Death and Dying

[Enkidoh]

Technically it's not true death your character experiences, but rather just unconsciousness (in fact, the 'death state' that resulted from losing all HP in FFXI was literally called 'KO' - ala, knockout), so the same thing should therefore apply here. Hence Raise, despite the references to 'raising the dead' in the spell's lore (ala, the CNJ questline), really doesn't - from a gameplay perspective it's more akin to resuscitation.

A further hint is the Brink of Death effect if you are KO'd once already, are raised and then defeated again with Weakness status and then raised again - if your character is already classed as 'dead' why would the weakness effect be called 'brink of death' if they already were? It's a concession to gameplay - nothing more.

And yes, death is constantly referred to throughout the storyline - the THM Guild are effectively funeral directors (whose school of magic developed from magical techniques they employed in the treatment of corpses for burial), the graveyard near Drybone plays an important part of the story (like, the player on several occasions has to assist with the burial of the dead), and even the new ARR WHM Job quest line, a Job usually associated with the protection of life and healing, ultimately

involves tracking down the ashes of a long-deceased padjal WHM.

The game's storyline has a very morbid tone in places, although nothing too gruesome, but the obsession with death did start getting depressing after a while.