Adol "The Human Buzzsaw" Christin: A History.

[Falcom Director of Fanservice]

For a character who has made as many appearances in a continuous series, we really don't know all that much about Adol's past.

I've yet ti play Ys V, mind you, or Dawn of Ys, so perhaps my knowledge is incomplete. Butwhat I have inferred thus far is that Adol does not hail from Esteria, Celceta, Romm (or whatever the Empire's proper name is), or Felghana. According to the anime, he claims to come from east of Esteria, but let pretty much everything is east of Esteria. If that's true, though, it also removes Ispana from his potential homelands.

Why did our Adol grow up to be the driven wanderer he is today? The anime claims that, as a child, Adol exposed to a number of stories and was inspired to see the world in order to find the things he read about. At the same time, we can also infer he didn't learn much history, given how little he seems to know about the various histories and legends in the lands he's visited. He also tends not to know much about them before him comes to them, either, so geography doesn't seem to be his strong suit.

Given that Adol doesn't seem to have much in the way of an education, it stands to reason that he doesn't hail from a wealthy family. Nor does it seem he came from a particularly progressive society (COUNTERPOINT: Have we ever seen a school anywhere?). Still, he is literate, and if the anime is to be believed, did have some access to books. How would he have picked up these skills? Did hs family make it a special point to teach him? Did he learn it on the road? Perhaps he made a point of learning it as a step toward bettering himself?

What say you, my likely better informed friends? I'll pontificate a bit more on the topic later. But for now, I'm curious to see what parts of the puzzle I am missing.

[zeomare]

in the intro to Ys 1 and 2 Complete it shows him young and what appears to be his father teaching him and showing him books so it looks like he learned from family as he went along he learned probably on his own much from his adventures about foreign lands and customs, so it seemes that the first half of his life he is taught by his family and the rest is self taught. If i recall he was born or lived in Promarock he was not rich but his family was definetly able to survive on their own and at a early age Adol was inspired to adventure around and when he heard about a land across the ocean that was cursed (Ys 1) he was quite inspired to visit. it was destiny for the most part he was meant to go there and acomplish the things that he did. this seems to have later insipred him to continue his journeys to the rest of the lands in search of adventure and knowledge. as for not knowing to much of the lands he visited perhaps the stories he was told were more mythilogical stories of legends and dragons that peeked his curiousity. these type of stories never really contain any real geographical terms or real histories or customs on the people who live there, they are stories that were passed down from people to people through out the generations found there way around the worlds. most of these stories were also incomplete and it took his adventurings to uncover the truths and histories of the Kingdom of Ys and the Ark of Napishtim as well as the many others that he encountered in his years.

chris

[FM-77AV]

In the Ys ETERNAL intro, it says he's born in a mountain village.

Do you know by name Adol Christin?
Adol Christin .... Thousand and hundred years
ago he was born at the small unknown
mountain village.
Where is situated the north-east of Eulope the western end in Elashia continent,
He was a very brave adventurer, who had traveled all over Eulope and foreign countries
since at the age of 16 till the death of 63 years old.
He who was born at the poor peasant's boy was commonly acknowledged to be a curious
and active youth.
In particular he wants to know the outerworld.
One day he met the traveler who stopped in his village, from when he began to go to
his own adventurous trip.

[zeomare]

yea i saw that on the box for the game, i could have sworn that village was promarock. maybe i am wrong and he simply lived there later on in his early life.

chris

[Falcom Director of Fanservice]

Zero-Mare: Ima have to rewatch that a couple times now.

Seldane: Holy smoo, I never ever saw that or even knew it existed. Was that actually ingame?

[FM-77AV]

Sure was. It is from the loading screen in Ys ETERNAL (not Ys Complete), but is extremely hard to catch, since that game loads in a second or less.

Part of that text is also on the Ys ETERNAL box.

More on that here...