This is yet another story I wrote during my secondary school days (in a boarding school with a military-style regime, it’s hard to find things to have fun with). The story centres on the theme of ‘我执’ (atma-graha) and is set in a land that frequently receives falling meteors, where endless mountain ranges rise up from the earth. A nomadic tribe that followed the stars, whose scholars climbed the peaks to seek the cosmic truth through the towering mountains. They regarded the eagles, able to soar effortlessly into the skies, as silent sages, and were convinced that the falling meteorites were the eagles’ tears. The tale began as a fable about the pursuit of truth, but later, the people of the mountains and those of the lowlands formed distinct religions and political systems, and war, exploitation, revolution, and the end of all things arrived upon this land. I truly hope that one day I will have the opportunity to illustrate this series of stories as a comic, or in some other form.
This might differ from your understanding, but: I rarely view Zontik as a character who lacks power; more often than not, I portray him as the one dominating mentally (or morally idk). And I wouldn’t use words like “merciful” to describe him. Maybe it’s just my preconceptions. When I first saw his card art, he was wielding a weapon that looked more exaggerated and heavy than any other jacks—to me, that symbolizes the expansion of power and violence Maybe I should wait until my thoughts are a bit clearer before writing this. It’s already 3 a.m. in my time zone, and I’m busy with commissions.
sorry but I believe that at their core, both Kuromaku and Zontik are about faith, though they express it in different ways. To me, their exploration of questions of faith is incredibly passionate; whether the author intended it or not, I can clearly sense that in the comics. The reason I’ve become interested in these two characters is mainly because I, too, have been constantly reflecting on questions of faith over the past few years. sorry again.
