The
Ageist itself is kind of legendary... well, the face on it... albeit outside Vana'diel... but still!
That is, the hyottoko, or hi otoko (fire man), and while I can't really think of an FFXI reference from it, I do find it at least slightly amusing. (Perhaps they were just reading/watching Kimetsu no Yaiba/Demon Slayer while thinking of something to do with a shield and a face on it.)
There's also a bit of a play on words (or rather katakana) going on with its names on the Japanese side:
Aegis = イージス = Iijisu
Ageist = えぇぢす = Eegisu
Regis = いぃぢす = Iigisu
Or at least that's how I read them (I'm no expert). It's just slightly different ways of spelling the word.
On the English side, I guess they might have played with the R being somewhat similar to A, Aegis and Regis looking a bit similar if you look quickly, and maybe squint a touch.
It's goofy fun, but no, I would not want them to do this for everything else similar going forward either.
What comes to the other April 1, 2023 (JST) Version Update notes posted on Thursday, March 30 (UTC), I'm most looking forward to the option to turn everything off (the Courier job and investigating 10,000 floors of Nyzul might be interesting too!)...
