Justice for Dyluck: Sacrifice and Star-Crossed Love in Visions of Mana
Heads up: This post will discuss some general plot elements and overarching themes in Visions of Mana without spoiling specific details. It will, however, spoil Secret of Mana, but come on — it came out in 1993.
In the opening scene to Visions of Mana, you meet two characters who you might mistakenly think will be the focus of this game. You control Eoren, a swordsman, as he escapes town with Lyza, a ponytailed young woman whom he clearly loves. If you’d played previous games in the Mana series, however, you might realize that these two are likely doomed, because this franchise doesn’t usually reward young lovers with a happy ending. In fact, it might be a trademark of this series, to the point that Visions of Mana — the newest installment in the series and a game that in many ways celebrates the titles that preceded it — returns to the theme of star-crossed love again and again and again. Indeed, the prologue ends with Eoren and Lyza not escaping as they planned. So it goes in this colorful but brutal world.
My introduction to the Mana series was Seiken Densetsu 2 (聖剣伝説2 or Legend of Holy Sword 2), which was released outside Japan as Secret of Mana. This game’s three heroes include Randi, a swordsman who looks a bit like Eoren, and Primm, a ponytailed lass who looks a bit like Lyza, but these two are not a couple. In fact, Primm joins the party because she’s looking for her boyfriend, a soldier named Dyluck, who’s been sent to investigate a local witch.
Luckless Dyluck, video game dreamboat.
One thing leads to another, and Dyluck ends up in the clutches of the game’s big bad. Consequently, Primm ventures around the world in order to rescue him. As the previous paragraphs might lead you to expect, things don’t turn out well for Primm and Dyluck. He dies, although the exact circumstances of his passing aren’t made explicit in the original English localization, but it’s made clear enough that his life ends in order to help the heroes.
Via this playthrough on YouTube. I’m putting a transcript of this exchange at the bottom of this post, alongside one from the 2018 remake and a fan translation.
It’s never fully explained what makes Dyluck so special. In fact, it’s only in this scene, with big bad Thanatos spilling his evil master plan, that we’re told that Dyluck embodies some mix of dark and light. Whatever the conditions, Dyluck is unusual enough that Thanatos wants to possess him — and the only way to prevent that is for Dyluck to die.
Via this playthrough on YouTube. This transcript is also at the bottom of the page.
The 2018 remake of Secret of Mana has a bad reputation, but I played it through before I tackled Visions of Mana just for the chance to experience the original in a new way. If nothing else, it’s valuable to people like me who have been poring over the game script to the original and wondering what might have been squeezed out due to censorship or space constraints.
The inclusion of the line “I have to do this” in both the original localization and the remake makes it seem like Dyluck sacrifices himself for lack of any better option. Neither version makes it clear specifically how he dies, but regardless Thanatos is denied a new body. The heroes then face off against Thanatos’ true, fully demonic form: the Dark Lich.
Dyluck is not the only character who must die in order to conclude the game. Popoi, the third hero and a magic-using sprite, fades from the world after the final boss is defeated. But the game implies that Popoi knows this will happen and nonetheless cheers Randi and Primm to fight the good fight anyway. The game’s ending begins with Randi and Primm realizing that they’ve lost both Dyluck and Popoi in the effort to save the world.
But despite the fact that Popoi is one of the three controllable characters in Secret of Mana, I was always bothered more by Dyluck, for whatever reason — possibly because I never fully understood what his deal was. Part of the appeal lies in the fact that Secret of Mana subverts the usual version of the “hero saves captive beloved” narrative by making the hero female and the captive male. (I’m certain Primm wasn’t the first, but she’s certainly a notable example of a female hero who’s saving her boyfriend.) Even that aside, there’s something open-ended about Dyluck’s death that haunted me back then and still does today. The back half of Secret of Mana is rather rushed, to put it mildly, and I suspect bits and pieces of Dyluck’s story ended up on the cutting room floor. But the ghost of Dyluck might haunt the people who make these games as well, because the installments that preceded Secret of Mana and the ones that came after indicate that variations on his story are very much at the heart of this series.
But first, a Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games trademark: the etymology of a name.
If you’ve read this site before, you might know that I think a lot about where names come from and why a character in a given work of fiction might have one name over another. Sometimes it just makes for a fun bit of trivia, but other times it can help you get insight into how creators view a given character — and yeah, Dyluck’s name is a real puzzler. The katakana for it, ディラック (Dirakku), could be interpreted a few different ways. Fatimah suggests Dirac or Diluc, noting that the British physicist Paul Dirac and the various things named after him are all rendered with the same katanaka as Dyluck’s Japanese name. Then there’s Durac, a very similar-looking character who appears in Sword of Mana, a 2003 remake of the first Mana game that retroactively incorporates a lot of characters originating in the sequels. It’s very clearly *supposed* to be Dyluck; it just seems that his name was rendered differently in English, as the names are identical in the Japanese version. However, there’s a theory that the name was actually meant to be Dulac, the last name of Lancelot in Arthurian legends. In many versions of these stories, Lancelot is the orphaned prince of a lost kingdom who was raised by the Lady of the Lake; the surname comes from the French du lac, which literally means “of the lake.”
In Secret of Mana, Dyluck is not exactly a Lancelot figure. If we’re talking about valiant knights with strong affiliations with water spirits, there’s Gemma, a knight who introduces the hero to Luka, the water sage occupying a palace built on a lake. (Luka’s English name is a truncated version of her Japanese name, ルサ・ルカ or Rusa Ruka, presumably a reference to the rusalka, the female water spirit from Slavic folklore.) The closest Dyluck comes to Lancelot’s story is falling in love with a woman society states he should not pursue — Primm is arranged to marry a noble, against her wishes. (And yes, I’m as surprised as anyone to be discussing Lancelot and Guinevere again on my video game blog, just a few days after I discussed them in the Ghosts ’n Goblins series.) If that connection seems like a stretch, however, I should point out that the Secret of Mana series began far more explicitly rooted in something Camelot-adjacent: the ill-fated Famicom Disk System title known as Seiken Densetsu: The Emergence of Excalibur.
Translation: The prologue to a grand battle spanning generations unfolds at last...
The island of Bardos remains under the reign of terror wrought by the demon Vargas. Countless knights have challenged Vargas to battle, and all have been defeated. The only way to defeat Vargas is to take up the holy sword Excalibur, embedded deep in the earth, and slay him with it.
The legendary holy sword, Excalibur, possesses its own will and serves only a master of its own choosing. And now, a young man has taken his first step into battle. The curtain is set to rise on a grand epic… For the first time in Japan, the party members joining you will move independently!
In order to defeat monsters, you must recruit comrades to fight alongside you. However, if careful consideration is not given when choosing your companions, you could end up in big trouble! What's more, each member of your party has a unique personality. Some are reliable allies, whereas others are cowardly and run when faced with a monster. Your choice of allies is the key to victory. Never before has there been a game like this!
I could and should write a whole separate post on this game which was never released but which nonetheless resulted in the creation of the Mana franchise as well as other titles. For now, you can read more about this “lost” game here, here and here.
The title was initially targeted for release in 1987, but it never materialized. Instead, a different title, something called Final Fantasy, hit shelves in Japan at the tail end of that year. Only the broadest of concepts from Emergence of Excalibur, such as computer-controlled companion characters and a story focused on a magical sword, ended up being incorporated into the first Mana game, released for the Game Boy in 1991 as Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden in Japan and in North America as Final Fantasy Adventure. (Confusingly, it was released in Europe as Mystic Quest; that title would be reused in 1992 for Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, which is not part of the Mana series and which is barely part of the Final Fantasy series.) But that Game Boy title did unofficially kick off the Mana series and did actually mark the debut of several elements that would become mainstays of the franchise, including various town names, Watts the blacksmith, many generic enemies, and the use of candy as a healing item, among other things.
This first Mana game also introduces the theme of sacrifice. The main hero — who is apparently named Sumo, although he is also unnamed in the original English localization of the game — travels with various companion characters throughout the game, but the most important of them is a mysterious girl — apparently named Fuji, although this was also news to me. Upon the defeat of the main villain, Fuji dies so she can become the new Mana Tree.
Again, so it goes.
Following 2006’s Dawn of Mana, 2024’s Visions of Mana was the first proper console installment of the franchise, and it serves as both a sort of reboot and an epic series of callbacks to the games that came before. That said, not that many of the main characters from previous games are mentioned by name, but both Dyluck and Primm are. Specifically, both have ships named after them — the Primm takes the party to the ocean kingdom of Illystana, while the Dyluck is the rotting husk of a sea-faring vessel that the party encounters in the Zawhak Desert. The symbolism is not subtle; like their namesakes, the Primm and the Dyluck are two ships that will not cross paths, because one ended its journey long ago.
Without getting into major Visions of Mana plot spoilers (because I’m saving those for the miscellaneous notes section), this allusion to Secret of Mana is just one of many examples in this new game where the player is warned about love stories not ending well. This exact thing is central to the backstory of the game’s big bad, but if I wanted to give a less spoilery example, I’ll point to Vuscav, the ocean-faring turtle-like or kappa-like creature who in the fan translation of Seiken Densetsu 3/Trials of Mana was known as Booskaboo. (The katakana for his name, ブースカブー, certainly could be rendered in romaji as something like Būsukabū, but that’s apparently not what Square-Enix decided on.) If you’re not familiar with this character, just know that he’s about as far away as you could imagine from a Romeo and Juliet-style tale of forbidden love that ends in tragedy, but that’s exactly what Visions of Mana decides to do with him.
The turtle formerly known as Booskaboo, as he appears in Trials of Mana.
When exploring the Tatoh Temple area of the game, the heroes are first greeted with a giant statue of Vuscav and then, as they explore the area, they learn a story about love between a long ago prince and a princess who are forbidden to be in love. You’re prompted to expect love between two humanoid characters, but it turns out that the doomed lovers in this instance are a human princess and Vuscav — in reckless disregard for interspecies prohibitions. This whole scenario hinges around the heroes righting the wrong of these two being separated when they were still alive, but in bringing them back together, the party also makes it so the lovers’ sad end proves vital to the effort to save the world.
Again, so it goes.
As I said before, I’m skipping several major plot points from Visions of Mana because I genuinely think people should play the game, because it’s excellent. I’ll be elaborating on those in a clearly marked spoiler section below. Even without those, however, I think it’s clear that sacrifice is a central theme of this video game series, if not *the* central theme.
When I first started noticing how often Visions of Mana features sacrifice as a plot point, I wondered if the whole game might be a musing on Dyluck himself, perhaps because his story lingered with other people as much as it did with me. It might be that, I guess, but it’s more likely that Dyluck’s story and the myriad examples of sacrifice in Visions of Mana exist because sacrifice is just part of the foundation of these games. And that might seem grim, but given that the central visual icon for these games is a tree — the Mana Tree, which more often than not gets decimated, only to grow back again — perhaps we can also take it as a hint that these sacrifices aren’t for nothing, and that death can make room for new life.
So it should go, at least.
Miscellaneous Notes
Right, so here is your spoiler warning for the next three paragraphs, in which I will discuss a few plot points central to the plot of Visions of Mana.
First of all, the whole game is propelled forward by the concept of alms, which in this context means sacrifices to the Mana Tree. Every four years, representatives from eight cities around the world (each representing one of the elemental spirits) are chosen to venture to the Mana Tree and offer their souls to keep the world in balance. The game is somewhat cagey in discussing this early on, however, and it’s not immediately clear to the player that being chosen as an alm means certain (if noble) death. Bad things happen when alms try to escape this fate, however, and one of the game’s central premises is the struggle of the alms to reconcile their destiny with their desire to live out their lives.
The game kicks off in Tiannea, the fire village and the home to both Val, the main hero, and Hinna, his childhood friend and love interest. When Hinna gets named alm of fire, Val escorts her on her pilgrimage to the Mana Tree, and the two begin to fall in love at the same time that it’s clear she won’t live long enough to share her life with him. But it’s worse than this, however. The party also encounters Eoren wandering solo, as Lyza gets turned to stone for trying to shirk her duties as the alm of earth. While he seems like a friend, he’s only angling to sacrifice Hinna himself in an effort to save Lyza. It doesn’t work.
Eoren accidentally awakens Daelophos, who was once the Mana Knight and the defender of the Mana Goddess. While out trekking around the world for the Mana Goddess, in what amounts to a kinda-sorta prequel to Visions of Mana that we just don’t see, Daelophos learns that his true love, Cerulia, dies, and so he decides to kill the goddess and destroy the world that would have let this injustice happen. Daelophos is the game’s big bad. However, it’s worth pointing out that he has some qualities in common with Dyluck. They’re both soldiers who come to misfortune while performing their duty. Daelophos’s story kind of works like Dyluck and Primm’s, only with the gender roles flipped again, with a hero not getting the happy ending they think they should get. And in being the knight associated with the Mana Goddess but who then goes evil, Daelophos represents a combination of light and darkness that recalls Thanatos’s explanation for why Dyluck is special.
This is the end of the spoilers for Visions of Mana.
The first Mana game was not envisioned as the kickoff of a franchise separate from Final Fantasy so much as an offshoot from it, and its titles reflect that — Final Fantasy Adventure in North America and Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden in Japan. What’s interesting about the design for the hero of that game is that he very much recalls the generic Warrior class from the first Final Fantasy, red armor and hair and everything. There’s also a Visions of Mana character who seems to be based on the same design, but clicking this link might constitute a spoiler.
And if I recall correctly, my first glimpse of Secret of Mana was in Electronic Gaming Monthly’s April 1993 issue, where it was titled Final Fantasy Adventure 2, which I guess would have made sense at the time.
In Visions of Mana, Hinna functions as a direct callback to Fuji, the heroine in Final Fantasy Adventure. In FFA, Fuji is the one companion character who won’t fight alongside the hero, although she will heal him. In Visions of Mana, Hinna similarly doesn’t fight monsters alongside Val, but she does have healing magic.
Curiously, in the FFA remake Sword of Mana, the heroine role is filled by a different character. She’s still the girl who ends up being the descendant of the Mana clan, but she has a distinctly different look to Fuji and she fights with a staff. I have in my notes that her name, Elena, comes from the dark-haired heroine shown in the advertisement for Emergence of Excalibur, but now for the life of me I can’t find the source for this bit of info. Am I mistaken or is this something anyone else can find?
Mana maidens, left to right: Hinna, Fuji and Elena.
Gemma might seem like an odd name for a manly knight character. And it is, but the meaning is two-fold. For one thing, while that functions as the unique character name in Secret of Mana, it’s introduced in Final Fantasy Adventure as a type of knight in service to the Mana Tree. In fact, one of the Gemma Knights in that game, Bogard, functions a lot like Gemma in Secret of Mana, to the point that you could view them as the same character. But the word has meaning on its own, too. It’s Latin for “bud,” as you’d find on a plant, so it’s a fitting name for knights who are so closely associated with the Mana Tree.
I’m curious if the name of Duran, the soldier boy hero from Trials of Mana, might be a reference to Dyluck as well, especially if you consider how the Dyluck character in Sword of Mana was named Durac. They’re awfully close. While I’m at it, I should probably say that I’m grateful that the English localization didn’t decide the name Derek was close enough for English-speaking gamers. Dyluck, though odd, has a certain ring to it.
Speaking of Trials of Mana, Hawkeye and his beloved Jessica may be the only couple in the history of a Mana game that gets a happy ending. They have to work for it, of course, and Jessica spends a good deal of the game as a captive, but in the end, neither Hawkeye nor Jessica die, and for the life of me I can’t think of another couple where at least one member is a central character in any game that gets off so easily. I wonder what gives.
I would suggest that His Dark Majesty — a.k.a. the Prince of Mavolia, who is the end boss of Trials of Mana if you pick Hawkeye of Reisz as your main character — has a few qualities in common with Dyluck to the point that you could view him as a worst-case scenario verion of him. As you play through this game, you learn that this villain was actually born a prince to a “castle of light” that once stood near Reisz’s kingdom, but he was imprisoned in the dungeon in an attempt to subvert a prophecy about him bringing destruction to this kingdom. While in prison, the ruler of Mavolia (the Mana equivalent of the underworld, often referred to as Makai in Japanese, and yes that should sound familiar) takes the prince on as his heir, and he eventually goes full bad guy, ultimately proving the prophecy true amd transforming the kingdom into the Dark Castle, which is the final dungeon before you fight him. A lot of these plot elements would be incorporated into Stroud, a villain in Dawn of Mana, but the backstory about him being a product of a combination of light and dark recalls Thanatos’s remarks about Dyluck.
For what it’s worth, His Dark Majesty appears on several cards in Circle of Mana. He is, um, quite naked, which is not how he appears in Trials of Mana.
Speaking of being a gay man who writes about how video games depict gender and sexuality, I found it interesting that Secret of Mana’s original English localization does a fairly good job not gendering Popoi. There are a few instances where they’re referred to with male pronouns, but both of them are used by characters who you could interpret as a incorrectly presuming Popoi’s gender. Considering that Secret of Mana was released in 1993, it’s all the more remarkable that its treatment of Popoi lands better today than 2000’s Final Fantasy IX, what with its awkward use of s/he to refer to Quina Quen. I suppose whether either character is nonbinary, agender or simply not offering any indicators one way or another is still up to the player to decide.
And finally, for the sake of comparison, here is the dialogue in Dyluck’s death scene in the original English localization of Secret of Mana.
Primm: Dyluck!
Thanatos: For ages I have been searching… for a human with the power to conquer this world... One born in the shadow of darkness, and raised in the light of Mana. Dyluck is the one. I cannot wait any longer. My body has grown weak! It is time! Using his body I will take the Mana Fortress, and rule the world!
Primm: Dyluck! Resist him with all your might!
Thanatos: Uhrg... ahh... kack! I must… hurry… This body is… breaking up! H… help me… guhuf… let… m… maieee!
Primm: Dyluck! Snap out of it!
Dyluck: ...Uhhn...Where am I?
* Guwa ha ha! *
Thanatos: Guwa ha ha! How good this new body feels! I grow strong!
Primm: Liar! You can’t just STEAL someone's body!!
Thanatos: My dear, I can do anything I want! Ha, ha-huh..? Can't...move!
Dyluck's voice: Primm...can you hear me? It’s me, Dyluck... He’s too strong...I’m finished, but I can help you... Thanatos is an ancient sorcerer who sold his heart to the underworld. Though his life force is eternal, he hasn’t his own body. His life force is growing darker. He feeds on hatred and destruction!
Thanatos: Ooh! Silence!
Dyluck: Primm, I'm so sorry I won't see you again. But I have to do this.
Dyluck: You're Randi, right? Take care of Primm...
Primm: Dyluck! Stop it! Please! Dyluck! STOP IT!!
Thanatos: Ugrrrrrrr!
Thanatos: I forbid this! Just when I was to be reborn! I… must withdraw! Give me your bodies! GUWAA!
And here is how that scene plays out in the 2018 remake:
Primm: Dyluck!
Thanatos: You’ve come so far, but you are too late! My current body is at its limit. I need another worthy vessel to house my spirit. If I were to take any normal human, my awesome power would tear it apart. But every few decades, there is one born in the shadow of darkness… A human capable of augmenting my powers beyond comprehension. Dyluck is one such human! His dark powers were sealed as a child. Now he possesses a foolishly naive sense of justice. But no matter. With his body, I will use the Mana Fortress to rule the world! It is time!
Thanatos: Grah! This… body is… withering… I must… possess my vessel… now!
Primm: Dyluck! You can’t let him do this! Resist him!
Thanatos: Uhrg… ahh… guh! Body… My body cannot… last… It’s… falling… apart! Help… Guwah! Y-you… fool!. AAAHHH!
Primm: Dyluck! Dyluck, can you hear me?
Dyluck: Wh-what… Guh… uhh… Wh-where am I…?
Dyluck: Bwahahaha! How good this new body feels! What power! Now… now the world is mine for the taking!
Primm: No! Not Dyluck! You give him back right now! You can’t just steal someone’s body!
Thanatos: My dear, I can do anything I want! Behold, your beloved Dyluck!
Thanatos: Huh? I-I can’t move!
Dyluck: Primm, can you hear me? It’s really me, Dyluck! You must listen to me! My connection won’t last for long; Thanatos is too strong… but I know how to defeat him. Thanatos was once an ancient sorcerer who sold his soul to Mavolia in exchange for eternal life. His spirit is eternal, but his body decays. When his mortal body grows weak, he must find a new host. And with each new host, his spirit grows darker as it feeds on hatred and destruction!
Thanatos: Urg…! Silence!
Dyluck: Primm… I’m sorry. This is goodbye… But— I have to do this. Randi, right? Please… take care of her… of Primm.
Primm: Dyluck no! No stop! You can’t!
Thanatos: Aaarghhh!
Thanatos: Impossible! Not when I’d finally cultivated the perfect vessel! I can’t survive like this! I have no alternative! You must relinquish your bodies to me!
In 2023, the Secret of Mana Reborn patch was created for the original Super NES ROM that gives what its creators claim is a fuller, more accurate version of the original Japanese script. Here’s how this same scene plays out in that version. Of particular note is that Dyluck does not kill himself in this version. He merely dies as a result of being possessed by Thanatos but lives long enough to warn the heroes.
Primm: Dyluck!
Thanatos: You’re finally here! But it’s too late. My current body will soon rot away; continuing onward is in vain. If I were to possess an ordinary human being, their body would explode from the controllable force of my power. Yet once in many decades, a person bearing the blood of darkness is born. So if I were to possess that person, my power would grow even stronger and broader… I have found that one. It is Dyluck! When this power of darkness is sealed in someone at a young age, it seems that, as a reaction, their sense of justice grows profusely stronger. I will have that as my new form, and along with the Mana Fortress, I will begin a new era for this world! Fuhahaha!
Thanatos: …! Aguh? C-curses! This… this body is already… at its limit! Quick… quickly, if I don’t quickly take possession of another…
Primm: Dyluck! Don’t let him do anything to you!
Thanatos: Huuurgh… Guh… c-curses! Uguguguh… Ge-buh… body… body is disintegrating! Uuh… Help… help me… *groan*... y-you… ouuuuu…!
Primm: Oh, Dyluck! Please hang on, Dyluck!
Dyluck: Uhh... ooh… where am I…? … … … … … Kukuku… Fuhahahaha!
Thanatos: Success! Possession is complete — a glorious new beginning! What a shame for you…
Primm: No way! You’re lying! There’s no way you could do something like that to him. Bring Dyluck back NOW!
Thanatos: Hahaha..! I *AM* Dyluck now! Fuhahaha… ha… ha? What’s this!? I can’t move!
Dyluck: Primm… can you hear me? It’s Dyluck. Please try to stay calm and listen. Now that he’s merged with me, I understand who he is, and I’ll use the last of my power to reveal his true form! But first, you must understand… This true form… is that of an ancient sorcerer who sold his soul to Mavolia to claim eternal life. But even though his spirit became immortal, his body continued to rot. When that happened, he took possession of another, over and over again. In time, even his spirit was eaten away by corruption, and he became the incarnation of spite and hatred toward life itself — the Dark Lich!
Thanatos: Ooh! Silence!
Dyluck: Primm, we’ll never be able to meet again. I’m sorry, but there’s no other way than this. Randi, you’re there too, aren’t you? Please take care of Primm.
Primm: Dyluck, no! Please! STOP IT!!
Thanatos: Rrgh! Cease this at once…!
Thanatos: I forbid this! This body that I worked so hard to… If this continues to go on, I’ll be annihilated…! So it’s make or break! I have no choice but to reveal myself… Now give me your bodies!!! Guwaaaa!
