|
>>Folken Lacour de Fanel>>Silver & Gold Basic Stats - Nariya & Eriya Age
The
equivalent of 18 Earth years Gender Female Birthday Unknown
- but Nariya (silver hair) is the elder
twin Birthplace Floresta
Mountains, Asturia, Gaea Height 177
cm Weight 56
kg Affiliation Zaibach Debut Episode
15 Voices Yuri
Amano (Nariya), Narumi Hidaka
(Eriya) Aliases Originally
named Narunaru and Beruberu Folken, as you may have noticed from reading the Speculations page, has a certain weakness for what you might term lame-dog cases - were not 'dog' a very inappropriate term in this case. He finds people who are rejected and exploited by society, and, when they are at their lowest, offers them a new life in which they will be valued, if only for their usefulness. Two such people were Narunaru and Beruberu, eight-year-old leopard-human twins, whose parents were killed by a human mob. Why they were killed is never explained, but things like Jajuka's slave status in Zaibach lead me to speculate that being half-animal on Gaea is a bit like being black in America. People will do bad things to you, and assume you want to do bad things, just because you're there. Beruberu and Narunaru escaped the mob and wandered alone for some time, Narunaru trying to comfort her younger sister, before they were once more cornered by humans, eager to sell them as slaves (a silver and gold pair is considered rare and valuable), and driven to the brink of a cliff. Too terrified and discouraged to fight back or try to escape, the little girls jumped over the edge - and were caught by an angel in black leather. All this happened in the fateful Year of Crystal Northeast, in which Folken and Varie disappeared, Leon Schezar went to Asgard and met Isaac, and Serena Schezar was abducted. I bet nothing that bad happened to you in 1986. To me one of the defining moments of Folken's personality comes in the little scene where he sets the twins safely on the ground. They immediately spring away from him, bristling and growling, and he holds his hand out to them. Predictably (to anyone who's dealt with a tired and frightened cat) they attack it with claws and fangs. This, please note, is Folken's good hand, extended in gentleness. It must hurt like mad. He doesn't swipe at them. He doesn't pull away. He only says 'Poor little things... you must have been so frightened.' Of course, another defining moment of Folken's personality came long before we got into such spoiler-rich territory, back at the start of the series when he had Fanelia razed for the sake of Dornkirk's plans. There you have the central contradiction of Folken - that he's the kind of person who wants to rescue stray kittens that no-one else cares about, but also the kind who can sentence hundreds if not thousands of people to death, serious injury, the loss of their homes and possessions, you name it, out of a higher sense of destiny or purpose. (On this point I sometimes end up comparing Folken with the character of Death in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. But more about all this in Equal and Opposite.) What
can I say about Nariya and Eriya
themselves? First off, they love Folken.
They really love Folken. He is
their 'mental nourishment,' both a
surrogate parent and the object of a
hopeless crush for both of them. Although
Folken is an ideological convert to
Dornkirk's purpose, I don't think Nariya
and Eriya would give two hoots about the
master plan if it didn't matter to him.
Because it is important to him they
will do absolutely anything he asks to
further it. As Enhanced Luck soldiers,
Nariya and Eriya come directly under
Folken's command, and appear to train
independently. As for their chemically
enhanced personal fortune, Nariya and
Eriya are the only people I remember
seeing have any such procedure performed
on them, and beast-people seem to be
regarded as subhuman in Zaibach. Folken
wouldn't have thought of them as such, but
this could be why he was permitted to
carry out the Fortunate Blood
transfusion. One
thing I reallywonder about is what
kind of daily contact the girls had with
Folken as they were growing up. I don't
think it would be possible to idealise him
the way they do if they had lived in the
same home and seen him at his worst (or,
at least, before his first cup of coffee
in the morning), but he must have spent a
fair amount of time with them. However,
it's plain that Folken never engaged
emotionally with Nariya and Eriya as they
did with him. For all the reasons outlined
in Speculation,
he sees himself as unlovable. I don't
think he ever for a moment (well, until
too late) understood how they adored him,
and not just because he clearly has no
idea how sexy he is. Another very telling
Folkenism comes when he asks one of the
twins (they decide who by tossing a coin,
and Eriya wins) to help him in the
role-play exercise necessary to force a
fate change on two distant people - in
this case, to manoeuvre Hitomi and Allen
Schezar together, leaving Van more
emotionally isolated and vulnerable. Eriya
must 'pretend' to be in love with Folken.
He says to her, 'I know this must be hard
for you, but you must try to think only of
me.' Uh, yeah, she's clearly having real
trouble with that. Presumably Folken just
thinks she's a very good actress.
This is one of the few occasions on which
a remarkably intelligent young man shows
himself to be, yes, Emotionally Clueless.
It's a Fanel thing. I'm really not sure why this is. Possibly it's just because of the anime convention of catwomen as highly sexualised - not that this is exclusive to anime, as any folllower of the Batman saga knows. Or perhaps Nobuteru Yuuki just got tired of designing unconventionally charming girls like Hitomi and Meruru and thought 'Damn it, I want to draw some hooters.' Even the nicest men come over like this sometimes and it's best just to ignore them until they get it out of their systems. But they're not characters I feel uncomfortable with, unlike many visually conventional babes, because they are portrayed with such emotional depth, and not used for gratuitous 'fanservice' images, the way, for example, Misato was in NGE. I know that was intended to be parodic but it got on my nerves. There is no fanservice in Escaflowne - well, not for straight guys, anyway *^.^* In
addition, I find Nariya and Eriya
extremely impressive as warriors. They
have very cool-looking mecha - although
the long manes of hair on their Teiring
guymelefs take the flamboyantly pointless
decoration of machines that prevails in
this series to new heights. (I'm always
surprised that we don't see guymelefs with
bumper-stickers.) There
is more to say about Nariya and Eriya,
but, because of the way I'm trying to
develop a sequential argument (anyone who
didn't read these pages in the order I
intended must be fiercely confused), it
properly belongs on the Equal
and
Opposite
page. As a closing thought, I find it very
interesting that catgirl characters are
used to develop our view of the
personalities of both Fanel brothers. I'm
not sure of the extent to which this
parallelism is significant, but their love
for cats is always shown as a sign of
their capacity for tenderness, and their
deeply human aspect, belied by their
harder exterior. Basically, my own
prejudices encourage me to believe that if
someone really likes cats, he must be okay
at heart. I like Nariya and Eriya because
they let us see that about Folken. And
they kick ass. And what of Nariya and Eriya in the Escaflowne movie, A Girl in Gaia? Well, they aren't warriors, that's for sure. They're torch singers. Yes, folks, it's Nariya and Eriya onstage in a bar belonging to Dryden, with considerably less to do in the movie than in the series and no connection to Folken whatever. (How weird is that? But I think it's very significant. Clock At the Movies to read why.) One rumour I heard prior to seeing the movie was that they were strippers in a nightclub owned by Dryden, which rather upset me as I didn't like to see them degraded like that, and didn't want to believe Dryden was a party to that degradation. I'm glad to say that the rumour was not true; their singing act is rather elegant and ethereal and they are respectably clothed (by catgirl standards, anyway) throughout. I kind of like the fact that the catgrrlz are working for Dryden rather than gatecrashing his wedding. ('Right! If you girls can't pay for the damage you did during the series, you're going to work it off in the movie!') |
|
