Fridge / Asura's Wrath

Fridge Logic for Asura's Wrath.

Warning: Spoilers Off applies to this page. Proceed at your own risk.

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Fridge Brilliance

• To some, Deus' weapon of choice might seem a bit odd, but that's until you realise that they are based of the Vajra which can mean thunderbolt.
• Sergei's Halo comes of as a bit unusual due to it being shaped like a lunar crescent. Then you realise it symbolizes Lunacy.
• The similarities between Berserker Asura and Vlithra's Core seem to just make the latter a Mirror Boss. But then you remember that Vlitra is the will of the planet driven mad by rage at Humanity and Demigods, and Asura's Mantra affinity is Wrath. They possess similar forms because they share the same mantra affinity: Wrath.
  • It also makes sense because in the original mythology, Vritra IS an Asura.
    • Then it starts entering Fridge Horror territory. Could it be that Vlitra used to be a Guardian General that used the Wrath mantra prior to Asura and lost himself to his wrath but never got out of it, and in the end becoming the Golden Spiders pawn?
    • Well, Vlitra is actually Gaia's Vengeance personified, and the Gohma were created by the Golden Spider in the first place. Nothing has ever stated what happened to the last possessor of the Wrath mantra. More than likely, that predecessor died in combat with the Gohma, as Kalrow is the oldest of the Seven Deities, and Augus, when unaffiliated with the Eight Guardian Generals, called them all weak. As far as I know, Asura has been the only known Demigod to take his powers to such a level.
• When I was near the end of Asura's fight with Chakravartin, I was...mystified. All of a sudden, I was pressing Action Command buttons for Chakravartin, along with the buttons for Asura. It wasn't until about half a minute in that I realized...although I was pressing those buttons, I was not the one who was giving the commands. So I stopped...and the buttons kept on pressing themselves for Chakravartin. Then it hit me in a flash of brilliance: I was so consumed with trying to tear Chakravartin apart, that I forgot what he was, and what I was doing. I was fighting the Creator.
• Who knew that the first boss fight in the game would foreshadow the last fight on the DLC? When Wyzen became Gongen Wyzen, he drew upon the Mantra Reactor, the Brahmastra's power source. During this stage of the battle, Gongen Wyzen calls Asura this: "The Destructor".
• Why did Chakravartin lose to Asura when he is described as omnipotent? He is The Creator, he only sucks at destroying.
• Speaking of Chakravartin, the self-styled "Spinner of All Mantra" and named by his debut episode as "the One Behind the Curtain". If you look closely, either in game or at his artwork, he has exactly 22 arms. The game, including all four main parts (and excluding the animated and Street Fighter DLC), has exactly 22 episodes. Chakravartin, the one behind the curtain, quite literally has a hand in everything that you do in this game.
• Why is Asura so much weaker than the Seven Deities until he gets really fucking pissed enough to trigger a burst and then knock them apart with a few punches? Because unlike everyone else in the Seven (save Augus, possibly) he never received a Mantra reactor when the Seven ascended. This isn't apparent until the DLC, where Yasha opens Asura's chest to reveal that he doesn't have a reactor, whereas Yasha does. That's why every battle Asura is involved in is an uphill struggle; until he gets angry enough that his Affinity for Wrath lets him draw on enough power to match his opponent, he's just not able to fight them evenly.
  • And the moment he does the first/only thing he does is kill The Creator. That is one hell of a power up.
• Drawing on the above, how are Asura and Yasha able to defeat Deus despite his overwhelming power? Deus' Mantra Affinity is Pride. By constantly and continuously hitting him over and over, they keep wounding his pride and thus reducing how much Mantra he can pull. That's why Yasha has such a hard time against Deus in Episode 15.5, because Deus was still extremely powerful and thus Yasha's attacks did nothing, fueling his pride and making him even stronger.
• When Asura completely loses it and becomes Wrath Asura, Yasha is able to get through to him, even though he has to beat the crap out of him to do it. Why? Because Yasha's Mantra affinity is Melancholy (read: Sadness). Rage is basically sadness at a much higher heat, so it makes sense that Yasha should be able to reach Asura in the state he's in; after all, they're both bitter over the state of the world and grieving for the same people.
• Why do the Gohma have gold blood (and turn gold as their corpses disappear) despite their colors for everything else being black and red? Because they aren't actually the creations of Gaea — they're Chakravartin's, and his power is predominantly gold-colored when he uses it. As the Gohma die, the magic making them up returns to its original form.
• Asura's personality becomes somewhat more balanced after having the Karma Fortress Mantra Reactor implanted because it exposes him to non-Wrath Mantra.
• It seems funny to most people that as Asura is killing Kalrow he says "I tire of hearing about the world" when he is doing so much to protect it. That is until you realize he's not saying that he doesn't care about the world, but that he's tired of hearing the pathetic justifications that the demigods are using to explain away their cruelty to humanity.
• When Asura and Yasha fight in Episode 21, Yasha is insanely powerful, despite ripping out his own Mantra Reactor and giving it to Asura. How did he become that powerful? His Mantra affinity is Melancholy. He's dying, and he knows it, so he's at his most melancholy in the entire game. It's no coincidence that when he's finally satisfied and smiling, that this is the moment he dies.
• During a flashback, Asura is shown saying that he has no idea what to do when his daughter cries, except to punch the face of who or whatever is causing her to cry. At the end of the game, what is he doing? REPEATEDLY PUNCHING GOD IN THE FACE.
• Fridge Sadness or Heartwarming, perhaps? During the opening of the final episode, Asura commandeers a Shinkoku battleship to soar into space to challenge Chakravartin. These battleships have been shown to require a sizable demigod crew, and Asura doesn't have his own unique craft or any known servants. In other words, it's implied that the leaderless remnants of the Shinkoku demigod armies are rallying behind Asura for one last defense of their beloved home - and consider Asura's battle strategy more or less entails catching Chakravartin's first attack head-on, they probably knew that it was a suicide mission, but did it anyways.
• It seems strange that the world would be governed by eight mantras that are all largely negative emotions. Until you remember that in Hindu Mythology, the Asura race were the embodiment of all of negative emotions. It's the Devas, who are above the Asura, who get to embody positive emotions.
• Asura and Augus both have blank white eyes. In Augus' case, it's because he's blind, unlike Asura, who can see perfectly. This doesn't make sense, until you realize that Asura, in a way, is also blind. To be precise, he's blinded by rage.
  • Made much more apparent by the ending of the DLC: after killing Chakravatin his eyes go from being white to normal. Why? Because now that his wrath is gone, he's no longer blinded by his rage, and his eyes reflect this.
  • There's a few occasions where Asura's eyes become sligthly dimmer - white-red sclera with a brighter spot as the iris/pupil: theyu always appear in moments where Asura is less angry than usual. One notable moment is during the Augus fight, where they're falling towards Gaia and the latter's words give Asura pause for a couple of seconds.
• So, why do the humans not have subtitles to tell the player what they're saying? Because Asura doesn't know what they're saying. After 12,000 years, the language has changed to the point that he has no idea what they're saying, and neither does the player by extension.
• When climbing up Naraka for the first time, the Golden Spider asked if he had angered Asura. The context was that Asura was hearing voices in his head and said 'shut up' out loud, confusing the spider. Turns out, the Golden Spider aka Chakravatin did anger Asura. In fact, he was the cause for Asura's misery throughout the entire game.
• Why did Asura have the power to defeat what amounts to the god of creation? As Asura himself said: 'I pray to no one, nor will I be prayed to!' What worth are the words and powers of a god to a non-believer?
• Why is Mithra so powerful? Because she's Asura's daughter. As evidenced by all the feats he achieves through the game he's able to defeat Chakravartin by his raw strength when focused through anger, showing a potential greater than the creator of the universe, which came naturally to his daughter in the manipulation of Mantra.
• Asura growing really big in the final episode may just be for Rule of Cool, until you realize his power core had been swapped with the Karma Fortress' reactor, which probably grants him that power.
• Initially the game is dismissive of Wyzen's transformation as a giant and the power it creates because size isn't everything, and yet it seems to contradict itself when Asura does it, however when you stop to analyze the transformations the reasons behind the early dismisal become clear, Wyzen used all that power with the intention of becoming big, Asura on the other hand became that big not because he was interested in growing bigger, but because his body grew due to the power and because he needed to get that big to reach Chakravartin otherwise it would take him millions of years just to reach Chakravartin's fortress.
• The largest Gohma army we see bar none is in episode 11.5, and there's actually a reason for that. At the climax of Asura and Augis' battle, Augus impaled straight through the planet with Wailing Dark. It's very likely that he attacked Vlitra and possibly even damaged or had a near-miss at its still forming humanoid core and thus Vlitra reacted with panic and threw everything and the kitchen sink to find and kill whatever just ran it through.
• Wyzen was considered the, "Powerhouse of The Seven Deities," so then why was he relatively easy for Asura to battle and defeat, despite all of the aid from their reserves of Mantra? Simple, Wyzen's Mantra affinity was Violence, not Pride like Deus' affinity was! During their brief reunion, Wyzen was nothing but arrogant and pompous to Asura, describing the latter as a fossil and how the remaining demigods were so might and superior with theirs words being so pure; Wyzen's Mantra affinity wouldn't have been empowering him because he wasn't feeling violent at the time, and therefore, Wyzen would not have been at full strength during their battle, despite the large usage of Mantra!
• Even though the Gohma have many different animal forms, none of them resemble insects or arachnids. This might seem odd to those familiar with the spider-like Gohma from the Legend of Zelda series, least until they find out that the Gohma in this game have a connection to a certain golden spider.

Fridge Horror

• According to some of Asura's lines to the Golden Spider this doesn't seem to be the first time he entered his Berserker form. Then what the hell drove him over the edge in the past?
  • If chapter 11.5 is any indication, that was the one other time he was driven over the edge with despair.
• The Stinger at the end of the DLC hints at the return of Mantra. Does this mean Chakravartin was reborn as well?
• Chakravartin says that everything that he has done (making the Gohma, giving the Gods the ideas for defeating it, etc.) was to choose his heir so that he can go on and find other worlds for his guidance. What if he has done it before, and Gaea is merely the latest planet he's pulled his plan on?

  • We don't know that for sure, but we do hear him say that he has destroyed and reset the planet when the results don't satisfy him. Do we even want to imagine how many times he's done that? He's shown he'll do it as many times as he feels necessary and he has the patience to wait thousands of years. It's a terrifying thought.
  • It's more frightening when considering just how deaths that his cycle brings. At the moment all you think is him destroying the planet and the deaths from that, but then stop to consider, all the humans, or whatever lifeforms exist, killed by whatever monster he created over that period as well, which is likely beyond count since the Seven Deities state that up to the point before Vlitra's return they had seven trillion souls, but that only counts the number they had then and hadn't already used, and the number that they weren't able to keep out of the Ghoma's hands. Chakravartin not getting the results he wants implies that in the past, his menace wiped out all life on the planet in those cases, and his Bring It line to Asura hints that even if someone could stop the thing they only ended up getting killed by him.

  • Does this mean that there are others that are of similar power that decided to go on and find heirs so that they could continue the cycle?
• In the epilogue, why did people millions of years in the future build a statue of Asura? Being hailed as an ancient hero could be a good thing but what if there are people who worship him? He is specifically against it. It's better than being remembered as a three-headed demon like the first time he perished but still, wouldn't it make Mithra cry if people misinterpreted and distorted, intentionally or not, her stories of her father?
• In Chapter 15, Asura is in Wrath Form, acts like a savage animal, and constantly growls and screams. And yet, as soon as Sergei starts revealing that he was the one who killed Durga and kidnapped Mithra, Asura becomes quiet and doesn't do anything violent until Sergei finishes speaking. The implication is that, despite being completely insane with anger, this reveal managed to shock Asura into a brief Heroic BSoD.

Fridge Logic

• But, seriously: how the hell did Augus and Asura get to the moon?
  • And why didn't we get to see it?
    • They jumped.
    • Pretty much. That was how they got from the moon back down to the planet, after all.
    • They maybe used Augus's Septentrion ship. Considering it lies crashed on the moon in the lost episode 2, the landing probably wasn't very soft. Probably because Augus was blind.
    • Considering that Asura can punch Ryu to the moon with little effort, there's not really any additional elaboration necessary.
• Speaking of Augus, how in the world does he fight so well if he's blind?
  • Because he's just that awesome.
• Why did Emperor Strada and Durga bleed red blood if they're demigods like the rest? Shouldn't it be glowing orange blood?
  • Strada and Durga are non-combat demigods. They only have extended lifespans. They don't use Mantra much at all, so their blood isn't orange from Mantra saturation.
• Why didn't Reincarnated!Asura recognize any statue that looked like him? Just saying it's a bit awkward not to know who you are. Second, he would've been pissed from people seeing him as a god.
  • The first thing someone thinks of when they see a statue of someone famous who looks like them is not "Holy shit that guy is me!" It is usually "That statue looks kind of like me. That's funny."
    • Or he just didn't care.
• Why is it that over the course of twelve and a half millennia, none of the seven hosts involved had even considered an option to take on Vlitra other than sacrificing trillions of innocents?
  • They did. Deus even says it explicitly when Yasha confronts him about it. They couldn't find any other way to fight Vlitra beyond using the Brahmastra cannon.
    • An alternative was to evacuate the planet to seek a new home as the Emperor had decided. Which, wasn't really a bad plan, as it would allow the people respite from the danger of the Gohma, at least for a while, and give their forces time to recover and strengthen themselves to properly face Vlitra in the future and take back the planet later. Whatever his intentions were, at the end, Deus cared more about victory over his enemy than the reason why he was facing that enemy, even if it meant reducing the reason to nothing more than fuel.