Reviewing Monsters: Persona 5, Part 3

Part three of my coverage of the Persona 5 Royal monsters! It's going a bit slow, since after the Kamoshida boss battle, a lot of the content is just dialogue up until the next dungeon, and I was experimenting a lot with running around and trying to explore as much of the overworld as possible. Mixing my "HAVE TO EXPLORE EVERYTHANG" Nintendo-born mentality with a quasi-dynamic world that has a limited amount of in-game 'days' for me to explore is kind of a recipe for me just trying to run around and talk to everything. And I really do enjoy it -- honestly, I might enjoy the daily activities more than I do the dungeoneering, as stylish as it is. 

But we're back with monster talk!

Again, while I will allude to certain events and characters in the story, for the most part this is a spoiler-free review in terms of the plot and characters. I do think that this is a pretty good game that you should really try out if you have the chance to! 

All of the Personas here are met mostly in fusion or the Velvet Room trials, with only the first dungeon boss actually encountered as an enemy. Since I finished Kamoshida's dungeon relatively early in the very generous allotted time, I've just been enjoying my time and making my way through the many story moments leading up to the second big dungeon. That's something that I feel will be affecting these reviews -- the speed that I'm going through the game is rather volatile, and how much of it will net me not just new monsters, but also enough to make an article, is going to be variable. 

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Jack Frost

• Monster Name: Mocking Snowman
• Arcana: Magician

We'll start off with a monster that has became the mascot of Atlus, the company behind Shin Megami Tensei and Persona. He is the first 'challenge boss' in the Velvet Room where he brings with him a lot of the newer (if lower-leveled) enemies we see here. And... there's definitely a very 'mascot' vibe to Jack Frost, yes? Intentionally, it seems? The colour palette is pretty simple, the face is goofy enough to be a mascot while the fangs make him 'villainous' enough to be an enemy, and with Jack Frost being a snow-elf fairy thing, we get a typical chibi-character proportion, and some blue accents like the boots, the jester cloak and the hat that ends in two sharp horns. Very cute. It does stand out compared to a lot of the other more... well, more realistic and monstrous enemies that Persona and the Shin Megami games tended to gravitate towards. Pretty neat-looking critter!

The legend of Jack Frost is from legend, and Jack Frost is a snow elf that brings in the cold weather in the winter. He's associated with creating the fern-like frost patterns that forms in the windows of homes and buildings, and gives the sensation of cold nips on people's noses... is that why Persona's Jack Frost doesn't have a nose? As the flavour text notes, Jack Frost can be innocent or kill people, which references how different legends have also been pretty variable on whether Jack Frost is a hero, a sinister figure, or just mischievous. This design works either way!  

Koropokguru

• Monster Name: Leafy Old Man
• Arcana: Hermit

Okay, this one is something I know from Shaman King, I believe! The Koropokguru are a race of 'small people' from Ainu folklore, roughly translated to 'people below the leaves of the butterbur plant', leading to the typical depiction of them as little dwarves under leaves. I think some other games have taken inspiration from the Koropokguru, like the Minish and Korok races in Zelda. In Ainu legend, the Koropokguru lived in the Ainu lands before the Ainu arrived there, and used to be in good terms with the humans. However, the Koropokguru, like many other fairy-esque legends, disliked to be seen, and would only make their gifts under the cover of night. However, when a young Ainu man decided to uncover the Koropokguru, he enraged them when he dragged one of the little people inside, leading the Koropokguru to forever not show themselves to humans. 

It's an interesting legend, but, of course, since the world of Persona 5 just have these gods and demons show in the cognition of the collective minds of humanity, there really isn't much to go on here, and the Koropokguru is just a cute old bearded man holding a leaf. 

Onmoraki

• Monster Name: Corpse Bird
• Arcana: Moon

An interesting monster design! Let's talk about the context first. The Onmoraki is a bird demon/yokai supposedly created from the deceased that did not receive enough memorial prayer, and haunt neglectful priests in a temple as they sleep, and have the ability to perfectly mimic voices. When not disturbing lazy priests, the Onmoraki will hide in shadows. Traditionally, they look like black cranes with distorted human faces and glowing eyes.

But then it all changed due to the works of an 18th-century artist, Toriyama Sekien, who illustrated a lot of the yokai of Japan, and his artwork of the Onmoraki is... shall we say, kind of cute. And very much resembling of a plucked chicken instead of the distroted and grotesque demon it was originally intended to be. And now, in modern Japanese depiction, the Onmoraki will often take a comical appearance based on this depiction. A quick google still shows a lot of the big, badass scary ghoul-bird, but I appreciate that Persona picked something very literal. 

Persona's Onmoraki is probably my favourite monster that I've seen so far, with the body of a tiny roasted chicken, and connected to it is a head bigger than the body of the chicken itself, with a distorted face upon it that really could only be best described as a very, very anxious onion. It is such a ridiculous looking visual image, and... and honestly I do really like that there's an equal amount of comical sadness and wretchedness in how this design was made. You can't tell from this static image from the archive of the game, but the Onmoraki in battle just flaps pathetically in place with its delicious chicken wings. Very fun design for sure!

Inugami

• Monster Name: Possessing Dog Ghost
• Arcana: Hanged Man

Inugami literally means 'dog god' or 'dog spirit', and are a type of yokai commonly seen in Japanese mythology, and one of the more common yokai seen in fiction, I believe. The Inugami are dog spirits (or spirits of animals similar to dogs, like wolves) that carry out malicious deeds or fiercely protect their user, and are sometimes associated with onmyoji. However, Inugami are extremely powerful spirits, and are able to turn on their masters or even possess humans. This possession is what became most associated with the Inugami. 

In real-life, there are a lot of records of animal mutilation that spread in some parts of Japan, which involves grisly butchery of cutting off the heads of starving dogs and burying the dog at a crossroads to flame the grudge of the dog and turn them into Inugami. Other methods include burying the dog alive, starving it and cut off its head as it's about to try and lunge for food. There's always some degree of possession with the Inugami, which will possess the 'user'. Even in legends that did not feature mutilation rituals, the Inugami will come to inhabit its users and cause them to behave similarly to dogs. Some bloodlines are said to be susceptible to Inugami possession, and this legend is, I believe, one of the basis of the popular manga Inuyasha.

Persona's depiction of Inugami seemed to visually borrow from the book 'Chiriyahokori', pictured on the Wikipedia page of Inugami which depicted the Inugami as being really long with tiny, stick-like limbs. They combined this general look with more realistic canine limbs, and then painted the Inugami's head all black, a reference to a different description of the Inugami having patches of black and white fur. Very interesting look overall, and I appreciate that they went with long-dog instead of just making it a generic demon wolf or wolf-man. 

Mokoi

• Monster Name: Night-Walking Warrior
• Arcana: Death

Okay, this one I didn't really find a lot of references to online, and any I can find tended to go back to Shin Megami Tensei material. But the Mokoi are evil spirits from Murngin (a group of Australian Aboriginal people) myths that are associated with death -- some legends say that they are the true cause of death outside of old age, but most talk about how the Mokoi will hunt down black magic practitioners, as well as kidnap and eat children.

My brief search through the internet really couldn't turn up any descriptions of the Mokoi beyond 'shadowy', and so the Persona Mokoi basically depicted the Mokoi as a green-coloured humanoid figure with stump-like limbs, and a face that looks like it's carved onto the 'wood'. It's holding a boomerang because Australia, I guess. Not too much to say here, it does kind of look like an evil spirit without going to the obvious routes of making it a bat-devil or a shadow ghost wraith thing. 

Apsaras

• Monster Name: Waterside Nymph
• Arcana: Priestess

Now we're going to the Hindu-Buddhist myths, with the Apsaras. The Apsaras is a class of celestial beings that are very roughly synonymous to a 'fairy' or a 'nymph' in Western culture, though are more properly just better described as 'spirits of water and clouds'. They usually take the shape of women, but are shapeshifters and are grat dancers. The Apsaras are often wives to the Gandharvas. The Gandharvas play music while the Apsaras dance in the court of Indar, King of the Gods. Some legends say twenty-six Apsaras appear in Indra's court, each representing an aspect of the performing arts. Other legends have more "worldly" Apsaras descending onto the mortal realm to seduce sages and prevent them from achieving enlightment. Over different cultures, they have been interpreted differently, with the legends of Java and Bali knowing the Apsara as bidadari, where in different parts, the bidadari would either be a heavenly maiden sent to tempt ascetics to prevent them from becoming greater than gods; or a reward in the afterlife from God to men that spurn worldly desires.

Anyway, all of this is just me saying that the Persona version of the Apsaras is pretty... tasteful, just a lady with a skintight leotard with some dancing ribbons and decorations. Compared to other female personas/demons in this franchise, she's pretty tasteful but also pretty boring as a result.

Slime

• Monster Name: Viscid Rotting Meat
• Arcana: Chariot

Okay, this one is a bit... interesting. The Slime monster is a pretty okay Slime monster. A bit more creepy than most cutesy slime monsters in franchises like Dragon Quest or Legend of Zelda or Final Fantasy or Atelier or the thirty dozen different RPG games that have slimes out there... thanks to the iconic Slime enemies in Dragon Quest, most depiction of Slimes in J-RPG games have been cute or cute-ish. There's even a trope of it! This Slime is... well, it's got glowing, creepy eyes and a very sad mouth, and it kinda also throbs in place. It's not as phallic as the Torn King of Desire, but they definitely share animation skeletons. Always appreciate a good blob monster, and the Slime's pretty neat.

It's just that... the Slime is kind of interesting because all the monsters we've seen here in Persona and its sister games are all based on deities and demons and mythical creatures from religions and myths. There's always something that inspires them, whether it be folk tales, holy scriptures, or passed-down ancestral stories. Not the Slime, no. The Slime is just... it's just a monster commonly found as a trope in J-RPG games ever since Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy based their bestiaries partially on early Dungeons & Dragons, which itself codified the many 'blob monsters' into oozes. And... I guess that is a kind of a 'modern' monster, in a way? It definitely works a lot better for Persona, I think, because the monsters in this series are borne out of the collective consciousness of humans. 

Shadow Kamoshida

• Monster Name: Suguru "Asmodeus" Kamoshida, the Bastard King of Lust

And we finally get to the final boss of the first dungeon, and the first 'target' of the first chapter of this game, which took a fair amount of time for me to reach. Suguru Kamoshida is... a pretty fucked-up individual that abuses his power of a gym teacher to do less-than-savourable things to his students. Without spoiling too much (though it's impossible to discuss these final bosses without spoiling at least some context), he's a physical and sexual abuser and the game does a great job at showing a lot of the supporting characters that become his victims. Of course, in real life, he's just a gym teacher with a frizzy hair and a pretty great writing to really highlight his misdeeds. 

In the world of the Palace, however, Kamoshida's 'Shadow' self takes the form of an egomaniacal king, whose only real difference is that he dresses around in a pink speedo, a big poofy cape and nothing else. Both real-world and Shadow-world Kamoshida pester our heroes throughout this first arc, but as they finally reach the end of the dungeon to steal the 'treasure', Shadow Kamoshida finally assumes his true form. And since Kamoshida is an egomaniacal pervert and rapist, his dungeon takes the form of a traditional castle with a lot of innuendo, like ladies in bikinis that throw themselves at Kamoshida, gigantic pillars shaped like the torso-to-hip body segments of his female volleyball players, and all this is just a twisted representation of how Kamoshida sees the school. 

There's a lot of themes on lust with Kamoshida, and indeed all of the major targets are going to be themed around the Seven Deadly Sins. (Except for Belphegor, the lazy bastard is too lazy to get off his toilet and he's reduced to a low-level enemy). Kamoshida is thus Persona's representation of Asmodeus, the prince of hell representing the sin of lust. Now in Ars Goetic representation of Asmodeus, he is a demon with three heads (a bull, a man and a ram) with a serpent tail, goose feet and sits on a dragon. Indeed, he had appeared in this form and other spiky demon-lord appearances in the Shin Megami Tensei franchise, but of course Persona's Asmodeus is unique to the character of Suguru Kamoshida. 

Like many of these J-RPG intricate boss battles, it's a bit hard to describe it since it's meant to be seen as it's writhing and moving, and not as a static image, but I'll try my best. The appearance of Asmodeus-Kamoshida is a gigantic humanoid almost reminiscent of Attack on Titan, being a naked, fleshy being with a distorted giant head, demon horns, a giant crown, and a mercifully completely flat crotch area. He's got four arms, each holding some object of his general debauchery -- a knife, a fork, and wineglass with a fake copy of Ann in it. On his lap is a trophy (Kamoshida is really big on how his sports achievements is the only thing that puts the school on the board). It's a bit less noticeable on a static image, but there are writhing female legs jutting out of it, and Kamoshida's super-long, slimy tongue will periodically drink from this and 'eat' one of these ghostly, mono-coloured ghostly female silhouettes to heal himself. Yes, that's about as far as they can get, though the attack names being things like 'lustful slurp' and 'libido boost' makes it clear what it's supposed to represent. 

Placed on either side of Kamoshida-Asmodeus are a set of throne and iron balls that are supposed to represent his 'throne', with little deformed little slaves (whose heads are stuck in metal cages) struggling to pull the metal chains. There's a lot of themes about how Kamoshida sees everything in the school as his 'slaves', and in the final part of the battle, he would actually summon 'cognitive clones' of some of his victims, who act all submissive and meek as they grab giant volleyballs that Kamoshida-Asmodeus would then spike down as giant atomic bombs at your party. The kicker, of course, is when one of the supporting characters, a female student that is all but stated to be raped by him and was so traumatized that she attempted to take her own life, shows up as a peppy, sexy bunny girl and it's a highly effective way of really highlighting how fucked-up Kamoshida sees the world around him.

I do like that at various points in the boss battle, you have to go and attack his prized possessions like his trophy and his crown, and even either take out or distract the slaves, since Kamoshida is so obsessed with his past achievements. It is rather satisfying to really bring him down after a pretty long arc of seeing him be a horrible person, though I honestly felt like we could've hurt him more, y'know?

As a monster design, I do rather like that a lot of Kamoshida's 'real world' obsessions are translated, admittedly rather disturbingly, into his demonic cognitive form. It's not a traditional 'cool' devil-man, but there's just something so appropriate about ugly desires and obsessions mutating into a more grotesque form, right? I actually don't know what the other bosses in the game look, and while Asmodeus isn't my favourite design in this game, it is definitely very great at what it's intended to do.