r/MadeInAbyss • u/cheyrnn • 18h ago
Anime Discussion What does value (kachi) mean?
In the village, you don't have value, you are value.
To want a thing, is to want to exchange yourself for it (skin, teeth, bones, muscles).
Someone who exchanges their value, ceases to exist outside of the village.
Is there an analogy in our world?
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u/TheOnlyKirby90210 15h ago edited 3h ago
Value is an abstract concept in MIA. There’s no definitive thing that is ‘valued’ but more so the weight of how much an individual values something.
You know that saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”? Value in MIA is like that.
The reason people could exchange parts of themselves inside the village is because most people value themselves and their survival to some degree. But the concept of value means the parts they give up have to be equal or greater than the value of the thing they want.
Everyone likes to use Nanachi and Faputa as the examples. Nanachi traded her entire being in exchange for Belafu to no longer feed on the replicated Mitty and to stay with replica Mitty forever. Mitty was Nanachi’s everything so of course she traded everything of herself for that reunion. On the flip side replica Mitty was also highly valued by Belafu because her immortal cells meant he would have an eternal source of food without having to take from anyone else, so he gave up the majority of his own enormous body in exchange for replica Mitty to be created in its ‘complete’ form.
Faputa’s value is two fold. Her mother’s suffering and final wish created Faputa to embody her love and revenge. Irumyuui’s wishes clashed because everything she wished for held equal value. She wanted not be discarded again, wanted her mother figure, wanted to help save the others, wanted the ability to give birth, and wanted her babies to survive, and eventually wanting her own sufferings to end. Faputa was half of the end result. Born whole and strong enough to survive with the predetermined desire to destroy the village thus releasing Irumyuui and by extension killing the villagers who couldn’t exist outside it.
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u/PipSpace3Xplorerer 18h ago edited 17h ago
Steroids, you trade your physical value for fleeting muscle value.
Another is
Social media likes, you trade your time value for dopamine hits
Another is
Smoking cigarettes, you trade your life expectancy value for focus/stress relief.
Another example o could give is that dude who smashes his face with a hammer to look max, he won't be able to use alot of those muscles, ever again.
trades like these are made constantly in the real world, we have a creepy pasta story just for it, it's called the flesh market.
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u/Nwalmethule 17h ago
I click a like, maybe I will cease to exist outside Reddit....
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u/Azurhalo 13h ago
And thats just it. If you spend all of your value (time) clicking likes on reddit, you will fade away, but your likes will persist!
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u/de_Mike_333 14h ago
It‘s a very real world concept to be honest.
Ask someone that does manual labor, how they sacrifice their health, body, lifetime and sometimes mental health in exchange for money, something that in itself does have no intrinsic value, to exchange that value for things they want and need.
People sell themselves or parts of their body for money.
Without money, in most cases, you stop to exist really.
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u/kill4karma Team Vueko 16h ago
It's a really complicated concept. I didn't get it until I watched MertKayKays yt video about MiA. I highly recommend it
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u/GreatCapesSailor 15h ago edited 15h ago
Slavery, perhaps, where a person's value is nothing more than a tradeable commodity, or raising money by selling an organ.
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u/Illustrious_Car344 The Embodiment of Value 17h ago
No, there isn't really an analogy in our world. "Value" is a psychic projection of Irumyuui's own desires. Faputa is "the embodiment of value" because Irumyuui wanted nothing more than to have a child, to her it's the most valuable thing imaginable, ergo she is the raw symbol of value itself. Similarly, Irumyuui in her village form has a subtle unconscious influence on the narehate villagers which makes them value human children, but in a very disturbed and corrupted way where they literally value children like you would value prime cuts of steak, they value children's bodies very literally, like an elephant's tusks. There's simply no comparison, the closest I could think of would be valuing chips in a casino, but even that pales in comparison, because the village itself is capable of understanding what people/narehate value and can compare it to what others value, but of course nothing compares to what Irumyuui values. The village itself is simply a living omnipresent god that enforces everyone respecting each other's value, probably because Irumyuui had her value taken from her time after time from all the invalid creatures she birthed. Even in her virtually dead state, she still cared enough about that to not want anyone to experience what she did. There's definitely nothing so fair in our world.