title: Iowa-class battleship

text: "Missouri" was the last of the four "Iowa"s to be completed. She was ordered 12 June 1940, laid down 6 January 1941, launched 29 January 1944, and commissioned 11 June 1944. "Missouri" conducted her trials off New York with shakedown and battle practice in Chesapeake Bay before transferring to the Pacific Fleet, where she screened US aircraft carriers involved in offensive operations against the Japanese before reporting to Okinawa to shell the island in advance of the planned landings. Following the bombardment of Okinawa, "Missouri" turned her attention to the Japanese homeland islands of Honshu and Hokkaido, performing shore bombardment and screening US carriers involved in combat operations. She became a symbol of the US Navy's victory in the Pacific when representatives of the Empire of Japan boarded the battleship to sign the documents of unconditional surrender to the Allied powers in September 1945. After World War II, "Missouri" conducted largely uneventful training and operational cruises until suffering a grounding accident. In 1950, she was dispatched to Korea in response to the outbreak of the Korean War. "Missouri" served two tours of duty in Korea providing shore bombardment. She was decommissioned in 1956. She spent many years at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington. Reactivated in 1984, as part of the 600-ship Navy plan, "Missouri" was sent on operational cruises until being assigned to Operation Earnest Will in 1988. In 1991, "Missouri" participated in Operation Desert Storm, firing 28 Tomahawk Missiles and 759 16-inch shells at Iraqi targets along the coast. Decommissioned for the last time in 1992, "Missouri" was donated to the USS "Missouri" Memorial Association of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, for use as a museum ship in 1999.


title: Iowa-class battleship

text: "Wisconsin" was ordered 12 June 1940, laid down 25 January 1942, launched 7 December 1943, and commissioned 16 April 1944. After trials and initial training in Chesapeake Bay, she transferred to the Pacific Fleet in 1944, and was assigned to protect the US fleet of aircraft carriers involved in operations in the Philippines until summoned to Iwo Jima to bombard the island in advance of the Marine landings. Afterward, she proceeded to Okinawa, bombarding the island in advance of the allied amphibious assault. In mid-1945 "Wisconsin" turned her attention to bombarding the Japanese home islands until the surrender of Japan in August. Reactivated in 1950, for the Korean War, "Wisconsin" served two tours of duty, assisting South Korean and UN forces by providing call fire support and shelling targets. In 1956, the bow of the uncompleted "Kentucky" was removed and grafted on "Wisconsin", which had collided with the destroyer . Decommissioned in 1958, "Wisconsin" was placed in the reserve fleet at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard until reactivated in 1986, as part of the 600-ship Navy plan. In 1991, "Wisconsin" participated in Operation Desert Storm, firing 24 Tomahawk Missiles at Iraqi targets, and expending 319 16-inch shells at Iraqi troop formations along the coast. Decommissioned for the last time 30 September 1991, "Wisconsin" was placed in the reserve fleet until stricken from the "Naval Vessel Register" on 17 March 2006, so she could be transferred for use as a museum ship. "Wisconsin" is currently berthed at the Nauticus maritime museum in Norfolk, Virginia.


title: Iowa-class battleship

text: Hull numbers BB-65 and BB-66 were originally intended as the first and second ships of the of battleships; however the passage of an emergency war building program on 19 July 1940, resulted in both hulls being reordered as "Iowa"-class units to save time on construction. The war ended before either could be completed, and work was eventually stopped. Initially, proposals were made to convert the hulls into aircraft carriers similar to the , but the effort was dropped. Eventually both hulls were scrapped.


title: Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World

text: , often referred to simply as Re:Zero and also known as Re: Life in a different world from zero, is a Japanese light novel series written by Tappei Nagatsuki and illustrated by Shin'ichirō Ōtsuka. The story centers on Subaru Natsuki, a "hikikomori" who suddenly finds himself transported to another world on his way home from the convenience store. The series was initially serialized on the website Shōsetsuka ni Narō from 2012 onwards. Thirty-one light novels, as well as five side story volumes and seven short story collections have been published by Media Factory under their MF Bunko J imprint.


text: The series's first three arcs have been adapted into separate manga series. The first, by Daichi Matsue, was published between June 2014 and March 2015. The second, by Makoto Fugetsu, has been published by Square Enix since October 2014. Matsue launched the third adaptation, also published by Media Factory, in May 2015. Additionally, Media Factory has published two anthology manga with stories by different artists. An anime television series adaptation by White Fox aired from April to September 2016, starting with an hour-long special. The first of two OVA based on the series was released in October 2018, and the second OVA was released in November 2019. In March 2017, game developer 5pb. released a visual novel based on the series. A second season aired in a split-cour format, with the first half airing from July to September 2020, and the second half airing from January to March 2021.


text: The novels and all three manga adaptations are published in North America by Yen Press. The anime adaptation has been licensed by Crunchyroll outside Asia, which released the anime on home video through Funimation in the United States and Anime Limited in the United Kingdom. In Southeast Asia and South Asia, the series is licensed by Muse Communication.


text: The light novels have sold more than 11 million copies, while the anime series has sold more than 70,000 copies on home video. The light novels have been praised for their fresh take on the "another world" concept, but have been criticized for awkward dialogue and redundancy. The series has been praised by critics for its fleshed-out characters, complex world and lore, and thought-provoking topics and themes. The series received awards at the 2015–2016 Newtype Anime Awards and the 2017 Sugoi Japan Awards, and was nominated for Anime of the Year at the 1st Crunchyroll Anime Awards.


text: Subaru Natsuki is a NEET who is suddenly summoned to a fantasy-like world. Just after arriving, he is killed while trying to help a young half-elf he befriends, , who is a candidate to become the next ruler of the Kingdom of Lugunica, only to revive some hours in the past. After dying some times, Subaru realizes that he has the power to turn back time after his death. After successfully helping Emilia, Subaru starts living in one of the Mansions of the Roswaal Mathers as a butler. Out of gratitude and affection for Emilia, Subaru makes use of his newfound ability to protect her and help on her ambition to be successfully appointed as the next queen, also providing assistance to other friends he makes along the way, while suffering due to the pain inflicted on him every time he dies, and carrying along the memories of everything that happened before his power activates, which is forgotten by everybody except for him.


text: In the late 2000s, the light novel series "The Familiar of Zero" ("Zero no Tsukaima") spawned a number of fan fiction on the website Shōsetsuka ni Narō ("Let's Become Novelists"), also known as Narō. Tappei Nagatsuki initially began writing "The Familiar of Zero" fan fiction on Narō, before building on its "isekai" ("other world") concept to write his own original web novel series on Narō, called "Re:Zero", which began serialization in 2012.


text: The series' editor at MF Bunko J, Masahito Ikemoto, first became aware of the web novel in April 2013, when it began to appear on his Twitter feed. He was immediately impressed by the series' use of Return by Death, and how it was a "depressing, yet surprising, twist on the fantasy genre," and began working with Nagatsuki to adapt the series into a light novel. Most light novels are around 250 pages in length, but Nagatsuki submitted a manuscript of more than 1,000 pages for the first novel, forcing Ikemoto to edit it heavily. While Nagatsuki wanted to engage in worldbuilding early on, Ikemoto felt that it was more necessary to make the readers feel engaged with the characters. He ended up rearranging the story so that parts focusing on the world and its lore were pushed back to the third arc of the series.


text: Prior to his involvement in "Re:Zero", illustrator Shin'ichirō Ōtsuka worked on video games, which led him to draw the backgrounds first when illustrating the series. After reading the web novel, he submitted a number of character designs for the major characters to Ikemoto. 's initial design made him look like a delinquent, with Otsuka later describing it as "not the face of a boy in his teens," leading Ikemoto to request that the character be "more friendly and less fierce" so that the audience could empathize with him during emotional scenes. Originally, 's character design appeared extremely plain, so a number of features were added to make her more interesting. Ikemoto specified that she must fit the "archetypal heroine" mold. and Ram also underwent significant changes from the first draft: their original designs lacked the characteristic hair parts, and their maid uniforms were longer and more "traditional."


text: The possibility of an anime adaptation came up early in the development of the series; Shō Tanaka, a producer at Kadokawa, asked Ikemoto about properties which might lend themselves to being animated, and Ikemoto recommended that Tanaka read Nagatsuki's web novels. Despite an initial miscommunication which led to Ikemoto believing that Tanaka wasn't interested, talks of adapting the series began soon after the web novels began the transition to print.


text: As part of talks for the potential anime adaptation, Ikemoto and Tanaka spoke to Tsunaki Yoshikawa, an animation producer at studio White Fox, about the possibility of his studio animating the series. Hoping to adapt the series into an anime similar to "Steins;Gate" (which White Fox also produced), and having a positive impression of the studio as one that did faithful adaptations, Tanaka then formally approached them about producing the show. White Fox's president contacted Yoshikawa for his opinion, and Yoshikawa recommended they accept, as long as the series "doesn't violate any broadcasting regulations."


text: Production on the anime began sometime after the release of the fifth novel in October 2014. Masaharu Watanabe was chosen by Yoshikawa to direct the series because he had previously worked for the studio doing key animation, while Kyūta Sakai was chosen to be the series' character designer and chief animation director because Yoshikawa felt that she would be able to do the novel's art justice whilst maintaining a consistent animation quality throughout the series' 25-episode run. Masahiro Yokotani was brought on board as the main writer, with the series being his first time composing for a "reborn in another world"-type story. Yoshikawa warned him about the violence in the series, but Yokotani was still surprised by the violent and disturbing scenes in novels three and beyond, having only read the first novel when he agreed to work on the project; he delegated the script writing of those episodes in the second cour to the other two scriptwriters. Yoshiko Nakamura joined the project sometime after Yokotani had completed the script for episode 3. When it proved unfeasible for Yokotani and Nakamura to write the scripts alone, the decision was made to bring another scriptwriter on board. Gaku Iwasa, the president of White Fox, asked them to hire someone "younger," leading Yokotani to suggest Eiji Umehara. Nagatsuki had recently been playing "Chaos;Child", which Umehara had written for, and he approved the choice, suggesting that they let Umehara write the "painful parts"; Umehara was invited to join the project around the time that the scripts for episodes 8 and 9 were being written. "Re:Zero" was the first light novel adaptation that either of the screenwriters had worked on.


text: Original author Tappei Nagatsuki was very active in the production of the anime, attending script meetings and recording sessions. When the staff would encounter a problem with a scene, he would occasionally write lines for them to use as reference while writing the script. The series was not initially intended to have 25 episodes, but was extended to give more time to the battle with the White Whale (which was expanded from two to three episodes) and to the content of episode 18 (episodes 16 to 18 were originally supposed to be covered in two episodes). Watanabe's main directive to the staff was to "capture the mood of the novel as much as possible"; the scriptwriters had discussions about how to compress the dense source material without losing the central elements of the story, and Nakamura recalls working with composition notes that "went on for pages." While planning and scripting the anime, choosing a proper conclusion was one of the most difficult parts for the staff, and a significant amount of time was devoted to choosing what to cover in the final episode, which included material not yet covered in the light novel.


text: After joining the project, both Nakamura and Umehara had to adjust their views of the main character, and were forced to rewrite scenes where they had made Subaru appear "cool." At Watanabe's direction, Nakamura was made to rewrite Subaru's telling of "The Red Ogre Who Cried" in episode 6 multiple times. The staff also had difficulty deciding on a song to use for Subaru's ringtone that plays during the closing scene of episode 19, considering songs like "Kanpaku Sengen," "The Beard Song," and "M" by Princess Princess, before settling on "Yoake no Michi" from "Dog of Flanders".


text: While choosing a composer to produce the series' music, director Watanabe wanted to choose someone who had "hit a nerve" with him. A fan of drama series, Watanabe was struck by a piece of music in the medical drama "Death's Organ", and found that the series' composer, Kenichiro Suehiro, had also worked on a number of his favorite anime and drama series. After Suehiro was attached to the production, Watanabe gave him three major guidelines: use human voices during the Return by Death sequences; compose the music like he would for a drama or a movie to capture the emotional scenes; and "pull all the stops" for the suspenseful scenes. Additionally, for the first cour, Watanabe asked for music with a "suspenseful" vibe, while requesting music with a "romantic" feel for the second cour. Both Watanabe and Suehiro are fans of Italian composer Ennio Morricone, and Suehiro tried to take inspiration from his works while composing the soundtrack. Watanabe also requested that there be songs that mimicked Hans Zimmer's score from "The Dark Knight". While Suehiro used music that wasn't very "anime-ish" during most of the series, he was asked to use more traditional anime music during the slice of life scenes. A number of times during the series, such as in episodes 7 and 15, Watanabe made it a point to use an entire song, something which is unusual in most anime.


text: The series makes limited use of its opening and ending themes, and Watanabe has said that he wished he could use them more frequently.


text: The "Re:Zero" web novel was initially serialized by Tappei Nagatsuki (writing under the username ) on the user-generated content site Shōsetsuka ni Narō from April 20, 2012, onwards. As of February 13, 2021, six story arcs have been completed and two "EX" side stories have been published, with the seventh arc in progress. In total the webnovel has 527 chapters available.


text: Following the web novel's publication, Media Factory acquired the series for print publication. The first light novel volume, with illustrations by Shin'ichirō Ōtsuka, was published on January 24, 2014, under their MF Bunko J imprint. As of September 2022, thirty-one volumes have been published, as well as five side story volumes and seven short story collections. Nagatsuki and Otsuka began publishing a series of short side-stories focusing on characters from the series in "Monthly Comic Alive", starting with the character in August 2016. It was followed with one focused on on November 26, 2016, and one featuring Ram and Rem on January 27, 2017. The light novels are published in English by Yen Press, who announced their acquisition of the license via Twitter on December 2, 2015. The publisher has also acquired the license to the "Re:Zero EX" side novels.


text: A manga adaptation by Daichi Matsue, titled , began serialization in the August 2014 issue of Media Factory's "seinen" manga magazine "Monthly Comic Alive" on June 27, 2014. The final volume was released on March 23, 2015. On December 2, 2015, Yen Press announced that they had licensed the series.


text: A second manga, titled , with art by Makoto Fugetsu, began serialization in Square Enix's "seinen" magazine "Monthly Big Gangan" on October 25, 2014. The final chapter was published on December 24, 2016, and an extra chapter was published on January 25, 2017. The second adaptation has also been licensed by Yen Press.


text: Daichi Matsue began serializing a third manga, in "Comic Alive" July 2015 issue on May 27, 2015. Yen will publish the third adaptation as well.


text: A manga anthology, titled , was published by Media Factory on June 23, 2016. A second anthology was published on September 23, 2017.


text: An Internet radio show to promote the series named began broadcasting on March 27, 2016. The show was aired every Monday and was hosted by Rie Takahashi, the voice actress for Emilia. Guests that appeared on the show included Yūsuke Kobayashi (Subaru Natsuki), Inori Minase (Rem), Yumi Uchiyama (Puck), Rie Murakawa (Ram), Satomi Arai (Beatrice), Chinatsu Akasaki (Felt), Kana Ueda (Anastasia Hoshin), and Yui Horie (Felix). The show ran for 33 episodes and concluded on December 19, 2016. The first radio CD, which contains episodes 1–8 of the show, was released on June 27, 2016. The second, which contains episodes 9–16 of the show, was released on September 28, 2016. The third, containing episodes 17–24, was released on November 30, 2016, and the fourth, containing episodes 25–33, was released on March 29, 2017.


text: An anime television series adaptation was announced by Kadokawa in July 2015. The series is directed by Masaharu Watanabe and written by Masahiro Yokotani, with animation by the studio White Fox. Kyuta Sakai is serving as both character designer and as chief animation director. Music for the series is composed by Kenichiro Suehiro. Kentaro Minegishi is the series' director of photography, and Yoshito Takamine serves as art director. Jin Aketagawa handled sound direction for the anime, and sound effects were produced by Yuji Furuya. Other staff members include Hitomi Sudo (editing), Yu Karube (3D director), Saaya Kinjō (art configuration), Izumi Sakamoto (color design), and Noritaka Suzuki and Gōichi Iwabatake (prop design).


text: The 25-episode series premiered on April 4, 2016, with an extended 50-minute first episode. It was broadcast on TV Tokyo, TV Osaka, TV Aichi, and AT-X. The series was simulcast by Crunchyroll. Episode 14 and 18 ran 2 minutes longer than a typical anime episode, clocking at 25 minutes and 45 seconds. The final episode ran 3 minutes longer, clocking at 27 minutes and 15 seconds.


text: A series of anime shorts featuring chibi versions of the characters, titled , were produced by Studio Puyukai to accompany the series. The shorts ran for eleven episodes before being replaced by a new series of shorts, titled , which began airing on June 24, 2016, and ran for 14 episodes. The shorts are directed, written, and produced by Minoru Ashina, with character designs by Minoru Takehara, who also animated the series alongside Sumi Kimoto and Chisato Totsuka. Kenichiro Suehiro reprised his role as composer for the shorts, while Tomoji Furuya of Suwara Pro produced the sound effects. Jin Aketagawa directed the sound at production company Magic Capsule.


text: The shorts aired on AT-X after each episode of the regular series, starting on April 8, 2016. Crunchyroll acquired the streaming rights to both shorts. Animax Asia later aired the series starting on January 13, 2017.


text: An original video animation (OVA) episode was announced at the "MF Bunko J Summer School Festival 2017" event on September 10, 2017. All of the main staff and cast returned for the OVA, with Tatsuya Koyanagi joining as chief director. Titled "Memory Snow", the OVA was screened in Japanese theaters starting on October 6, 2018. A second OVA, titled , was announced on September 23, 2018. The OVA is an adaptation of the prequel novel which was included with the first Japanese Blu-ray release of the television series, and focused on the meeting of Emilia and Puck. It was released in Japanese theaters on November 8, 2019.


text: The series is licensed by Crunchyroll in the United States; Funimation announced during their Katsucon 2018 panel that they will release it on home video with an English dub as part of the two companies' partnership. Crunchyroll also holds the license in the United Kingdom, where the series is distributed by Anime Limited. Both Funimation and Anime Limited's Season 1 Part 1 Blu-ray releases received negative attention after it was discovered that they showed visible color banding and compression artifacts. The season 1 part 2 Blu-ray was released on February 5, 2019.


text: On March 23, 2019, it was announced that a second season is in production. The cast and staff will reprise their roles for the second season. It was scheduled to premiere in April 2020, but was delayed to July 2020 due to production complications caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the arrival of the second season's initial premier date, an edited version of the first season premiered on January 1, 2020, on AT-X and other channels, with the edited version recapping the first season through one-hour episodes. It also included new additional footage. The OVA "Memory Snow" was also broadcast in between the episodes 5 and 6 of the edited version.


text: The second season was announced to be in a split-cour format, with the first half airing from July 8 to September 30, 2020, and the second half airing from January 6 to March 24, 2021. The English dub for Season 2 Part 1 began airing from August 26 onwards. There is no standard length for each episode and the runtime is varying from 24 to 30 minutes.


text: A crossover comedy series, "Isekai Quartet", Chibi style, much like the OVA. It also featured characters from the light novel series "KonoSuba", "Overlord", and "The Saga of Tanya the Evil", all published by Kadokawa Corporation. The anime premiered on April 9, 2019.


text: The first opening theme song was "Redo" by Konomi Suzuki, and the first ending theme was "Styx Helix" by Myth & Roid, while for episode 7 the ending theme was "Straight Bet," also by Myth & Roid. The second opening theme song, titled "Paradisus-Paradoxum," was performed by Myth & Roid, while the second ending theme, "Stay Alive," was performed by Rie Takahashi. Myth & Roid also performed the ending theme for episode 14 titled "theater D."


text: The second season's first opening theme song was "Realize" by Konomi Suzuki, while the second season's first ending theme song was "Memento" by Nonoc. The second season's second opening theme song was "Long Shot" by Mayu Maeshima (former vocalist of Myth & Roid), while the second season's second ending theme song was "Believe In You" by Nonoc.


text: The series' soundtrack was released on CD on October 26, 2016. The disk contains 21 tracks composed by Kenichiro Suehiro.


text: "Redo," Suzuki's 10th single, was released on CD on May 11, 2016. The single was also released as a limited edition with a DVD featuring a music video, a live concert video, and a "making of" video. The songs were performed by Suzuki, with lyrics by Genki Mizuno and arrangement by Makoto Miyazaki.


text: The CD for "Styx Helix," the series' first ending theme, was Myth & Roid's 3rd single. Written, arranged, and performed by the group, it was released on May 25, 2016, and included both regular and instrumental versions of "Styx Helix" and "STRAIGHT BET."


text: "Stay Alive," the second ending theme, was released as a single on August 24, 2016. The songs were performed by Takahashi (Emilia) and Minase (Rem). The songs were written and arranged by Heart's Cry.


text: Myth & Roid released the second opening theme as a single on August 24, 2016. The CD included regular and instrumental versions of "Paradisus-Paradoxum" and "theater D."


text: For "Memory Snow", three pieces of theme music were used: the ending theme "Memory Memory Snow" and the image song "Relive" by Nonoc, and the insert song "Memories" by Riko Azuna.


text: In August 2016, game developer 5pb. announced that they were developing a visual novel based on the series, titled . The game follows an original story that differs from the light novel and the anime, and allows the player to choose between routes featuring Emilia, Rem, Ram, Felt, Beatrice, Crusch, Priscilla, or Anastasia. A DLC allows players who pre-ordered the game to replace the character's costumes with swimsuits. The opening theme, , was performed by Suzuki, who sung the anime's first opening theme, while the ending theme, , was performed by Minase and Murakawa. The game has received a generally positive score of 30/40 on Famitsu.


text: In Japan, the game was originally scheduled to be released for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita on March 23, 2017, but was delayed to March 30, 2017, due to certain circumstances. The limited edition of the game came with a soundtrack CD and either a Ram (for the PS4 version) or Rem (for the PSVita version) SD figure.


text: A virtual reality app that allows the user to interact with the character Rem was released for iOS and Android on May 26, 2017. A version featuring the character Emilia was released on June 6, 2017. The game was later ported to both PC and to the PlayStation VR.


text: A role-playing mobile game called "Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World: Infinity" that was made by Tianjin Tianxiang Interactive Technology and authorized by White Fox was released on January 14, 2020, in China. Another mobile game that made by Sega titled was released for Android and iOS on September 9, 2020. In the game, the player can become protagonist Subaru Natsuki and relive the story of the anime. From there, the player can branch into “What If” stories. Furthermore, a new story original to the game was produced under the full supervision of original author Tappei Nagatsuki.


text: A tactical adventure video game was developed by Chime and published by Spike Chunsoft titled and was released for PlayStation 4, PC, and Nintendo Switch in January 2021. The game has an original story and was produced under the full supervision of original author Tappei Nagatsuki and illustrated by the series' illustrator Shinichiou Otsuka. It is the first official "Re:Zero" game to have an English release.


text: A role-playing browser game called "Re:Zero -Starting Life in Another World- Forbidden Book and the Mysterious Spirit" that was made by DMM Games released on July 14, 2021, in Japan. On March 14, 2022, DMM Games has announced the game will be shut down on July 14, 2022.


text: Kadokawa published a 272-page guide to the series' first three arcs, titled "Re:zeropedia", alongside the 10th volume of the novels on October 24, 2016. An official "dōjinshi" art book was published at Comiket, with art by Ponkan 8 ("Shirobako" and "My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected"), Yuka Nakajima ("Listen to Me, Girls. I Am Your Father!", "Amagi Brilliant Park"), and TakayaKi ("Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou"). A crossover with Natsume Akatsuki's light novel series "KonoSuba", titled "Re:Starting Life Blessing This World" was published on December 21, 2016. The book featured interviews with each series' authors and illustrators, as well as the principal voice actors in their respective anime adaptations. A one-shot crossover manga by Daichi Matsuse and Masahito Watari (illustrator of the "KonoSuba" manga adaptation) was also included. A fanbook containing commentary on the episodes of the anime, as well as the collected "Animate Times" cast and staff interviews, was published on December 31, 2016. Bushiroad released a Booster Pack set and Trial Deck+ of Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- for Weiß Schwarz on December 28, 2018.


text: According to Japanese light novel news website LN News, the series had 1 million copies in print as of June 2016, over 2 million as of September 2016 and over 3.1 million as of May 2017. As of November 2019, the sales count is approximately 4.6 million. The light novel series was the tenth best-selling light novel series in Japan between November 2015 and May 2016, selling 263,357 copies. During that period, the first and second volumes were the 35th and 48th best-selling light novel volumes, selling 49,194 and 41,617 copies, respectively. The series was the fourth best-selling series in 2016, selling 1,007,381 copies between November 2015 and November 2016. Its first three volumes were the 14th, 21st, and 30th best selling volumes of the year, selling 155,363, 127,970, and 110,574 copies, respectively. In 2017, the series was the third best-selling series, with 925,671 copies sold. Its 1st, 10th, 11th, and 12th volumes respectively ranking 19th (60,135 copies), 25th (56,001 copies), 7th (101,480 copies), and 12th (79,431 copies) in the period between November 2016 and May 2017.


text: The series was the 21st best selling anime series on home video during 2016, selling approximately 68,791 Blu-ray and DVD sets. The OVA "Memory Snow," released in 2018, sold a total of 10,429 Blu-ray and DVD copies.


text: Theron Martin of "Anime News Network" reviewed the first book, praising it for being a somewhat fresher take on the "transported to another world" concept, but leveled criticism at it for bumpy and awkwardly timed dialogue and a tendency for redundancy.


text: The series ranked number one in a poll of 820 people conducted by the Japanese website Anime! Anime! to determine the best show of spring 2016. Andy Hanley from UK Anime Network considered the anime adaptation as one of 2016's best series.


text: The Managing Editor from Anime Now!, Richard Eisenbeis lists the anime as one of his top picks from 2016 for its "culturally complex" world and characters that have "their own plans, faults, and motivations." He praised Subaru as the "most complex character of the year" due to provoking the audience to "cheer him and despise him" in a world that portrayed him as the "least special person in it."


text: The series took second place in the 2015–2016 Newtype Anime Awards. Additionally, director Masaharu Watanabe took first place, as did Subaru, Rem, and Puck (in the best male, female, and mascot character categories, respectively). Masahiro Yokotani's screenplay took second place, while the series' character designs (by Shin'ichirō Ōtsuka and Kyuta Sakai) took third place. The series' soundtrack and second opening theme both took fourth place in their categories. The light novels and the anime both took first place in their respective categories in the 2017 Sugoi Japan Awards.


text: In a survey of (primarily female) Otamart users, the series was ranked second on a list of the most successful anime/manga/light novel franchises of 2016. "Re:Zero" was nominated for "Anime of the Year" in Crunchyroll's 1st Anime Awards in 2016, and was also the service's most-watched series of 2016, topping "Yuri on Ice".


title: Studio Trigger

text: , also known as Studio Trigger, is a Japanese animation studio founded by former Gainax employees Hiroyuki Imaishi and Masahiko Ōtsuka in 2011. It has produced anime works including "Kill la Kill" (2013), "Little Witch Academia" (short films, 2013 and 2015; TV series, 2017), "Promare" (2019), "" (2020), and "" (2022).


title: Studio Trigger

text: Studio Trigger was founded by former Gainax employee Hiroyuki Imaishi, following his success with "Gurren Lagann" (2007). This led to the creation of Studio Trigger, with "Gurren Lagann"s visual humor and style defining the studio's work, and Trigger being seen as a successor to Gainax.


title: Studio Trigger

text: Studio Trigger was established on August 22, 2011 by Hiroyuki Imaishi and Masahiko Ōtsuka shortly after leaving Gainax. The studio name and official website was revealed in October 2011. Along with assisting production on various series, Trigger has released a short film, "Little Witch Academia", and has developed its first original anime television series, "Kill la Kill", which aired from October 2013 to March 2014. On July 8, 2013, Trigger launched a Kickstarter project in order to fund a second episode of "Little Witch Academia". The project was well received and achieved its goal of $150,000 in under five hours, and went on to raise a total of $625,518.


title: Studio Trigger

text: Studio Trigger, along with studios Sanzigen and Ordet, joined joint holding company Ultra Super Pictures.


title: Studio Trigger

text: In 2018, Studio Trigger created a Patreon with the goal of acquiring necessary funding for projects and merchandise. They offer both a US$1 and US$5 option for patrons (including a limited US$80 tier that ships a drawing to the patron) and currently have over 1900 backers on the platform, raising over US$5000 per month.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: The 2021 Copa América was the 47th edition of the Copa América, the international men's football championship organised by South America's football ruling body CONMEBOL. The tournament took place in Brazil from 13 June to 10 July 2021. The tournament was originally scheduled to take place from 12 June to 12 July 2020 in Argentina and Colombia as the 2020 Copa América. On 17 March 2020, CONMEBOL announced that due to the COVID-19 pandemic in South America, the tournament had been postponed for a year, in conjunction with UEFA's decision to also postpone UEFA Euro 2020 to 2021. This was the first time since 1991 where no guest nation took part in the tournament.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: On 20 May 2021, Colombia was removed as co-host amid ongoing protests against President Iván Duque Márquez, and Argentina was then removed on 30 May due to COVID-19 issues. The following day CONMEBOL confirmed Brazil as the new host of the tournament.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: Hosts Brazil were the title holders, having won their ninth title in 2019, which they also hosted. Argentina won their fifteenth title after defeating Brazil 1–0 in the final, their first senior title since the 1993 edition of the same tournament. They also equalled Uruguay's overall record of Copa América titles.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: In March 2017, CONMEBOL reportedly proposed that the Copa América take place in 2020 as part of a calendar change. Following the 2019 edition in Brazil, the quadrennial tournament would move from odd to even years starting in 2020, with the following edition taking place in Ecuador in 2024. This would move the tournament in line with the UEFA European Championship, which is also held in even years with a 2020 edition taking place. Reports suggested that the United States may host the tournament, having previously held the one-off Copa América Centenario in 2016, which celebrated the centenary of CONMEBOL and the Copa América. On 18 September 2018, plans for a calendar change were confirmed by CONMEBOL president Alejandro Domínguez after submitting an official request to FIFA.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: On 26 October 2018 at the FIFA Council meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, the request was approved for the Copa América to take place in even years, starting with the 2020 edition. The tournament was originally scheduled to take place between 12 June and 12 July 2020, the same dates as UEFA Euro 2020.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: On 13 March 2019, CONMEBOL announced Argentina and Colombia as co-hosts of the 2020 event after the United States bid was rejected. It was officially announced the same day when CONMEBOL approved of the joint hosting. It was officially awarded on 9 April 2019 at the CONMEBOL Congress in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: On 20 May 2021, due to security concerns amid protests against the government of President Iván Duque Márquez, Colombia was dropped as co-host of the tournament.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic in South America began impacting football. FIFA announced that the first two rounds of the South American qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup, due to take place in March, were postponed, while CONMEBOL temporarily suspended the Copa Libertadores. On 17 March 2020, CONMEBOL announced that the Copa América would be postponed to the following year, taking place from 11 June to 11 July 2021, in order to protect the health and safety of the teams, media, visitors and host cities. On the following day, the Bureau of the FIFA Council approved the date change in the FIFA International Match Calendar. As a result, the expanded FIFA Club World Cup, which was due to take place in June and July 2020, was rescheduled to 2021.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: On 22 May 2021, Argentina went under a nine-day lockdown due to soaring COVID-19 cases, which included the suspension of all domestic football. On 30 May 2021, CONMEBOL announced that due to the current circumstances in the country, Copa América would be pulled from Argentina, and that they were looking at bids from other countries to host the tournament. This reportedly included a bid from the United States, after that bid was initially rejected. It was reported that the Argentine government had made increasing demands for biosecurity protocols that CONMEBOL found unreasonable. On 31 May Brazil was confirmed as the new host.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: All matches in the tournament were held behind closed doors, except the final, where 10% of Maracanã Stadium's capacity was allowed for guests with a negative COVID-19 test before entering. All delegations, each limited to 65 members, were vaccinated, as were the match officials.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: On 1 June 2021, the Brazilian government and Brazilian Football Confederation announced the cities of Brasília, Goiânia, Cuiabá and Rio de Janeiro as the host venues of the competition, with the Maracanã, Mané Garrincha, Pantanal and the Olímpico stadiums used for matches. On 2 June, the CBF decided to use the Nilton Santos as the second stadium in Rio de Janeiro. The government also allocated resources in the federal budget to provide the necessary support for the CONMEBOL's tournament logistics and security. Mané Garrincha hosted the opening match on 13 June, and the final was held at the Maracanã on 10 July.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: On 20 November 2019, CONMEBOL published a document confirming eight venues, Estadio Mario Alberto Kempes in Córdoba, Estadio Malvinas Argentinas in Mendoza, Estadio Monumental in Buenos Aires and Estadio Ciudad de La Plata in La Plata for Argentina and Estadio Olímpico Pascual Guerrero in Cali, Estadio Atanasio Girardot in Medellín, Estadio Metropolitano Roberto Meléndez in Barranquilla and Estadio El Campín in Bogotá for Colombia. Moreover, Estadio San Juan del Bicentenario in San Juan and Estadio Hernán Ramírez Villegas in Pereira were also nominated but not confirmed, being finally dismissed.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: On 3 December 2019, prior to the draw, it was known that Estadio Único in Santiago del Estero was included as one of the Argentine venues.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: On 15 March 2021, the Estadio Ciudad de La Plata, La Plata venue was ruled out as a result of the schedule shortening.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: Colombia would have hosted the North Zone group, while Argentina would have hosted the South Zone group. Each country would also have hosted two quarter-finals and one semi-final. The third place match and final would have been played in Colombia.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: All ten CONMEBOL national teams participated in the competition, divided into two geographical zones for the group stage.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: In June 2019, the CONMEBOL Council officially approved the participation of Australia and Qatar as the two invited teams, who were the previous two winners of the AFC Asian Cup. Australia would have made their debut appearance in the Copa América, while Qatar would be making their second appearance, having participated in the previous edition. However, on 23 February 2021, Football Australia and the Qatar Football Association announced their withdrawal from the tournament, due to the postponement of the remainder of the AFC Second Round of 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification to June 2021. Following the withdrawals, a CONMEBOL spokesperson said that there was a calendar issue that stopped Australia and Qatar, that he had already seen interest from other national teams to play as guests in their place and that he would like to have 12 teams. The spokesperson added that if no replacements were found, the tournament would be played with 10 teams (for the first time since 1991).


title: 2021 Copa América

text: The team allocations of the CONMEBOL members, divided into North Zone and South Zone, were announced on 9 April 2019. The group stage draw was held on 3 December 2019, 19:30 COT (), in Cartagena. Original co-hosts Argentina and Colombia were automatically allocated to positions A1 and B1, respectively. After the draw, the zones for the two invited nations and the positions of teams within the groups were as follows:


title: 2021 Copa América

text: On 2 June 2021, Argentina and Brazil were allocated to positions A1 and B1, respectively, in the competition calendar update.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: Each team had to submit a list of up to 28 players (expanded from 23), including at least three goalkeepers.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: On 21 April 2021, CONMEBOL announced a total of 14 referees, 22 assistant referees, 16 video assistant referees (VAR), and 10 support referees appointed for the tournament. This edition featured the participation of a Spanish refereeing team as part of the memorandum of understanding signed by CONMEBOL and UEFA in February 2020, which included a referee exchange programme.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: On 5 June 2021, Uruguayan video assistant referees Leodán González and Daniel Fedorczuk were replaced by Andrés Cunha, also from Uruguay. In addition, Juan Soto from Venezuela and Jhon Alexander León from Colombia replaced the video assistant referee Nicolás Gallo and the assistant referee Miguel Roldán respectively, both from Colombia. Nicolás Gallo and Miguel Roldán had previously been suspended indefinitely as a result of their performance in the match between Uruguay and Paraguay valid for the CONMEBOL World Cup qualifiers.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: The original schedule and kick-off times for the tournament were announced on 3 December 2019 and 4 March 2020 respectively. On 17 March 2020, the tournament was postponed until 2021 and the new schedule was announced on 13 August 2020. Following the withdrawals of Qatar and Australia, the schedule was shortened and it was announced on 15 March 2021. The final match schedule with Brazil as host country was announced on 2 June 2021.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: "All match times listed are in BRT (), as listed by CONMEBOL. Cuiabá is located in a different time zone, AMT (), so the local time is also given."


title: 2021 Copa América

text: Pibe, a brown dog, was selected as the official mascot for the tournament, making it the 14th officially selected mascot in Copa América history.


title: 2021 Copa América

text: A customized version of "La Gozadera" by Cuban duo Gente de Zona was revealed as the official song of the tournament, ahead of its official reveal on 11 May.


title: Marina Abramović

text: Marina Abramović (, ; born November 30, 1946) is a Serbian conceptual and performance artist. Her work explores body art, endurance art, feminist art, the relationship between the performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Being active for over four decades, Abramović refers to herself as the "grandmother of performance art". She pioneered a new notion of identity by bringing in the participation of observers, focusing on "confronting pain, blood, and physical limits of the body". In 2007, she founded the Marina Abramović Institute (MAI), a non-profit foundation for performance art.


title: Marina Abramović

text: Abramović was born in Belgrade, Serbia, then part of Yugoslavia, on November 30, 1946. In an interview, Abramović described her family as having been "Red bourgeoisie." Her great-uncle was Varnava, Serbian Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Both of her Montenegrin-born parents, Danica Rosić and Vojin Abramović were Yugoslav Partisans during World War II. After the war, Abramović's parents were awarded Order of the People's Heroes and were given positions in the postwar Yugoslavian government.


title: Marina Abramović

text: Abramović was raised by her grandparents until she was six years old. Her grandmother was deeply religious and Abramović "spent [her] childhood in a church following [her] grandmother's rituals—candles in the morning, the priest coming for different occasions". When she was six, her brother was born, and she began living with her parents while also taking piano, French, and English lessons. Although she did not take art lessons, she took an early interest in art and enjoyed painting as a child.


title: Marina Abramović

text: Life in Abramović's parental home under her mother's strict supervision was difficult. When Abramović was a child, her mother beat her for "supposedly showing off". In an interview published in 1998, Abramović described how her "mother took complete military-style control of me and my brother. I was not allowed to leave the house after 10 o'clock at night until I was 29 years old. ... [A]ll the performances in Yugoslavia I did before 10 o'clock in the evening because I had to be home then. It's completely insane, but all of my cutting myself, whipping myself, burning myself, almost losing my life in 'The Firestar'—everything was done before 10 in the evening."


title: Marina Abramović

text: In an interview published in 2013, Abramović said, "My mother and father had a terrible marriage." Describing an incident when her father smashed 12 champagne glasses and left the house, she said, "It was the most horrible moment of my childhood."


title: Marina Abramović

text: She was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade from 1965 to 1970. She completed her post-graduate studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, SR Croatia in 1972. Then she returned to SR Serbia and, from 1973 to 1975, taught at the Academy of Fine Arts at Novi Sad while launching her first solo performances.


title: Marina Abramović

text: In 1976, following her marriage to Neša Paripović (between 1971 and 1976), Abramović went to Amsterdam to perform a piece and then decided to move there permanently.


title: Marina Abramović

text: From 1990 to 1995, Abramović was a visiting professor at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at the Berlin University of the Arts. From 1992 to 1996 she also served as a visiting professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg and from 1997 to 2004 she was a professor for performance-art at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Braunschweig.


title: Marina Abramović

text: Abramović claims she feels "neither like a Serb, nor a Montenegrin", but an ex-Yugoslav. "When people ask me where I am from," she says, "I never say Serbia. I always say I come from a country that no longer exists." In 2016, Abramović stated that she has had three abortions throughout her life, adding that having children would have been a "disaster for her work."


title: Marina Abramović

text: In her first performance in Edinburgh in 1973, Abramović explored elements of ritual and gesture. Making use of twenty knives and two tape recorders, the artist played the Russian game, in which rhythmic knife jabs are aimed between the splayed fingers of one's hand. Each time she cut herself, she would pick up a new knife from the row of twenty she had set up, and record the operation. After cutting herself twenty times, she replayed the tape, listened to the sounds, and tried to repeat the same movements, attempting to replicate the mistakes, merging past and present. She set out to explore the physical and mental limitations of the body – the pain and the sounds of the stabbing; the double sounds from the history and the replication. With this piece, Abramović began to consider the state of consciousness of the performer. "Once you enter into the performance state you can push your body to do things you absolutely could never normally do."


title: Marina Abramović

text: In this performance, Abramović sought to re-evoke the energy of extreme bodily pain, using a large petroleum-drenched star, which the artist lit on fire at the start of the performance. Standing outside the star, Abramović cut her nails, toenails, and hair. When finished with each, she threw the clippings into the flames, creating a burst of light each time. Burning the communist five-pointed star represented a physical and mental purification, while also addressing the political traditions of her past. In the final act of purification, Abramović leapt across the flames into the center of the large star. At first, due to the light and smoke given off by the fire, the observing audience did not realize that the artist had lost consciousness from lack of oxygen inside the star. However, when the flames came very near to her body and she still remained inert, a doctor and others intervened and extricated her from the star.


title: Marina Abramović

text: Abramović later commented upon this experience: "I was very angry because I understood there is a physical limit. When you lose consciousness you can't be present, you can't perform."


title: Marina Abramović

text: Prompted by her loss of consciousness during "Rhythm 5", Abramović devised the two-part "Rhythm 2" to incorporate a state of unconsciousness in a performance. She performed the work at the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, in 1974. In Part I, which had a duration of 50 minutes, she ingested a medication she describes as 'given to patients who suffer from catatonia, to force them to change the positions of their bodies.' The medication caused her muscles to contract violently, and she lost complete control over her body while remaining aware of what was going on. After a ten-minute break, she took a second medication 'given to schizophrenic patients with violent behavior disorders to calm them down.' The performance ended after five hours when the medication wore off.


title: Marina Abramović

text: "Rhythm 4" was performed at the Galleria Diagramma in Milan. In this piece, Abramović kneeled alone and naked in a room with a high-power industrial fan. She approached the fan slowly, attempting to breathe in as much air as possible to push the limits of her lungs. Soon after she lost consciousness.


title: Marina Abramović

text: Abramović's previous experience in "Rhythm 5", when the audience interfered in the performance, led to her devising specific plans so that her loss of consciousness would not interrupt the performance before it was complete. Before the beginning of her performance, Abramović asked the cameraman to focus only on her face, disregarding the fan. This was so the audience would be oblivious to her unconscious state, and therefore unlikely to interfere. Ironically, after several minutes of Abramović's unconsciousness, the cameraman refused to continue and sent for help.


title: Marina Abramović

text: To test the limits of the relationship between performer and audience, Abramović developed one of her most challenging and best-known performances. She assigned a passive role to herself, with the public being the force that would act on her. Abramović placed on a table 72 objects that people were allowed to use in any way that they chose; a sign informed them that they held no responsibility for any of their actions. Some of the objects could give pleasure, while others could be wielded to inflict pain, or to harm her. Among them were a rose, a feather, honey, a whip, olive oil, scissors, a scalpel, a gun and a single bullet. For six hours the artist allowed audience members to manipulate her body and actions without consequences. This tested how vulnerable and aggressive human subjects could be when actions have no social consequences. At first the audience did not do much and was extremely passive. However, as the realization began to set in that there was no limit to their actions, the piece became brutal. By the end of the performance, her body was stripped, attacked, and devalued into an image that Abramović described as the "Madonna, mother, and whore."


title: Marina Abramović

text: In her works, Abramović affirms her identity through the perspective of others, however, more importantly by changing the roles of each player, the identity and nature of humanity at large is unraveled and showcased. By doing so, the individual experience morphs into a collective one and creates a powerful message. Abramović's art also represents the objectification of the female body, as she remains motionless and allows spectators to do as they please with her body; the audience pushes the limits of what one would consider acceptable. By presenting her body as an object, she explores the elements of danger and physical exhaustion.


title: Marina Abramović

text: Initially, members of the audience reacted with caution and modesty, but as time passed (and the artist remained passive) people began to act more aggressively. As Abramović described it later: "What I learned was that ... if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you. ... I felt really violated: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the audience. Everyone ran away, to escape an actual confrontation."


title: Marina Abramović

text: In 1976, after moving to Amsterdam, Abramović met the West German performance artist Uwe Laysiepen, who went by the single name Ulay. They began living and performing together that year. When Abramović and Ulay began their collaboration, the main concepts they explored were the ego and artistic identity. They created "relation works" characterized by constant movement, change, process and "art vital". This was the beginning of a decade of influential collaborative work. Each performer was interested in the traditions of their cultural heritage and the individual's desire for ritual. Consequently, they decided to form a collective being called "The Other", and spoke of themselves as parts of a "two-headed body". They dressed and behaved like twins and created a relationship of complete trust. As they defined this phantom identity, their individual identities became less accessible. In an analysis of phantom artistic identities, Charles Green has noted that this allowed a deeper understanding of the artist as performer, since it revealed a way of "having the artistic self made available for self-scrutiny".


title: Marina Abramović

text: The work of Abramović and Ulay tested the physical limits of the body and explored male and female principles, psychic energy, transcendental meditation and nonverbal communication. While some critics have explored the idea of a hermaphroditic state of being as a feminist statement, Abramović herself denies considering this as a conscious concept. Her body studies, she insists, have always been concerned primarily with the body as the unit of an individual, a tendency she traces to her parents' military pasts. Rather than concerning themselves with gender ideologies, Abramović/Ulay explored extreme states of consciousness and their relationship to architectural space. They devised a series of works in which their bodies created additional spaces for audience interaction. In discussing this phase of her performance history, she has said: "The main problem in this relationship was what to do with the two artists' egos. I had to find out how to put my ego down, as did he, to create something like a hermaphroditic state of being that we called the death self."


title: Marina Abramović

text: Between 1981 and 1987, the pair performed "Nightsea Crossing" in twenty-two performances. They sat silently across from each other in chairs for seven hours a day.


title: Marina Abramović

text: In 1988, after several years of tense relations, Abramović and Ulay decided to make a spiritual journey that would end their relationship. They each walked the Great Wall of China, in a piece called "Lovers," starting from the two opposite ends and meeting in the middle. As Abramović described it: "That walk became a complete personal drama. Ulay started from the Gobi Desert and I from the Yellow Sea. After each of us walked 2500 km, we met in the middle and said good-bye." She has said that she conceived this walk in a dream, and it provided what she thought was an appropriate, romantic ending to a relationship full of mysticism, energy, and attraction. She later described the process: "We needed a certain form of ending, after this huge distance walking towards each other. It is very human. It is in a way more dramatic, more like a film ending ... Because in the end, you are really alone, whatever you do." She reported that during her walk she was reinterpreting her connection to the physical world and to nature. She felt that the metals in the ground influenced her mood and state of being; she also pondered the Chinese myths in which the Great Wall has been described as a "dragon of energy." It took the couple eight years to acquire permission from the Chinese government to perform the work, by the time of which their relationship had completely dissolved.


title: Marina Abramović

text: At her 2010 MoMA retrospective, Abramović performed "The Artist Is Present", in which she shared a period of silence with each stranger who sat in front of her. Although "they met and talked the morning of the opening", Abramović had a deeply emotional reaction to Ulay when he arrived at her performance, reaching out to him across the table between them; the video of the event went viral.


title: Marina Abramović

text: In November 2015, Ulay took Abramović to court, claiming she had paid him insufficient royalties according to the terms of a 1999 contract covering sales of their joint works and a year later, in September 2016, Abramović was order to pay Ulay €250,000. In its ruling, the court in Amsterdam found that Ulay was entitled to royalties of 20% net on the sales of their works, as specified in the original 1999 contract, and ordered Abramović to backdate royalties of more than €250,000, as well as more than €23,000 in legal costs. Additionally, she was ordered to provide full accreditation to joint works listed as by "Ulay/Abramović" covering the period from 1976 to 1980, and "Abramović/Ulay" for those from 1981 to 1988.


title: Marina Abramović

text: "Cleaning the Mirror" consisted of five monitors playing footage in which Abramović scrubs a grimy human skeleton in her lap. She vigorously brushes the different parts of the skeleton with soapy water. Each monitor is dedicated to one part of the skeleton: the head, the pelvis, the ribs, the hands, and the feet. Each video is filmed with its own sound, creating an overlap. As the skeleton becomes cleaner, Abramović becomes covered in the grayish dirt that was once covering the skeleton. This three-hour performance is filled with metaphors of the Tibetan death rites that prepare disciples to become one with their own mortality. The piece consists of a three-piece series. "Cleaning the Mirror" #1 was performed at the Museum of Modern Art, consisting of three hours. "Cleaning the Mirror" #2 consists of 90 minutes performed at Oxford University. "Cleaning the Mirror" #3 was performed at Pitt Rivers Museum for five hours.


title: Marina Abramović

text: Abramović worked with Jacob Samuel to produce a cookbook of "aphrodisiac recipes" called "Spirit Cooking" in 1996. These "recipes" were meant to be "evocative instructions for actions or for thoughts". For example, one of the recipes calls for "13,000 grams of jealousy," while another says to "mix fresh breast milk with fresh sperm milk." The work was inspired by the popular belief that ghosts feed off intangible things like light, sound, and emotions.


title: Marina Abramović

text: In 1997, Abramović created a multimedia "Spirit Cooking" installation. This was originally installed in the Zerynthia Associazione per l'Arte Contemporanea in Rome, Italy and included white gallery walls with "enigmatically violent recipe instructions" painted in pig's blood. According to Alexxa Gotthardt, the work is "a comment on humanity's reliance on ritual to organize and legitimize our lives and contain our bodies".


title: Marina Abramović

text: Abramovic also published a "Spirit Cooking" cookbook, containing comico-mystical, self-help instructions that are meant to be just poetry. "Spirit Cooking" later evolved into a form of dinner party entertainment that Abramovic occasionally lays on for collectors, donors, and friends.


title: Marina Abramović

text: In this piece, Abramović vigorously scrubbed thousands of bloody cow bones over a period of four days, in reference to the ethnic cleansing that had taken place in the Balkans during the 1990s. This performance piece earned Abramović the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale.


title: Marina Abramović

text: Abramović created "Balkan Baroque" as a response to the war in Bosnia. She remembers other artists reacting immediately, creating work and protesting about the effects and horrors of the war. Abramović could not bring herself to create work on the matter so soon, as it was too close to home for her. Eventually, Abramović returned to Belgrade, where she interviewed her mother, father, and a rat-catcher. She then incorporated these interviews into her piece, as well as clips of the hands of her father, her father holding a pistol and her mother showing empty hands then crossed hands. Abramović is dressed as a doctor recounting the story of the rat-catcher. While this is happening, Abramović sits among a large pile of bones and tries to wash them.


title: Marina Abramović

text: The performance occurred in Venice in 1997. Abramović remembers worms emerging from the bones and the horrible smell, as it was extremely hot in Venice during the summer. Abramović explains that the idea of scrubbing the bones clean, trying to remove the blood, is impossible. The point Abramović is trying to make is that blood can't be washed from bones and hands, just as the war can't be cleansed of shame. She wanted to allow the images from the performance to speak for not only the war in Bosnia, but for any war, anywhere in the world.


title: Marina Abramović

text: Beginning on November 9, 2005, Abramović presented "Seven Easy Pieces" at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. On seven consecutive nights for seven hours she recreated the works of five artists first performed in the '60s and '70s, in addition to re-performing her own "Lips of Thomas" and introducing a new performance on the last night. The performances were arduous, requiring both the physical and the mental concentration of the artist. Included in Abramović's performances were recreations of Gina Pane's "The Conditioning," which required lying on a bed frame suspended over a grid of lit candles, and of Vito Acconci's 1972 performance in which the artist masturbated under the floorboards of a gallery as visitors walked overhead. It is argued that Abramović re-performed these works as a series of homages to the past, though many of the performances were altered from their originals.


title: Marina Abramović

text: From March 14 to May 31, 2010, the Museum of Modern Art held a major retrospective and performance recreation of Abramović's work, the biggest exhibition of performance art in MoMA's history, curated by Klaus Biesenbach. Biesenbach also provided the title for the performance, which referred to the fact that during the entire performance "the artist would be "right there" in the gallery or the museum."


title: Marina Abramović

text: During the run of the exhibition, Abramović performed "The Artist Is Present", a 736-hour and 30-minute static, silent piece, in which she sat immobile in the museum's atrium while spectators were invited to take turns sitting opposite her. Ulay made a surprise appearance at the opening night of the show.


title: Marina Abramović

text: Abramović sat in a rectangle drawn with tape in the floor of the second floor atrium of the MoMA; theater lights shone on her sitting in a chair and a chair opposite her. Visitors waiting in line were invited to sit individually across from the artist while she maintained eye contact with them. Visitors began crowding the atrium within days of the show opening, some gathering before the exhibit opened each morning to rush for a more preferable place in the line to sit with Abramović. Most visitors sat with the artist for five minutes or less, a few sat with her for an entire day. The line attracted no attention from museum security until the last day of the exhibition, when a visitor vomited in line and another began to disrobe. Tensions among visitors in line could have arisen from an understanding that for every minute each person in line spent with Abramović, there would be that many fewer minutes in the day for those further back in line to spend with the artist. Due to the strenuous nature of sitting for hours at a time, art-enthusiasts have speculated as to whether Abramović wore an adult diaper to eliminate the need to move to urinate. Others have highlighted the movements she made in between sitters as a focus of analysis, as the only variations in the artist between sitters were when she would cry if a sitter cried and her moment of physical contact with Ulay, one of the earliest visitors to the exhibition. Abramović sat across from 1,545 sitters, including Klaus Biesenbach, James Franco, Lou Reed, Alan Rickman, Jemima Kirke, Jennifer Carpenter and Björk; sitters were asked not to touch or speak to the artist. By the end of the exhibit, hundreds of visitors were lining up outside the museum overnight to secure a spot in line the next morning. Abramović concluded the performance by slipping from the chair where she was seated and rising to a cheering crowd more than ten people deep.


title: Marina Abramović

text: A support group for the "sitters", "Sitting with Marina", was established on Facebook, as was the blog "Marina Abramović made me cry". The Italian photographer Marco Anelli took portraits of every person who sat opposite Abramović, which were published on Flickr, compiled in a book and featured in an exhibition at the Danziger Gallery in New York.


title: Marina Abramović

text: Abramović said the show changed her life "completely – every possible element, every physical emotion". After Lady Gaga saw the show and publicized it, Abramović found a new audience: "So the kids from 12 and 14 years old to about 18, the public who normally don't go to the museum, who don't give a shit about performance art or don't even know what it is, started coming because of Lady Gaga. And they saw the show and then they started coming back. And that's how I get a whole new audience." In September 2011, a video game version of Abramović's performance was released by Pippin Barr. In 2013, Dale Eisinger of "Complex" ranked "The Artist Is Present" ninth (along with "Rhythm 0") in his list of the greatest performance art works.


title: Marina Abramović

text: In 2009, Abramović was featured in Chiara Clemente's documentary "Our City Dreams" and a book of the same name. The five featured artists – also including Swoon, Ghada Amer, Kiki Smith, and Nancy Spero – "each possess a passion for making work that is inseparable from their devotion to New York", according to the publisher. Abramović is also the subject of an independent documentary film entitled "Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present", which is based on her life and performance at her retrospective "The Artist Is Present" at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010. The film was broadcast in the United States on HBO and won a Peabody Award in 2012. In January 2011, Abramović was on the cover of Serbian "ELLE", photographed by Dušan Reljin. Kim Stanley Robinson's science fiction novel "2312" mentions a style of performance art pieces known as "abramovics".


title: Marina Abramović

text: A world premiere installation by Abramović was featured at Toronto's Trinity Bellwoods Park as part of the Luminato Festival in June 2013. Abramović is also co-creator, along with Robert Wilson of the theatrical production "The Life and Death of Marina Abramović", which had its North American premiere at the festival, and at the Park Avenue Armory in December.


title: Marina Abramović

text: In 2007 Abramović created the Marina Abramović Institute (MAI), a nonprofit foundation for performance art, in a 33,000 square-foot space in Hudson, New York. She also founded a performance institute in San Francisco. She is a patron of the London-based Live Art Development Agency.


title: Marina Abramović

text: In June 2014 she presented a new piece at London's Serpentine Gallery called "512 Hours". In the Sean Kelly Gallery-hosted "Generator", (December 6, 2014) participants are blindfolded and wear sound-canceling in an exploration of nothingness.


title: Marina Abramović

text: In celebration of her 70th birthday on November 30, 2016, Abramović took over the Guggenheim museum (eleven years after her previous happening there) for her birthday party entitled "Marina 70". Part one of the evening, titled "Silence," lasted 70 minutes, ending with the crash of a gong struck by the artist. Then came the more conventional part two: "Entertainment", during which Abramović took to the stage to make a speech before watching English singer and visual artist ANOHNI perform the song "My Way" while wearing a large black hood.


title: Marina Abramović

text: In March 2015, Abramović presented a TED talk titled, "An art made of trust, vulnerability and connection".


title: Marina Abramović

text: In 2019, IFC's mockumentary show "Documentary Now!" parodied Abramović's work and the documentary film "Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present." The episode, titled "Waiting for the Artist", starred Cate Blanchett as Isabella Barta (Abramović) and Fred Armisen as Dimo (Ulay).


title: Marina Abramović

text: Originally set to open 26 September 2020, her first major exhibition in the UK at the Royal Academy of Arts has been rescheduled for autumn 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Academy, the exhibition will "bring together works spanning her 50-year career, along with new works conceived especially for these galleries. As Abramović approaches her mid-70s, her new work reflects on changes to the artist's body, and explores her perception of the transition between life and death."


title: Marina Abramović

text: In 2021, she inaugurated a monument, "Crystal wall of crying", at the site of a Holocaust massacre in Ukraine of Babi Yar memorials.


title: Marina Abramović

text: Abramović had proposed some solo performances during her career that never were performed. One such proposal was titled "Come to Wash with Me". This performance would take place in a gallery space that was to be transformed into a laundry with sinks placed all around the walls of the gallery. The public would enter the space and be asked to take off all of their clothes and give them to Abramović. The individuals would then wait around as she would wash, dry and iron their clothes for them, and once she was done, she would give them back their clothing, and they could get dressed and then leave. She proposed this in 1969 for the Galerija Doma Omladine in Belgrade. The proposal was refused.


title: Marina Abramović

text: In 1970 she proposed a similar idea to the same gallery that was also refused. The piece was untitled. Abramović would stand in front of the public dressed in her regular clothing. Present on the side of the stage was a clothes rack adorned with clothing that her mother wanted her to wear. She would take the clothing one by one and change into them, then stand to face the public for a while. "From the right pocket of my skirt I take a gun. From the left pocket of my skirt I take a bullet. I put the bullet into the chamber and turn it. I place the gun to my temple. I pull the trigger." The performance had two possible outcomes.


title: Marina Abramović

text: Abramović directed a segment, "Balkan Erotic Epic", in "Destricted", a compilation of erotic films made in 2006. In 2008 she directed a segment "Dangerous Games" in another film compilation "Stories on Human Rights". She also acted in a five-minute short film "Antony and the Johnsons: Cut the World".


title: Marina Abramović

text: The Marina Abramović Institute (MAI) is a performance art organization with a focus on performance, long durational works, and the use of the "Abramovic Method".


title: Marina Abramović

text: In its early phases, it was a proposed multi-functional museum space in Hudson, New York. Abramović purchased the site for the institute in 2007. Located in Hudson, New York, the building was built in 1933 and has been used as a theater and community tennis center. The building was to be renovated according to a design by Rem Koolhaas and Shohei Shigematsu of OMA. The early design phase of this project was funded by a Kickstarter campaign. The campaign was funded by more than 4,000 contributors, including Lady Gaga and Jay-Z. The building project was canceled in October 2017 due to its high anticipated cost,


title: Marina Abramović

text: The institute continues to operate as a traveling organization. To date, MAI has partnered with many institutions and artists internationally, traveling to Brazil, Greece, and Turkey.


title: Marina Abramović

text: Abramović maintains a friendship with actor James Franco, who interviewed her for the "Wall Street Journal" in 2009. Franco visited Abramović during "The Artist Is Present" in 2010. The two also attended the 2012 Metropolitan Costume Institute Gala together.


title: Marina Abramović

text: In July 2013, Abramović worked with pop singer Lady Gaga on the singer's third album "Artpop". Gaga's work with Abramović, as well as artists Jeff Koons and Robert Wilson, was displayed at an event titled "ArtRave" on November 10. Furthermore, both have collaborated on projects supporting the Marina Abramović Institute, including Gaga's participation in an 'Abramović Method' video and a nonstop reading of Stanisław Lem's sci-fi novel, "Solaris".


title: Marina Abramović

text: Also in July 2013, Jay-Z showcased an Abramović-inspired piece at Pace Gallery in New York City. He performed his art-inspired track "Picasso Baby" for six straight hours. During the performance, Abramović and several figures in the art world were invited to dance with him standing face to face. The footage was later turned into a music video. She allowed Jay-Z to adapt "The Artist Is Present" under the condition that he would donate to the Marina Abramović Institute. Abramović stated that Jay-Z did not live up to his end of the deal, describing the performance as a "one-way transaction". However, two years later in 2015, Abramović publicly issued an apology stating she was never informed of Jay-Z's sizable donation.


title: Marina Abramović

text: Abramović sparked controversy in August 2016 when passages from an early draft of her memoir were released, in which—based on notes from her 1979 initial encounter with Aboriginal Australians—she compared them to dinosaurs and observed that "they have big torsos (just one bad result of their encounter with Western civilization is a high sugar diet that bloats their bodies) and sticklike legs". She responded to the controversy on Facebook, writing, "I have the greatest respect for the Aborigine people, to whom I owe everything."


title: Marina Abramović

text: Among a tranche of emails leaked from John Podesta and published by WikiLeaks in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election was a message from Abramović to Podesta's brother discussing an invitation to a spirit cooking, which was interpreted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones as an invitation to a satanic ritual, and presented by Jones and others as proof that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had links with the occult. In a 2013 Reddit Q&A, in response to question about occult in contemporary art, she said: "Everything depends on which context you are doing what you are doing. If you are doing the occult magic in the context of art or in a gallery, then it is the art. If you are doing it in different context, in spiritual circles or private house or on TV shows, it is not art. The intention, the context for what is made, and where it is made defines what art is or not". Sculptor Nikola Pešić says that Abramović has a lifelong interest in esotericism and Spiritualism, but this should not be confused with Satanism, which is a different system of occult beliefs.


title: Marina Abramović

text: On April 10, 2020, Microsoft released a promotional video for HoloLens 2, which featured Abramović. However, due to accusations by right-wing conspiracy theorists of her having ties to Satanism, Microsoft eventually pulled the advertisement. Abramović responded to the criticism, appealing to people to stop harassing her, arguing that her performances are just the art that she has been doing for 50 years of her life.


Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is a 2022 action role-playing game in the "Final Fantasy" series developed by Koei Tecmo's Team Ninja, and published by Square Enix in celebration of the series' 35th anniversary. As an alternate universe prequel of Square Enix's original "Final Fantasy" on the NES, the storyline follows a set of characters brought into a fantasy world to face the malevolent Chaos. The game was released in March 2022 for Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.


"Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin" is an action role-playing game in which players take on the role of protagonist Jack, exploring environments and fighting monsters of the "Final Fantasy" series. Combat takes place in real-time, with Jack being able to switch between two assigned jobs and use physical and magical attacks. Once an enemy's "break gauge" is depleted, Jack can perform a finishing blow that crystallizes the enemy, allowing Jack to harvest them and restore a portion of his magic meter.


title: Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

text: "Stranger of Paradise" is set in a dark fantasy interpretation of the setting for the original "Final Fantasy" game. The main character is Jack, a man consumed by a need to destroy Chaos. Jack is accompanied by other companions, including newcomers Ash and Jed. During the journey they face a knight who has taken on the role of Chaos; while seemingly the foretold Warriors of Light, each has doubts as to whether that is their role.


text: Jack arrives in the kingdom of Cornelia, intent on destroying Chaos whose darkness has begun to plague the world, and is quickly joined by two other warriors, Ash and Jed, who have a similar mission. They petition the King of Cornelia to allow them to enter the Shrine of Chaos and destroy Chaos itself. While the King and his court are skeptical of Jack, Ash and Jed being the prophesied Warriors of Light due to the fact they are a party of three instead of four and possess only black crystals, the King allows them access to the Shrine of Chaos.


text: Jack and his party enter the Shrine of Chaos and seemingly defeat Chaos, only to reveal that the person they fought is a young girl named Neon, who similarly possesses a black crystal like them. She explains that she had also sought out to destroy Chaos ten years ago, but realized that Chaos is simply a myth created by humans to rationalize the existence of darkness. She had originally planned to absorb all the world's darkness to become the singular entity of Chaos that could be defeated by a band of heroes, but failed. Jack is skeptical of her story, and maintains that Chaos does exist and he will find it. Neon decides to accompany Jack's party as the fourth Warrior of Light. As they return to Cornelia, they muse about how all four of them have lost their memories, and Jack reasons it's to prevent them from making personal attachments that could interfere with their duty. The King then tasks the Warriors with restoring the Crystals of Wind, Fire, Earth, and Water to save the world.


text: To find the crystals, the Warriors meet with Astos, the King of the Dark Elves, who points them in the direction of the Wind Crystal. While searching for the Wind Crystal, the Warriors are transported to the Flying Fortress, a space station orbiting the planet. They defeat the Fiend of Chaos guarding the Wind Crystal, Tiamat, who reverts to another defeated hero named Sophia. The Wind Crystal is restored and Sophia decides to join the Warriors. As they journey to the Earth Crystal, the Warriors begin to recover fragments of their memories as they defeat monsters and absorb the darkness mist they expel into their crystals, and remember they all come from a faraway land beyond Cornelia. They subsequently find the Earth and Fire Crystals, defeating the respective Fiends Lich and Marilith. On the way to the Water Crystal, Neon admits to the Warriors that unlike them, she was born in Cornelia and now remembers that she was given her crystal by Astos. They then proceed to defeat the Fiend Kraken and restore the Water Crystal.


text: With the four Crystals restored, the Warriors return to Cornelia, only to find the darkness more prevalent than before. They are welcomed coldly and accused of being servants of Chaos just as monsters and darkness-infected pirates attack. After repelling the assault, the Warriors confront Astos looking for answers. Astos explains that he is an observer left behind by the Lufenians, a highly advanced civilization capable of interdimensional travel, tasked with reporting the balance of light and darkness in Cornelia. Astos then attacks the Warriors, and upon his defeat, they begin to recover more of their memories. It is revealed that Jack and his friends are in fact Strangers, Lufenian agents tasked with traveling to Cornelia to destroy the excess darkness Lufenia disposes of there. Jack and his friends have in fact been sent to Cornelia many times before, though their memories are temporarily erased on every deployment. However, if the Strangers fail to destroy the darkness, Lufenia simply resets the world. Disgusted by Lufenia's meddling in and manipulation of Cornelia, Jack and his friends secretly plotted with Astos to find a way to break Lufenia's hold over Cornelia. Astos reveals that Lufenia fears the darkness because if it combines with human emotion, it creates chaos, which is the one force they cannot control. He also reveals that upon his death, the darkness he has stockpiled in his body will be released and cover the entire world.


text: Jack and his friends rush back to Cornelia, but are unable to save Princess Sarah or any of the people. As Princess Sarah dies in his arms, Jack recovers more memories and remembers that he and Princess Sarah had fallen in love with each other. Seeing their chance, Ash, Jed, Neon, and Sophia attack Jack, forcing him to kill them in self defense and absorbing their collected darkness so he can become Chaos. He then forces open a portal back to Lufenia and absorbs Darkness Manifest, truly becoming Chaos. Fearful of chaos infection, Lufenia severs their connection with Cornelia, but warn Jack that Warriors of Light will rise to resist him. This gives Jack the epiphany that he can use his power to create conditions on Cornelia that will cause true Warriors of Light native to Cornelia to rise so they will no longer have to rely on Lufenia for protection. He then finds himself transported 2000 years in Cornelia's past by Ash, Jed, Neon, and Sophia, who have become his Four Fiends. As his friends lay the groundwork to create the Warriors of Light, Jack embraces his family name Garland and waits in his throne room as the Warriors of Light arrive to challenge him.


text: However, once the true Warriors of Light arrive to challenge Jack in battle, they are easily vanquished. Jack then meets with the dragon king Bahamut and, after completing a series of trials, arranges a deal that will empower the Warriors of Light in future cycles. Jack challenges the Warriors again in a future cycle and, though he bests them again, finds greater hope that their improving strength will one day be enough to defeat him.


text: "Stranger of Paradise" is co-developed by franchise creator Square Enix and Koei Tecmo division Team Ninja. It is co-directed by Daisuke Inoue from Square Enix and Hiroya Usuda and Nobumichi Kumabe from Team Ninja; co-produced by Jin Fujiwara from Square Enix and Fumihiko Yasuda from Team Ninja. The story and scenario were written by Stellavista Ltd. freelancer scriptwriter Kazushige Nojima. Longtime Square Enix employee Tetsuya Nomura created the original concept, and acts as character designer and creative producer in the game. The music is composed by Naoshi Mizuta, with additional contributions by Hidenori Iwasaki and Ryo Yamazaki. Nomura created the initial idea for "Origin" after production finished on "Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy", imagining an action-focused game about conquering locations. When later approached for a new "Final Fantasy" concept, he combined this initial concept with a different concept of a game series focusing on "Final Fantasy"'s villain Garland, as an angry older protagonist to create the final concept. Due to the shift in tone, Nomura originally thought it would be an original title, but Inoue and Fujiwara pushed for its inclusion in the franchise.


text: The aim behind the title was a mature, "brutal" take on the "Final Fantasy" series that would separate it from the rest of the franchise while retaining connections to it. The gameplay was designed to emulate Team Ninja's known style of challenging action combat; Team Ninja had previously worked with Square Enix on "Dissidia Final Fantasy NT". The job system, a recurring feature of "Final Fantasy", took inspiration from the system created for "Final Fantasy V", with Inoue saying there were more jobs than that game featured in "Stranger of Paradise". The game combines the job system with Soulslike gameplay elements. The level designs deliberately emulated or referenced other numbered entries, such as a wooded wetland area taking inspiration from the Sunleth Waterscape from "Final Fantasy XIII".


text: Rather than a remake of the first "Final Fantasy", "Stranger of Paradise" was a new storyline using the original as inspiration, focusing on the themes of examining the role and goals of Warriors of Light. In contrast to the pale crystals used across most of the series, the red crystals and blood-colored elements of artwork emphasised the darker tone. Commenting on the scenario, Nojima highlighted one line, "it's not a hope or a dream. It's like a hunger. A thirst", as the mainspring of the story. The subtitle had a dual meaning of the party literally being strangers in the game world, and the party being unwelcome in the game's "paradise". Character Princess Sara was designed by Roberto Ferrari, who emulated the original game's design for her. The key artwork was created by Square Enix's Image Studio CGI division under Nomura's supervision.


text: The game's existence was leaked by industry insiders in May 2021 and was shown during a Square Enix livestream forming part of E3 2021; its platforms are PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows via the Epic Games Store, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. A limited time trial version was also launched alongside the announcement, intended as a standalone demo to elicit feedback from players to finetune the game prior to release. During this early promotional stage, Square Enix decided to focus only on the opening section and early premise of the game, keeping other details secret. The trailer met with a mixed response from journalists and fans due to its tone and characters designs. The demo was balanced so it was approachable using different playstyles, incorporating different job types and difficulty levels. At release, the demo was found to not launch due to corrupted files, prompting Square Enix to work on a fix. A patch was released on June 15, fixing the corrupted files and allowing the demo to be played. The patch came included with first-time downloads. Due to the initial troubles, the demo's availability was extended by two days.


text: Based on feedback from the first demo, the graphics and performance were improved, and commands were included for players to trigger party support commands manually. Nomura originally planned the game's marketing around the mystery of Jack's identity, but Fujiwara told Nomura that many Western fans correctly guessed that Jack was this game's version of Garland. In response, Nomura reworked the marketing to focus on how Jack became Garland, with the image of Garland carrying Sara becoming a key image related to both the opening and the second half of the narrative. On revealing Jack's identity before the game's release, Fujiwara told "Polygon" that "the team thought rather than having it suspended up in the airwith players kind of speculating 'Wait, this is a lot more violent than we'd expected. This hero character seems to be a lot older and more mature compared to your typical Final Fantasy protagonist'rather than misleading people, the team felt that it would be better if we were more transparent about what the story was going to be about. That's why we decided that we wanted to reveal this as a story about the villain, but that there is a rich story behind it that we want to show".


text: The game released on March 18, 2022. A second demo was released between October 1 and October 11, allowing players to try out the multiplayer content. The demo also included an expanded version of the first demo's single-player content. A third and final demo was released on March 10, 2022 and was available until April 19.


text: "Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin" received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic.


text: "Destructoid" liked the level design, combat, and job variety, and especially praised the tone, writing, "It's not for everyone, despite how much the "Final Fantasy" name might bring people in. It's a Team Ninja action game first, and an oddball isekai story second...it wears its flaws on its sleeve." "Game Informer" reviewed the game less positively, criticizing its story, level design, and the lack of an incentive to engage with enemies, while praising the locales, combat, classes, and customization, concluding, ""Stranger of Paradise" is the strangest "Final Fantasy" game yet, bounding wildly between awful and fantastic. If you can tolerate Jack (and that's a big ask), the excellently crafted combat is worth a look." "IGN" gave the game an 8 out of 10, writing, "Its overly complex story and one-dimensional NPCs don't pay off until the final hours, but the freedom available in its challenging combat and extensive character customization is consistently rewarding from the start...It's a love letter to its own source material, filled with references and homages to the series' history that seem designed to give fans of any Final Fantasy something to enjoy." "VentureBeat" gave the game 4 stars out of 5, concluding, "Despite Stranger of Paradise's ugly graphics, shallow characters, and nonsensical script, the game is fun." "GameSpot" and "GamesRadar+" praised the gameplay while citing the incoherent story, characters, level design, and unstable framerate as negatives. "Push Square" cited the game's campy tone, music, boss battles, a singular good character, and the reverence for "Final Fantasy" as the game's positives while also writing negatively about the graphical issues, edgy protagonist, supporting cast, and incomprehensible story.


text: In Japan, "Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin" sold 46,849 physical units in its launch week, with the PlayStation 4 version selling 28,944 physical copies, making it the best-selling retail game of the week in the country. The PlayStation 5 version was the fourth best-selling retail game in Japan during the same week, with 17,905 copies being sold. It sold over 57,000 physical units in Japan during its launch month, with the PS4 version selling over 36,000 units and ranking among the top ten best-selling games of the month.


text: In the United States, "Stranger of Paradise" was among the top ten best-selling games of March 2022 in its launch month. In the United Kingdom, it was the eighth best-selling game in its launch week.


title: Donkey

text: The domestic donkey is a hoofed mammal in the family Equidae, the same family as the horse. It derives from the African wild ass, "Equus africanus", and may be classified either as a subspecies thereof, Equus africanus asinus, or as a separate species, Equus asinus. It was domesticated in Africa some years ago, and has been used mainly as a working animal since that time.


title: Donkey

text: There are more than 40 million donkeys in the world, mostly in underdeveloped countries, where they are used principally as draught or pack animals. While working donkeys are often associated with those living at or below subsistence, small numbers of donkeys or asses are kept for breeding or as pets in developed countries.


title: Donkey

text: A male donkey is known as a "jack" or "jackass", a female is a "jenny" or "jennet", and an immature donkey of either sex is a "foal". Jacks are often mated with female horses (mares) to produce "mules"; the less common hybrid of a male horse (stallion) and jenny is a "hinny".


title: Donkey

text: Traditionally, the scientific name for the donkey is "Equus asinus asinus" based on the principle of priority used for scientific names of animals. However, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature ruled in 2003 that if the domestic species and the wild species are considered subspecies of one another, the scientific name of the wild species has priority, even when that subspecies was described after the domestic subspecies. This means that the proper scientific name for the donkey is "Equus africanus asinus" when it is considered a subspecies and "Equus asinus" when it is considered a species.


title: Donkey

text: At one time, the synonym "ass" was the more common term for the donkey. The first recorded use of "donkey" was in either 1784 or 1785. While the word "ass" has cognates in most other Indo-European languages, "donkey" is an etymologically obscure word for which no credible cognate has been identified. Hypotheses on its derivation include the following:


title: Donkey

text: From the 18th century, "donkey" gradually replaced "ass" and "jenny" replaced "she-ass", which is now considered archaic. The change may have come about through a tendency to avoid pejorative terms in speech and may be comparable to the substitution in North American English of "rooster" for "cock", or that of "rabbit" for "coney", which was formerly homophonic with "cunny" (a variation of the word cunt). By the end of the 17th century, changes in pronunciation of both "ass" and "arse" had caused them to become homophones in some varieties of English. Other words used for the ass in English from this time include "cuddy" in Scotland, "neddy" in southwestern England and "dicky" in southeastern England; "moke" is documented in the 19th century and may be of Welsh or Romani origin.


title: Donkey

text: "Burro" is a word for donkey in both Spanish and Portuguese. In the United States, it is commonly applied to the feral donkeys that live west of the Rocky Mountains; it may also refer to any small donkey.


title: Donkey

text: The genus "Equus", which includes all extant equines, is believed to have evolved from "Dinohippus", via the intermediate form "Plesippus". One of the oldest species is "Equus simplicidens", described as zebra-like with a donkey-shaped head. The oldest fossil to date is ~3.5 million years old from Idaho, USA. The genus appears to have spread quickly into the Old World, with the similarly aged "Equus livenzovensis" documented from western Europe and Russia.


title: Donkey

text: Molecular phylogenies indicate the most recent common ancestor of all modern equids (members of the genus "Equus") lived ~5.6 (3.9–7.8) mya. Direct paleogenomic sequencing of a 700,000-year-old middle Pleistocene horse metapodial bone from Canada implies a more recent 4.07 Myr before present date for the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) within the range of 4.0 to 4.5 Myr BP. The oldest divergencies are the Asian hemiones (subgenus "E. (Asinus)", including the kulan, onager, and kiang), followed by the African zebras (subgenera "E. (Dolichohippus)", and "E. (Hippotigris)"). All other modern forms including the domesticated horse (and many fossil Pliocene and Pleistocene forms) belong to the subgenus "E. (Equus)" which diverged ~4.8 (3.2–6.5) million years ago.