The true story of Anima
I found this on this web site for those of you who are interested:
http://anima.underclocked.com/symbolism.html
Much of Anima's history is unknown. It is never stated in the game or in the various guides as to how old she was, where she came from, or even whether or not her name was Anima prior to becoming a fayth. What is known is sketchy at best.
Twenty-eight years prior to the events in Final Fantasy X, Anima gave birth to her and Jyscal's only child, Seymour. She was living in Guadosalam at that time. Three years later, her husband became the leader of the Guado and converted his people to the Yevon religion.
During the first five years of Jyscal's leadership, the Guados became caught up in an internal conflict. The source of the conflict, whether it was racial or religious, is not known. The conflict became so severe that the tribe threatened to split into two factions. In order to prevent the split and a civil war, Jyscal regretfully agreed to the terms of the protesting group: the banishment of Anima and Seymour to Baaj Island.
Anima lived on Baaj for only two years. At the end of this time, she and Seymour travelled to the ruins of Zanarkand. From the flashback seen at the fountain, Anima knew that she was going to die soon. What she was dying of is unknown. She came to Zanarkand in order to become a fayth. More specifically, she sought to become the Fayth of the Final Summoning. She was desperate to give him the power to survive on his own -- he was only ten years old at the time of her death -- and to give him a means of gaining acceptance by the people of Spira.
It is not known how a dying woman and her ten year old child were able to get through to Yunalesca's heavily-guarded chambers, but Anima was transformed into Seymour's Final Aeon, Anima. Terrified, Seymour refused Anima as his Final Aeon and fled back to Baaj. However, from the information provided in the game, Seymour did accept her power as a normal aeon, as it is stated that he became a summoner as a child. This combination of power and solitude proved too much for the young summoner and he grew unstable.
Fifteen years later, Seymour returned to Baaj to receive Anima as his Final Aeon. Her fayth statue was transferred to Baaj Temple, now in ruins, and sealed. Now possessing the immense power of a Final Aeon, he became more corrupt and power hungry. Three years later, in the city of Luca, he had fiends released into the stadium and summoned Anima as a show of might. Anima was later defeated in Macalania Temple along with Seymour and is never summoned again by her now-unsent son.
After their own journey to Zanarkand, Yuna and her guardians travelled to Baaj Temple and unlocked the seal to Anima's fayth statue. It had now been eighteen years since Anima became a fayth, during which time she saw her child grow into a hate-driven madman. She felt great regret for the wrongs committed against Seymour, especially those that she had unintentionally caused. She sought a way to ease her son's suffering somehow and, in doing so, gain pardon for her own actions. In offering her power to Yuna, Anima had only one request: destroy Sin and Seymour's obsession with Sin.
In defeating its source, the being that had once been the summoner Yu Yevon, Sin was destroyed forever. However, in order to defeat Yu Yevon, each of the aeons needed to be possessed by Yevon and slain. In this final act, Anima found atonement.
Appearance
woman: Before becoming a fayth, Anima was an elegant-looking woman with a slender build and pale complexion. She had a pretty, oval-shaped face with blue eyes, a full mouth, and a straight, sharp nose. Her straight black hair was worn without ornament: it was brushed backwards and reached down to her shoulderblades. Anima wore several necklaces made up of thin gold chains with gold, teardrop-shaped pieces interspaced along their lengths. She wore a long dress with a lapis blue bodice and sleeves and a pale blue skirt. The sleeves were bell-sleeves with gold details at the cuff. She wore delicate, blue slippers on her feet.
fayth: The appearance of Anima's fayth statue bridges what she was and what she became. Like the other fayth statues, only the back of the statue is visible. This image is made up of two layers: the upper, more visible layer, and the lower, background layer. In the upper layer, Anima is portrayed standing with her arms raised -- in the middle of the Yevon prayer gesture -- and shackled at the wrists. On either side of her are the blue "wings" present on her aeon. Two lengths of chain are wrapped around these wings, which binds them together at knee-level. Below this, where her feet would be, the lower, horned head is seen. The second layer is mostly obscured by the middle and lower half of the fayth statue, but, the upper half of the lower layer portrays the woman Anima wearing a crown and the shoulder pieces present on her aeon.
aeon: Anima's aeon is truly a fearsome and disturbing sight. She is composed of an upper half, which is visible during normal and special attacks and a concealed lower half that is visible only during her overdrive. The upper half is humanoid, with two of her arms crossed over her chest with bandages and decorated with swirling, green tattoos. Her flesh is tough and a brownish color. Anima's head is a combination of a fish and a beast, with long tusks and fangs and powerful jaws. Her head is bandaged, covering one eye and lacing around the crest on the top of her head. The single visible eye is a pale, glassy blue. A second, small pair of arms reach out from the back of her neck and cross around her collarbone. These hands, human in appearance with greyish-purple skin, grip the ends of a necklace. The necklace is made of heavy, silver-colored chain with a golden pendant. The pendant bears the image of the human Anima. Dark, scaled epulets grow from her shoulders. A pair of ultramarine fringed wing-like appendages encase Anima's upper and lower halves. These wings are open at the two ends and chained together at her waist. The inside of these wings are red and are embossed with the symbol for Baaj Temple.
The lower half of Anima is also humanoid in apperance. Her lower half is also reversed: its back faces the same direction as the upper half's front and vice-versa. While dormant, only the lower half's back and long, grey-white hair is visible. However, when performing her overdrive, Anima's lower half uncurls and bends so that her head is facing forwards. Her head is mummy-like, with long, shaggy hair obscuring most of her face and twin tufts of hair terminating from her empty eye sockets. Her arms are chained at the wrists and her clawed hands are covered in gold rings. On either side of her head are branching ears/horns, from which beads hang. On top of her head is an organic crown made up of the same tissue as the crest on her upper half.
The influence of Jung's personality theories on Anima's character may be more than just her name; it may have influenced her character design(s) as well. From researching the theories, I have found evidendence of the influence of his theories regarding the anima, animus, and syzyny as well as the four stages of love represented in anima projection and the different syzyny pairings.
One of the unique aspects of the aeon Anima is her two-halved nature. Just as every man contains a feminine side to his subconscious, each woman has a masculine side to her subconscious. This masculine side is known as the animus. According to Jung's theories, the anima and animus combine to form something known as a syzyny; a marriage of the minds.
Anima herself could be said to be an aeon representation of a syzyny. It can be theorized that Anima's upper half represents the anima while her lower half represents the animus. Yet, though she is a depiction of her son's anima and her own animus, Anima is still wholly a female aeon. According to Jung, "[t]he androgyny of the anima may appear in the anima herself."
The syzyny has two archetypes: the animus joined to the anima is known as the Wise Old Man archetype while the anima joined to the animus is known as the Chthonic Mother archetype. The lower animus half of Anima does resemble an (albeit demonic-looking) elderly man whose crown may suggest wisdom. The upper anima half of Anima is chthonic (underworldly) in apperance and Anima herself is a mother. However, the connection goes deeper than that.
Another name for the Chthonic Mother archetype is the Great Mother or Earth Mother. The archetypal Chthonic/Great/Earth Mother is driven by love, but destroys as a result of her love. She has good intentions that fail in their execution. Anima had Seymour's best interests in mind when she chose to become a fayth, but she failed to protect him due to his own lust for power.
The anima is also divided into four stages: primitive woman, romanticized beauty, love and feeling, and wisdom. These four stages are in turn represented by four women: Eve, Helen of Troy, the Virgin Mary, and Athena. The primitive woman/Eve stage represents motherhood in its biological and instictive sense. The romanticized beauty/Helen of Troy stage represents a woman as an individual; one with a desire for romance and pleasure. The love and feeling/Virgin Mary stage represents love and emotion elevated to an almost spiritual level of devotion. The fourth and final stage, the wisdom/Athena stage, represents the wise and knowing spiritualized woman.
Although all four stages are represented in Anima's three forms (Eve and Helen of Troy by the woman and Athena by the fayth), the love and feeling/Virgin Mary stage is present in all of them. Although it is the most brutal looking of the three forms, the aeon contains the most symbolic imagery of this stage. The most obvious of these is the pendant that she wears, which depicts her in human form in the attitude of a medieval Madonna. A second, more obscure, one is in the wing-like strips that run along her sides. These wings are ultramarine on the outside and red on the inside. The color ultramarine has long been associated with the Virgin Mary as the pigment was so rare and costly that it was used only in paintings of great importance. The color red, before being associated with witches and prostitutes, was also associated with the Virgin Mary as it was a color of power (the two sides of the anima are that of the goddess or holy woman and that of the witch or prostitute).
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