title: Back to the Future: The Game

text: Marty arrives on June 13, 1931, and learns that Doc was accused of arson upon Kid's illegal speakeasy and thus needs to break out of jail. Doc tells Marty to seek the aid of his younger self, Emmett, who at this point in time assists his father, who staunchly resents Emmett's dream of a career in science, at the courthouse. Along the way, Marty encounters his grandfather Arthur "Artie" McFly, Officer Danny Parker (his girlfriend Jennifer's grandfather), and a young Edna. While convincing Emmett to help, Marty delivers a subpoena to Artie, who serves as Kid's accountant, persuading him to testify against Kid and help prove Doc's innocence. Believing all has been fixed, Doc and Marty prepare to return to the present when Marty starts to fade away. Doc discovers Artie would be killed the next day for testifying, thus erasing Marty's existence. Travelling back in time, they convince Artie to lay low after testifying while avoiding their past selves.


title: Back to the Future: The Game

text: Returning to May 15, 1986, they realize that their actions in the past have prevented the arrest of Kid Tannen, allowing him to expand his criminal operations. As a result of this, the Tannen family became the fifth-most-dangerous crime family in California, owning all of Hill Valley. Marty and Doc travel to August 25, 1931, the day Kid was supposed to be arrested. The duo find another option: they convince Trixie Trotter, Kid's moll who has a soft-spot for Artie, to testify instead. The cop (Danny Parker) who was meant to arrest Kid has been demoted because of Marty and Doc's tampering, causing his girlfriend Betty (Jennifer's grandmother) to dump him and he now works for Kid to earn some extra money. After Marty restores his confidence, Parker decides to turn against Kid to win back Betty. Kid and his gang are jailed, and all appears to be in-order. Doc reveals that this is also the night that motivated him to finish his rocket car experiment for the Hill Valley Science Expo. He went to see "Frankenstein" when he was stressed and was inspired, even keeping the ticket stub until 1986. Marty and Doc return to the future unaware that their actions have caused Edna to fall in love with Emmett, and their relationship causes Emmett to give up on his scientific inventions. The ticket stub starts to fade out of existence as Doc realizes that Edna stopped him from seeing the film.


title: Back to the Future: The Game

text: When they return to 1986 again, Doc and Einstein disappear, and Marty discovers that Hill Valley is now a totalitarian walled society, run by "Citizen Brown". Sneaking inside, Marty learns that Edna has brainwashed Emmett and used his intelligence to craft a perfect society in her eyes. Marty gets close to Citizen Brown and shows him a notebook he recovered from 1986 with the first drawing of Doc's flux capacitor. Citizen Brown is flooded with memories and decides to turn against Edna to fix history. He helps Marty repair the DeLorean and the two travel back to 1931 to try to undo their previous mistakes. However, the damage causes the DeLorean to arrive in October instead of August, when the Science Expo is about to begin and Edna and Emmett's relationship has strengthened. Marty is ready to take whatever steps are needed to end it, but Citizen Brown becomes worried about what will happen to Edna and angry that Marty does not care about her feelings, and drives off alone in the DeLorean to assess the situation.


title: Back to the Future: The Game

text: Marty, with help from Trixie, ends Edna and Emmett's relationship, but Emmett is still reluctant to return to his scientific roots. Marty tries to force Emmett to see Frankenstein to help him, leading to an argument about Emmett's inability to assert himself. A lightning storm erupts, causing Emmett to realize that rockets cannot make the car fly. This memory acts as a replacement for Emmett seeing the creature electrocuted in the film as in the original timeline. The answer is static electricity and Marty helps Emmett convert his rocket car to a new propulsion system in time for the Science Expo. Meanwhile, Edna is picked up by Citizen Brown, and when she explains what Marty has done, Brown decides to help her thwart Marty's plan. At the Expo, Edna and Brown attempt to sabotage Emmett's project, but Marty discovers them in time. During this, he happens to learn that Edna was responsible for the arson of Kid's speakeasy. During the Expo, Emmett successfully demonstrates his flying car, just as Judge Brown arrives. Marty helps Emmett to stand up for his choices. Judge Brown and his son settle their differences, with Emmett's father now accepting his son's scientific views.


title: Back to the Future: The Game

text: Edna is incensed as her plan has been foiled, and when Citizen Brown refuses to help her further, she runs him over with the DeLorean and inadvertently activates the time machine. As he dies and disappears (due to Marty fixing Emmett's timeline), Citizen Brown tells Marty he was right about Edna. Marty gives Emmett a sealed note with instructions to be opened in the future. Shortly after, a second DeLorean appears with Doc at the wheel, having been summoned from 1986 by the note. As they talk about events, the town of Hill Valley disappears around them. They find, from Marty's great-grandfather William "Willie" McFly, that the town burned down shortly after its founding in 1876 with Mary "Scary Mary" Pickford (in fact Edna Strickland) its only remaining inhabitant. Travelling to July 17, 1876, Marty and Doc discover a crazed Edna has travelled there and attempted to burn down the saloon run by Beauregard Tannen, inadvertently taking the rest of Hill Valley with it. They stop Edna before she can commit the act while simultaneously saving her from Tannen's shotgun, returning her and the first DeLorean to the restored Hill Valley of 1931. Edna is quickly arrested, having previously been recorded confessing to arson against Kid's speakeasy. The alternate DeLorean then disappears, having been erased from history. As Marty and Doc are preparing to return, Marty spots Artie and Trixie, having fallen in love with each other, and worries about his future since Artie was to be wed to his grandmother Sylvia. She reveals that “Trixie Trotter” is a stage name and that her name is actually Sylvia Miskin.


title: Back to the Future: The Game

text: Doc and Marty return to 1986 and discover that in this new post-time-travel timeline, there was no estate sale because Doc's reconciliation with his father allowed the Browns to stay part-time in Hill Valley. They find that Edna and Kid had fallen in love while in jail, and afterwards married and both became much happier and friendlier since. Doc reveals his previous absence to Marty; he had been compiling a history of the McFly family to present to Marty as a graduation gift but found information on his grandmother challenging to come across (as she was working under the name Trixie) and thus had travelled to 1931 to attempt to obtain research first-hand. Suddenly, three separate DeLoreans appear, each with a different future version of Marty driving them. They approach Marty and Doc and insist they come to help assure that their respective futures occur as they are supposed to. Doc and his Marty leave the Marties arguing with each other, saying the future can wait until after they have enjoyed the present for a while; they then depart to an unknown time.


title: Back to the Future: The Game

text: "Back to the Future: The Game" was announced by developer Telltale Games in early June 2010, as part of a licensing deal to create video games based on Universal Pictures' "Back to the Future" and "Jurassic Park" film series. The title is split-up into five episodes and was available for Microsoft Windows, OS X, PlayStation 3, Wii (as a single retail release) and iOS.


title: Back to the Future: The Game

text: The development team sought input from fans on various scenarios by means of an online survey and brought in trilogy co-creator, co-writer and co-producer Bob Gale as story consultant. Several concepts he and director Robert Zemeckis had originally conceived for "Part II", such as the exploration of the Prohibition era and Doc's family history, were reworked into the game. Telltale Games found adhering to the films' established timelines to be one of the greatest challenges regarding the development of the script. Many ideas had to be scrapped due to conflicts that would have caused paradoxes with the stories of the films. Gale stated that although the game is not part of the series canon, it is possible that it could take place in alternate timelines.


title: Back to the Future: The Game

text: In September 2010, the team revealed the first piece of concept art for the protagonists, created by artist Ryan Jones and based on actors Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd, who allowed their likenesses to be used for the in-game characters. Season designer and writer Michael Stemmle emphasized that the game's graphics would take a less realistic and more stylized approach while trying to stay true to the feel of the trilogy. The puzzles were designed to rely on applying items in the inventory to characters and objects as the developers did not think of Marty as a protagonist that would build a gadget from various parts.


title: Back to the Future: The Game

text: As Michael J. Fox was unavailable to reprise his role as Marty for the game, newcomer A.J. Locascio voiced the character instead, though Fox later provided voice work for Marty's great-grandfather William in the fifth and final episode of the game, as well as for the three futuristic versions of Marty who appear in the game's final cutscene. Locascio was able to get the part when his audition sample ended up in the email inbox of voice director Julian Kwasneski, and managed to impress both Gale and Lloyd with how closely it resembled the sound of Fox's voice during the time the trilogy was filmed. Lloyd returned to voice Doc Brown and began his first recording session for the game in late September 2010. Later, Claudia Wells joined the cast, reprising her role as Jennifer Parker from the first film. Kid Beyond provided the voice for Biff Tannen in place of actor Tom Wilson in the game's original release; however, Wilson returned to voice the character for the 30th anniversary re-release. James Arnold Taylor voiced the younger Emmett Brown. Though the game features other returning characters including George and Lorraine McFly, voicework for these characters are provided by a variety of voice actors in the Bay Area. The song Back in Time by Huey Lewis and the News, which was written for the first film, appears in the game.


title: Back to the Future: The Game

text: To promote the title, Telltale brought a replica of the DeLorean time machine as part of their booth display at the 2010 Penny Arcade Expo which occurred shortly after the game's announcement. Prior to the game's release, Telltale Games published their first Facebook game, "Back to the Future: Blitz Through Time", with mechanics similar to "Bejeweled Blitz", to tie in with the episodic series. It has been taken down as of 2012.


title: Back to the Future: The Game

text: A voucher for a free copy of the first episode of the series was included in the of the "Back to the Future" trilogy on October 26, 2010. A promotional offer was made on Telltale's web site to download a free copy as well. Via this promotion, however, the first episode began distribution on February 16, 2011. As of April 2011, Telltale offered the first episode for free for anyone with a registered account at their website. As a pre-order bonus, Telltale offered buyers a free copy of "Puzzle Agent", access to a pre-release insider forum on their web site, and stated that they would donate one dollar to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research for each pre-order.


title: Back to the Future: The Game

text: The first episode of "Back to the Future: The Game" was released for free on via Telltale Games' website, for both PC and OS X on December 22, 2010, with a later release for the PlayStation 3, also made free on the PlayStation Store, on February 15, 2011, and iOS two days later.


title: Back to the Future: The Game

text: A full retail version consisting of all five episodes for PC was released on September 29, 2011, and on PlayStation 3 and Wii on October 25, 2011, across North America; EU versions for all three platforms were released the following year. Additional releases for PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One were released globally in October 2015.


title: Back to the Future: The Game

text: The game was delisted from all digital storefronts by the end of 2018, following the closure of Telltale Games.


title: Back to the Future: The Game

text: "Back to the Future: The Game" received generally positive reviews. The first episode, "It's About Time", was praised by several reviewers as an effective start to the series. IGN's Greg Miller gave the episode a score of 8.5/10, writing, "it's a movie-inspired game that doesn't suck. Instead, it pushes the characters in interesting directions and whips up a good story." Miller praised Telltale Games for recreating the "Back to the Future" universe with attention to detail and for the iteration's witty dialogue. Nathan Meunier of GameSpot gave the episode a 7.5/10 score, saying the series "shows a lot of promise with its debut installment". The review added that "The entertaining story that follows is enhanced by believable character interactions, imbuing the adventure with a great sense of authenticity." Meunier did note that the installment was "surprisingly light on challenge and content." Ben PerLee from GameZone summarized his praise of the game by saying it is a "feel good cinematic experience that any fan of "Back to the Future" will want to check out, and everyone else would do well to check it out." "PALGN" gave the installment a 7/10, saying that fans of the films "will find plenty to love with all of the callbacks and nostalgic moments", but calling the game's pace slow and the 1930s setting uninspiring. The review concluded, "Fans will delight in the more nostalgic and clever moments of "It's About Time", but it's a short, easy and somewhat bland introduction to the series, which we hope still has time to get a lot better." In a 2/5 stars review, The Escapist said the first episode of the game "doesn't quite get the tone [of the films] right and fails to offer up much compelling gameplay." The reviewer called the setting, situations, and characters "bland", further describing the characters as "cardboard nobodies", and did not review the rest of the series. The consensus among critics was that the voice acting was exceptional, with particular praise directed at A.J. Locascio's impersonation of Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly. Most reviewers were critical of the episode's puzzles as being too simplistic and easy. Review aggregator Metacritic assigned the episode an average review score of 74/100.


title: Back to the Future: The Game

text: "Back to the Future: The Game" was Telltale's most successful franchise prior to the release of "The Walking Dead: The Game".


title: Back to the Future: The Game

text: In 2016, IDW Publishing released "Back to the Future: Citizen Brown", a comic book of the game and adapted by Bob Gale and Erik Burnham. It was released over five issues from May to September 2016. The comic follows the story of the game albeit with some minor changes, which according to Bob Gale: "...I convinced IDW to go back in time with me to correct a few mistakes we made the first time around, as well as to set up some things that pay off cleverly in true BTTF style."


title: Charon's obol

text: Charon's obol is an allusive term for the coin placed in or on the mouth of a dead person before burial. Greek and Latin literary sources specify the coin as an obol, and explain it as a payment or bribe for Charon, the ferryman who conveyed souls across the river that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. Archaeological examples of these coins, of various denominations in practice, have been called "the most famous grave goods from antiquity."


title: Charon's obol

text: The custom is primarily associated with the ancient Greeks and Romans, though it is also found in the ancient Near East. In Western Europe, a similar usage of coins in burials occurs in regions inhabited by Celts of the Gallo-Roman, Hispano-Roman and Romano-British cultures, and among the Germanic peoples of late antiquity and the early Christian era, with sporadic examples into the early 20th century.


title: Charon's obol

text: Although archaeology shows that the myth reflects an actual custom, the placement of coins with the dead was neither pervasive nor confined to a single coin in the deceased's mouth. In many burials, inscribed metal-leaf tablets or Exonumia take the place of the coin, or gold-foil crosses during the early Christian period. The presence of coins or a coin-hoard in Germanic ship-burials suggests an analogous concept.


title: Charon's obol

text: The phrase "Charon’s obol" as used by archaeologists sometimes can be understood as referring to a particular religious rite, but often serves as a kind of shorthand for coinage as grave goods presumed to further the deceased's passage into the afterlife. In Latin, Charon's obol sometimes is called a "viaticum", or "sustenance for the journey"; the placement of the coin on the mouth has been explained also as a seal to protect the deceased's soul or to prevent it from returning.


title: Charon's obol

text: The coin for Charon is conventionally referred to in Greek literature as an "obolos" (Greek ὀβολός), one of the basic denominations of ancient Greek coinage, worth one-sixth of a drachma. Among the Greeks, coins in actual burials are sometimes also a danakē (δανάκη) or other relatively small-denomination gold, silver, bronze or copper coin in local use. In Roman literary sources the coin is usually bronze or copper. From the 6th to the 4th centuries BC in the Black Sea region, low-value coins depicting arrowheads or dolphins were in use mainly for the purpose of "local exchange and to serve as ‘Charon’s obol.‘" The payment is sometimes specified with a term for "boat fare" (in Greek "naulon", ναῦλον, Latin "naulum"); "fee for ferrying" ("porthmeion", πορθμήϊον or πορθμεῖον); or "waterway toll" (Latin "portorium").


title: Charon's obol

text: The word "naulon" (ναῦλον) is defined by the Christian-era lexicographer Hesychius of Alexandria as the coin put into the mouth of the dead; one of the meanings of "danakē" (δανάκη) is given as "the obol for the dead". The Suda defines "danakē" as a coin traditionally buried with the dead for paying the ferryman to cross the river Acheron, and explicates the definition of "porthmēïon" (πορθμήϊον) as a ferryman's fee with a quotation from the poet Callimachus, who notes the custom of carrying the "porthmēïon" in the "parched mouths of the dead."


title: Charon's obol

text: In Latin, Charon's obol is sometimes called a "viaticum," which in everyday usage means "provision for a journey" (from "via", "way, road, journey"), encompassing food, money and other supplies. The same word can refer to the living allowance granted to those stripped of their property and condemned to exile, and by metaphorical extension to preparing for death at the end of life's journey. Cicero, in his philosophical dialogue "On Old Age" (44 BC), has the interlocutor Cato the Elder combine two metaphors — nearing the end of a journey, and ripening fruit — in speaking of the approach to death:


title: Charon's obol

text: Drawing on this metaphorical sense of "provision for the journey into death," ecclesiastical Latin borrowed the term "viaticum" for the form of Eucharist that is placed in the mouth of a person who is dying as provision for the soul's passage to eternal life. The earliest literary evidence of this Christian usage for "viaticum" appears in Paulinus’s account of the death of Saint Ambrose in 397 AD. The 7th-century "Synodus Hibernensis" offers an etymological explanation: "This word ‘viaticum’ is the name of communion, that is to say, ‘the guardianship of the way,’ for it guards the soul until it shall stand before the judgment-seat of Christ." Thomas Aquinas explained the term as "a prefiguration of the fruit of God, which will be in the Promised Land. And because of this it is called the "viaticum", since it provides us with the way of getting there"; the idea of Christians as "travelers in search of salvation" finds early expression in the "Confessions" of St. Augustine.


title: Charon's obol

text: An equivalent word in Greek is "ephodion" (ἐφόδιον); like "viaticum", the word is used in antiquity to mean "provision for a journey" (literally, "something for the road," from the prefix ἐπ-, "on" + ὁδός, "road, way") and later in Greek patristic literature for the Eucharist administered on the point of death.


title: Charon's obol

text: Greek and Roman literary sources from the 5th century BC through the 2nd century AD are consistent in attributing four characteristics to Charon's obol:


title: Charon's obol

text: Greek epigrams that were literary versions of epitaphs refer to "the obol that pays the passage of the departed," with some epigrams referring to the belief by mocking or debunking it. The satirist Lucian has Charon himself, in a dialogue of the same name, declare that he collects "an obol from everyone who makes the downward journey." In an elegy of consolation spoken in the person of the dead woman, the Augustan poet Propertius expresses the finality of death by her payment of the bronze coin to the infernal toll collector ("portitor"). Several other authors mention the fee. Often, an author uses the low value of the coin to emphasize that death makes no distinction between rich and poor; all must pay the same because all must die, and a rich person can take no greater amount into death:


title: Charon's obol

text: The incongruity of paying what is, in effect, admission to Hell encouraged a comic or satiric treatment, and Charon as a ferryman who must be persuaded, threatened, or bribed to do his job appears to be a literary construct that is not reflected in early classical art. Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood has shown that in 5th-century BC depictions of Charon, as on the funerary vases called lekythoi, he is a non-threatening, even reassuring presence who guides women, adolescents, and children to the afterlife. Humor, as in Aristophanes's comic catabasis "The Frogs", "makes the journey to Hades less frightening by articulating it explicitly and trivializing it." Aristophanes makes jokes about the fee, and a character complains that Theseus must have introduced it, characterizing the Athenian hero in his role of city organizer as a bureaucrat.


title: Charon's obol

text: In another satirical work of Lucian, the "Dialogs of the dead", a character called Menippus has just died and Charon is asking for an obol in order to convey him across the river to the underworld, Menippus refuses to pay the obol, and consequently to enter the world of the dead claiming that:


title: Charon's obol

text: The use of coins as grave goods shows a variety of practice that casts doubt on the accuracy of the term "Charon’s obol" as an interpretational category. The phrase continues to be used, however, to suggest the ritual or religious significance of coinage in a funerary context.


title: Charon's obol

text: Coins are found in Greek burials by the 5th century BC, as soon as Greece was monetized, and appear throughout the Roman Empire into the 5th century AD, with examples conforming to the Charon's obol type as far west as the Iberian Peninsula, north into Britain, and east to the Vistula river in Poland. The jawbones of skulls found in certain burials in Roman Britain are stained greenish from contact with a copper coin; Roman coins are found later in Anglo-Saxon graves, but often pierced for wearing as a necklace or amulet. Among the ancient Greeks, only about 5 to 10 percent of known burials contain any coins at all; in some Roman cremation cemeteries, however, as many as half the graves yield coins. Many if not most of these occurrences conform to the myth of Charon's obol in neither the number of coins nor their positioning. Variety of placement and number, including but not limited to a single coin in the mouth, is characteristic of all periods and places.


title: Charon's obol

text: Some of the oldest coins from Mediterranean tombs have been found on Cyprus. In 2001 Destrooper-Georgiades, a specialist in Achaemenid numismatics, said that investigations of 33 tombs had yielded 77 coins. Although denomination varies, as does the number in any given burial, small coins predominate. Coins started to be placed in tombs almost as soon as they came into circulation on the island in the 6th century, and some predate both the first issue of the obol and any literary reference to Charon's fee.


title: Charon's obol

text: Although only a small percentage of Greek burials contain coins, among these there are widespread examples of a single coin positioned in the mouth of a skull or with cremation remains. In cremation urns, the coin sometimes adheres to the jawbone of the skull. At Olynthus, 136 coins (mostly bronze, but some silver), were found with burials; in 1932, archaeologists reported that 20 graves had each contained four bronze coins, which they believed were intended for placement in the mouth. A few tombs at Olynthus have contained two coins, but more often a single bronze coin was positioned in the mouth or within the head of the skeleton. In Hellenistic-era tombs at one cemetery in Athens, coins, usually bronze, were found most often in the dead person's mouth, though sometimes in the hand, loose in the grave, or in a vessel. At Chania, an originally Minoan settlement on Crete, a tomb dating from the second half of the 3rd century BC held a rich variety of grave goods, including fine gold jewelry, a gold tray with the image of a bird, a clay vessel, a bronze mirror, a bronze strigil, and a bronze "Charon coin" depicting Zeus. In excavations of 91 tombs at a cemetery in Amphipolis during the mid- to late 1990s, a majority of the dead were found to have a coin in the mouth. The burials dated from the 4th to the late 2nd century BC.


title: Charon's obol

text: A notable use of a danake occurred in the burial of a woman in 4th-century BC Thessaly, a likely initiate into the Orphic or Dionysiac mysteries. Her religious paraphernalia included gold tablets inscribed with instructions for the afterlife and a terracotta figure of a Bacchic worshipper. Upon her lips was placed a gold danake stamped with the Gorgon's head. Coins begin to appear with greater frequency in graves during the 3rd century BC, along with gold wreaths and plain unguentaria (small bottles for oil) in place of the earlier lekythoi. Black-figure lekythoi had often depicted Dionysiac scenes; the later white-ground vessels often show Charon, usually with his pole, but rarely (or dubiously) accepting the coin.


title: Charon's obol

text: The Black Sea region has also produced examples of Charon's obol. At Apollonia Pontica, the custom had been practiced from the mid-4th century BC; in one cemetery, for instance, 17 percent of graves contained small bronze local coins in the mouth or hand of the deceased. During 1998 excavations of Pichvnari, on the coast of present-day Georgia, a single coin was found in seven burials, and a pair of coins in two. The coins, silver triobols of the local Colchian currency, were located near the mouth, with the exception of one that was near the hand. It is unclear whether the dead were Colchians or Greeks. The investigating archaeologists did not regard the practice as typical of the region, but speculate that the local geography lent itself to adapting the Greek myth, as bodies of the dead in actuality had to be ferried across a river from the town to the cemetery.


title: Charon's obol

text: Charon's obol is usually regarded as Hellenic, and a single coin in burials is often taken as a mark of Hellenization, but the practice may be independent of Greek influence in some regions. The placing of a coin in the mouth of the deceased is found also during Parthian and Sasanian times in what is now Iran. Curiously, the coin was not the danake of Persian origin, as it was sometimes among the Greeks, but usually a Greek drachma. In the Yazdi region, objects consecrated in graves may include a coin or piece of silver; the custom is thought to be perhaps as old as the Seleucid era and may be a form of Charon's obol.


title: Charon's obol

text: Discoveries of a single coin near the skull in tombs of the Levant suggest a similar practice among Phoenicians in the Persian period. Jewish ossuaries sometimes contain a single coin; for example, in an ossuary bearing the inscriptional name "Miriam, daughter of Simeon," a coin minted during the reign of Herod Agrippa I, dated 42/43 AD, was found in the skull's mouth. Although the placement of a coin within the skull is uncommon in Jewish antiquity and was potentially an act of idolatry, rabbinic literature preserves an allusion to Charon in a lament for the dead "tumbling aboard the ferry and having to borrow his fare." Boats are sometimes depicted on ossuaries or the walls of Jewish crypts, and one of the coins found within a skull may have been chosen because it depicted a ship.


title: Charon's obol

text: Cemeteries in the Western Roman Empire vary widely: in a 1st-century BC community in Cisalpine Gaul, coins were included in more than 40 percent of graves, but none was placed in the mouth of the deceased; the figure is only 10 percent for cremations at Empúries in Spain and York in Britain. On the Iberian Peninsula, evidence interpreted as Charon's obol has been found at Tarragona. In Belgic Gaul, varying deposits of coins are found with the dead for the 1st through 3rd centuries, but are most frequent in the late 4th and early 5th centuries. Thirty Gallo-Roman burials near the Pont de Pasly, Soissons, each contained a coin for Charon. Germanic burials show a preference for gold coins, but even within a single cemetery and a narrow time period, their disposition varies.


title: Charon's obol

text: In one Merovingian cemetery of Frénouville, Normandy, which was in use for four centuries after Christ, coins are found in a minority of the graves. At one time, the cemetery was regarded as exhibiting two distinct phases: an earlier Gallo-Roman period when the dead were buried with vessels, notably of glass, and Charon's obol; and later, when they were given funerary dress and goods according to Frankish custom. This neat division, however, has been shown to be misleading. In the 3rd- to 4th-century area of the cemetery, coins were placed near the skulls or hands, sometimes protected by a pouch or vessel, or were found in the grave-fill as if tossed in. Bronze coins usually numbered one or two per grave, as would be expected from the custom of Charon's obol, but one burial contained 23 bronze coins, and another held a gold solidus and a "semissis". The latter examples indicate that coins might have represented relative social status. In the newer part of the cemetery, which remained in use through the 6th century, the deposition patterns for coinage were similar, but the coins themselves were not contemporaneous with the burials, and some were pierced for wearing. The use of older coins may reflect a shortage of new currency, or may indicate that the old coins held a traditional symbolic meaning apart from their denominational value. "The varied placement of coins of different values … demonstrates at least partial if not complete loss of understanding of the original religious function of Charon’s obol," remarks Bonnie Effros, a specialist in Merovingian burial customs. "These factors make it difficult to determine the rite’s significance."


title: Charon's obol

text: Although the rite of Charon's obol was practiced no more uniformly in Northern Europe than in Greece, there are examples of individual burials or small groups conforming to the pattern. At Broadstairs in Kent, a young man had been buried with a Merovingian gold tremissis ("ca." 575) in his mouth. A gold-plated coin was found in the mouth of a young man buried on the Isle of Wight in the mid-6th century; his other grave goods included vessels, a drinking horn, a knife, and gaming-counters of ivory with one cobalt-blue glass piece.


title: Charon's obol

text: Scandinavian and Germanic gold bracteates found in burials of the 5th and 6th centuries, particularly those in Britain, have also been interpreted in light of Charon's obol. These gold disks, similar to coins though generally single-sided, were influenced by late Roman imperial coins and medallions but feature iconography from Norse myth and runic inscriptions. The stamping process created an extended rim that forms a frame with a loop for threading; the bracteates often appear in burials as a woman's necklace. A function comparable to that of Charon's obol is suggested by examples such as a man's burial at Monkton in Kent and a group of several male graves on Gotland, Sweden, for which the bracteate was deposited in a pouch beside the body. In the Gotland burials, the bracteates lack rim and loop, and show no traces of wear, suggesting that they had not been intended for everyday use.


title: Charon's obol

text: According to one interpretation, the purse-hoard in the Sutton Hoo ship burial (Suffolk, East Anglia), which contained a variety of Merovingian gold coins, unites the traditional Germanic voyage to the afterlife with "an unusually splendid form of Charon's obol." The burial yielded 37 gold tremisses dating from the late 6th and early 7th century, three unstruck coin blanks, and two small gold ingots. It has been conjectured that the coins were to pay the oarsmen who would row the ship into the next world, while the ingots were meant for the steersmen. Although Charon is usually a lone figure in depictions from both antiquity and the modern era, there is some slight evidence that his ship might be furnished with oarsmen. A fragment of 6th century BC pottery has been interpreted as Charon sitting in the stern as steersman of a boat fitted with ten pairs of oars and rowed by "eidola" (εἴδωλα), shades of the dead. A reference in Lucian seems also to imply that the shades might row the boat.


title: Charon's obol

text: In Scandinavia, scattered examples of Charon's obol have been documented from the Roman Iron Age and the Migration Period; in the Viking Age eastern Sweden produces the best evidence, Denmark rarely, and Norway and Finland inconclusively. In the 13th and 14th centuries, Charon's obol appears in graves in Sweden, Scania, and Norway. Swedish folklore documents the custom from the 18th into the 20th century.


title: Charon's obol

text: The custom of Charon's obol not only continued into the Christian era, but was adopted by Christians, as a single coin was sometimes placed in the mouth for Christian burials. At Arcy-Sainte-Restitue in Picardy, a Merovingian grave yielded a coin of Constantine I, the first Christian emperor, used as Charon's obol. In Britain, the practice was just as frequent, if not more so, among Christians and persisted even to the end of the 19th century. A folklorist writing in 1914 was able to document a witness in Britain who had seen a penny placed in the mouth of an old man as he lay in his coffin. In 1878, Pope Pius IX was entombed with a coin. The practice was widely documented around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in Greece, where the coin was sometimes accompanied by a key.


title: Charon's obol

text: So-called "ghost coins" also appear with the dead. These are impressions of an actual coin or numismatic icon struck into a small piece of gold foil. In a 5th- or 4th-century BC grave at Syracuse, Sicily, a small rectangular gold leaf stamped with a dual-faced figure, possibly Demeter/Kore, was found in the skeleton's mouth. In a marble cremation box from the mid-2nd century BC, the "Charon's piece" took the form of a bit of gold foil stamped with an owl; in addition to the charred bone fragments, the box also contained gold leaves from a wreath of the type sometimes associated with the mystery religions. Within an Athenian family burial plot of the 2nd century BC, a thin gold disk similarly stamped with the owl of Athens had been placed in the mouth of each male.


title: Charon's obol

text: These examples of the "Charon's piece" resemble in material and size the tiny inscribed tablet or funerary amulet called a "lamella" (Latin for a metal-foil sheet) or a "Totenpass", a "passport for the dead" with instructions on navigating the afterlife, conventionally regarded as a form of Orphic or Dionysiac devotional. Several of these prayer sheets have been found in positions that indicate placement in or on the deceased's mouth. A functional equivalence with the Charon's piece is further suggested by the evidence of flattened coins used as mouth coverings ("epistomia") from graves in Crete. A gold phylactery with a damaged inscription invoking the syncretic god Sarapis was found within the skull in a burial from the late 1st century AD in southern Rome. The gold tablet may have served both as a protective amulet during the deceased's lifetime and then, with its insertion into the mouth, possibly on the model of Charon's obol, as a "Totenpass".


title: Charon's obol

text: In a late Roman-era burial in Douris, near Baalbek, Lebanon, the forehead, nose, and mouth of the deceased — a woman, in so far as skeletal remains can indicate — were covered with sheets of gold-leaf. She wore a wreath made from gold oak leaves, and her clothing had been sewn with gold-leaf ovals decorated with female faces. Several glass vessels were arranged at her feet, and her discoverers interpreted the bronze coin close to her head as an example of Charon's obol.


title: Charon's obol

text: Textual evidence also exists for covering portions of the deceased's body with gold foil. One of the accusations of heresy against the Phrygian Christian movement known as the Montanists was that they sealed the mouths of their dead with plates of gold like initiates into the mysteries; factual or not, the charge indicates an anxiety that Christian practice be distinguished from that of other religions, and again suggests that Charon's obol and the "Orphic" gold tablets could fulfill a similar purpose. The early Christian poet Prudentius seems to be referring either to these inscribed gold-leaf tablets or to the larger gold-foil coverings in one of his condemnations of the mystery religions. Prudentius says that "auri lammina" ("sheets of gold") were placed on the bodies of initiates as part of funeral rites. This practice may or may not be distinct from the funerary use of gold leaf inscribed with figures and placed on the eyes, mouths, and chests of warriors in Macedonian burials during the late Archaic period (580–460 BC); in September 2008, archaeologists working near Pella in northern Greece publicized the discovery of twenty warrior graves in which the deceased wore bronze helmets and were supplied with iron swords and knives along with these gold-leaf coverings.


title: Charon's obol

text: In Gaul and in Alemannic territory, Christian graves of the Merovingian period reveal an analogous Christianized practice in the form of gold or gold-alloy leaf shaped like a cross, imprinted with designs, and deposited possibly as votives or amulets for the deceased. These paper-thin, fragile gold crosses are sometimes referred to by scholars with the German term "Goldblattkreuze". They appear to have been sewn onto the deceased's garment just before burial, not worn during life, and in this practice are comparable to the pierced Roman coins found in Anglo-Saxon graves that were attached to clothing instead of or in addition to being threaded onto a necklace.


title: Charon's obol

text: The crosses are characteristic of Lombardic Italy (Cisalpine Gaul of the Roman imperial era), where they were fastened to veils and placed over the deceased's mouth in a continuation of Byzantine practice. Throughout the Lombardic realm and north into Germanic territory, the crosses gradually replaced bracteates during the 7th century. The transition is signalled by Scandinavian bracteates found in Kent that are stamped with cross motifs resembling the Lombardic crosses. Two plain gold-foil crosses of Latin form, found in the burial of a 7th-century East Saxon king, are the first known examples from England, announced in 2004. The king's other grave goods included glass vessels made in England and two different Merovingian gold coins, each of which had a cross on the reverse. Coins of the period were adapted with Christian iconography in part to facilitate their use as an alternative to amulets of traditional religions.


title: Charon's obol

text: Scandinavia also produced small and fragile gold-foil pieces, called "gullgubber", that were worked in repoussé with human figures. These begin to appear in the late Iron Age and continue into the Viking Age. In form they resemble the gold-foil pieces such as those found at Douris, but the "gullgubber" were not fashioned with a fastening element and are not associated with burials. They occur in the archaeological record sometimes singly, but most often in large numbers. Some scholars have speculated that they are a form of "temple money" or votive offering, but Sharon Ratke has suggested that they might represent good wishes for travelers, perhaps as a metaphor for the dead on their journey to the otherworld, especially those depicting "wraiths."


title: Charon's obol

text: Ships often appear in Greek and Roman funerary art representing a voyage to the Isles of the Blessed, and a 2nd-century sarcophagus found in Velletri, near Rome, included Charon's boat among its subject matter. In modern-era Greek folkloric survivals of Charon (as Charos the death demon), sea voyage and river crossing are conflated, and in one later tale, the soul is held hostage by pirates, perhaps representing the oarsmen, who require a ransom for release. The mytheme of the passage to the afterlife as a voyage or crossing is not unique to Greco-Roman belief nor to Indo-European culture as a whole, as it occurs also in ancient Egyptian religion and other belief systems that are culturally unrelated. The boatman of the dead himself appears in diverse cultures with no special relation to Greece or to each other. A Sumerian model for Charon has been proposed, and the figure has possible antecedents among the Egyptians; scholars are divided as to whether these influenced the tradition of Charon, but the 1st-century BC historian Diodorus Siculus thought so and mentions the fee. It might go without saying that only when coinage comes into common use is the idea of payment introduced, but coins were placed in graves before the appearance of the Charon myth in literature.


title: Charon's obol

text: Because of the diversity of religious beliefs in the Greco-Roman world, and because the mystery religions that were most concerned with the afterlife and soteriology placed a high value on secrecy and arcane knowledge, no single theology has been reconstructed that would account for Charon's obol. Franz Cumont regarded the numerous examples found in Roman tombs as "evidence of no more than a traditional rite which men performed without attaching a definite meaning to it." The use of a coin for the rite seems to depend not just on the myth of Charon, but also on other religious and mythic traditions associating wealth and the underworld.


title: Charon's obol

text: In cultures that practiced the rite of Charon's obol, the infernal ferryman who requires payment is one of a number of underworld deities associated with wealth. For the Greeks, Pluto ("Ploutōn", Πλούτων), the ruler of the dead and the consort of Persephone, became conflated with Plutus ("Ploutos", Πλοῦτος), wealth personified; Plato points out the meaningful ambiguity of this etymological play in his dialogue "Cratylus". Hermes is a god of boundaries, travel, and liminality, and thus conveys souls across the border that separates the living from the dead, acting as a psychopomp, but he was also a god of exchange, commerce, and profit. The name of his Roman counterpart Mercury was thought in antiquity to share its derivation with the Latin word "merces", "goods, merchandise."


title: Charon's obol

text: The numerous chthonic deities among the Romans were also frequently associated with wealth. In his treatise "On the Nature of the Gods", Cicero identifies the Roman god Dis Pater with the Greek Pluton, explaining that riches are hidden in and arise from the earth. Dis Pater is sometimes regarded as a chthonic Saturn, ruler of the , whose consort Ops was a goddess of abundance. The obscure goddess Angerona, whose iconography depicted silence and secrecy, and whose festival followed that of Ops, seems to have regulated communications between the realm of the living and the underworld; she may have been a guardian of both arcane knowledge and stored, secret wealth. When a Roman died, the treasury at the Temple of Venus in the sacred grove of the funeral goddess Libitina collected a coin as a "death tax".


title: Charon's obol

text: The Republican poet Ennius locates the "treasuries of Death" across the Acheron. Romans threw an annual offering of coins into the Lacus Curtius, a pit or chasm in the middle of the Roman Forum that was regarded as a "mundus" or "port of communication" with the underworld.


title: Charon's obol

text: Chthonic wealth is sometimes attributed to the Celtic horned god of the Cernunnos type, one of the deities proposed as the divine progenitor of the Gauls that Julius Caesar identified with Dis Pater. On a relief from the Gallic "civitas" of the Remi, the god holds in his lap a sack or purse, the contents of which — identified by scholars variably as coins or food (grain, small fruits, or nuts) — may be intentionally ambiguous in expressing desired abundance. The antler-horned god appears on coins from Gaul and Britain, in explicit association with wealth. In his best-known representation, on the problematic Gundestrup Cauldron, he is surrounded by animals with mythico-religious significance; taken in the context of an accompanying scene of initiation, the horned god can be interpreted as presiding over the process of metempsychosis, the cycle of death and rebirth, regarded by ancient literary sources as one of the most important tenets of Celtic religion and characteristic also of Pythagoreanism and the Orphic or Dionysiac mysteries.


title: Charon's obol

text: From its 7th-century BC beginnings in western Anatolia, ancient coinage was viewed not as distinctly secular, but as a form of communal trust bound up in the ties expressed by religion. The earliest known coin-hoard from antiquity was found buried in a pot within the foundations of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, dating to the mid-6th century BC. The iconography of gods and various divine beings appeared regularly on coins issued by Greek cities and later by Rome. The effect of monetization on religious practice is indicated by notations in Greek calendars of sacrifices pertaining to fees for priests and prices for offerings and victims. One fragmentary text seems to refer to a single obol to be paid by each initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries to the priestess of Demeter, the symbolic value of which is perhaps to be interpreted in light of Charon's obol as the initiate's gaining access to knowledge required for successful passage to the afterlife.


title: Charon's obol

text: Erwin Rohde argued, on the basis of later folk customs, that the obol was originally a payment to the dead person himself, as a way of compensating him for the loss of property that passed to the living, or as a token substitute for the more ancient practice of consigning his property to the grave with him. In Rohde's view, the obol was later attached to the myth of the ferryman as an "ex post facto" explanation.


title: Charon's obol

text: In the view of Richard Seaford, the introduction of coinage to Greece and the theorizing about value it provoked was concomitant with and even contributed to the creation of Greek metaphysics. Plato criticizes common currency as "polluting", but also says that the guardians of his ideal republic should have divine gold and silver money from the gods always present in their souls. This Platonic "money in the soul" holds the promise of "divinity, homogeneity, unchanging permanence, self-sufficiency, invisibility."


title: Charon's obol

text: Attempts to explain the symbolism of the rite also must negotiate the illogical placement of the coin in the mouth. The Latin term "viaticum" makes sense of Charon's obol as "sustenance for the journey," and it has been suggested that coins replaced offerings of food for the dead in Roman tradition.


title: Charon's obol

text: This dichotomy of food for the living and gold for the dead is a theme in the myth of King Midas, versions of which draw on elements of the Dionysian mysteries. The Phrygian king's famous "golden touch" was a divine gift from Dionysus, but its acceptance separated him from the human world of nourishment and reproduction: both his food and his daughter were transformed by contact with him into immutable, unreciprocal gold. In some versions of the myth, Midas's hard-won insight into the meaning of life and the limitations of earthly wealth is accompanied by conversion to the cult of Dionysus. Having learned his lessons as an initiate into the mysteries, and after ritual immersion in the river Pactolus, Midas forsakes the "bogus eternity" of gold for spiritual rebirth.


title: Charon's obol

text: John Cuthbert Lawson, an early 20th-century folklorist whose approach was influenced by the Cambridge Ritualists, argued that both the food metaphor and the coin as payment for the ferryman were later rationalizations of the original ritual. Although single coins from inhumations appear most often inside or in the vicinity of the skull, they are also found in the hand or a pouch, a more logical place to carry a payment. Lawson viewed the coin as originally a seal, used as potsherds sometimes were on the lips of the dead to block the return of the soul, believed to pass from the body with the last breath. One of the first steps in preparing a corpse was to seal the lips, sometimes with linen or gold bands, to prevent the soul's return. The stopping of the mouth by Charon's obol has been used to illuminate burial practices intended, for instance, to prevent vampires or other revenants from returning.


title: Charon's obol

text: The placement of the coin on the mouth can be compared to practices pertaining to the disposition of the dead in the Near East. An Egyptian custom is indicated by a burial at Abydos, dating from the 22nd Dynasty (945–720 BC) or later, for which the deceased woman's mouth was covered with a faience "uadjet", or protective eye amulet. Oval mouth coverings, perforated for fastening, are found in burials throughout the Near East from the 1st century BC through the 1st century AD, providing evidence of an analogous practice for sealing the mouths of the dead in regions not under Roman Imperial control. Bahraini excavations at the necropolis of Al-Hajjar produced examples of these coverings in gold leaf, one of which retained labial imprints.


title: Charon's obol

text: A coin may make a superior seal because of its iconography; in the Thessalian burial of an initiate described above, for instance, the coin on the lips depicted the apotropaic device of the Gorgon's head. The seal may also serve to regulate the speech of the dead, which was sometimes sought through rituals for its prophetic powers, but also highly regulated as dangerous; mystery religions that offered arcane knowledge of the afterlife prescribed ritual silence. A golden key "(chrusea klês)" was laid on the tongue of initiates as a symbol of the revelation they were obligated to keep secret. "Charon's obol" is often found in burials with objects or inscriptions indicative of mystery cult, and the coin figures in a Latin prose narrative that alludes to initiation ritual, the "Cupid and Psyche" story from the "Metamorphoses" of Apuleius.


title: Charon's obol

text: In the 2nd-century "Cupid and Psyche" narrative by Apuleius, Psyche, whose name is a Greek word for "soul," is sent on an underworld quest to retrieve the box containing Proserpina’s secret beauty, in order to restore the love of Cupid. The tale lends itself to multiple interpretational approaches, and it has frequently been analyzed as an allegory of Platonism as well as of religious initiation, iterating on a smaller scale the plot of the "Metamorphoses" as a whole, which concerns the protagonist Lucius’s journey towards salvation through the cult of Isis. Ritual elements were associated with the story even before Apuleius’s version, as indicated in visual representations; for instance, a 1st-century BC sardonyx cameo depicting the wedding of Cupid and Psyche shows an attendant elevating a "liknon" (basket) used in Dionysiac initiation. C. Moreschini saw the "Metamorphoses" as moving away from the Platonism of Apuleius’s earlier "Apology" toward a vision of mystic salvation.


title: Charon's obol

text: The two coins serve the plot by providing Psyche with fare for the return; allegorically, this return trip suggests the soul’s rebirth, perhaps a Platonic reincarnation or the divine form implied by the so-called Orphic gold tablets. The myth of Charon has rarely been interpreted in light of mystery religions, despite the association in Apuleius and archaeological evidence of burials that incorporate both Charon’s obol and cultic paraphernalia. And yet "the image of the ferry," Helen King notes, "hints that death is not final, but can be reversed, because the ferryman could carry his passengers either way." A funeral rite is itself a kind of initiation, or the transition of the soul into another stage of "life."


title: Charon's obol

text: Contrary to popular etiology there is little evidence to connect the myth of Charon to the custom of placing a pair of coins on the eyes of the deceased, though the larger gold-foil coverings discussed above might include pieces shaped for the eyes. Pairs of coins are sometimes found in burials, including cremation urns; among the collections of the British Museum is an urn from Athens, "ca." 300 BC, that contained cremated remains, two obols, and a terracotta figure of a mourning siren. Ancient Greek and Latin literary sources, however, mention a pair of coins only when a return trip is anticipated, as in the case of Psyche's catabasis, and never in regard to sealing the eyes.


title: Charon's obol

text: Only rarely does the placement of a pair of coins suggest they might have covered the eyes. In Judea, a pair of silver denarii were found in the eye sockets of a skull; the burial dated to the 2nd century A.D. occurs within a Jewish community, but the religious affiliation of the deceased is unclear. Jewish ritual in antiquity did not require that the eye be sealed by an object, and it is debatable whether the custom of placing coins on the eyes of the dead was practiced among Jews prior to the modern era. During the 1980s, the issue became embroiled with the controversies regarding the Shroud of Turin when it was argued that the eye area revealed the outlines of coins; since the placement of coins on the eyes for burial is not securely attested in antiquity, apart from the one example from Judea cited above, this interpretation of evidence obtained through digital image processing cannot be claimed as firm support for the shroud's authenticity.


title: Charon's obol

text: Coins are found also at the deceased's feet, although the purpose of this positioning is uncertain. John Chrysostom mentions and disparages the use of coins depicting Alexander the Great as amulets attached by the living to the head or feet, and offers the Christian cross as a more powerful alternative for both salvation and healing:


title: Charon's obol

text: With instructions that recall those received by Psyche for her heroic descent, or the inscribed "Totenpass" for initiates, the Christian protagonist of a 14th-century French pilgrimage narrative is advised:


title: Charon's obol

text: Anglo-Saxon and early–medieval Irish missionaries took the idea of a viaticum literally, carrying the Eucharistic bread and oil with them everywhere.


title: Charon's obol

text: The need for a viaticum figures in a myth-tinged account of the death of King William II of England, told by the Anglo-Norman chronicler Geoffrey Gaimar: dying from a battle wound and delirious, the desperate king kept calling out for the "corpus domini" (Lord's body) until a huntsman acted as priest and gave him flowering herbs as his viaticum. In the dominant tradition of William's death, he is killed while hunting on the second day of red stag season, which began August 1, the date of both Lughnasadh and the Feast of St. Peter's Chains.


title: Charon's obol

text: The hunt is also associated with the administering of a herbal viaticum in the medieval "chansons de geste", in which traditional heroic culture and Christian values interpenetrate. The "chansons" offer multiple examples of grass or foliage substituted as a viaticum when a warrior or knight meets his violent end outside the Christian community. Sarah Kay views this substitute rite as communion with the Girardian "primitive sacred," speculating that "pagan" beliefs lurk beneath a Christian veneer. In the "Raoul de Cambrai", the dying Bernier receives three blades of grass in place of the "corpus Domini." Two other "chansons" place this desire for communion within the mytheme of the sacrificial boar hunt. In "Daurel et Beton", Bove is murdered next to the boar he just killed; he asks his own killer to grant him communion "with a leaf," and when he is denied, he then asks that his enemy eat his heart instead. This request is granted; the killer partakes of the victim's body as an alternative sacrament. In "Garin le Loheren", Begon is similarly assassinated next to the corpse of a boar, and takes communion with three blades of grass.


title: Charon's obol

text: Kay's conjecture that a pre-Christian tradition accounts for the use of leaves as the viaticum is supported by evidence from Hellenistic magico-religious practice, the continuance of which is documented in Gaul and among Germanic peoples. Spells from the Greek Magical Papyri often require the insertion of a leaf — an actual leaf, a papyrus scrap, the representation of a leaf in metal foil, or an inscribed rectangular "lamella" (as described above) — into the mouth of a corpse or skull, as a means of conveying messages to and from the realms of the living and the dead. In one spell attributed to Pitys the Thessalian, the practitioner is instructed to inscribe a flax leaf with magic words and to insert it into the mouth of a dead person.


title: Charon's obol

text: The insertion of herbs into the mouth of the dead, with a promise of resurrection, occurs also in the Irish tale "The Kern in the Narrow Stripes," the earliest written version of which dates to the 1800s but is thought to preserve an oral tradition of early Irish myth. The kern of the title is an otherworldly trickster figure who performs a series of miracles; after inducing twenty armed men to kill each other, he produces herbs from his bag and instructs his host's gatekeeper to place them within the jaws of each dead man to bring him back to life. At the end of the tale, the mysterious visitor is revealed as Manannán mac Lir, the Irish god known in other stories for his herd of pigs that offer eternal feasting from their self-renewing flesh.


title: Charon's obol

text: Scholars have suggested that the use of a viaticum in the Christian rite for the dying reflected preexisting religious practice, with Charon's obol replaced by a more acceptably Christian sacrament. In one miraculous story, recounted by Pope Innocent III in a letter dated 1213, the coins in a moneybox were said literally to have been transformed into communion wafers. Because of the viaticum's presumed pre-Christian origin, an anti-Catholic historian of religion at the turn of the 18th–19th centuries propagandized the practice, stating that "it was from the heathens [that] the papists borrowed it." Contemporary scholars are more likely to explain the borrowing in light of the deep-seated conservatism of burial practices or as a form of religious syncretism motivated by a psychological need for continuity.


title: Charon's obol

text: Among Christians, the practice of burying a corpse with a coin in its mouth was never widespread enough to warrant condemnation from the Church, but the substitute rite came under official scrutiny; the viaticum should not be, but often was, placed in the mouth after death, apparently out of a superstitious desire for its magical protection. By the time Augustine wrote his "Confessions", "African bishops had forbidden the celebration of the eucharist in the presence of the corpse. This was necessary to stop the occasional practice of placing the eucharistic bread in the mouth of the dead, a viaticum which replaced the coin needed to pay Charon’s fare." Pope Gregory I, in his biography of Benedict of Nursia, tells the story of a monk whose body was twice ejected from his tomb; Benedict advised the family to restore the dead man to his resting place with the viaticum placed on his chest. The placement suggests a functional equivalence with the "Goldblattkreuze" and the Orphic gold tablets; its purpose — to assure the deceased's successful passage to the afterlife — is analogous to that of Charon's obol and the "Totenpässe" of mystery initiates, and in this case it acts also as a seal to block the dead from returning to the world of the living.


title: Charon's obol

text: Ideally, the journey into death would begin immediately after taking the sacrament. Eusebius offers an example of an elderly Christian who managed to hold off death until his grandson placed a portion of the Eucharist in his mouth. In a general audience October 24, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI quoted Paulinus's account of the death of St. Ambrose, who received and swallowed the "corpus Domini" and immediately "gave up his spirit, taking the good Viaticum with him. His soul, thus refreshed by the virtue of that food, now enjoys the company of Angels." A perhaps apocryphal story from a Cistercian chronicle "circa" 1200 indicates that the viaticum was regarded as an apotropaic seal against demons ("ad avertendos daemonas"), who nevertheless induced a woman to attempt to snatch the Host ("viaticum") from the mouth of Pope Urban III's corpse. Like Charon's obol, the viaticum can serve as both sustenance for the journey and seal.


title: Charon's obol

text: In the 19th century, the German scholar Georg Heinrici proposed that Greek and Roman practices pertaining to the care of the dead, specifically including Charon's obol, shed light on vicarious baptism, or baptism for the dead, to which St. Paul refers in a letter to the Corinthians. A century after Heinrici, James Downey examined the funerary practices of Christian Corinthians in historical context and argued that they intended vicarious baptism to protect the deceased's soul against interference on the journey to the afterlife. Both vicarious baptism and the placement of a viaticum in the mouth of a person already dead reflect Christian responses to, rather than outright rejection of, ancient religious traditions pertaining to the cult of the dead.


title: Charon's obol

text: Although Charon has been a popular subject of art, particularly in the 19th century, the act of payment is less often depicted. An exception is the "Charon and Psyche" of John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, exhibited "ca." 1883. The story of Cupid and Psyche found several expressions among the Pre-Raphaelite artists and their literary peers, and Stanhope, while mourning the death of his only child, produced a number of works dealing with the afterlife. His Psyche paintings were most likely based on the narrative poem of William Morris that was a retelling of the version by Apuleius. In Stanhope's vision, the ferryman is a calm and patriarchal figure more in keeping with the Charon of the archaic Greek lekythoi than the fearsome antagonist often found in Christian-era art and literature.


title: Charon's obol

text: Poets of the modern era have continued to make use of Charon's obol as a living allusion. In "Don Juan aux enfers" ("Don Juan in Hell"), the French Symboliste poet Charles Baudelaire marks the eponymous hero's entry to the underworld with his payment of the obol to Charon. A. E. Housman speaks of a man "Crossing alone the nighted ferry / With the one coin for fee," to "the just city / And free land of the grave."


title: Charon's obol

text: Irish Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney makes a less direct allusion with a simile — "words imposing on my tongue like obols" — in the "Fosterage" section of his long poem "Singing School":


title: Derf Backderf

text: John Backderf (born October 31, 1959), also known as Derf or Derf Backderf, is an American cartoonist. He is most famous for his graphic novels, especially "My Friend Dahmer", the international bestseller which won an Angoulême Prize, and earlier for his comic strip "The City", which appeared in a number of alternative newspapers from 1990 to 2014. In 2006 Derf won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for cartooning. Backderf has been based in Cleveland, Ohio, for much of his career.


title: Derf Backderf

text: Backderf grew up in Richfield, Ohio, the son of a chemist. He attended Eastview Junior High and Revere High School, where one of his classmates was future serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.


title: Derf Backderf

text: Backderf graduated high school in 1978, and attended the Art Institute of Pittsburgh for six months, before dropping out. The following year, he worked as a garbageman back in his hometown. Backderf then attended, and graduated from, Ohio State University with a BA in journalism. Backderf was immersed in the punk movement during the late 1970s and early 1980s.


title: Derf Backderf

text: He began as a political cartoonist, for the "Ohio State Lantern", then professionally at "The Evening Times", the evening counterpart of "The Palm Beach Post", in West Palm Beach, FL. He worked as a staff cartoonist at the "Cleveland Plain Dealer" in the late 80s. In the mid-1990s Backderf worked in the newsroom of the "Akron Beacon Journal".


title: Derf Backderf

text: Backderf's comic strip "The City" appeared in over 140 publications, mostly free weekly newspapers, starting with the now-defunct "Cleveland Edition" in 1990, including: "The Village Voice", "The Chicago Reader", "Cleveland Scene", "Miami New Times", "Houston Press", "Pittsburgh City Paper", "The Providence Phoenix", and "Washington City Paper". In 2014, Derf announced that he was discontinuing "The City" to focus on graphic novels.


title: Derf Backderf

text: Strips from "The City" were collected in "The City: The World’s Most Grueling Comic Strip" (SLG Publishing, 2003) and a four-volume series of comic books, "True Stories" (Alternative Comics, 2015, 2016, 2018).


title: Derf Backderf

text: Backderf wrote "Punk Rock & Trailer Parks" (SLG Publishing, 2010), a 152-page graphic novel set in 1980, during the punk rock heyday in Akron, Ohio, a music scene that produced such acts as Devo, Chrissie Hynde, and The Cramps. "Punk Rock & Trailer Parks" is a fictional story that follows one remarkable young man named Otto who, through talent, wits and sheer chutzpah becomes a star in the Rubber City punk scene and has memorable meetings with underground luminaries of the day, including Wendy O. Williams, Stiv Bators, Lester Bangs, and The Clash. "Punk Rock & Trailer Parks" was featured in the 2010 edition of "Best American Comics" (Houghton Mifflin).


title: Derf Backderf

text: "My Friend Dahmer" (Abrams Comic Arts, 2012) is the culmination of a comic book project first started in 1994, shortly after Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison. Derf's first Dahmer story appeared in "Zero Zero" #18 (Fantagraphics, July 1997). Derf then pitched the project as a 100-page graphic novel, but failed to find a publisher. He then self-published a scaled-back 24-page "My Friend Dahmer" comic book in 2002. The original self-published comic book was nominated for an Eisner Award and was adapted and staged as a one-act play by the NYU Theater Dept. The final 224-page incarnation was nominated for Ignatz, Harvey, and Reuben Awards, received an Angoulême Award and was named by "Time" magazine as one of the top five non-fiction books of 2012. Lev Grossman, book critic for "Time", named "My Friend Dahmer" as one of the "top five non-fiction books of the year". The book has been translated into 14 languages. A film adaptation of "My Friend Dahmer", starring Ross Lynch as Dahmer, Alex Wolff as Backderf, Anne Heche, Dallas Roberts and Vincent Kartheiser, premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival and received a general theatrical release in the fall of 2017. The film received generally positive reviews.


title: Derf Backderf

text: "Trashed" (Abrams Comic Arts, 2015), an Eisner Award-winning fictional story based on Derf's experiences as a 21-year-old garbageman, was published as a 240-page graphic novel. The project first appeared as a 50-page magazine-size comic book (SLG Publishing, 2002) . It was Derf's first attempt at long-form storytelling and was nominated for the Eisner Award for Best Writer-artist. Derf revisited the project as a webcomic in 2010 and 2012 on his website.


title: Derf Backderf

text: "Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio" (Abrams Comic Arts, 2020; ) addresses the 1970 Kent State shootings. The 288-page book, which is heavily researched and includes copious footnotes at the end, is a dramatic recreation of those four bloody days in 1970 that resulted in four students being shot and killed by Ohio National Guard troops. It profiles each of the four students who were killed, telling their stories through the days leading up to May 4th, using personal details gathered through interviews with friends and oral histories from the May 4th special collection and archives amongst other sources. It has won a number of accolades, including an Alex Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) division of the American Library Association. and the 2021 Eisner Award for best reality-based work, the 2021 Ringo Award in the same category, and Derf's second Alex Award from the American Library Association.


title: Derf Backderf

text: Derf cites Spain Rodriguez, "Mad" magazine and Lynda Barry as important influences on his art style. He also credits Expressionism as the inspiration for his usage of heavy ink, but feels the major influence on his work is the imagery of punk.


title: Derf Backderf

text: Backderf has contributed to many well-known national publications, including "Playboy", "The Wall Street Journal" and "The Progressive". His illustrations have also appeared on posters, T-shirts, and CD covers.


title: Derf Backderf

text: Backderf's work has been displayed in many galleries and museums both in the United States and abroad. In 1995, he had a large solo show at Altered Image Gallery in Cleveland, and in 1999 the Akron Art Museum put on a retrospective of his work, titled "Apocalyptic Giggles: The Industrial Cartoon Humor of Derf". The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at the Ohio State University established a Derf Collection of original art and papers in 2011. In 2021, the Society of Illustrators in New York City held a major exhibition of original art from "Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio".


title: Derf Backderf

text: Backderf has won over 50 awards for his newspaper work, including a Bronze Medal from the Society of Newspaper Design. He was a member of the newsroom team for the "Akron Beacon Journal" that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1995. In 2006 Derf won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for cartooning. He received the Prix Révélation at the 2014 Angoulême International Comics Festival in France. In 2016, he won an Eisner Award for lettering for "Trashed". In 2021, he won both an Eisner Award and a Ringo Award for Best Non-fiction Book for "Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio".


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: Pope Gregory XVI (; ; born Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari; 18 September 1765 – 1 June 1846) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 2 February 1831 to his death in 1 June 1846. He had adopted the name Mauro upon entering the religious order of the Camaldolese.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: Strongly conservative and traditionalist, he opposed democratic and modernising reforms in the Papal States and throughout Europe, seeing them as fronts for revolutionary leftism. Against these trends, Gregory XVI sought to strengthen the religious and political authority of the papacy (see ultramontanism). In the encyclical "Mirari vos", he pronounced it "false and absurd, or rather mad, that we must secure and guarantee to each one liberty of conscience." He encouraged missionary activity abroad and condemned the slave trade.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: He is the most recent pope to take the pontifical name "Gregory", and the most recent pope who was not a bishop when elected. He was, until the accession of Pope Francis in 2013, the most recent pope to have been a priest of a religious order.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari was born at Belluno in the Republic of Venice, on 18 September 1765, to an Italian lower noble family. His parents were from a small village named Pesariis, in Friuli. His father was a lawyer. At the age of eighteen Bartolomeo Cappellari joined the order of the Camaldolese (part of the Benedictine monastic family) and entered the Monastery of San Michele in Murano, near Venice. He was ordained a priest in 1787. As a Camaldolese monk, Cappellari rapidly gained distinction for his theological and linguistic skills, and was assigned to teach philosophy and theology at San Michele in 1787, at the age of 22.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: In 1790, at the age of 25, he was appointed "censor librorum" for his Order, as well as for the Holy Office at Venice. He went to Rome in 1795 and in 1799 published a polemic against the Italian Jansenists titled "II Trionfo della Santa Sede" ("The Triumph of the Holy See"), which passed through various editions in Italy and was translated into several European languages. In 1800 he became a member of the Academy of the Catholic Religion, founded by Pope Pius VII (1800–1823), to which he contributed memoirs on theological and philosophical questions. In 1805, at the age of 40, he was appointed abbot of the Monastery of San Gregorio on Rome's Caelian Hill.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: When the army of the French Emperor Napoleon took Rome and arrested and deported Pius VII to France in 1809, Cappellari fled to Murano, where he taught in the Monastery of St. Michele of his Order, where he had first become a monk. From there he and a group of monks moved their little college to Padua in 1814. After Napoleon's final defeat, the Congress of Vienna re-established the sovereignty of the Papal States over central Italy and Cappellari was called back to Rome to assume the post of vicar general of the Camaldolese Order. He was then appointed as Counsellor to the Inquisition, and later promoted to be Consultor (29 February 1820) and then, on 1 October 1826, Prefect of the Congregation of "Propaganda Fide" ("Propagation of the Faith"), which dealt with all missionary work outside of the Spanish Empire, including missions to the non-Catholic states in Europe. Twice he was offered a bishopric and twice he refused.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: On 21 March 1825, Cappellari was created cardinal "in pectore" (published 13 March 1826) by Pope Leo XII, and shortly afterwards he was asked to negotiate a concordat to safeguard the rights of Catholics in the Low Countries, a diplomatic task which he completed successfully. He also negotiated a peace on behalf of Armenian Catholics with the Ottoman Empire. He publicly condemned the Polish revolutionaries, who he thought were seeking to undermine Russian Tsar Nicholas I's efforts to support the Catholic royalist cause in France by forcing him to divert his troops to suppress the uprising in Poland.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: Cappellari had never travelled outside Italy and was most familiar with Venice and Rome. He spoke Italian and Latin fluently, but no other European languages, and did not understand European politics. However, he was proficient in Armenian, and Haruti'iwn Awgerian (Pascal Aucher)'s 1827 Venice edition of works attributed to Severian of Gabala and translated into Armenian was dedicated to him.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: On 2 February 1831, after a fifty-day conclave, Cappellari was unexpectedly chosen to succeed Pope Pius VIII (1829–30). His election was influenced by the fact that the cardinal considered the most "papabile", Giacomo Giustiniani, was vetoed by King Ferdinand VII of Spain. There then arose a deadlock between the other two major candidates, Emmanuele De Gregorio and Bartolomeo Pacca. What finally drove the cardinala to make a decision was a message from the Duke of Parma notifying them that revolt was about to break out in the northern Papal States. To resolve the impasse, the cardinals turned to Cappellari, but it took eighty-three ballots for the canonically required two-thirds majority to be reached.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: At the time of election, Cardinal Cappellari was not yet a bishop: he is the most recent man to be elected pope prior to his episcopal consecration. He was consecrated as bishop by Bartolomeo Pacca, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia and Velletri and dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals, with Pietro Francesco Galleffi, Cardinal Bishop of Porto e Santa Rufina and sub-dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals, and Tommasso Arezzo, Cardinal Bishop of Sabina, acting as co-consecrators.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: The choice of Gregory XVI as his regnal name was influenced by the fact that he had been abbot of the Monastery of San Gregorio on the Coelian Hill for more than twenty years, and in honour of Gregory XV, the founder of the Congregation for the Propaganda (Propagation of the Faith). The Monastery of S. Gregorio was the same abbey from which Pope Gregory I had dispatched missionaries to England in 596.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: The revolution of 1830, which overthrew the House of Bourbon, had just inflicted a severe blow on the Catholic royalist party in France. Almost the first act of the new French government was to seize Ancona, thus throwing Italy, and particularly the Papal States, into a state of confusion and political upheaval. In the course of the struggle that ensued, it was more than once necessary to call in Austrian troops to fight the red-shirted republicans engaged in a guerrilla campaign. The conservative administration of the Papal States postponed their promised reforms after a series of bombings and assassination attempts. The replacement of Tommaso Bernetti by Luigi Lambruschini as Cardinal Secretary of State in 1836 did nothing to appease the situation.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: In the northern territories the leaders of the revolt were middle-class gentry opposed to the general inefficiency of the government.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: Gregory XVI and Cardinal Lambruschini opposed basic technological innovations such as gas lighting and railways, believing that they would promote commerce and increase the power of the bourgeoisie, leading to demands for liberal reforms which would undermine the monarchical power of the Pope over central Italy. Gregory XVI in fact banned railways in the Papal States, calling them "chemins d'enfer" ("road to hell", a play on the French for railroad, "chemin de fer", literally "iron road").


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: The insurrections at Viterbo in 1836, in various parts of the Legations in 1840, at Ravenna in 1843 and at Rimini in 1845, were followed by wholesale executions and draconian sentences of hard labour and exile, but they did not bring the unrest within the Papal States under the control of the authorities. Gregory XVI made great expenditures for defensive, architectural and engineering works, having a monument to Pope Leo XII built by Giuseppe Fabris in 1837. He also lavished patronage on such scholars as Angelo Mai, Giuseppe Mezzofanti, and Gaetano Moroni. This largesse, however, significantly weakened the finances of the Papal States.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: In 1839, Gregory XVI issued an apostolic letter against the Atlantic slave trade, "In supremo apostolatus", in which he wrote:


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: Other important encyclicals issued by Pope Gregory XVI were "Sollicitudo ecclesiarum", which stated that in the event of a change of government, the church would negotiate with the new government for placement of bishops and vacant dioceses (issued 1831); "Mirari Vos", on liberalism and religious indifferentism (issued on 15 August 1832); "Quo graviora", on the Pragmatic Constitution in the Rhineland (issued on 4 October 1833); "Singulari Nos", on the ideas of Hugues Félicité Robert de Lamennais (issued on 25 June 1834), and "Commissum divinitus" (17 May 1835) on church and state.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: Gregory XVI canonized Veronica Giuliani, an Italian mystic, during his papacy. During his reign, five saints were canonized (notably Alphonsus Liguori) and thirty-three Servants of God were declared Blessed (including the Augustinian Simon of Cascia). In addition, many new religious orders were founded or supported and the devotion of the faithful to the Blessed Virgin Mary increased, both in private and public life.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: The pope created 75 cardinals in 24 consistories, in which the pope elevated 35 cardinals ""in pectore"", including his future successor Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, who became Pope Pius IX. The pope also created six additional cardinals "in pectore", though the pope died before these names could be revealed, therefore cancelling their appointments to the cardinalate.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: In 1836, the pope wanted to nominate Charles Joseph Benoît Mercy d'Argenteau to the College of Cardinals, but the archbishop refused the nomination because he did not wish to leave his family and home for a possible position in the Roman Curia. Gregory XVI nominated four "in pectore" cardinals on 21 April 1845 and one on 24 November 1845; Gregory XVI also named another "in pectore" cardinal in the 12 July 1841 consistory, never revealing his name. According to Philippe Boutry, Alerame Maria Pallavicini (the Master of the Sacred Palace) was the "in pectore" cardinal announced on 24 November 1845, however, Pope Pius IX refused to publish his name upon his ascension to the papacy less than a year later.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: On 20 May 1846, he felt himself failing in health. A few days later, he was taken ill with facial erysipelas. At first, the attack was not thought to be very serious, but on 31 May, his strength suddenly failed, and it was seen that the end was near.


title: Pope Gregory XVI

text: Gregory XVI died on 1 June 1846 at 9:15 AM at age 80. That morning, he received the Extreme Unction from the sub-sacristan Agostino Proja. After his funeral, he was buried in Saint Peter's Basilica.


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: "Ayakashi Triangle" focuses on exorcist ninja Matsuri Kazamaki, as he tries to defend his childhood friend, the Ayakashi Medium Suzu Kanade, from evil spirits called ayakashi. However, during a battle to save Suzu's life, Matsuri is turned into a girl after being cursed by Shirogane, the King of Ayakashi. With no apparent way to reverse the transformation, Matsuri is forced to live publicly as a girl in the foreseeable future as he and Suzu deal with both the friendly and the malicious ayakashi they encounter as well as their growing romantic feelings for each other, all while trying to break Matsuri's curse for him to return to his original masculine form.


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: The story of "Ayakashi Triangle" takes place in the fictional located in the countryside of Japan. Unbeknownst to its citizens, Omiko is also populated by spirits that are invisible to most people. The few individuals able to see ayakashi are those who possess a large amount of at least one of the two energies that humans are composed of: the life energy, and the spiritual energy. An example of such is the a rare type of human who over-secretes haku, the energy from which ayakashi are entirely made of; for this reason, the Ayakashi Medium is worshiped by the majority of ayakashi as a deity-like figure.


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: Although ayakashi in general are amicable and pacific towards humans, there are malicious and wicked ayakashi that endanger their lives. To counter the threat they pose as well as to protect the public from dangerous ayakashi, exist clans that consist entirely of exorcist ninja whose strengthened kon allows them to perform jutsu and other extraordinary feats. These clans work directly under the Exorcist Ninja Association a secret organization founded by the government of Japan hundreds of years prior to the start of the series. The Association supplies local agents across the country with knowledge about ayakashi, training to combat them, and special equipment; this last one is provided by tool shops that also doubles as regular stores for the wider community.


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: Matsuri Kazamaki and Suzu Kanade are childhood friends who share the ability to see ayakashi. While Matsuri is descendant of a line of exorcist ninja who protect people from evil ayakashi, Suzu is an Ayakashi Medium whose power draws many ayakashi to her. However, Matsuri learns Suzu's growing power will inevitably bring ayakashi to try to devour her to get more power, so he decides to protect Suzu by exorcising the evil ayakashi that approach her. Years later, on the day before the pair were to start high school, Suzu is attacked by Shirogane, the but is saved by Matsuri. Unable to beat him, Matsuri seals away most of his powers into a scroll, but before he does, Shirogane puts a curse on Matsuri that turns him into a girl, hoping the transformation will ruin any chance he and Suzu have of becoming a couple in the future. As Suzu helps Matsuri to adjust to his new life as a girl, Shirogane plots to regain his power and devour Suzu.


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: In 2019, mangaka Kentaro Yabuki published the one-shot manga in the 11th issue of "Weekly Shōnen Jump" on February 9, as part of the magazine's "J Romcom Festival!" for Valentine's Day celebrations. This one-shot would later be used by Yabuki as a source of inspiration for him to create "Ayakashi Triangle", with the manga featuring a premise similar to that of "Reo × Leo", although there was no ayakashi in the one-shot, a significant difference that would only be shown in the manga. "Reo × Leo" focused on a normal high school student named and her childhood friend a martial artist boy who is magically gender-swapped into a girl by his father; Yabuki reused the characteristics of both characters, including their personalities and designs, to conceive the main protagonists of "Ayakashi Triangle", Matsuri Kazamaki and Suzu Kanade.


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: In May 2021, Yabuki commented that when he created the primary setting of "Ayakashi Triangle", Omiko City, he modeled the designs of the scenario after an unspecified area near Odawara, located in Kanagawa Prefecture.


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: In "Ayakashi Triangle", one of the most outstanding elements present in its plot is the constant display of female nudity (male nudity is also seen, but rarely in comparison to female), as in the 37th chapter of the manga, in which Suzu is initially seen taking a shower and spends the entire chapter naked, with special focus dedicated to her body. Other elements observed are the use of panty shots ("panchira"), revealing or sexualized clothing, groping, and other representative cases of sexual overtones that can be considered as "ecchi" or as qualifiers for anything related to erotic and simply content. In digitally released chapters, the intimate parts of the female characters' bodies, such as the vagina and nipples, are censored. However, the printed volumes of the manga show the latter exposed and in detail.


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: The previously mentioned elements of "Ayakashi Triangle" are commonly associated with Yabuki's works, especially his earlier manga series "Black Cat" (2000–2004), "To Love Ru" (2006–2009), and the latter's continuation "To Love Ru Darkness" (2010–2017); the first series was created solely by Yabuki, while the last two manga were only illustrated by him, with writer Saki Hasemi as co-creator of the "To Love Ru" franchise alongside Yabuki. Unlike "To Love Ru", the sexual content seen in "Ayakashi Triangle" is less explicit and prominent than its own, due to the fan service not being one of the main focuses of the manga as it was in "To Love Ru", although the graphic and sexual intensity of many scenes in "Ayakashi Triangle" is still higher when compared to other manga series. Furthermore, the occasional cameo appearances of "To Love Ru" characters in "Ayakashi Triangle" confirm that the two series are not only canonical to each other but also coexist in the same fictional universe. For instance, the character Run Elise Jewelria (who has the ability to gender-swap identical to Matsuri) makes a brief appearance in the 4th chapter of "Ayakashi Triangle", and Kyouko Kirisaki is indirectly alluded to in the 8th chapter of the manga.


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: "Ayakashi Triangle" is notable for focusing on legendary creatures that are notable in Japanese folklore and mythology, with the aforementioned ayakashi as the central point of the series. In legends, ayakashi are "yōkai" that appear above the surface of some body of water, whereas in the manga, ayakashi is the collective name to refer to the variety of spirits that inhabit the world, in addition to having subspecies such as the "tsukumogami", a type of ayakashi that take over inanimate objects. A secondary focus in "Ayakashi Triangle" is Japanese culture. An exemplification of this is how some of the manga's drawings pay homage to the classic style of Japanese art. Another case worthy of observation is that Matsuri is constantly seen wearing a "fundoshi" (in both his male and female forms), which is a traditional Japanese undergarment for adult men.


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: Up until the 35th chapter of "Ayakashi Triangle", the manga had a predominant emphasis on mythological figures from Japanese folklore. As of the 36th chapter, the series started to address supernatural beings from other cultures, with the character Rochka being the first non-Japanese creature seen in "Ayakashi Triangle". Rochka, whose name is an abbreviation for Snegurochka, is generally depicted in Russian fairy tales as the embodiment of winter and the granddaughter of Ded Moroz. Described as a "magical Russian loli", she is believed to be the Russian equivalent of Yuki-onna, "yōkai" that appear as beautiful women in icy, snowy or mountainous regions.


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: The series' main theme is about sexual orientation, and how the romantic attraction that one person feels for another is unrelated to their sex or gender. In "Ayakashi Triangle", this is addressed mainly in the interactions between Matsuri and Suzu; the latter's behavior in the manga strongly reflects that of someone who is uncertain of their sexual preferences, as Suzu constantly questions herself in several chapters of the series if it is acceptable for her to pursue a relationship with Matsuri, regardless of whether or not they are of the same sex. Also, Matsuri's condition in "Ayakashi Triangle" could be taken as an allegory for the "queer" experience, since, due to his physical transformation, he is forced to examine his romantic interest for the same sex, a situation analogous to that of a person who suddenly realizes that they have feelings for someone of the same gender. The above theme coincides with Yabuki's statement in July 2020 that he plans to include various "relationship triangles" in the manga that go beyond just romance.


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: "Ayakashi Triangle", written and illustrated by Kentaro Yabuki, started in Shueisha's "shōnen" manga magazine "Weekly Shōnen Jump" on June 15, 2020. The series finished in the magazine on April 18, 2022, and was transferred to the "Shōnen Jump+" website starting on April 25 of the same year. Shueisha has collected its chapters into individual "tankōbon" volumes. The first volume was released on October 2, 2020. As of November 4, 2022, eleven volumes have been released.


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: "Ayakashi Triangle" has been licensed for simultaneous publication in North America as it is released in Japan, with its chapters being digitally launched by Viz Media on its "Shonen Jump" website. Shueisha also simulpublishes the series translated into both English and Spanish languages for free on the "Manga Plus" app and website. In January 2022, both "Manga Plus" and Viz Media's "Shonen Jump" revelead that they would not publish the series' 74th and 75th chapters. Viz Media retired the book volumes for purchase from their website. In March 2022, Seven Seas Entertainment announced that they had licensed the manga and will release it in uncut print and digital formats.


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: A vomic (voice comic) adaptation of "Ayakashi Triangle" started to be released on November 20, 2020, with episodes uploaded to Jump Comics' official YouTube channel. The vomic shows the manga images appearing on screen as voice actors, music and sound effects are heard. It stars both Hiromu Mineta and Yūki Kyōka as Matsuri Kazamaki (Mineta voices the character in his male form and Kyōka voices his female form), Saya Aizawa as Suzu Kanade, and both Mitsuteru Nagato and Hikaru Fujikura as Shirogane (Nagato voices Shirogane in his standard cat form while Fujikura voices his ayakashi form), among other voice actors.


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: On December 18, 2021, during Jump Festa 2022, an anime television series adaptation was announced. The series is produced by Connect and directed by Noriaki Akitaya, with assistant direction by Kei Umabiki, scripts written by Shogo Yasukawa, character designs handled by Hideki Furukawa, and music composed by Rei Ishizuka. It is set to premiere on January 10, 2023, on GYT and other networks. Philosophy no Dance will perform the opening theme song , while MIMiNARI will perform the ending theme song featuring Miyu Tomita and Kana Ichinose. Crunchyroll licensed the series.


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: Ever since the debut of "Ayakashi Triangle", the term which stands for Transsexual "Yuri", has become a popular trend on Twitter in response to the series' primary romance involving exclusively female characters.


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: In Japan, the first volume of "Ayakashi Triangle" debuted in 10th place on the daily Shoseki rankings with more than 23,350 copies sold on October 2, 2020. It subsequently dropped to 20th and then to 35th on October 4. As of October 13, "Ayakashi Triangle" sold more than 33,000 copies, surpassing the sales for the volumes of both "" and "Undead Unluck".


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: Reviewing the first two chapters of "Ayakashi Triangle", Shawn Hacaga of "The Fandom Post" called the story "decent" but "nothing special". Apart from strongly praising Yabuki's art as "gorgeous" and "fantastic", Hacaga also said it was fun nonetheless and admitted to being surprised by the gender-swap at the end of the first chapter. Reviewing for "UT Daily Beacon", Connor Holt gave the manga a rating of 3 out of 5, saying that "Ayakashi Triangle" is average when viewed as an "ecchi" manga, but fails when viewed as a romantic comedy. Holt also commented on how he prefers for the manga to continue in this direction and that it helps to differentiate "Ayakashi Triangle" from other series in "Weekly Shōnen Jump". In another review, Holt complimented on how Yabuki has managed a perfect balancing act between the manga's love triangle narrative, battle elements and "ecchi" overtones, saying it "gives readers an actual reason to read this manga and enjoy it as it comes into its own".


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: Jacob Parker-Dalton of "OTAQUEST" praised Yabuki's art style, in addition to comparing "Ayakashi Triangle" with Akihisa Ikeda's "Rosario + Vampire": "dumb, horny, but definitely crafted with care and attention". Dalton also expressed his opinion on how "Ayakashi Triangle" looks like the first installment of a manga from the mid 2000s, since the series, according to him, "reuses several elements typical of that period: demons and "yōkai", for one, but also shameless objectification, gender bending, and even a cute animal mascot". In a later review, Dalton emphasized the "quality" writing of "Ayakashi Triangle", comparing it to Hirohiko Araki's "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure" by stating that "one of the series' latest chapters, in particular, was well written enough to warrant a comparison". In a third review for "Ayakashi Triangle", Dalton positively remarked on the development of the series' plot as a "well-constructed story with plenty of emotional moments", and how the manga is "quickly proving to be far more competent than it initially appeared to be".


title: Ayakashi Triangle

text: Thomas Daniell of "AllYourAnime.Net" commended "Ayakashi Triangle" as "clearly the work of a long established mangaka and not some newbie", but still criticized the developments of the manga as being "predictable", and noted that while Matsuri's gender-swap at the end of the first chapter was a "fun twist", it is a cliché widely used in anime and manga. Regarding the characters, Daniell said that, albeit they are not original, Yabuki's focus on them allows the details of the manga to "drip in a bit more naturally". Daniell also highlighted the series' use of fan service, and felt that, although it is used in part for comedic effect, its main purpose is to draw audience. Matthew Newman of "Beneath the Tangles" wrote, "The whole idea of ninja exorcists already had me interested. The first chapter is really packed full and, while there are some "ecchi" moments, overall it's a lot of fun. The series is rated above Teen, so you'd need to read it on the "Shonen Jump" website and not their app. But so far, I think it's worth checking out."