Compare to Horsemen of the Apocalypse - for when the rest show up - and Afterlife Express - when the Grim Reaper is or rides on a vehicle, especially a train. May overlap with Destroyer Deity if they're not separate entities. If something does take down the Reaper, you may have The Death of Death on your hands.Ī subtrope of Psychopomp. Thus, the concept of being able to defeat or kill Death in combat ( Castlevania) or Grim Reaper figures themselves being able to die ( Death Note) can seem absurd to Western viewers.
Shinigami are more typically spirits associated with death, rather than being the singular Anthropomorphic Personification thereof. Japanese media then proceeded to play with the character to the point that many shinigami no longer have anything in common with the Grim Reaper, aside from the name. When this concept was imported to Japan in the 19th century, they translated the name as Shinigami (while typically translated as "god of death", it is literally "death kami ", which doesn't have quite the same connotations). The Reaper sometimes overlaps or is influenced by the Angel of Death of Biblical scripture, in which case he may explicitly be equated with the Archangel Azrael.Ī frequent variation is the notion that instead of the Grim Reaper, there is a Grim Reaper - that it's a position offered to certain people after they die. His goals can oftentimes be discerned through his tools or weaponry: if it's a large, two-handed implement like a Sinister Scythe or a gun with More Dakka, you're probably dealing with an Omnicidal Maniac who will cut down lives like fields of wheat if using smaller sickles or more precision-based weaponry, he's likely to be aiming for a particular target and just doing his job, and if he's using chains, whomever he's after probably already escaped him once before. Others go the other way and say Don't Fear The Reaper instead of evil, he is benevolent. Still other representations of death forgo the neutral or buffoonish guise and make Death a God of Evil that must be fought, i.e. He may even be played for laughs as a Beleaguered Bureaucrat. He may be sinister or come across as friendly. He first appeared in Western art and folklore with the outbreak of the mid-14th century epidemic called "The Black Death," also known as "the Plague".Īs with most folklore-ish characters, he has many and diverse characterizations. The Grim Reaper, in his days as a frequent figure of folk tales, was originally used as a menacing, somber symbol of the inevitability of death. Often he picks up the characteristics of Charon, the boatman of the river Styx in Greek mythology, but even these characteristics are filtered through a Christian veil, i.e. He is sometimes described as mute, and in some accounts you can challenge him to a game of chess for the right to stay alive.
This god, in turn, was drawn from the Ur-Example of the Sassanid sect's Zoroastrian god Zurvan Akarana. These dual accouterments are Older Than Steam, but both were drawn from the ancient Greco-Roman god Χρόνος (Chronos). He is also often shown with an hourglass as a symbol of elapsing life. The nature and purpose of the Grim Reaper (also simply known as "Death") varies between two different versions: one version describes him as a simple guide - the supernatural being who takes people to the afterlife when they die (the fancy word for this is " Psychopomp") another version sees him as the entity of death - he makes people die by touching them or by means of supernatural powers.Įither way, he is generally seen as a tall, often skeletal, specter in a black hooded robe wielding a Sinister Scythe when he visits commoners and a sword when he visits royalty, although the scythe is the most popular of his symbols.
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