フォスフォフィライト
phosphophylite, the protagonist?
this section will not be spoiler free. please read or at least watch houseki no kuni before reading this.
phosphophylite, to me, is a protagonist who is not given plot armor, or the guarantee of safety due to being the main character. they experience loss, horror, innoncence, a loss of identity, a loss of drive, and ultimately manage to focus only on one thing, and that isn't even what they set out for.
when we first begin houseki no kuni, phos is presented as a very typical main character. they are shy, weak, with a drive to get stronger but a pretentiousness that they are 'too good' for the one job that their sensei managed to assign them. being a 3.5 on the mohs scale, they cannot be a fighter without sustaining serious injuries, as so much as a loud shout can shatter them to pieces. they try to find something that has 'never been found before', and is pointed towards one of the more solitary members of the gems' group, cinnabar.
cinnabar has been self-condemned to the night watch, as they are the only ones who can do it. their body seeps out mercury, something that dulls any crystal it touches, and therefore they are scared of getting close to people, in case they hurt them. phos seeks them out, asking for something they've never seen before, but also tries to recruit cinnabar into being their assistant, before they are briefly attacked by the lunarians. cinnabar is jealous of how phos can attract attention from the lunarians instantly, whilst they wish for nothing more than to be taken and go to the moon, and phos says that they will find something better than the night watch for cinnabar to do, so they want them to 'stop saying they're going to the moon'. this is the beginning of phos having 'greater' goals in life, as they are now doing things for other people rather than themselves.
phos proceeds to get eaten and dissolved into the shell of a giant mollusc, dropped into the monestary by the lunarians. although they are pieced together after, they can now understand said mollusc, now known as ventricosus. it invites them into the ocean, promising something 'new' to them. they recall the idea of humans, how they were split over time into the soul, bone, and flesh. phos listens, but phos suddenly loses their legs as they are used as a bargaining chip for ventricosus to try and retrieve their brother, acuteleas, from the lunarians. however, before any trade can be completed, acuteleas (in a dumbed down state) lashes out and manages to kill all of the lunarians that they were initially trading with. phos' legs are not returned to them, but instead acuteleas returns their weakened body to the shore, along with two sticks of agate shell.
these agate pieces are adjoined to phos' body, replacing their legs with newer, quicker ones. their inclusions, once bound to phos' feeble 3.5 hardness, are finally able to release their ability, which initially makes phos cocky and say they can fight on the front lines. however, they have also forgotten the names of one of their fellow gems. the doctor, rutile, whilst fixing phos up, tells the other gems that they have lost 1/3 of their memories, as they have lost their legs. they do not remember what happened in the ocean. despite this, phos still retains most of their personality, and laments over their promise to cinnabar. but they want to fight now, so they team up with the twin gems, amethyst 84 and 33. however, there is also the appearance of a new type of sunspot in the sky, with a new type of lunarians who attack the amethysts and crush them in front of phos' eyes. they are rescued, but phos laments over how their legs refused to move when needed most. they don't understand why they were so scared to the point of being unable to move.
winter then rolls around. the gems feed off sunlight usually, so they leave winter duties to one antartcite, who only forms during the colder temperatures. they sleep for the duration of the winter. other than phos, that is. they form some kind of friendship-partnership with antarc in the winter, but antarc makes the mistake of saying that they wish phos had arms to match the ability of their legs. phos loses their arms in the ice floe, but there is nothing to replace them either. they and antarc go to the shore of nascency, where all gems are born, and antarc attatches a gold-platium alloy to phos's body. it takes to it well, but encases phos in a cube of alloy, whilst antarc sees the lunarians on the horizon. antarc, weaker than phos at a 3 on the mohs scale, loses a significant part of their body during the fight, but they return to phos' cube to check on them. however, as they enter phos' view, their neck is skewered by a lunarian's arrow, and they are taken to the moon. phos experiences true loss for the first time, as they are powerless to stop the fragments of antarcticite being taken from this world, never to be seen again.
phos has lost so much of themselves by this point, that they take on antarticite as a person. they take on their personality, their role, with calculated precision and individuality and coldness that is so unlike their initial self that their fellow gems are scared of them when they wake up. they are now infinitely more powerful with that malleable alloy as their arms, but they aren't happy about it. their hair is cut short, and they look physically identical to antarcticite. however, their eyes are constantly trained on the future. they need to know more, as it becomes more and more apparent that their sensei, someone they've loved and trusted their whole lives, is far more intertwined with the lunarians than he appears. their new goal becomes communication with the lunarians, but all they can get out of them are pathetic puffs of air. so phos decides they will go to the moon and talk to the lunarians themselves, and invites cinnabar. it is something other than the nightwatch they can do. but cinnabar points out it's not fun, and phos said it would be fun. so they cannot accept, for it feels like phos has forgtten their true promise, and is now blindly following their half-memory of cinnabar. cinnabar doesn't like how every time they see phos, they look different. they are worlds apart, despite living so close.
the anime, Land of the Lustrous, finishes here. there are 12 episodes, and it finishes with phos looking like antarc, with striped legs and alloyed arms, short hair, and being much taller, as their body has stretched to accomodate the volume of alloy within them. but this is not how the manga ends phos' endless turmoil of body modification.
the manga and anime overlap near the end, when phos is still looking for ways to communicate with the lunarians. phos meets the resident librarian, ghost quartz, and they end up teaming up to go against the lunarians. however, the top layer of their 'skin' is removed, leaving behind a completely different person, cairngorm. but to phos, this person, despite not even having the powder that makes them look like sensei, is antarcticite. and they don't want to lose them. phos had multiple episodes of seeing antarcticite appear from the solution they form from, and now their biggest fear, loss, is staring them in the face. so they encase cairngorm in their alloy, and drag them around, in a trance state that this person is 'definitely' antarcticite.
then, phos loses their head in a fight with the lunarians. it is taken to the moon. the gems aren't entirely sure what to do, but cairngorm offers up blue sapphire's head. blue sapphire isn't coming back, they say, and phos wakes up with new hair, and with a new voice in the back of their mind. blue sapphire is cold, manipulative, calculating, and therefore these things suddenly come easily to phos. they even run their hand through their hair like sapphire did, and it tips cairngorm off that something isn't quite right about this new transplant. but phos' hair is chopped off by another arrow from a lunarian, and their hair is even shorter than it was before. phos' hair was initially made up of petal-like segments, whilst blue sapphire has straight edges, and it makes them look ever more like antarcticite. but phos doesn't care about this. they continue on with their goal: communication with the lunarians. how? by going to the moon, of course.
7 gems choose to go to the moon. diamond, yellow diamond, alexandrite, cairngorm, benetite, amethyst 33, and phosphophylite. phos searches for the truth of their and the lunarians' existence, whilst the others have their own reasons for it.
okay i came back to this like 2 months later and forgot half of the events in such deep detail as i recounted it here (i had just finished it) so i guess that calls for a reread at some point. but that can come when i'm not worrying abt my grades and whatever.
overall, i'd just like you to know that houseki no kuni means a lot to me. its story is incredibly compelling, the characters are complex, and phos' transformation makes you reconsider humanity and its qualities. what do You consider to be a characteristic of the 'fundemental' human? anger? love? having a metaphorical heart, or a physical one?
it takes a lot to discuss something like houseki no kuni, and i tend to stray from it as words leave me behind, but it means a lot to me as a series. my favourite art is the one below, because it feels real and relateable. houseki no kuni is fiction, but it always felt tangible to me. the way 'human' phos looks upon their younger self, with no discernable expression, yet you can feel some sort of weight behind it. they know that this self of theirs will become what they are now, and that reminds me of myself one way or another.
houseki no kuni isn't for everyone, don't get me wrong. large amounts of body horror, body modification, things that would be intolerable if phos was actually human and not simply made of crystal are constant themes throughout the manga, but i think it's used incredibly well to both convey the worldbuilding and the plot. cosmic horror and the use of inimagineable amounts of time are used to the manga's advantage, to the point of the heat death of the world, and i believe that it really deserves more recognition for what it manges to pull off in terms of both its concept and exectution. my only advice is, if you ever read it, don't get attatched to anyone. they won't be around for long.