Sparda being a "deadbeat"

[windleopard]

Where exactly did this idea that Sparda just abandoned Eva and the twins to fend for themselves come from? Not only does the the intro to the first game make it clear Sparda isn't around because he died but

Spoiler

dialogue for DMC 5 special edition indicates that he did indeed raise the twins with Eva

.

So where did "Sparda the deadbeat" come from?

 

[V's patron]

I think it's because of Dante's "I don't have a father" line in 3. The implications became interesting to think about and I guess it grew from there.

 

[Morgan]

"I don't have a father" is a stupid line and a non-sequitur to Vergil's question, though, but even with that, Dante only disowned Sparda with one line because he wasn't around to save them during the attack, and because Dante's character in terms of his past got reduced to Mommy's Boy (fueling Oedipus Complex mentions from gremlins that spend too much time on TV Tropes). That's still not a mark on Sparda's character, that was just 19 year old edgy Dante being edgy. Any sensible person recognizes a father that's absent through untimely death is as much a "deadbeat" as a military father on deployment is a "deadbeat", as in, "not at all". Sparda died, either through old age or he was killed in action, and that's it. People just have him confused for Agnus and Vergil.

 

[Foxtrot94]

I think it's because of Dante's "I don't have a father" line in 3. The implications became interesting to think about and I guess it grew from there.

I mean, it was always pretty clear to me that that line was meant to highlight Dante had, over the years, grown to despise the demonic heritage from the fatherly half of his parents, leading to the refusal to chase after Sparda's power, which was what Vergil asked him.

To me, that whole exchange never had anything to do with Sparda's presence in the household, considering the context and subtext. I understand that, taken out of context, it could be interpreted that way but that is why context exists, LOL. I'm surprised some people read "absentee Sparda" into that.

 

[AgentRedgrave]

Apparently in the Japanese version instead of "I don't have a father". Dante reminds Vergil that Sparda is gone and he's stuck in the past.

 

[Lain]

Apparently in the Japanese version instead of "I don't have a father". Dante reminds Vergil that Sparda is gone and he's stuck in the past.

Unfortunately I just watched the scene in JPN to fact-check that and sadly it's the same in both languages.

 

[AgentRedgrave]

Unfortunately I just watched the scene in JPN to fact-check that and sadly it's the same in both languages.

Huh, well okay then. Remind me to fact check TV tropes, least that's where I think I read that.

 

[V's patron]

I saw Dante as having unresolved baggage towards his father back then. Not just as a demon but as a person. I wouldn't say Sparda was an actual deadbeat, just Dante made him into one as a way of coping with his trauma or just growing pains as a teenager.

After all, how many us really know our parents when we are young?

Its a rhetorical question but food for thought.

 

[Morgan]

Huh, well okay then. Remind me to fact check TV tropes, least that's where I think I read that.

1. Never trust TV Tropes.
2. Never trust TV Tropes.

They really thought DMC1 Trish's quote of "You lost a mother and brother 20 years ago" meant 20 years after DMC3 even when Eva didn't feature in DMC3 whatsoever and that Yamato the sword was a pointed reference to "traditional Japan" and not the alternate reading of "Enma Katana". They know absolute f all on lore unless someone more knowledgeable tells it to them.

 

[Picard]

Where exactly did this idea that Sparda just abandoned Eva and the twins to fend for themselves come from? Not only does the the intro to the first game make it clear Sparda isn't around because he died but

Spoiler

dialogue for DMC 5 special edition indicates that he did indeed raise the twins with Eva

.

So where did "Sparda the deadbeat" come from?

Aside from everything else noted previously in the thread, it is also a pun. Deadbeat.

 

[Foxtrot94]

Aside from everything else noted previously in the thread, it is also a pun. Deadbeat.

@ReaperHunter would be proud of you.

 

[ReaperHunter]

Indeed I am, haha

 

[Lady95]

I saw Dante as having unresolved baggage towards his father back then. Not just as a demon but as a person. I wouldn't say Sparda was an actual deadbeat, just Dante made him into one as a way of coping with his trauma or just growing pains as a teenager.

After all, how many us really know our parents when we are young?

Its a rhetorical question but food for thought.

I definitely agree with this!

Dante and Vergil were 8 when their life got ruined (and Sparda was already absent before then), no matter how illogical it may seems, in my opinion, it makes perfect sense for a kid that was awfully traumatized to blame the source of his trauma. Sparda may not have been the source itself, but he's the reason Dante, Vergil and Eva were attacked and then persecuted, of course Dante is going to reject his father alongside his demonic heritage (since in his mind nothing would have happened if not for both).


Hiding, running away, surviving, feeling constant fear etc... As a direct result of Mundus having it out for his father and deciding to take it out on them must have been pretty much impossible for a kid to handle and/or metabolize. I can see him, as a little kid, asking himself why their father did nothing more to prevent something like this from happening (especially knowing he had a long list of enemies), why Sparda wasn't there when they needed him the most (illogical, but kids don't care for logic) or even asking why Sparda even decided to settle down and put up a family despite knowing that he'd be condemning his children to a future like this.

Dante himself doesn't seems to want kids or a family of his own, in the DMC5 Prequel Novel he

Spoiler

Refuses when Matier tries to set him up with Lucia, saying that his focus is on the job/his job comes first (or something along those lines) and saying that he has his reason to do so when Matier insist

and I think (just a supposition on my part) that it might have something to do with him not wanting to make the same mistake as his father.

Also, from what we saw up until now, it doesn't seems like Dante ever really got along with Sparda that much. I remember some extra material mentioning that he has a love-hate relationship with Vergil and that he hates Vergil's cold personality which reminded him of their father, or a novel mentioning that Sparda once broke his arm by mistake cause he didn't realize his own strenght, and of course there is the bit at the end of DMC5SE

Spoiler

with Vergil saying that Dante used to cry every time their father raised his voice.

 

[Handsome Devil Sparda]

Y

Where exactly did this idea that Sparda just abandoned Eva and the twins to fend for themselves come from? Not only does the the intro to the first game make it clear Sparda isn't around because he died but

Spoiler

dialogue for DMC 5 special edition indicates that he did indeed raise the twins with Eva

.

So where did "Sparda the deadbeat" come from?

you watch your mouth

 

[windleopard]

that Yamato the sword was a pointed reference to "traditional Japan" and not the alternate reading of "Enma Katana".

The DMC wiki states that it's both.

 

[Handsome Devil Sparda]

Y

you watch your mouth

Sparda saved the world

 

[Lain]

The DMC wiki states that it's both.

Wiki's can be a wonderful labour of love but at the end of the day they are still fan-made and thus far from infallible.

Case in point: When it comes to the 閻魔刀, the romanisation has been simplified for us dumb Westerners but it's meant to be "Yamatou" - well actually it's really read as "Enmatou" but I have no way of discerning if that was a mistake or intentional* on the translator's part since there was no JPN dub of DMC1 iirc to compare it to. But the point is that it's not actually phonetically the same as 大和 (Yamato) and the fact that the Wiki states it symbolises Vergil's respect of tradition in contrast to Dante strikes me as a classic case of "backwards etymology" as the sword was introduced and named in DMC1 which claims it was the weapon of Sparda with zero indication it belonged to Vergil. But nowadays it's so heavily tied to Vergil that the Wiki writers have started from a conclusion and tried to mistakenly work backwards to make the assumed connection fit. Even as late as the DMC5 files state that Sparda named it after a god of death, that being Enma of course.

*Outside of Shin Megami Tensei, I don't recall having seen a JPN source acknowledge the original Sanskrit name of Yama for Enma but I suppose it's possible Kamiya or someone told them to go with "Yamatou" for some stylistic reason or another.

...Anyways, apologies for the tangent. :/

 

[Handsome Devil Sparda]

Wiki's can be a wonderful labour of love but at the end of the day they are still fan-made and thus far from infallible.

Case in point: When it comes to the 閻魔刀, the romanisation has been simplified for us dumb Westerners but it's meant to be "Yamatou" - well actually it's really read as "Enmatou" but I have no way of discerning if that was a mistake or intentional* on the translator's part since there was no JPN dub of DMC1 iirc to compare it to. But the point is that it's not actually phonetically the same as 大和 (Yamato) and the fact that the Wiki states it symbolises Vergil's respect of tradition in contrast to Dante strikes me as a classic case of "backwards etymology" as the sword was introduced and named in DMC1 which claims it was the weapon of Sparda with zero indication it belonged to Vergil. But nowadays it's so heavily tied to Vergil that the Wiki writers have started from a conclusion and tried to mistakenly work backwards to make the assumed connection fit. Even as late as the DMC5 files state that Sparda named it after a god of death, that being Enma of course.

*Outside of Shin Megami Tensei, I don't recall having seen a JPN source acknowledge the original Sanskrit name of Yama for Enma but I suppose it's possible Kamiya or someone told them to go with "Yamatou" for some stylistic reason or another.

...Anyways, apologies for the tangent. :/

@Demi-fiend what say you, since you play that game

 

[Morgan]

Wiki's can be a wonderful labour of love but at the end of the day they are still fan-made and thus far from infallible.

Case in point: When it comes to the 閻魔刀, the romanisation has been simplified for us dumb Westerners but it's meant to be "Yamatou" - well actually it's really read as "Enmatou" but I have no way of discerning if that was a mistake or intentional* on the translator's part since there was no JPN dub of DMC1 iirc to compare it to.

Non-issue. JPN dubs for the games didn't debut until the fourth one and no one even mentions Yamato until then either, but they still had text to write it in. The solution is to find a JPN playthrough of DMC1 in LDK mode or an artbook with DMC1 concepts for the LDK costume including Yamato, to read what the text uses for "Yamato". If it's consistent with the DMC3 manga and DMC4's subtitles then it's still "閻羅刀" "Enma-tou" read as "ヤマト" "Yama-tou" as the manga clarifies. It probably is consistent. Japanese don't play when it comes to names and puns/references on names.

*Outside of Shin Megami Tensei, I don't recall having seen a JPN source acknowledge the original Sanskrit name of Yama for Enma but I suppose it's possible Kamiya or someone told them to go with "Yamatou" for some stylistic reason or another.

...Anyways, apologies for the tangent. :/

When the Romans have Jupiter, they're not going to call him Zeus; that's the Greeks' job. Likewise, the Japanese refer to that deity as "Enma", they don't need to acknowledge the "Yama" name outside of how they write it. The Japanese uses the kanji "閻羅刀" and the first two characters are the Han for "Yánluó", Yama the judge of the dead, so it's safe to say they're not referring to something like "Enma" that's written with the characters for "Monkey".

The connection is even easier to make comparing the JPN and ENG versions of Yu Yu Hakusho and Dragonball, with King Enma (閻羅大王, Enma-daiou) in both anime being referred to King Yama in English sub or dub while the text or spoken Japanese is "Enma-daiou" with the same characters, and both are managers of the afterlife and spirits.

The idiocy of the Wiki is in acknowledging that the Yamato is written as "Enma Katana" (閻魔刀 Enma-tou) and read as "Yamatō" then making any mention whatsoever to 大和 "Yamato". Imagine selectively acknowledging a macron and then calling the words the same when they're not? A macron makes a ton of difference to legibility, it's why we pronounce the E differently in "extreme" than we would for "elephant". But I digress. It's the sword of the god of death that originally "[had] the power to divide and wipe out the darkness". Now it's who knows what doing god knows what, in the hands of some poetry nerd.

 

[Lain]

Non-issue. JPN dubs for the games didn't debut until the fourth one and no one even mentions Yamato until then either, but they still had text to write it in. The solution is to find a JPN playthrough of DMC1 in LDK mode or an artbook with DMC1 concepts for the LDK costume including Yamato, to read what the text uses for "Yamato". If it's consistent with the DMC3 manga and DMC4's subtitles then it's still "閻羅刀" "Enma-tou" read as "ヤマト" "Yama-tou" as the manga clarifies. It probably is consistent. Japanese don't play when it comes to names and puns/references on names.

I watched a few LDK runs per your suggestion but to no avail as due to the power of editing they would skip things like going into the Menu and such to keep things running smoothly. That said, the sheer lack of any Furigana to the point where even some of the JPN players had to pause and consider how to read the kanji makes me think there probably wasn't any for Yamato in DMC1 at least. Interestingly, Vergil's entry in the "3142: Graphic Arts" book merely calls it "閻魔刀" without the usual addition of ヤマト in brackets curiously enough.

When the Romans have Jupiter, they're not going to call him Zeus; that's the Greeks' job. Likewise, the Japanese refer to that deity as "Enma", they don't need to acknowledge the "Yama" name outside of how they write it. The Japanese uses the kanji "閻羅刀" and the first two characters are the Han for "Yánluó", Yama the judge of the dead, so it's safe to say they're not referring to something like "Enma" that's written with the characters for "Monkey".

The connection is even easier to make comparing the JPN and ENG versions of Yu Yu Hakusho and Dragonball, with King Enma (閻羅大王, Enma-daiou) in both anime being referred to King Yama in English sub or dub while the text or spoken Japanese is "Enma-daiou" with the same characters, and both are managers of the afterlife and spirits.

The idiocy of the Wiki is in acknowledging that the Yamato is written as "Enma Katana" (閻魔刀 Enma-tou) and read as "Yamatō" then making any mention whatsoever to 大和 "Yamato". Imagine selectively acknowledging a macron and then calling the words the same when they're not? A macron makes a ton of difference to legibility, it's why we pronounce the E differently in "extreme" than we would for "elephant". But I digress. It's the sword of the god of death that originally "[had] the power to divide and wipe out the darkness". Now it's who knows what doing god knows what, in the hands of some poetry nerd.

Ah, perhaps I should have been clearer on what I was talking about. Namely if Kamiya told the translator to use "Yamato" or if it was their own discretion when making the ENG script. Thus because it's extremely rare to see a JPN source namedrop Yamarāja it made me think it was someone on the English side of things. Methinks if Kamiya had been hands-on the sword would have been left as "Enma" much like in say One Piece.

------------------

Taking everything that's been said into consideration, my speculation is that it was probably the translator who went with the name "Yamato" and later during the Itsuno years when the sword became plot-relevant it was decided by the JPN Devs to make the pronunciation that in Japanese as well in order to maintain consistency between languages. I would love to pick someone's brain who worked on the series on how it all happened, but for now that'll do for my speculation until any unseen evidence arises.