Shadow Queen Style Giygas Style Togepi Style Boney Style Printer Icon Printer Friendly

Home Page > Mother > Mother_3 : With Magypsy - The Red Blimp

With Magypsy

MOTHER 3 is a game with many layers of meaning, and quite a bit of that regards the Magypsies. First mentioned by Alec as being "neither man nor woman", these mystery mages are important players in the game and there's always a bit of discussion going on about how they dress. The point of this page is to try and list as many of the bits of symbolism and such that relates to the Magypsies. A good amount of the stuff on this page is well-documented, but spread so sparsely between MOTHER 3 discussion boards that it may require a bit of hunting for the uninitiated beginner.

Something noted by most music majors playing MOTHER 3 is that the names of the Magypsies are based off of musical modes – the Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian diatonic modes. Shogo Sakai was responsible for this, as shown by an interview with Shigesato Itoi:

Interviewer: There's quite a mysterious ring to the Magypsy names, like Ionia and Phrygia.
Itoi: That was Shogo Sakai's doing. Apparently they're special musical terms.
Interviewer: Is that true for all of the Magypsies?
Itoi: Even Mixolydia.
Interviewer: Really?
Itoi: Think of it as Mr. Sakai's own play on words. Apparently, people who know a lot about music find that naming scheme intriguing.

Locria’s naming here is special because among the musical modes, the Locrian mode is the odd one out; it is based on the ‘diminished’ scale and sounds very unstable and dissonant when played, which relates to Locria’s character as being an unstable character which caused dissonance among Tazmilians. Aeolia and Ionia, named after the most well-used standard modes, also seem to be the most important Magypsies. Although each of the modes has its own 'mood', there doesn't seem to be much of a correlation between the mode's feel and each Magypsies' character. A few fans have noticed that the Mixolydian mode, which has been said to give music a 'dreamy' feel, correlates well to Mixolydia, who was first seen by Lucas and co. under the influence of mind-altering mushrooms.

Each Magypsy also has its own color which corresponds to the color of the rainbow. Their color is also the color of their house. They are:

Once again, Locria’s color is significant because Indigo is considered a spectral color (what's a spectral color? if you displayed an indigo shirt, you wouldn’t be able to say specifically “That’s an indigo shirt” because you can’t differentiate between blue and indigo without having a reference). Indigo is often considered a not-color of the rainbow because of this, and is sometimes dropped from the rainbow. This is interesting because Locria ‘dropped out’ of the Magypsies for something else.

Of particular notice with the Magypsies is that they seem to resemble cross-dressing men. They shave and have very blockish, manly faces, but wear traditionally feminine clothing such as dresses. They also engage in other stereotypically 'gay' behavior, such as vanity and spending much time on appearance (in fact, their powers are limited without their make-up on, as shown by Ionia when bound and gagged). They dot their speeches with "♥"s, which is also a traditionally feminine thing (think teenagers who write <3 at the end of their text messages). This has led a good amount of people to speculate that they actually are cross-dressers, though this is refuted by Alec's statement that they are "neither man nor woman". It seems that although they were designed to look like transvestites, they are not, and this sort of dress is normal for Magypsies.

It's interesting to note that although the Magypsies don't appear to have romantic relationships or any sexual orientation, many fans have noticed a dirty little joke that plays on this. Locria enjoys eating bananas, and Ionia's favorite food is pickles... hmm, now why would someone give characters - which look like gay men, food with a phallic shape? ;)