The behelit myth in Tower of Druaga

If you aren’t familiar with my previous work on the behelit myth, read these:

Themes:
https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/behelit-myth/
https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2015/09/26/berserk-finale/
https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/a-couple-of-quick-thoughts-re-the-behelit-myth/
https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2019/05/25/kaiju-battles-as-fatalism/ (re: the four horsemen motif)

Interpretation:
https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2018/01/28/of-disgrace-and-triumph/
https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2018/11/23/citizen-kane-a-master-class-in-megalomania/
https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2019/01/18/a-kind-of-inverted-jesus-story/

Applications:
https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2016/12/08/the-behelit-myth-in-murdoch-murdoch/
https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/trumps-behelit-myth-theory-on-iran-soros-etc/
https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/cultural-psychotherapy-mass-countertransference-and-jordan-peterson/

Counter-behelit sacrificial hero myth:
https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2016/03/03/chrono-trigger-is-far-more-than-it-seems/
https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2016/05/12/twilights-apotheosis/

Tower of Druaga is an excellent little show that no one’s ever heard of. The basic plot is there’s a giant tower with a big monster at the top, guarding a treasure. You’re led to believe it’s a standard shounen anime loosely based on an old arcade game with a surprisingly funny writer on staff, but at the end of season one there’s a twist: The girl that they’ve been building up as the teenage hero’s romantic interest turns on him with his older half-brother and, activating the behelit, they ascend to another, higher tower together. Their two parties get washed away in a deluge and several of the basic fantasy tropes are suddenly broken (e.g. King Gilgamesh, who defeated the same monster many years ago, is shown to be secretly evil). It starts right after the hero defeats the Krishna-like monster at 18:00.

Note:
-The hero intended to use his wish revive the party member he’d lost.
-Double helix at 22:25.
-Neeba and Kaaya’s ascension releases a deluge which carries their friends away.
-When the hero and company are washed into the lake it’s reminiscent of childbirth.

It’s pretty clear that a major component of the myth is to betray the trust of a trusting, in-group innocent in exchange for a permanent membership in a higher caste, sort of like killing your own innocence. I’ve heard that they do this in some special forces training, where you raise a pet and then kill it, which is pretty evil when you get down to it. They’re probably doing this to release their latent psychopathy, or maybe it’s just to weed out people with a strong aversion to doing horrible things.

It’s an extraordinarily clever show, and if the childish, saccharine exterior doesn’t put you off I’d recommend it as one of my top ten animes.