“Becoming Ithaqua” is his motivation. And this kind of insane decision often stems from a desperate situation of grief and rage, so we hope to highlight his temperament in his appearance.

— Excerpt from his concept/design Notes, from Identity V Wiki & Socials

As you observe and analyze both his story and his design, you’ll start to notice that there lies a prominent theme within Ithaqua; grief, anger, and the way it affects your humanity.

Ithaqua has a design that can be described as sharp and pointed; with design elements like his stilts, the tips of his ears, his monstrously long nails, his weapon, and even the ends of his coat, designed in likelihood to bat wings. All of those elements paint a monstrous image through design connotation, as they serve to make him look more outwardly threatening and inhumane.

Although when designing him, the designers took care so as to make sure he didn’t looks too monstrous, making sure that rather than looking like a monster out right, he’d instead give off the imagery of someone adapting the image of one. Someone who “became” and shed humanity because of their grief and wrath; both of which are important aspects of his personality and character.

With that in mind, it is in perfect accordance that there are contrasting elements that balance out that painted picture of monstrosity. Amongst his sharpness, you notice that there is quite a bit of roundness to him. His mask is noticeably doe-eyed, wide like a child’s, and with a rounded shape that comes off like a human face that hasn’t quite burned away all the baby fat from its youth. Fur lines his back and up to his neck, highlighting his bad posture and softening the top half of his figure; making it look almost circular whilst his legs and cape jutt out of that shape, again in contrast to each other. Tufts of his hair peek out from his ears, fluffing out that sharpness. His feet aren’t able to seamlessly blend into the stilts, making his humanity quite obvious when you observe his monstrously tall figure more critically.

In character design specifically, “roundness” has a connotation in the same way sharpness does. It’s a design element with intended purposes. Roundness equals softness, and softness is an inherent human trait; roundness in a character can come off as giving way to a gentler, more human nature. Aspects like bad posture and a “babyfaced” mask hint at childish youth, reminding you of a young adult or even a teenager.

So that is to say; when you examine him more closely, it becomes more obvious that Ithaqua is not ithaqua. He is not the Night Watch. He is not the monstrous, eldritch being that his name comes from. Hell, we could wager that his mother didn’t even name him that. He was a human boy that shed his human name, a boy who once upon a time lived in the woods with his mother in peace and fairytale-like idyllic-ness.

"已被养育成人的少年", or “the youth who had been raised until adulthood” in english—a phrase literally used to describe him in official sources.

This boy was a child who had his life ruined by devotion to divinity; a parallel of monstrousity. The village touted his mother as a witch; a woman in line with monsters and demons, and they made sure she suffered “salvation” for it. This is what his wrath and grief stemmed from, and that is what pushed him into shedding his human shell. You could imagine that he lost all youthful naivete and softness as he unsheathed that dagger and plunged it into Nathaniel; his very own coming of age story.

While his mother was accused of “monstrousity” (inhumanity; an alliegance to monsters that therefore made her a monster), Ithaqua willingly adapts it to protect her. What once had been a weapon made to use against her has now been wielded by her own son (who she cannot even recognize). Wrath was a weapon she suffered through in the name of divinity. But now, so too is it also a mask.

On the topic of Ithaqua’s mask, there are other peculiar elements that I’ve observed about it. As you watch Ithaqua’s background story, you can observe that the curve of Nathaniel’s smile is similar to the curve of the mouth in his mask. And again about its eyes; in the closeup shot of Ithaqua’s eyes, you can see that his eyeshape is also quite similar to the mask’s. Wide and doe-eyed, but still sharp around the corners.

The mask is what pulls most of the weight in trying to make Ithaqua look more like a monster. It’s the first thing one might look upon when first laying their eyes on him, and its where you are supposed to infer that you’re standing face to face with a monster. But again, there’s still so much humanity to it the more you cloesly observe it as noted in the way that the mask fits Ithaqua’s face like a glove, or that it even has the same features as him—a sharp jawline, babyfaced cheeks, and wide eyes that are sharper around the corners—only that those features are twisted to be as uncanny as possible for the mask to pass off as the face of a monster’s.

In its likeliness to Nathaniel’s (an inevitable byproduct of the mask being in likelihood to Ithaqua, or even vice versa), you’d then have to wonder; if the mask is supposed to be the appearance of a monster, did Ithaqua purposely model it after Nathaniel, rather than himself?