Wait, do Friends have knowledge about non-friend species?

LeekyRoot said:

Wait, do Friends have knowledge about non-friend species?

Well, the park has basically gone back to nature with the exception of a few buildings they presumably maintain and some "ruins". I'm sure that involves all the normal animals that would exist in their area of the globe (and some that wouldn't thanks to zoo animals being Friended and un-Friended, and potentially being able to survive transplanted into a new environment and also being near enough population to propagate themselves). I mean, they're not surprised by "new Friends", so clearly, there's other normal and extinct animals being Friended around.

Likewise, it's pretty clear the owls have information on most natural creatures, such that there's an expectation that they can identify new Friends.

This page actually brings up an interesting point. Throughout the manga and anime, and what info I could find about the game, I noticed that all of the friends were based on air-breathing vertebrate species, mostly mammals and birds, with a few reptiles and maybe one or two amphibians (the only one that comes to mind is Axolotl). This begs the question, where is the line drawn that determines whether a species can or cannot be Friended? Can fish be friends? invertebrates? I think we can rule out single-celled or otherwise microscopic organisms, else the park would be swarming with them.

Xeno-The-Hedgehog said:

This page actually brings up an interesting point. Throughout the manga and anime, and what info I could find about the game, I noticed that all of the friends were based on air-breathing vertebrate species, mostly mammals and birds, with a few reptiles and maybe one or two amphibians (the only one that comes to mind is Axolotl). This begs the question, where is the line drawn that determines whether a species can or cannot be Friended? Can fish be friends? invertebrates? I think we can rule out single-celled or otherwise microscopic organisms, else the park would be swarming with them.

I don't know much Friends lore, but someone else mentioned this a bit earlier, and you have the boundaries about right: There are no fish or insect friends, much less plant or fungus friends. The only aquatic friends are the likes of dolphins, penguins, and other homeothermic air-breathers.

It's also a bit of an odd hole in the lore, to the best of my knowledge, since if Ceruleans are formed when inorganic matter is struck by sandstar, and Friends are formed when animals (even dead animals, and sometimes even mythical animals that never existed at all) are struck, what happens when an un-friendable insect or fish or tree gets struck?

NWSiaCB said:

I don't know much Friends lore, but someone else mentioned this a bit earlier, and you have the boundaries about right: There are no fish or insect friends, much less plant or fungus friends. The only aquatic friends are the likes of dolphins, penguins, and other homeothermic air-breathers.

It's also a bit of an odd hole in the lore, to the best of my knowledge, since if Ceruleans are formed when inorganic matter is struck by sandstar, and Friends are formed when animals (even dead animals, and sometimes even mythical animals that never existed at all) are struck, what happens when an un-friendable insect or fish or tree gets struck?

I know I'm late to the party, but with KF2 done with a while ago, I think(?) I might have a satisfactory answer for this?
This is partly just a personal theory, and I don't remember the exact source, but in one of the fictions they explained that the Sandstar found on the island landed there meteorically. It's my theory that the first thing that came into contact with it after landing (possibly because it was a complex enough life form or because it landed on one and it didn't incinerate all of it on entry like it might smaller organisms) was a human female. This is why all Friends take a feminine human form when coming into contact with Sandstar: its copying the initial data it took in and transforming whatever it touches into a facsimile of that form. But only vertebrates are able to be transformed, possibly because a certain amount of human-like data must be present for the transformation to occur, and a spine is where that line is drawn.

As to why Ceruleans are formed, it's explained in KF2 that it's not all inanimate objects, otherwise the volcano the Sandstar sits in would end up one massive monster they'd need actual Shin Goji to fight. No, instead it links back to humans. The things that become Ceruleans are man-made items, like cameras and teapots, because these items also have a certain amount of human information to them. And while the anime explains it as "an emotional connection," I personally think it's more likely that they've just had enough contact with humans to have that information. Your hands are all over a camera or teapot; tons of people sit and sweat on buses; Kyururu is constantly fiddling with her sketch pad and has herself all over it.

But it didn't react to the inside of a jar, because there's no human there. You don't need to stick your fingers in there for any reason; heck, the particular jar I'm referencing was found at a research station, so it was probably sterilized or at least cleaned. And the reason Ceruleans run wild is because you're attempting to convert a non-living creature into a complex living one instantaneously. And they're just following the most basic of human instincts: eating.

So that's my explanation for how Sandstar works. Not sure how it kept Kyururu alive for X0 years without aging, but it is just a theory.

reversemoon said:

But it didn't react to the inside of a jar, because there's no human there. You don't need to stick your fingers in there for any reason; heck, the particular jar I'm referencing was found at a research station, so it was probably sterilized or at least cleaned. And the reason Ceruleans run wild is because you're attempting to convert a non-living creature into a complex living one instantaneously. And they're just following the most basic of human instincts: eating.

Worth remembering, fossilized bones, including those of Gastornis (Which died out at latest roughly 45 mya), are also capable of being Friended... as are objects related to mythic creatures (I.E., the Yatagarasu and Yamata no Orochi). The former have been dead and most* traces of organic life removed for not just millennia, but tens of millions of years. The latter never had any life to begin with, in the case of those carved from stone (IIRC, what are "Friended" are "yorishiro" of said entities).

As for the line, it does not appear to be just being a vertebrate. It appears it's being a member of tetrapoda that's the line. There are no fish-type Friends.

*I say most, because with the right preservation conditions and the right tools you can almost completely reconstruct even a long-extinct animal down to its coloration- see Anchironis.

Garrus said:

Worth remembering, fossilized bones, including those of Gastornis (Which died out at latest roughly 45 mya), are also capable of being Friended... as are objects related to mythic creatures (I.E., the Yatagarasu and Yamata no Orochi). The former have been dead and most* traces of organic life removed for not just millennia, but tens of millions of years. The latter never had any life to begin with, in the case of those carved from stone (IIRC, what are "Friended" are "yorishiro" of said entities).

As for the line, it does not appear to be just being a vertebrate. It appears it's being a member of tetrapoda that's the line. There are no fish-type Friends.

*I say most, because with the right preservation conditions and the right tools you can almost completely reconstruct even a long-extinct animal down to its coloration- see Anchironis.

>There are no fish-type Friends
That's because to become a Friend, you need a certain level of 'self'. Not to a level of complete human-like consciousness, but to a level of something that aware that they are different from their surroundings. Fishes does not have a sense of self, so they can't became Friend. There's a particular exception for this rule, that is cephalopods that certainly exhibits high level of intelligence yet haven't formed a Friend.

Garrus said:

Worth remembering, fossilized bones, including those of Gastornis (Which died out at latest roughly 45 mya), are also capable of being Friended... as are objects related to mythic creatures (I.E., the Yatagarasu and Yamata no Orochi). The former have been dead and most* traces of organic life removed for not just millennia, but tens of millions of years. The latter never had any life to begin with, in the case of those carved from stone (IIRC, what are "Friended" are "yorishiro" of said entities).

As for the line, it does not appear to be just being a vertebrate. It appears it's being a member of tetrapoda that's the line. There are no fish-type Friends.

Rathurue said:

>There are no fish-type Friends
That's because to become a Friend, you need a certain level of 'self'. Not to a level of complete human-like consciousness, but to a level of something that aware that they are different from their surroundings. Fishes does not have a sense of self, so they can't became Friend. There's a particular exception for this rule, that is cephalopods that certainly exhibits high level of intelligence yet haven't formed a Friend.

I understand that there are a number of Friends that are dead or come from fictitious sources (this whole comic is about one, after all). It's just that the in-universe explanation for that goes into the whole "Kemonoplasm" thing, and that's a can of worms I don't want to open. I will say that part of that explanation is that they use DNA from living animals and supplement what's missing with Kemonoplasm (ex. Serval is about 99% her own DNA and 1% KP, Woolly Mammoth is about 80% her and other elephant DNA and 20% KP, and someone like Kuro-chan would borrow about 20% DNA from existing animals and 80% would be KP.)

Oh, there are at least two Fish-Type Friends, but they're mythical creatures so I don't know if that counts as actual fish. One is Kinsachi, the Tiger-headed fish found on top of Nagoya castle, and the other is Jinmengyo who's a human-faced carp. I think Jinmengyo also makes an appearance during the one of the chapters in the park. I thought there was also a Magoi one, but I couldn't find it.

And I thought fish had nodocords, not spines. If I'm wrong that's fine, that's just what I remembered.

reversemoon said:

Oh, there are at least two Fish-Type Friends, but they're mythical creatures so I don't know if that counts as actual fish. One is Kinsachi, the Tiger-headed fish found on top of Nagoya castle, and the other is Jinmengyo who's a human-faced carp. I think Jinmengyo also makes an appearance during the one of the chapters in the park. I thought there was also a Magoi one, but I couldn't find it.

And I thought fish had nodocords, not spines. If I'm wrong that's fine, that's just what I remembered.

I think mythological creatures let them play fast and loose with the rules, so if there were any fish Friends, they would be in there.

Fish are definitely proper vertebrates, including sharks and rays. Chordates outside of vertebrata are what you're thinking of, most likely the lancelet.

There's also the possiblity that there aren't fish friends because sandstar can't diffuse through substances much denser than air. All aquatic mammals are air breathers, and so must surface regularly where they can be exposed. Fish have no requirement to ever surface.

Arcana55 said:

There's also the possiblity that there aren't fish friends because sandstar can't diffuse through substances much denser than air. All aquatic mammals are air breathers, and so must surface regularly where they can be exposed. Fish have no requirement to ever surface.

There's always underwater volcanoes.

Irony of ironies, as of this year, we now have a fish friend (Coelocanth) and an invertebrate friend (Japanese Devil Fish).