Zeus’s turn, yay…Spoiler: Doi’s explanation is exactly what you thought it would be (minus the Persephone connection, why would you even think about that).
Anahita here. Alex here. Demeter here. Amon is here.
As the main god of Greek mythology, Zeus has been the theme of a great number of sculptures and paintings ever since Antiquity. He’s such a prominent god, even people who aren’t too familiar with mythology know him. Now that I think about it, Greek mythology was the very reason I fell in love with myths as a child. Back then, there were quite a lot of TV programmes about various mythologies, civilisations and relics, the most popular chief god was Zeus and manga inspired by Greek mythology were also very successful. He is the God of my mythological roots, so I obviously decided to design him as well as I could.
But once I started drawing him I fell prey to indecision, since I had a feeling that drawing him normally would have made me add a ‘Super’ before his name… (wry). The first image that comes to mind is that of an old man wearing a toga and an ancient Greek style armour, but I had some doubts about drawing the same type of figure you can encounter in other works. I then challenged myself to emphasise originality and display lesser known mythological facts or obscure anecdotes.
With that in mind, the first thing I wanted to draw was Zeus’s duality. Zeus is a chief god, so the image of justice is strong, but in truth he also had quite the malicious and sleazy side (laughs). I’m going to leave out why that side appeared, but there are various interesting theories, like it being the fault of humans and so on. If anyone is interested in this, please do check it out.
So, I tried to adapt these two sides to the descriptions found in legends and figured I should apply the concepts of good and evil to Zeus’s armour. The good side is symbolised by the figure resembling a sculpture with the armour of ‘brightness’ and the kerauno [thunderbolt]. The wicked side is represented by the beast-like figure wearing the armour of ‘fear’ and the adamantium sickle. This is how the Zeus of this form was born, as a sort of final form you can glimpse in battle. By the way, I also subtly emphasised his crotch, since it’s part of who he is (laughs).
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