Okay, now that more of the "Software Sprites" or, "fairies" as most people refer to them, have shown up, i guess now's as good a time as any to talk a little about their names, eh?
When i first ran across Brünhilde, i didn't know what to think---i mean, here was an *excellent* sci-fi series, and suddenly it crossed over to the fantasy realm. Not that i have anything against fantasy, but i had trepidiations about the sudden inclusion of magic in a series that, prior to Volume 3.1, had no magic...and the name "brünhilde" just seem to add to the "hokiness" of the whole concept. What the heck was takada-sensei thinking?! But the addition of Gerhilde, Siegrune, and Helmwige changed my thoughts on the Software Sprite System...
It's not that their inclusion suddenly made it any better...far from it, when Gerhilde showed up i was even more annoyed...no, it wasn't until i had to start translating their names that i gained a new respect for them and for the great imagination Takada-sensei has. Translating Brünhilde's name was no problem--- the katagana characters, Buryunhirude were pretty straight-forward. But i was at a loss with putting katagana like Ji-guru-ne into the roman alphabet...what the hell? her name's "Jiggalune"? Obviously i was missing something, so i started looking into the name's a little closer...Since Brünhilde's name was the only one i was certain of, i did a little "google-ing" and...hmmm...seems Brünhilde was associated with Beowulf and Siegfried...Siegfried rung a bell, so i did a search with "Siegfried"...i found links to stories, but nothing concrete...then i noticed that he was a character in Wagner's maximum four opera series, Der Ring des Nibelungen ("The Ring Of The Nibelung"), and that rung another bell...i then pulled up information on the cast of the third opera, "Die Walküre" ("The Valkyrie") and *bingo!* there they were, the *entire* cast of fairies! So, in truth, Brünhilde et al *aren't* fairies, per se, they're Valkyrie, or guardian spirits of warriors! That, to me, was a *lot* cooler...
for the record, then, here's a list of the "fairies" (Valkyrie) that you can expect to see throughout the remainder of the series:
ALLIES
Brünhilde - Sayoko's "fairy"
Helmwige - Rose's "fairy"
ENEMIES
Gerhilde
Siegrune
Schwertleite
Ortlinde
Waltraute
Grimgerde
Rossweisse
So. now you know why the "fairies" have the names they do! (^.^)
Those Darn Fairies!