I find it weird that the Mind Reading Thing specifically warns you away from the Horned Woman, and that the Horned Woman's posture suggests that of an old woman. Could it be that the Horned Woman also has a Sense Sphere inside of her, and thanks to her low sense of self, is just repeating whatever information it absorbs? After all, the kanji used to write "horn" can also be read as "antennae". If this is the case, then the information she takes in would also be transmitted to the Mind Reading Thing - adding to her suffering by providing additional delusions she involuntarily has to listen to. This would explain her warning you away from the Horned Woman, and the Horned Woman's incongruous, elderly mannerisms. If the two are connected, then the Horned Woman could just as easily pick up impulses from the Mind Reading Thing - physically expressing mannerisms that the Mind Reading Thing no longer can (given the awkward posture the Sense Sphere forces her into).

    There is a small amount of cut text still present on the game disc, but it isn’t terribly exciting. Most of the cut lines have already been translated and included on their respective character dialogue pages. The remaining content takes the form of removed cutscenes and items. The first cutscene is a simpler version of the intro cutscene, which features less medical terminology and a strange alteration to the phrasing of “barbiturate sedative”:

    "Wake up."
    "It’s no good! There’s a disturbance in his brain waves. Increase the barbituric acid sedative!"
    "Cerebral blood flow has entered normal range."
    "Wake up.”

    The second cutscene appears to have been initially included to help spell things out for confused players. The entire sequence is an internal monologue by Koriel #12:

    ＜Again…? Am I not even allowed to go mad? The world was destroyed, and the Idea Sefirah of the Creator and Preserver birthed a new one. The world is repeatedly distorted through the wheel of reincarnation; it is erased, it is born again, distorts again, and I sin again. I must return the pain. This world that repeats itself like the punishment of Sisyphus… pain in order to preserve itself… in order to break free from this cycle… ＞

    And finally, there are four mysterious lines that read only as “erased”. These lines are located between the Archangel’s first post-game line and the Mind Reading Thing’s only post-game line.

    Most of the cut items involve redundant warping abilities, such as the “Stair Bone” which warps you near a floor exit or the “Flight Box” which, when opened, will either warp you somewhere else on the current floor or move you straight to the next level. Similarly, “Treasure Bones” will (usually) warp you to a room containing one or more items. There are several more movement-based items which only affect Grotesques, like the “Chaos Torturer” which shuffles the positions of all enemies on the current floor or the “Alignment Torturer” which lines them all up in a single file (probably intended for use with Arrow Bones). The “Box Worm” (which “inspects the contents of boxes and traps”) and “Emission Wings” (which “keep you from feeling weird and aroused”) appear to reference mechanics no longer in the game. Finally, there are the “Wings of the Holy Ghost”, imitation wings which raise your max HP, VT, ATK, and DEF by 2.

    The sprites used on this website were ripped by first loading them into memory and then using sprite ripping software to capture them. That is to say, if I wanted to rip a sprite, I had to first encounter it in the game. If I can ever manage to decode the raw graphics data I’ve ripped from the game disc (and if the results are interesting) then perhaps this will one day become a proper article of its own.

    In the world after the Great Heat Wave, it seems that matter has a habit of fusing together sporadically. Multiple characters became conjoined, the Mind Reading Thing fused with a Sense Sphere, and Urim and Thummim are absorbed by a distended wall. I picture stuck items working much the same way, with the equipment fusing directly to the flesh in some kind of Videodrome inspired abomination. This also makes removal via Gliro theft or Feather Worms extra horrific.

    It's an even further stretch, but I almost wonder if consuming Flesh items or Hearts works on the same principle - with the 'gulp' sound effect not representing swallowing the food in a traditional manner, but rather it being absorbed into your injured body. The Flesh just melts into the wound and fills the cavity - an image that is strangely fitting if the flesh really does come from your dead clone predecessors. It also makes the "eating while full" HP upgrade mechanic make a bit more sense as well, seeing as you're increasing your defenses by way of grafting on extra mass/growths.

    This character wasn’t always present in the Archangel’s backstory. Around the time of Baroque’s initial release on the Sega Saturn, STING encouraged the creation of fanworks by offering various rewards to participating fans. One such fan project was a story entitled “Younger Brother” by Masami Kiyanaka.

    The story is told from the perspective of the Archangel’s severely disabled and disfigured older sister. Her life is one of isolation and loneliness, until the Archangel is old enough to come visit her and quickly becomes her only friend. As he grows older, he eventually gets involved in the Malkuth and disappears. He occasionally returns to her in secret during the night, his behavior growing more fanatical as he becomes increasingly obsessed with creating a world in which she won’t have to suffer from her disabilities. In the wake of the Great Heat Wave, she is left in a world where she no longer stands out as abnormal. Her beautiful, accomplished parents have fused together into a disfigured creature, not unlike the daughter they were so ashamed of. In this blasted wasteland, she waits in vain for her brother to fulfill his final promise - that he would one day return for her.

    This backstory manages to be simultaneously haunting and humanizing, and it’s easy to see why Yonemitsu took a special liking to this contribution. He chose to effectively canonize it by working it into his own Baroque prequel “Little Girl, a Songbird was Distorted by the World”, in which the Archangel references both the sister character and his promise to her (“Wait for me”).

    For the (then upcoming) Playstation port, Yonemitsu would attempt to rework this backstory and deliver it through additional dialogue lines for the Archangel. In Yonemitsu’s version however, the Archangel’s sister died in isolation a long time ago, dying all alone because society averted their eyes from her disfigured appearance. Because of this, the Archangel wishes to distort the world to a point where those people can no longer avert their eyes from the unpleasant aspects of life. I feel like this was a mistake, further compounded by future embellishments (like the sister being shot to death in the manga and the remake suggesting God assumed her appearance). These clichéd additions caused me to initially dismiss the original story entirely. But when I finally sat down to read it in earnest, I was surprised by how good it was.

    Knowing the Archangel is alive but can never return for his sister is an incredible, emotional gut-punch of an ending - but it does get slightly undermined by the Archangel’s ability to project himself through the Sense Spheres all over the world. It's also difficult for me to see this intensely compassionate version of the Archangel as the same character from the original game. Despite my own nitpicks regarding this story, it’s unfortunate that this talented contribution became so diluted by the port and remake’s changes, including their reimagining of the Archangel as a petty villain out for revenge on a society that turned a blind eye to his sister’s suffering. With so little of her work actually making it into the game, it’s ironic that Masami Kiyanaka was never acknowledged in the credits of the Playstation port.

    I’ve amassed a disproportionate amount of trivia about Sack Thing because she’s my favorite character, so I’ll be dumping it all here.

    As is fairly evident, Sack Thing avoids putting herself at risk of possible retaliation by quoting what others have said and rarely speaks directly using her own words and opinions. This is especially tragic when considering that the "Luka" she refers to is from a Suzanne Vega song about a battered child. Other references made by her are to real life poets Sakutaro Hagiwara and Paul Éluard. In a stream commemorating the release of the Switch port, I had the opportunity to ask Yonemitsu who the frequently quoted "Marie" is. He (jokingly?) claimed that it was a reference to Atelier Marie, a game Yonemitsu wanted to play at the time, but was too busy to.

    The chains and bindings on the burial garb she's wearing imply some disturbing things about what it means to die in the world of Baroque. It suggests a fear that the dead might not remain inanimate. Due to her proximity to the Coffin Man, I have a theory that she had been interred and he accidentally excavated her while he was busy converting the catacombs into training dungeons. I imagine he got annoyed by her constant chatter, so he dragged her just out of earshot before resuming his work.

    Natural distortions appear to exaggerate physical features in an attempt to accommodate strong desires, such as Neck Thing’s elongated neck (which aids him in averting his eyes from the horrific surroundings he helped to create), or his body beginning to absorb his surroundings (in an attempt to satiate his gluttony). Research Angels have enlarged brains to aid in their pursuit of knowledge, the Sentry Angel’s monolithic body helps him to obstruct your passage, and even the Horned Woman’s antennae could be growths that aid her in forming ‘connections’ with others she wishes to emulate. This reasoning suggests that Sack Thing’s lopsided and unusually strong exhalations could be the result of an enlarged mouth or other orifice that formed to meet her desperate need for air (due to her father's strangulation attempt).

    Her claim to have overheard the separation surgery the protagonist underwent as a child is very interesting. I can see two ways to interpret this, either a) she was actually present and Koriel #12 really was a conjoined twin, or b) she's catching repeated fragments of Koriel #12's delusions through the nearby Horned Woman. I tend to interpret Koriel #12's past as a conjoined twin to be purely a figment of his Baroque, but I must admit that there's much more evidence in Sack Thing's past to support that this all really happened.

    The Dr. Noda which Sack Thing mentions stands out amongst her other quotes, which seem to be mostly poetry related. This reference, combined with claiming to have overheard Koriel #12's surgery, suggests that her father (Box Thing) may have been a medical professional at one point (with Dr. Noda being one of his colleagues). This explains why she would have been present to overhear the surgery, despite being far too young to have been working at a hospital. Box Thing's consideration of using a heart seed for a transplant before disregarding it as "unscientific" also supports the theory that he was a medical professional of some sort (although it's worth noting that he says he doesn't know how to perform a transplant anyway).

    The line she quotes from Dr. Noda mentions "the pretend angels", and claims that they are "religious fanatics" who have ruined the world. This disdain is hugely important, because it strongly suggests that Box Thing's past as a doctor and Koriel #12's separation surgery happened before any of these characters were inducted into the Malkuth. The remake, conversely, depicts the incredibly young conjoined twins as already having been Koriel members, which makes very little sense to me.

    When shown Sack Thing's crystal, the Sentry Angel solemnly advises it would be better shown to her father (unless you're playing the PS1 version, which utterly ruins the Sentry Angel's character by having him suggest you show her father because he thinks it'll be funny). This strongly implies that her father, Box Thing, was a member of the Malkuth Order - something that is further confirmed by his knowledge of the Artificial Sense Spheres and the Archangel. Box Thing was probably recruited at some point after the surgery and moved to the Special Area where the Nerve Tower was located.

    Based on statements surrounding the cut “Quantum Interference Train”, Sack Thing may have been on her way to visit her father when the train derailed during the Great Heat Wave. If any of that material survived to the final scenario draft, perhaps Box Thing went looking for her in the wake of the disaster, only to find her distorting within the trainwreck. The recent apocalypse could better explain his willingness to commit murder-suicide, and his babbling (to the Sentry Angel?) about the act he committed could have led to an attempted arrest (explaining the shackles he wears). Escaping into the Nerve Tower, he now searches for a means to resurrect his “dead” daughter.

    As one last note, the quotations she chooses are either informative and relevant to nearby events, or lines close to her heart that express how she's feeling (drawing from her interest in poetry, for example). The fact that she liked Dr. Noda's anti-religious sentiment enough to echo it and her inability to retreat from her traumatic memories through a Baroque (unlike many other NPCs), paint her as a secular realist who is far more empathetic than most of the other NPCs you meet in the game. Upon making contact with Box Thing (an event she probably learns of through the Horned Woman's transmissions), she begins to collapse under the past condemnations of her father and the violence he committed against her. Opening up to the protagonist and the death of Neck Thing have a noticeable impact on her stilted speech patterns, and she slowly begins speaking more normally over the course of the game. This erosion of her Baroque, tragically, makes her even more vulnerable to the traumatic memories of her father. Sack Thing's mental health then deteriorates until she is capable only of screaming for death.

    In an early interview, Yonemitsu stated that the inspiration for Baroque came from the idea that we unconsciously carry guilt from our use of natural resources for energy and our consumption of animals for food. It's hard for me to see the Angelic Insects (feathered beings sealed into cramped cultivation tubes) and not think of factory farming. They're both beings extracted from the natural world and subjected to an existence of pure suffering for the convenience of mankind. I can’t help but feel it’s significant that the protagonist must give up the convenience offered by the Angelic Rifle and the exploitation of the Littles in order to progress in the game.

    If the design-note inspired explanations in "Baroque World Guidance" are to be believed, even the worms you find in the game are sentient - their special attributes fueled by distortions their own delusions create. Ironic, considering that these parasites' delusions generate nothing but positive effects for you, their host. It's as if they themselves are blissfully ignorant that they survive only through the exploitation of others.

    After all, pearls are formed around impurities (such as parasites) by oysters in an attempt to protect themselves from damage. Humans certainly have a parasitic relationship with the planet, which according to Baroque, is God’s “language”. Perhaps the relationship between humanity and the God of Baroque is not so much one of “creator and creation” but rather “host and parasite”. Is it really a coincidence that the worm-like parasites of the game resemble the Malkuth cross, a symbol which (according to the Baroque Report series) was modeled after the same kind of RNA transcription that certain viruses use in order to parasitically replicate themselves?

    “Baroquism Syndrome” and “Baroque Interludium” by Mariko Shimizu are, like “Baroque”, highly subjective works that play with the uncertainty of reality constantly. It’s difficult to tell if the events of these stories even happened at all, as they’re framed in a way that suggests they may have been just another fabricated “distorted delusion” left behind before a Baroque-influenced suicide. That said, there are a few twists contained within these tales that have seriously distorted my personal delusions regarding the core game.

    It’s difficult to tell how exactly the Malkuth’s Tarantella Melody conditioning works, but it seems as if applicants are meant to be driven Baroque by listening to the sound file. They are then subjected to a trial - with the successful applicants becoming angels and the failures becoming meat puppets. The Malkuth adherents we see in the story are clearly Baroque in their thinking and yet they don’t express any Baroque mannerisms. This leads me to believe that successful candidates undergo some kind of brainwashing (as Kitsune suggests) to stabilize them and further bring them into line with Malkuth doctrine.

    The meat puppets, however, are apparently not given any such treatment. Fumi exhibits the drifting eyes and trembling fingertips of a Baroque when not being controlled, only appearing normal when he’s being puppeteered. The process of controlling these failures is never elaborated on, but seems to involve soaking the head of the puppet prior to control being established. Such brainjacking is implied to have been used on Fumi, Ruby, Reika the Grotesque, Suzume during his reunion with Kitsune, and even the young girl the Archangel controls in Yonemitsu’s own prequel “Little Girl, a Songbird was Distorted by the World.”

    So just who are the people speaking through these characters? In most cases, this is not explored (although I personally suspect the woman in the mourning dress of being Ruby’s puppet master). Despite this lack of information, I believe the person usually in control of Fumi is none other than the protagonist of “Baroque”, Koriel #12.

    In her “World Guidance” interview, Mariko Shimizu states that “the protagonist is essentially the reader”, further implying that Kitsune’s “long, long email” is being sent directly to Koriel #12 - also referred to in the story as “the winged youth” and “you”. At the climax of “Baroquism Syndrome”, this youth flat out admits he was ordered to hijack Fumi by “an Angel above me” (a word only one kanji away from “Archangel” in Japanese). But even before this, the winged youth is aided by Fumi during Kitsune’s trial. And going even further back, similarities begin to crop up between Koriel #12 and the things Fumi says and does while being controlled.

    Both the puppeteered Fumi and Koriel #12 are associated with great cataclysms of fire that ‘melt the world like butter’. Both are very effeminate (Koriel #12 is voiced by a woman in promotional materials and is said to have gender dysphoria in the initial publication of Yonemitsu’s prequel story). And most significantly, both have blurred senses of self due to having become conjoined with other people. After all, the line between one person and another often becomes confused within the Malkuth’s mental network of ‘failures’ and puppet masters. The most prominent example of this is the consciousness that Fumi and Ruby share, perhaps as a result of becoming integrated into the same network. But what if one of the puppet masters got partially caught within the mind of one of his slaves, say during an emergency situation involving the flooding of the Nerve Tower?

    I’m pretty certain that Koriel #12’s Baroque concerns his past as a conjoined twin. The Horned Woman confirms this when given the protagonist’s crystal (or Baroque). Baroques are delusions and delusions are, by definition, fabrications. So why would Koriel #12’s Baroque concerning his past be any different? Could this delusion be the result of him undergoing a faulty ‘separation’ when he was subjected to the Tarantella Melody while in control of Fumi? Is the ‘conjoined twin’ Baroque he possesses merely the result of trying to cope with having lost a part of his mind to Fumi during the accident?

    It’s interesting to note that Koriel #12’s Baroque is projected onto the world in the wake of the Great Heat Wave. Just as he described through Fumi, the world has melted like butter. Except back then, he never said anything about separation anxiety to Kitsune. That fixation only comes later, after the events of “Baroquism Syndrome”. And sure enough, the Great Heat Wave causes many of the survivors to melt together, becoming cruel parodies of conjoined twins. His desire to become “whole” again is projected outward onto the victims of the disaster. Many suffer greatly due to their respective fusions, and yet the protagonist never seems to question what he’s done to them. His lack of reaction makes me think he genuinely feels he’s helped them. This would be in line with what he says through Fumi - that burning the world is the only way to save it. So whenever he remakes the world, he’s not interested in reverting the damage he’s caused. In his eyes, it’s an improvement. His only regret seems to be that his “lost half” was more worthy of life than himself.

    This all-consuming guilt over the sacrifice of his other half is important, because I believe it’s what caused the formation of this Baroque in the first place. Once released from the Malkuth brainwashing, it sounds as if he rejected the organization out of disgust - no longer wanting to be associated with their fake wings. Freed of their conditioning, he would have to come to terms with what he’d been doing while part of the Order, including the use of other human beings as flesh puppets. The sense of guilt and unworthiness he feels after his exploitation of Fumi could easily lead to a fantasy in which they were naturally conjoined from birth and not through his own actions as part of the Malkuth. In this way, he could at least ease the pain of responsibility. In this way, the symptoms of their faulty separation would no longer remind him of his cruel deeds.

    The scar on Koriel #12’s waist would contradict all of this, except that in “Baroque”, those who don’t become Grotesques still have their physiology distorted by their delusions (e.g. the Research Angels’ enlarged brains, the Sentry Angel’s wide body, etc). This would also explain why the scar is perpetuated through the cloning process (as injuries aren’t encoded into DNA) and why the Crypt Angel is unable to remove it.

    This fringe theory is undoubtedly a Baroque (as Mariko Shimizu was given a lot of artistic freedom), but so many factors coincide with it. Only one of the twins being able to “be awake” at a time is suggestive of Fumi’s consciousness being suppressed while Koriel #12 is using “their” body, the chess games they play a reflection of the complex schemes and trials they played out. It’s far too Baroque for even me to consider, but perhaps the queen sacrificed in their game from the Memory cutscene could have been Ruby herself.

    Whether or not any readers find this delusional account compelling, I hope it goes to demonstrate how incredible the world of “Baroque” is at making the player’s imagination run wild. This potential to always find something new, either real or delusional, is what keeps me coming back to this game over and over again.

    Despite my heavy (and hypocritical) use of images from the "Baroque: ~the Missing Paradigm~" manga for this section of the site, my feelings regarding this adaptation are not very positive. I think Ueda's self-assessment of her work as being a significant departure from the source material is perfectly fair and accurate. It takes some substantial liberties with Baroque's themes and I wish someone with a style more suited to the world of Baroque had been given the task of depicting the game instead. Q-Hayashida's striking visualization of "Maken X" comes to mind, and THORES Shibamoto’s Baroque doujinshi perfectly encapsulate the decadently intricate and diseased atmosphere of Baroque's world. Meanwhile, Ueda's incredibly safe and normal interpretation of the Malkuth (for instance) is in stark contrast to the terrifying and eccentric cult of the prequel stories and the game itself, which is a huge letdown.

    My biggest gripe about the manga is nothing to do with Ueda's actual work, but rather how the PS2/Wii remake of Baroque is arguably more concerned with adapting this manga than they are with preserving the original game - going so far as to allow the player to tear Eliza and Alice apart once again in the post-game. The manga-inspired remake and the manga itself effectively form a barrier to new fans, a thick and obscuring lens formed by other artists' personal interpretations of the original game. In order for new players to have that same, highly personal experience with the original, they must first break through this mountain of derivative re-imaginings and embellishments. Separating these artists’ personal interpretations from one’s own (still-developing) understanding of the original can be a daunting process, especially for Western fans that have to overcome the additional language barrier presented by the original game. It presents an unfair system, in which the interpretations of a privileged few artists get to eclipse and deny that same process of discovery and personal interpretation to others. It’s a challenge that most prospective players just don’t have the interest in undertaking - either forfeiting the opportunity to have their own experience or just passing the game by entirely.

    One of Baroque’s more elusive event triggers involves the walls of Urim and Thummim’s chamber beginning to distend and absorb them. In my research and experimentation, it appears that Neck Thing’s burial is the only thing that can delay this from happening. I had once assumed the pair were sinking into the earth out of guilt just like everyone else, but it appears far more likely that you’re just satiating the appetite of the planet (and therefore God?) by feeding it NPCs in the Outer World. If you wait more than a few cycles to bury Neck Thing, Urim and Thummim will be absorbed instead. Someone will be eaten no matter what, and just like the flashback involving the conjoined twins, one must be sacrificed so that the other may live.

    This theory becomes far, far more horrifying the more you think about it. Thummim comes to the conclusion that they’re “becoming one” with the world, using much the same language as God and her multiple divinities use to describe fusing with Koriel #12. It always used to bother me that Thummim is so unconcerned with their plight but one fact explains this apathy. They’re becoming part of God, and according to Alice, God can’t feel pain or sadness.

    As Urim and Thummim become one with the world, and therefore God, they are losing the ability to feel anything negative. Their voracious hunger is numbed and they begin refusing food, insisting that they no longer have any interest in it. Thummim doesn’t even pause to comment on Urim’s fate as she’s sucked into the wall and disappears forever. We can even see that the Sentry Angel looks as if he’s being digested once he becomes buried (his body becomes a gory, skeletal mess and one of his arms falls off) - and yet, neither Thummim nor the Sentry Angel voice any concern that they’re decomposing alive as the earth consumes them.

    "Master is born at the same time he dies. Master dies at the same time he is born. Mayhaps that was the beginning of everything..."

    Merging with God before the player has fulfilled certain conditions means that Koriel #12 remakes the entire world in every detail, with the single exception that he does not exist within this reiteration of the world - instead being replaced by his dead twin. It is clear from the dialogue following the Consciousness Simulation that the Malkuth have been producing clones for some time now, further evidenced by the large amount of gear and resources left behind by your fallen predecessors.

    To what extent has the world been reshaped over time by this never-ending cycle? Is the protagonist effectively God by this point, having transposed his will onto the once unmoving, unspeaking creator? Is the Archangel actually correct in his condemnation of the protagonist for having distorted the world in order to have a future in which he can once again become fused with another being? Is the Archangel, along with all of the other key players, merely puppets in Koriel #12's cosmic plan to fulfill the emotional desires created by his Baroque? After all, both the protagonist and Alice use the male plural pronoun "bokutachi" (ぼくたち) to refer to themselves and their "siblings" (Koriel #12/his twin and Alice/Eliza/God, respectively). This means that lines in the game's ending like "What will become of us?" and "But this is the world we created." could either be spoken by Koriel #12 or Alice - opening up so many possible interpretations to the point where even Koriel #12 himself might have been the game's antagonist all along. There is a very real possibility that his desires are overriding God's and ensuring that the world will stay in its current, diseased state for the sake of his own happiness.

    While my own personal interpretation of Baroque applies a fairly concrete chronology and logic to the story, I want to make sure I clarify just how fluid reality is in Baroque. The game plays with the uncertainty and subjective nature of reality constantly, even dipping into simulation theory with the wireframe chamber that the Creator and Preserver inhabits (reminiscent of a computer construct) and the Malkuth's ability to create near-perfect replicas of reality in the Consciousness Simulation. In a world where an unreliable narrator’s viewpoint can affect the nature of reality itself, there is no such thing as an objective account of the game’s events. This was an intentional creative choice by Yonemitsu which serves to underline how people’s differing perspectives on the real world alter their own perceived reality.

    This is something I see a lot of western fans fail to understand, either preaching their interpretations as absolute fact on wikis, or attacking other fans they don’t agree with in an attempt to claim some imagined position of authority. It’s not that I don’t relate to this behavior. I’m outspoken in my views and it’s easy for me to become overbearing when stating them. But that’s why I deliberately designed this website like an old fansite from the 1990s instead of contributing my efforts to something like a wiki. I want this place to be an unstructured collection of my distorted delusions concerning a game I love, not a comprehensive authority trying to govern all information regarding it. It’s important that whatever form the world of Baroque takes is ultimately left up to the delusions of the player.