Nebilim

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Nebilim is a character in the Tales series, mainly Tales of Symphonia and Tales of the Abyss.

Contents 1 Tales of Symphonia 2 Tales of the Abyss 3 Power Unlocking 4 Mythological References

[edit] Tales of Symphonia

In Tales of Symphonia, Nebilim appears as an optional boss character. He is, apparently, some evil king from the ancient past controlling nine awesome weapons. When a man from Flanoir named Abyssion tricks the group of heroes into gathering the nine Nebilim weapons for him. When they meet in the Temple of Shadow, Abyssion uses the Necronomicon (book of the dead) in order to revive Nebilim inside his own body. When the group defeats Nebilim, his body is destroyed as is the Necronomicon.

The weapons are called Devil's Arms, weapons that was once wielded by Nebilim. There are 9 weapons, one for each characters in Tales of Symphonia. The Devil's Arms are:

[edit] Tales of the Abyss

In Tales of the Abyss, Nebilim is a female: Prof. Gelda Nebilim. She is Jade Curtiss' teacher. Jade accidentally kills her and tries desperately to create a replica of her. But the replica turns out to be evil and was sealed away, but later you get to fight her after completing a process of collecting mystical weapons.

The weapons are catalysts of Fonons, believed to be able to activate the Planetary Fonic Artes. They were researched by the Malkuth army, led by none other than Gelda Nebilim. The party searched for them to obtain more information of the Planetary Fonic Artes, which led them to Nebilim's Crag, a place where the replica Nebilim was trapped in. Apparently the glyph used to activate the Planetary Fonic Arte is half-replaced by a seal. When the party placed the catalyst weapons in the seal, Nebilim was released. It turns out that she was gathering 1st and 6th fonons from Fonists and ended up trapped inside the crag. There are 6 catalyst weapons, one for each characters in Tales of the Abyss. They are:

[edit] Power Unlocking

In both games, the weapons are named after either demonic entities, or holy objects. When Nebilim/Abyssion is defeated, the originally 0-power weapons' true power is unlocked, having attack power equal to how much monsters the character defeated. At the grade shop, one can transfer over the number of monsters defeated by using the Transfer Battle Records option.

[edit] Mythological References

Though there is no clear-cut connection, it could be assumed that Nebilim is a reference to the Nephilim, or beings born of angel-human crossbreeding, of Judaochristian mythos. The reason for this is that the Japanese rendition of Nephilim is Nepirimu (ネピリム), as opposed to Nebilim's Nebirimu (ネビリム). The only difference between the two words is that Nebirimu is written with the katakana HI (ヒ) modified by a dakuten, while Nepirimu is written with the katakana HI modified by a handakuten. Another example of Japanese modification of a foreign name with a switch of handakuten to dakuten or vice versa is Excalibur/Excalipoor of Final Fantasy fame, featured first in Final Fantasy V.