Agreed, and neither does 20 lives as a five year old equate to the full experience and perspective of a centenarian either. Arguably the only thing Van's combined memories of 3 lifetimes as a sub-20 year old young adult has made him an expert on is being a victim of child abuse. Even ignoring the fantasy elements, most normal milestones one would normally reach in life as an adult such as holding a full-time job, leaving home, raising children, etc. he's only just now experiencing for the first time on life #3. Once he gets into his late teens, that's going to be a whole new territory for him.
On top of that, he seems to be using high speed thought and clones frequently, which would increase his perceived mental age. Every day could be like 2 days of experiences. I think the word we're looking for here is manchild. Van is a MANCHILD in the body of the child. So not much different than many an isekai protagonist. This 100%. At worst you could describe him as harsh/callous, selfish, overly cautious, tenacious, traumatized, etc. and most of those depend on the situation. His "sanity" should even be improving since Darcia was resurrected. His "sanity" would get worse if he started losing friends and family, and since he has the ability to keep them alive indefinitely and is subtly influencing their affection for him with skills, he could be said to have an emotional dependency issue.
Aside from the fact that he has evolved skills based around insanity, like Grotesque Mind, he is credibly sane, except for where Heinz and his original party are concerned. He admits it himself during the conversation in Alda's dungeon, there is no sanity involved, no amount of reason can save Heinz from Van.
I maintain that Van is either insane or his mind functions differently. Basically, what I'm saying is his mind is like an eldritch horror. Whether he is truly insane or not, he causes insanity in others.
I'm not going to say Van is sane or insane more like disturbed. But in my opinion Van maintains some sense of sanity otherwise he would create a virus to wipe out everyone in the world except those he cares for and those with status effect immunity. He can do that at any time so until he does he is not insane in my book just disturbed.
I would say that it is contradictory, he is a person with a great capacity for reasoning and adaptability, capable of creating long-term plans that last for years (although only preparing for the worst scenarios, Vandeliu is not lying down to everything going well), but also he is very sentimental and could ruin the whole plan by buying an ice cream for a child who lost his parents
I said we not van. A reminder to all, the definition of sane should be "a state of mind that the majority of a society regards as normal" Someone who has gone through the same stuff as van and didn't go crazy can't be sane, as any person with a normal mindset would not be able to bear it.
I din't think Van can be said to be insane, he is emotianaly and psychologicaly damaged. With a trauma from when his mom was killed. Resulting in a very unstable mentality. That began healing after geting to know the ghouls. But the trauma is stil there, and comes back whenever he sees Heinz or hear about the lies they told regarding Darcias death. Those are the times I could call Van Insane. But on a daily basis, no, he is not insane (anymore). Wanting to protect what you care for is normal. The problem there is that he knows that Alda and his forces won't allow them to live. Making his trauma and metal scars unable to heal properly. Well the main readon I won't call Van insane is because of the story itself. It is writen mainly from the point of view from Vidas side. Where there are gods of lambda and evil gods. With evil gods being looked upon as evil and insane by the inhabitants of Lambda. While being perfectly sane in their own world. So it all basicly depends on where you stand in the world and what criteria you judge for mesuring his sanity.
I believe it's pretty clear that Van is insane. There are plenty of instances where it's presented but honestly the most stark examples are when he takes in the demon king blood, the mirror image in the trial of Zakkart, and the demon king's shadow. No traditionally sane person would be able to absorb them by basically thinking, "Well, it's in me, so it is me." or, "You are a direct copy of me, so you are also me." The fact that he can use hundreds of clones and not have any cognitive dissonance is plenty of evidence for me.
This is the most technically accurate way to describe Van's mental state. While the vernacular uses the terms "crazy" and "insane" interchangeably, the term "insane" is a very specific legal term, not a medical one. Insanity only applies when the mental state has deteriorated to the point where the individual is either completely incapable of knowing the difference between right and wrong, or completely incapable of controlling their actions. The vast, vast majority of the time, Van is completely capable of understanding his actions, the consequences, and even if his actions are extremely dubious, from a moral standpoint, he fully comprehends how others would interpret them. When he's anywhere within speaking distance of Heinz and crew, he quickly proceeds to completely lose control of his actions, goes into black-outs, and attacks with complete abandon. It doesn't help that Heinz himself does everything in his power to provoke Van by refusing to admit he's done anything wrong, draws his sword first, asks questions later, if ever, and responds with shrieking rage when Van can manage to hold himself together long enough to spell out why he hates him and what a completely unrepentant threat Heinz is to the people, yes people, that Van cares for, only for Heinz to yell out "they are not people!" and attack. There is no way Heinz's path of "atonement" that involves mass-murdering entire villages for his own fame, wealth, and glory is ever going to lead to a peaceful co-existence, but he refuses to believe it because he's completely deluded himself that his "heroic reforms" are making a lasting difference and improvement to the lives of the very races he's hunting down, and that what little benefit Vida's races are getting from the coat-tails of his "compassion" won't just suddenly evaporate like a morning fog the moment he's gone.
In the moral aspect, he had several, the encounter with Heinz or the destruction of the souls of Gordon and Ryley, these are just some examples of moments that led him to his current form (a difficult to describe because looking back Vandeliu has many mixtures ideologies of life, some contradictory to each other). and perhaps one of the most important moments that we ignored the most were the 15 lobotomized, he had to learn to live with the things that had been done to him and what he had to do, thanks to the phantasms he learned to create a barrier between the artificial affection that many people seek as the real thing that only beings that accept you as you are can give you and at the same time value both (interacting with the ghosts of researchers will also have helped him realize that even the most horrible people are still people) and being private His freedom made him realize the value of it and how terrible it is to play with it, without this kind of thing Vandeliu could have transformed into someone who only lives for revenge and pleasure About how he sees himself, remember that Vandeliu is so far from humans that he is closer to the undead in his way of processing information and perceiving himself and the world, we use our brains, but they think directly with the soul, they do not have the Most of our limitations and not even have our own senses, Vandeliu was at the beginning of the story halfway, but the current Vandeliu is not his current body, the main body that the fragments refer to does not refer to the physical body of Vandeliu, the main body is the form of Vandeliu's soul that inhabits his body, that indescribable creature that is neither a spirit nor a god is his true form. Although he does not want to admit it, he is not human, he is a mass of energy with consciousness, identity, personality and well, soul, but he is a completely different species from any other on the surface of the planet, the closest thing to him are the incarnate gods like Gudfangar, Vida, hihi or fitun. edit: and how I achieve this, simple, time and a strong will, because I have to say it, is something that I admire about this character, his first life was a situation in which a large part of the young Japanese or young people of almost everyone in general, had resorted to suicide, theft, abusing others or through bad company falling into alcohol or drugs to escape their reality. he strove to change it even if he never had hope or anything or anyone who He was motivated, not even dreams, he moved on (although in part it was because amamiya was basically a zombie in those times, a living dead that not even dying was a surprise for him)
i think the fact so many different people can read Vans story and come to different conclussions about how sane he is and his mental state really just shows its all a matter of personal perspective and how you look and interrupt it. i dont really think there is a right or wrong answer here, there are cases to be made for both sides so it really just comes down to everyones own personal thoughts on it. it is interesting to discuss though and hear all the different view points, it allows me to see things in different ways i wouldnt have otherwise saw them in.
I agree there are always two sides to every story. If you don't look at it from different angles you will only see a small part of the big picture.
Between Alda, who is a genocidal maniac, Vida, who had sex with the faux undead that she made from Zakkart, Rodcorte, who is the embodiment of apathy and incompetence, the group of Alda fundamentalists, who would burn down entire villages for cultivating rice, the duke, who had all of the cultivation villages wiped out to one up his brother, and the village that burned Darcia alive for piping the wrong dude, Vandaleiu is one of the more mentally okay characters. The only reason that his quirks and delusions are pointed out is because they are inconvenient to the antagonists and make a good excuse for said antagonists to impede him on his journey to achieve his goals.
In world everyone thinks van is insane. I mean everyone including the undead and vida races he is close with. The only ones that don't are the people that dont know him or the crazy religious ones that see him as the coming of Christ. Even van agrees he is insane. Its just that he is high functioning so it is less apparent. Im pretty sure someone described him as a unstable monster somehow held together by his thought of what a "human" should be.
That definition is effectively an argumentum ad populum. Simply because a majority of uneducated dipshits think something is "sane" or "the smart thing to do" does not make it so. Van is insane regardles tho.
I think that it's less about sanity and more about how he has lost practically all ihnibitons a normal human mind would have. One example of that is how he didn't even blink when Borkus was eating a human leg after a battle. How he doesn't mind how grotesque his soul is (to the point even some evil gods get overwhelmed by it) and on fact has no hesitation in breaking parts of his soul to give to others. Accepting copies of himself as part of himself and so on~ Basically it's not that Van is crazy, insane and so on~ It's more about how different his reasoning line is different from other people, and the fact that he has no psychological restrains. I am pretty sure that if he judged necessary to protect his family he would not hesitate on killing a whole city or eating human flesh. Obviously tho he is so powerful that he has more than enough room to avoid doing those things even if he needs to restrict himself while on battle so we won't ever see just how far he can actually go.