- #34
Surprised people complain about ending and have questions remaining when every question in this topic had either hints to an answer, was nearly directly answered or was left open ended for a reason.
Estefan said:
kurotera said:
So 126 is the last chapter? Why does the entry page say it's got 127 chapters?
Sure, there are many things I did not understand in this comic. Some examples:
Who is this Meigus guy, what are his goals, how did he become what he was in the end?
Why would a "vacuum" make a "phase transition"? What does "phase transition" mean in respect to a "vacuum" in the first place? And why would this lead to the formation of a new universe? This somehow looks like the creation of energy out of nothing, and seems to contradict the Law of Conservation of Energy to begin with. I usually do not care at all if something in fiction is possible in physics or not. However, Eden seems to take the scientific stuff seriously, so I would consider a breach of nature's laws as a flaw in this specific case.
More generally, what is this whole Pleuma project about?
For questions like this to stop rising up I will clear yours up at least:
1) Meigus guy is mostly a symbolic entity in this manga to represent the greed of humanity striving for more than they can chew, hence he is not really important as a character himself, his idea is. As a person - he is just your typical guy who wanted to become more than he is - a god if you will.
From gnosticism point of view - he is partly what gnosticism stands against.
2) New universe is the result of the big bang - and the cause for big bang was what you asked about. Phase transition of vacuum means exactly what usual phase transition of anything else would - a change of state of the materia. Obviously it's one of the things that's purely mangaka's own ideas since science has nothing on that. That theory is honestly nearly 100% not how the dark matter works but we don't(and won't ever) know to confirm or disprove it, sadly.
As for vacuum questions - you are asking for the impossible, current science(and more than likely the knowledge humans will have forever) won't really ever answer things like that because we are hitting our technological limit, it won't be like in fantasy type Sci Fi where humans evolve endlessly, we will either die out or devolve(most likely combination of both in cause and effect proportion) much earlier, ceasing our growth and eventually whatever remains of us will be wiped out by the outside forces(whatever comes first out of cosmic influence, be it star related or some other cosmic disaster), fading into the unknown.
3) The laws and the wiki you give are laughable, honestly - laws are never absolute, especially not the ones made by us theorizing. For now the science still develops and there are constant changes to what we know. Hell, a lot of things that was taught to my generation with great zeal is already getting out of date and even more if I take my parents generation study - I can also point out the things that are no longer valid. Overall as laughable as it is, but that's the only way humanity can even grow to being with - trial and error.
Laws only work until someone can topple them. Specifically the law you mentioned has so many contradictions with newly popping up knowledge. This makes it 100%(yes, note even infinitely close to 100%) that it's not a perfect explanation for anything at all. It's just that we have nothing better right now and it works within our limited mindset.
4) Pleuma project - I am nearly 100% positive this is word play on pneuma(or maybe even something lost in the translation), which explains everything if you consider that this whole manga is based on idea of Gnosticism.
It's not 1:1 identical, but it's as similar as it gets - Pneumatics were the ones who essentially supported the idea of manga's counterpart of colloid, the idea of transcending mortal bodies, in gnosticism case they believed in the divine spark and goddess of all knowledge SOPHIA(I hope you see the analogy, especially with how sophia ended up)
By the way - Maya also is from gnosticism(the representation of wisdom and supernatural), although this is semi covered in the manga, so it's probably hard to miss, since they did mention Maya being the mother of buddha.(Mahamaya)
Overall it goes even deeper than that, but I won't explain it here - go research yourself if you are interested, as it involves multiple religions and beliefs.
Aletheia also plays a part, she is the 'truth'(also noticeable if you check her role in manga, as she is literally the one who revealed the truth about everything)
There are obviously quite a few things I didn't cover, but this is getting too long.
Honestly, if you research gnosticism even remotely - you will see how brilliant this manga is. You can clearly see the mangaka seriously dabbled into a lot of topics to make this amazing masterpiece.
You often see those 'trying to be smart' manga types making childish mistakes, but not in this one. This one actually does not fail in any 'simple parts' like a lot of other manga do and instead makes it's own theory on things we don't know. It's obviously more than likely a wrong theory, but well, at some point people were hanged for telling world ain't flat.. so we did progress from that point somewhat.
Overall I am usually the first to criticize manga like this and point flaws, but I have nothing to complain about here, so I will only slowly clap and give this a 10/10 it deserves.
