Why do we live, and what do we live for? There is no score sheet to play towards in human existence, though some might frame wealth, power, or some other metric as their own measure of success. But can a human life be measured in terms of success or failure? Is failing to seize opportunity failing at life itself, or are such disappointments themselves intrinsic to the experience? Is a life born into suffering worth any less than a life born into splendor, or is suffering somehow meaningful as well? Maybe seeking meaning in life is itself a trap, one designed to rob us of enjoying what is in favor of pining for what might be. If our only certainty is change, perhaps our most vital skill is mutability, and thus “why do we live” demands an answer as flexible as life itself.
For all his power, it certainly doesn’t seem like Fortuna has arrived at a satisfying answer. Fortuna sacrificed thousands of lives so that his friend East might survive, but even that did not bring him happiness. East now exists as a spirit, a phantom untouched by either age or experience, who flees with Koko when Fortuna’s terrible crime is revealed. And so Fortuna lapses further still, coveting a past happiness he can no longer understand, assembling an army of bones to compliment his rejection of the future. When addressed by his well-earned title “King of the Dead,” Fortuna can do no more but gripe about its unscientific nature; the human consequences of his research escape him, only the lust for control remains.
Through his obsession with the past and desire for control of the future, Fortuna establishes himself as a rejection of everything Spirit Circle has taught us. While Fuuta’s other past selves revealed time and experience as the only antidotes to suffering, Fortuna seeks to use living souls to maintain a perpetual present, with him as its eternal overseer. Rather than opening himself up to novel experiences and personal transformation, Fortuna seeks the end of uncertainty, and possesses no curiosity regarding the perspectives of others. In fact, Fortuna seems to actually find strength in his own implacability, his willingness to center his own perspective at the expense of all else. How else could he destroy thousands of lives for the sake of his experiments without a single regret? There is a strength to be found in closing yourself off from the wheel of experience, though it is a hideous sort of strength.
The true nature of spirit energy, the fact that it unites all of us through our collective consciousness and systems of rebirth, ought to be a cause of celebration, a testament to our unity, and to the lessons we carry on even beyond death. It is the final symbol of life’s only promise: that things may not get better, but things will one day be different. But to Fortuna, it is merely a resource to be exploited, in order to maintain a fading simulacrum of a moment that was never meant to last. And so Fortuna lives among ghosts, relics and skeletons that offer no new insights or experiences, no hope for change. Fortuna’s great victory is also his undoing: by harnessing the wheel to preserve his memories, he builds a cage for himself, ensuring he too can never grow or escape. Having so completely isolated himself from human experience, Fortuna now lacks the perspective even to understand how what he is doing is wrong.
Koko tries, though. Standing before the King of the Dead, she speaks passionately of the atrocities he’s committed, and the countless lives he’s snuffed out, all their future possibilities gone in an instant. Learning of her quest for vengeance, Fortuna responds “vengeance? Why, did you know some of them?” To Fortuna, lives only matter insofar as they impact his own life and feelings, and all of his own feelings are tethered to the loss of his “comfortably boring” domestic life. Though the scale is far different, there are clear shades of our modern Kouko’s quest in Fortuna’s desires. Each is driven by the same failures: an inability to forgive the crimes of the past, and a desire to steer your future towards redressing those crimes. Whether it’s Kouko’s grudges or Fortuna’s quest for a static future, each has embraced a life of looking backwards, much like Lafelle’s bleak Soul Tower. The end point of both total veneration for the past and total abandonment of humanity is stagnation: one way or the other, you must learn and change if you wish to contribute to the cycle.
Even in Fortuna’s depraved state, the possibility for change still seems present, though perhaps out of reach. In his sharply illustrated reflections on losing touch with his master, we see Fortuna realizing the monster he’s become. What’s more, it’s clear what fragment of humanity led him to this moment. His continuation of his master’s research was a way of maintaining their connection, and perhaps once a healthy act of veneration rather than obsession. If Fortuna had simply leaned on Koko and Rune in his grief, he might have endured East’s passing with hope, and one day found himself enjoying some new comfortable boredom.
But it was not East’s death that robbed Fortuna of his possibilities: it was his own heedless pursuit of that one happy memory. Confronted by his old companions, he still fails to see he is the cause of his ruin, and even wonders if they might still return to the life they shared. Rune’s response to his optimism is heartbreaking; when asked what she’d like to do when Fortuna makes her human, she can only list off opportunities that have long passed. “I wanted to lift Koko-chan when she was little, I wanted to try East’s bread,” and so on. All these chances, or perhaps the future hope of equivalent chances, have been robbed from them not because Rune is a spirit being, but because of the violence Fortuna inflicted on this world. Those thousand glimmering moments that compose a life, each fresh and unexpected, have been stripped from the world in pursuit of the certainty of Fortuna, the inevitability of Fortuna, the constancy of Fortuna in every possible reality.
Whether it’s an unexpected brush with fatherhood in middle age, a reunion with old friends, or simply an acknowledgment of how you were supported and how lucky you’ve been, life has a way of surprising us, if we only allow ourselves to be surprised. We are connected by countless tiny threads that don’t require some spiritual faith to understand. Every day we impact those around us, and every day we have the opportunity to be impacted in turn, simply by the often frustrating, occasionally serendipitous friction of coexisting in the world. Whether we find anxiety or comfort in that inevitability is a matter of perspective; at the very least, I’d hope we can concede that there are both good and bad turns of fate, and all of us have a mix of each headed down the line.
Additionally, as Fortuna’s continued meddling in the lives of his successors makes clear, it is also essential that things end, that lives and stories pass into memory and myth. It was Fortuna’s inability to accept death that caused all of this suffering, and it was Kouko’s inability to forget her past lives that carried that suffering on into the present day, when every relevant party had long since passed away. Of all the things we can carry with us, why carry that hurt, that sense of grievance, as your final conclusion from the lives you’ve lived? If suffering and regrets are the only things we can truly maintain across the cycles, why maintain anything at all? Let the new world be born, let the new page be turned, let our every fault and grudge be eventually forgiven, that we might start again in the clarity of a fresh cycle.
But Fortuna can neither accept the wonder of change or embrace the inevitability of endings, and thus as Fuuta wakes from his final recollection, he finds his body under control by Fortuna himself. Things only get worse as Fuuta-Fortuna is informed that his mother must head into the hospital early, as they’re fearing complications regarding her unborn child. When Fuuta begs Fortuna to learn more, Fortuna callously responds that he already knows how this will end: both mother and child will die during a difficult birthing process, leaving Fuuta unwilling to battle Kouko, necessitating Fortuna’s control. And thus the apocalyptic, universe-spanning drama of Fortuna’s objectives are brought down to the most intimate human level: against a man who could claim the world and still be unhappy, our champion fights for two tiny lives that mean the world to him.
The blind spots of Fortuna’s philosophy are made clear as he directs Fuuta’s body at school, and marvels at the allegedly damning imperfections of Fuuta and his schoolmates. When Fuuta laments his struggles with schoolwork, Fortuna can only suggest that if Fuuta “had been a little bit more ordinary, you might have been happy.” Fortuna, who sees ordinary people as simply drones and sources of energy, cannot comprehend the thousand emotions we struggle with daily, and the countless ways we choose to exert and express ourselves in spite of our limitations. He thinks the only two choices are to either be “perfect like him” or to be completely mundane, because he has no appreciation for the variable, interconnected nature of human experience.
This line of thinking infuriates Fuuta, who has come to deeply respect the unique struggles inherent in any human life. And in fact, he swiftly puts the lie to Fortuna’s claims of indifference, stating that even Fortuna found something to relate to in how Lafelle suffered losses during his pursuit of eternity. Fortuna doesn’t fully believe his own philosophy, but it is far more convenient to disregard his humanity than to acknowledge he is only marginally different from the thousands of lives he has destroyed. This leaves him vulnerable to Fuuta’s counterpoints, as Fuuta stresses the obvious commonalities between all human lives, and the universal experience of accepting failure and continuing to push forward. Life need not be grand to be worthy, or spent in pursuit of some higher goal. To such self-defeating philosophies, Fuuta replies that “I struggle with my studies, and I’m not great at sports. But I have my friends, and I’m happy for now. That’s my way of life.”
“I’m an ordinary person, but even the life of an ordinary person has great meaning for the soul. Everything is part of an important journey. It’s all part of my life.” There is no shame in being ordinary, no need to be someone who captures attention. Our ordinary lives are still essential; most lives are ordinary, and through their ordinary behavior, they come to indelibly change the lives of those around them, creating an infinitely sprawling network of personal connections and altered roads. Like Flors’ statue, grand external achievements have little meaning in the abstract; looking back, it is the times we shared with others in pursuit of those achievements, those allegedly “ordinary” moments of conflict and concern, that truly define our lives, and that carry on with us to whatever new cycle may come.
Tensions culminate on the battlefield, as Fortuna squares off against Kouko for the fate of the future. Having lost so much he can no longer even explain why he pursues his goals, Fortuna claws at fragments of the past, possessing only the stifling certainty that the future is hopeless. But with one phone call, Fortuna’s cage of certainty is shattered: in spite of his predictions, Fuuta’s mother is safe, and has given birth to healthy twins. Dragged away from his selfish battle by Fuuta’s compassion, Fortuna soon finds himself looking down on two newborn yet familiar faces: his beloved teacher, and his apprentice Flambe. For all of Fortuna’s raging against the cycle, that cycle has ensured that everyone he cares about has enjoyed multiple fruitful lifetimes, carrying on the lessons of their prior lives to this present moment, this loving family.
As the past lives sharing his mind sob in gratitude at this moment and this reunion, it becomes increasingly difficult for Fortuna to justify his cosmic selfishness. But having spent so long driven only by his grudges, Fortuna still rallies against peace – and is dragged back by his diverse reincarnations, all those who were willing to learn from their time in the sun, and pass on their knowledge to their successors. One by one, Fuuta’s alternate selves reach out towards the future, stating “I’m not starting over, I’m starting now.” Whether imagined through the cyclical reincarnation of old souls or simply memory’s endurance and time’s renewal, the past need not be coveted, for it is always with us. Think not for a second that all good things are behind us; for every moment is a new beginning, and change is our only certainty. Ultimately, even Fortuna finds a sliver of comfort in Fuuta’s declaration that he no longer needs to fight, and that the healing of the cycle has already begun. “You don’t have to search for it. Everything is right here.”
Time moves on as always after Fortuna is defeated, prompting the end of Fuuta’s school year and Kouko’s transfer to a new school. But though Fuuta’s recollections of his past lives begin to fade, the lessons instilled by each of them remain. “It’s better to forget some things. But don’t forget gratitude. Treasure your friends. Treasure people. Treasure family. Treasure love.” Let that which we carry be the best parts of our memories: the relationships we’ve forged, and the times we’ve shared with the people we love. Let not regret or revenge define your memories; let them be full of treasured wonders, and live that you may populate them with many more. Be mindful of the past, but also hopeful for the future. Labor not on the validation of fame and fortune; seek your own joy, and remember that a life enjoyed is a life well-lived. Most of all, live kindly, and you will be treated with kindness in turn. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not for many years to come. But nothing ever truly ends, and change is our only certainty. Why do we live? Probably… because something good will happen.
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