Mephisto's Traumatic Past - Arknights Perish in Frost Episode 5 Reaction & Impressions

[@lynharth9947]

I did not expect this episode to pop off the way it did from start to finish!! Edit: it wasn't Talulah that gave Mephisto oripathy but another abusive family member of his. This was alluded more clearly in-game so i understand ur confusion.

[@SoulWhiteAngel]

As a note: No the rock wasnt from talulah, just a random woman from the backstory. As you see what happened later in flashbacks, mephisto kills them since he was getting abused by his parents, if i remember right, it was his mother to stop him from singing. (So the corpses are his parents) The language shifts i think its the anime showing that these languages exsist and it would be hard to change each to english while showing each of these. Like lungman language showing all the slang and whatnot. There is an interview on the official channel you should check out, the dub is something they talk about during it, it may or may not help understand some choices. Good watch regardless. Btw as part of the AK community and who watched the episode with a bunch of people. This episode was such an amazing episode 10/10 and the adaptation for it was better then the game. The entire thing. They changed the story for the better for this episode. (Talking bout the faust and mephisto parts)

[@alexvorobov4231]

Actually, Mephisto in game stated, in his talk to Faust. that his mother left him (and their house in general) long ago.

[@thangang3801]

Its a common things in Arknights in general when characters swear in their native tongue. For Swire its in Chinese and Russian for Mephisto. Don't give much thought about it, it not like they can put "FUCK" in the anime or subtitles.

[@KikyouLisianthus]

In the case of Mephisto/Eno being forced to swallow originium, it was because his stepmother (iirc?) hated and abused him on a daily basis and this was just another act of abuse. Though since it is originium, this ended up destroying any hope for a normal life he might have had since the originium granules scraped his throat and permanently damaged his ability to sing. When Faust/Sasha discovered that his friend got infected in such a way by his own family, he snapped and told Eno that they needed to be punished, and with Eno being an impressionable kid without understanding morals, he interpreted that to mean Sasha was telling him to punish his own family for the deed. And so Eno murdered his entire family and destroyed his home on the premise that Sasha told him to do it. Sasha would be mortified by the fact that his words were understood in such a way, but Sasha wanted to stay by Eno's side because he knew that he was important for Eno's mental/emotional stability, and he wanted to protect Eno from any other bad actors that might influence Eno in the future. So Sasha chose to infect himself with an originium nugget he had found and originally planned to sell, to show Eno that he will always stay by his side to serve as the anchor Eno needs to become happy. Keep in mind that Sasha only scratched his hand with that originium nugget, rather than swallowing it. Of course, circumstances brought them to Talulah and things will be explained further on that front eventually (like season 4, copium). But Talulah wasn't the one who caused Mephisto's infection, and in fact she had them join Reunion because they were already infected. As for the power level of Reunion's leaders, it's not about consuming originium, it's just a matter of how their respective infections have manifested to empower their arts and abilities. Eating originium does nothing special, other than causing lacerations along the digestive tract versus other vectors of infection like open wounds on the skin where originium particles will enter, or inhalation of originium dust through the lungs. Sure, it seems like Reunion has a lot of these heavy hitters because they are in the forefront of the story, but Rhodes Island has a whole unit of heavy hitters of their own, known as Elite Operators, including Blaze. The Elite Ops are all individually powerful enough to be deployed solo in hostile environments and turn the tide of battle on their own. They are each essentially the equivalent of our world's strategic weapons (ie. nukes) which means their deployments are also monitored nervously by the great powers of Terra. That's why the anime's adaptation of Blaze's introduction last episode fell completely fell flat on its face. Blaze is one of the most powerful assets of Rhodes Island because her power allows her to boil her own blood (her official theme song is literally "Boiling Blood" by Christina Vee), using it as a catalyst for high intensity explosions, combined with her unrivaled strength and tenacity that allows her to drop from helicopters without a parachute while still carrying passengers like Amiya. Her apperance last episode should have caused much of the LGD building to collapse from her helidropping directly onto the roof, and the anime failed to explain that she was using droplets of her own blood as hypersonic bullets to assassinate a lot of Faust's phantom crossbowmen unit as they retreated. The last episode had a ton of problems in terms of quality, so I am relieved to see that this newest episode has stepped the quality back up.

[@Nevri.]

It's not Crunchyroll. The subs (I'm pretty sure) are done by Yostar themselves. They do it with EN localization in game too. While OG lines are fully in japanese, translation and EN dub adds those native words, along with accents to, I assume make operators feel more real and that they're from different countries. I assume it's something Yostar discussed with Hypergryph (studio that makes Arknights) about localization process, so it's fully intentional.

[@XenoflareBahamut]

LOL can you imagine Fumizuki's subtitles?

[@Nevri.]

@@XenoflareBahamut Urusai, kono yaro!

[@soloprimogeniture4678]

A thing about Blaze is that she signifies also some level of radical prejudice that the infected has against the general populace. Greythroat is Uninfected. So Blaze interprets her curiosity about the infecteds badly. This shows that even the "good guys" infecteds are STILL haunted by how the society treats them. They are still suspicious and scared.

[@al103]

Not exactly curiosity. RI kinda have pro-Infected bias, it was toned down this episode (Blaze especially, but Amiya too) and Greythroat kinda don't understand why Infected bandits get "not getting shot in the head" card when it's OK to kill normal bandits who try to kill Infected. Her questions may seem as rude to some who don't get where she comes from.

[@NezeruGaming]

Greythroat's "curiosity" doing a lot of heavy lifting there when she has actual animosity towards the infected, despite being part of Rhodes Island.

[@al103]

@@NezeruGaming ??? You buy in Blaze's bullshit or something? Greythroat never had any animosity against Infected - like her best friend is Amiya who is VERY visibly infected in a way that you can't ignore, hell she grew on Rhodes Island landship - she couldn't do that without interacting with Infected all the time. Greythroat hate those Infected who treat their infection like indulgence to do everything bad as "world shat on me so I have right to shit on the world" like big part of Reunion and... well... people who killed her parents (and honestly in game start of the arc Blaze is very VERY close to that category). Also Greythroat can't understand why Infected suffering is somehow different from non-Infected suffering, that's why she asked Blaze that question in the game. And thing is... it's NOT. It's just much easier for Infected to become victim of said suffering besides what they get by default with Oripathy. Things in Lungmen helped her internalize that "easier to suffer" part.

[@ФёдорЛепински]

And besides that. The Gray Throat is very afraid of getting infected. It got to the point that when she accidentally touched the originium with her hand, she then rubbed the place with sandpaper until it bled, thinking that this way she would be able to remove its traces.

[@amooosasaki2299]

I loved this episode so much. It just kept getting better and better as the episode continued and the ending was very cinematic and fitting. How they showed Faust's arts was very interesting and it was way better than anything I've imagined while reading the story. Definitely my favorite episode in arknights 10/10.

[@bakutie]

i think the subtlety of mephistos writing was shown in the anime pretty well, which honestly surprised me sadly a lot of people miss that from the game too and I assume it'll be the same here cuz of how heavy handed his character was in the s1 parts anyway damn the anime improved this scene quite a bit I didn't get much feels from the scene in-game, things were only super sad when you find out more abour reunion later but this does a fine job on it's own so props to yostar

[@dreamers8703]

About Greythroat and issues she have with Blaze will be explained in the next episode and after you watch and want to know more about her you can read her archive file and her module lore.

[@tachyonrailgun]

10/10 episode. So much better than the last one and the changes they made from game were really really good. And we got to see the black raincoats and Lin which was honestly hype. Great job with that introduction and showing the "darker side of Lungmen" as you called it. A few others have explained the stuff with Mephisto and the "strange rock" , so ill leave it at that!

[@Neen746]

As others have pointed it out..Talulah wasn't the one who shoved the rock into Mephisto's throat..but I wanna correct some people saying it was his mom/step mom..no it wasn't..so I'm gonna sum up some of the things the anime cut from the flashback: -Eno taught Sasha how to read and write..brought him books and bread -there was monologue of Faust agonizing before the flashback started saying that no books has ever taught him or wrote how to deal with such situtions (talking about Eno) and wonders how things would've turned out if he never let him go back home on that day (speaking about the day Eno got infected) -The woman who shoved the rock into Eno's throat was just a woman at his house..Eno described her as a "fat woman" in the game -Several adults were abusing Eno..not only his father and that woman..(Eno's mom left the house according to him)..Eno tells Sasha that one man slashed his leg..the other slashed his back but he never referred to one of these men with "father"..he then tries to calm furious Sasha down and says "my wounds are okay now thanks to that originium rock that fat woman shoved down my throat!"..but Sasha gets even more horrified -Adults abuse wasn't the only thing Eno had to put up with..he was bullied by other kids and Sasha often came and beat them up -The flashback makes it clear that Eno's sense of right and wrong is blurred and his emotions and feelings about his own suffering are numb..whenever Sasha wanted to bandge him up he went: "don't care about my wounds!!...it doesn't matter!!" -Finally..Eno actually killed the abusive adults almost on the same day of his infection..he used his arts to make the kids bullies kill the adults..he did it because Sasha was so furious about his wounds (the leg and back slash) that he snapped and told him that whatever caused it needs to be punished and destroyed so he did exactly what Sasha told him by going back home and killing them on that same day..later Sasha tells him to never do that again but he never explains why which got Eno confused Pheww..that's it for Eno and Sasha flashback..as for Greythroat and Faust conversation..about more than half of it was cut..the conversation in the game had them talking about following orders and people who don't think for themselves but just follow the orders..Faust says that such people are like machines with 1 task appointed to them (this was him referring indirectly to Mephisto who just let Faust and Talulah decide for him what to do because he trusts them which caused him to be enabled and influenced by Talulah to become cruel..Faust calls Talulah out for taking advantage of Mephisto's trust so she blackmails him saying that Mephisto needs him to feel value and because he'll die without him around)

[@capriumnoir6426]

The adaptation of this episode was great, though I wanted it to last a bit longer to let the hatred for Mephisto fester a bit more for the anime only's so they would be conflicted in relating to him when they see their backstory, like most of the Arknights Players. The only tiny complaint I have for this episode was they didn't show the part where Faust unintentionally caused Mephisto to kill his parents, Faust seeing the abuse encouraged Mephisto to stand up for himself and Mephisto misinterpreting it to just killing his family, absolutely horrifying Faust.

[@hessianqrow7977]

Blaze being a doting big sis and trauma happening just Arknights being Arknights 🥺

[@OhWhenDidiAsk]

Lungmen is based on Hong Kong so the characters swear in Cantonese (at least sometimes). As a native Cantonese speaker there’s been one lungmenite line this season that I can understand. And it probably shouldn’t be translated for tos reasons

[@kenkaneki3873]

As others have said already the non translated lines when characters speak foreign languages is a carry over from the game Also Talulah didn't give the rock to Mephisto it was someone else, the dead people from the flashback were his family that he killed from getting fed up over the abuse.

[@VCE4]

"Funny" how this episode contained cutest and darkest (so far) parts in itself at the same time. There are a lot of more important stuff to talk about, but damn that moment with Amiya being cuddled by Blaze was cute.

[@xriya7466]

I might be wrong but the i dont think taluhla was the person who forced the originite on mephisto

[@bakaoniichan193]

Mephisto got the originium shoved down his throat by his grandmother, who was part of his abusive family

[@ordinaryhuman1285]

​@@bakaoniichan193 Yes she did it becouse they hated his singing.

[@shiori2182]

@@bakaoniichan193 stepmother iirc, not grandmother.

[@Foxfiend]

Surprised you didn't mention the part between Amiya and Blaze. That was a true 10/10 moment.

[@Clarste]

When Blaze was complaining about people using the Infected, she wasn't talking about Reunion using the Infected, she was talking about Lungmen using Rhodes Island to fight Reunion.

[@Razor4884]

Yeah, there aren't very many episodes in the season, so a lot of things are being crammed into some episodes. That's why you may have felt the episode was all over the place. But nevertheless, I think it was good overall.

[@shadymann9468]

Not really a spoiler, just clarification it was just some woman who did that to Mephi it was just another senseless tragedy that lead Eno to become Mephisto.

[@fenjix5982]

in the game the storytelling change from first person focus on just amiya or chen like previous chapter to third person where you can see what each character dealings with. and that actually make the story pacing very slow in the game

[@mattpacana3538]

Btw the reunion leaders being strong isnt because they got origninium shoved down their throats, its because they dont care, the ones weve seen that affect the battlefield so much are ones that dont care as much about their lives anymore. They get their power from their infection, the more they use it, the more it consumes them, the more powerful it can become, thats why at episode 2 frostnova started coughing, her symptom was flaring frol overusing her arts yet she doesn't care, for her it was worth it. Talulah aswell, she does not care if she dies from originium, so she uses it wantonly, but then again she does have 'that' which kinda makes her a bit more special. Mephisto, he only started truly making the horde when faust is presumed dead and he just gave up all hope and using his arts even to his bodies demerit, and i wonder if they would show bird mephisto here aswell, it was heart breaking. Amiya should be as strong as them, hell maybe even stronger due to something done by someone important during rhodes islands past, when it still wasnt called that, the only reason she isnt? The rings, they suppres her power so that her infection doesn't progress as much. Basically a lot of infected can become absurdly dangerous if they dont care enough, to face the pain brought by originium and harness its power to strengthen them, but they still care, they still want to live. Of course it doesn't mean that you want to die, its just that dying is worth ir for you, that its too important for you that you wouldnt care about yourself anymore as much as a normal person should.

[@mattpacana3538]

@krismas7531 yep that's why I was being vague about things, just because amiya is stronger isn't really a spoiler as to what is her strength, talulahs probably not gonna be seen this season but I still worded it that way as it's still kinda wrong but right at the same time so shouldn't really be spoilery , and bird mephisto can turn to anything at this point so shouldn't be spoilers I think?

[@LynxLynxLynx0222]

It’s so much better than the last one… wish we can see more gray throat tho

[@vp7877]

Yeah Talulah didn't do that. It looks like before they were reunion

[@oldcat30]

Talulah didnt shove that rock to him, its mephisto family i forgot if its his mother or grandma, but definetly not Talulah. thats what i remember from the game

[@Marinetr]

Mephisto is a big damn troublemaker. He should have just follow Crownslayer and forge his path instead of making petty trouble for everybody.

[@gellal1]

they really sacrifice the previous ep for this ep and its worth it

[@steliosmamatas2970]

The best gacha is getting an amazing anime as well