She heard hearts bounce, tears brewing, and breath going backward, but nobody said a word. By the sorrow and loss and sweetness in their faces she knew that they recognized her, and she accepted their hunger as her homage. She thought of the hunter’s great-grandmother, and wondered what it must be like to grow old, and to cry.
p. 33
“Most shows,” said Rukh after a time, “would end here, for what could they possibly present after a genuine unicorn? But Mommy Fortuna’s Midnight Carnival holds one more mystery yet─a demon more destructive than the dragon, more monstrous than the manticore, more hideous than the harpy, and certainly more universal than the unicorn.”
p. 33
She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night.
p. 7
“...She can’t turn cream into butter, but she can give a lion the semblance of a manticore to eyes that want to see a manticore there─eyes that would take a real manticore for a lion, a dragon for a lizard, and the Midgard Serpent for an earthquake. And a unicorn for a white mare.”
p. 30
この関係を、「美少女」の存在をからめて見事に語ってみせたのが西尾維新の『化物語』シリーズでしたが、新房昭之監督のアニメ版においても映像表現を駆使して美少女の中の怪異が存分に描ききられていました。
またプロダクション manglobe のオリジナルアニメ作品『Ergo Proxy』では、独特の背景設定を工夫してそれぞれが位相を交換し得るものとして、神と人と魔物の関係を描いていました。The Last Unicorn の主題である、人とは根本的に異なる神存在と、これに対する人間存在の本質的あり方の対比をより明確に理解して頂けるよう、以下にアニメ『Ergo Proxy』論のリンクをあげておきます。
Science, Science Fiction and Speculation: God, Man and Self in Ergo Proxy 1
https://www.academia.edu/7892277/Science_Science_Fiction_and_Speculation_God_Man_and_Self_in_Ergo_Proxy_1
Science, Science Fiction and Speculation: God, Man and Self in Ergo Proxy 2
https://www.academia.edu/7892210/Science_Science_Fiction_and_Speculation_God_Man_and_Self_in_Ergo_Proxy_2
Science, Science Fiction and Speculation: God, Man and Self in Ergo Proxy 3
https://www.academia.edu/7881969/Science_Science_Fiction_and_Speculation_God_Man_and_Self_in_Ergo_Proxy_3