Okay I'm starting this as a new topic since it's getting kinda lengthy...

Yes Musubi has long hair by the end.. whatever, my hair grows out, and then I cut it.. Don't see why Musubi wouldn't do the same thing. Cibo's hair length changes from time to time, too. Same thing with the armor, people's clothing and armor can change all the time...

Here's where I'm confused... How did Clawsa save her? She doesn't look very saved to me.. Looks like she gets Silicon armor and beats the crap out of everyone.

And it looks to me like Clawsa's body turned into a low level safeguard... Same with the kids on the bus.. Maybe I'm just confused? Are those not Safeguards? Now that I think about it, they don't have those symbol things, but they do look a lot like the Safeguards in BLAME!

As for Musubi's morality, I dunno.. 3000 years might do that to someone. I'd sure do the Safeguard's bidding from time to time if I thought I'd be able to save the world in the end. Anyway, think of the thousands of people she's probably had to watch die anyway. I think maybe the Safeguard go in and out of controlling her body, or something like that....

Yay debating is fun!

-Jenshin

I think my problem with the hair thing is that it follows a pattern along the manga, and even though you would probably cut your hair it doesn't seem like she does, or has during those 3000 years. And yes, some characters change armor, and even bodies frequently, yet Musubi hasn't in 3000 years, that says something about her I think. Besides, after all that time perfecting her skills as a melee fighter and sword-thingy user, I don't see her suddenly switching bodies and weapons.

Clawsa didn't save her from her body being reconstructed using Safeguard technology (why would he, anyway? she'd be dead otherwise) but he did save her from brainwash, because he awoke her just before it happened, so she had the chance to escape. And as we find out soon enough, the Order was already on its way, and may have gotten the drop on her if it wasn't for Clawsa. And yes, she does beat the crap out of everyone, if by everyone you mean the Order, but she's motivated by a personal grudge not by Safeguard brainwash.

Clawsa's body was turned into something resembling an exterminator, but it's not under the control of the Safeguard, therefore it's not a Safeguard. That's what they mean when they say the Order is using technology stolen from them. They reconstruct bodies by invoking Safeguard countermeasures, but they are under control of the resulting download. Obviously what they do to Clawsa is the most basic form of the process. What they do to themselves, however -- the results being the Silicon Creatures we've all come to know and love -- is a more sophisticated process probably involving the invocation of a higher level Safeguard and replacing it's consciousness with the one from the body's previous owner.

Also, even if Musubi's morality could somehow change in the passing of so many years, there's this line on page 149: "Furthermore, I haven't met a human being in the last 100 years". This may seem irrelevant to you, but to me it implies that she is concerned about the lack of humans.
Also, you said: "I'd sure do the Safeguard's bidding from time to time if I thought I'd be able to save the world in the end.". That's just it, none of the Safeguard actually think that they're going to "save the world". They're just drones, killing anyone that tries to mess with the megastructure or NetSphere. They don't give a rat's ass about the ultimate fate of mankind or anything else for that matter. The privilege of thinking about that sort of thing is denied to them, at least during their service.

So my idea is this:
It's impossible for you to trick the Safeguard into thinking you're working for them, while you're actually doing stuff for your own purposes. The Safeguard probably don't care about Musubi, as long as she doesn't start ripping into megastructure levels, and if she does that, they will send agents, and it won't be for the sake of giving her a warm welcome. If they did care, after 3000 years they surely would've taken over her already.
Musubi works for herself, and she's only concerned about the destruction of Silicon Creatures, and saving mankind. Lastly, she gains nothing from somehow joining or pretending to join the Safeguard when it is that system that has been responsible for bringing almost every attempt to set things right to an untimely end.

That said, I can't disprove that Musubi somehow became Sanakan in the end after some obscure circumstances, but you can't prove it either. Anyway, I'm still not convinced that it's even possible.

Okay I can't prove it, but I still think it's a logical interpretation and solve such problems as why did Sanakan show up in a different outfit, help out Killy, etc.

Just want to point out that our hero Killy has somehow survived 3000 years without being picked off, so why can't Musubi as well?

-Jenshin

Oh I don't doubt that Musubi is alive or could be alive. But for some reason Nihei chose to leave her out of this. I think that's probably because Musubi doesn't really know what's going on. She just knows that the Order is bad and they must be destroyed, but apparently she doesn't know what the chaos is all about, and that she should be looking for some dude with Net Genes instead of wasting time slaughtering Silicon Creatures that would eventually be slaughtered anyway if the chaos was eliminated.

I mean, I know that Musubi at one point looks kind of like Sanakan, but there's also a point in BLAME! when Killy kills some Silicon Creature that looks like Cibo but is obviously not Cibo. Physical resemblance isn't enough to think that one character is the same as another, in my opinion, because Nihei isn't too hot on drawing distinctly unique faces. I know some people who thought that the girl with the dog in Vol. 1 was Cibo as well, even before the anime came out, and that's just wrong. We don't know who that girl is, but it's obviously not Cibo, despite what the anime's Cibo-insertion obsession may tell us.

Finally, another reason why I don't think that Musubi is Sanakan, is that even as early as Vol 3 or 4 we, or at least I, get the impression that Killy knows Sanakan from before (which would make sense, since he was apparently a Safeguard as well) and this was before NOiSE had even begun. That fact in my opinion, would be enough to explain in a vague way (as is usual in BLAME!) why Sanakan switches (or is switched, we don't really know) to the GA, and tries to help Cibo and in a way, Killy as well. Besides, as I said before in some other thread, half-jokingly, it's her genes in that sphere along with Cibo's and Seu's, so it's technically her daughter she intends to save; maybe that just flipped a switch in her brainwashed mind.

edit: Yay, I'm a Builder now!

I'll leave you to your own opinions psiberpunk. Yay I'm so glad you know that the chick with the dog is not Cibo.

Okay so now I know lots of people disagree with the Musubi is Sanakan thing.. Does anyone agree with me?

-Jenshin

The universe of Blame! he is really very great, for that reason I think that Musubi is not Sanakan. In addition at the end of Noise Musubi one is separated from any organization and totally alone very like a vagabond. Then as he can be Sanakan, when this being this totally related with the organization of the Safeguards and the Governal Angency.

P.D: Somebody has seen that Sanakan has a sword?

Elbowlick: Negative Corridor is apparently just a glimpse into a Silicon Creature "factory" or something like that. There may be some deeper message involved but it comes after "The End" so it's probably not directly related to NOiSE or Musubi.

Hey Elbowlick, Noise chapter 7 has nothing to do with Musibi or Noise, or possibly even BLAME! althought it might take place in the same world.. It's just some little cloned dude that finds a butterfly in a hold in the wall and thinks that's a good idea and becomes one himself.

So.. Musubi becomes a vagabond, huh.. But her body was created by the Safeguards. So shouldn't the Safeguards be able to exert some kind of control over it, kind of like how Cibo couldn't control her body at times? So Musubi wanders around as Musubi until the Safeguard deem her Sanakan-ness necessary and she changes and kills people.
Just a thought.

-Jenshin

Hm, well, it seems Noise Ch. 7 really isn't related, then. : (

I hope that there's an interview in the future where someone asks Nihei about the Musubi / Sanakan thing directly and puts this rest once and for all -- though the evidence really does seem to speak for itself. : P

Actually, does anyone know if this is mentioned in 'BLAME! and so on'...?

----

Going on a bit of a tangent here:
SANAKAN! would make an awesome doujinshi project. Anyone feel up to some writing? I might have some time to draw a bit. : D

Killy also has a Safeguard made body, yet you don't see him getting overcome by Safeguard impulses. What happened to Cibo is because she basically just forced herself into Sanakan's body and managed to stay inside it because of the Toha autonomous directive.
I've always thought that the point of NOiSE besides giving us some backstory, is that Killy may have undergone something similar to what Musubi did. After all, the GA says that Killy actually dates from a pre-Safeguard system, so he must have been a real human coetaneous with Musubi. Then he probably "joined" the Safeguard, and later was stolen from them by the GA or some other external agent, like Clawsa.
Sanakan, Dhomo, Iko; all the special Safeguards were probably human at one point or another, unless one of them is a pure AI like Mensab, but that would probably spend resources the Safeguard aren't willing to spare.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand, I think if Musubi was transforming into Sanakan for some reason, she'd know, just like Cibo did when she was overtaken by her. And if she knew, she'd probably consider it something interesting enough to mention in her little summary of what's been going on with her. So really, we've seen no evidence that the Safeguard are even capable of remotely interfering with a body that is out of their control. Even with Killy, Sanakan pumped him full of needles instead of killing him obviously in hope that he'd return to being a Safeguard, but they had to do it that way, it wasn't possible to do it through the NetSphere. Further evidence of this is what the Safeguard dude tells Musubi when she is about to be brainwashed (probably through that machine she was in); he says basically that they must destroy the Order through agents like her, because to try and capture them through the NetSphere would cause it to incur some serious damage.

I think rather than saying anything else, I'm just going to crack down on translating that Artbook and see if Nihei mentions any of this at all.

-Jenshin

Does anyone wonder what exactly happened to Clawsa? It seems to me that considering he has no physical body, that the most likely cause of his demise would be a run-in with the Safeguard. Likely he tried to take a peek at the netsphere and got squashed.

I still like the possibility that Killy and Sanakan are on that missing children poster from Noise. I mean...look at them! That's Killy's trademark scowl! And the other one HAS to be Sanakan.



As someone mentioned earlier, the City is truly vast. If it has encompassed the inner solar system and even further to the point of Jupiter...sweet monkey Jesus, that is HUGE. It's not inconceivable that Susonu could wander for millenia and never encounter Killy. Perhaps at the time of Blame!, she is still residing near the megastructure's origin, where Earth used to be. Meanwhile Killy is advancing up through the various levels, towards the end of the megastructure.

Now here's a question...who would win in a fight? Despite my love of Sana-chan<3, Musubi is incredibly fast and lethal at close quarters, not to mention that SG blade can wreak all hell. Sanakan is pretty decent at hand to hand combat judging from the insane beating she handed Killy in their first battle, but she isn't built for it like Musubi is...and despite the power of the GBE, it's a long range weapon and easy to dodge if you have superhuman reflexes. I'd hand the victory to Musubi, unless Sanakan was several kilometers away and had the drop on Musubi.

I think that the corridor chapter in noise represents the beginning of the chaos. Some have theorized that clawsaw is Killy, they did say he was an inspector form a time preceding the safeguards. But this is all speculation.

Jae: I also think that one of the kids really resembles Killy, however it wouldn't make much sense for him to have been one of them. Unless, of course, that is why he hates the Silicon Creatures so much. But I'd better stop right here, or I'll end up spending an hour writing some elaborate story that would be pure speculation anyhow.

Also, no offense, but it appears that you came into this topic with only the title in mind, and that is not representative of what we're actually discussing in here. This thread comes from a discussion between Jenshin and myself sparked by Jenshin's hypothesis about Musubi being the same person as Sanakan, so this thread is a continuation of that debate (the original posts that initiated the discussion are in the "best character" thread, I believe).