Jump to content

The 'Pugi' and its Mysterious Etymology


Aggro Incarnate
 Share

Recommended Posts

Anyone who has played Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 (barring those who didn’t bother to visit some particular village with a particular unit back in Ch. 1) would be familiar with a rather accurate killer hand axe known as the 'Pugi'. Recent days have even seen memes due to its amazing combat utility. As many are also familiar, it has also made somewhat of a cameo appearance in Fire Emblem Awakening, a game released by IS in the Nintendo 3DS long after Kaga cut ties with the Fire Emblem franchise: 8-4, in the North American localisation of FE13, decided to call this weapon 'Orsin's Hatchet', which I guess somewhat cleverly sidesteps the issue of a possible NA localisation for the so-called Pugi (though probably not intentionally so, since the Japanese name of this was オーシンの投げ斧, or Orsin’s Throwing Axe: clearly a reference to the so-called Pugi, but indirect)

srYbojz.png


However, not much seems to be transparent about the etymology of the so-called 'Pugi', or 'Puggi' as it appears in some other circles. I mean, what is the 'Pugi', really? From where does it derive its name?

A few of the Fire Emblem Wikis (http://fireemblemwiki.org/wiki/Pugi, http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Pugi) mentions that the ‘Pugi’ may have been derived from 'pugilist,' a term referring to professional boxers. Incidentally, 'Pugilist' is also the name that bookofholsety, who was in charge of the recent Project Naga translation patch team for Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, plans to use in his translation of Thracia 776 in place of the familiar ‘Pugi’. However I find something unsettling about this conjecture. It has an air of desperation simply in virtue of how ad-hoc it seems. (No offense to whoever noticed the similarity or bookofholsety, by the way) I mean, is Kaga a boxing fan? Even if so, why would he name an axe like that?

Why is this so ad-hoc, one may ask, and with a bit of reflection I’d say that it’s the simple fact that the Pugilist Hypothesis fails to link this mighty in-game axe to any actual weaponry in human history. Okay, perhaps this condition is way too restrictive; after all, games make up or put together obscure references for weapon names all the time! But usually weapons in Fire Emblem tend to reference one of the following (though I won’t pretend that this is an exhaustive list by any means):

1) Raw materials in which the weapon is made of (Iron Sword, Steel Axe, Silver Lance, etc.)
2) Mythological figures, weapons or relic (Mystletainn, Fimbulvetr, Reginleif, Ginnungagap, etc.)
3) Characters, places or items in-game (Effie’s Lance, Nohrian Blade, etc.)
4) Plain old real life stuff or concepts (Concoction, Fire, Tornado, Stick, Umbrella, Rescue, etc.)
5) Actual weaponry of the past from various cultures (Durandal, Kodachi, etc.)
6) FE-specific adjectives or modifiers (Elwind, Arcthunder, Brave Bow, etc.)

‘Pugi’, unfortunately, doesn’t straightforwardly fit into any of the above categories. At least, I haven’t found any lead to it. So I thought, heck, maybe looking into the actual properties of the weapon might give us some clues.

In Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, プージ(Katakana pronounced roughly as POO-JI, though it’s a bit more like PEU than POO; note: it’s not POOG-I!) has the following parameters.

Name Type Use Mt Hit Crit Rng Wt WEx
プージ Axe 60 10 80 30 1-2 9 1

Well, would you look at that. Admittedly, one might note that the ‘Pugi’ in FE5 has the sheer might of being pounded in the face by a pugilist, especially when compounded with its 30 Crit and Orsin’s PCC of 3 or his Wrath skill in the Enemy Phase; maybe this is why people thought ‘pugilist’ was at least half-convincing… But I suspect that this line of thought is mostly the work of confirmation bias at work. I mean what are the chances of Kaga or anyone at IS at that point thinking of a savage blow delivered by a professional boxer as they designed the Pugi axe in-game? (You can probably tell that I’m not satisfied with the whole ‘Pugi coming from Pugilist’ thing at all by now…)

But recently I came to realise that this weapon name isn't unique to FE5. It also features in none other than the now-released Vestaria Saga 1, as I came across recently in efforts to compile data on some of the weapon names, properties and effects that appear in that game in English. Here are its parameters:

Name Mt Hit Crit Rng Prf Use Wt Remarks
プージ 12 65 3 1-2 12 32 18 Performs 2 consecutive attacks

Though it doesn’t share the FE5 Pugi’s immense crit rate, it is still a really decent weapon featuring fairly high might, 1-2 range, large no. of uses (most ranged weapons in this game has only 16 uses) and functions as a brave weapon.

Furthermore, in Berwick Saga (a game I've sadly never played yet), there seems to be a similarly sounding ージ (Katakana pronounced roughly as BOO-JI: note the Katakana differences between the プージ, the so-called ‘Pugi’, and theージ) features, not only as an axe, but as a personal weapon. Here is its in-game image, which looks surprisingly similar to the FE5 official artwork of the プージ. The parameters are as follows.

Name Type Mt Rank Prec Rng Wt Str Dur Remarks
ブージ Axe 11 30 5 0 10 B Dean only, Crit+6%, Attack Number +1

And looking at all this made me suspect as to whether all of three of these weapons, and not just the first two, may actually be referring to one and the same type of weapon. I mean, all three of these weapons are unique axes that aren’t sold anywhere on shops, and functions as some of the best axes in terms of their properties in their respective games; decent might and accuracy (Note: Hit rates in BS seems to increase by Prec x10 of the weapon in question, so the ブージ effectively has 50 Hit. With the highest Prec value for an Axe being 6, it’s fairly accurate for an axe in that game; I’ve heard that due to its combat system, the hit rates are overall quite low anyways), along with some special properties that make it stand out. The FE5 and BS renditions are both Prf weapons, while the FE5 and VS renditions both have it as a niche 1-2 range weapon (the former being a killer hand axe, while the latter being a brave hand axe); BS ブージ’s attack number +1 makes it such that Dean activates another round of combat, so it’s kind of like a brave weapon, though it doesn’t have 1-2 range. All in all, I’m not sure how others would think about this, but I find it difficult to dismiss this as mere coincidence.

After all, the Kaga games aren’t entirely consistent in how it writes its weapon names in Katakana: for example, Darts in Berwick Saga is written as (Dart, in singular), but as ダーツ (Darts, in plural) in Vestaria Saga 1; the Zweihänder is ツヴァイハンダー in BS while as ツバイハンダー in VS1. This gives further weight to the conjecture thatプージ and ブージ may be based on the same weapon just with different Katakana transliteration, with those differences in script not pointing towards any substantial differences of reference between them.

Interestingly enough, with respect to Internet searches, プージ doesn’t yield may results in terms of weaponry, but the ブージ does. And it turns out that the ブージ features in other games as well: for example, in Granblue Fantasy as the シュヴァリエブージ・マグナ (Chevalier ‘ブージ’ Magna?). This adds on to my speculation that there may actually be something that the プージ s or the ブージ s are referring to, some real name or weapon, or at least some obscure reference that Japanese game developers have going.

Furthermore, I’ve noticed that the English take given to ブージby Serenes Forest is Bhuj; the Fire Emblem Wikia uses this as well. In fact, Google Translate for seems to suggest this as well, as does the JP Wikipedia article on Bhuj. So I thought, could the Bhuj give us some lead as to what the so-called ‘Pugi’ might actually be?

1. The Bhuj (भुज)
To start with, Google Translate seems to give the Bhuj a rather positive first impression regarding its pronunciation, to the point where both プージ and ブージseem like acceptable Katakana typographical choices. In addition, ブージ seems to be a common transcription choice for the Bhuj (only second to ブジ), so points for that as well.

A quick Wiki search shows that the Bhuj is an Indian dagger named after the city of Bhuj where it originated, with a blade connected to a long handle. It’s also referred to as an axe-knife due to its axe-like haft. So it’s not really an axe per se, which is a bit disappointing. Maybe this just isn’t what we were looking for?

Here are some images, which don’t look very promising either.


K0uaDhj.jpg

Qa3erCY.jpg



But I figured that while the original Bhuj doesn’t look like the プージ art at all, it could be the case that its manifestations within games may be different, and perhaps there may be some sort of trends to how the Bhuj is represented in the game developing community, so I looked up to see if I could get some game/fantasy examples.


DHaEqbO.jpg


nxwQBF6.jpg

L60gvPj.jpg



Meh, it may be a bit closer to what we had in mind as an axe type of weapon, but it doesn’t quite have its pollaxe / halberd type look to it as the FE5 プージ official artwork does. So while Bhuj also has the feature of being able to make sense of both pronunciation schemes, it doesn’t seem to have the same look to it, which implies different utility in combat.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, what is an Indian weapon doing in a medieval fantasy themed SRPG? I honestly don’t know about this, mostly because I haven’t yet committed to any serious research about this. Maybe there is some sort of actual historical reason that put the Bhuj to familiar use in parts of Europe, or at least gave it some degree of familiarity? Whoever knows about this can tell me, because honestly as of now I have no clue.

Fortunately, I came across something else upon searching under ブージ...

2. The Vouge (or Voulge)

Now we come to the Vouge, or the Voulge as it is more commonly written in English, though Vouge isn’t that uncommon from the looks of the internet (I’m not sure how convincing of a reflection this is of actual linguistic practice though). Dictionary.com seems to suggest that the pronunciation for ‘Vouge’ is roughly like VOOJ: It seems that ブージ could be an excellent Katakana transcription indeed, though I’m not sure how you’d go from vouge to プージ i.e. ‘Pugi’, though given how unexpected some of these Katakana transcription can be perhaps this isn’t too big of stretch.

The Wikipedia article lists it as a type of polearm, so some points for that.

Also, here are some pictures of the Vouge:


LrJnniM.png


CTH5lCk.jpg


GjnVDNR.jpg


At first I was dismayed by the discrepancy of some of these and the overall variations. But then I came across this:

Vouge This term is perhaps the most vague of all. Medieval French texts suggest that it denotes what in England was called a bill, and several of them use it for a tool for hedging or cutting brushwood - i.e., a billhook. Martin du Bellay in his Memoires (1582) implies that it was a characteristically English weapon - i.e. a bill; but modern writers have used it to denote a glaive (vouge francais) or an early halberd (swiss vouge)

Ewart Oakeshott, European Weapons and Armour: From the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution

Now the FE5 プージ official artwork doesn’t really look like a billhook or a glaive, but the Swiss Vouge option i.e. the early halberd does seems like a possibility.

By the way, here is an image of a halberd:

ycHCmyN.jpg



The Vouge, or Voulge, also has some showing in games. Given how vague the term is to begin with, perhaps it’s natural that there is some deviation, but at least some of them look like the FE5 プージ.

aCgljGP.jpg

OtDu3d6.png


Xhme9xF.png

All in all, the Vouge has the advantage of being a European weapon in the games that clearly tried to be a tactical RPG in the style of medieval fantasy. If I had to note weaknesses for this option, though, there would be the discrepancy of its pronunciation with the プージ, as well as how the few references to the Vouge has rather different Katakana transcription, such as ボルゲ, ヴォウジェ, though ブージ does occasionally feature. And given the inherent vagueness of the term (according to the above source), having at least one variant that shows similarity adds some support for this conjecture.


All in all, I consider the Pugi actually being the Vouge (or the Voulge) a strong possibility.

3. Fǔzi (斧子)

This was actually my not-so-serious headcanon in the long past, though now it’s been long since I’ve dismissed it.
If you consider the Chinese word for Axe (斧子), the pinyin (for Mandarin Chinese) is no other than... Fǔzi.

This has the advantage of straightforwardly referring to an axe. but note that the actual pronunciation deviates quite considerably from プージ or ブージ; the pronunciation, roughly speaking, is more like FOO-Z (with no vowels at the ending).

But again, why would FE, a European medieval fantasy themed SRPG from Japan, use the Chinese term for the axe? And if so, why would it use the Katakana transcription instead of the actual Chinese script? Besides, the fact that it’s such a generic term doesn’t really lead credence in dealing with the rather special properties of the FE5プージ or the BS ブージ.

As such, I no longer consider this as a serious possibility, thought I thought it deserved at least a mention.

Retrospective

All in all, I do find it almost uncanny how all these different weapons, clearly derived from different cultures, have such similar-sounding English transliterations: Bhuj, Vouge, and Fǔzi. Then again, I’m someone who is not proficient at any of Japanese, Indian, French or Mandarin Chinese, (I do speak Korean with native proficiency, but that’s probably irrelevant), nor am I an expert on medieval weaponry, so I’m probably talking nonsense here; if I’m making seriously overreaching claims or on the verge of being offensive, please to tell.
If I had to choose one of these as a viable etymological candidate for the プージ, though, I’d probably give it to the Vouge, simply in virtue of how it fits the medieval fantasy setting the best out of the given options, has the potential to refer to something close to the FE5 official art, and still manages to sound somewhat like what the Katakana suggests.

Who knows, perhaps some day ‘Pugi’ as a name will be replaced by another, proper name for this weapon in the translation patches to come, and ‘Pugi’ and becomes a mere relic of the past, a quirk of the past translation efforts and the Fire Emblem community. But before we can indulge in such pleasantries the task at hand seems to be to sort this issue out, since as of now it still remains a bit of a mystery.

Edited by Aggro Incarnate
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not saying it's necessarily likely, but it could always just be a made-up name.

It's also worth remembering that the axe Armads was named after a sword named Almace, and then there's Excalibur, the wind spell, being named after a sword, and the ice blade Audhulma being named after a mythological cow. I'm sure that's not even the half of it, like Gradivus being named after the gladius, which is a type of short sword, despite Fire Emblem's Gradivus being very much a singular lance.

Intelligent Systems doesn't always name their things after the same type of... thing, so it's very possible that the name could be intended to be Bhuj or something like that. Of course, it could also not be, but I don't think it's wise to restrict yourself to only axes or axe-y weapons when trying to deduce what the name is referencing, since Intelligent Systems has shown that they don't always restrict themselves in that way when naming the things to begin with.

Edited by Topaz Light
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not saying it's necessarily likely, but it could always just be a made-up name.

It's also worth remembering that the axe Armads was named after a sword named Almace, and then there's Excalibur, the wind spell, being named after a sword, and the ice blade Audhulma being named after a mythological cow. I'm sure that's not even the half of it, like Gradivus being named after the gladius, which is a type of short sword, despite Fire Emblem's Gradivus being very much a singular lance.

Intelligent Systems doesn't always name their things after the same type of... thing, so it's very possible that the name could be intended to be Bhuj or something like that. Of course, it could also not be, but I don't think it's wise to restrict yourself to only axes or axe-y weapons when trying to deduce what the name is referencing, since Intelligent Systems has shown that they don't always restrict themselves in that way when naming the things to begin with.

I agree that プージ need not reference an actual weapon, and I appreciate your comment that it may be too restrictive to confine possibilities into an axe or an axe-type weapon, but as for the possibility of it being just a made-up name, a really closely-sounding ブージ appears way too frequently throughout multiple games by different publishers to dismiss it as a simply-made up name by Kaga or IS.

From what I've found so far, プージ features in

- Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 (Intelligent Systems before Kaga left, Nintendo)

- Vestaria Saga 1 (Basically Kaga's indie game)

From what I've found so far, a closely-sounding ブージ features in

- Berwick Saga: Lazberia Chronicles Chapter 174 (Enterbrain)

- Final Fantasy XI (Square Enix)

- Final Fantasy XIV (Square Enix)

- Granblue Fantasy (Cygames, Mobage)

and there could be more...

The latter includes multiple developers and publishers, not just IS or Kaga. So while it need not be a reference to an weapon of similar type and build to the FE5 official プージ artwork, I suspect that there is at least SOME REFERENCING going on.

To recap, here's a brief summary of the above post

1. Given the extremely similar parameters/niches of the FE5 and VS1 プージ and the BS ブージ, as well as the shape of the in-game models for the FE5 プージ and the BS ブージ, I've suggested that プージ and ブージ may be being used to reference the same type of thing. The Kaga games occasionally use different Katakana transliterations for the same referent (I brought up Darts and the Zweihander as examples, since these are the more obvious to the English audience), so there is more reason to believe that both the プージ and ブージ are indeed referencing the same thing.

2. Under this conjecture of プージ and ブージ having the same referent being used as an assumption, I found that ブージ appears through multiple games with different developers, suggesting that there exists a common referent to all these ブージ's (though due to there being the Bhuj and the Vouge, and maybe more, they need not all be reference to the exact same weapon)

3. I tried to look for what it might be referencing by looking into English translations of these games (when available), or posts in general with ブージ appearing on the internet, and it seems that the Bhuj and Vouge are candidates worth considering (as well as an honorary mention to 斧子 for being my half-serious headcanon for a while); these have the advantage of referencing actual weapons, and have pronunciations fairly similar to what the Katakana suggests, though at varying degrees.

Interestingly, the shapes of these weapons as portrayed in-game in the examples I've brought above seem to converge to axe-like shapes like the Bhuj (though the blade of this one isn't quite shaped like an axe) or the Vouge. (see the links and pictures under the spoiler tags; some of them are references to FF or Granblue). So while I wouldn't give my final word that one of the two is the definitive reference for プージ, I find it difficult to dismiss this as mere coincidence

I definitely wouldn't dismiss non-axe-y, non-weapon possibilities entirely, but given that I've already located three references to weapons, I think one might need strong arguments to suggest that the reference may be otherwise. Of course there is the possibility of it being the otherwise, but unless concrete alternative examples are introduced, I find it difficult to consider them in any serious depth. I'm trying to discuss and compare the merits of various possible candidates that I could identify and trying to assess which is the most likely reference, if it is at all, and it's difficult to compare something you have with a possibility that no one brought up yet so far.

I stand by my word that the Vouge seems more likely than the Bhuj for the reasons aforementioned in the above post, though the Bhuj very well may be a possibility.

P.S. Out of FE titles, FE5 is the only one where プージ makes an appearance. The rest of the games I've mentioned above are all from different developers, Kaga games or otherwise. It may not be the case that プージ be the result of the practice of IS specifically

Edited by Aggro Incarnate
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting research, I certainly learned new things here, even if the etymology is still ambiguous.

Would you mind researching 'Swanchika'? It's the only one of Jugdral's legendary weapons that we're not sure on the etymology of yet. I asked about it here a while ago, but nobody had a decisive answer for me, although there was a decent theory. I'd almost want someone to ask Kaga directly at this point.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting research, I certainly learned new things here, even if the etymology is still ambiguous.

Would you mind researching 'Swanchika'? It's the only one of Jugdral's legendary weapons that we're not sure on the etymology of yet. I asked about it here a while ago, but nobody had a decisive answer for me, although there was a decent theory. I'd almost want someone to ask Kaga directly at this point.

Swanchika appeared as an axe in Dissidia Final Fantasy (and if it's there then it's probably in some other Final Fantasy game I don't know about) so there's basic confirmation that it's not a made up name. Unless Final Fantasy was intentionally referencing Fire Emblem. Which would be nice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is one of the most interesting topics anyone has posted here in a while. Thanks for the read! I personally favour the Bhuj idea myself. As others have pointed out, IS has never really cared much what the namesake weapons are or look like. Falchion is a good example of this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is one of the most interesting topics anyone has posted here in a while. Thanks for the read! I personally favour the Bhuj idea myself. As others have pointed out, IS has never really cared much what the namesake weapons are or look like. Falchion is a good example of this.

You know until I seen all the examples listed together, I never really noticed how incredibly weird it is that IS just doesn't care about the origin weapon half the time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's worth noting that the majority (even the vast majority) of such weird name choices are for legendary weapons, or otherwise singular weapons. Likely many were chosen for their connotations (Excalibur, Thorhammer), or because there aren't a huge number of important mythological axes, bows, spells, etc (Armads, Murgleis, Nidhogg, whatever Swanchika is)

Pugi is a Prf, but is not unique, so on those terms its position is debatable

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's worth noting that the majority (even the vast majority) of such weird name choices are for legendary weapons, or otherwise singular weapons. Likely many were chosen for their connotations (Excalibur, Thorhammer), or because there aren't a huge number of important mythological axes, bows, spells, etc (Armads, Murgleis, Nidhogg, whatever Swanchika is)

Pugi is a Prf, but is not unique, so on those terms its position is debatable

I might be a bit rusty on the lore but what connotations does Excalibur the spell share with Excalibur the sword? I would expect something like that to be light magic rather than wind. Also when Excalibur first appeared it was just a good exclusive weapon for Merric putting it in the same boat as Pugi.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting research, I certainly learned new things here, even if the etymology is still ambiguous.

Would you mind researching 'Swanchika'? It's the only one of Jugdral's legendary weapons that we're not sure on the etymology of yet. I asked about it here a while ago, but nobody had a decisive answer for me, although there was a decent theory. I'd almost want someone to ask Kaga directly at this point.

I've searched the Internet for a bit and even some of the Japanese sites on Final Fantasy conjectured that Swanchika has its roots on the Swastika, with it being based on Thor's Hammer and all. I'm not sure how persuasive I find the explanation, but it seems like the best one we have so far.

This is one of the most interesting topics anyone has posted here in a while. Thanks for the read! I personally favour the Bhuj idea myself. As others have pointed out, IS has never really cared much what the namesake weapons are or look like. Falchion is a good example of this.

Thanks for your compliment! As for the comments on IS' weapon naming practice though, I don't remember Kaga-era FE titles ever using non-European inspired weapon names, and I personally find it weird for the プージ to be a sudden exception. I might have considered the Bhuj more seriously if it referred to a particular individual weapon or something, but instead both the Bhuj or the Vouge refers to types of weapons, so even with IS having somewhat bizzare weapon naming conventions regards to weapon origin, it seems rather unlikely for IS or Kaga to suddenly name an axe with an Indian weapon.

That said, it seems ブージ is much more common as a transliteration for Bhuj than it is for the Vouge...

There is also a Bhuj axe in Castlevania

Thanks, I actually came by the Bhuj appearing in Castlevania as I was searching, but for some reason I kinda forgot that it was a Japanese game to begin with.

I might be a bit rusty on the lore but what connotations does Excalibur the spell share with Excalibur the sword? I would expect something like that to be light magic rather than wind. Also when Excalibur first appeared it was just a good exclusive weapon for Merric putting it in the same boat as Pugi.

I'd guess that BwdYeti meant that with プージ in FE5 isn't unique in that there are actually 2 chances to obtain it in-game. The first one comes through Orsin visiting a village (presumably his home) back in Ch. 1, and the second one is dropped by a Berserker in Ch. 16B IIRC

Edited by Aggro Incarnate
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've searched the Internet for a bit and even some of the Japanese sites on Final Fantasy conjectured that Swanchika has its roots on the Swastika, with it being based on Thor's Hammer and all. I'm not sure how persuasive I find the explanation, but it seems like the best one we have so far.

Thanks for your compliment! As for the comments on IS' weapon naming practice though, I don't remember Kaga-era FE titles ever using non-European inspired weapon names, and I personally find it weird for the プージ to be a sudden exception. I might have considered the Bhuj more seriously if it referred to a particular individual weapon or something, but instead both the Bhuj or the Vouge refers to types of weapons, so even with IS having somewhat bizzare weapon naming conventions regards to weapon origin, it seems rather unlikely for IS or Kaga to suddenly name an axe with an Indian weapon.

That said, it seems ブージ is much more common as a transliteration for Bhuj than it is for the Vouge...

Thanks, I actually came by the Bhuj appearing in Castlevania as I was searching, but for some reason I kinda forgot that it was a Japanese game to begin with.

I'd guess that BwdYeti meant that with プージ in FE5 isn't unique in that there are actually 2 chances to obtain it in-game. The first one comes through Orsin visiting a village (presumably his home) back in Ch. 1, and the second one is dropped by a Berserker in Ch. 16 IIRC

I'd find it slightly strange if more than one legendary weapon in Holy War was directly based on Mjlonir.

Wait you can get a second Pugi (I must have known that I've played the game)? Man that weapon is so incredibly awesome. The only downside it had was the finite number of uses but then it gives you a second half way through the game. Not to mention this is the game that gives you an early Hammerine and let's you keep weapon remains after breaking them.

Edited by Jotari
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I mean dumping the katakana into google gives you a link to JP Wikipedia's page for Bhuj so I figure its a fairly safe bet. This is a well researched post though, so props.

The only thing I can think to add to detract from this etymology (is that even the right word for this lol) is that as far as pronounciation goes, バージュ would be an arguably more accurate way of conveying the actual prounciation, but its not like Japan makes sense with loan words most of the time anyway.

Edited by Irysa
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I might be a bit rusty on the lore but what connotations does Excalibur the spell share with Excalibur the sword? I would expect something like that to be light magic rather than wind. Also when Excalibur first appeared it was just a good exclusive weapon for Merric putting it in the same boat as Pugi.

I always assumed that Excalibur was used for a wind spell because it's still a "cutting"-type attack. It uses blades of wind to damage the enemy, so that's why it's named after a legendary bladed weapon.

That's what I always assumed, anyway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I always assumed that Excalibur was used for a wind spell because it's still a "cutting"-type attack. It uses blades of wind to damage the enemy, so that's why it's named after a legendary bladed weapon.

That's what I always assumed, anyway.

That's pretty weak considering a massive amount of weapons are designed to cut opponents. And even getting tehcnical about it excalibur could be decribed as more designed to hack than cut in most of its depictions where it's a pretty large sword. There might be something in the lore that's related to wind however as I've just remembered that Saber from Fate/Stay Night uses some kind of wind magic to make her sword invisible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I mean, it's definitely not meant to be equating it directly to the sword, but yeah.

And, I guess by "cutting" I more meant, very generally, "blade-type attack", which hacking also falls under. Sorta like how there's also a wind spell called "Shaver"; the wind spell animations are strongly stylized as being blade-type attacks, which is why "Excalibur" kinda made sense to me as a name for the ultimate wind spell.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 years later...
On 9/28/2016 at 2:56 PM, Aggro Incarnate said:

I consider the Pugi actually being the Vouge (or the Voulge) a strong possibility.

My man predicted the future. Nice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...