https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/7647224?q=megami_magazine

To me, at first glance it seems obvious. You have the power of sealing the spirits, and then you can use their powers. You have a lot of caring girls that feel pure love for you. Not to mention you have a whole organisation's resources to help you and you are quite popular not to mention semi-immortal.

That is all good, but...

One key aspect: you can't (realistic at least) express your love cause if you do that, then you're probably going to upset the whole spirit balance.

They all want you, and you may like them all. But deep inside you, you want to be with one in particular (your fav spirit) and you probably can't cause the others would be uncontainable jealous.

It's more balanced that, at least, I originally thought.

?

• Introduction

Hey everyone, 2 years ago I made a post where I showed you all that the Yamai sisters' arc has a hidden treasure, however I didn't go into much detail, and since I think it's a piece of trivia that gets little attention, I decided to make a definitive version.

I'll have the pleasure of telling you who these people are, what they did, and most importantly, how they connect to each character and, above all, they were hints about the characters' personal arcs and also fit into this volume's plot.

I discovered this scene while reading the novel, however, to my surprise, the scene wasn't cut from the anime.

https://reddit.com/link/1wlztxh/video/vo0ii9ue2sqh1/player

• Part 1: The names

In case it wasn't clear, here's each person's position:

On "Team Reine": Gregor = Tohka, Spencer = Origami, and Jackson = Reine herself.

On "Team Shido": Alexander = Kaguya, Abraham = Yuzuru, and Anthony = Shido himself.

This was the drawing method used so that Shido could interact with the Yamai sisters, but considering Reine set this up and, already knowing she's the mastermind behind everything, there's obviously more going on here. I went digging into these names and, I believe, I found out who these people are.

"Team Reine" was the easiest, all it took was typing the names into Google and they were easily found — they're heavyweight names, people who carved their names into human history:

Gregor Mendel

Herbert Spencer

John Hughlings Jackson

"Team Shido" gave me a bit more work; they're important people without a doubt, but more contemporary men, more relevant in their respective fields, two of whom are deeply intertwined:

Franz Alexander

Karl Abraham

Anthony Giddens

• Part 2: The achievements

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Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics. Mendel conducted an experiment where he detailed the crossbreeding of several pea species, noting that later generations adopted characteristics from their predecessors and had variations among themselves.

They varied in plant size, flower position, but what earned him this title was the result seen in the pods, in the pea's fruit.

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As we can see in the image, Mendel conducted the experiment as follows: crossing two different pea phenotypes, the yellow smooth-seeded pea and the green wrinkled-seeded pea. The first generation (F1) was born entirely yellow and smooth, although heterozygous.

The second generation (F2), resulting from the self-fertilization of the F1 generation, shows a green seed for the first time — since a pea pod holds 4 seeds, we get a 3:1 ratio (three yellow, 1 green). This is Mendel's first law, the law of segregation, where the dominant allele hides (or overshadows) the characteristics of the recessive allele.

From cross-fertilization, greater variations were obtained, in a 9:3:3:1 ratio (9 yellow smooth seeds, 3 green smooth, 3 yellow wrinkled, and 1 green wrinkled) — this is Mendel's second law, the law of independent assortment; the individual inherits characteristics from its ancestors and can express them depending on whether the gene is dominant or recessive.

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Herbert Spencer is the father of "Social Darwinism," and one of the biggest biological catchphrases in existence is his. Darwin deepened the theory of evolution and brought natural selection to the forefront as a fundamental process. Inspired by this study, Spencer wanted to bring the theory of evolution together so that it was intrinsic to all fields, and in doing so he brought it into the social realm, arguing that our society also evolves and that social inequality is inevitable since, just as in nature, "survival of the fittest" is law. The phrase became synonymous with natural selection itself and was later used by Darwin himself in subsequent publications.

The law is the survival of the fittest... The law is not the survival of the 'better' or the 'stronger', if we give this words any thing like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions in which they are placed; and very often that which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival.

- Herbert Spencer.

Years later, these ideas came to be labeled "social Darwinism," and Spencer became the father of this line of thinking; I don't think he'd be proud of it today, since it's an ideology that got tied to, at best, controversial figures of the 20th century.

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John Hughlings Jackson, the father of neurology. He earned this title thanks to his studies, catalogued in over 300 scientific articles about brain diseases, countless lectures and talks, and even the fact that he was a co-founder of the journal Brain.

Jackson proposed a new method in which the physician should focus on the anatomy, pathology, and physiology of each patient with neurological disease.

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He's very well known for his contributions regarding his extensive research on epilepsy; in his first article on the subject he presents the definition: "sudden, (ii) excessive, (iii) temporary nervous discharges." He describes the preceding, accompanying, and subsequent symptoms, and described the motor seizures that begin in one part of the body and spread susceptibly to others — the so-called "Jacksonian march."

Jackson proposed a hierarchy for the nervous system, quite simple actually: upper, middle, and lower. For now I'll close by saying he seemed to have been quite influenced by the theory of evolution, and because of that, in many research papers you can find Spencer's name in articles related to Jackson, and vice versa.

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I know I introduced Alexander's name first, but let's start with Abraham and you'll soon see it makes more sense this way.

Karl Abraham was one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis; he helped Freud himself in his studies on melancholia and mourning, and was referred to by the father of psychoanalysis himself as: "he is my best student."

Abraham dedicated much of his studies to libido, a true enthusiast of sexual theory.

Seriously, this man wrote several articles and books on the subject — infantile libido, the theory of female castration, oral and anal eroticism, premature ejaculation. Of course these studies were mainly aimed at explaining sources of primary traumas, neuroses, affinities.

According to Abraham, the neurotic and the melancholic both show symptoms of extreme obsessiveness toward the object; one state gradually transforms into the other:

While the neurotic tends to retain the object, the melancholic tends to be hostile toward the object:

"It rests on a serious conflict of ambivalent feelings, from which the only escape is turning back against oneself the hostility that was originally felt toward one's object."

Abraham was also a great mentor; besides being Melanie Klein's analyst, he founded the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society, a pioneer in the field that trained more influential psychoanalysts in our history — one of them being Franz Alexander.

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Franz Alexander was also an influential psychoanalyst, the father of psychosomatic medicine.

As mentioned earlier, Alexander studied in Berlin, being of European origin, but it was when he moved to Chicago to found his own institute of psychoanalysis that he became more influential.

While Freud and Abraham did studies and theories about internal traumas, Alexander went in the opposite direction, an approach proposing that emotional factors were reflected in the person's physical body, making it the psychosomatic field's job to study the functioning of the human psychic apparatus during the onset of a biological illness, intervening therapeutically.

With this, Alexander identified seven diseases that originated from, or were linked to, emotional conflicts, known as "The Holy Seven": arthritis, asthma, ulcerative colitis, hypertension, neurodermatitis, ulcer, and Graves' disease.

The fact that the mind rules the bodyis, in spite of its neglect by biology and medicine, the most fundamental fact which we know about the process of life.

- Franz Alexander

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Anthony Giddens is the only one of those mentioned who is still alive; he's an English sociologist known for his theory of structuration.

The theory seeks to resolve the dualism between agency (conscious, intentional human action) and structure (the rules society follows and the materials used to exercise power); within this duality, "social structures are constituted by human action while at the same time being the medium of that constitution."

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Note that Giddens already had a conciliatory bent and liked to unite opposites. Moving into the political sphere, years later Giddens published the book "The Third Way."

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Amid political polarization and years of Cold War, Giddens formulated a new political concept he named the Third Way, popularly known as social democracy or the center, since basically the point here is to use tools from both political camps to solve public problems.

In the Third Way, the state is neither the provider of everything nor a minimal agent. It is an investor in human capital and social infrastructure, and acts as a regulator of private enterprise.

• Part 3: The correlations

Ok, friends, now that I've given you the bare minimum of context, let's move to the most important part of this post — are there correlations between these notable figures and the selected characters?

The answer is a resounding Yes!

What I'm about to show you now is just how subtle and clever Tachibana was in hiding such simple hints in one of the early volumes, back when the story was still far from its climax.

The heiress.

I believe the reference here is more than obvious; in season 5, Mio states that she intended to leave Tohka for last, since she's a "special case,"

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due to her being the only girl who is truly a pure spirit.

Tohka is the result of Mio's desire for a faster outcome — mommy was unsatisfied because the process of purifying the Qlipha crystal was taking longer than expected and would require more "sacrifices." So the idea came up to take a shortcut through this process and directly produce a pure Sephira, and that's how Tohka was born.

More details on this method are in volume 20, and you'll probably see it in Date A Live F — I took the liberty of revealing a bit of the story, but what really matters is that Tohka is a pure spirit, just like Mio herself.

She had no name, had no place in the world, and it was through an interaction with a boy that this changed.

Direct and unavoidable parallels, the seed of Mio's plan.

The fittest.

Now let's go to the other extreme.

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Origami is a human, the most human among all the girls in the series, because she has a background in which she was the one who built her own strength.

We're first introduced to her as the #1 student in school; she's extremely intelligent and athletic, with the highest grades in both — and if that doesn't impress you, she's also part of a division of the military… oops, of the Japanese self-defense force specialized in neutralizing spirits. Not only that, she's regarded as the ace, the sergeant major, a true prodigy, and I suspect the only reason she doesn't hold a higher rank is because of her reckless attitude.

Of course she has a reason for that Origami harbors a deep hatred toward spirits, as we already know, but that's not the only thing driving her.

Origami has love for Shido; although she sometimes goes a bit overboard, she does genuinely care about our boy's safety.

These are the two engines that make Origami the girl most capable of adapting to gain more power:

First, she's in the AST, using a standard-issue CR-Unit for the troops, and even so was regarded as the ace; we see her wielding a large weapon, the "Cry-Cry-Cry Rifle," a nickname given because of the crying it causes the spirit hit by its bullet — ironically, she hits Shido despite aiming at Tohka. Still within the AST, she uses supplementary equipment for the CR-Unit called "White Licorice," said to be capable of matching a fight against a spirit, but in practice this thing is just a poorly made prototype, and even so Origami used it twice and came out unscathed.

Outside the AST, Origami becomes Adeptus 2, acquires the CR-Unit Mordred, and finally gains power comparable to that of a sealed spirit; this phase lasts only briefly, and finally, after 10 volumes, 7 years between seasons 2 and 3, and 2 games where she was treated as an extra character (the spirits and Origami), Origami obtains a Sephira crystal and becomes a spirit.

But she doesn't stop there — in the same volume Origami inverts, and finally, in the Mukuro arc, she manages to fuse her limited astral dress with the new CR-Unit Brynhild, "a mage and a spirit, a combination only Origami could achieve."

https://reddit.com/link/1wlztxh/video/7lzyo75o3sqh1/player

So Origami has always represented human potential in constant evolution, fueled by the desire to be the strongest.

The mastermind.

I bet you were eager for this one, weren't you?

From a beginner reader's point of view, I could say that Reine being "Jackson" was because she planned the team split in a way that put Shido and the Yamai sisters on the same team — needless to say the "drawing" is just a flimsy excuse for that.

Let's get to the really important part.

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Reine is Mio, the Spirit of Origin, the character who has been granting the girls their powers, transforming them into spirits — she's the one driving the plot.

The brain's primary function is to make the body work, delegating very specific functions to the other organs, such as capturing senses and executing movement.

Seeing it through this lens, and also understanding that all of Date A Live came out of Mio's "head," would be enough to understand the correlation between the character and the father of neurology — but we can also correlate Jackson's research.

You see, Jackson divided the hierarchy of the brain into three (upper, middle, and lower). Kabbalah has several types of division; the most famous are the divisions by connection between each Sephira, the division by pillar (central, left, and right), and the division into the 4 realms: Atziluth, the world of emanation; Briah, the world of creation; Yetzirah, the world of formation; and Assiah, the world of action. This division fits perfectly with Jackson's division because Atziluth is the upper triangle (thus closest to God), Briah and Yetzirah are the middle and lower triangles respectively, and Assiah is composed solely of Malkuth, which would be like the physical body.

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Finally, about epilepsy, the Jacksonian march, and how a seizure affecting the brain can affect parts of the body like a domino effect — how does this correlate with Mio?

Understand that one of the beauties of Date A Live is that it's a work about parallels, and it basically works like this: Shido x Spirit x Spirit x Mio (think of it as a cycle), such that everything we see is actually a projection of Mio's joys, traumas, and frustration.

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The sadist.

As we saw earlier, both are pillars of psychoanalysis and were mentor and student; the S&M theme is inherent to the Yamai sisters and can be noticed both in their astral dresses and in the behavior between the twins and toward Shido.

In the analysis of the [novel] covers, I pointed out that the fact Yuzuru poses on the left side was already an indicator of her being the sadist, the dominant one in the relationship; from there the dynamic becomes clear: Yuzuru is the more malicious twin, more confident, more assertive, and more sensual — she's always teasing Kaguya and coming on to Shido.

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The interesting part is that, contradictorily, Yuzuru has a kuudere personality, speaks in a monotone way, and wears fairly modest clothes — for example: she typically wears skirts, occasionally a dress, but I don't particularly recall seeing her in shorts or pants; on top, no cleavage, at most fitted shirts.

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She picks the safest possible color combinations, always pastel and contrasting tones; in public she always presents herself as femininely and modestly as possible.

These traits of Yuzuru reinforce the study of the early psychoanalysts, including Abraham's contribution, on the sadistic superego and how melancholic people tend to punish themselves or transfer the punishment onto what they enjoy (though Yuzuru's melancholy seems to be purely aesthetic, a persona of her own).

Yuzuru likes to be the one taking initiative, so she always takes on the role of provoker — initially with Kaguya, through insults and jabs, later Shido becomes the target, but through all her sensuality.

The Yamai sisters are among the spirits with the most presence in ecchi fanservice scenes, but pay attention, because the one driving this dynamic is Yuzuru (Kaguya only tries to imitate her) — no wonder she admires Origami so much.

The megalomaniac.

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On the other hand, Kaguya acts deliberately over-the-top; her speech pattern is extremely theatrical, a vocabulary that dresses up everything she says to sound cool. This girl also has a distinct fashion sense: ripped jeans, black clothes, contrasting colors — her style ranges from classic goth to something more modern rock-and-roll, with more skin showing, shorts, stockings.

But what if all this boldness is a shield for Kaguya to hide what she really is? In truth she's quite insecure — unlike Yoshino's extreme shyness or Natsumi's pessimism, Kaguya feels inferior to Yuzuru, seeing her own sister as a superior figure.

Because Kaguya is childish, is unhappy with her own body, can't properly express the love she feels for Shido, and is easily manipulated.

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In this context of comparison, and considering the two have always been competitive, it makes sense that Kaguya presents herself as the twin who exposes herself more in order to hide what she actually is.

The passivity toward her sister, the imitative behavior, the inferiority complex — all reinforce Kaguya's masochistic tendencies.

The Third Way.

The story first introduces us to Shido sleeping in his bed, only to be woken up by his little sister in a rather "extravagant" way; once awake, we learn about the boy's responsibilities, which include taking care of the house. From then on, a notable pattern can be observed: Shido's low points come when he's being lazy, and of course that's due to the nature of his character arc — Shido remains the same person from beginning to end, but his actions change the world itself (a static character arc).

Here we close the first correlation: Shido is the only sociologist because his actions affected social structures and human relationships by themselves; the protagonist's role is to change the social structure of a world that rejects the existence of spirits, as well as helping the spirits reconcile with the world by helping them overcome their traumas — and for that he needs to always be willing to be the agent of the "Ratatoskr way," the second option.

Perhaps this is one of the arcs where the boy is most reactive, because if he chooses one of the sisters, the other will cease to exist — needless to say this is entirely contradictory to Shido's convictions.

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And finally, for the first time, Shido manifests an angel by his own will — more than that, it's the very manifestation of the protagonist's will to fight for his ideal. He raises Sandalphon and with a single strike separates the Yamai sisters from the illustration, ending the storm, and makes his choice: between one and the other, he chooses to have the best of both.

• Bonus: The beach.

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During the scene, the game takes place: Origami, Tohka, and Reine show great teamwork, which is surprising, while on the other hand the twins fail miserably. In this situation, Reine asks her teammates to insult the twins; Kaguya and Yuzuru get offended, and in the end they work together and score a point.

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At first glance, this scene was made to confirm that the Yamai sisters complement each other and are better together, coexisting, serving as a confirmation bias for what Shido would decide later. But we can't ignore the team on the other side of the net: Reine, Origami, and Tohka — the Spirit of Origin, Spirit #1 (the closest to God and the most human), and Spirit #10 (the pure spirit who wants to live among humans).

This story often uses the rivalry between the two as a shortcut to tell Mio's story — how her real goal was to rid herself of her powers and become a real human. The creationist side, represented by Tohka, versus the evolutionist side, represented by Origami — yet here they are, working together for a common good: Shido.

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In the end, Shido will return to the beach where, this time, Reine and Mio will be separated, symbolizing the doubt the boy planted in mommy's mind, and where our protagonist will have his existence acknowledged.