I eat, therefore I am: the beauty of Qu philosophy

This post contains spoilers for Final Fantasy IX.

Final Fantasy IX is one of my favorite games of all time due to its overall strive for quality. Telling a heart-warming, heart-wrenching, and heartbreaking story with beautiful medieval-inspired music, a lush and emotional story of grand adventure, and a charismatic world inhabited by colorful creatures and people, it really is a masterpiece in gaming history. My favorite aspect of this work of art, though, is the attention to the characters and their development. 

A gaudy flying ship is just part of the charm in IX's atmosphere.

Rather than just a hero and villain getting their time in the limelight as we figure out their reason for having an adventure, I feel like every character was thoroughly fleshed-out and deep. Not only does each have a great deal of personality, but as the story unfolds, each character develops and overcomes some kind of impactful inner struggle along the way. Each character, to me, represented different parts of the human psyche, or at least different feelings, as illustrated by their title screen quotes, and as executed through their actions and dialogue in the story.

Zidane advocates the virtue of doing what is right for right’s sake. Dagger endures the struggle between self and face. Vivi questions what it truly means to exist. Every character has a purpose and portrays a different path in life that the player can relate to.

But there is one character in the lineup that is often ignored when we talk about these deep, meaningful characters: Quina Quen.

I do what I want! You have problem?!

A lot of people see Quina as the comic relief character, and indeed Quina does fulfill that role. But when the tension gets a little too high, Quina doesn’t throw a pie in someone’s face or rattle off some potty humor.

Sure, his/her strange way of talking makes him/her a bit more difficult to take seriously than the other characters, but after reading into what the character is saying, I think Quina may be the most philosophically important character of them all.

Quina doesn’t interrupt a serious moment with simply humor. Quina challenges the ideas and feelings of the other characters and, in turn, the ideas and feelings of the player as well. Quina gives you the opportunity to reconsider what you have just learned or what you have just felt.

Quina’s basic character is a challenge to standard thinking. Is Quina male or female? What does it mean to be “male” and female”? Why does Quina follow Zidane and the others? Even in gameplay, Quina is an anomaly. Quina’s weapons are forks, which do random amounts of damage, and each fork has some kind of special ability seemingly out of nowhere. Are forks strong or weak? Perhaps the answer is “both.” And I'm not even going to get into how eating enemies gives you their powers or how eating frogs powers up your magic...

Quina's master Quale offers a lot of Qu wisdom.

"I do what I want! You have problem?!"

Final Fantasy IX’s theme is existence. The characters in the game all play with the question “What does it mean to exist?” Vivi discovers that the nature of his existence is not at all what he thought it was. Freya, forgotten by the love of her life, feels as if she does not exist at all if she doesn’t exist in her lover’s memory. Steiner struggles with the meaning of his existence after shedding his blind loyalty to a corrupt empire.

Quina’s outlook on existence, however, is much different than the others. The Qu tribe that s/he belongs to is defined by their obsession with eating and food. Quina seems to exist for the sole purpose of eating, and has no desire to do anything else. To the Qu, eating is life. Since Quina exists to eat, this means Quina exists to live.

It’s an interesting position on the meaning of life. The purpose of our existence is, simply, to live. The other characters struggle to find a meaning to their existence, the nature to their existence, or a way to utilize their existence the best they can. Quina, on the other hand, simply exists, and simply eats. There is no inner turmoil for Quina.

"Why you care about small things? World very simple place."

At the end of a scene in which two minor characters (one of which is a shopkeeper) are discussing customers and money, the shopkeeper begins to explain the meaning of money, but is interrupted by Quina:

“Why you care about small things? World very simple place. World only have two things: Things you can eat, and things you no can eat.”

This quote is a favorite of mine because it challenges not only standard thought, but the value of money. In Quina’s mind, products and money are all part of a single group: things that are inedible. To Quina, this group of things is worthless. But the other characters, and most players of the game, put a high value on money.

But is money needed to live? Certainly, most people reading this feel that money has some sort of value, and can’t simply be dismissed because we can’t eat it. But what would life be like without money? Quina seems to have everything s/he ever wanted out of life, in fact, s/he could easily be considered the most successful of all the Qu throughout history. And s/he never once thought about money.

I think too often, we forget that what we are used to is not how life has to be. We grow up learning that we have to go to school, then we have to get a job, then we do that for a long time and eventually we have enough money to live after not having a job. But do we really need to do that?

Quina challenges this assumption that we have to live life in this way. And it’s not a challenge that other people haven’t made before. A few years ago, I discovered the concept of freeganism—an anti-consumerist movement in which people live almost completely off discarded items. It’s a life without a need for money. And a lot of freegans would consider themselves to be very happy.

I believe Quina gives us a chance to redefine what is important to us. With this type of thinking, we have the opportunity to value what is truly important to ourselves. I think this is a secret to success. Success is what we want it to be—not what is already to defined for us.

Quina doesn’t have money. But Quina ate more food and experienced more dishes than any other Qu. Wouldn’t Quina be considered the most successful of all the Qu people? Can we, then, define our own success in this way? If we surround ourselves with the things that are important and valuable to us, as individuals, are we not successful?

"Must eat to find out what taste good!"

Quina as a Coca-Cola bottle topper.

In another part of the game, before a battle with a big baddie, the evil guy is taunting Zidane and Quina, calling their measures to save the world futile, asking what they think they can do even if they win this one fight. Quina, who displays no real interest in saving in the world or winning fights, responds:

“Must eat to find out what taste good! Is my lesson from traveling around the world.”

There are many messages here. I think an important one is that you can’t know what is good until you’ve tried everything. If you just always eat one food you like, you may never discover a hundred other foods that you would love even more. Is this not a waste of your life? Quina’s quest is not to save the world, but to develop his/her own character (which, in Quina’s case, is that of eating).

But I feel that we cannot fully be ourselves if we have not taken every opportunity available to us. If we eat our favorite food every day, but haven’t tried all the other foods we could eat, are we really eating our favorite? Or just some other food that we happen to like enough? There is no reason not to keep trying everything.

And that is what Quina is trying to convey. It doesn’t even matter if there is a goal—you just have to keep trying. And not in just the cliché “never give up” sense, but in a literal sense. Even when you have succeeded, you keep trying. You just keep going, having new experiences and discoveries. You are never done with life. There is always something out there for you to eat, and you don’t know if it’s good or not yet.

Even among Final Fantasy IX's colorful, quirky cast, Quina seems to stand out.

Quina challenges our perceptions of the world, the meaning to our existence, and promotes a life of meaningful experiences. I think of every character in Final Fantasy IX, Quina very well could be the most thought-provoking of them all.

If you’ve never played before, I urge you to experience this wonderful game from beginning to end, and if you have played before, try it again, and pay attention to what our frog-catching friend has to say. I think we could all learn a thing or two (while laughing!) from the ironic beauty of Qu philosophy.

Final Fantasy IX and artwork are property of Square-Enix