Futomimi フトミミ

“You must be the demon I prophecised about.”

Futomimi is perhaps the most exceptional of all Manikins, and certainly the strongest. He serves as leader of the Manikins thanks to his strength but mostly thanks to his unusual gift, unusual even for the Vortex World: he can predict, accurately, the close future. The Manikins respect him greatly and call him their prophet, a role he tackles with grace and great determination.

Futomimi is first encountered in the prison of Kabukicho. However, that is not the first time the protagonist hears of him. When the protagonist wins the Mantra "trial" and frees Isamu, an irritated Isamu tells him about how the Manikins told him about their prophet and how they wanted to get out of prison and find him. Isamu then sets out on a search for the prophet in question. Sadly, it doesn't end well for him: Futomimi is emprisonned, and Isamu is throwl into jail as well with the Manikins and tortured for his magatsuhi, snapping his sanity in two.

Meanwhile, the protagonist heads to Kabukicho and, after defeating the naga guards and the head jailer, a giant Mizuchi, gets to meet Futomimi himself, whom the death of Mizuchi has freed. He already knows about the protagonist, a being he has prophecized about before. Though he looks rather impassive, he sincerely thanks the protagonist for freeing him and his people, then tells him where to find Isamu.

After his meeting with an unbalanced Isamu, the protagonist meets Futomimi again outside the room. Futomimi has started gathering the Manikins to travel to a safer place, Asakusa. As token of his gratitude, he foretells the protagonist's future, telling him a man is waiting for him in Ginza. With one last thanks, he leaves with the Manikins.

Futomimi is next encountered in Mifunashiro, where he comes out of his meditation to greet the protagonist at the door of the sacred land. However, he forbids him from entering Mifunashiro, ans it is the sacred birthplace of all Manikins and he cannot allow a demon to walk in the sacred mud they were born from. After a warning that Sakahagi is a bad Manikin and that his peers should not be judged because of him, he then returns to his meditation.

A little later, he exits Mifunashiro once again to warn the Manikins of a terrible danger for them growing in Yoyogi Park. The player could think that it is Sakahagi, and indeed, the murderous Manikin is there, having gotten his hands on the Yahirono Himorogi, a stone of immense power. However, the great danger of Futomimi's vision is rather Chiaki Hayasaka, who has fled Yoyogi Park by the time the protagonist arrives. Chiaki reaches Ikebukuro, wounded and without her right arm, which Sakahagi has hacked off. There, she gains the power of Gozu-Tennoh. Futomimi was right, but it is too late now to stop Chiaki.

Whil the protagonist is distracted by his attempt to reach Isamu and slap some reason into him, Chiaki assembles the angels of God and launches an attack, or rather, a genocide in Asakusa and Mifunashiro. By the time the protagonist arrives, it is too late. Asakusa is deserted. Mifunashiro is littered with corpse. The once peaceful cave, the only wet area in the desert of the Vortex, is filled with gloating angels hunting down the survivors with sadistic glee.

The protagonist finally reaches Futomimi, in the holy of holy, he is still alive, trying to defend himself against Chiaki. He knows he cannot stop her, so when he spots the protagonist, he pleads for him to help, claiming that his heart is unlike any demon's. The choice is actually a game-changing choice: depending on whose side the protagonist decides to stand, the path of the game, and thus, the ending, will change.

If the protagonist aligns with Chiaki and Yosuga, like a heartless monster, he will have to find a surprisingly difficult boss, Futomimi himself, who proves to be no slouch in combat.

If the protagonist aligns with any other Reason or none at all, Chiaki will summon threee seraphim (Uriel, Raphael and Gabriel) to distract the protagonist with a boss fight while she finishes off Futomimi.

Upon the end of the of the battle with the seraphim, she claims that oddly, Futomimi did not die like a mud doll. Then, adding insult to injury, she summons her sponsor god right there and then. The large rock she and Futomimi were standing on explodes, releasing all its magatsuhi, and Baal Avatar appears to answer Chiaki's call.

It is the end of the plot involvement of Futomimi, but not the end of his story.

If the protagonist chooses to explore the Labyrinth of Amala and makes it to the Fourth Kalpa, he can find the Hell Maze in the Twelve Meters of Eternity on even numbered Kagutsuchi phases that are not New, Half or Full. Inside, he can find a lot of souls, but two in particular stand out: the Old Soul and the Young Soul.

The young Soul, dressed in a high school uniform, asks the protagonist if it's okay to kill to your hearts content. It turns out that the Young Soul is that of a young serial killer, who told a girl before the Conception that "everyone has good inside them". The unnamed killer, deep down, longed to be the kind of person everyone would like. After obtaining the Afterlife Bell in Zishigaya Cemeteray from an unfortnate Manikin who used it to become human again and was killed instantly upon reverting because the Vortex doesn't allow humans to live there, the protagonist can return to Hell's Maze and ring the bell for the Young Soul. The Young Soul is then freed from the maze and allowed to move on, allowing the part of his soul that had become the Manikin Futomimi to be reborn as a demon of the Kishin race, which is made of guardian deities.

Name Significance

The name Futomimi comes, I believe, from futomani 太占, an ancient divination method said to have been used by the gods of Shinto themselves to predict the future. In futomani, one heats the scapula of a deer with fire, then interprets the cracks in the bone to understand what will happen in the future. The first futomani divination was performed by Ame no Futotama no Mikoto, god of divination and religious services, to discover how to make Amaterasu come out of the cave she was hiding in. Futotama is the legendary ancestor of the line of shinto priests who accomplished Shinto rituals at the Yamato court.

Stats

Once fused, Futomimi becomes a level 63 Kishin race demon with nice skills that allow him to last in your party. He lacks in Agility somewhat, but that's nothing that cannot be fixed with mitamas. He also resists all Physical attacks in addition to voiding Death, Expel and Ailments. I personally used Futomimi all the way to Lucifer and he always served me well.

An interesting thing to note is that both Futomimi and Sakahagi have a skill common to regular Manikins, War Cry, and that Sakahagi also has Panic Voice, another skill regular Manikins can have.

Reason

Equality

Futomimi's Reason, despite not being able to conceive one according to the Vortex's laws, is one of equality. In Futomimi's world, no one would be above or below another. Everyone would have the same rank, or rather, rank would not exist at all; there would be no slaves and no masters. Bullying, enslavement and torture would no longer exist, and everyone would live at peace with one another.

Futomimi's Reason is remarkable in the fact that, of all the Reasons proposed by the game, it is the only sefless one. Of course, Futomimi has interest in seeing it come true, as it would free him of his condition as well, but unlike the self-centered human Reasons he doesn't attempt to twist the world to conform to his malfunctions and shortcomings: he has considered the wishes of others when thinking about his Reason. He has seen the suffering of his people, and wishes to relieve them of their pain, while the human Reason bearers aim first and foremost to soothe their own existential crises.