If you remember in Suffering, Odysseus says "but Scylla has a cost". Scylla's 'cost' is the lives of six men, or else she'll destroy the ship and kill everyone. Odysseus knew this even before Eurylochus admitted to opening the bag, he had ALREADY decided to sacrifice six men, to save the rest. Just when Eurylochus admitted he opened the bag, Odysseus decided he would be one of the men offered to Scylla for safe passage, but he ended up surviving, hence Mutiny. This is much less "Odysseus wants to kill his crew" and more "Odysseus will now pay any cost to get home".
I would argue that scylla doesn't require an offering. In the myth there is scylla and charybdis, with the water in between. Charibdis has the chance of either inhaling or exhaling water, meaning he'd kill all of or none of the crew. There really is no middle path, you have to choose one side or the other. Scylla randomly takes 6 men no matter what. What Odysseus did was purposely sacrifice 6 men in order to ensure he stays alive himself. But yeah, he definitely had that plan before the confession. Eury just got chosen after the confession
@@idkanymore2.014 oh yeah not to mention Eurylochus was all about that "lets leave our men to die" life when they were turned to pigs Eurylochus is the real asshat there.
@@idkanymore2.014 no. This is where the phrase "between a rock and a hard place" comes from. Odysseus' whole thing is to reach Ithaca with all of them alive if he can until he can't. So no, he didn't want to save himself only, not until the end when he was just tired of the crew's bullshit.
@@m1sh474 I'm not saying he wanted only himself to live. Just that there was multiple other options and that he wanted to ensure that he did live. If scylla was going to take 6 men no matter what, he could have been one of those six men. The torches was just to make sure he stayed alive.
@@m1sh474 "There is no price he won't pay". After coming back from the UNDERWORLD all of his crew were tokens of sacrifice if it ment he specifically returned. Sure he would like NOT to kill his crew but it didn't matter at all at that point.
Though that’s an interesting way to put it…Eurylochus figures out that the torches were the targets for Scylla. Now, whether or not he understands that Odysseus wanted him dead is up to interpretation, It is canon that Eurylochus has to figure out what the torches were for to call him out on it on the next song. Still hurts
The reason Thunder Bringer exists is because Helios went to Zeus and threatened to bring the sun to the Underworld if he didn't do something about what Odysseus's crew did to his cattle.
@@baalsagol346 on Japanese mythology Amaterasu, goddess of the sun gets mad at her brother, Susano god of the storm, and decides no more sun for anyone and goes to a cave and blocks the entrance, obviously everything starts going to hell with out sun so all the gods try to get Amaterasu out of the cave like trying to trick her with a rooster and a mirror but nothing works, so in one of the versions of the story (becuase there’s a lot of them) one god has the idea to call the goddess of the festivals and make a big party, also this goddess decided to dance naked to catch attention, so Amaterasu decides to go out for a moment jealous of hearing the festival with out her and gets stunned lock by the naked goddess dancing 😂 so the other gods take the moment to close the cave so she can’t go back so that’s how they manage to get the sun back. Susano has also his own story of redemption after everyone punished him for making Amaterasu mad in the first place. So yeah on that comment they are referencing that story with Greek mythology 😂
I mean they still got arms they could still swim. But uhm their spinal cord is cut, their intestines and organs are falling out. I don't think they'd drown from not swimming like a shark. I think they'd be more like a victim of disembowlement.
@@junrobin9335 they'd drown in their own blood rather than water... if they're lucky. If they're even luckier, they might die from shock while having the tail cut off. If they're unlucky... drawn out agonizing death via bloodloss+suffocation while slowly sinking in the sea it is.
@@NaBa.O3O Yup but thinking it over even more. There are two times they'll potentially experience shock. First the slicing off of the tail. But the second shock is salt water. There have been cases of people with wounds landing in sea water and dying from the shock of the saltwater hurting and agitating the wound more. It'd be the second time they feel like being on fire.
So, fun fact: Fish can drown. Thousands of Sharks drown every year because they're fins are cut off to make a popular Asian soup-dish, while their still-breathing bodies are cast into the sea. Without fins, they can swim, and if they don't swim, they can pass water through their gills, which will cause them to suffocate. So, Odysseus essential just committed genocide on a tribe of Sirens. Also, another fun fact, the original Sirens had no fish-like attributes, the fishiness came from later, Medieval interpretations, often conflated to or sharing similar origins to Mermaid folklore.
Actually Siren original were faceless monsters. Homer Odyssey do not describe them (It's up to the reader to imagine their looks as Homer only describe their human likeness and alluring aspects), and keep them ambiguous like many other early greek poems, having more descriptions on the Siren is a latter revision, before that SIrens were seemingly a concept of a monster left ambiguous as the reader would imagine a more charming version himself than any fixed description. Argonautica (3rd century BC) describe very similarly to a harpy another greek monster and calls them Siren. Meanwhile multiple depiction also like Earthen wares from Athens dating around 3rd century BC also describe as another greek existing monster Tritons and Nereid (Tritons is how the males were called while Neireds is the name for females) also calling them as Sirens. Fun fact the Tritons monsters are based on the god Triton which is Poseidon child with a water nymph. So the half-fish depiction is very much as greek as the bird Siren. So both type of Siren did exist in Greek myth technically around the same time and we don't have anything solid tracing any further back to my knowledge. I do think Siren is more of a monster category with similar behavior (half-human monsters hunting humans sailors with charming voices)
I think most species of fish can breathe without moving. Though, for all we know, the sirens could breathe air, meaning it wouldn't matter all that much. However, they'll probably bleed out long before they drown, since they've literally been cut in half.
It's important to remember that it wasn't that Ody _wanted_ to sacrifice his men. Its just that he was _willing_ to Wanting and willing are two completely separate things.
Yeah, but not for his sacrificial pawns for them thete is literally no difference especially if he could not care less about having them understand it was 6 people or everyone. He makes no difference between the sirens his crew and his brither in lae, they are not worth reasoning with, they question him, he will try to kill them
I think you misunderstood Scylla, too. Odysseus handed out six torches because Scylla was literally the only way home and six people HAD to die to make it through Scylla, so he handed out the six torches to mark those specific six men for death and spare everyone else. It was bad, but it's not like Odysseus was just looking for an excuse to kill six people.
OK yes he wasn't looking to kill anyone specifically at first, but he clearly changes his mind about the plan and instead orders Eurylochus to pass the torches out, intending for him to die with the rest for betraying his trust. An excellent showing in ruthlessness, but he fails to think it through. Eurylochus not only manages to survive somehow, but uses the knowledge Odysseus bestowed upon him to unravel his horrible plan in front of the entire remaining crew.
@@rainestar6781 oh 100% but it's never out of malice. The whole point of that was that he can't trust anyone but himself now that he knows his second in command betrayed him. So he coldly decided to tell Eurylochus to light the torches knowing he would hold it. Also a fun fact that not many notice is that only Odysseus actually knew where they were going since until the end of different beast nobody could hear so only he lip-read the siren
@@J939NWhat I was trying to say is that Eurylochus was malicious. Ody didn't have to tell him to pass out the torches. He could have just handed a torch to him himself if he really just coldly decided to kill him. The reason that matters is that Eurylochus figured that out. He took their sacrifices entirely to heart because Ody also specifically tried to off him while making only him aware why. By his decision, the entire plan is tainted by his malice towards a man who was one of his best friends and literal brother by literal marriage. He was actively choosing to murder (by proxy) the husband of his sister. Imagine choosing to inflict that pain on anyone. Eurylochus was *_incensed_* even while begging Odysseus to refute him, scared to death of the mere thought. Ody's confirmation *_S H A T T E R S_* him, and tells the rest of the crew that none of their lives matter to him anymore.
@@rainestar6781 that part is a bit of a stretch. The second in command commonly takes the captains orders throughout the crew like in full speed ahead, it only makes sense that Eurylochus would be the one to light the torches and likely hold one too. Eurylochus doesn't even realize what's happening until the last man is taken (the canon stream animatic where he hands off the torch to help protect the men only to realize that they are aiming for the torches) leading him to hysterically questioning Odysseus on whether or not he actually just sacrificed his own crew. I don't see where the maliciousness comes In. Odysseus only ever follows his own orders when in battle, otherwise he just does his own thing. (I.e. *Storm*:has eurylochus to tell the other ships. *Full speed ahead*: has Eurylochus tell the rest of the crew about his plan rather than do that himself even though he isn't steering the boat so he doesn't have much of a reason not to other than convenience.)
Well, to quote Circe- “she's an immortal devastation, terrible, savage, wild, no fighting her, no defense”, “Scylla's mother- she spawned her to scourge mankind” Tldr- nightmare fuel, even by a goddess’ standards
Oh yeah for sure, it's awesome seeing all the different Scylla. I must say thou, BrittPowwPixel's Scylla is for sure my favorite. The way the main head pantomimes the moves of the lesser ones like it's directing them, and the sinuous movement is just so gorgeous on top of the overall design.
Well the artists have to come up with a creature that even poseidon does not want to square up with like the siren said... so yeah.. nightmare fuel it is XD
Something other people have pointed out in other videos. Zeus's name hasn't been said ONCE in the entire epic. The thunder is enough for people to know who is it.
something that i feel the need to point out, while Odysseus was absolutely being a monster by giving up 6 of his men to Scylla, he wasnt wrong. it was the only way they would have gotten out of there
Then again, the next song imply that the crew had pretty much already given up on coming home and would have accepted to settle anywhere to live the rest of their life. Ody was the only one that still wanted to make it home
@@theod4660I think in the original they did actually stay a Circe's for a bit since the crew wanted to until the crew then convinced Odysseus to start heading out again after like a year.
@@arghhhhy5874it is Circe who helps Ody trace a plan to get back home. Scylla and Charybdis are unavoidable, they are in the same place. They will succumb to one or the other, so Circe recommends sacrificing six men to Scylla instead or loosing the whole crew and ship to Charybdis.
@@Chiisainyo yeah this is true. I believe Circe is also the one who tells him to have his crew cover their ears with beeswax to avoid succumbing to the sirens.
20:07 It's partially his fault. He opened the wind bag and put the men in direct path of posiden. Not only that, but he directly ignored his captains orders, which is something you can't do. Also, Scylla was the only way they had even a chance at getting home, so yes. It was a sacrifice.
not only his captain's orders but also his KINGS orders, Odysseus was the king of Ithica not just the captain of their crew. So not only was he ignoring his captain's orders (as you pointed out, already terrible) but also his KINGS orders, which is like so much worse...
1) Odysseus didn't hurt the cyclops because he wanted him to suffer, he hurt the cyclops because blinding him was the only way to escape. 2) I think you're missing what Odysseus was doing with the sirens. With no tails, and bleeding, they are going to die within minutes of hitting the water.
This is accurate. They're not the only fish in the sea that hunt, and most fish that do hunt by the scent of blood. The second the blood spreads far enough, they are going to be hunted, and won't be able to swim away effectively.
@@Tini_BalleriniNot only that but they can't swim without their tails, they'll just sink down to the bottom. And we know for example sharks die if they stop moving, dolphins and whales die if they don't come to the surface to breathe in some Oxygen etc.
Odysseus needed to blind him so they could escape because he was blocking the entrance, sure - but Athena still told him to kill the cyclops before he left. He had the opportunity once the cyclops was blind.
if the sirens dont drown they would just die from starvation as well because they dont have the tools needed to catch their pray, and sure they eat people but its not like they will have much force or the ability to pull them into the water with no tail and bleeding everywhere in the water is a pretty good give a way that whatever is in the water isn't your loved one
Zeus was the god of lightning (very very frighting) but he also was the god of judgment so that is why he is there after the slaughtering of Helios cows to pass judgment
Also the God who gave kings their divine right to rule. The way I see this Lightningbringer was essentially Zeus asking Odysseus: "As king, do you take responsibility for your men's actions? Or do you wash your hands of them as mutineers?" And of all the gods, it would be Zeus who would pose this question to a king.
Helios is more of Zeus direct cousin and also the god of the sun. He kinda has a bit of seniority over him as he and his sister Selune have very important roles. Helios can't really drop his job to deal with a group of sailors so he just told Zeus to deal with it in his stead. Also he does see everything the gods and mortals does so for all we know he could just bring up some shit and cause drama Zeus didn't want
@@AirierZeus, as king of the gods, is very much the Greek ideal of what a King is, a judgmental figure with ultimate power over you who can and will abuse that power at a moments notice for his own gain without caring about who gets hurt, but ALSO a figure of ultimate authority charged with judgement onto others and upholding the rule of law who must be respected and placated at all times.
Helios: Why is there a ship near my island? Eury: I'm just a man! Ody: Eury nooo!!! Helios: Bertha no!!! Helios: You killed my cow, my favorite cow. Ody: Oh not this again, you doomed us all! Helios: You lost your sun privileges mortals. Zeus: Calm down man I'll punish them. Helios: Fine.
Did he not notice that the crew changed from say "we are the man made monsters" to "He is the man made monster" after he ordered them to cut off the sirens' tails and throw them back into the water, let them drown?
To clear up your confusion about Zeus being the god of lightning, not the sun: in the song Mutiny, they talk about "who do you think he'll send". Helios sent Zeus to mess them up, it wasn't Helios himself 🙃
@@dragonstouch1042 also I think in the original story he threatened to bring the sun down if Zues didn't handle it. Remember Poseidon and Hades aren't under Zues's rule. That's why Papa P can do as he pleases and hunt Ody. Threaten to wash the whole world if he wants. The sun god on the other hand is one of the mount Olympia gods. He can't just go scorching the entire earth without clearance. So it was basically a case of "You're the boss you handle it your way. Otherwise im bringing the sun down." Though not specifically recorded as the reason zues intervenes there is something to keep in mind. If the sun was brought down it would also affect the underworld because of how things stack in the greek relm order. That would put the Olympic gods at immediate conflict with the underworld gods. There are quite a few more gods down there then people realize and all of them are forces to be reckoned with. Im fuzzy if Persephone is down there at this point but i think she is. Beside Thanatos and Hypnos ((whom unless you're one of the big 3 you do not want to tangle with)) you have Hades himself. And although Zues proclaimed himself king of all the gods, his older brother as well as Poseidon don't exactly recognize his authority. It's actually likly Hades is stronger then him. Hades is the chillest god ever thankfully. But bringing the sun down would basically start the greek version of Ragnarok. So Zues can risk that or he can go zap a few mortals, give a good life leson, flex for the entire pantheon ((which he lives to do)) and be done in time to father some new horible monstrosity because the dude is the literal incarnation of rule 34.
12:15 tbh, i think both he and crew would have preferred to kill cyclops in that moment, but "his body is blocking the path, if we kill him we'll be stuck inside". That part was still warrior of the mind. Shouting his name afterwards... Not so much
Me: You have swords, just chop your way through him. Hard work, but you don't leave that enemy behind. I love Warrior of the Mind because it demonstrates Odysseus's hubris, which is what caused all his problems.
@@songsayswhat the moment they try "chopping through" him he wakes up and whoever is close gets it, blinding him and letting him be distracted with it is smartest choice. Returning and finishing job as athena proposed... they couldn't "chop through him" when they were working all together on adrenaline with proper morale. Sure, he is blind now, but it only means he's less predictable, and Ody's men are shaken by first losses in years, exhausted after previous battle, chopping club into spear and using it to attack him. Sure, they could have won,but with more unnecessary losses
24:20 its not a matter of animator's perspective. Odysseus knew and planned it all along. In Suffering, when the siren says he needs to go through Scylla's lair he responds with "No! But Scylla has a cost!" which means he knew that he would have to pay a toll for passage, so yeah, it does not give room for other interpretations at all, the man was about it
And they wanted a monster. Ypu kinda get what you pay for dude. They wouldn't let him just be a man. Not to mention eurylochus fucked him over every step of the way. Tried to leave the crew on circes Island when it was convenient, turned the crew against him with the sky island odysseus actually comes up with an ok plan with the whole wind bag thing all he had to do is not open the bag and they were within sight of home, and 1 guess who fucked that up. 1. Not only killed 558 men, not only separated odysseus and his wife after 12 years, as well as his mother even took her own life at the sight of the storm and what she'd assume is him dying. Eurylochus then goes on to complain about odysseus sacrificing men as if he didn't mold him into this exact monster they have today, and fights odysseus because of morality which is actually OK. Whats not ok is him a DAY later doing the exact same thing odysseus did but with more lives. There are no morals here. Even when he kills the sheep, nodding to the sheep that died on the cyclops island (hint hint he also fucked them over there although less his fault) but bro has the audacity to look at odysseus and ask him what they should do as if he didn't tell him 3 seconds beforehand. Homie ruined odysseuss life. I'd be alittle bitter too.
It is a sacrifice because Scylla was immortal and they can't fight and kill them without killing them. So Odysseus had no choice but to let six men die so the rest could live. Especially considering Charybdis would have taken them all and the ship. It's why we have the phrase "between a rock and a hard place"
Right?? I know that Eury didn't hear what the siren said, but she said to go there because Poseidon is scared of that lair. If the GOD OF THE SEA is afraid of a sea creature, you don't fight it. There's no amount of planning or acumen that can allow you to reason with it or survive it. You just play by her rules
@@giorgiomauceri410 in the original story, it was Circe who warned Odysseus of Scylla and tell him that he had to sacrifice 6 men in order for all to survive. He wasn't happy to but he had no choice
You are right. In the original he was tied to the mast. Jorge states that these two songs were directly deviating off Canon and shouldn't be taken as such, which is why they were "mystery" songs. The first time anyone ever heard what they were called or what they sounded like was on the live stream. He also said that the Sirens Magic was most effective by penetrating the ear fully to access their memories and because they had bees wax in their ears the siren was effective but not mystically deadly. She kept making mistakes by not being able to access his memories fully. I.e the daughter instead of 'son' and instead of Poseidon's theme she accidentally accesses in his memories the Zeus theme. The melody for "he will chase you high and low so find a place he'll never go..." is the same tune as the one Zeus Sings in the horse and the infant. She also lacks Penelope's instrument but in the background you can hear a mallet - which was used in regards to Polites 😢 As for the start of 'Suffering', I also have a theory that the "eee ahhh ahhh" part at the beginning sounds like the Sirens trying to match pitch to perfectly find a match to mimic peneolpes real voice. It sounds like 'toning' to me which is really clever.
When he said "Scylla has a cost" he definitely knew what had to happen. And I think he knew from the very beginning that E man opened the Bag. Especially when he tried to confess on Circe's Island. He just didn't want to hear it or deal with it.
“He knows these are the wrong choices but he doesn’t have right ones *to* make” is the perfect summary of this saga imho. People keep trying to argue whether Odysseus or Eurylochus is more at fault etc, when really it’s just *a whole lot of awful choices* and no-win situations and a ship full of flawed people making flawed choices.
Definitely. They're both making f*cked up choices and mistakes, they're both questionable people. They're both wrong! The whole point of this musical is becoming a monster. Odysseus is aware that he IS THE MONSTER. He is not 100% in the right, and Eurylochus is not 100% wrong. They're both gray and I love them for it.
They’re just people in some really stupid situations normal people are not supposed to handle. For example Mutiny. Killing the cows or not, there is not a situation there where the crew wins. It was either starve to death or anger the gods. That is only one example but there are plenty in the entire musical. Arguing which one is morally correct is silly imo, neither of them are perfectly morally correct, they’re just people making choices in the gods playground.
To be fair, the "Odysseus has a kid with Circe which later comes to kill him" is not canon to the original source, The Telegony is quite literally an ancient fanfiction of the Odyssey. That's why most people don't talk about it because of how much it sucks. Penelope "known for her loyalty to her husband who has been missing for 20 years" marries his Son which also killed her husband? one of the worst ancient works to exist.
right like, the most loyal spouse in greek myth and they decide to make him a cheater just this once? This was the guy that got stuck on an island with calypso, a very beautiful maiden, for an extra 10 years and never laid a finger on her and youre telling me he slept with a dangerous sorceress he met for a short while? Also ik in general greek stories are so wild, but him sleeping with the enemy as a tactic really wouldve only made sense if he didn't have the moly flower
@@niffleraku For Circe, there are versions of the Odyssey (earlier than Telegony, possibly even original Homer) where Odysseus had to 'trade his body' to Circe to free his men, with him refusing to go to Circe's bed until she reversed the spell. And in Homer's version, on Calypso's island, Odysseus is unwilling but unable to do anything about Calypso's advances for the 7 years he was stuck on the island.
@@niffleraku In most versions, Odysseus does sleep with both Circe and Calypso. But I use "sleep with" in the loosest sense possible. It's very much not consensual on his end, he just has to do it because they're goddesses and who knows what they'd do if he refused them.
@@bookswithike3256 Oh yeah i mean, nonconsensual sex is really shit all around, it's just that there's versions of him doing it willingly which would count as actually cheating so that's what I was more referring to
Ngl if i had to pick between the woman who has been my sole motivation for the past 12 years or the group of guys that can't follow directions for anything, it wouldn't be a hard choice
but that's not the choice. The choice is between the lives of the men you're supposed to get home, and your own (with the distant possibility of seeing your wife some time down the line)
They aren't just a group of guys who can't follow directions tho, they are his friends who were getting scared that their captains was going to kill them all with bad leadership, a fear that is proven true in the end. They aren't just numbers, they are human lifes who had their own families to return to.
Oh no the consequences of their own actions~ and after opening the bag, mutiny and the cow i wouldn't sacrifice myself for them either. And let's not forget that he was the only one wanting to save the others from circe. And tbh i don't think those idiots would be able to get home by themselves either way lol
So I'm the exact opposite. He's probably spent more time his entire life with these men through hardships and tribulations than hes known his wife. I'm going down for my men man. Idc if like 3 of them made a bad choice.
How you completely misunderstood that Ody smile is so baffling. That was a smile of resignation as he just said come what may when he closed his eyes. Whether he got cut down or the lightning bolt hit, he was done
I disagree, there are multiple interpretations of his smile at the end. In the Iliad, Odysseus has a feud with Palamedes (he saw to Odysseus reuse when he pretended to be crazy to avoid the war (put baby Telemachus in front of the plough, so Odysseus had to save him)). Eventually O got payback for that and other small squabbles by getting him convicted as a Trojan spy. P was stoned to death whilst O smiled at him just before he died. (At least in Stephen Fry’s retelling, have not read a full translation of the Iliad yet) So if we know believe that he is truly ruthless and knowing he just got “betrayed again” by his own men, it is not so far a stretch to interpret the smile this way
@@Schinak well don’t be rude. Just pointing out that there are multiple interpretations of a character possible. That is beauty of stories and especially Greek tragedies. There is no one right version because it is all descended from an oral tradition. The whole idea is that these stories get retold. Jorge is doing a wonderful job with this and all the artists doing the animation are doing the same by visually emphasising certain aspects (like deciding to make O smile at the end). It’s up to the audience to interpret it, which is by definition subjective.
20:21 this moment is something that terrifies me Scylla looking at Odysseus saying you are the same as me a monster And not eating him as to say welcome to the family
Welp, she does what she need to survive. Circe is the one who turned her into that monster out of jealousy. She can't eat fish because she is right next to Charybdis who sucks everything thrice a day, only sea monsters can survive that. She can't eat the sea monsters because they are usually someone's kid and it will get her in the kind of trouble Ody has been twice already. Her only option to survive is eating sailors. Ody's only option is to sacrifice six men. None of them like it, they would choose something else if they could, but here they are.
It's truly fascinating to see how many different people experience the Thunder Saga. Some completely blame Eurylochus for everything. Some put all the blame on Odysseus. Others say the blame is equal on all sides. It's so interesting - we never get the answer to the question of "When does a Man become a Monster?"... we have to decide that on our own.
Honestly the moment he dropped the baby. All his following ruthlessnes is to justify that, cause if he does not make it home, that would have been pointless. Given eurylochus would have never had a chance to mess up 2 without ody messing up with the cyclops before. It wss odys faukt at first why they did not make it home, of cause, the wind bag and the cattle are in the end what leads to everyone dying sonone can claim equal responsibility. What makes tge difference js that eurylochus cared till the end, even saved his life after ody just betrayed hin and he betrayed him back.... Ody calculatededly sacrificed his men, eurylochus had his part. But he never intentionally lead to their deaths making him come up moraly on top in my eyes, even if both are traguc understandable in who they came to act the way they did and absolutely carry halv of the responsibility that lead to everyone's death
11:35 In theory it would kill the Sirens. Sirens, according to Greek mythology, have human-like upper bodies and fish-like tails. While their upper bodies allow them to breathe air, their fish-like tails mean they rely on underwater respiration as well. -Most marine creatures, including fish, need to move in the water to breathe, a process known as ram ventilation. This movement pushes water through their gills, allowing them to extract oxygen.- Sirens would have gills located on their torso, below their rib-like structures, which are not capable of actively pumping water like some sharks can. -Sharks are an exception because they can switch between ram ventilation and buccal pumping, where they use their mouth muscles to draw water in.- However, Sirens, -lacking this adaptation,- would rely solely on movement to ensure water flows through their gills. By cutting off their tails, the Odysseus and crew immobilized the Sirens, preventing them from moving and thus stopping the flow of water through their gills. This lack of movement would lead to suffocation, as they would be unable to breathe underwater without the necessary water flow through their gills. Therefore, immobilizing the Sirens by cutting off their tails would indeed result in their death due to drowning being unable to breath nor air nor water once they finished sinking especially since they will end up passing out from anemia from having their legs chopped off and bleeding out, they will either die from the bleeding or lack of oxygen whichever kills them first. Edit: Precision lots of Marine life can either use buccal pumping or ram ventilation. Lots of marine life cannot do both but if not using buccal respiration they do need ram ventilation. Siren need their mouth, and trachea to work with lungs and air to speak out of the water, having their gills connected to their mouth would log the lungs with water if they could do buccal pumping basically drowning them everytime they got out of the water. So their gill would need to be separated or away from their air ways making it extremely unlikely a Siren could even do buccal pumping for their gills (unless they have an entire 2nd Larynx in their neck which would make their neck very thick and not human like).
This is actually incorrect most fish don't need to perform ram ventilation and can actually do buccal pumping. That's the reason why you can see fish just float in an aquarium without. In fact bony fish have much more complex gill structures that allow them to perform buccal pumping more efficiently than sharks. Both bony fish and cartilaginous fish are able to do both. Only a few species are obligate ram ventilators and most of them are sharks. Scientifically gills would need to be near the mouth for them to work. But that's a moot point because clearly Jorge's intention was that cutting off their tails would kill them because bisecting a creature tends to kill them.
@@Zlixlriffs I have added precision and strike-through the inaccuracies (in part due to misunderstanding some information and in part due to faulty data presentation). But I still think the point still stand if that you need to do ram ventilation if not using the buccal pumping and unless the Siren have an entire 2nd larynx in their throat and neck and have a thick neck. Their gills wouldn't be connected to their mouth in a way that allows buccal pumping while protecting their lungs and gill from water and air respectively while also allowing food to go to their stomach.
I know the general consensus is that Neal Illustrates made the best Thunder Bringer animatic, however with it not taking place on Odysseus’s ship as it importantly is supposed to be I’ve reserved it for the alternate animatics section of my playlist.
I think this one gut punches more with Eury reaching out to Ody as he dies and then him seeing Polities and Eury at the very end as he sinks. Ugh.... I get teary-eyed.
The line “but Scylla has a cost” in suffering means he did know in advance, it WAS a sacrifice. It was 6 men offered up to the 6 heads or all of them go down fighting something they can’t kill. Did he tried to include Eury in that? Yes, but he didn’t do it specifically to kill him, he was going to do it anyway.
Fun fact about Scylla: In the original Odyssey it was Circe that recommend Odysseus to steer closer to Scylla's lair as the other choice was steering closer to Charybdis which would have made Odysseus lose his ship and crew. They didn't go through the lair directly as they did in the musical. "Hug Scylla's crag-sail on past her-top speed! Better by far to lose six men and keep your ship than lose your entire crew." - Circe
Why is nobody talking about the fact that eurolychos got about 450+ men killed because he opened the wind bag? That’s objectively worse than killing six men to get the rest home
They pissed off Helios, God of the sun, and Odysseus says "and now that you've pissed him off, who do you think he'll send??" And so Helios basically cried to Zeus.
Okay. The reason Odysseus killed 6 men off is so that Scyllas heads were distracted so the rest could escape. He was pissed at Euroclyes and also knew if he lived through Scylla he would probably be a problem later. He knew this because he heard of Scylla before this. Hw wasn't being cruel he was trying to be efficient. He hated it but he had too because he knew if they tried to fight Scylla they would lose. Odysseus is being ruthless... Not cruel.
Completely. But this animation highlighted his actions on a way that looked WAY more vengeful. Probably more the the song implied on its own. I'm looking forward to seeing how other animatora tackle this. 😁
@@Airier by the way, because Euroclyes opened the bag, it made it seem Odysseus and his men died to Odysseus's mother, and she dies from heartbreak/suicide because of that, and Odysseus and the crew just learned that his mother is dead. honestly not the best time to bring that up when you just sang about being monsters and being merciless.
@@Airier I mean... Justice as seen by the Ancient Greece moral code. Also, if you're thinking of looking at alt. animatics, I do recomment Neal Illustrator's Thunder Bringer.
I think the smile at the end was meant to signify that if Ody's gonna get killed by anyone, he'd much more gladly accept it from Eury than anyone else.
Now you're one of us and have to wait for the next part! Epic has gotten a lot more popular over the past couple months so a lot of new artists have been exposed to Epic and making animatics for the newest songs. So that's why it was the same 4/5 artists for the first act but like this saga had 5 different artists
@@alanplays2881 I mean Jorge has already said that the Wisdom Saga is in the works and that it should be out soon-ish in like a couple of months or two
@enriquepx1698 Yeah I kinda laughed when I said this hours ago and shortly after I get the TH-cam notification for his channel and he clears that right up lol
@@Airier now you can also accompany Jorge's channel and hear his explanations and more infos about the musical without spoilers 😅 i highly reccomend it!
Scylla is known to be an extremely powerful monster. There’s likely nothing he could do besides pay the toll. I guess he could’ve tried the Charybdis route but their ship was too big slow to escape from her. In reality, Poseidon likely doesn’t fear Scylla but his daughter Charybdis is near her. That’s probably the more likely reason he wouldn’t follow in this area.
@@redikaicore And go where? They’d be hunted down by Poseidon and killed. Doomed if you go, doomed if you don’t. Scylla gave the best chance of the crew’s survival.
Fun fact: the few times we've heard penelope in the previous songs she was always accompanied by a viola however this time that viola is missing to show how this isn't the real penelope. This was done intentionally by Jorge. Fun fact part 2: most main character are accompanied by certain instruments e.g penelope is viola. Eurylochus has the voice of the crew. Polites has malets etc.
34:14, helios was the titan of the sun, apollo took over (zues's son) so i kind of imagine its like a "daddy daddy do something they killed my cow );" kinda situation
33:59 Odysseus literally said "who do you think he'll send". Helios is the god of the sun, Eurylochus and the crew killed his sacred cattle, so Zeus punished Odysseus' crew on Helios' behalf.
11:26 1. He did not blind the cyclops for selfish reasons, he was actually showing him mercy. It's literally mentioned in remember them. Athena: Finish it Ody: No Athena: No? Ody: What good would killing do, *when mercy is a skill more of this world could learn to use* 2. The sirens don't survive. Bleeding out and without being able to swim or breathe, they all die in a matter of minutes.
@@Airier nw, lots of us heard 'run' n jay reacted to it saying it was funny to imagine em running in circles (n that it was 'row') he also reacted to 'man-made monsters', 'when does a cabagge become a meteor', 'raining king of ithaca' and 'banana peels' for penelope ^^
Ooooh thank you for introducing me to that Scylla animator, it was incredible! Also yes, Odysseus did trade/ sacrifice not just try to murder, it was the cost he paid to get past Scylla and it was one of the very few ways it was possible. Edit: Oh, also, Ody smiling after the crew try to kill him straight after choosing himself over them was an individual animator's contribution, it isn't a canon thing that was in the official release.
Hey @airier, the sirens are fish people. If the tails are cut off then they can't move. If they can't move they sink, and if they sink they drown. Thanks for listening to my ted talk lol (just clarifying, love your reactions)
Also, they are half fish, the tail is half p6f them. Chop someone in half and even if they can stay afloat they'll bleed to death. Swim to breath and you'll only make it happen faster. At least thats my theory.
@@firebreathingmoonbeam3961 yeah, sacrificed BY ODYSSEUS (whatever his reasons, he was still the only one making decisions). this is the same logic as "I saved money by buying things I didn't want or need but on sale"
@@draeonic your logic fails slightly as he did NEED to sacrifice 6 men. So regardless of anything 6 men will die this way where as if he doesnt offer them up scylla might destroy the ship to get to her food so he is somewhat saving the men he doesnt sacrifice. It is still a dick move to not give them any warning at all but there likely would have been a mutiny if he mentioned it
@@robertmartens9072my logic is perfectly fine, thank you, because he DIDN'T need to do that. Was it the only choice that aligned with his goal? Probably. But that goal isn't objectively an absolute imperative, he could have chosen to settle down on the first island they encountered. Or grabbed some sirens to give to Scylla for snacks instead of his men. What happened WAS his choice even if the alternatives sucked.
Something that i love in Thunder Bringer: in Ruthlessness a chorus announces Poseidon, same for Athena in Warrior of the Mind... here you DON'T NEED THE NAME! The roar of the tunder is enough to tell you who this is! Also, in the Odessy Helios was enraged about the death of the cow, and begged Zeus to make things right. This part is accurate, only in the original opera Odysseus was spared because he was the only one that didn't eat the cow's meat.
Scylla was actually signing in harmony with Odysseus saying we are the same. He knew they only way out was to pay 6 men. And she was singing that hey I know you realize this is the only way and we both fight and pay and manipulate to make it through. Her in comfort in it him struggling with it. And I also love the blood is the same you just get to choose whose blood it is.
To explain why Odysseus is killing the Sirens he is cutting off their tails, thus they wouldn't be able to swim and would sink into the ocean. It's not that they wouldn't be able to breath but wouldn't be able to swim and would bleed out in the ocean.
A couple of things: 1. In Suffering Odysseus did say "There was a price with Scylla." 2. The reason he didn't tell them about Scylla is because people would argue and fight so he had to make the hard choice and just said random people get picked. Plus last time he told the truth they still opened the bag. Also I believe that in the cannon animatic in Eurylochus didn't have one. 3. Odysseus couldn't just escape he had to cut the ropes on the sharp rock. 4. Odysseus did learn and tried to stop his crew but they didn't listen again. 5. In Mutiny Odysseus did say "Who do you think he'll send?" 6. In Odysseus defense the crew should take the punishment for what happened to the cow. Side note you should watch Niel Illustrator Thunder Bringer animatic. It is very cool
in the cannon animatics Eurylochus was given a torch at the start. He just dropped it during the battle attempting to save another and someone else picked it up who he watched get eaten.
I love just how ZUES Zues is in Thunderbringer. He spends the first two minutes just being thirsty and reminding us how consent-agnostic he is then the last half taunting and murdering Greeks.
I mean, kinda? The song is definitely meant to remind that, sure, but he's not doing that to a real woman. The thing he's putting under pressure, bringing through the wringer, wielding and using is PRIDE, more specifically Odysseus's pride. He's punishing him for his pride and bringing him to his breaking point so that the crew can see his true colours. In that moment, he's neither the great adulterer nor the god of the sky. He's the King of the Gods, mocking an ant who calls itself king and monster, while punishing his crew for their sin. You can feel the vibe shift from the Soldier and the Infant, where Zeus is also King of the Gods, but as a stern commander. Even then, though, you can see the same thing: he's not warning Odysseus, he's giving him a price to pay in order to shatter his pride but win the war. Why? Because "the gods will make him know", meaning that Odysseus could've found a way to prevent Astyanax from dying, but the Gods would've intervened. Consent isn't a part of this song, although with Zeus it almost always is 😅
@@giorgiomauceri410 The song is comparing pride to a woman and how he treats it the same way. And in mythology he DEFINATELY does all those things to women. I understand the point is he is pointing out Odysseus's pride, but he is doing so by saying "I do the same to pride as i do to women, use and drop them whether they want it or not"
@@Gioppdumister I would, yes. do we know enough about siren anatomy to risk them reacting differently? idk, that's not a risk i'd take. Kill them quick and efficient on deck THEN dump them in the water. (except for the six you're keeping fresh for Scylla, of course )
That smile at the end of the last on looked more pained then malicious to me. Like he feeling like “I’ve made my choice but why do I have to be a monster?”
A leader is responsible for his crew only if the crew do act on his behalf. Eurylochus did not act on Odysseus behalf when opening the bag so treating it as betrayal is fair. Regarding Eurylochus opening the bag of winds, it's important to understand the consequences (It's less black and white that everything is Odysseus's fault). Odysseus and his men were within sight of home when Eurylochus' greed and betrayal sent them back into Poseidon's grasp, resulting in the deaths of around 527 men (leaving only 43 mens alive which were the mens that went behind Odysseus' back and openend the bag). This act stemmed from simple greed and distrust of Odysseus, who, despite his flaws, was trying his best to get his men home safely. Yes pissing off Poseidon is on Odysseus, but that wouldn't have mattered if the crew held it in until they reached home which they were about to, which was single-handedly trashed by opening the bag. Odysseus' priorities evolved throughout their journey. Initially, he aimed to bring his full crew home. After losing most of his men to Poseidon, he focused on keeping the remaining crew alive. Following his visit to the underworld and meeting the prophet, he aimed to bring back some crew rather than none. However, after Eurylochus admitting his fault with the bag which ended killing most of his crew and the remaining of his crew's mutiny, his concern became getting home himself. When faced with Scylla, Charybdis, or Poseidon, Odysseus chose to sacrifice six men to Scylla rather than risking the entire crew, a necessary choice confirmed by the Sirens. Even Poseidon avoided Scylla, highlighting the danger of a direct confrontation that could result in much more people dying. The crew repeatedly acted against Odysseus' orders, leading to disastrous consequences. Their betrayal, such as opening the bag of winds and killing Helios' cattle, led to their demise. While Odysseus had his faults, his intention was to keep his crew alive (even if just some parts of the crew remained by the end) and bring them home. In contrast, Eurylochus' actions stemmed from greed and indignation, causing further harm to a bad already situation making it unsalvageable by his own hand. Zeus' punishment for killing Helios' cattle was due to the crew's disobedience, not Odysseus' failure. Zeus held the crew accountable despite giving Odysseus the choice, reflecting the tragic but justified consequences of their betrayal (Which means they were responsible for the choices they made). Odysseus' final smile reflects his relief from the burdens of command and betrayal. No longer responsible for a mutinous crew that repeatedly failed him when the end of the journey was near, he grants himself mercy, recognizing that ruthlessness can be an act of self-preservation. By choosing not to shoulder blame for their actions, he finds peace in accepting that some burdens are not his to bear.
@@haraken3119 tbh, there's Odysseus fault too. In luck runs out he tried to gaslight them with "hey, we've made it so far" and "none of you died at war" (which was stupid considering their doubts appeared after first loses in years - "you rely on wit and people die on it") instead of providing constructive arguments why going to wind god is their only smart choice. Then, he first showed distrust at crew, pushing everyone, including his closest person (at the moment), his second-in-command and brother-in-law Eurylochus away. If he just said "bro, help me guard the bag" or just communicated with crew better - instead he showed them that he doesn't trust them first, so they assumed that perhaps there's a reason, perhaps there's treasure inside bag, it was failure of leadership and communication as much as failure of subordination. Also, them getting to Ithaca without opening bag still would likely be a disaster. Ody already pissed Poseidon off, and he knows their Kingdom is Ithaca, ISLAND kingdom... Perhaps it's for better only those 500+ men died, and not all of Ithaca (don't get me wrong, Eurylochus and crew are still at fault, but as much as Ody) Also, killing Helios cattle isn't betrayal, cause Odysseus is removed from command at moment, and they lost all hope ("Ody we're never gonna make it home..."). In original Odyssey it's even more explicit, Eurylochus tells that if they die, at least it won't be of starvation, cause starvation is one of worst death. They took risk with their lives, as when Odysseus went to lotus eaters or cyclops. It wasn't the wisest act, but seeing how desperate they were, it's understandable. If Zeus didn't want to toy with Odysseus and actually gave choice to Eurylochus, who commanded crew at time of slaughter, perhaps all would have been better - he doesn't have Ody's hyperfixation on family and really values his comrades, hell, he even spared Ody after mutiny, he might have been able to sacrifice himself for crew. But alas, greek gods wouldn't be greek gods, greek heroes wouldn't be greek heroes, musical wouldn't be epic
@@danylonazarov 1- Odysseus communication failure doesn't void going behind his back since he did say what it was even if he kept on it. (Both are at fault, it's just that pretending it was solely on Odysseus is kind of missing half of the point) 2- If Poseidon would go to Ithaca before Odysseus landed in the land of Giant, then nothing stops him from following him after the Odyssey, but he doesn't... Might be an issue that despite Ithaca being an island it is in the domain of another God and would be considered trespassing or that Poseidon just cared enough as Odysseus literally landed in the laps of his principal domain. 3- The mutiny and the cattle killing kind of is a betrayal considering he removed himself form Odysseus command, despite the advice of Odysseus did the kill and still then expected Odysseus to take the fall regardless despite it being solely on himself and the rest of the crew. As much as they want to blame Odysseus, that is completely on them and removed any of Odysseus involvement from the decision making before the fact. Eurylochus would have sacrificed Odysseus in a heartbeat considering that in Puppeteer it showed that Eurylochus wouldn't put himself in danger to save Odysseus even before the whole Scylla, Monster and Underworld part. Even despite the part that Odysseus didn't merit Zeus wrath as Eurylochus himself is to blame for that problem. Blood would flow, it is only a matter of whose, the one who didn't kill the cattle, or those who did despite better advice.
@@haraken3119 well, in some later snippet we get Poseidon in Ithaca, no? Also, in Puppeteer it shows that Eurylochus can abandon few people FOR Odysseus and other crew. He states both in Luck Runs out and Puppeteer that he values Odysseus' life, and he vouches for Odysseus not to risk his life with Circe cause there's no chance (and if not for unexpected Hermes intervention, there wouldn't be). I'm not saying any crewsmates ot Eurylochus are in the right, I'm saying they're all imperfect, and in that way their king is worth them
@@danylonazarov Except that his hesitation when Odysseus tells him I only hope you would do the same for me when he talks about rescuing the captured scouts. It basically implies that no Eurylochus wouldn't. Despite his grandstanding valuing Odysseus' life he doesn't value it that as much as Odysseus valued theirs in the 1st arc. Yes Eurylochus would sacrifice a few crew members as long as it means not putting his neck and the rest of the crew, but when it came to facing the consequences of his own initiative he expected Odysseus to put his neck like he did at every step in the 1st arc for them. What I am saying is that for once Odysseus Ruthlessness was indeed mercy on himself to no put himself in a punishment that wasn't his own nor of his own doing. And I don't know how it is better that Eurylochus viewed Circe as an undefeatable foe, but not Helios and Zeus, expecting Odysseus to handle Zeus or choose to die himself, despite just saying he was fine with whatever happens as long as it isn't hunger, changing his tune immediately when actual danger showed up. In the end he reaped what he sowed with that decision of killing the cattle. Also in Homer's Odyssey Poseidon never set foot in Ithaca. His goal is to prevent Odysseus from getting home for as long as possible, but once he did, Poseidon left him alone. Not caring enough to upset Athena who was protecting Odysseus wife and son in Ithaca even when Odysseus lost her favor.
@@haraken3119 in original Odyssey Poseidon just followed Polyphemus' curse word for word, he had no much own initiative/interest like he seem to have in epic. Regarding Odysseus "putting his neck for them all act one" - his decision to go to Lotus eaters himself, he shoots ship first, and later crewmates die, shouting for what to do "captain, captain" while he stays shocked after Polites death. Storm prevents them from sailing to Ithaca due to ODYSSEUS telling his name. Then all Ruthlessness clusterfuc... Then, at Circe's, Eurylochus goes with scouts himself, risking his life, and after that - asks Odysseus specifically not to risk his life, also, that stop which you interpret as Eurylochus not being ready to do the same - in Mutiny Odysseus is ready to kill him, it was in canon livestream animatic. Eurylochus, even after that, can't and don't want to kill Odysseus, treats his wound and takes him along. During Scylla, Odysseus is just standing, doing nothing, while Eurylochus frantically runs trying to save crewmates, risking his life (also lifestream animatic).and even if behind-the-scenes tiktok, author explain that Eurylochus doesn't have his own proper instrument because he is kind of "lost" in character and in life, his "instrument" is voices of crew, because they're all he has now
fun fact: for the version of Thunder Bringer you watched Eurylochus, despite looking like he was gonna attack Odysseus, was actually trying to push him out of the way of the lightning according to the animator. that's why his arm was outstretched like he was reaching for Odysseus.
With the whole torches situation I like to think that all Odysseus said was "light up 6 torches", didn't matter who held them, and Eurylochus wouldn't mind holding one himself, seems like a simple enough request
Most fishes would probably die if you got of their tail, so its definitely killing. I mean, cut our legs off and throw us into the forest we'd also probably die
22:03 He didn't WANT to let his men die, he HAD to offer them to Scylla so that the rest of his men (himself included) could go unharmed. Did he purposely give one of the torches to Eurylochus so that Scylla would kill him and he wouldn't be able to betray Odysseus again? Yes. Probably. Did he want his men to die? No. Of course not! But he is stated to have become a monster, and that he would do anything to get home, even if that means letting his men die.
Its not that Odysseus is happy to get what he wants at the end, its him being devastated by the choice he had to make, and gave up resistance in case his crew got to him before Zeus got to them
No, they died. In another Animatic they were all tied up behind the Back and they have lungs, like Dolphins. The 6 sacrafices was already decided the Moment he learned of Scylla, but i guess Eurelikes was set on the Hitlist after his confession.
To be fair. Odysseus had to sacrifice some to save all, and then found that his second in command was responsible for the death of most of the crew. "48 left under your command" after the wind was opened.
Ariers reaction to cut off there tails is very different i always get chills and think that the implication is that they operate like whales where they need to surface to live and will bleed out and be unable to swim and then they can just eat the tails
I knew at the start would be SO confusing for you. The live stream was WILD!! I take the eeee ahhh ahhh as the sirens toning to try and find the right pitch and tone to mimic Penelope's voice.
I like to think it's not just "why lie if you're gonna eat them-" but also. The route they've given him is hopeless and dark. By telling him that's the solution he is more inclined to give into them. But he's too far gone at that point, surprising both the sirens AND later Euryloches when he accepts the necessary suffering to power through.
REMINDERS GUYS! everyone perceives the story different! (especially the first time hearing it). Plus with the animatics can definitely change the story in the smallest way. Me personally i love Neal’s animatic for thunder bringer BUT they changed it to where they weren’t on a boat and i still have to say it’s my fav even if it differs from the story. Let’s be kind when helping Airier understand the story! Much love still a fun reaction ❤
Here’s some ways you can tell it isn’t Penelope- they don’t play her instrument, the viola. Also, the backing vocals are the other sirens. Jorge made a short describing how he imagines their powers working, and it’s pretty interesting/heartbreaking Additionally, Jorge made the mistake of 12 years instead of 10 back in the Circe Saga. Now it’s a fandom joke. That’s why he sounds uncertain as to how many years it’s been. A little Easter egg for fans
So something i wanted to point out in Thunder Bringer specifically to you. Is eurylochus knew he messed up all throughout this journey. He knew that if he had listened to his captain and trusted his captain back when they met Aeolus they would be home. He feels the guilt because of him so many men died, because of him they had to go to the underworld and now knowing he messed up again with Helios’s cattle he realized what Odysseus was trying to do all this time. So yes while he was upset and trying to kill him- Eurylochus ultimately did what he shouldve done before. Trust and protect his captain. Thats why at the end of thunder bringer we see that shot of Odysseus being launched back because Eurylochus pushed him out of the way out of instinct
23:20 well, if he went into Circe situation with mind like that... He'd simply listen to Eurylochus and cut loses, not even trying to save few men turned into pigs.
@@nootnoot9784 he didn't know that. From his prospective, he went there just for his men, and even after that, until she herself proposed to help, he just asked "let us puppets leave"
Canon Odysseus with Scylla just told his crew to grab six torches so it was completely random. He knew if they fought her they more than likely would all die so it's easier to just make it fair and random and he deal with the fact that he ordered 6 people to their deaths
This tunder bringer animatic is by far my favorite....the eagle claws on zuse the various little things but then biggest thing for me is the line "in the end its all the same once i apply all the pressure" he actually used atmospheric pressure to make them kneel
He knew the cost was high, the six men. In the song he choose his boy because they were home until the bag was opened and everything from then on he could lay at his boys feet because it happened trying to get back to where they were.
In a lot of the animatics the gills are on the tail half of the body so cutting off the tail works. Sarcificing people was not doing something stupid. Scylla is someone POSEIDON won't touch. There was no getting through that without deaths. He just LIMITED it to 6
11:19 when he said to cut off their tails and let’s them drown is to that they have a hard time swimming and they will sink and not go up for air since there’s nothing to help them swim up.
I always interpreted Scylla saying "We are the same you and I" as her saying, we were *both* good-willing people, who got turned into monsters, although for Ody it's metaphorically, and for Scylla it's literal By that I mean that, in a lot of myths, Scylla used to be one of Circe's nymphs, but a man showed up on the island one day, and Circe fell in love with him(This might be what Circe was refering to near the end of "There are other ways" when saying "I have been in love once before"), but the man had fallen for Scylla, so Circe, who was mad at Scylla, had turned Scylla into a monster and kicked her off the island And in the canon animatic Jorge had commissioned for the Thunder Saga livestream, Eurylochus had given a torch to a random soldier before realizing they were sacrifices And going to Scylla *was* their *only* choice, their best chances really, either sacrifice 6 men with scylla, or having a 50/50 of all of them dying to Charybdis So I see this as a "Odysseus will do *anything* to get back home to his wife and son(like he said in "Monster")" rather than "I want to kill 6 men" he was willing, yes, but *wanting*? No And I'm not saying Ody is not in the wrong, he's just not *as* bad as you are thinking, at least in Epic he's not Also, side note, the next saga *The Wisdom Saga*, comes out at the end of this month on August 30th
So a couple of things: - In this version they are playing the Sirens like fish where if you cut off their tails and throw them into the sea they’ll eventually drown because they can’t move around or escape. It’s a very cruel way to kill them. - For Scylla, Odysseus knew of the cost to travel by Scylla. He mentions she has a cost in Suffering. So he likely planned the Torch thing either to have specific people eaten or another interpretation I haven’t really seen is have certain people blinded to Scylla. Although in most animatics, there is an implication that he kinda wanted Scylla to kill Eurilocus but also doesn’t seem too angry that it didn’t happen either. Also Thunder Bringer is Zeus yes. I like the idea that the Penelope he sees is an illusion to push Odysseus to make the choice Zeus wants him to make. But also reminder that Zeus isn’t asking him to be the monster more of asking - will you as the captain take the judgement for your crew like captains generally in the past would be responsible for whatever the crew did, or would he reject being their captain and let their sin fall on their own heads? Not sure why more people don’t see that tbh. Yea Zeus is being cruel by making Ody choose, but as Zeus says - “someone’s gotta die today”. He’s basically saying someone must be punished for the sin committed. It’s just the myth Zeus just kills the crew while here he makes Ody choose. And this is why I love Epic and cannot wait for the next saga to come out! (We have 3 more Sagas to go)
I will say, i think Ody smiling at the end there is less ''Happy with the outcome'' and more ''Whatever happens next i deserve it, if they kill me before Zeus dose them in, i desrve this'' if only because that's...the actual intention of Epic's creator as well, in the commissioned Animatic for that last bit (showed on the livesream), Odysseus is showed as being beyond heartbroken by his choice, and is accepting of whatever comes up next
Before he died (at least in this animation) Eurylochus also pushed Odysseus out of the way of the lightning. A few people mentioned he could be smiling because of that as well.
30:00 and this is the difference between Eurylochus and Odysseus, Odysseus learned from his mistakes and took responsibility when his crew did something @haraken3119 in the Comments sums it up well.
The thing about Scylla is the Odysseus knew exactly what would happen, and that’s why he told Eurylocus to light 6 torches, one for each head. None of the others knew what would happen. They didn’t know about Scylla. So he did knowingly choose to sacrifice 6 men. And he did intend for Eury to be one of the six, but in the official animation from the release stream, he handed it off to another crew member while trying to save some of the other men before he realized the torches were targets. When the man he gave the torch to immediately got chomped, he realized what happened
About sirens. You have to remember, being half fish, the Tail is literally half of them. When you cut the tail you cut them in half, chances of survival slim. Also... While they drop the human parts into the water, they don't really drop tails... They are the fish parts.... "We are the one who feast now"💀
In the original he was tied to the mast while the others had their ears fully plugged. Sirens would sing about sailor's desires, causing them to go towards them and hit rocks, breaking their ships to become easy prey. Siren's song had this property of telling you about anything that you want even if the sirens had no reason to know. Anyway, he was ruthless by cutting off their tail. They can't breathe underwater, they will die slowly, unlike the cyclops
I don't think Odysseus was smiling at the end because he was getting what he wanted. He probably figured his crew was about to kill him and he deserved it for all he'd done.
I don’t think Odysseus specifically chose who got the torches, he just told Eurylochus to light them. I think it’s an easier idea to think Odysseus specifically chose Eurylochus because of his betrayal, but I don’t think it was either’s choice. If Scylla didn’t have those torches to see by, an attack from her could’ve sunk the ship and killed them all, so the torches were unfortunately the only choice.
Yeah. I definitely got the impression this animatic really hyped up the cruelty aspect as opposed to the songs intention which was a little more utilitarian. Still a cool interpretation though.
Honestly, Odysseus isn't even the bad guy, Eurylochus is. Yes, not killing the cyclops was stupid and giving his name even worse, but he was angry and grieving. He DID lead 600 men through war and nobody died there, he knows what hes doing 99% of the time. They would've gotten home just fine after he talked to Aeolus and got the storm to stop but Eurylochus didn't trust his friend and captain, the man he called a brother, and opened the bag. Opening the windbag caused them to even get closer to Poseidon, to meet Circe, to need to go to the Underworld and get past Scylla in the first place. Odysseus trying to get him killed by having him light the torches is the least i would do if my second in command betrated me and our crew so deeply because... Because there could've been treasure in the bag??? And to make matters worse, the moment he starts his mutiny and puts himself in charge, he knowingly kills the Sun God's cows, Odysseus told him as much, and gets everyone killed by getting Zeus attention. Why would Odysseus ever sacrifice himself for his crew after they betrayed him? After everything Eurylochus has done to keep him away from Ithaca?
If you remember in Suffering, Odysseus says "but Scylla has a cost". Scylla's 'cost' is the lives of six men, or else she'll destroy the ship and kill everyone. Odysseus knew this even before Eurylochus admitted to opening the bag, he had ALREADY decided to sacrifice six men, to save the rest. Just when Eurylochus admitted he opened the bag, Odysseus decided he would be one of the men offered to Scylla for safe passage, but he ended up surviving, hence Mutiny.
This is much less "Odysseus wants to kill his crew" and more "Odysseus will now pay any cost to get home".
I would argue that scylla doesn't require an offering. In the myth there is scylla and charybdis, with the water in between. Charibdis has the chance of either inhaling or exhaling water, meaning he'd kill all of or none of the crew. There really is no middle path, you have to choose one side or the other. Scylla randomly takes 6 men no matter what. What Odysseus did was purposely sacrifice 6 men in order to ensure he stays alive himself. But yeah, he definitely had that plan before the confession. Eury just got chosen after the confession
@@idkanymore2.014 oh yeah not to mention Eurylochus was all about that "lets leave our men to die" life when they were turned to pigs
Eurylochus is the real asshat there.
@@idkanymore2.014 no. This is where the phrase "between a rock and a hard place" comes from. Odysseus' whole thing is to reach Ithaca with all of them alive if he can until he can't. So no, he didn't want to save himself only, not until the end when he was just tired of the crew's bullshit.
@@m1sh474 I'm not saying he wanted only himself to live. Just that there was multiple other options and that he wanted to ensure that he did live. If scylla was going to take 6 men no matter what, he could have been one of those six men. The torches was just to make sure he stayed alive.
@@m1sh474 "There is no price he won't pay". After coming back from the UNDERWORLD all of his crew were tokens of sacrifice if it ment he specifically returned. Sure he would like NOT to kill his crew but it didn't matter at all at that point.
In another animatic, Eurylochus actually handed the torch to someone else, so he never realized Odysseus tried to get him killed.
That would make it a little less horrible. The realization in this one is a real guy punch.
@@Airier For real.
I think in the cannon animatic that was in the live stream he gave it to someone.
Correction, he passed it to someone else, that guy got eaten, the torch dropped on the ground and he realized what was happening.
Though that’s an interesting way to put it…Eurylochus figures out that the torches were the targets for Scylla. Now, whether or not he understands that Odysseus wanted him dead is up to interpretation, It is canon that Eurylochus has to figure out what the torches were for to call him out on it on the next song.
Still hurts
The reason Thunder Bringer exists is because Helios went to Zeus and threatened to bring the sun to the Underworld if he didn't do something about what Odysseus's crew did to his cattle.
Zeus: Oh Susano told me how to deal with this.
Aphrodite: I'm not doing a strip dance.
Zeus: Fine, I'll go deal with my great grandson.
Persephone: I did this before it was cool, Helios!
@jasonsmith6219 Context, please 🙏
@@baalsagol346 on Japanese mythology Amaterasu, goddess of the sun gets mad at her brother, Susano god of the storm, and decides no more sun for anyone and goes to a cave and blocks the entrance, obviously everything starts going to hell with out sun so all the gods try to get Amaterasu out of the cave like trying to trick her with a rooster and a mirror but nothing works, so in one of the versions of the story (becuase there’s a lot of them) one god has the idea to call the goddess of the festivals and make a big party, also this goddess decided to dance naked to catch attention, so Amaterasu decides to go out for a moment jealous of hearing the festival with out her and gets stunned lock by the naked goddess dancing 😂 so the other gods take the moment to close the cave so she can’t go back so that’s how they manage to get the sun back. Susano has also his own story of redemption after everyone punished him for making Amaterasu mad in the first place. So yeah on that comment they are referencing that story with Greek mythology 😂
Ame no uzume! Dancing Sun Gods out of caves before it was cool.
12:28 "they could probably still swim"
Sir, their whole lower half is their tail.
It really reminds me of definned sharks and how they're tossed back overboard to die, unable to move, unable to breathe, bleeding out.
@@coroixiwa my disappointment is inmeassurable and my day is ruined :(
I mean they still got arms they could still swim. But uhm their spinal cord is cut, their intestines and organs are falling out. I don't think they'd drown from not swimming like a shark. I think they'd be more like a victim of disembowlement.
@@junrobin9335 they'd drown in their own blood rather than water... if they're lucky. If they're even luckier, they might die from shock while having the tail cut off. If they're unlucky... drawn out agonizing death via bloodloss+suffocation while slowly sinking in the sea it is.
@@NaBa.O3O Yup but thinking it over even more. There are two times they'll potentially experience shock. First the slicing off of the tail. But the second shock is salt water. There have been cases of people with wounds landing in sea water and dying from the shock of the saltwater hurting and agitating the wound more. It'd be the second time they feel like being on fire.
So, fun fact: Fish can drown. Thousands of Sharks drown every year because they're fins are cut off to make a popular Asian soup-dish, while their still-breathing bodies are cast into the sea.
Without fins, they can swim, and if they don't swim, they can pass water through their gills, which will cause them to suffocate.
So, Odysseus essential just committed genocide on a tribe of Sirens.
Also, another fun fact, the original Sirens had no fish-like attributes, the fishiness came from later, Medieval interpretations, often conflated to or sharing similar origins to Mermaid folklore.
Yup. If I remember correctly they were more like prey birds. I do not recall if they could fly.
Actually Siren original were faceless monsters. Homer Odyssey do not describe them (It's up to the reader to imagine their looks as Homer only describe their human likeness and alluring aspects), and keep them ambiguous like many other early greek poems, having more descriptions on the Siren is a latter revision, before that SIrens were seemingly a concept of a monster left ambiguous as the reader would imagine a more charming version himself than any fixed description.
Argonautica (3rd century BC) describe very similarly to a harpy another greek monster and calls them Siren.
Meanwhile multiple depiction also like Earthen wares from Athens dating around 3rd century BC also describe as another greek existing monster Tritons and Nereid (Tritons is how the males were called while Neireds is the name for females) also calling them as Sirens.
Fun fact the Tritons monsters are based on the god Triton which is Poseidon child with a water nymph. So the half-fish depiction is very much as greek as the bird Siren.
So both type of Siren did exist in Greek myth technically around the same time and we don't have anything solid tracing any further back to my knowledge.
I do think Siren is more of a monster category with similar behavior (half-human monsters hunting humans sailors with charming voices)
It's definitely not genocide but otherwise you are correct.
*can't
I think most species of fish can breathe without moving. Though, for all we know, the sirens could breathe air, meaning it wouldn't matter all that much. However, they'll probably bleed out long before they drown, since they've literally been cut in half.
1:42 I love that Gigi always make Odysseus look at the Siren when she's speaking, so he can read her lips.
Oh that's so cool!!
also the zoom in on her mouth and more animated....animatic part on the "He will hunt you high and low" part to really highlight
It's important to remember that it wasn't that Ody _wanted_ to sacrifice his men. Its just that he was _willing_ to
Wanting and willing are two completely separate things.
Yeah, but not for his sacrificial pawns for them thete is literally no difference especially if he could not care less about having them understand it was 6 people or everyone. He makes no difference between the sirens his crew and his brither in lae, they are not worth reasoning with, they question him, he will try to kill them
I think you misunderstood Scylla, too. Odysseus handed out six torches because Scylla was literally the only way home and six people HAD to die to make it through Scylla, so he handed out the six torches to mark those specific six men for death and spare everyone else.
It was bad, but it's not like Odysseus was just looking for an excuse to kill six people.
Exactly, that's why in suffering he talks about Scylla having a cost
OK yes he wasn't looking to kill anyone specifically at first, but he clearly changes his mind about the plan and instead orders Eurylochus to pass the torches out, intending for him to die with the rest for betraying his trust.
An excellent showing in ruthlessness, but he fails to think it through.
Eurylochus not only manages to survive somehow, but uses the knowledge Odysseus bestowed upon him to unravel his horrible plan in front of the entire remaining crew.
@@rainestar6781 oh 100% but it's never out of malice. The whole point of that was that he can't trust anyone but himself now that he knows his second in command betrayed him. So he coldly decided to tell Eurylochus to light the torches knowing he would hold it.
Also a fun fact that not many notice is that only Odysseus actually knew where they were going since until the end of different beast nobody could hear so only he lip-read the siren
@@J939NWhat I was trying to say is that Eurylochus was malicious. Ody didn't have to tell him to pass out the torches. He could have just handed a torch to him himself if he really just coldly decided to kill him. The reason that matters is that Eurylochus figured that out. He took their sacrifices entirely to heart because Ody also specifically tried to off him while making only him aware why. By his decision, the entire plan is tainted by his malice towards a man who was one of his best friends and literal brother by literal marriage. He was actively choosing to murder (by proxy) the husband of his sister. Imagine choosing to inflict that pain on anyone. Eurylochus was *_incensed_* even while begging Odysseus to refute him, scared to death of the mere thought. Ody's confirmation *_S H A T T E R S_* him, and tells the rest of the crew that none of their lives matter to him anymore.
@@rainestar6781 that part is a bit of a stretch. The second in command commonly takes the captains orders throughout the crew like in full speed ahead, it only makes sense that Eurylochus would be the one to light the torches and likely hold one too. Eurylochus doesn't even realize what's happening until the last man is taken (the canon stream animatic where he hands off the torch to help protect the men only to realize that they are aiming for the torches) leading him to hysterically questioning Odysseus on whether or not he actually just sacrificed his own crew. I don't see where the maliciousness comes In. Odysseus only ever follows his own orders when in battle, otherwise he just does his own thing.
(I.e. *Storm*:has eurylochus to tell the other ships.
*Full speed ahead*: has Eurylochus tell the rest of the crew about his plan rather than do that himself even though he isn't steering the boat so he doesn't have much of a reason not to other than convenience.)
It’s amazing how Scylla animatics are like a litmus test for “What is the most horrifying monster I can imagine?”
Jay said he wanted people to have nightmares. Artists are delivering!
Well, to quote Circe- “she's an immortal devastation, terrible, savage, wild, no fighting her, no defense”, “Scylla's mother- she spawned her to scourge mankind”
Tldr- nightmare fuel, even by a goddess’ standards
That and Polyphemus!
Oh yeah for sure, it's awesome seeing all the different Scylla. I must say thou, BrittPowwPixel's Scylla is for sure my favorite. The way the main head pantomimes the moves of the lesser ones like it's directing them, and the sinuous movement is just so gorgeous on top of the overall design.
Well the artists have to come up with a creature that even poseidon does not want to square up with like the siren said... so yeah.. nightmare fuel it is XD
Something other people have pointed out in other videos. Zeus's name hasn't been said ONCE in the entire epic. The thunder is enough for people to know who is it.
Everyone knows despite all the various powers and abilities the Greek gods and monsters have, only one of rules over thunder.
something that i feel the need to point out, while Odysseus was absolutely being a monster by giving up 6 of his men to Scylla, he wasnt wrong. it was the only way they would have gotten out of there
he was wrong not to give his men the choice to give up on going home and disembark before he sacrificed them
Then again, the next song imply that the crew had pretty much already given up on coming home and would have accepted to settle anywhere to live the rest of their life. Ody was the only one that still wanted to make it home
@@theod4660I think in the original they did actually stay a Circe's for a bit since the crew wanted to until the crew then convinced Odysseus to start heading out again after like a year.
@@arghhhhy5874it is Circe who helps Ody trace a plan to get back home. Scylla and Charybdis are unavoidable, they are in the same place. They will succumb to one or the other, so Circe recommends sacrificing six men to Scylla instead or loosing the whole crew and ship to Charybdis.
@@Chiisainyo yeah this is true. I believe Circe is also the one who tells him to have his crew cover their ears with beeswax to avoid succumbing to the sirens.
20:07 It's partially his fault. He opened the wind bag and put the men in direct path of posiden. Not only that, but he directly ignored his captains orders, which is something you can't do. Also, Scylla was the only way they had even a chance at getting home, so yes. It was a sacrifice.
not only his captain's orders but also his KINGS orders, Odysseus was the king of Ithica not just the captain of their crew. So not only was he ignoring his captain's orders (as you pointed out, already terrible) but also his KINGS orders, which is like so much worse...
1) Odysseus didn't hurt the cyclops because he wanted him to suffer, he hurt the cyclops because blinding him was the only way to escape.
2) I think you're missing what Odysseus was doing with the sirens. With no tails, and bleeding, they are going to die within minutes of hitting the water.
This is accurate. They're not the only fish in the sea that hunt, and most fish that do hunt by the scent of blood.
The second the blood spreads far enough, they are going to be hunted, and won't be able to swim away effectively.
@@Tini_BalleriniNot only that but they can't swim without their tails, they'll just sink down to the bottom. And we know for example sharks die if they stop moving, dolphins and whales die if they don't come to the surface to breathe in some Oxygen etc.
Odysseus needed to blind him so they could escape because he was blocking the entrance, sure - but Athena still told him to kill the cyclops before he left. He had the opportunity once the cyclops was blind.
also sirens also need to come up for air similar to whales
if the sirens dont drown they would just die from starvation as well because they dont have the tools needed to catch their pray, and sure they eat people but its not like they will have much force or the ability to pull them into the water with no tail and bleeding everywhere in the water is a pretty good give a way that whatever is in the water isn't your loved one
Zeus was the god of lightning (very very frighting) but he also was the god of judgment so that is why he is there after the slaughtering of Helios cows to pass judgment
Ah, that makes sense (there's a joke in there somewhere about Zeus not needing Good judgement to stand in judgement).
Didn't Helios blackmail him do deal with it by threatening to turn off the sun?
Also the God who gave kings their divine right to rule. The way I see this Lightningbringer was essentially Zeus asking Odysseus: "As king, do you take responsibility for your men's actions? Or do you wash your hands of them as mutineers?"
And of all the gods, it would be Zeus who would pose this question to a king.
Helios is more of Zeus direct cousin and also the god of the sun. He kinda has a bit of seniority over him as he and his sister Selune have very important roles. Helios can't really drop his job to deal with a group of sailors so he just told Zeus to deal with it in his stead.
Also he does see everything the gods and mortals does so for all we know he could just bring up some shit and cause drama Zeus didn't want
@@AirierZeus, as king of the gods, is very much the Greek ideal of what a King is, a judgmental figure with ultimate power over you who can and will abuse that power at a moments notice for his own gain without caring about who gets hurt, but ALSO a figure of ultimate authority charged with judgement onto others and upholding the rule of law who must be respected and placated at all times.
Helios: Why is there a ship near my island?
Eury: I'm just a man!
Ody: Eury nooo!!!
Helios: Bertha no!!!
Helios: You killed my cow, my favorite cow.
Ody: Oh not this again, you doomed us all!
Helios: You lost your sun privileges mortals.
Zeus: Calm down man I'll punish them.
Helios: Fine.
Polites soul:.....guys....you don't remember NOTHING TO THE SHEEPS!? *angry noises*
To quote a comment from the releases of the Thunder Saga
"What gives you the right to make a cow say 'ow'?"
Did he not notice that the crew changed from say "we are the man made monsters" to "He is the man made monster" after he ordered them to cut off the sirens' tails and throw them back into the water, let them drown?
Yeah, thats not killing them to to stay safe, thats being needlesly cruel
No, Odysseus is killing the sirens. He's not just hurting them. They are going to drown. He even said that in the song.
To clear up your confusion about Zeus being the god of lightning, not the sun: in the song Mutiny, they talk about "who do you think he'll send". Helios sent Zeus to mess them up, it wasn't Helios himself 🙃
Zeus is also the god of Justice
@@dragonstouch1042 also I think in the original story he threatened to bring the sun down if Zues didn't handle it.
Remember Poseidon and Hades aren't under Zues's rule. That's why Papa P can do as he pleases and hunt Ody. Threaten to wash the whole world if he wants. The sun god on the other hand is one of the mount Olympia gods. He can't just go scorching the entire earth without clearance. So it was basically a case of "You're the boss you handle it your way. Otherwise im bringing the sun down."
Though not specifically recorded as the reason zues intervenes there is something to keep in mind. If the sun was brought down it would also affect the underworld because of how things stack in the greek relm order. That would put the Olympic gods at immediate conflict with the underworld gods. There are quite a few more gods down there then people realize and all of them are forces to be reckoned with. Im fuzzy if Persephone is down there at this point but i think she is.
Beside Thanatos and Hypnos ((whom unless you're one of the big 3 you do not want to tangle with)) you have Hades himself. And although Zues proclaimed himself king of all the gods, his older brother as well as Poseidon don't exactly recognize his authority. It's actually likly Hades is stronger then him. Hades is the chillest god ever thankfully. But bringing the sun down would basically start the greek version of Ragnarok.
So Zues can risk that or he can go zap a few mortals, give a good life leson, flex for the entire pantheon ((which he lives to do)) and be done in time to father some new horible monstrosity because the dude is the literal incarnation of rule 34.
Helios is the titan of the sun@@michaelpro7092
Skydaddy, he was mean to me, avange me
11:36 "they don't breathe with their tails"
They need their tails to swim.
12:15 tbh, i think both he and crew would have preferred to kill cyclops in that moment, but "his body is blocking the path, if we kill him we'll be stuck inside". That part was still warrior of the mind. Shouting his name afterwards... Not so much
Me: You have swords, just chop your way through him. Hard work, but you don't leave that enemy behind. I love Warrior of the Mind because it demonstrates Odysseus's hubris, which is what caused all his problems.
@@songsayswhat the moment they try "chopping through" him he wakes up and whoever is close gets it, blinding him and letting him be distracted with it is smartest choice. Returning and finishing job as athena proposed... they couldn't "chop through him" when they were working all together on adrenaline with proper morale. Sure, he is blind now, but it only means he's less predictable, and Ody's men are shaken by first losses in years, exhausted after previous battle, chopping club into spear and using it to attack him. Sure, they could have won,but with more unnecessary losses
24:20 its not a matter of animator's perspective. Odysseus knew and planned it all along. In Suffering, when the siren says he needs to go through Scylla's lair he responds with "No! But Scylla has a cost!" which means he knew that he would have to pay a toll for passage, so yeah, it does not give room for other interpretations at all, the man was about it
And they wanted a monster. Ypu kinda get what you pay for dude. They wouldn't let him just be a man. Not to mention eurylochus fucked him over every step of the way. Tried to leave the crew on circes Island when it was convenient, turned the crew against him with the sky island odysseus actually comes up with an ok plan with the whole wind bag thing all he had to do is not open the bag and they were within sight of home, and 1 guess who fucked that up. 1. Not only killed 558 men, not only separated odysseus and his wife after 12 years, as well as his mother even took her own life at the sight of the storm and what she'd assume is him dying. Eurylochus then goes on to complain about odysseus sacrificing men as if he didn't mold him into this exact monster they have today, and fights odysseus because of morality which is actually OK. Whats not ok is him a DAY later doing the exact same thing odysseus did but with more lives. There are no morals here. Even when he kills the sheep, nodding to the sheep that died on the cyclops island (hint hint he also fucked them over there although less his fault) but bro has the audacity to look at odysseus and ask him what they should do as if he didn't tell him 3 seconds beforehand. Homie ruined odysseuss life. I'd be alittle bitter too.
Tldr: putting all this blame on odysseus is not only unrealistic and unfounded, but also incorrect.
But it gives room of if he choose who specifically takes the torches. He just tells him to light six torches. Who takes the torches is not up to him
It is a sacrifice because Scylla was immortal and they can't fight and kill them without killing them. So Odysseus had no choice but to let six men die so the rest could live. Especially considering Charybdis would have taken them all and the ship. It's why we have the phrase "between a rock and a hard place"
Right?? I know that Eury didn't hear what the siren said, but she said to go there because Poseidon is scared of that lair. If the GOD OF THE SEA is afraid of a sea creature, you don't fight it. There's no amount of planning or acumen that can allow you to reason with it or survive it. You just play by her rules
@@giorgiomauceri410 in the original story, it was Circe who warned Odysseus of Scylla and tell him that he had to sacrifice 6 men in order for all to survive. He wasn't happy to but he had no choice
You are right. In the original he was tied to the mast.
Jorge states that these two songs were directly deviating off Canon and shouldn't be taken as such, which is why they were "mystery" songs.
The first time anyone ever heard what they were called or what they sounded like was on the live stream.
He also said that the Sirens Magic was most effective by penetrating the ear fully to access their memories and because they had bees wax in their ears the siren was effective but not mystically deadly. She kept making mistakes by not being able to access his memories fully. I.e the daughter instead of 'son' and instead of Poseidon's theme she accidentally accesses in his memories the Zeus theme. The melody for "he will chase you high and low so find a place he'll never go..." is the same tune as the one Zeus Sings in the horse and the infant. She also lacks Penelope's instrument but in the background you can hear a mallet - which was used in regards to Polites 😢
As for the start of 'Suffering', I also have a theory that the "eee ahhh ahhh" part at the beginning sounds like the Sirens trying to match pitch to perfectly find a match to mimic peneolpes real voice. It sounds like 'toning' to me which is really clever.
He said "ROW FOR YOUR LIVES" but it does kinda sound like Run
That EVIL laugh hahaa
Scylla canonically has 6 heads.
When he said "Scylla has a cost" he definitely knew what had to happen. And I think he knew from the very beginning that E man opened the Bag. Especially when he tried to confess on Circe's Island. He just didn't want to hear it or deal with it.
I LOVE your reactions SO much. ❤
“He knows these are the wrong choices but he doesn’t have right ones *to* make” is the perfect summary of this saga imho. People keep trying to argue whether Odysseus or Eurylochus is more at fault etc, when really it’s just *a whole lot of awful choices* and no-win situations and a ship full of flawed people making flawed choices.
Definitely. They're both making f*cked up choices and mistakes, they're both questionable people. They're both wrong! The whole point of this musical is becoming a monster. Odysseus is aware that he IS THE MONSTER. He is not 100% in the right, and Eurylochus is not 100% wrong. They're both gray and I love them for it.
They’re just people in some really stupid situations normal people are not supposed to handle. For example Mutiny. Killing the cows or not, there is not a situation there where the crew wins. It was either starve to death or anger the gods. That is only one example but there are plenty in the entire musical. Arguing which one is morally correct is silly imo, neither of them are perfectly morally correct, they’re just people making choices in the gods playground.
To be fair, the "Odysseus has a kid with Circe which later comes to kill him" is not canon to the original source, The Telegony is quite literally an ancient fanfiction of the Odyssey. That's why most people don't talk about it because of how much it sucks.
Penelope "known for her loyalty to her husband who has been missing for 20 years" marries his Son which also killed her husband? one of the worst ancient works to exist.
right like, the most loyal spouse in greek myth and they decide to make him a cheater just this once? This was the guy that got stuck on an island with calypso, a very beautiful maiden, for an extra 10 years and never laid a finger on her and youre telling me he slept with a dangerous sorceress he met for a short while?
Also ik in general greek stories are so wild, but him sleeping with the enemy as a tactic really wouldve only made sense if he didn't have the moly flower
@@niffleraku For Circe, there are versions of the Odyssey (earlier than Telegony, possibly even original Homer) where Odysseus had to 'trade his body' to Circe to free his men, with him refusing to go to Circe's bed until she reversed the spell. And in Homer's version, on Calypso's island, Odysseus is unwilling but unable to do anything about Calypso's advances for the 7 years he was stuck on the island.
@@niffleraku In most versions, Odysseus does sleep with both Circe and Calypso. But I use "sleep with" in the loosest sense possible. It's very much not consensual on his end, he just has to do it because they're goddesses and who knows what they'd do if he refused them.
@@bookswithike3256 Oh yeah i mean, nonconsensual sex is really shit all around, it's just that there's versions of him doing it willingly which would count as actually cheating so that's what I was more referring to
@@Killrbladez hello, i replied to the person below you, my comment also applies to your post here 👋
34:20 Helios went to Zeus threatening to go with sun into Underworld if Zeus didn't punish those who hurt his cows
Imagining Hades reaction to Helios showing up with a whole sun fills me with many giggles.
Ngl if i had to pick between the woman who has been my sole motivation for the past 12 years or the group of guys that can't follow directions for anything, it wouldn't be a hard choice
but that's not the choice. The choice is between the lives of the men you're supposed to get home, and your own (with the distant possibility of seeing your wife some time down the line)
They aren't just a group of guys who can't follow directions tho, they are his friends who were getting scared that their captains was going to kill them all with bad leadership, a fear that is proven true in the end. They aren't just numbers, they are human lifes who had their own families to return to.
100% agree
Oh no the consequences of their own actions~ and after opening the bag, mutiny and the cow i wouldn't sacrifice myself for them either. And let's not forget that he was the only one wanting to save the others from circe.
And tbh i don't think those idiots would be able to get home by themselves either way lol
So I'm the exact opposite. He's probably spent more time his entire life with these men through hardships and tribulations than hes known his wife. I'm going down for my men man. Idc if like 3 of them made a bad choice.
How you completely misunderstood that Ody smile is so baffling. That was a smile of resignation as he just said come what may when he closed his eyes. Whether he got cut down or the lightning bolt hit, he was done
He misunderstands a lot to be fair haha
I disagree, there are multiple interpretations of his smile at the end. In the Iliad, Odysseus has a feud with Palamedes (he saw to Odysseus reuse when he pretended to be crazy to avoid the war (put baby Telemachus in front of the plough, so Odysseus had to save him)). Eventually O got payback for that and other small squabbles by getting him convicted as a Trojan spy. P was stoned to death whilst O smiled at him just before he died. (At least in Stephen Fry’s retelling, have not read a full translation of the Iliad yet)
So if we know believe that he is truly ruthless and knowing he just got “betrayed again” by his own men, it is not so far a stretch to interpret the smile this way
@@foppy7 him going PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME DO THIS to Zeus proves he isn't ruthless. Gods you ody demonizers love to delude yourselves
@@bradleyhall4315Yeah he really does it seems
@@Schinak well don’t be rude. Just pointing out that there are multiple interpretations of a character possible. That is beauty of stories and especially Greek tragedies. There is no one right version because it is all descended from an oral tradition. The whole idea is that these stories get retold. Jorge is doing a wonderful job with this and all the artists doing the animation are doing the same by visually emphasising certain aspects (like deciding to make O smile at the end). It’s up to the audience to interpret it, which is by definition subjective.
20:21 this moment is something that terrifies me Scylla looking at Odysseus saying you are the same as me a monster
And not eating him as to say welcome to the family
👆
THIS. Exactly THIS!!!
Welp, she does what she need to survive. Circe is the one who turned her into that monster out of jealousy. She can't eat fish because she is right next to Charybdis who sucks everything thrice a day, only sea monsters can survive that. She can't eat the sea monsters because they are usually someone's kid and it will get her in the kind of trouble Ody has been twice already. Her only option to survive is eating sailors. Ody's only option is to sacrifice six men. None of them like it, they would choose something else if they could, but here they are.
Well she didn’t eat him cuz she was sated but yeah.
It's truly fascinating to see how many different people experience the Thunder Saga. Some completely blame Eurylochus for everything. Some put all the blame on Odysseus. Others say the blame is equal on all sides. It's so interesting - we never get the answer to the question of "When does a Man become a Monster?"... we have to decide that on our own.
Honestly the moment he dropped the baby. All his following ruthlessnes is to justify that, cause if he does not make it home, that would have been pointless.
Given eurylochus would have never had a chance to mess up 2 without ody messing up with the cyclops before. It wss odys faukt at first why they did not make it home, of cause, the wind bag and the cattle are in the end what leads to everyone dying sonone can claim equal responsibility. What makes tge difference js that eurylochus cared till the end, even saved his life after ody just betrayed hin and he betrayed him back.... Ody calculatededly sacrificed his men, eurylochus had his part. But he never intentionally lead to their deaths making him come up moraly on top in my eyes, even if both are traguc understandable in who they came to act the way they did and absolutely carry halv of the responsibility that lead to everyone's death
11:35 In theory it would kill the Sirens.
Sirens, according to Greek mythology, have human-like upper bodies and fish-like tails. While their upper bodies allow them to breathe air, their fish-like tails mean they rely on underwater respiration as well. -Most marine creatures, including fish, need to move in the water to breathe, a process known as ram ventilation. This movement pushes water through their gills, allowing them to extract oxygen.-
Sirens would have gills located on their torso, below their rib-like structures, which are not capable of actively pumping water like some sharks can. -Sharks are an exception because they can switch between ram ventilation and buccal pumping, where they use their mouth muscles to draw water in.- However, Sirens, -lacking this adaptation,- would rely solely on movement to ensure water flows through their gills.
By cutting off their tails, the Odysseus and crew immobilized the Sirens, preventing them from moving and thus stopping the flow of water through their gills. This lack of movement would lead to suffocation, as they would be unable to breathe underwater without the necessary water flow through their gills.
Therefore, immobilizing the Sirens by cutting off their tails would indeed result in their death due to drowning being unable to breath nor air nor water once they finished sinking especially since they will end up passing out from anemia from having their legs chopped off and bleeding out, they will either die from the bleeding or lack of oxygen whichever kills them first.
Edit: Precision lots of Marine life can either use buccal pumping or ram ventilation. Lots of marine life cannot do both but if not using buccal respiration they do need ram ventilation. Siren need their mouth, and trachea to work with lungs and air to speak out of the water, having their gills connected to their mouth would log the lungs with water if they could do buccal pumping basically drowning them everytime they got out of the water. So their gill would need to be separated or away from their air ways making it extremely unlikely a Siren could even do buccal pumping for their gills (unless they have an entire 2nd Larynx in their neck which would make their neck very thick and not human like).
This is actually incorrect most fish don't need to perform ram ventilation and can actually do buccal pumping. That's the reason why you can see fish just float in an aquarium without. In fact bony fish have much more complex gill structures that allow them to perform buccal pumping more efficiently than sharks. Both bony fish and cartilaginous fish are able to do both. Only a few species are obligate ram ventilators and most of them are sharks. Scientifically gills would need to be near the mouth for them to work. But that's a moot point because clearly Jorge's intention was that cutting off their tails would kill them because bisecting a creature tends to kill them.
A bit of a flaw in your reasoning here in Greek myth; the sirens were part bird, not fish. The fish part probably came from other cultures.
@@Zlixlriffs I have added precision and strike-through the inaccuracies (in part due to misunderstanding some information and in part due to faulty data presentation). But I still think the point still stand if that you need to do ram ventilation if not using the buccal pumping and unless the Siren have an entire 2nd larynx in their throat and neck and have a thick neck. Their gills wouldn't be connected to their mouth in a way that allows buccal pumping while protecting their lungs and gill from water and air respectively while also allowing food to go to their stomach.
In theory, being cut in the stomach, especially with antique medicine would be fatal to pretty much everything that isn't a god
Greek mythology sirens are actually birds. First recorded fish-person comes from early 8th century.
The versions of scylla that are terrifying are the ones that are intelligent and not just bloodthirsty.
Agreed.
Isn’t she intelligent in the myth?
@@Gioppdumister to be fair I have only read the highschool equivalent of the odyssey so I have no idea and the old school movies were no better.
I know the general consensus is that Neal Illustrates made the best Thunder Bringer animatic, however with it not taking place on Odysseus’s ship as it importantly is supposed to be I’ve reserved it for the alternate animatics section of my playlist.
I think this one gut punches more with Eury reaching out to Ody as he dies and then him seeing Polities and Eury at the very end as he sinks. Ugh.... I get teary-eyed.
Good call tbh, can’t wait to see his reaction to the Neal animatic but the context of the ship getting blasted to flinders is very important
I disagree only because i think neals shows better how cocky and imposing zues is.
I was definitely shocked since that's the version I have in my playlist
It’s so good. Just not very correct canonically. But it’s my favorite.
i've never seen someone misunderstand something so profoundly lol
For real like leave my man Odysseus he is doing what everyone would have done 😭
Yeah
The line “but Scylla has a cost” in suffering means he did know in advance, it WAS a sacrifice. It was 6 men offered up to the 6 heads or all of them go down fighting something they can’t kill. Did he tried to include Eury in that? Yes, but he didn’t do it specifically to kill him, he was going to do it anyway.
Fun fact about Scylla: In the original Odyssey it was Circe that recommend Odysseus to steer closer to Scylla's lair as the other choice was steering closer to Charybdis which would have made Odysseus lose his ship and crew. They didn't go through the lair directly as they did in the musical.
"Hug Scylla's crag-sail on past her-top speed! Better by far to lose six men and keep your ship than lose your entire crew." - Circe
Why is nobody talking about the fact that eurolychos got about 450+ men killed because he opened the wind bag? That’s objectively worse than killing six men to get the rest home
I can see your point, but we was not aware that would happen
But honestly I kind of agree, and he should have listened to his captain
They pissed off Helios, God of the sun, and Odysseus says "and now that you've pissed him off, who do you think he'll send??" And so Helios basically cried to Zeus.
Okay. The reason Odysseus killed 6 men off is so that Scyllas heads were distracted so the rest could escape. He was pissed at Euroclyes and also knew if he lived through Scylla he would probably be a problem later. He knew this because he heard of Scylla before this. Hw wasn't being cruel he was trying to be efficient. He hated it but he had too because he knew if they tried to fight Scylla they would lose. Odysseus is being ruthless... Not cruel.
Completely. But this animation highlighted his actions on a way that looked WAY more vengeful. Probably more the the song implied on its own. I'm looking forward to seeing how other animatora tackle this. 😁
@@Airier
by the way, because Euroclyes opened the bag, it made it seem Odysseus and his men died to Odysseus's mother, and she dies from heartbreak/suicide because of that, and Odysseus and the crew just learned that his mother is dead.
honestly not the best time to bring that up when you just sang about being monsters and being merciless.
“The place he’d never go is on land” but what about the horses, you forget the horses.
Yep. Completely forgot about the horses. The other version of ruthlessness made a point to remind me of them.
i read it as smth else reference and idk exactly what it was but i read it with that voice
ty bc u just made my day sjksjk
11:56 in this story the sirens breathe air so without their tails they would drown because they cannot get out of the water to breathe.
1:22 I think the reason they're singing like that is because the syrens are trying to find the right voice that fits Penelope
34:10 True, but Zeus IS the God of Justice; so if Helios had a bone to pick with a mortal, he's ask Big Z Energy over here to pass the judgment.
Every time I read Zeus God Of Justice, I feel like it's the set up for a joke (even though I know it's not 😅).
@@Airier I mean... Justice as seen by the Ancient Greece moral code. Also, if you're thinking of looking at alt. animatics, I do recomment Neal Illustrator's Thunder Bringer.
I think the smile at the end was meant to signify that if Ody's gonna get killed by anyone, he'd much more gladly accept it from Eury than anyone else.
Now you're one of us and have to wait for the next part! Epic has gotten a lot more popular over the past couple months so a lot of new artists have been exposed to Epic and making animatics for the newest songs. So that's why it was the same 4/5 artists for the first act but like this saga had 5 different artists
While waiting is gonna suck, I am looking forward to exploring alternative animations. 😁👍
@Airier Next saga will probably be teased end of this month/early next month
@@alanplays2881 I mean Jorge has already said that the Wisdom Saga is in the works and that it should be out soon-ish in like a couple of months or two
@enriquepx1698 Yeah I kinda laughed when I said this hours ago and shortly after I get the TH-cam notification for his channel and he clears that right up lol
@@Airier now you can also accompany Jorge's channel and hear his explanations and more infos about the musical without spoilers 😅 i highly reccomend it!
Scylla is known to be an extremely powerful monster. There’s likely nothing he could do besides pay the toll. I guess he could’ve tried the Charybdis route but their ship was too big slow to escape from her.
In reality, Poseidon likely doesn’t fear Scylla but his daughter Charybdis is near her. That’s probably the more likely reason he wouldn’t follow in this area.
He could have also given up on getting home and not sacrificed his men.
@@redikaicore And go where? They’d be hunted down by Poseidon and killed. Doomed if you go, doomed if you don’t. Scylla gave the best chance of the crew’s survival.
@@redikaicorethe crew would've revolted against him. The crew also wanted to go home.
the part with the golden cows "This is the home of the sun god the cows are imortal WHO DO YOU THINK HELL SEND?" was the dead give away.
Fun fact: the few times we've heard penelope in the previous songs she was always accompanied by a viola however this time that viola is missing to show how this isn't the real penelope. This was done intentionally by Jorge.
Fun fact part 2: most main character are accompanied by certain instruments e.g penelope is viola. Eurylochus has the voice of the crew. Polites has malets etc.
34:14, helios was the titan of the sun, apollo took over (zues's son) so i kind of imagine its like a "daddy daddy do something they killed my cow );" kinda situation
33:59 Odysseus literally said "who do you think he'll send".
Helios is the god of the sun, Eurylochus and the crew killed his sacred cattle, so Zeus punished Odysseus' crew on Helios' behalf.
In the Odyssey they still had to pay the price of 6 men to Scylla, because the alternative was Charibdis and nobody would have survived that
11:26
1. He did not blind the cyclops for selfish reasons, he was actually showing him mercy. It's literally mentioned in remember them.
Athena: Finish it
Ody: No
Athena: No?
Ody: What good would killing do, *when mercy is a skill more of this world could learn to use*
2. The sirens don't survive. Bleeding out and without being able to swim or breathe, they all die in a matter of minutes.
Just so you know when they're being attacked by Scylla he actually says "Row for your lives"
I e heard multiple takes on this. I've read the transcript. But it still sounds like run to me. Guess it's just in my head. 🤷♂️😅
@@Airier nw, lots of us heard 'run' n jay reacted to it saying it was funny to imagine em running in circles (n that it was 'row')
he also reacted to 'man-made monsters', 'when does a cabagge become a meteor', 'raining king of ithaca' and 'banana peels' for penelope ^^
Ooooh thank you for introducing me to that Scylla animator, it was incredible! Also yes, Odysseus did trade/ sacrifice not just try to murder, it was the cost he paid to get past Scylla and it was one of the very few ways it was possible.
Edit: Oh, also, Ody smiling after the crew try to kill him straight after choosing himself over them was an individual animator's contribution, it isn't a canon thing that was in the official release.
😁👍
Hey @airier, the sirens are fish people. If the tails are cut off then they can't move. If they can't move they sink, and if they sink they drown. Thanks for listening to my ted talk lol (just clarifying, love your reactions)
Also, they are half fish, the tail is half p6f them. Chop someone in half and even if they can stay afloat they'll bleed to death. Swim to breath and you'll only make it happen faster. At least thats my theory.
Technically, his brother (brother in law) is the betrayer and Odysseus was punishing him for his betrayal, and saving the life of another crew member.
"I'm not going to sacrifice you" is not saving someone's life 😒
@@draeonic yes, it is. Because he was being sacrificed someone else didn't have to take that spot.
@@firebreathingmoonbeam3961 yeah, sacrificed BY ODYSSEUS (whatever his reasons, he was still the only one making decisions).
this is the same logic as "I saved money by buying things I didn't want or need but on sale"
@@draeonic your logic fails slightly as he did NEED to sacrifice 6 men. So regardless of anything 6 men will die this way where as if he doesnt offer them up scylla might destroy the ship to get to her food so he is somewhat saving the men he doesnt sacrifice. It is still a dick move to not give them any warning at all but there likely would have been a mutiny if he mentioned it
@@robertmartens9072my logic is perfectly fine, thank you, because he DIDN'T need to do that. Was it the only choice that aligned with his goal? Probably. But that goal isn't objectively an absolute imperative, he could have chosen to settle down on the first island they encountered. Or grabbed some sirens to give to Scylla for snacks instead of his men. What happened WAS his choice even if the alternatives sucked.
Something that i love in Thunder Bringer: in Ruthlessness a chorus announces Poseidon, same for Athena in Warrior of the Mind... here you DON'T NEED THE NAME! The roar of the tunder is enough to tell you who this is!
Also, in the Odessy Helios was enraged about the death of the cow, and begged Zeus to make things right. This part is accurate, only in the original opera Odysseus was spared because he was the only one that didn't eat the cow's meat.
Scylla was actually signing in harmony with Odysseus saying we are the same. He knew they only way out was to pay 6 men. And she was singing that hey I know you realize this is the only way and we both fight and pay and manipulate to make it through. Her in comfort in it him struggling with it.
And I also love the blood is the same you just get to choose whose blood it is.
To explain why Odysseus is killing the Sirens he is cutting off their tails, thus they wouldn't be able to swim and would sink into the ocean. It's not that they wouldn't be able to breath but wouldn't be able to swim and would bleed out in the ocean.
Also they are half fish (at least in this version). Chopping anyone in half is almost a garanteed death.
Fish still need oxygen. I believe sirens are much like sharks and need to keep moving to filter water to oxygen with their gills
A couple of things:
1. In Suffering Odysseus did say "There was a price with Scylla."
2. The reason he didn't tell them about Scylla is because people would argue and fight so he had to make the hard choice and just said random people get picked. Plus last time he told the truth they still opened the bag. Also I believe that in the cannon animatic in Eurylochus didn't have one.
3. Odysseus couldn't just escape he had to cut the ropes on the sharp rock.
4. Odysseus did learn and tried to stop his crew but they didn't listen again.
5. In Mutiny Odysseus did say "Who do you think he'll send?"
6. In Odysseus defense the crew should take the punishment for what happened to the cow.
Side note you should watch Niel Illustrator Thunder Bringer animatic. It is very cool
in the cannon animatics Eurylochus was given a torch at the start. He just dropped it during the battle attempting to save another and someone else picked it up who he watched get eaten.
I love just how ZUES Zues is in Thunderbringer. He spends the first two minutes just being thirsty and reminding us how consent-agnostic he is then the last half taunting and murdering Greeks.
I mean, kinda? The song is definitely meant to remind that, sure, but he's not doing that to a real woman.
The thing he's putting under pressure, bringing through the wringer, wielding and using is PRIDE, more specifically Odysseus's pride. He's punishing him for his pride and bringing him to his breaking point so that the crew can see his true colours.
In that moment, he's neither the great adulterer nor the god of the sky. He's the King of the Gods, mocking an ant who calls itself king and monster, while punishing his crew for their sin.
You can feel the vibe shift from the Soldier and the Infant, where Zeus is also King of the Gods, but as a stern commander. Even then, though, you can see the same thing: he's not warning Odysseus, he's giving him a price to pay in order to shatter his pride but win the war. Why? Because "the gods will make him know", meaning that Odysseus could've found a way to prevent Astyanax from dying, but the Gods would've intervened.
Consent isn't a part of this song, although with Zeus it almost always is 😅
@@giorgiomauceri410 The song is comparing pride to a woman and how he treats it the same way. And in mythology he DEFINATELY does all those things to women. I understand the point is he is pointing out Odysseus's pride, but he is doing so by saying "I do the same to pride as i do to women, use and drop them whether they want it or not"
11:40 no, it's a death sentence, a slow and painful one at that. He's not making the same mistake at all.
slow and painful gives you time to call on any deity who might listen to avenge you. he got lucky they didn't have a direct line to a god
@@draeonicassuming you don’t pass out from shock. Which you would.
@@Gioppdumister I would, yes. do we know enough about siren anatomy to risk them reacting differently?
idk, that's not a risk i'd take. Kill them quick and efficient on deck THEN dump them in the water.
(except for the six you're keeping fresh for Scylla, of course )
29:03 "GODDAMN YOU, JORGE!"
I think we all had a moment like this throughout the musical lol
13:00 their tail is almost half of their body, if the water can't drown and kill them, the blood loss will.
That smile at the end of the last on looked more pained then malicious to me. Like he feeling like “I’ve made my choice but why do I have to be a monster?”
A leader is responsible for his crew only if the crew do act on his behalf. Eurylochus did not act on Odysseus behalf when opening the bag so treating it as betrayal is fair.
Regarding Eurylochus opening the bag of winds, it's important to understand the consequences (It's less black and white that everything is Odysseus's fault). Odysseus and his men were within sight of home when Eurylochus' greed and betrayal sent them back into Poseidon's grasp, resulting in the deaths of around 527 men (leaving only 43 mens alive which were the mens that went behind Odysseus' back and openend the bag). This act stemmed from simple greed and distrust of Odysseus, who, despite his flaws, was trying his best to get his men home safely. Yes pissing off Poseidon is on Odysseus, but that wouldn't have mattered if the crew held it in until they reached home which they were about to, which was single-handedly trashed by opening the bag.
Odysseus' priorities evolved throughout their journey. Initially, he aimed to bring his full crew home. After losing most of his men to Poseidon, he focused on keeping the remaining crew alive. Following his visit to the underworld and meeting the prophet, he aimed to bring back some crew rather than none. However, after Eurylochus admitting his fault with the bag which ended killing most of his crew and the remaining of his crew's mutiny, his concern became getting home himself.
When faced with Scylla, Charybdis, or Poseidon, Odysseus chose to sacrifice six men to Scylla rather than risking the entire crew, a necessary choice confirmed by the Sirens. Even Poseidon avoided Scylla, highlighting the danger of a direct confrontation that could result in much more people dying.
The crew repeatedly acted against Odysseus' orders, leading to disastrous consequences. Their betrayal, such as opening the bag of winds and killing Helios' cattle, led to their demise. While Odysseus had his faults, his intention was to keep his crew alive (even if just some parts of the crew remained by the end) and bring them home. In contrast, Eurylochus' actions stemmed from greed and indignation, causing further harm to a bad already situation making it unsalvageable by his own hand.
Zeus' punishment for killing Helios' cattle was due to the crew's disobedience, not Odysseus' failure. Zeus held the crew accountable despite giving Odysseus the choice, reflecting the tragic but justified consequences of their betrayal (Which means they were responsible for the choices they made).
Odysseus' final smile reflects his relief from the burdens of command and betrayal. No longer responsible for a mutinous crew that repeatedly failed him when the end of the journey was near, he grants himself mercy, recognizing that ruthlessness can be an act of self-preservation. By choosing not to shoulder blame for their actions, he finds peace in accepting that some burdens are not his to bear.
@@haraken3119 tbh, there's Odysseus fault too. In luck runs out he tried to gaslight them with "hey, we've made it so far" and "none of you died at war" (which was stupid considering their doubts appeared after first loses in years - "you rely on wit and people die on it") instead of providing constructive arguments why going to wind god is their only smart choice. Then, he first showed distrust at crew, pushing everyone, including his closest person (at the moment), his second-in-command and brother-in-law Eurylochus away. If he just said "bro, help me guard the bag" or just communicated with crew better - instead he showed them that he doesn't trust them first, so they assumed that perhaps there's a reason, perhaps there's treasure inside bag, it was failure of leadership and communication as much as failure of subordination.
Also, them getting to Ithaca without opening bag still would likely be a disaster. Ody already pissed Poseidon off, and he knows their Kingdom is Ithaca, ISLAND kingdom... Perhaps it's for better only those 500+ men died, and not all of Ithaca (don't get me wrong, Eurylochus and crew are still at fault, but as much as Ody)
Also, killing Helios cattle isn't betrayal, cause Odysseus is removed from command at moment, and they lost all hope ("Ody we're never gonna make it home..."). In original Odyssey it's even more explicit, Eurylochus tells that if they die, at least it won't be of starvation, cause starvation is one of worst death. They took risk with their lives, as when Odysseus went to lotus eaters or cyclops. It wasn't the wisest act, but seeing how desperate they were, it's understandable. If Zeus didn't want to toy with Odysseus and actually gave choice to Eurylochus, who commanded crew at time of slaughter, perhaps all would have been better - he doesn't have Ody's hyperfixation on family and really values his comrades, hell, he even spared Ody after mutiny, he might have been able to sacrifice himself for crew.
But alas, greek gods wouldn't be greek gods, greek heroes wouldn't be greek heroes, musical wouldn't be epic
@@danylonazarov 1- Odysseus communication failure doesn't void going behind his back since he did say what it was even if he kept on it. (Both are at fault, it's just that pretending it was solely on Odysseus is kind of missing half of the point)
2- If Poseidon would go to Ithaca before Odysseus landed in the land of Giant, then nothing stops him from following him after the Odyssey, but he doesn't... Might be an issue that despite Ithaca being an island it is in the domain of another God and would be considered trespassing or that Poseidon just cared enough as Odysseus literally landed in the laps of his principal domain.
3- The mutiny and the cattle killing kind of is a betrayal considering he removed himself form Odysseus command, despite the advice of Odysseus did the kill and still then expected Odysseus to take the fall regardless despite it being solely on himself and the rest of the crew. As much as they want to blame Odysseus, that is completely on them and removed any of Odysseus involvement from the decision making before the fact. Eurylochus would have sacrificed Odysseus in a heartbeat considering that in Puppeteer it showed that Eurylochus wouldn't put himself in danger to save Odysseus even before the whole Scylla, Monster and Underworld part. Even despite the part that Odysseus didn't merit Zeus wrath as Eurylochus himself is to blame for that problem. Blood would flow, it is only a matter of whose, the one who didn't kill the cattle, or those who did despite better advice.
@@haraken3119 well, in some later snippet we get Poseidon in Ithaca, no? Also, in Puppeteer it shows that Eurylochus can abandon few people FOR Odysseus and other crew. He states both in Luck Runs out and Puppeteer that he values Odysseus' life, and he vouches for Odysseus not to risk his life with Circe cause there's no chance (and if not for unexpected Hermes intervention, there wouldn't be).
I'm not saying any crewsmates ot Eurylochus are in the right, I'm saying they're all imperfect, and in that way their king is worth them
@@danylonazarov Except that his hesitation when Odysseus tells him I only hope you would do the same for me when he talks about rescuing the captured scouts. It basically implies that no Eurylochus wouldn't. Despite his grandstanding valuing Odysseus' life he doesn't value it that as much as Odysseus valued theirs in the 1st arc. Yes Eurylochus would sacrifice a few crew members as long as it means not putting his neck and the rest of the crew, but when it came to facing the consequences of his own initiative he expected Odysseus to put his neck like he did at every step in the 1st arc for them. What I am saying is that for once Odysseus Ruthlessness was indeed mercy on himself to no put himself in a punishment that wasn't his own nor of his own doing.
And I don't know how it is better that Eurylochus viewed Circe as an undefeatable foe, but not Helios and Zeus, expecting Odysseus to handle Zeus or choose to die himself, despite just saying he was fine with whatever happens as long as it isn't hunger, changing his tune immediately when actual danger showed up. In the end he reaped what he sowed with that decision of killing the cattle.
Also in Homer's Odyssey Poseidon never set foot in Ithaca. His goal is to prevent Odysseus from getting home for as long as possible, but once he did, Poseidon left him alone. Not caring enough to upset Athena who was protecting Odysseus wife and son in Ithaca even when Odysseus lost her favor.
@@haraken3119 in original Odyssey Poseidon just followed Polyphemus' curse word for word, he had no much own initiative/interest like he seem to have in epic.
Regarding Odysseus "putting his neck for them all act one" - his decision to go to Lotus eaters himself, he shoots ship first, and later crewmates die, shouting for what to do "captain, captain" while he stays shocked after Polites death. Storm prevents them from sailing to Ithaca due to ODYSSEUS telling his name. Then all Ruthlessness clusterfuc... Then, at Circe's, Eurylochus goes with scouts himself, risking his life, and after that - asks Odysseus specifically not to risk his life, also, that stop which you interpret as Eurylochus not being ready to do the same - in Mutiny Odysseus is ready to kill him, it was in canon livestream animatic. Eurylochus, even after that, can't and don't want to kill Odysseus, treats his wound and takes him along. During Scylla, Odysseus is just standing, doing nothing, while Eurylochus frantically runs trying to save crewmates, risking his life (also lifestream animatic).and even if behind-the-scenes tiktok, author explain that Eurylochus doesn't have his own proper instrument because he is kind of "lost" in character and in life, his "instrument" is voices of crew, because they're all he has now
fun fact: for the version of Thunder Bringer you watched Eurylochus, despite looking like he was gonna attack Odysseus, was actually trying to push him out of the way of the lightning according to the animator. that's why his arm was outstretched like he was reaching for Odysseus.
ty! :')
With the whole torches situation I like to think that all Odysseus said was "light up 6 torches", didn't matter who held them, and Eurylochus wouldn't mind holding one himself, seems like a simple enough request
Most fishes would probably die if you got of their tail, so its definitely killing. I mean, cut our legs off and throw us into the forest we'd also probably die
22:03 He didn't WANT to let his men die, he HAD to offer them to Scylla so that the rest of his men (himself included) could go unharmed.
Did he purposely give one of the torches to Eurylochus so that Scylla would kill him and he wouldn't be able to betray Odysseus again? Yes. Probably.
Did he want his men to die? No. Of course not!
But he is stated to have become a monster, and that he would do anything to get home, even if that means letting his men die.
Its not that Odysseus is happy to get what he wants at the end, its him being devastated by the choice he had to make, and gave up resistance in case his crew got to him before Zeus got to them
12:03 The song follows the impression that sirens are like whales and need to come up for air after a certain amount of time
No, they died. In another Animatic they were all tied up behind the Back and they have lungs, like Dolphins.
The 6 sacrafices was already decided the Moment he learned of Scylla, but i guess Eurelikes was set on the Hitlist after his confession.
To be fair. Odysseus had to sacrifice some to save all, and then found that his second in command was responsible for the death of most of the crew. "48 left under your command" after the wind was opened.
Ariers reaction to cut off there tails is very different i always get chills and think that the implication is that they operate like whales where they need to surface to live and will bleed out and be unable to swim and then they can just eat the tails
I knew at the start would be SO confusing for you. The live stream was WILD!! I take the eeee ahhh ahhh as the sirens toning to try and find the right pitch and tone to mimic Penelope's voice.
I like to think it's not just "why lie if you're gonna eat them-" but also. The route they've given him is hopeless and dark. By telling him that's the solution he is more inclined to give into them. But he's too far gone at that point, surprising both the sirens AND later Euryloches when he accepts the necessary suffering to power through.
13:40 Dude. They're sirens. Not ghecos. Pretty sure being cut IN HALF kills them.
REMINDERS GUYS! everyone perceives the story different! (especially the first time hearing it). Plus with the animatics can definitely change the story in the smallest way. Me personally i love Neal’s animatic for thunder bringer BUT they changed it to where they weren’t on a boat and i still have to say it’s my fav even if it differs from the story. Let’s be kind when helping Airier understand the story! Much love still a fun reaction ❤
Here’s some ways you can tell it isn’t Penelope- they don’t play her instrument, the viola. Also, the backing vocals are the other sirens. Jorge made a short describing how he imagines their powers working, and it’s pretty interesting/heartbreaking
Additionally, Jorge made the mistake of 12 years instead of 10 back in the Circe Saga. Now it’s a fandom joke. That’s why he sounds uncertain as to how many years it’s been. A little Easter egg for fans
So something i wanted to point out in Thunder Bringer specifically to you. Is eurylochus knew he messed up all throughout this journey. He knew that if he had listened to his captain and trusted his captain back when they met Aeolus they would be home. He feels the guilt because of him so many men died, because of him they had to go to the underworld and now knowing he messed up again with Helios’s cattle he realized what Odysseus was trying to do all this time. So yes while he was upset and trying to kill him- Eurylochus ultimately did what he shouldve done before. Trust and protect his captain. Thats why at the end of thunder bringer we see that shot of Odysseus being launched back because Eurylochus pushed him out of the way out of instinct
23:20 well, if he went into Circe situation with mind like that... He'd simply listen to Eurylochus and cut loses, not even trying to save few men turned into pigs.
He still needed Circes help to get into the underworld and avoid Posiedon
@@nootnoot9784 he didn't know that. From his prospective, he went there just for his men, and even after that, until she herself proposed to help, he just asked "let us puppets leave"
Canon Odysseus with Scylla just told his crew to grab six torches so it was completely random. He knew if they fought her they more than likely would all die so it's easier to just make it fair and random and he deal with the fact that he ordered 6 people to their deaths
Song is called 'Scylla'. Opening lyric is 'the lair of Scylla'. Scylla appears - 'whose face is that?' 😆
This tunder bringer animatic is by far my favorite....the eagle claws on zuse the various little things but then biggest thing for me is the line "in the end its all the same once i apply all the pressure" he actually used atmospheric pressure to make them kneel
He knew the cost was high, the six men. In the song he choose his boy because they were home until the bag was opened and everything from then on he could lay at his boys feet because it happened trying to get back to where they were.
In a lot of the animatics the gills are on the tail half of the body so cutting off the tail works. Sarcificing people was not doing something stupid. Scylla is someone POSEIDON won't touch. There was no getting through that without deaths. He just LIMITED it to 6
11:19 when he said to cut off their tails and let’s them drown is to that they have a hard time swimming and they will sink and not go up for air since there’s nothing to help them swim up.
I always interpreted Scylla saying "We are the same you and I" as her saying, we were *both* good-willing people, who got turned into monsters, although for Ody it's metaphorically, and for Scylla it's literal
By that I mean that, in a lot of myths, Scylla used to be one of Circe's nymphs, but a man showed up on the island one day, and Circe fell in love with him(This might be what Circe was refering to near the end of "There are other ways" when saying "I have been in love once before"), but the man had fallen for Scylla, so Circe, who was mad at Scylla, had turned Scylla into a monster and kicked her off the island
And in the canon animatic Jorge had commissioned for the Thunder Saga livestream, Eurylochus had given a torch to a random soldier before realizing they were sacrifices
And going to Scylla *was* their *only* choice, their best chances really, either sacrifice 6 men with scylla, or having a 50/50 of all of them dying to Charybdis
So I see this as a "Odysseus will do *anything* to get back home to his wife and son(like he said in "Monster")" rather than "I want to kill 6 men" he was willing, yes, but *wanting*? No
And I'm not saying Ody is not in the wrong, he's just not *as* bad as you are thinking, at least in Epic he's not
Also, side note, the next saga *The Wisdom Saga*, comes out at the end of this month on August 30th
I really rambled on😂
@CorbinIsAGod not at all, im so glad he saw this because his misinterpretation hurt my soul 💀
11:25 he’s effectively doing the equivalent of cutting their legs off. Bit hard to swim that way when you’re main form of motion is no longer there.
So a couple of things:
- In this version they are playing the Sirens like fish where if you cut off their tails and throw them into the sea they’ll eventually drown because they can’t move around or escape. It’s a very cruel way to kill them.
- For Scylla, Odysseus knew of the cost to travel by Scylla. He mentions she has a cost in Suffering. So he likely planned the Torch thing either to have specific people eaten or another interpretation I haven’t really seen is have certain people blinded to Scylla. Although in most animatics, there is an implication that he kinda wanted Scylla to kill Eurilocus but also doesn’t seem too angry that it didn’t happen either.
Also Thunder Bringer is Zeus yes. I like the idea that the Penelope he sees is an illusion to push Odysseus to make the choice Zeus wants him to make. But also reminder that Zeus isn’t asking him to be the monster more of asking - will you as the captain take the judgement for your crew like captains generally in the past would be responsible for whatever the crew did, or would he reject being their captain and let their sin fall on their own heads? Not sure why more people don’t see that tbh. Yea Zeus is being cruel by making Ody choose, but as Zeus says - “someone’s gotta die today”. He’s basically saying someone must be punished for the sin committed. It’s just the myth Zeus just kills the crew while here he makes Ody choose. And this is why I love Epic and cannot wait for the next saga to come out! (We have 3 more Sagas to go)
I will say, i think Ody smiling at the end there is less ''Happy with the outcome'' and more ''Whatever happens next i deserve it, if they kill me before Zeus dose them in, i desrve this'' if only because that's...the actual intention of Epic's creator as well, in the commissioned Animatic for that last bit (showed on the livesream), Odysseus is showed as being beyond heartbroken by his choice, and is accepting of whatever comes up next
Before he died (at least in this animation) Eurylochus also pushed Odysseus out of the way of the lightning. A few people mentioned he could be smiling because of that as well.
@@Airier ah, yeah fair enough
37:58 is it a smile or the lip curling grimace as he cries over his crew, his brothers, his friends?
30:00 and this is the difference between Eurylochus and Odysseus, Odysseus learned from his mistakes and took responsibility when his crew did something @haraken3119 in the Comments sums it up well.
The thing about Scylla is the Odysseus knew exactly what would happen, and that’s why he told Eurylocus to light 6 torches, one for each head. None of the others knew what would happen. They didn’t know about Scylla. So he did knowingly choose to sacrifice 6 men. And he did intend for Eury to be one of the six, but in the official animation from the release stream, he handed it off to another crew member while trying to save some of the other men before he realized the torches were targets. When the man he gave the torch to immediately got chomped, he realized what happened
About sirens. You have to remember, being half fish, the Tail is literally half of them. When you cut the tail you cut them in half, chances of survival slim.
Also... While they drop the human parts into the water, they don't really drop tails...
They are the fish parts....
"We are the one who feast now"💀
In the original he was tied to the mast while the others had their ears fully plugged. Sirens would sing about sailor's desires, causing them to go towards them and hit rocks, breaking their ships to become easy prey. Siren's song had this property of telling you about anything that you want even if the sirens had no reason to know.
Anyway, he was ruthless by cutting off their tail. They can't breathe underwater, they will die slowly, unlike the cyclops
I don't think Odysseus was smiling at the end because he was getting what he wanted. He probably figured his crew was about to kill him and he deserved it for all he'd done.
I don’t think Odysseus specifically chose who got the torches, he just told Eurylochus to light them. I think it’s an easier idea to think Odysseus specifically chose Eurylochus because of his betrayal, but I don’t think it was either’s choice. If Scylla didn’t have those torches to see by, an attack from her could’ve sunk the ship and killed them all, so the torches were unfortunately the only choice.
Yeah. I definitely got the impression this animatic really hyped up the cruelty aspect as opposed to the songs intention which was a little more utilitarian. Still a cool interpretation though.
Honestly, Odysseus isn't even the bad guy, Eurylochus is. Yes, not killing the cyclops was stupid and giving his name even worse, but he was angry and grieving. He DID lead 600 men through war and nobody died there, he knows what hes doing 99% of the time. They would've gotten home just fine after he talked to Aeolus and got the storm to stop but Eurylochus didn't trust his friend and captain, the man he called a brother, and opened the bag. Opening the windbag caused them to even get closer to Poseidon, to meet Circe, to need to go to the Underworld and get past Scylla in the first place. Odysseus trying to get him killed by having him light the torches is the least i would do if my second in command betrated me and our crew so deeply because... Because there could've been treasure in the bag???
And to make matters worse, the moment he starts his mutiny and puts himself in charge, he knowingly kills the Sun God's cows, Odysseus told him as much, and gets everyone killed by getting Zeus attention. Why would Odysseus ever sacrifice himself for his crew after they betrayed him? After everything Eurylochus has done to keep him away from Ithaca?