In the opening, Yoshiro is praying to Soh's Spirit Stone.
In her plaque, it says she worships their ancestors. But...it says their ancestors were gods of the mountain. This seems important so I'll be tackling it in another post on what Cursed Soh is.
A closer look...
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| Can't see... |
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| From the trailer. |
It's quite...grotesque? The branch growing out of her left shoulder reminds me of the flower armor on Soh's right shoulder.
Her pose is different to Yoshiro's.
I tried using photomode to look at Soh's Spirit Stone during the Batsu fight in the prologue.
It might never have been rendered because the opening is an FMV. Maybe there's no 3D render of her Spirit Stone? But in the true ending, when we see Shadow Soh, there's the Spirit Stone and it's not an FMV.
So, the Path of the Goddess is purifying the land while becoming defiled and your body becoming an object of worship until the next Maiden is chosen. Then you return as a Messenger to guide the next Maiden to the same fate.
The punishment for depleting the mountain's resources is that their descendants(Chosen Maidens) must endure defilement the way the goddess did? Good way to teach a lesson but humanity never changes. Nothing changes until Soh's cycle.
I can only assume by Yoshiro and Soh's interactions, that Soh cares for her descendant and doesn't want the same fate for her, creating Cursed Soh. It's why Cursed Soh emerges only in Soh's cycle.
But was Soh really the only one to care?
(One of the possible themes of Kunitsu-Gami is how the destruction of resources affects future generations?)