I love this topic when it comes to color associations between colors. Another one you notice is that Poison in the West tends to be a sickly green color, but in Japan they associate purple with Poison.
I talk about that in the video 😄 it very well could be the case, and is in some instances, where you can actually see individual leaves, but I feel like my theory is more fun! lol and there are some times, like if the character is flying in an open field and uses a wind attack, where would the leaves suddenly be appearing from, you know? I kind of lump this in, along with green tornadoes and storms, as part of Fujin's green motif.
@@humblemudgames I would say that you're probably right that Fujin being green gave the Japanese the concept that wind should be green, I'd also speculate that Fujin is green because the wind is most easily seen in trees and grass blowing in it. As I recall the Chinese elements don't have a "wind", they have fire, water, earth, metal and wood. There wind is a subcategory of wood in the same way ice is to water, because they linked the feeling of the wind blowing to the image of trees blowing in it. Given the two country's proximity and history, I'd be surprised if Japan didn't inherit some of that conceptual link themselves and made Fujin green because of that.
@@geovaughan8261 I did think about this on my own, but I didn't think people would stick around to watch me go back to talking about leaves. I touch on it with the leaves in the wind in Albert's Dragoon transformation, so all the dots are there for people to connect if they want to. Attention spans are hard to hold, and I can see in the analytics -- A majority of people are only watching only the first 4-5 minutes of this video and not even making it to the Fujin part, lol!
@@humblemudgames Before the reboot, all Green Bionicle characters were associated with wind with each Toa among them being called Toa of Air. But after the reboot the same Toa got rebranded to "Toa of the Jungle".
The little details like putting the name of the game on screen when showing footage are appreciated. Can't wait for this channel to blow up, some of the best video game content on this platform.
Thank you! Someone suggested that in my Q&A video so I started adding it. I also put lists of all games and songs featured in the video in the description too.
As a green enthusiast : Nice work! One thing you may also enjoy is how Earth element in video games seems to have a duality, with different color representation depending on the take. For example if the Earth interpretation is thematically tied to rocks and stones then it will be represented in browns and yellows. BUT if it thematically includes plants then it will typically be represented with the color green. Narratively this also changes what the element represents, from being a stalwart protector ally who can shoulder any burden in brown or yellow, to being a more compassionate protector character focused on growth and valuing life in green.
This is a wonderful comment and I love your username! I completely agree and have found the same to be true in my experience too. Rosetta in Granblue Fantasy Relink manipulates a lot of plant life & can be offensive, trap, heal, and likely poison too. That would probably all be considered "earth magic". But if there was ever a Zelda RPG and you could recruit a Goron, you just KNOW he'd also be an earth type, but more of the "I throw rocks and am tanky" type like you mentioned.
@@humblemudgames oh hey, if it interests you further, should check out Max derrat. He has a video on devil may cry but a part of it touches on the usage of the 4 cardinal video game colors and their connections to alchemy, buddhism, etc.
I first noticed this with Bakugan as a kid. I didn't even get into it, but looking from the outside in, all the elemental colorations I saw made intuitive sense to me EXCEPT for wind.
Green is associated with wind in Hinduism, which carried over into Buddhism and thus flowed discretely into Japanese culture. Also, the blue-green dragon is associated with wind and rain in Chinese folklore. Which, again, discretely influenced Japanese culture. Though, yeah, it is probably just the most practical colour to use without confusing your players. Unless you've got 18 types like Pokemon and need to work with shades just to be intelligible.
Honestly Pokemon probably has ever JRPG element, but ironically don’t include the most famous elements of Light and Wind. Flying is probably equivalent to Wind, and Light or Holy magic probably has to go to Fairy type since there is no other equivalent.
@@joesunday199 honestly, not particularly. while its offensive type chart is _somewhat_ simple to imagine, moving something like this from a move tag to a full-on type raises a very important question: the hell would sound pokemon even be weak to. or resist. there's a lot of connections you could make for why sound would strongly affect a certain type or why another type would be able to resist it, but how would you define what happens when an exploud gets hit by something that isn't just a repeat of the type it already currently has? like, really. what would a mono sound exploud, because what else would be a more _perfect_ representative of a sound type, be weak to also ... what pokemon would even _be_ sound type? exploud, chatot, kricketune, chimeco, rillaboom, _maybe_ politoed, meloetta if they felt like changing the type of a _mythical,_ and ... that's about it? toxtricity, kommo-o, noivern, bronzong, primarina, skeledirge, and scream tail are all _strongly_ associated with sound, but they're all typed out and i can't imagine anyone being convinced that _toxtricity_ doesn't embody the electric poison typing or that bronzong doesn't ooze mythical energy. and. isn't made of metal. also: overdrive? torch song? bug buzz? metal sound, grass whistle? i would say sparkling aria could get away with being sound type because liquid voice, but that's a _hidden_ ability and it'd be _real odd_ if the water starter's signature move, the one that's turned into its _signature z-move,_ wasn't a _water_ move if used by the starter primarina. but beyond that specific case ... would these just stop being sound moves? or would sound be a type _and_ a move tag? or would all these moves with a clear elemental theme ( and, with more than a few, _also_ being signature moves ) just suddenly get wiped down into being sound-type? like i get it, it's easy to look at exploud and chatot and how a bunch of sound moves are normal type and think, "oh, they could just do what they did with fairy!" but that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. sound is a _very_ diverse property that's used by a lot of different pokemon in a lot of different ways, and beyond that, it just ... doesn't really have the _physicality_ of something a pokemon can _be._ that's why it makes sense as a move tag, as something pokemon can _do_ without it being something they fundamentally _embody,_ in the same way that punching and biting do
I didn't include that because the green color usually has to do with storm clouds that have a large amount of water or ice, not necessarily being 100% wind. I could totally see that being the inspiration behind green tornado spells like Aero, though. But of course, we didn't always know *why* storms and tornadoes could be green, so that could perhaps be why wind magic is green in Japanese media also, or maybe why Fujin is usually depicted as green, since maybe ancient peoples saw those green storms!
I always thought it was green because of the rustling of leaves and the connotation of nature. Standing near a field and watching wind knock down arcs of grass as they move across.
also the elements of earth, fire, wind, and water are western alchemy elements. the east tend to go off different set of elements usually from fengsui which are earth, wood, fire, water, and metal. wind is actually not a recognized element by itself. and also in feng sui, the elements have a kind of rock, paper, scissors relation
The tabletop game Exalted has my favorite color associations. The core five elements are red for fire, green for wood, white for earth, black for water, and blue for air
The seven celestial associations are gold for the sun, silver for the moon, orange for the Journey star, blue for the Serenity star, red for the Battle Star, green for the Secrets Star, and purple for the Endings Star
Breaking the color coded conventions is really trippy too. When I was playing Trinity Trigger I had the hardest time wrapping my head around water being pink and fire being blue. Lightning was still yellow so at least that one made sense.
@@jacobkristensen1692 water only really shows its color in its deepest depths, hence why a cup of water is fully translucent and the surface of any body of it matches the color of the sky ( which, of course, is _usually_ also blue, but even something as common as sunset will affect both ) or whatever particles are dissolved into it. so a water element being a color other than blue could reflect the conditions of the world itself, where due to a non-earth-like atmosphere, heavenly bodies, or the chemistry of lakes and rivers, water is just not blue in the situations we'd expect it to be 'course fantasy water can also just _be_ pink. pink water may be scientifically plausible, but a fictional land can have rain and rivers and oceans all colored like pepto bismol and that's just how it is there, just adding to the wonder and fantasy of it all
THANK YOU! I always thought of wind as green and earth as yellow. Some games flip this and it really annoys me. Fire = Red Water = Blue Wind = Green Earth = Yellow or Brown Ice = Light Blue Holy = White (sometimes Yellow) Darkness = Black (sometimes Purple) Lightning = Yellow/Light Blue/Purple Psychic = Purple or Pink
Chrono Cross has the entire “green” innate as either wind or plant based. I recently was talking with friends when I realized this isn’t a color association most people have. I used to question it when I was growing up, but it’s been second nature to me for so long that I don’t even think about it anymore.
When I was assigning colors to elements, I started with red and cyan, since they're opposites on the color wheel and work well for fire and water. Then I just moved 90 degrees to get yellow-green and blue-magenta, which became earth and air respectively. I tinted the violet towards white for a sort of lavender wind, and the chartreuse towards black to get a deeper, mossy-green earth.
I like that, that makes a lot of sense! Sounds somewhat similar to the strategy games like Skies of Arcadia seem to employ. Was this color assignment done for a game of your own?
@humblemudgames in theory! It's more like a loose idea I'm waiting to implement if a game project ever goes in the direction of me needing to color-code the four classical elements. I just really love thinking about what symbols and colors I'd use for different aspects of a mechanic, even if I don't know what I'd use it for yet, haha!
I'm not alone!! Love to see what you found, recently i've found out that the green (Midori) in japan it's pretty new they were used to calle it blue, some elders still call it blue (ao) maybe that word coul influenciate the game /anime media in general industry
Also, if talking about Purple associations; Darkness/Shadow uses Purple. Edit: I have seen both Darkness and Gravity tied to each other. Certain users of Darkness can control Gravity. I wonder why that is.
5:32 I noticed the green = wind thing as a kid too, and yeah, the plant association was my first guess at an explanation too: You can't really see wind because it's air, but you can totally see leaves blowing around and grass waving in the wind, and those things are most likely green. So I guess that makes sense. But over time, I also gradually noticed- and this is an even more subtle thing- that sometimes air and plant magic are actually rolled into the same elemental category or otherwise directly associated with each other. So I started to guess that maybe there's some sort of... air/plant combo element in Asian cultures? Later on, I eventually learned of the "wood" element from wuxing elemental philosophy, which seems to also be the de facto air element in that system too, and that seemed to confirm that theory. On top of that, green is also a fairly common "healing" color, so to speak, with healing effects tending to be green, (or maybe a blue-green teal, but still, close to green) green numbers in Final Fantasy games indicate healed HP, and so on. Which ties into the wood thing, because the wood element isn't about physical wood so much as the... vital or life essence of plants and nature. Or maybe natural life and vitality as a whole? Which would totally make sense for green being the color of healing as well, especially when games thematically associate wind, natural greenery, and healing energies all together. Nature is living things, all living things breathe, air is wind, it all kind of wraps together into green being the natural vitality color, and wind being the familiar physical element most associated therewith, in a somewhat messy way. ...Well, except for when water is the healing physical element instead, that is. Like I said, it's not absolutely consistent. But since different cultures clearly have different elemental philosophies in general, and that doesn't stop the individual systems from being relevant to the individuals who subscribe to them, I see no reason that video games can't also choose to follow one elemental philosophy or another on a case-by case basis. So yeah, while I certainly agree that giving green to wind because the other colors were already more clearly taken by other elements makes sense, and is most likely a factor, I've come to believe that there's definitely a lot more thinking to it than that, and said thinking goes back a long ways.
You're absolutely right, and whereas you went down the nature/wood element that's closely associated with Tao/Daoism, I went the Shinto route with Fuujin. It's just fun to ponder, right? However, I think things like what you have mentioned here and some things other commenters have said warrants a follow-up video to this one one day. I'm just glad this video opened up such a discussion!
Now that I think about it, purple is used in a lot of less common powers like gravity, or "evil" powers like darkness or spirit. Like you said, it's not always the case. But it happens a lot.
Yeah, when I was looking up things about green wind, the 'gravity is purple' and 'purple is powerful' trope came up too. Ganondorf comes to mind for me.
I see purple as a good color for lightning/thunder energy tbh, tho it can overlap a bit with darkness. Thunder is bright purple, darkness is dark almost black purple , maybe with magenta accents
@@petrus9067 Genshin Impact has Electro (Lightning) which is colored Purple. Darkness and Light are interesting Elements. You don't see them as much as Earth, Fire, Air, and Water. I think even Plants/Nature are only slightly more common.
I don't know how common of a name it is, but I've encountered a character actually named Midorikaze, literally 'green wind', before. There's also Midori from FE Fates, who is Kaze's daughter. Could be related.
I thought I was the only one who thought about elements and their colors back then. I hope you delve into more topics in similar vein like purple vs. yellow lightning. EDIT: And maybe darkness having different shrouds of color, sometimes it's depicted as pitch black, sometimes it's red and black, and sometimes it's black and purplish.
yeah, I hint at that with the green tornadoes that show in the video! they mostly come from storm clouds though, the tie in with tornadoes is a misconception!
In Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, the Wind Armor, Wind Demon, and every DSS card combination including Griffin (the wind card) that gives the protagonist a visible effect, weapon, or familiar is green.
First time watching the channel! Great video, learned something new! I always associated green with nature/grass type, and like you touched on the wind going through the trees, blowing off the leaves etc. To me it's just tradition but it's a solid video on why this might be. Bravo! :)
I mean, it's often represented with the color yellow in the west, so is this so wierd? If you ask me, white, light blue or grey would make more sense. Also, Green is not a primary color, it's Red, Blue and Yellow.
Man, I really wish I could remember what game I played in the past where wind was blue and water was green! I remember being super weirded out by it. 😅
Really neat video! Another green example that I thought of immediately was that in the persona games, the "garu" spell family, which are wind spells, are all green. I think they've been green since the beginning, which would go back to 1996. In the mainline Shin Megami Tensei series, they tend to use "zan" spells, which are 'force' but seem to be essentially the same, and I think those are also green and would go back even farther - possibly back to the original Megami Tensei in 1987.
I never really questioned this, I grew up with bionicle which explicitly drew this connection, mostly because the toa of air lived in the jungle. Prior to watching the video I thought "it's probably grass cutter, sword with wind powers and associated with grass, the blade probably became green over time" Seems like I wasn't that far off
Your first hypothesis - the one of primary colors needing representation, and white being taken by Holy (though Holy is not always an element in RPGs...) actually seems WAY more likely to me. But it does make sense that the Fujiin connection might influence just how acceptable green is as wind to a Japanese author. As an American, I always would have colored them like A:TLA does, because a willingness to use secondary colors allows more options. Air = Green was always odd enough to me that I noticed this. Also: another example - Luc from the Suikoden Series.
Yeah, I caused a bit of confusion when I said that. Green is a primary color in computer graphics, which is where my head was at. But the more traditional, well-known definition for primary colors says that yellow is primary. So that's my b there.
Well, in Kamen Rider, Kamen Rider Wizard Wind Style in green, Kuga Pegasus form is also green, Double Cyclone half forms are also green, in Megaman battles network 2 the Wood style charged attack is a green tornado, in Bakugan, wind atribute known as Ventus is also green, in Rpg Maker the RTP icon for wind magic is also green, and the list goes on forever.
also the elements of magic as we know them come from western alchemy and in the east, they historically go by completely different elements, usually derivative of feng sui. those elements are earth, fire, water, wood, and metal. and those elements have complex rock, paper, scissors relation with each other alongside other complex cultural nuances
if I were to make a part two, I'd definitely dive into this next. wood being a catch-all for nature, basically. Lots of people have brought it up and it's very interesting!
@@arx3516 not relevant. my point is that that is a part of western culture. aristotle has no historical significance in the cultures of far east asia. their historical elements are completely different than those derived from aristotle. even if it isnt directly derived from feng shui, the eastern elements are very different.
I'll be 100% with you just because I don't want to take credit; I talked to my buddy Tristin during the process of making this video and he was like, "oh! Disgaea does this too! I can send you some footage if you want!" and so I took him up on it. I have Disgaea V and want to dive in, I just haven't gotten the chance yet! But yeah, I didn't want to take credit for that. I shouted him out in the description as well.
@@humblemudgames 5 is a REALLY good introduction to Series. Disgaea 2 is my personal favorite, I honestly think is the best one, and the Newest Release 7 was GOATed, can't go wrong with any of those. Just Avoid 6 like the plague and you'd be fine.
I was gonna come in here and talk about how in Golden Sun, Wind is connected to the Jupiter Psynergy family and is therefore much more connected to the color violet (as Jupiter Psynergy are represented by the Jupiter Star and Jupiter Djinn, both of which are violet), but I guess Ivan's green cape can be a subtle nod to the connection. No notes on the rest of this, super insightful video. I'd never even considered the Fujin connection but it makes total sense. A few other examples from Zelda, too: Farore, the Goddess of Courage (aka the Green Goddess), is linked to wind as an element in many ways, with her icon potentially being a set of wind waves, her spell being Farore's Wind and being very green, and her champion in Wind Waker being the Hero of Winds (a little tenuous but I'm taking it lol) Also, the Forest Temple was originally going to be the Wind Temple in Ocarina of Time. You can tell from several beta elements, as well as the fact that the "Forest" Medallion looks like a fan and the "Forest Temple" segment of Ganon's Tower is mostly wind-based puzzles.
On the topic of Ivan - Yeah, he wears purple, and wind spells in general are purple coming from Jupiter. BUT he also wears this big green cape, which is what you'll see 90% of the time in-battle, and one of the first summons you get is a big green goddess named Atalanta who rains down green wind arrows. Cyclone is used to move shrubbery and leaves, which carry that green leaf motif. I should've elaborated more on GS, and some of it is a stretch. But again, I'm just having fun with the theory, it's not something that can be proven. If you want to discount that, that's cool, there are still plenty of examples in the video!
Yeah, I guess so! I mentioned in the video that wind users often are colored green themselves and/or have green wind. In this case, I thought Ivan went into that "green outfit" category. But I see that's controversial and I understand. There's still a lot of other GS examples too of this happening. I also showed an example where color coding DOESN'T happen but the wind is still green, with my Romancing Saga 2 character who is clothed in red but has a majority of wind spells over fire! There will always be exceptions. :) thanks for watching!
This was a fun watch, what a great deep dive! I think you're into something with Fujin 風神 but it is amazing how well green works as wind! From basic colours and yellow being better for earth to the leaves blowing around, heck even razor leaf from original Pokemon does this despite grass being its own type!
Nice vid! You're right about Wind getting zoned-out by other elements heh. I want to tack on an example from Lost Odyssey for your observation. When fighting an early garuda-like boss named Grilgan, its wind attack Down Burst (sound familiar!?) is grey like a tornado. However, its poison claw - often attributed to Earth - has green effects.
I found a copy of Lost Odyssey earlier this year and am intending to dive into it at some point on my Xbox One, can't wait to try it! I know some people call it The "true" Final Fantasy 13, haha. Avatar the Last Airbender color codes earth as green too, which makes sense. I think I've always associated it with a brown-orange due to Quest 64, Pokémon, etc myself. Thanks for watching!
Another honestly weird case of Wind being associated with Green is in the JRPG InuYasha: The Secret of the Cursed Mask for the PS2, released in 2004. The player character gets abilities related to four elements (Fire, Wind, Water, and Light) with each having a dedicated focus (Fire abilities are exclusively for damage, Water is for healing, Wind is for status ailments or stat control, and Light is the ultimate power providing a barrier and either the strongest attack or the strongest healing depending if you're playing as a boy or a girl). And while the Wind stuff is always green in color... the incantation, at least for the English version, has the character say "Oh overflowing BLUE sky" and the name of the Wind-focused abilities are "BLUE Sky [insert ability intent here]".
That could be a mistranslation from Japanese because the more common word for blues and greens refers to basically half the color spectrum (ao or aoi) and means both blue AND green as well as cyan, while other specific words are used to denote greens that aren't blue (midori) or blues that aren't green (I don't remember that off the top of my head, it wasn't as easy for me to remember because I didn't have a Zelda character to associate with it). Or it could be localizers using commonplace Western association of the sky with sky blues and not caring that the magic itself is green.
@@RoninCatholic To be fair, the game has some very notorious localization issues. I'm even streaming a playthrough of the Japanese version of the game using a translator on the script to compare for any differences with the English version.
Good video and good analysis man. I like these kinds of videos. Also sorry for your loss, meant to say it before but wasn't sure if it was appropriate to at the time. You seem like a very thoughtful person and wishing you all the success, whatever that means to you.
Thank you! I wasn't sure how people would take it because this one is a little bit of a niche topic, and different from my usual stuff, but people seem to like it so far, fingers crossed! I appreciate the kind words, thank you for saying that. 💜
I think there's arguments to be made about its association with "nature" and nature based magics being represented by green as well, and wind being a natural force. (and nature is left out of a lot of elemental systems so wind represented as green to signify nature makes sense). Also the term "green energy" and it's correlation to wind turbines being a significant method for sustainable energy helps solidify the association. (all in addition to what you pointed out in the video!)
Thanks so much! I actually ALMOST put the green energy/renewable energy concept into this video but I thought it was a little too new compared to the other concepts discussed. You're absolutely right on the element of nature. I'm thinking about doing a follow up video based on everything people have shared here in a month or so, so keep an eye out for that.
What a weird coincidence, I starting watching YuYu Hakusho for the first time last week and then you reference the part that I just got past. Really wish they would give it the HunterxHunter treatment and update it
I just started watching it this month also! That YYH Genesis fighting game I show footage of in the last half of the video is really great, you should check it out!
Everyone keeps mentioning wind blowing through greenery of nature for the association of wind=green, but no one has mentioned JADE as in the literal stone thought of as SACRED/HEAVENLY in asian culture. Japan was influenced by china in a lot of ways, so I assume Jade being a "heavenly stone" where the gods/winds dwell would make its way into people's mind as an obvious color association. Also the chief celestial deity in chinese culture was called the Jade Emperor.
i believe wind is portrait with green because of the five elements of hindu, wood been one of them and representing air and wind as well. The logic, i guess, is that oxygen comes from plants
Your English is great! I understood. A lot of people have talked about this wood element, I think that's really cool. It's been awesome learning about how so many cultures have the green wind element.
Reminds me of my own Elemental Color Palette: Red - Fire. Orange - Sun. Yellow - Lightning. Green - Wind. Turquoise - Sky. Cyan - Ice. Blue - Water. Violet - Moon. Pink - Earth.
The earliest example in videogames that comes to mind is Crystalis (1990) where the wind sword icon and powers are all green. I'm not sure whether to count Fist of the North Star's Toki because he's inconsistently colored. Sometimes gray, but often with a green tint. Then there's Mega Man 2's Air Man (and power) which are both blue!
A scientific explanation; just as water isn't blue in your cup or when raining, but it is in the bathtub or ocean, neither is wind green as it blows through the air, it's only when enough is gathered in one place will it have any color, and such instances are few and far between... Storms get kinda green if they get intense enough for tornadoes, and said tornadoes are only ever white/grey because of the clouds that get swirled into them... Makes me wonder what would it look like without any clouds or dust, perhaps then it could be green enough to see... And hence, why wind element (and such aligned magicks & entities) are green; it's raw, pure wind energy!
Those green skies are caused mostly by massive amounts of rain in a nasty storm cloud though, it's not tied directly to tornadoes. But I get your sentiment!! It has to do with how the light hits the water molecules (summarizing a lottttt here, haha)
Very interesting; I've associated green with wind for a long time - my memories of the '80s are pretty spotty, but at the very latest, Final Fantasy 4's Valvalis would've cemented this idea in my head - but never really questioned it. Don't know why I hadn't thought of Fujin, but
I can’t find this old video I saw on the topic so after watching this I think you can give it some justice… it’s about the red and blue dynamic in like video games and anime I know it goes farther than that even in our own world but yeah an example is like Dante and Virgil in Devil May Cry, the red protagonist and the blue rival!
Interesting that in Ocarina of Time, the Forest Temple/Medallion were originally meant to be Wind - themed, hence both the windmill-spiral icon on it as well as their room in Ganon's Castle being a wind puzzle. So another indirect green connection!
Ah, so similar to how lightning/thunder is usually purple in Japanese stuff (purple is a fairly common color for Raijin, seen in ine of your images) where as in the west it tends to be yellow -- the Greek word for amber is "elektron" and amber gets a negative charge when rubbed. Interestingly, Pikachu is yellow. Hm.
In Genshin Impact, Anemo (Wind) is Teal. Green is for Dendro (Plant) in Genshin. But, Teal is a variant of Green. So, we have an idea as to why Wind is Green. But What about Darkness as an Element? Science says Darkness is simply the absence of Light. But, in Fantasy, Darkness is an Element. It's also colored purple. Why is that?
Some RPGs where wind isn't green that I know are: Shining Force 2, wind is yellow gusts with blue tornadoes added in on the higher levels. Shining Force 3 wind is yellow as well. In the Phantasy Star series, wind is blue in the first game, and gray in the 2nd and 4th games, but it was green in the 3rd game. In Final Fantasy VII, the tornado spell was white. Also, when Aero debuted in the Final Fantasy series, it was yellow, and the tornado spell was gray.
Yeah, there are always exceptions, as I mentioned in the video 😄 I wish I had known PS3 had green wind, I would've included it. I've only played PS1 and 4.
I'm a meteorologist. The green scale is commonly used for wind representation. In One Piece, Dragon's wind power has a green-ish hue on loguetown. Talim from Soul Calibur has a green moveset too!
A reason could also be a mixture of western and east asian influence in media. In east asia they usually don't refer to the classical greek elements of Fire, earth, water and air, but instead draw inspiration from the "five phases", their associated beasts and their colors: Fire/Red (Vermilion bird) Water/black (Tortoise), Metal/white (Tiger), Earth/Yellow (Dragon) Wood/Blue-GREEN (Azure Dragon). I read somewhere that early asian (Chinese and Japanese) languages did not have separate words for blue and green (please correct me). Perhaps as creators got influenced by western mythology and the inclusion of Air/wind in symbolic storytelling, green was assigned to wind, since the Azure Dragon, who is also associated with the color Green, was the only other beast of flight, besides the Vermilion bird and Yellow Dragon which were connected to Fire and Earth, respectively?
@@humblemudgames Also the Azure Dragon is associated with the "wood element" (trees and plants) which is how we can perceive wind, like you mentioned. In buddhism the heart chakra is associated with the Air element and the color Green!!
I was just thinking the same thing and was about to comment until I saw you had already beat me to the punch. There's also the western elemental contrast of wind/air/sky and earth, but the concepts of the elements in Feng Shui/geomancy have wood as the element that destroys earth. Putting these two ideas together for a video game where you want to create a mechanic of opposing elements, where wind and wood share the idea of being "effective" against earth, it would make sense to give wind aspects associated with wood like the color green. It also makes visual representations of wind a lot more aesthetically pleasing, using leaves or flower petals or blades of grass in wind-based attacks to add style and the feeling of power to the attack. Its hard to imagine wind actually hurting your opponent, but seeing some leaves whipping around in the gust, you might then imagine that those leaves might be being blown about with such force that they slice into them. Or that the wind is so powerful that its ripping up the trees and grass in the area. There seems to be a lot of individual influences from mythology as well as more practical video game design reasons that just add up to feeling like its just right to make wind green.
In Japan, it's still fairly common to refer to blues and greens collectively by a common adjective inclusive of both. In China, many centuries ago the word for blue and green also included black. Some strange idioms came about from separating the words out, like specifically referring to _trees_ as blue and _sky_ as green with the new words for one hue over the other.
Thank you for clarify this curiousity I didn't know I had. Some other examples Magic Knights of Rayearth. 3 knights, each one based in three elements: Fire, Water and Wind, the color scheme is the same as you mentioned: red, blue and green. Gingaman: The green ranger is known as Wind Warrior Hayate. Kamen Rider Wizard green style is named Hurricane and has wind-based powers.
Interestingly, the wind element in Golden Sun is represented by purple, although that's mainly because wind Adepts tend to have psychic-based powers such as telepathy & prophecy (yes the powers in general are Psynergy, psychich energy/synergy).
I should have elaborated more, a lot of people have pointed that out. But here are some other examples from the GS series. Ivan is has his big green cloak, as I said. Atalanta, wind summon, is green and rains down green wind arrows. Ivan's daughter Karisa has green hair. Cyclone is used to move leaves, and has the green leaf motif. Zol, related to the wind, is green. If you don't want to count it, I totally understand! But yeah, I still have plenty of other examples too so it's all good 😁 Thanks for watching!
This makes me question, do I gravitate towards wind based characters because I like green? Green was the color I used for science class in school and now I work in a lab, and I love plants...
I like the Fujin connection. Another thing I was thinking about is Tao/Dao and the elements there: Fire, Water, Earth, Metal, and Wood. Each also associated with colour, seasons, etc. There's no wind of course, but I think Wood is supposed to be a stand in for that. I think Wind also equates to Life in many situations (Like how water is often with healing), and life is often shown as green too, think of most HP bars.
If you live in the eastern 2/3 of the US and have had experienced severe thunderstorms producing damaging winds or tornadoes, a cloud with a strong green hue will often be overhead when all this is going on.
I am on the East Coast, so I'm well aware. I didn't mention it in the video since it's related more to thunderstorms rather than purely wind, but I put the dots in there for people to connect if they want to, like the several green tornadoes and such I shared in the video. I'm sure that was at least one of the inspirations behind Fujin's green coloring. Perhaps those green storms happened in Japan as well and was taken as an indication that he was angry or something.
I think there's also the association of color in the Chinese 5 elements. The Chinese ones are fire(red), earth(yellow), wood(green), water(black), and metal(white). The Japanese version of the same thing (i believe they both originate from east asian buddhism) is Fire, Earth, Wind, Water, and Void. Void replaces metal, and wind replaces wood. I don't know how much impact that has on Japanese culture, but it might explain the connection between wind, the color green, and plants in general.
Another thing that could be relevant: where I grew up, you knew there was a severe storm or even potentially a tornado nearby when the sky turned green. I don’t know how common storms and tornados are in Japan or if the same phenomenon is found there, but wind being green makes complete sense to me because I grew up knowing that green sky = strong wind.
I didn't include that because the green color usually has to do with storm clouds that have a large amount of water or ice, not necessarily being 100% wind. I could totally see that being the inspiration behind green tornado spells like Aero, though. But of course, we didn't always know *why* storms and tornadoes could be green, so that could perhaps be why wind magic is green in Japanese media also, or maybe why Fujin is usually depicted as green, since maybe ancient peoples saw those green storms!
The Alchemist Code's wind element is green. Dragalia Lost's wind element is also green. Same with World Flipper Anemo from Genshin is on the lighter side of green, but this counts, as well.
Another angle to look at the green wind connection is when you compare it to healing magic, which often involves green as part of the magic in quite a few games. Also, whenever plants are an option as from my experience plants would lean more towards yellow greens while wind and healing lean more towards blue greens Examples i can think of, persoba and smt use green for Garu(wind) Zan(force) While healing spells like Dia typically have green in their animations Eldritch blast in dnd is also a force damage spell is often depicted as green Genshin impact, has both Anemo(wind) Dendro(plant) The wind effect in both games follow the light blue-green tinting Heck they even have a characters that use raijin and fujin symbolism in the raiden shogun and wanderer Interstingly in these games Electro(electricity) is depicted as purple, which im pretty sure isnt unheard of in other media
Electricity is also purple in The Legend of Dragoon! Wind and electricity in Golden Sun are kind of merged together, so it's often purple there as well.
I'm glad you liked that hahaha! That was improvised and I ended up enjoying it so much I kept it in. I do genuinely love Quest 64, I've played it many times throughout my life but officially beat it on my PlayStation Vita (emulated) this year. I talk about it some more in my "games I was wrong about" video, I believe. I plan on doing a full on retrospective of it one day.
I noticed this phenomenon too! Always lowkey wondered why it was such a prominent trend. I haven't watched the video yet, but I'm guessing it has something to do with Fujin being green in Japanese myth.
I think my first thought was chrono cross, where the element of green represents wind as well as plant magic, followed closely by smt (technically "force," but same difference since nocturne)
Really interesting. Fuu from Magic Knight Rayearth is another with wind powers who wears green as well as her mecha being that color. I always wondered about that. Also rewatching Yu Yu Hakusho is always a good thing.
It's not a JRPG or anime, but Lego Bionicles also represents the element of Wind with green! The Toa of Air, Lewa and all of his people are a very healthy leaf-like green color.
A fun question would be which color is better for representing lightning energy: yellow? Purple? Bright cyan? I'm team purple because its what most lightning bolts look like to me, plus it doesn't overlap with another element usually
Wind Waker has two wind gods, Zephos and Cyclos. Except in Japanese they're called Fuchin and Raichin. Fuchin of course rides a green cloud and is a greenish-blue color.
Cool vid! I've noticed this before, but never really thought much of it. If asked, I guess I would have gone with the tree explanation Also while in Lego Ninjago, Morro is associated with green because of his backstory of wanting desperately to be the green ninja, I now can't help but wonder if they made his element wind in part because of his green association
![[#2024MAMA] G-DRAGON - 무제(Untitled, 2014)+POWER+HOME SWEET HOME+뱅뱅뱅+FANTASTIC BABY | Mnet 241123 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ox29z5Nf1Uk/mqdefault.jpg)
part 2: you fly to japan and interview John Fujin himself. "mr. fujin-san, what's up with all the green?"
He probably looks dapper in green slacks
I love this topic when it comes to color associations between colors.
Another one you notice is that Poison in the West tends to be a sickly green color, but in Japan they associate purple with Poison.
i asociate purple with poison! but also i'm a weeb so
Purple also reminds me of eletricity for some reason. Probably thanks to Static Shock
I think the purple-poison is also pretty common in Chinese stories!
@@fukunaga-kane same (not due to static shock tho)
I think it's because in the West, purple is related to nobility and wealth, since emperors and heads of state wore purple going back to the Romans.
I've always thought it was because moving leaves were the most obvious indication of wind...
I talk about that in the video 😄 it very well could be the case, and is in some instances, where you can actually see individual leaves, but I feel like my theory is more fun! lol
and there are some times, like if the character is flying in an open field and uses a wind attack, where would the leaves suddenly be appearing from, you know?
I kind of lump this in, along with green tornadoes and storms, as part of Fujin's green motif.
@@humblemudgames I would say that you're probably right that Fujin being green gave the Japanese the concept that wind should be green, I'd also speculate that Fujin is green because the wind is most easily seen in trees and grass blowing in it.
As I recall the Chinese elements don't have a "wind", they have fire, water, earth, metal and wood. There wind is a subcategory of wood in the same way ice is to water, because they linked the feeling of the wind blowing to the image of trees blowing in it. Given the two country's proximity and history, I'd be surprised if Japan didn't inherit some of that conceptual link themselves and made Fujin green because of that.
@@humblemudgamesYou weren’t completely wrong. You just didn’t go a layer deeper and ask why Fuujin, the god of wind, is green to begin with.
@@geovaughan8261 I did think about this on my own, but I didn't think people would stick around to watch me go back to talking about leaves. I touch on it with the leaves in the wind in Albert's Dragoon transformation, so all the dots are there for people to connect if they want to. Attention spans are hard to hold, and I can see in the analytics -- A majority of people are only watching only the first 4-5 minutes of this video and not even making it to the Fujin part, lol!
@ If I’m going to comment on a video as a whole, I at least owe the respect to watch it through. :)
Two words: green Bionicle.
They have green wind too??
@@humblemudgames Yes! The green characters in Bionicle had air powers.
@@steleplays (Toa of Plant Life were also green, of course, but none of those showed up in set form!)
The fact that you brought up Bionicle already makes this the best comment. I loved those as a kid, still have them actually.
@@humblemudgames Before the reboot, all Green Bionicle characters were associated with wind with each Toa among them being called Toa of Air. But after the reboot the same Toa got rebranded to "Toa of the Jungle".
The little details like putting the name of the game on screen when showing footage are appreciated. Can't wait for this channel to blow up, some of the best video game content on this platform.
Thank you! Someone suggested that in my Q&A video so I started adding it. I also put lists of all games and songs featured in the video in the description too.
As a green enthusiast : Nice work! One thing you may also enjoy is how Earth element in video games seems to have a duality, with different color representation depending on the take.
For example if the Earth interpretation is thematically tied to rocks and stones then it will be represented in browns and yellows. BUT if it thematically includes plants then it will typically be represented with the color green. Narratively this also changes what the element represents, from being a stalwart protector ally who can shoulder any burden in brown or yellow, to being a more compassionate protector character focused on growth and valuing life in green.
This is a wonderful comment and I love your username! I completely agree and have found the same to be true in my experience too. Rosetta in Granblue Fantasy Relink manipulates a lot of plant life & can be offensive, trap, heal, and likely poison too. That would probably all be considered "earth magic". But if there was ever a Zelda RPG and you could recruit a Goron, you just KNOW he'd also be an earth type, but more of the "I throw rocks and am tanky" type like you mentioned.
@@humblemudgames I was HEAVILY influenced by Legend of Dragoon in life, just didnt think jade irl was the best shade lol
I love how pokemon has Ground being light brown/orange and Rock being Grey/Dark Brown.
@@humblemudgames oh hey, if it interests you further, should check out Max derrat. He has a video on devil may cry but a part of it touches on the usage of the 4 cardinal video game colors and their connections to alchemy, buddhism, etc.
I first noticed this with Bakugan as a kid. I didn't even get into it, but looking from the outside in, all the elemental colorations I saw made intuitive sense to me EXCEPT for wind.
Agreed, that and beyblade (rock/fang leone and it's abilities)
This is the first example that came to my mind too
Green is associated with wind in Hinduism, which carried over into Buddhism and thus flowed discretely into Japanese culture. Also, the blue-green dragon is associated with wind and rain in Chinese folklore. Which, again, discretely influenced Japanese culture.
Though, yeah, it is probably just the most practical colour to use without confusing your players. Unless you've got 18 types like Pokemon and need to work with shades just to be intelligible.
Japanese both language and culture is an imitation of the chinese.
Honestly Pokemon probably has ever JRPG element, but ironically don’t include the most famous elements of Light and Wind.
Flying is probably equivalent to Wind, and Light or Holy magic probably has to go to Fairy type since there is no other equivalent.
@@revolvingworld2676 Sound would have made a great Pokemon Type.
Exploud mains rise up
@@joesunday199 honestly, not particularly. while its offensive type chart is _somewhat_ simple to imagine, moving something like this from a move tag to a full-on type raises a very important question: the hell would sound pokemon even be weak to. or resist. there's a lot of connections you could make for why sound would strongly affect a certain type or why another type would be able to resist it, but how would you define what happens when an exploud gets hit by something that isn't just a repeat of the type it already currently has? like, really. what would a mono sound exploud, because what else would be a more _perfect_ representative of a sound type, be weak to
also ... what pokemon would even _be_ sound type? exploud, chatot, kricketune, chimeco, rillaboom, _maybe_ politoed, meloetta if they felt like changing the type of a _mythical,_ and ... that's about it? toxtricity, kommo-o, noivern, bronzong, primarina, skeledirge, and scream tail are all _strongly_ associated with sound, but they're all typed out and i can't imagine anyone being convinced that _toxtricity_ doesn't embody the electric poison typing or that bronzong doesn't ooze mythical energy. and. isn't made of metal. also: overdrive? torch song? bug buzz? metal sound, grass whistle? i would say sparkling aria could get away with being sound type because liquid voice, but that's a _hidden_ ability and it'd be _real odd_ if the water starter's signature move, the one that's turned into its _signature z-move,_ wasn't a _water_ move if used by the starter primarina. but beyond that specific case ... would these just stop being sound moves? or would sound be a type _and_ a move tag? or would all these moves with a clear elemental theme ( and, with more than a few, _also_ being signature moves ) just suddenly get wiped down into being sound-type?
like i get it, it's easy to look at exploud and chatot and how a bunch of sound moves are normal type and think, "oh, they could just do what they did with fairy!" but that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. sound is a _very_ diverse property that's used by a lot of different pokemon in a lot of different ways, and beyond that, it just ... doesn't really have the _physicality_ of something a pokemon can _be._ that's why it makes sense as a move tag, as something pokemon can _do_ without it being something they fundamentally _embody,_ in the same way that punching and biting do
I've seen the sky turn green when a NASTY storm was approaching. Seen it with tropical storms and tornadoes 🌪 😅
I didn't include that because the green color usually has to do with storm clouds that have a large amount of water or ice, not necessarily being 100% wind. I could totally see that being the inspiration behind green tornado spells like Aero, though. But of course, we didn't always know *why* storms and tornadoes could be green, so that could perhaps be why wind magic is green in Japanese media also, or maybe why Fujin is usually depicted as green, since maybe ancient peoples saw those green storms!
I always thought it was green because of the rustling of leaves and the connotation of nature. Standing near a field and watching wind knock down arcs of grass as they move across.
I talk about that about halfway through the video. Definitely is part of the motif!
I always assumed they ran out of colors since red blue and yellow/brown are obvious for fire water and earth so green is the leftover choice for wind
Green would also work for Earth, but yellow doesn't work as well for Wind unless Wind is also Lightning and/or Sun. A more general Sky Powers element.
also the elements of earth, fire, wind, and water are western alchemy elements. the east tend to go off different set of elements usually from fengsui which are earth, wood, fire, water, and metal. wind is actually not a recognized element by itself. and also in feng sui, the elements have a kind of rock, paper, scissors relation
Idunno, for me yellow was always better suited for Wind than green - probably because green fits Earth better, and also AtlA
The tabletop game Exalted has my favorite color associations. The core five elements are red for fire, green for wood, white for earth, black for water, and blue for air
The seven celestial associations are gold for the sun, silver for the moon, orange for the Journey star, blue for the Serenity star, red for the Battle Star, green for the Secrets Star, and purple for the Endings Star
Breaking the color coded conventions is really trippy too. When I was playing Trinity Trigger I had the hardest time wrapping my head around water being pink and fire being blue. Lightning was still yellow so at least that one made sense.
Why would you want to make water anything but blue? Very strange
@@jacobkristensen1692 water only really shows its color in its deepest depths, hence why a cup of water is fully translucent and the surface of any body of it matches the color of the sky ( which, of course, is _usually_ also blue, but even something as common as sunset will affect both ) or whatever particles are dissolved into it. so a water element being a color other than blue could reflect the conditions of the world itself, where due to a non-earth-like atmosphere, heavenly bodies, or the chemistry of lakes and rivers, water is just not blue in the situations we'd expect it to be
'course fantasy water can also just _be_ pink. pink water may be scientifically plausible, but a fictional land can have rain and rivers and oceans all colored like pepto bismol and that's just how it is there, just adding to the wonder and fantasy of it all
"Dad why is wind green in japanese media?"
"Many moons ago..."
It really feels like that! hahaha
THANK YOU! I always thought of wind as green and earth as yellow. Some games flip this and it really annoys me.
Fire = Red
Water = Blue
Wind = Green
Earth = Yellow or Brown
Ice = Light Blue
Holy = White (sometimes Yellow)
Darkness = Black (sometimes Purple)
Lightning = Yellow/Light Blue/Purple
Psychic = Purple or Pink
Chrono Cross has the entire “green” innate as either wind or plant based.
I recently was talking with friends when I realized this isn’t a color association most people have. I used to question it when I was growing up, but it’s been second nature to me for so long that I don’t even think about it anymore.
When I was assigning colors to elements, I started with red and cyan, since they're opposites on the color wheel and work well for fire and water. Then I just moved 90 degrees to get yellow-green and blue-magenta, which became earth and air respectively. I tinted the violet towards white for a sort of lavender wind, and the chartreuse towards black to get a deeper, mossy-green earth.
I like that, that makes a lot of sense! Sounds somewhat similar to the strategy games like Skies of Arcadia seem to employ. Was this color assignment done for a game of your own?
@humblemudgames in theory! It's more like a loose idea I'm waiting to implement if a game project ever goes in the direction of me needing to color-code the four classical elements.
I just really love thinking about what symbols and colors I'd use for different aspects of a mechanic, even if I don't know what I'd use it for yet, haha!
I'm not alone!! Love to see what you found, recently i've found out that the green (Midori) in japan it's pretty new they were used to calle it blue, some elders still call it blue (ao) maybe that word coul influenciate the game /anime media in general industry
Fantastic video.
It’s rare these days to see a video on an obscure topic that hasn’t already been discussed.
Thank you! I couldn't find the answers myself so I tried to come up with my own!
Good video. You should do one about gravity being purple
Also, if talking about Purple associations; Darkness/Shadow uses Purple.
Edit: I have seen both Darkness and Gravity tied to each other. Certain users of Darkness can control Gravity. I wonder why that is.
5:32 I noticed the green = wind thing as a kid too, and yeah, the plant association was my first guess at an explanation too: You can't really see wind because it's air, but you can totally see leaves blowing around and grass waving in the wind, and those things are most likely green. So I guess that makes sense.
But over time, I also gradually noticed- and this is an even more subtle thing- that sometimes air and plant magic are actually rolled into the same elemental category or otherwise directly associated with each other. So I started to guess that maybe there's some sort of... air/plant combo element in Asian cultures? Later on, I eventually learned of the "wood" element from wuxing elemental philosophy, which seems to also be the de facto air element in that system too, and that seemed to confirm that theory. On top of that, green is also a fairly common "healing" color, so to speak, with healing effects tending to be green, (or maybe a blue-green teal, but still, close to green) green numbers in Final Fantasy games indicate healed HP, and so on. Which ties into the wood thing, because the wood element isn't about physical wood so much as the... vital or life essence of plants and nature. Or maybe natural life and vitality as a whole? Which would totally make sense for green being the color of healing as well, especially when games thematically associate wind, natural greenery, and healing energies all together. Nature is living things, all living things breathe, air is wind, it all kind of wraps together into green being the natural vitality color, and wind being the familiar physical element most associated therewith, in a somewhat messy way.
...Well, except for when water is the healing physical element instead, that is. Like I said, it's not absolutely consistent. But since different cultures clearly have different elemental philosophies in general, and that doesn't stop the individual systems from being relevant to the individuals who subscribe to them, I see no reason that video games can't also choose to follow one elemental philosophy or another on a case-by case basis.
So yeah, while I certainly agree that giving green to wind because the other colors were already more clearly taken by other elements makes sense, and is most likely a factor, I've come to believe that there's definitely a lot more thinking to it than that, and said thinking goes back a long ways.
You're absolutely right, and whereas you went down the nature/wood element that's closely associated with Tao/Daoism, I went the Shinto route with Fuujin. It's just fun to ponder, right? However, I think things like what you have mentioned here and some things other commenters have said warrants a follow-up video to this one one day. I'm just glad this video opened up such a discussion!
Now that I think about it, purple is used in a lot of less common powers like gravity, or "evil" powers like darkness or spirit. Like you said, it's not always the case. But it happens a lot.
Yeah, when I was looking up things about green wind, the 'gravity is purple' and 'purple is powerful' trope came up too. Ganondorf comes to mind for me.
Maybe it's because purple is a rare color in nature.
I see purple as a good color for lightning/thunder energy tbh, tho it can overlap a bit with darkness. Thunder is bright purple, darkness is dark almost black purple , maybe with magenta accents
@@petrus9067 Genshin Impact has Electro (Lightning) which is colored Purple. Darkness and Light are interesting Elements. You don't see them as much as Earth, Fire, Air, and Water. I think even Plants/Nature are only slightly more common.
I don't know how common of a name it is, but I've encountered a character actually named Midorikaze, literally 'green wind', before. There's also Midori from FE Fates, who is Kaze's daughter. Could be related.
I thought I was the only one who thought about elements and their colors back then. I hope you delve into more topics in similar vein like purple vs. yellow lightning.
EDIT: And maybe darkness having different shrouds of color, sometimes it's depicted as pitch black, sometimes it's red and black, and sometimes it's black and purplish.
When a tornado is a' brewing, the sky turns green. Probably where it comes from
yeah, I hint at that with the green tornadoes that show in the video! they mostly come from storm clouds though, the tie in with tornadoes is a misconception!
You don’t know how happy it made me to see Golden Sun mentioned and on the thumbnail. Great video!
That really stood out to me on the thumbnail cus wind in that game is purple.
In Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, the Wind Armor, Wind Demon, and every DSS card combination including Griffin (the wind card) that gives the protagonist a visible effect, weapon, or familiar is green.
And the wood element is associated specifically with _roses_ in that game. Rose Whip and Rose Sword.
First time watching the channel! Great video, learned something new! I always associated green with nature/grass type, and like you touched on the wind going through the trees, blowing off the leaves etc. To me it's just tradition but it's a solid video on why this might be. Bravo! :)
Thank you so much! I've been subscribed to you for a while on my personal account, awesome seeing you here!
I mean, it's often represented with the color yellow in the west, so is this so wierd? If you ask me, white, light blue or grey would make more sense.
Also, Green is not a primary color, it's Red, Blue and Yellow.
Man, I really wish I could remember what game I played in the past where wind was blue and water was green! I remember being super weirded out by it. 😅
Let me know if you end up remembering it! There are always exceptions
Really neat video! Another green example that I thought of immediately was that in the persona games, the "garu" spell family, which are wind spells, are all green. I think they've been green since the beginning, which would go back to 1996. In the mainline Shin Megami Tensei series, they tend to use "zan" spells, which are 'force' but seem to be essentially the same, and I think those are also green and would go back even farther - possibly back to the original Megami Tensei in 1987.
That's so cool to know! I can't wait to dive into SMT and Persona one day!
Old Megami Tensei games did not had colored icons for spells tho.
I never really questioned this, I grew up with bionicle which explicitly drew this connection, mostly because the toa of air lived in the jungle. Prior to watching the video I thought "it's probably grass cutter, sword with wind powers and associated with grass, the blade probably became green over time"
Seems like I wasn't that far off
Your first hypothesis - the one of primary colors needing representation, and white being taken by Holy (though Holy is not always an element in RPGs...) actually seems WAY more likely to me. But it does make sense that the Fujiin connection might influence just how acceptable green is as wind to a Japanese author. As an American, I always would have colored them like A:TLA does, because a willingness to use secondary colors allows more options. Air = Green was always odd enough to me that I noticed this.
Also: another example - Luc from the Suikoden Series.
Green isn't a Primary Color. The Primary Colors are just Red, Blue and Yellow. Green is the combination of Blue and Yellow.
Yeah, I caused a bit of confusion when I said that. Green is a primary color in computer graphics, which is where my head was at. But the more traditional, well-known definition for primary colors says that yellow is primary. So that's my b there.
There is also the literal jade wind in the guild wars franchise, also shoutout to Lavitz and his Gust Of Wind Dance!
Yo I forgot about Guild Wars! That's right! I did pull off Alberts Gust of Wind Dance in this video, but Lavitz' version hits different 💅
Been a while since i played guild wars. Was so much fun
Legend of Dragoon call out gets you a like my dude. Keepin' doin' the good work on research!
Well, in Kamen Rider, Kamen Rider Wizard Wind Style in green, Kuga Pegasus form is also green, Double Cyclone half forms are also green, in Megaman battles network 2 the Wood style charged attack is a green tornado, in Bakugan, wind atribute known as Ventus is also green, in Rpg Maker the RTP icon for wind magic is also green, and the list goes on forever.
also the elements of magic as we know them come from western alchemy and in the east, they historically go by completely different elements, usually derivative of feng sui. those elements are earth, fire, water, wood, and metal. and those elements have complex rock, paper, scissors relation with each other alongside other complex cultural nuances
if I were to make a part two, I'd definitely dive into this next. wood being a catch-all for nature, basically. Lots of people have brought it up and it's very interesting!
It's interesting how Aristotle's 4 elements can easily represent the 4 states of matter:
Earth= Solid
Water= Liquid
Air= Gas
Fire= Plasma.
@@arx3516 not relevant. my point is that that is a part of western culture. aristotle has no historical significance in the cultures of far east asia. their historical elements are completely different than those derived from aristotle. even if it isnt directly derived from feng shui, the eastern elements are very different.
@@arx3516 your comment only serves to emphasize that our understanding of the natural world and it's elements comes from a culturally western view.
Thank you for Mentioning Disgaea, more People need to Mention Disgaea. You are a real one!
I'll be 100% with you just because I don't want to take credit; I talked to my buddy Tristin during the process of making this video and he was like, "oh! Disgaea does this too! I can send you some footage if you want!" and so I took him up on it.
I have Disgaea V and want to dive in, I just haven't gotten the chance yet!
But yeah, I didn't want to take credit for that. I shouted him out in the description as well.
@@humblemudgames 5 is a REALLY good introduction to Series. Disgaea 2 is my personal favorite, I honestly think is the best one, and the Newest Release 7 was GOATed, can't go wrong with any of those. Just Avoid 6 like the plague and you'd be fine.
@ElickFlash Good to know!
I was gonna come in here and talk about how in Golden Sun, Wind is connected to the Jupiter Psynergy family and is therefore much more connected to the color violet (as Jupiter Psynergy are represented by the Jupiter Star and Jupiter Djinn, both of which are violet), but I guess Ivan's green cape can be a subtle nod to the connection.
No notes on the rest of this, super insightful video. I'd never even considered the Fujin connection but it makes total sense. A few other examples from Zelda, too:
Farore, the Goddess of Courage (aka the Green Goddess), is linked to wind as an element in many ways, with her icon potentially being a set of wind waves, her spell being Farore's Wind and being very green, and her champion in Wind Waker being the Hero of Winds (a little tenuous but I'm taking it lol)
Also, the Forest Temple was originally going to be the Wind Temple in Ocarina of Time. You can tell from several beta elements, as well as the fact that the "Forest" Medallion looks like a fan and the "Forest Temple" segment of Ganon's Tower is mostly wind-based puzzles.
I also pointed this out. I didn't really understand where he was getting green for Golden Sun or the Jupiter Adepts. A scarf color is not enough lol.
On the topic of Ivan - Yeah, he wears purple, and wind spells in general are purple coming from Jupiter. BUT he also wears this big green cape, which is what you'll see 90% of the time in-battle, and one of the first summons you get is a big green goddess named Atalanta who rains down green wind arrows. Cyclone is used to move shrubbery and leaves, which carry that green leaf motif. I should've elaborated more on GS, and some of it is a stretch. But again, I'm just having fun with the theory, it's not something that can be proven. If you want to discount that, that's cool, there are still plenty of examples in the video!
@@humblemudgames so a half example since its not completely subverting the trend?
Yeah, I guess so! I mentioned in the video that wind users often are colored green themselves and/or have green wind. In this case, I thought Ivan went into that "green outfit" category. But I see that's controversial and I understand. There's still a lot of other GS examples too of this happening. I also showed an example where color coding DOESN'T happen but the wind is still green, with my Romancing Saga 2 character who is clothed in red but has a majority of wind spells over fire! There will always be exceptions. :) thanks for watching!
This was a fun watch, what a great deep dive! I think you're into something with Fujin 風神 but it is amazing how well green works as wind! From basic colours and yellow being better for earth to the leaves blowing around, heck even razor leaf from original Pokemon does this despite grass being its own type!
Nice vid! You're right about Wind getting zoned-out by other elements heh. I want to tack on an example from Lost Odyssey for your observation. When fighting an early garuda-like boss named Grilgan, its wind attack Down Burst (sound familiar!?) is grey like a tornado. However, its poison claw - often attributed to Earth - has green effects.
I found a copy of Lost Odyssey earlier this year and am intending to dive into it at some point on my Xbox One, can't wait to try it! I know some people call it The "true" Final Fantasy 13, haha. Avatar the Last Airbender color codes earth as green too, which makes sense. I think I've always associated it with a brown-orange due to Quest 64, Pokémon, etc myself. Thanks for watching!
@@humblemudgames Lost Odyssey is great! Highly recommend.
jet the hawk mentioned 🦅🦅🇸🇦🇸🇦🦅🦅
Another honestly weird case of Wind being associated with Green is in the JRPG InuYasha: The Secret of the Cursed Mask for the PS2, released in 2004. The player character gets abilities related to four elements (Fire, Wind, Water, and Light) with each having a dedicated focus (Fire abilities are exclusively for damage, Water is for healing, Wind is for status ailments or stat control, and Light is the ultimate power providing a barrier and either the strongest attack or the strongest healing depending if you're playing as a boy or a girl). And while the Wind stuff is always green in color... the incantation, at least for the English version, has the character say "Oh overflowing BLUE sky" and the name of the Wind-focused abilities are "BLUE Sky [insert ability intent here]".
That could be a mistranslation from Japanese because the more common word for blues and greens refers to basically half the color spectrum (ao or aoi) and means both blue AND green as well as cyan, while other specific words are used to denote greens that aren't blue (midori) or blues that aren't green (I don't remember that off the top of my head, it wasn't as easy for me to remember because I didn't have a Zelda character to associate with it).
Or it could be localizers using commonplace Western association of the sky with sky blues and not caring that the magic itself is green.
@@RoninCatholic To be fair, the game has some very notorious localization issues. I'm even streaming a playthrough of the Japanese version of the game using a translator on the script to compare for any differences with the English version.
Another example: in Rayearth the Fire dragon is red, Water one blue and Wind one is green.
0:49 Except the Asian firemage of Concord LOL
Good video and good analysis man. I like these kinds of videos. Also sorry for your loss, meant to say it before but wasn't sure if it was appropriate to at the time. You seem like a very thoughtful person and wishing you all the success, whatever that means to you.
Thank you! I wasn't sure how people would take it because this one is a little bit of a niche topic, and different from my usual stuff, but people seem to like it so far, fingers crossed! I appreciate the kind words, thank you for saying that. 💜
I think there's arguments to be made about its association with "nature" and nature based magics being represented by green as well, and wind being a natural force. (and nature is left out of a lot of elemental systems so wind represented as green to signify nature makes sense). Also the term "green energy" and it's correlation to wind turbines being a significant method for sustainable energy helps solidify the association. (all in addition to what you pointed out in the video!)
Thanks so much! I actually ALMOST put the green energy/renewable energy concept into this video but I thought it was a little too new compared to the other concepts discussed. You're absolutely right on the element of nature. I'm thinking about doing a follow up video based on everything people have shared here in a month or so, so keep an eye out for that.
Lewa from Bionicles: Woah, I'm one of you guys, awesome 🤘
What a weird coincidence, I starting watching YuYu Hakusho for the first time last week and then you reference the part that I just got past. Really wish they would give it the HunterxHunter treatment and update it
I just started watching it this month also! That YYH Genesis fighting game I show footage of in the last half of the video is really great, you should check it out!
Love me some green! 💚 I always figured it was some kind of tradition. Glad you showed some Golden Sun and Disgaea! 💚
Thanks for watching, friend! My buddy Tristin lent me the footage for Disgaea since he had all those spells unlocked, he's a real one!
@humblemudgames That's awesome! Yeah, Disgaea is near and dear.
Everyone keeps mentioning wind blowing through greenery of nature for the association of wind=green, but no one has mentioned JADE as in the literal stone thought of as SACRED/HEAVENLY in asian culture. Japan was influenced by china in a lot of ways, so I assume Jade being a "heavenly stone" where the gods/winds dwell would make its way into people's mind as an obvious color association. Also the chief celestial deity in chinese culture was called the Jade Emperor.
Yes! That's a big reason why I mentioned the Jade Dragoon Spirit in Legend of Dragoon! 💚
i believe wind is portrait with green because of the five elements of hindu, wood been one of them and representing air and wind as well. The logic, i guess, is that oxygen comes from plants
sorry for the rough english
Your English is great! I understood. A lot of people have talked about this wood element, I think that's really cool. It's been awesome learning about how so many cultures have the green wind element.
Reminds me of my own Elemental Color Palette:
Red - Fire. Orange - Sun. Yellow - Lightning. Green - Wind. Turquoise - Sky. Cyan - Ice. Blue - Water. Violet - Moon. Pink - Earth.
How can you distinguish Turquoise and Cyan? They are not different like Pink and Violet. You can consider Chartreuse as well.
The earliest example in videogames that comes to mind is Crystalis (1990) where the wind sword icon and powers are all green. I'm not sure whether to count Fist of the North Star's Toki because he's inconsistently colored. Sometimes gray, but often with a green tint. Then there's Mega Man 2's Air Man (and power) which are both blue!
pretty sure the wind crystal in FF1 was green and that was 1987
@@badendersgame Good catch!
A scientific explanation; just as water isn't blue in your cup or when raining, but it is in the bathtub or ocean, neither is wind green as it blows through the air, it's only when enough is gathered in one place will it have any color, and such instances are few and far between... Storms get kinda green if they get intense enough for tornadoes, and said tornadoes are only ever white/grey because of the clouds that get swirled into them... Makes me wonder what would it look like without any clouds or dust, perhaps then it could be green enough to see...
And hence, why wind element (and such aligned magicks & entities) are green; it's raw, pure wind energy!
Those green skies are caused mostly by massive amounts of rain in a nasty storm cloud though, it's not tied directly to tornadoes. But I get your sentiment!! It has to do with how the light hits the water molecules (summarizing a lottttt here, haha)
Very interesting; I've associated green with wind for a long time - my memories of the '80s are pretty spotty, but at the very latest, Final Fantasy 4's Valvalis would've cemented this idea in my head - but never really questioned it. Don't know why I hadn't thought of Fujin, but
I can’t find this old video I saw on the topic so after watching this I think you can give it some justice… it’s about the red and blue dynamic in like video games and anime I know it goes farther than that even in our own world but yeah an example is like Dante and Virgil in Devil May Cry, the red protagonist and the blue rival!
that's a great idea!
2:15. V Sauce, Michael here!
SOMEONE NOTICED, hahaha
@humblemudgames 😉 ❤️
Interesting that in Ocarina of Time, the Forest Temple/Medallion were originally meant to be Wind - themed, hence both the windmill-spiral icon on it as well as their room in Ganon's Castle being a wind puzzle. So another indirect green connection!
I sent this to my friends and we all went “wait a minute…” good stuff
Thank you so much for this video. I was waiting for someone to make a video about this topic
I've wondered this ever since the Wind Stone in Super Mario RPG was green (I always preferred yellow for wind, but that was the Earth Stone!)
That Culex battle was so hype
Except Sir Sonic, knight of the wind! Nice job, I guess i never noticed windy green consciously lol
Ah, so similar to how lightning/thunder is usually purple in Japanese stuff (purple is a fairly common color for Raijin, seen in ine of your images) where as in the west it tends to be yellow -- the Greek word for amber is "elektron" and amber gets a negative charge when rubbed.
Interestingly, Pikachu is yellow. Hm.
Legend of Dragoon was also my intro to wind = green. It’s still how I remember the color assignments today.
In Genshin Impact, Anemo (Wind) is Teal. Green is for Dendro (Plant) in Genshin. But, Teal is a variant of Green.
So, we have an idea as to why Wind is Green. But What about Darkness as an Element? Science says Darkness is simply the absence of Light. But, in Fantasy, Darkness is an Element. It's also colored purple. Why is that?
A lot of people have talked about purple representing darkness, overwhelming power, gravity, etc. Definitely a concept for me to consider discussing!
@@humblemudgames Yeah, sounds good. I wonder how Gravity connects to Darkness. I think the Mana series gives Darkness the power over Gravity.
In some Western occult circles green is typically associated with earth due to flora while wind or air is yellow. I've seen some JRPGs do this too.
Some RPGs where wind isn't green that I know are: Shining Force 2, wind is yellow gusts with blue tornadoes added in on the higher levels. Shining Force 3 wind is yellow as well. In the Phantasy Star series, wind is blue in the first game, and gray in the 2nd and 4th games, but it was green in the 3rd game. In Final Fantasy VII, the tornado spell was white. Also, when Aero debuted in the Final Fantasy series, it was yellow, and the tornado spell was gray.
Yeah, there are always exceptions, as I mentioned in the video 😄 I wish I had known PS3 had green wind, I would've included it. I've only played PS1 and 4.
I'm a meteorologist. The green scale is commonly used for wind representation. In One Piece, Dragon's wind power has a green-ish hue on loguetown. Talim from Soul Calibur has a green moveset too!
How cool to see a meteorologist in here! Did not know about the green scale! Also I totally forgot about Talim! What a throwback!
A reason could also be a mixture of western and east asian influence in media. In east asia they usually don't refer to the classical greek elements of Fire, earth, water and air, but instead draw inspiration from the "five phases", their associated beasts and their colors:
Fire/Red (Vermilion bird)
Water/black (Tortoise),
Metal/white (Tiger),
Earth/Yellow (Dragon)
Wood/Blue-GREEN (Azure Dragon).
I read somewhere that early asian (Chinese and Japanese) languages did not have separate words for blue and green (please correct me).
Perhaps as creators got influenced by western mythology and the inclusion of Air/wind in symbolic storytelling, green was assigned to wind, since the Azure Dragon, who is also associated with the color Green, was the only other beast of flight, besides the Vermilion bird and Yellow Dragon which were connected to Fire and Earth, respectively?
That's SUPER cool, thank you so much for sharing that! I love the azure dragon theory. I hadn't come across that.
@@humblemudgames Also the Azure Dragon is associated with the "wood element" (trees and plants) which is how we can perceive wind, like you mentioned.
In buddhism the heart chakra is associated with the Air element and the color Green!!
I was just thinking the same thing and was about to comment until I saw you had already beat me to the punch. There's also the western elemental contrast of wind/air/sky and earth, but the concepts of the elements in Feng Shui/geomancy have wood as the element that destroys earth. Putting these two ideas together for a video game where you want to create a mechanic of opposing elements, where wind and wood share the idea of being "effective" against earth, it would make sense to give wind aspects associated with wood like the color green.
It also makes visual representations of wind a lot more aesthetically pleasing, using leaves or flower petals or blades of grass in wind-based attacks to add style and the feeling of power to the attack. Its hard to imagine wind actually hurting your opponent, but seeing some leaves whipping around in the gust, you might then imagine that those leaves might be being blown about with such force that they slice into them. Or that the wind is so powerful that its ripping up the trees and grass in the area.
There seems to be a lot of individual influences from mythology as well as more practical video game design reasons that just add up to feeling like its just right to make wind green.
In Japan, it's still fairly common to refer to blues and greens collectively by a common adjective inclusive of both. In China, many centuries ago the word for blue and green also included black.
Some strange idioms came about from separating the words out, like specifically referring to _trees_ as blue and _sky_ as green with the new words for one hue over the other.
Hououji Fuu from MAGIC KNIGHTS RAYEARTH
Fuu likely being a direct reference to Fujin or Fuujin!
@ pretty much. Her name means wind of the Phoenix temple and her guardian beast is a giant green wind bird.
Thank you for clarify this curiousity I didn't know I had.
Some other examples
Magic Knights of Rayearth. 3 knights, each one based in three elements: Fire, Water and Wind, the color scheme is the same as you mentioned: red, blue and green.
Gingaman: The green ranger is known as Wind Warrior Hayate.
Kamen Rider Wizard green style is named Hurricane and has wind-based powers.
I was literally pondering this just a few days ago. It's nice to have a good answer.
This was very interesting! U should do a whole series on exploring the historical and mythological origins of common tropes in games and media!
Maybe!!
Interestingly, the wind element in Golden Sun is represented by purple, although that's mainly because wind Adepts tend to have psychic-based powers such as telepathy & prophecy (yes the powers in general are Psynergy, psychich energy/synergy).
I should have elaborated more, a lot of people have pointed that out. But here are some other examples from the GS series. Ivan is has his big green cloak, as I said. Atalanta, wind summon, is green and rains down green wind arrows. Ivan's daughter Karisa has green hair. Cyclone is used to move leaves, and has the green leaf motif. Zol, related to the wind, is green. If you don't want to count it, I totally understand! But yeah, I still have plenty of other examples too so it's all good 😁 Thanks for watching!
The fact that this video have a Legend of Dragoon reference, warms my heart!
There's also Chrono Cross, where color-coded elements are a decently important plot point and wind is green. Plus Persona/SMT.
you and @oofley8346 suggested the same thing 15 minutes apart. Great inclusions!
This makes me question, do I gravitate towards wind based characters because I like green? Green was the color I used for science class in school and now I work in a lab, and I love plants...
Sounds like it may have had an influence for sure!!
I like the Fujin connection. Another thing I was thinking about is Tao/Dao and the elements there: Fire, Water, Earth, Metal, and Wood. Each also associated with colour, seasons, etc. There's no wind of course, but I think Wood is supposed to be a stand in for that. I think Wind also equates to Life in many situations (Like how water is often with healing), and life is often shown as green too, think of most HP bars.
Yup, I think the five elements draw a lot of parallels as well. I'm sure they likely had an influence in all of this.
This video felt like a trip through my own head and the tangents I constantly go on internally, haha. Very ADHD-coded.
I definitely have ADHD symptoms and hyperfixate on things, that's for sure.
Loved the video. I think another great example is Magic Knight Rayearth, where character Fuu had wind magic and her looks had a loooot of green.
Never thought of it until now, but I can see why Rock Lee's outfit is all green
That's crazy... I was LITERALLY just thinking why wind was green (in fantasy and etc) yesterday 💀
Wild coincidence
Glad you found this video!
If you live in the eastern 2/3 of the US and have had experienced severe thunderstorms producing damaging winds or tornadoes, a cloud with a strong green hue will often be overhead when all this is going on.
I am on the East Coast, so I'm well aware. I didn't mention it in the video since it's related more to thunderstorms rather than purely wind, but I put the dots in there for people to connect if they want to, like the several green tornadoes and such I shared in the video. I'm sure that was at least one of the inspirations behind Fujin's green coloring. Perhaps those green storms happened in Japan as well and was taken as an indication that he was angry or something.
I think there's also the association of color in the Chinese 5 elements. The Chinese ones are fire(red), earth(yellow), wood(green), water(black), and metal(white). The Japanese version of the same thing (i believe they both originate from east asian buddhism) is Fire, Earth, Wind, Water, and Void. Void replaces metal, and wind replaces wood. I don't know how much impact that has on Japanese culture, but it might explain the connection between wind, the color green, and plants in general.
Another thing that could be relevant: where I grew up, you knew there was a severe storm or even potentially a tornado nearby when the sky turned green. I don’t know how common storms and tornados are in Japan or if the same phenomenon is found there, but wind being green makes complete sense to me because I grew up knowing that green sky = strong wind.
I didn't include that because the green color usually has to do with storm clouds that have a large amount of water or ice, not necessarily being 100% wind. I could totally see that being the inspiration behind green tornado spells like Aero, though. But of course, we didn't always know *why* storms and tornadoes could be green, so that could perhaps be why wind magic is green in Japanese media also, or maybe why Fujin is usually depicted as green, since maybe ancient peoples saw those green storms!
The Alchemist Code's wind element is green.
Dragalia Lost's wind element is also green.
Same with World Flipper
Anemo from Genshin is on the lighter side of green, but this counts, as well.
Another angle to look at the green wind connection is when you compare it to healing magic, which often involves green as part of the magic in quite a few games.
Also, whenever plants are an option as from my experience plants would lean more towards yellow greens while wind and healing lean more towards blue greens
Examples i can think of, persoba and smt use green for Garu(wind)
Zan(force)
While healing spells like Dia typically have green in their animations
Eldritch blast in dnd is also a force damage spell is often depicted as green
Genshin impact, has both
Anemo(wind)
Dendro(plant)
The wind effect in both games follow the light blue-green tinting
Heck they even have a characters that use raijin and fujin symbolism in the raiden shogun and wanderer
Interstingly in these games Electro(electricity) is depicted as purple, which im pretty sure isnt unheard of in other media
Electricity is also purple in The Legend of Dragoon! Wind and electricity in Golden Sun are kind of merged together, so it's often purple there as well.
You really got me with the "Quest 64... Green!" bit.
Love that game and was a really well done joke! Garenteed a sub from me!
I'm glad you liked that hahaha! That was improvised and I ended up enjoying it so much I kept it in. I do genuinely love Quest 64, I've played it many times throughout my life but officially beat it on my PlayStation Vita (emulated) this year.
I talk about it some more in my "games I was wrong about" video, I believe. I plan on doing a full on retrospective of it one day.
I noticed this phenomenon too! Always lowkey wondered why it was such a prominent trend. I haven't watched the video yet, but I'm guessing it has something to do with Fujin being green in Japanese myth.
Maybe you have the power to see the future
Oh wow, we really had the exact same thought. Wild.
There's also a phenomenom that turns the sky green before a particulatly intense tornado or storm.
I think my first thought was chrono cross, where the element of green represents wind as well as plant magic, followed closely by smt (technically "force," but same difference since nocturne)
you and @loganrenfrow2544 suggested the same thing, 15 minutes apart. Great inclusions!
Really interesting. Fuu from Magic Knight Rayearth is another with wind powers who wears green as well as her mecha being that color. I always wondered about that. Also rewatching Yu Yu Hakusho is always a good thing.
Fujin in MK4 (first appearance) shot green projectiles from his crossbow.
It's not a JRPG or anime, but Lego Bionicles also represents the element of Wind with green! The Toa of Air, Lewa and all of his people are a very healthy leaf-like green color.
A fun question would be which color is better for representing lightning energy: yellow? Purple? Bright cyan? I'm team purple because its what most lightning bolts look like to me, plus it doesn't overlap with another element usually
Wind Waker has two wind gods, Zephos and Cyclos. Except in Japanese they're called Fuchin and Raichin. Fuchin of course rides a green cloud and is a greenish-blue color.
Cool vid! I've noticed this before, but never really thought much of it. If asked, I guess I would have gone with the tree explanation
Also while in Lego Ninjago, Morro is associated with green because of his backstory of wanting desperately to be the green ninja, I now can't help but wonder if they made his element wind in part because of his green association
This was a great topic! I never thought about this before.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Absolutely out of the box and awesome video. I never stopped to think about it, I always took for granted that the green was correct.