Hope

In Oni, the word "hope" is rarely spoken or written. Apart from Chung's (fake) datapad, all occurrences relate to Konoko and/or the Daodan.

Relevant quotes

Konoko

• I just hope they're smart enough to stay out of my way.

(in the diary entry for CHAPTER 09 . TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES)

• You must reach the bio-matter disposal vats. It's a crazy plan, but it's your only hope!

(in the last mission objective CHAPTER 12 . SINS OF THE FATHER)

• I just hope the Chrysalis can keep me alive...

(near final spoken line in CHAPTER 12 . SINS OF THE FATHER) (the final line is : Father, I pray you were right...)

• Mankind as we knew it is doomed: the Chrysalis will change us all. Let's hope it's for the better.

(final spoken line in CHAPTER 14 . DAWN OF THE CHRYSALIS, i.e. in the anime outro)

Chung

• The warehouse manager has suspected this for some time and has been warning his office personnel to get out over the last month. If I'm dead, then he's probably next. He's a good man, I hope you can find him in time. I hope you have better luck than I did. Be careful.

(in his datapad : it turned out, however, that it was planted by the Syndicate)

TCTF scientists

On Chrysalis removal

• It is possible to overload the recuperative capacity of the Chrysalis, but doing so would prove fatal to the host body.[...]We do hold out hope that an alternative treatment method may exist. If we think of the mutated cells as a cancer we could theoretically attack the Chrysalis with the implantation of a second cell cluster modified to destroy the Chrysalis cells and possibly reverse the mutation they caused. How the Daodan Chrysalis might respond to this threat to its existence, and what effect such a treatment might have on the host body remains unknown.

(in a CHAPTER 12 . SINS OF THE FATHER console)

On the transformation

• We must hope that Konoko was destroyed when she fell into the biomatter disposal vats. [...] If not then she may be even closer to her final evolutionary stage: what form that might take, and what the presence of such a creature might portend for humanity we cannot know.

(in a CHAPTER 13 . PHOENIX RISING console)

Pandora's box

Hope is featured in Greek mythology in the episode of Pandora's box. Since there's no page about Oni 2's Pandora yet ^^, I'm putting this here.

Pandora's myth

In Greek mythology, Pandora ("all gifted") was the first woman, fashioned by Zeus as part of the punishment of mankind for Prometheus' theft of the secret of fire. The myth of Pandora is very old, appears in several distinct versions, and has been interpreted in many ways. In all versions, however, the myth is a kind of theodicy, addressing the question of why there is evil in the world.

• "Pandora" on Wikipedia (mini-summary above and summary below)
• Another good resource

The titan Epimetheus ("hindsight") was responsible for giving a positive trait to each and every animal. However, when it was time to give man a positive trait, there was nothing left. Prometheus ("foresight"), his brother, felt that because man was superior to all other animals, man should have a gift no other animal possessed. So Prometheus set forth to steal fire from Zeus and handed it over to man.

Zeus was enraged and decided to punish Prometheus and his creation: mankind. To punish Prometheus, Zeus chained him in unbreakable fetters and set an eagle over him to eat his liver each day, as the eagle is Zeus's sacred animal. Prometheus was an immortal, so the liver grew back every day, but he was still tormented daily from the pain, until he was freed by Heracles during The Twelve Labours.

To punish mankind, Zeus ordered the other gods to make Pandora as a poisoned gift for man. Pandora was given several traits from the different gods: Hephaestus molded her out of clay and gave her form; Athena clothed her and adorned her with necklaces made by Hephaestus as well as taught her manual dexterity and how to spin; Aphrodite gave her beauty; Apollo gave her musical talent and a gift for healing; Demeter taught her to tend a garden; Poseidon gave her a pearl necklace and the ability to never drown; Zeus made her idle, mischievous, and foolish; Hera gave her curiosity; Hermes gave her cunning, boldness and charm. The name Pandora, thus, derives from the fact she's received gifts from all deities: "all gifts".

The most significant of these gifts, however, was a jar, (later mis-translated as "box"), given to Pandora either by Hermes or Zeus. Before he was chained to the rock, Prometheus had warned Epimetheus not to take any gifts from the gods. Epimetheus did not listen to his brother, however, and when Pandora arrived, he fell in love with her. Hermes told him that Pandora was a gift to the titan from Zeus, and he warned Epimetheus to not open the jar, which was Pandora's dowry.

Until then, mankind had lived a life in a paradise without worry. Epimetheus told Pandora never to open the jar she had received from Zeus. However, Pandora's curiosity got the better of her and she opened it, releasing all the misfortunes of mankind (plague, sorrow, poverty, crime, despair, greed, etc.). Once opened, she shut it in time to keep one thing in the jar: hope. The world remained extremely bleak for an unspecified interval, until Pandora "chanced" to revisit the box again, at which point Hope fluttered out. Thus, mankind always has hope in times of evil.

In another version of the myth, hope (Elpis) is considered the worst of the potential evils, because it is equated with terrifying foreknowledge. By preventing hope from escaping the jar, Pandora in a sense saves the world from the worst damage.

The daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora was Pyrrha, who married Deucalion and was one of the two who survived the deluge.

There are a few parallels with the Biblical myth of the Original Sin. Epimetheus was a Titan, and was ascribed by Zeus to give a positive trait to all living creatures (just as Adam gave out names). Pandora comes as Eve, and the opening of the box triggers a process similar to the Flight from Eden. Initially, Man was moulded out of clay by Prometheus and Epimetheus (which, in another way, links to Adam too).

Another guy Heracles freed as a bonus to one of the 12 labours is Theseus : that was during his descent to Hell, to steal Cerberus.

Hope as a form of evil

Isolating the part of Pandora's myth (see above) that deals with hope...

Interpretations diverge as to whether hope should be considered as a form of evil in the same way as the rest of the contents of Pandora's box. One common interpretation is that hope was "included" by a good-willing deity, as a gift to mankind by some marginally benevolent Olympian.

Another way to look at it is that hope is an illusion/delusion, and as such a form of evil just as great as the others, perhaps even the greatest of them all, because it seems to have a good side.

In a wicked way, both interpretations come together. Evil alone can plague mankind into numbness, or "suicide", while hope (delusion) helps it suffer through. It's complementary to evil because it draws out the suffering, indefinitely. Without hope, we'd be in purest hell, while delusion dilutes it a little bit. Whether that sort of illusion is good or bad is up to anybody to decide.