks for doing the research on all this! I'd offer to dig around with my professional-level Japanese skills some more, but unfortunately that would probably involve flying to Japan and digging out random old books on mythology to no avail, lol.
As a danish person, I never thought I'd hear anyone talk about Saxo in a Fire Emblem video.
brb, going back in time to teach the ancient norse about odin's legendary bow "ichaival"
So this is what the lalilulelo were talking about.
Well Othinus is the latin name for Odin, and yeah any modern references of the concept of the Othinus Crossbow was probably inspired by Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus as you brought up.
Fun fact, Othinus Crossbow (オティヌスの弩) shows up in none other than Berwick Saga (2005), though it goes by 'Ollerus' in the translation patch. That said, lol at whoever combined this reference on top of the info on fake Norse bow Ichaival on Wikipedia.
Funnily enough, in the Gesta Danorum itself Othinus is exiled and replaced for a time by a priest named Ollerus. Fantastic meta joke.
I could watch these longer excel videos all day
Moral of the story - The same thing your high school teachers have been telling you for years - Wikipedia is not a primary source.
the thing is, wikipedia is a perfect source, just make sure that the wikipedia page actually has trustworthy sources listed, cause this one sure didn't
@@phaeste it's a great source of sources but it's not primary
9:22 This is literally Eitri but with less clothes lmao
I saw the title and thought "He won't mention symphogear" but then symphogear turned out to be the main culprit all along. Weird.
This is a genuinely good video. Deserves to be seen well beyond just the niche FE community.
Absolutely love this obscure fire emblem research content. You make me smarter
I've heard several of the Symphogear staff were RPG fans which tbh just makes it even more likely they just lifted a weapon from FE4, especially as FE4 was actually a pretty successful game when it released
not mere fans, they actually worked on RPG videogames before, like the Wild Arms series for example
Never would I have expected that Excelblem would utter the words Symphogear and try to actively explain the absurdity that it is, but yet here we are.
Go watch Symphogear.
Obligatory "WATCH SYMPHOGEAR" comment passing by
This is what teachers would tell you would happen if you used Wikipedia.
One of my favorite random bits of fe trivia, I'm glad you covered it
What I imagine happened, is after someone read that "an old man" shot an unnamed weapon that could string together 10 arrows, they decided they could get creative and took great artistic license. That's commonly what happens when reference material is so vague.
Also, when something or someone gets a decent reputation in your industry it's not all that surprising that others will use your material to pull from. Fire Emblem is popular in Japan, as well as popular world wide, so it's not surprising to me that other developers and companies looked to them for weapon ideas without really double checking. And who can blame them? 😅
Was absolutely not expecting a Symphogear cameo in one of these videos but I’m here for it
Glad to see you are doing random Wikipedia conspiracies. Seriously, this was fun to watch, and I'm left wondering how long it took to untangle all this.
So on the same day I watched this for the first time I actually found a more recent game that uses Ichaival as a name for a legendary Crossbow.
A rogue-lite know as Crown trick released in 2020 (developed by Next Studios and co-published by them and Team 17) uses it as the name for a Legendary "Rifle" (Crossbow but comes under the rifle weapon type) among other mythologically sourced weapons like Gungnir and Durandal. Doesn't really mean much, just found it a fun coincidence.
Imagine someone figured out you played a niche strategy RPG series or you watched a certain weird anime because you decided to include a made-up name in your works that you didn't realise only has one traceable source
As a Symphogear fan I totally believe the theory that the Wikipedia entry was made by a fan. We are totally capable of doing something like that just to reference the anime
Kaga does a little trolling
I know this already because in middle school right after my first FE4 playthrough I had an argument with a friend and embarrassed myself because I tried to prove it was a real thing
i think everyone liked fire emblem and just took the name, i mean, it's possible, who would forget that specific weapon of one of the first games of a series almost dead years ago
Im not even half way and i love how the man just describes symphogear
Symphogear is a bit of a confusing instance that seems to be halfway there and halfway not.
It likely is something that got the name through a game of telephone but it was certainly trying to reference Ullr. In the opening of Symphogear G, you see the gods associated with the weapons in the background and Odin only appears alongside Gungnir. The English romanization they were certainly confused on, since in the TV release they do write "Ichii-bal" but changed it to "Ichaival" for the BD releases. The staff of Symphogear also aren't opposed to throwing stuff in just for a pop culture reference but the writer IS quite knowledgeable about obscure mythology if you've ever seen Wild Arms. He was knowledgeable enough to not put Odin in the opening, at least.
Also smh talking about spreading unsubstantiated rumors but not knowing that Chris isn't an idol.
Except for in the parallel universe where she is an idol, of course. With one Mr. J. W. Vercingetorix as her manager.
I'm sure Kaga would be proud that one of his favourite characters' weapon got into an anime series and multiple other games
The views don't lie, this is super intresting my man. Would love some more.
lately youve been making some original and interesting content, good job bro
I love that you mentioned Symphogear
Trying to enjoy my time watching a fire emblem video, then was kicked in the kidney by hearing "smite" being uttered.
It's crazy how much work you (seem to) put in to these researches. I love it.
I just want to add that Gesta Danorum, the book with the old man with the crossbow is a sort of complete history of the Danish people written in the 12th century that literally spans from prehistory to the end of the 12th century.
In it, the Norse Gods are described as, "old certain men versed in sorcery," who, "winning the minds of the simple, began to claim the rank of gods."
Odin, being the leader and all, appears many times under different names and disguises to be exiled again and again.
So, yeah, the old man who helped Hadding? The English translation specifically refers to this in the pre-explanation Supernatural Beings, Woden section.
In other words, that's generally thought to be Odin. Or Othinus, since the book was written in Latin.
Huh, a few years ago, when me and some friends started playing Smite, I talked about some names I recognized because of the games I played. Some I knew a bit more than others, and I mentioned "there's an Ichaival in Fire Emblem, but that's the only thing I know about it... Also, old FE have fan translations only, so maybe the JP name is different, and both [FE and Smite] references something else, IDK", but now I know it was actually made up!
Very neat information. Thank you for putting this together! I'll show it to my friends.
0:59 “wielded by a Japanese teenage idol” so fire emblem, then
Now I wanna see a symphogear fire emblem game (and I'm not going to count the awkward persona crossover)
@@aboriginiteIt already exists. It's called Tokyo Mirage Sessions.
@@aboriginite Shirabe’s voice actress Yoshino Nanjo plays the Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE character Kiria Kurono which is basically that, although then again that’s more Symphogear meets Megaten.
In other news, all the 6 Symphogear users’ VA voice fire emblem characters in FeH
Hibiki is Lysithea
Tsukasa is Nott
Chris is Dagr
Maria is Fir and Athena
Kirika is Gunnthra
And Shirabe is again Kiria
@@firewolf950tfwgaming7 did not know that trivia but really appreciate it. I guess I will call this an acceptable result with this in mind
No.
Tokyo Mirage Sessions. Not FE.
History with Excelblem
Shout out to Symphogear
13:30
Yep, that’s probably going to end up happening, but not as quick as the whole Ichaival thing
This is one of the best videos you’ve ever made holy shit
This is a banger video, I would absolutely not mind more videos like this omg
This is why you should never listen to Symphogear fans
I'm 99% sure there is also a unique bow in GW2 called Yaldir or Yvaldir or something like that too
Yeah can confirm that spelling would not work at all even ch only appears in words that are borrowed in its origin 😅 and there is literally only 2 words that even contain ich nether is Scandinavian to say the least
This is a really great video exploring an interesting quirk of history, but I'm mostly just thinking that Yukine Chris is amazing.
I kept going through a roller coaster of emotions as Excel named thing after thing that I knew, no matter how niche. Literally the only thing referenced in this video that I didn't have any experience with is Smite, and that's a new feeling
Every time Symphogear got mentioned, I struggled not to giggle, my feelings on that series are so complicated.
I knew about the basics of this before but I love the amount of research you put into this, it makes the whole story even better.
Also I want it to be know that despite the fact that Symphogear was the reason why this weapon was popularized, it's actually an amazing anime that gets better every season. Watch Symphogear
This is the kind of deep lore I live for. Fantastic video
i really like these new style of videos talking about random obscure things in FE, this and the vulnerary video were both very entertaining, and helps fill the gap between jitaroquest streams. keep up the good work excelblem!
Brilliant video yet again, really liking this style of content.
I'm not suprised smite devs use wikipedia to research the history for their game.
This is some really excellent research. You did a fantastic job.
Well that is a chain of events i never expected