Thread by @feathermetsu

Happy Ontos Day!

The proverb on the Trinity Processor (3:13) is taken as Ontos’ birthday, so it’s finally time to share a probably surprising theory:

In XB2, Ontos is Jin. I call this “Jintos Theory”.

#XenobladeChronicles2 #XB2meta #OntosDay2023 #Ontos #Jintos

First of all -- I recognize this may seem controversial, but don’t worry! Things play nicer than you might think. I’m aware there are complications in this game wherein everything is complicated, but I’m just going to show my work first and talk hedges and XB1 at the end.

I can’t be 100% sure that no one has ever thought of this before, but I’ve looked far and wide in two languages and I’ve never seen anyone talking about it. I’m invested in Jintos theory. I think it has merit as a cohesive theory that doesn’t need to draw from outside the text.

As a XB2-only player, I’m not influenced by the intertextuality of the series. I’ve seen that most fans buy into the notion of a Xenoblade Cinematic Universe, so to speak, but we don’t have to. It may surprise you how many answers can be found exclusively within the text of XB2.

I’ve seen so many takes like “Jin’s too OP” and “voices of core crystals wtf??” and “this guy makes no sense”. And yeah! I get it! The version of him we got feels like it’s missing something. Seeing it as bad writing is the obvious explanation, but it’s too strangely cohesive.

The context for this theory supposes that there was a version of this game early in development which was built around Jin being Ontos, and then the direction changed and only scraps of the original remained. We can piece together those scraps and see quite a lot of the picture.

In brief, I think that Ontos was seriously damaged during Klaus’ dimensional split. What happened next is purely speculation, but *something* reshaped what remained of his core, wiped his memories, and reestablished his identity as the exceptional yet normal Tornan Blade “Jin”.

Of course this Aegis-only plot happened outside of Klaus’ awareness, since his line in ch10 suggests he had no idea what was going on. It’s not like he was very mobile! He was probably busy dealing with pain and immortality management for quite a long time.

With the broad summary out of the way, let’s get into the evidence! I’ll break things down into the following sections:

♦️1) Jin’s core
♦️2) Jin’s powers
♦️3) Jin’s true form
♦️4) Malos
♦️5) Trinity Processor + Aegis connections
♦️6) Jin’s motives
♦️7) Alvis

This will be very long! For anyone seeing this in real-time, I’ll be posting gradually as I finish compiling things for each section. This will make it easier for me to keep track of all the moving parts. Thanks in advance for your patience. 🙇💜

♦️1) Jin’s Core

The hallmark of an Aegis is the distinctive shape and color of their core. At first glance, Jin doesn’t seem to match this, but I noticed that his core fits within an Aegis core. There’s enough leftover space for there to have been damaged / missing parts, too.

Jin is the only Blade in Alrest whose core is not on his chest (apart from the animal common Blades, notably excluding Dromarch). The mask works as a disguise because nobody expects a Blade to have a core up there, so even DLC-era Jin’s core raises lots of red flags (lol).

And speaking of red, Jin’s core isn’t mottled at all. He’s the only Flesh Eater whose core turns fully red.

A *lot* of attention is drawn to the abnormal color of his core in the game, disproportionally moreso than to any of the many other FEs we meet.

The third Aegis core crystal isn’t shown in XB2, but its appearances in other games show that it’s the same shade of bright red as the XB2-unique color of Jin’s core.

It’s also noteworthy that Jin’s core gets damaged a lot during the game, and he reacts differently to that than other Blades. He doesn’t die after his first chip, which is… almost unprecedented! Only Malos, another Aegis, survives with damage like that.

When Jin killed Haze, he cut a similar gap into her also-fragmented core, and she died from it. When Mythra targetted Obrona’s, Perdido’s, and Cressidus’ cores, they died even faster, within seconds. When Drivers die, their Blades dematerialize immediately.

It isn’t until his core shatters to an even worse extent in ch9 that Jin finally dies, and he takes his time with it. About 1:25 until he’s fully dispersed, to be exact.

Speaking of dying, Jin gets this beautiful scene where he dissolves into ice-aspected ether that lingers in the air. The same thing happens to Malos… and it *also* took him about 1:25 to fully disperse. (I’m only counting on-screen time for these, btw.)

(Even when Jin took Lora’s heart, his disintegration was slow enough to allow him to finish this process while she was already very dead. We don’t get to see other FE transformations directly, so it’s not clear how this might compare, but it’s still longer than similar scenes.)

Pneuma/Mythra/Pyra don’t “die” on-screen in the same way, but when they switch forms, it generates a similar faerie-dust-like poof of colored ether, too. It’s an Aegis thing.

The similarities between their framing don’t stop there, either. There’s a very particular kind of planar glow that happens only to Aegis cores when they’re drawing lots of power from the Conduit.

I’ve doublechecked every other scene I can think of, and other powerful Blades have a radial glow if they even glow at all.

The emphasis on that stark horizontal glare seems to be Aegis-related visual coding.

And it happens a *lot*.

(Fun fact: depressed!Malos also has a radial glow once, as he’s entering into Aion in ch10. It’s extremely out of the ordinary, and lowkey devastating. But I digress.)

There’s also a strange moment in ch8 where Jin reveals *something* on his chest to the party. It’s after his ch5 FE reveal, and we’ve already seen his core on his forehead *and* the scar on his chest, so… wtf is this? The camera is also poised conveniently behind him.

I don’t have an explanation for this outside of Jintos theory, tbh. I wonder if that breastplate covers up an empty Aegis core mount when Jin is in his Tornan form. We know that the core mounts go away when a Blade undresses enough, so this could be possible.

This strikes me as a cost-effective compromise for retaining pre-rendered assets while effectively “cutting out” the Jintos angle from the final script. It’s relatively easy to move the camera position when you’re working in 3D.

It’s also an in-universe explanation for the matching JinMal breastplates. Two Aegises, covering up what remains of their cores, standing alone against the world and trying to find their third partner…

♦️2) Jin’s Powers

The game’s final explanation for Jin is that he’s the most powerful FE, but I’m not the only person who has noticed that this doesn’t really make sense. That role is already filled very effectively by Nia, a FE healer so powerful she can raise the goddamn dead.

Jin’s abilities, both in and out of combat, are stronger and more numerous, even in his weakened, canonically unhealthy state.

He completely overpowers Nia in ch7, something that not even a restored-crystal Malos could do.

Before he ever even becomes a FE, Jin takes over for Mythra in the DLC fight against Malos and holds him off more effectively. It isn’t until Mythra loses control that she’s shown as being more powerful than pre-FE Jin.

His bond with Lora is canonically telepathic (in Japanese).

https://twitter.com/feathermetsu/status/1591299391452631041

This is not the case with Nia and Dromarch, who can only sense each other. Even Zeke and Pandoria, arguably the best Blade-Driver bond in XB2, don’t seem to have full telepathy. They’re synchronized on a more instinctual level, like a shared nervous system or a hivemind… lol XD

If Jin could telepathically communicate with all of his Drivers, then that extra synchronicity alone would surely be enough to mark them as, say, *paragons* of their nation… whether they liked it or not!

To further contextualize this, let’s look at the other Aegises.

Pyra and Mythra communicate with each other telepathically, which is worth mentioning despite the fact that they obviously share a body and consciousness. It still demonstrates that this can happen for Aegises, under at least some circumstances.

It’s not confirmed one way or another with Addam-Mythra, but Addam latches onto Lora as a mentor. It’s only after their first campfire together that Addam and Mythra form a tether for the first time in battle. Maybe they’re the same and ordinary Driver training wasn’t enough.

Rex and Pyra can usually only sense each other, but it’s important to note that they don’t have a formal Blade-Driver resonance. They met in quite an unusual way, and their connection is sustained through the shared core, not through a traditional resonance.

The only exception is when Pyra and Mythra are entreating with Rex in ch7, when they’re teetering on the brink of whatever nonexistence means for an Aegis. Maybe this is because they primarily existed in Rex’ part of the shared core at that point? This doesn’t ever happen again.

Back to Jin’s powers!

Let’s tackle the infamous “voices of core crystals”.

Even working with the English localization's version of this line, it's much less odd in the context of Jin being an Aegis! Mythra has foresight, Pyra can sense ripples in the ether force, and Pneuma can magically embiggen Titans.

Jin having a deeper connection with the *people* dormant within those cores is deeply fitting for his characterization as a Blade rights activist. I actually even think they shuttered the cores in the Marsanes for his sake -- it might be too loud otherwise!

I think Torna was trying to un-fuck the core crystals that Amalthus “purified”. Having a team member who could provide feedback about that process without resonating with them is probably useful!

I also read Jin’s line as a kind of poetic doublespeak in Japanese. Jin is both answering Malos’ very technical question about the healing process and reaffirming that they’re succeeding in their goals. Think of it like a “the future of Blades is here with us” kind of thing.

And for the last example of this section, let's visit a moment during his trueform debut in ch6 when Poppi remarks about Jin’s unusual ether generation. Nia literally compares him to *Pyra*, an(other) Aegis who draws power from the Conduit, not the external environment.

♦️3) Jin’s True Form

Jin isn’t the only normal-presenting Blade with multiple forms, but he is the only one who can use his Blade powers in both forms. Nia can only channel Dromarch’s power when she’s wearing her Gormotti disguise; she switches out to use her own abilities.

Nia having a second form at all, especially one with those limitations, is compliant with the notion of “strange abilities” that “blossom” after a Blade becomes a FE. The same is true of her enhanced healing powers.

Now, there is some muddy overlap here. Absolute Zero and Nia’s hyper-healing are both extensions of their original abilities, ice-aspected arts and healing respectively. Jin is hella strong in both forms, but he never uses Absolute Zero in his Tornan form. They *are* both FEs.

But the differences between them are still so vast that I still think “just a really strong FE” doesn’t cut it for Jin! And I think both Malos and Lora would agree with me.

Malos describes Jin’s Absolute Zero as his 本来の能力 -- to borrow a phrase from English!Amalthus, his “original primal power”. 本来 denotes something original and natural. This isn’t a FE ability, so if it’s natural and only done in his true form, then that’s natural, too.

And Lora, a character who obviously doesn’t live to observe FE!Jin, states outright in the DLC that she’s still trying to draw out Jin’s full power. That wouldn’t be possible unless Jin’s true form predated his transformation into a FE. He’s healthier than ever here!

There’s another clue hidden in Lora’s own appearance. She’s an extremely compassionate, Blade-first Driver. Most obviously, she’s probably wearing literal cuts of etherfabric from Haze’s sleeves that Haze herself must have sewn up for her, lol XD

But as for her armor, that comes directly from Jin’s then-hidden dragon form. I wonder if she glimpsed some of it in a dream or something; their connection is so strong, it could happen! Dreams and visions are important to Aegises, after all.

(Some of those dreams and visions! Honorable mention to the not-depicted voiced line Malos says [in Japanese] if you take him to the inn in Argentum about having bad dreams… right before all of XB2 happens to him 🙃)

(In Jin's case, I personally think these are hallucinations, not necessarily visions or dreams, but I’ll include them for the sake of being thorough! Maybe other people would headcanon them differently.)

Finally, I think it’s notable that Jin’s true form has wings. Mythra had four hip-wings in her concept art, the generic “Aegis” in Cole’s play is winged, Pneuma’s wings are mechanical, Jin’s are dragonlike, and Malos’ Logos form must surely have some as well.

(I think they’re bird wings, something different to complete the Trinity. As you may have noticed, my @ is feathermetsu, and I *will* earn it >:D)

https://twitter.com/feathermetsu/status/1613710872635133953

https://twitter.com/feathermetsu/status/1616509866239229953

https://twitter.com/feathermetsu/status/1623906442368659461

Speaking of best boy…

♦️4) Malos

On the topic of inexplicable coincidences, Malos sure does mis-manifest in Alrest wearing Tornan armor which perfectly matches Jin’s, despite resonating with an Indoline Driver and having never met Jin before. It’s almost like he’d been watching him in his past life…

“It’s just cuz Nomura drew them both, it doesn’t mean--” NOPE, text is text is text. There’s a viable in-universe explanation, and it’s fun and rich and dense, and again, text is text! We’re sticking to XB2 itself for this one, no paratext necessary!

(Just to cover my bases, the rest of Torna can also be accounted for by FE/BE powers. We know that all three can hide their cores at will, so controlling or changing aspects of their appearances isn’t a stretch. Even Pyra has to wear fabric to cover her core, and she’s an Aegis!)

The Malos of XB2 is at least mostly amnesiac, but even his DLC version (I call him 1.0) doesn’t seem to have a perfect memory of his past in the World Tree. He’s suffering acutely from Amalthus’ influence and he seems confused, trying to work shit out.

There’s this deeply funny moment that’s like half-shitpost where one of the gargoyles “attacks” Jin. It might’ve been grabbing him or knocking off his mask to get a better look, but it’s such an “I FOUND HIM!!!” moment…

…and then Malos books his ass straight to Torna, where he stares into every strong eligible white-haired bachelor’s eyes until he finds Jin!!

And then he *smiles*. He remembers those eyes. Finally, he found him.

Malos also puts an abnormal amount of effort into trying to convince Jin to change his mind about humans. He doesn’t explicitly say “come away with me” or “join me”, but he comes right up to the edge of saying it.

I used “true form” instead of “true nature” in that translation because Malos specifically chose to say 本当の姿 here. It’s almost like he was trying to draw out Jin’s memories or something… And Jin sure did gasp…

This is an unrelated reaction image, don’t mind it~ >;D

Malos is a character who tries to draw Pneuma’s full power out *twice*; seeing this extra care he takes with Jin might just be the same thing. Malos 1.0 actually remembered more than any of the other Aegises, and he wanted to awaken them.

Why would Malos treat Jin the same if he wasn’t Ontos? Why would he care? He doesn’t have foresight, he can’t know he’s gonna marry him in a few years.

But he sure does recognize him *again* after his Very Bad Day and the loss of a third of his core. That’s just pure instinct.

“You’re the same as me” is one of those iconic lines that has a dozen beautiful, poetic meanings. I’m not trying to reduce it to “You’re also an Aegis” at the expense of any of them -- on the contrary, I think it adds something fascinating that complements all of them.

♦️5) Trinity Processor + Aegis Connections

Let’s start tying things together. If we analyse the most noteworthy of the Trinity’s abilities, they break down like this:

Pneuma -- Create
Logos -- Destroy
Ontos -- Control

Pneuma can manifest any element and advance Titan forms at will. Malos’ ether eats away at anything it touches like acid. Jin can control elementary particles and move at the speed of light.

Aegises were not originally created as Blades; their original forms were sophisticated AI which interfaced with the Conduit and defended the station from outside threats. Thinking about them as specialized AI, I could reverse-engineer how they may have been designed.

It’s humanity we’re talking about, so of course Logos came first -- destruction, weapons, power, etc. Human things! But it turns out Aoidos doesn’t want an unchecked agent of destruction it can’t control, so then we get Ontos -- control.

This partially worked! Based on how Malos seems perfectly happy to stay in second-place to Jin, and pledge his entire existence to Jin, and swear repeatedly to make Jin’s dreams come true… Logos was probably extremely happy to be Ontos’ sub LOL!!

(He super does *not* treat Amalthus this way lmfaooo…)

Considering that Jin has faster reflexes than Malos and is canonically stronger when he's at full strength and using the full breadth of his powers, it tracks for him to have been designed with that intention. Seems like a win for Aoidos, albeit a gayer one than they expected!

But oops, it turns out the control guy doesn’t like taking orders (“We will do it MY way!!”), so then Aoidos reimagines everything and does it way differently the third time. It’s critical that Pneuma, the “create” part of the Trinity, is stable and responsive.

So, Pneuma is a reaction to the LogOntos system. They’re a self-contained system with an internal judgment and compassion component and a synthesized persona. They’re femme-coded and much more agreeable than their brothers.

Klaus openly prefers them.

There’s a narrative symmetry in the 2v2 dichotomy that XB2 would’ve had with confirmed Jintos. (You might even call it mlm vs wlw hostilities~ lmfao I’ve cracked it, this is what XB2 is actually about! jk, jk… or am I?)

It also improves the framing of the DLC -- an Aegis war focusing on *all three Aegises* and their Drivers during the first synchronized lifetime they spent awake in Alrest, with Jin as our primary protagonist.

Jin’s line about Mythra “lacking compassion” would also be reframed as a sly reference, something he instinctively knows about her but can’t quite explain.

He reprises this intuition when talking about her future important connection -- to Pyra, her missing half.

("An ordinary Blade" it's like he's drawing my attention to the irony on purpose lol)

His coldness towards her might be an instinctual sense that she’s betraying her true partner by bonding with some Tornan prince. It’s kind of charming! Jin at this point hasn’t (re-)met Malos and doesn’t realize that he’s polyamorous yet. His is quite the glass house~ XD

This might seem obvious, but XB2 debuted the concept of Aegises and the Trinity Processor; why wouldn’t it feature all three of them in the game? In any self-contained story, it’d be disastrous writing for Ontos to only appear in one offhand line in the last ~hour of the game.

The Trinity Processor have a lot of shared connections, too. Take, for instance, their shared amnesia about their time in the World Tree, and how they’re the only Blades with any health problems in the game -- besides Minoth, the one “failed” FE who ages and gets sick.

The other FEs don’t suffer like that; Minoth’s condition is the clear exception. Malos is missing a fuckload of his core and can’t draw his monado, Jin has ether seizures and can’t reliably formshift, and Pneuma became temporarily mortal when they shared their core with Rex.

King Eulogimenos throws some shade about how an Aegis could possibly lose to a totally normal Blade like Jin Normalblade -- but this, too, makes more sense if it just hasn’t been revealed yet that he’s *also* an Aegis who, unlike Pneuma, has been awake for all these centuries.

Jin is the default victor in the ch6 finale, to the chagrin of many redditors. The victories the party does win against him in other chapters have less to do with their superior abilities and more to do with Jin’s shitty health being repeatedly pushed to the absolute limit.

Jin, like Pneuma, can’t sustain his power for a long time. He has to ration himself and recover, maybe even for a long time -- or at least longer than he actually has. Aegises were the first Blades and being unplugged from the Conduit might reveal some glitches in their coding.

(Just a reminder that Jin’s perspective is hinted to be very unstable. I’ll explore this another time, but there’s evidence that he hallucinates things that the people around him can’t see / don’t react to. Whether this is just his health declining or another Aegis glitch… idk.)

Malos doesn’t seem to have the same kind of stamina problem, but that might be related to the mechanics of how “destruction” works for him. Maybe it’s less taxing than the generative “creation” ability or the high-speed high-focus “control” ability of his siblings.

To wrap up this section, let’s look at Ontos’ proverb:

“Blessed are those who have discovered wisdom; those who have acquired understanding!”

I was shocked at how suitable this prompt is for a character like Jin. Just rewatch the ch5 finale with this in mind, you’ll see.

And a tag before we move on, because I loooove his lines here. So much. So fucking much. He’s got a massive communication disorder when he’s talking about himself, but this is a topic he’s passionate about. He probably *practiced* these lines. What a dork.

♦️6) Jin’s Motives

In order to make sense of this theory, we have to understand how Jin thinks and what his motives might be for all of this. Why fake his disappearance? Why masquerade as a Blade? What’s the goal at the end of the rainbow?

Jin is a freedom fighter. In this lifetime he’s a Blade rights activist. In his previous one, he helped Ornelia fight a war for independence. By nature, he resists oppression and disempowerment, and he values agency above all things. (*whispers* controooool…)

Jin also has an unprecedented ability to reject all Drivers for ~80 years. It’s no coincidence that the person he finally resonated with was an abused child who was actively experiencing violence she couldn’t defend herself against. She grew up to respect him as a person, too!

(Also, during Jin’s resonance scene, he doesn’t have a core on his forehead *at all* until he introduces himself to Lora. It literally appears on screen. Check it out, it’s wild. Definitely not normal Blade behavior; their cores manifest first in every summoning clip.)

From all this, we can interpret some things about Jin’s core values (pun very much intended). He cares deeply about his bond with Lora and clearly loved Ornelia, too. He cares deeply about Blades, and justice, and agency. He hates Klaus, even if he doesn’t remember him directly.

In fact, killing god is one of Jin’s primary motives in this lifetime. Malos announces it for him in ch7, having taken on the fulfillment of Jin’s wish with great enthusiasm. It’s even embedded within Jin’s mechanics! He’s hellbent on overthrowing systems and killing god!

Jin’s strongest Blade art is called “Heavenly Disrupt” (天乱剣, roughly “Blade Revolting Against Heaven”). This evolved from his lv3 special in the DLC, “Ice Revolution” (氷乱, also “Ice Revolution”). Jin’s just Arya Stark with only one big name on the top of his list, lmfao~

There are other fun things on his affinity chart, too, like “Full Resonance” (共鳴), “Mind’s Eye” (心眼), and “Transmigration” (流転). He also has “Fortitude”, which is “the power to endure hardships.”

Hardships like, say, being apart from your partner(s) for countless years…

…or being able to survive them at all Dx

Connecting Ontos to Jin requires some imagination. It’s a part of the story that the game simply didn’t tell. The degree to which various steps were planned or derailed are ours to consider.

I’ll quickly sketch out my version here. Bear in mind that this is just one possible interpretation, an attempt to provide logical answers to various questions.

How did Ontos first get invested in Blades? -- Watching Klaus plan the Blade-Driver system and developing empathy for the powerless while he recovered.

How did he stay hidden from Klaus? -- Logos and Pneuma lied for him. Klaus was immobilized and distracted and couldn’t check.

Was it his choice to leave the World Tree? -- No, his circumstances forced him to flee. It’s a long story but it’s Klaus’ fault.

How long between the dimension rip and his departure? -- Within a human lifetime.

Did Logos know in advance? -- No, but Pneuma was a co-conspirator.

What were his goals for living as “Jin”? -- Experience the Blade-Driver system from within in order to pass fair judgment on it (aka: “call bullshit”). Use the Blade upload system to pass his memories to Logos, who would store them and also hide the evidence from Klaus.

Why did his core end up on his forehead? -- Two reasons. It strengthened his psyempathic Blade bonds and preserved his telepathy, and it strategically opened up his chest to receive a piece of Logos’ core when they reunited.

How were things supposed to resolve? -- Logos was meant to escape and core-share with Jin, thus reawakening Ontos and restoring his memory. Then they’d jailbreak Pneuma, kill Klaus, and free Blades from their slavery by overhauling the system themselves.

Just like how Drivers borrow Blades’ powers, so too did Klaus simply borrow the Trinity Processor’s powers. They have the ability to operate independently from him! They were involved in designing the system and they know how to undo and change things.

What unforeseen circumstances does he encounter in Alrest? -- Malos’ amnesia and becoming a FE! Jin has a human heart in that chest now, along with a deep attachment to the 99%-dead Driver he got it from. Things can’t resolve until they successfully resurrect her.

We can’t definitively prove that Jin’s scar was a result of taking Lora’s heart. Minoth has one, too, but he’s labelled as a “failure”. Maybe Jin always had an inexplicable scar on his chest and couldn’t quite remember how he’d gotten it or the core that used to live there.

// Jin chose this lifetime to become a FE for a reason. It’s the first one in which he has found everything he wanted. He found both Logos and Pneuma, and he loves Lora. Contrastingly, it wasn’t enough to only love Ornelia in his last lifetime. He was still unsatisfied.

Our Jin would never accept letting Lora go. All he wants is his “one lifetime with her”, and he’s still living it. Similarly, if Ontos had done some interdimensional calculus and found the One (1) viable path that led to his reunion with Logos… well, I think that suits him.

He cares about his people, at the expense of others. He has to push back against that actively and learn to care about others. His circle can expand -- first to include Lora, then later his found family with Malos -- but he’s close-knit by nature.

The compassion Jin shows Pneuma across the game is very touching in this context. He hugs every Aegis (and breaks two of their swords, but let’s not forget that he also has amnesia…).

I also speculate that he might have been the true catalyst for their awakening in ch7.

I’m analyzing just a few frames of a cutscene here. Jin was standing right in front of Pyra at a point where he expected Malos would easily prevail and return. When he hears the party instead, he quickly moves away. It’s almost a startle -- notable for an otherwise still man.

Maybe he'd been fucking around with their ruined core and trying to restore things, working on ancient instincts to unblock their system from synching properly. He had shadows of Ontos’ experience; the Trinity may have often helped each other purge invasive Aoidos updates.

Imo, that would be a much more compelling explanation than the one the game tried to pass off.

And speaking of things that games tried to pass off…

♦️7) Alvis

I’m mostly kidding. But it’s nevertheless true that Alvis-as-Ontos was a retcon that MonoSoft added a decade after his game’s release. I’ve been told by people who know XB1 better that the key was more thematically suitable, but this isn’t my wheelhouse so idk.

What I will say about him is that even his retconned identity as Ontos is not a contradiction to Jintos theory, nor would the reverse encroach upon Alvis’ space in fandom. We already have the dichotomous existences of Klaus and Zanza to guide us here. Both can be true.

Every path I’ve considered for connecting Ontos the AI-Aegis in the World Tree to Jin the Blade in Alrest requires him to have been injured in that dimensional split. There’s an element of truth to what Klaus believes -- some of Ontos did leave, and that may have become Alvis.

Also re: Klaus, I also want to clarify that his death being linked to Zanza’s doesn’t mean that Alvis can’t survive Jin -- unlike Klaus, who is literally Just Some Guy, Ontos is an Aegis with a direct connection to the Conduit. Alvis and Jin don’t depend on each other like that.

Considering that they’re both branching versions of the original Ontos, it’s fun to look at their similarities. Visually, it’s just obvious. From what I’ve heard about Alvis’ personality, he’s also rather quiet, serious, intelligent, and motivated. There’s symmetry between them.

I haven’t talked about it too much in this meta, but the holes in XB2’s storytelling suggest that the whole concept underwent some radical changes mid-development. I wrote more about that here if you’re interested:

https://twitter.com/feathermetsu/status/1628517089668644864

Of course, I’ve done a bit of a deception in this meta. I said we’d stick to XB2 exclusively -- and to some extent, we did! But Jintos theory is actually an interplay between the text, the gaping holes within the text, and what that implies about the game’s production cycle.

We can’t really talk about it without at least hinting at those problems. A complete story that carries out its character and plot arcs to a full and satisfying extent would require things like Jintos theory and other similar theories in order to make the world cohesive.

So in a way, by doing a strict textual analysis, we’ve ended up in the same metatextual place by a different path… funny how that happens.

What I like best about Jintos theory is that it allows the Trinity Processor Aegises to exist together in the same game. They have active, meaningful, complicated relationships with each other. We don’t have to just imagine that one of them exists, but only ~somewhere else~.

I’ve done my best to gather all the threads I could think of that might help paint a better picture of what Jintos theory looks like to me. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some details, it’s really such a massive and comprehensive concept. But I hope it’s broadened your perspective!

And in case you still want to read more meta for some reason, here's my last Aegis birthday meta for Logos/Malos!

https://twitter.com/feathermetsu/status/1579887327522226176

No matter which version of Ontos you’re celebrating today, I hope you have a good one! Thanks for sticking with me through this long journey!