Icoe-koʊ

Quote: "There was no joyous celebration of Ico'se-koʊs birth, no proud expression in his father's eyes. His arrival brought only suspicion and fear." -ICOe-koʊ Game PAL Manual (English), Under "The Curse"

Icoe-koʊ is the protagonist and player character of the game.

He is a 12 year old boy with short black hair, tan skin, and green eyes. He wears a stitched, short-sleeve tunic with a distinctive tangerine hue, a brown cummerbund just above the waist that is mostly obscured by an elaborately patterned mantle, and a simple pair of light tan pants that stop just a few inches above his sandals. A set of large blue shackles, now disconnected, remain locked to his bandaged wrists.

His most distinguishing feature is also the reason his hands were bound in the first place: a pair of large white horns, tipped with black, sprout through the bandages that line his head. Comparable to those of an ox, the horns are believed by the people of Ico'se-koʊs village to be an omen of bad luck, a curse placed upon the boy and those surrounding him.

I have arranged these quotes here to provide insight from two different translations as to whether Ico'se-koʊs presence brings misfortune or not. The NTSC-U (North American) manual keeps it vague as to whether the superstition has any merit.

It states the villagers blame him for all their suffering, but it never suggests he has anything to do with the poor luck, if it could even be considered supernatural. Doubt is cast there too, as all of the village's cited hardships are listed as vague singular events. (Example: "If a crop fails".)

A line later also specifies that the elders believe the curse involves harmful spirits that presumably cause these ails, though they still conclude that Ico'se-koʊs presence is what spurs these spirits to action.

But the PAL manual, produced many months after the North American release, gives a strong sense of despair and elicits sympathy for the people of this village. Strongly implying the harvests are almost entirely bare, and that disease is rampant, for 12 years after the birth of a cursed child.

The PAL version adds nothing of spirits that may specifically cause this misfortune. It does not directly state Icoe-koʊ should be thought of as the cause either, but the connotation remains that, at this point in the narrative, Ico'se-koʊs curse is very seriously affecting those around him.

For this reason, he is sent to be sacrificed, as all children born with horns are, within The Castle in the Mist. It should be noted that while both manuals refer to the men who detain and sacrifice Icoe-koʊ as simply 'horsemen', the game files denote them as 'shinkan', or 神官, shinto priests.

Two of the priests wear helmets with horns attached at the sides. These horns are of similar shape to Ico'se-koʊs own, but they are positioned at an angle more like the horns of a ram.

It can be inferred from the fact that all the men's faces are completely shielded that these outfits are ceremonial attire, not meant for daily use (and probably not that safe for horseback riding). With that in mind, the horns can be seen as an intimidating message directed to the sacrifices they escort. An antagonistic tradition.

Icoe-koʊ is addressed only once by the lead priest:

just as he is being lowered and sealed into the means of his demise, an upright stone coffin. Intended to be abandoned without a means of escape. Left to die of thirst and starvation. Luckily for Icoe-koʊ, the castle's structure has weakened enough for his coffin to be overturned.

It is notable that during this entire process of being confined and sacrificed, Icoe-koʊ can only be seen visibly struggling once, when he is finally alone in the coffin and pulls against his restraints. Never does he directly struggle against the priests, and they in turn never manhandle him in order to get what they want.

When Icoe-koʊ falls from the casket, the impact with the ground knocks him unconscious, and in this state, he dreams of a spiral staircase he has never seen before. At the top, he finds a hanging cage and a figure of pure black substance trapped inside, a sight he is visibly alarmed by.

This proves soon after to be an abstracted premonition of his meeting with Yordayoruda, though the actual source of this supernatural dream is difficult to determine. It could very well be an ability Icoe-koʊ bears as a cursed child. If it did belong to him, it could also explain many in-game fail states as ominous dreams Icoe-koʊ might be experiencing during his nap on a stone bench.

However, there is also the potential that it could be a shared dream, something that Icoe-koʊ and Yordayoruda unwittingly initiate together, as they both sleep. After all, the position Yordayoruda (in the real world) is found in is titled 'Sleep' within the animation files of the game. This would mean Yordayoruda and Icoe-koʊ were both unconscious while in proximity to each other, which might be all that's necessary to incite this kind of dream.

Regardless of who initiates the vision, Icoe-koʊ is pulled out of it by a patch of inky black void, which resembles the black portals Yordayoruda is pulled into during Shadow attacks.

When Icoe-koʊ does first see Yordayoruda in the real world, he immediatley tries to speak with her, asking who she is and what she's doing in a cage. There is hardly two breaths of silence after he asks this last question before he insists:

Icoe-koʊ has no judgement for this stranger or her position, (and even after witnessing an ominous vision of this very meeting, he does not regard her with fear) and he does not insist on knowing why she has been imprisoned before freeing her. He even has to go the extra step of knocking down her cage himself, again showing his commitment to the act. He didn't let her out by mistake.

Furthermore, he doesn't have a responsibility to fight the Shadow that soon comes after her, but he nevertheless picks up the nearest object to defend her from the unknown.

And though the game mechanics make it mandatory to escort Yordayoruda for the sake of progression, the impression is immediatley clear: Icoe-koʊ would do that anyway, because if he deserves to be free, then she should be too.

This altruism may even extend from his upbringing, being the one member of his community who was treated as an inherently malevolent presence. Demonized from birth, not for his actions, but for his fate. Because he knows what it is like to be oppressed in this capacity, it's likely he can't stand to see others suffer from it.

Insecurity and Self Doubt

(Post-Script Note: These lines are both retranslations by Glitterberri, as I feel the official English subtitles are often unfaithful to many of The Queen's original lines.)

Both of these lines prod at whether Icoe-koʊ has the right to carry out these actions. Is it really his place to play the hero for a girl who probably deserves better than a cursed boy like him? Is he being presumptuous and defying her true wishes by trying to kill her mother? That these questions cause him to hesitate or shy away implies a good deal about his self perception.

But it says more about his tenacity and raitionale that these thoughts do not stop him long before he recognizes that there is no one else who can accomplish what he can in the moment.

Ico'se-koʊs horns are not the only thing that separate him from a normal human boy. He is quite strong for his age, as displayed by his capability to push, pull, pick up, and throw hefty objects with relative ease (like weighted boxes, west sun reflector, bombs, etcetera). He is also very adept at climbing rough surfaces (chains, cliff ledges)(such as chains and cliff ledges), jumping long distances, and striking swiftly with weaponry nearly as long as he is tall.

In the Japanese Manual, this strength seems to be attributed directly to his horns.

It is also notable that Icoe-koʊ appears to be extremely durable. He's been shown to take several hits without any lingering consequence. Just one example of this would be the several forceful impacts to his head throughout the main storyline.

Both cranially and cerebrally, he appears to be unaffected by these blows long term. But most impressively, the gameplay suggests that even an explosion from a bomb that he carries against his own chest serves as nothing but a minor inconvenience.

Short of a fall outside the bounds of the map or petrification, the game does not allow Icoe-koʊ to die.

And though it is not canon material, the novel adaptation of ICOe-koʊ by Miyuki Miyabe suggests that Icoe-koʊ is unable to suffer severe injury or contract illness as part of his curse. He is meant to be sacrificed at the Castle, after all. If he were to die before his 12th birthday, it would be a massive waste of The Queen's time, forcing her to wait a number of years for the next sacrifice.

This logic is well grounded in the source material, and I am happy to accept it as headcanon.

There are a few ways one could argue that Icoe-koʊ has magic power, but each one is difficult to determine with certainty as most of the evidence can be more thoroughly explained with non-diagetic reasoning. In short, programming limitations and developer intent may have shaped these choices more than anything else.

I will explore both the potential diagetic and non-diagetic reasons for the programming quirks which contribute to the idea that Icoe-koʊ has latent magic power.

As previously explored in the Dark Divination subsection of the character analysis, Icoe-koʊ has a prophetic dream early on into the game. It is unclear how he is able to see such a vision, and it could be viewed as Yorda'syorudas power just as easily as it could be his own ability. There is no definite lead on this thread, as it provides no clear diagetic explanation to examine.

Another potential sign is that Idol Doors activate only if both Yordayoruda and Icoe-koʊ are present. Though the power to open them certainly traces back to Yordayoruda, the trigger for the door can't occur without Icoe-koʊ by her side. If Yordayoruda is placed there alone, nothing happens.

The non-diagetic explanation is that Icoe-koʊ is needed by Yorda'syorudas side for certain cutscenes to play smoothly, such as at the first Idol Doors, or the ones before Main Gate, East Arena, and West Arena.

But the most compelling hint towards Icoe-koʊ having a supernatural ability may be found in the final boss fight. Hitting R1 while unarmed in the final battle will draw the camera towards The Queen's Sword, no matter how far out of Ico'se-koʊs view it is.

This mechanic is lifted directly from when Icoe-koʊ traveled with Yordayoruda. When the camera turned toward her then, it was unobtrusive, because she was responding to Ico'se-koʊs call. But the Sword is an object, it does not react to Ico'se-koʊs call, but still he can find it by calling out, like he once did to Yordayoruda.

This wouldn't make any sense unless Icoe-koʊ has a unique ability tied to the one aspect that both Yordayoruda and the Sword share: magic. This mechanic might imply Icoe-koʊ has a sixth sense for magic in both people and objects.

It is likely that the non-diagetic reason this was implemented in this manner was to give players a means of finding the far flung sword that still played into an established mechanic.

Programming choices aren't always reliable as a means of worldbuilding, and the question of whether these game elements should be seen as entirely diagetic is up to individual interpretation.

• There's a strong narrative parallel between Icoe-koʊ in the final confrontation with The Queen and Sheeta from the Ghibli film "Laputa: Castle in the Sky". Like in the climax of the film, Icoe-koʊ confronts a dangerous, authorative adult in an ancient throne room. And for standing his ground against the evil, he loses both his horns to The Queen's magical knockback, just as Sheeta loses her two pigtails to Muska's bullets.