Why on Earth Was This Final Fantasy Monster Named ‘Veteran’?
And now for the last of my fun little “Satan in video games” series, which I didn't intend to write. But sometimes you stumble onto one thing, and in writing about that you find something else. And then you’ve written several posts about the representation of Satan in video games, and you want to finish it up before people get the wrong idea about you.
This one comes from a comment on the first Ghouls ’n Ghosts piece, in which I explained that the Red Arremer (a.k.a. Firebrand the Gargoyle) got his name as a result of a sort of Capcom office in-joke about Toshio Arima, who worked as a programmer on the game. In response, I got a comment from a reader that read as follows: “I always assumed Arremer was derived from Ahriman, the devil-like figure of Zoroastrianism. It’s a perfect fit, too!” And he was right! It seemed like such a perfect fit that without having researched it, I would bet money on it being the inspiration for this character and his name. In Zoroastrianism, Ahriman (also known as Angra Mainyu) is the antithesis to the Ahura Mazda, an all-knowing and all-loving creator deity. Therefore, Ahirman is a fairly close approximation of the adversary figure in Abrahamic religions, and according to many scholars this figure actually probably did shape Jewish, Christian and Islamic conceptions of Satan, the Devil and Iblis, respectively.
But it’s just not the case, despite all the signs to the contrary. In fact, the etymology of Red Arremer is something else entirely, and it’s not necessarily something that you’d be able to guess unless you happened to work at Capcom in the mid-1980s. This is perhaps a worthwhile thing to keep in mind when investigating the origin of things: that sometimes what seems like an obvious connection just isn’t.
However, I did recognize the name Ahriman and not just from history classes. I knew it as a video game reference, and I was not at all surprised to learn that this figure has been appropriated by the Final Fantasy games. First appearing in Final Fantasy III, the Ahriman (アーリマン, Āriman) has been a staple of the series ever since, and it’s frequently one of the stronger generic enemies you fight in any given game.
Having been around since 1990, however, means it’s been subject to some head-scratching localizations over the years. When I first encountered it in the Lunar Subterrane in the Super NES localization of Final Fantasy IV, it was the FatalEye, which I think makes enough sense on its own. When it shows up in Kefka’s Tower in Final Fantasy VI, however, the English localization gave it a strange name: Veteran. They actually got that name again in Final Fantasy IX.
What on earth could have prompted anyone to name look at this evil eyeball with bat wings as say, “Ah, clearly a Veteran”? The Final Fantasy wiki has one theory, but I’m not sure I buy it: The localized name is a misinterpretation of the katana as “early man,” which I suppose I can understand, but it seems like too big a leap to get from a man who’s early to a veteran. As the wiki puts it, someone who has experience in a given field was working at it before others did, meaning they started… early. Like, yeah, I can understand how someone just looking at the katakana wouldn’t necessarily see the Zoroastrianism embodiment of evil, but I can only imagine they just kept saying “early man” to themselves enough times before they eventually threw up their hands and decided on what they did because it was in the ballpark, kinda sorta, and had the appropriate amount of letters.
Theories? I’m all ears. And yes, I will be adding this to the wanted list.
It’s worth noting that Final Fantasy VII ended up with an even worse name, even if it’s easier to imagine how someone ended up there. It’s Allemagne, which is French for “German.” It doesn’t make sense, and I’d wonder what a German gamer would think about encountering it, but I can see how someone staring at the katakana would only end up with this and just offer it up for a lack of better alternatives. It does imply that whoever made this decision either didn’t have access to previous localizations or did and just assumed they could do better than the previous option, though clearly Square did not stick with it.
Miscellaneous Notes
Ahriman is not to be confused with a different Final Fantasy enemy that is essentially just an evil eye. There’s also Evil Eye, but what’s especially interesting about this one is that it began as a Beholder — essentially lifted straight from Dungeons & Dragons. While Final Fantasy and many other other RPGs borrow liberally from D&D, the Beholder is one of the recurring monsters that is not drawn from any folklore; instead, it was created for the game specifically by Terry Kuntz for the Greyhawk edition in 1975. Presumably because this constituted a legal whoopsie, the sprite was replaced with a new one that looks like more of a skull.
This monster does not recur as often as, say, the Ahriman, does, but the non-copyright-violating redesign does show up again here and there. Curiously, the original design did show up again as a player icon option in the first Dissidia game.
It’s not all that unusual to encounter situations like the one I described at the beginning of this post, where an obvious connection just doesn’t end up being the case. It happens with etymology all the time. Take a pair of works seems appropriate for my “Satan in video games” series: religion and sacrilege. Because sacrilege is the violation of the sacred, it would be normal to assume that it has a connection to religion, which is often the arbiter of what is sacred. The words have totally different etymologies, however, with sacrilege coming from the Latin phrase sacrum legere, “to steal sacred things,” the latter part coming from the Latin verb legere, “to take, pick up.” Religion, however, comes from the Latin verb relegere, “to read again” in the sense of poring over a scripture to study it, which in turn comes from a totally different Latin verb legere, this one meaning “to read” and related to the word lecture. You’d be correct to assume the words were related. You just wouldn't be right. And I’ve encountered more than a few instances of this kind of thing writing this blog, where the obvious connection just doesn’t turn out to be the case. Another example of words that seem like they should be related but aren’t? Gross and grotesque. Another? Devil and evil. I think it’s a good reminder than what seems like a sure thing may not be.
Did you know this was a language blog masquerading as a video game blog this entire time? Surprise!