Lore Discussion about how Attributes are defined for characters in lore.
The official description of why each characters are what attribute is a bit vague, it's clearly giving room for the devs to be very flexible in how they do Attributes since of course it has a huge influence on gameplay, so I thought it might be interesting to discuss and predict what future characters could be.
The official explanation from in game:
"Classification is generally based on the origin of abilities. Taking the six most common and universal types as examples:
Cosmos: Originates from maintaining order.
Chaos: Originates from disrupting order.
Anima: Originates from nature, manipulating natural elements or life, requiring no medium.
Lakshana: Originates from the physical realm, with one's own body serving as the medium.
Incantation: Originates from language as a non-physical medium. Can summon beings from other dimensions.
Psyche: Originates from mental and psychological non-physical realms, requiring a real-world medium outside of oneself for manifestation."
---------------------
Based on those lore, this is what I personally noticed about each of them and who currently are these attributes:
Cosmos:
Cosmos is kind of vague, but it always ties back to keeping things in order. The MC, Hotori, and Edgar all show that in different ways. The MC restores your esper cycle, Edgar heals you when your HP is low, and Hotori can pause time. Some of it blends into gameplay, but overall it points to abilities that keep things stable or bring them back to a balanced state, which fits the idea of order. I think every unit here is pretty justifiable and there's no need to go too indepth. But it's the hardest one to predict for upcoming characters unless we know the nature of their abilities.
---------------------
Chaos:
Chaos is pretty simple on paper, though one of the two that we have is not that clear per say.
Daffodil doesn’t seem chaotic at all as a person, in fact she’s very orderly, but her kit is all about distortion like prisms, reflections, echoes, and messing with what’s real versus what’s just a reflection. That idea of breaking the line between light, shadow, and perception fits the “disrupting order” angle, especially with her eyesight being taken in exchange for her Esper Ability, since sight is how we normally make sense of things.
Lacrimosa is more straightforward. She’s vampire coded, detached from normal human behavior, and her copy ability straight up steals and replicates other people’s powers, which breaks the idea of ownership and structure. Even just being something tied to life and death in an unnatural way already fits Chaos pretty well.
---------------------
Anima:
Anima is meant to be abilities that come from nature or life itself, with no external medium involved; basically, the power is generated directly through the body. Characters like Nanally and Mint show this by, I guess, just being cat girls and having electrical elements for Nanally and wind elements for Mint. But it's a bit weird cause we also have like Skia, who's just a dog person not being in this class. Jiuyuan also fits the nature angle with plant-based abilities, even if her method uses a gun as a focus. That part makes it a bit inconsistent, since “no medium” gets blurry when tools are still involved, but the core idea seems to be nature or life energy expressed through the user’s body.
Lakshana:
Lakshana is supposed to be about the physical realm, with the user’s own body acting as the medium. This is mostly reflected through physical changes like Skia becoming a doggo and can enter a shadow form. Other characters like Hathor with her wing, or Chaos with his eye variation and ability setup, also show some form of body alteration. The issue is the range is pretty wide, since something like wings, horns, or cat traits don’t always feel meaningfully different from Anima's nature concept. Like a lot of the Epsers in general tend to have some sort of physical change. To me it's one of the more inconsistent class to define.
Psyche:
Psyche is one of the more consistent classes to me. Every Psyche character follows the idea of needing some kind of external medium to use their ability. Haniel has Hootie and her music player, Aurelia uses a conductor’s wand to control her attacks and likely her summons, and Fadia relies on her coffin to shift into her other form. The things they create or control also feel less like independent beings compared to Incantation summons. It’s pretty consistent in how it always needs something outside the body to act as the trigger or anchor for their powers.
Incantation:
Incantation is probably the easiest class to spot. It comes from language as a non-physical medium and usually involves summoning beings from other dimensions. Baicang fits this the most clearly. The summoning part is also very obvious with characters like Sakiri calling out Kiroumaru, Adler with his dragon, and Linko (Lingko) being likely Incantation because of her ghost.
That's pretty much it. I just like rambling about dumb lore, and I also wanted more insight on how other people interpret the vague one sentence description for each attribute and what you expect the upcoming units to be. So would love some comments lol