The second 'part' of the Kaneshiro's Palace write-ups! I don't really have a whole ton to say here that I haven't in the previous part, where I talked a lot about Makoto and Kaneshiro and how this mafia arc has been structured.
Anyway, while I think I've been relatively talkative about the main party members and the villains, let me say my quick impressions about the Confidants that I've met, in rapid-fire succession. Igor: he sure is mysterious. Caroline/Justine: very annoying in the main story cutscenes, quite funny in the random hangouts. Sojiro: he sure teaches me about coffee, I like him. Takemi: her story and voice-acting are very interesting, I like her. Mishima: what a dork, I'm just sad that I can't actually call him out on his bullshit without harming my social points. Kasumi: she's kinda barely around. Kawakami: the maid thing is sure, um, unique, but I don't feel particularly strongly either way about her. Yoshida: I like his story, but he's also stuck with a rather boring, repetitive series of scenes. Maruki: a bit too philosophical for me, he does 'feel' like he's going to be important later on. Goro: I sure got spoiled on what he's going to do later, right now he's inoffensive.
I've met Chihaya and Ohya but haven't activated their confidants, and I've met Shoji Girl but haven't had enough charm to ask her out in that church. And, of course, it'll be quite some time before I can get Iwai to talk about the illegal gun he gave me.
Now obviously a lot of these characters, I assume, will get all their mysterious secrets and whatever emotional hang-ups Joker has to get them through revealed as I go through their storylines (such as what Takemi and Yoshida have revealed, and it's also clear that we're going to have to deal with Mishima and Kawakami's problems later one).
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Andras
- Monster Name: Menacing Owlman
- Arcana: Devil
Another Ars Goetia demon! You're an ice wolf ghost guy in Genshin Impact! The Goetia describes Andras as a humanoid with angel's wings and an owl's head, riding a wolf and holding a sword. Persona gets the central figure right, making this a humanoid with a very serious-but-comical owl head and angel wings, and... I'm sorry, I think the fact that Andras's body is completely buck-ass-nude, regardless of the presence of genitalia or not, that made me snicker a bit.
Anyway, the mythological Andras is noted to be violent and dangerous, and all the summoners have to stay in the magical circle. Andras will try to tempt his summoners to leave the circle, upon which he can kill them. He's able to control anger and tempt people to kill their allies -- which the Persona Registry notes as his ability to 'stoke the hatred within soldiers'. I don't really pay too much attention to the moves these guys can do, but the Andras in my party did a fair amount of wacky hijinks with his 'Terror Claw' attacks that induces fear to enemies.
Isis
- Monster Name: She of Life and Death
- Arcana: Priestess
Unlike what current society would associate 'Isis' with, Isis is thhe mother goddess in ancient Egyptian mythology. Isis is one of the Ennead -- nine gods descended from the original sun god, Atum. Isis is the sister-wife of the sun god Osiris, and is involved in the resurrection of her husband after his death at the hands of the evil god Set, helping Osiris become the new god of death and revival with her healing magics. She also cares for their son, Horus, god of kingship, the sun and the sky. Isis was worshipped as the ideal pinnacle of womanhood, a good mother and wife, and she's often worshipped when people are trying to invoke healing spells. She's also associated with mourning and funerary rites, similar to how she restored the broken soul of her brother-husband Osiris. Over time, worship of Osiris and Isis ended up spreading out of Egyptian culture to the Nubians and Greeks, and more aspects are attributed to her -- magic, protection of the kingdom, kingship, the sky, and even fate itself.
Pesrona's Isis shows an Isis that's a combination of all these facets. She has the throne on top of her headdress, as commonly shown in most of her hieroglyphs. Under that and perhaps a bit hard to see in this picture is the head of a tiny bird, which is also something she's often depicted with in heiroglyphs. She also has wings under her arms, as is often depicted as a woman with a kite's wings under her arms... though in Persona, her wings and a significant part of her regalia are now golden. She honestly wouldn't look too out of place in like a superhero movie with those spiky-sharp wings!
Anyway, Usually I don't have too much to say about humanoid Personas, but I am admittedly always a sucker for Egyptian mythology!
Tam Lin
- Monster Name: N/A
- Arcana: Faith
A Persona only able to be created from the 'special fusion' of Cait Sith, High Pixie and Leanan Sidhe, all fair folk, Tam Lin is a figure from a famous ballad from the Scottish borders. Tam Lin (one of many alternate spellings of the name) resides in the forest of Carterhaugh, and will collect either the virginity or a possession of any maiden who passes through it. He would later meet a woman called Janet (or Margaret, there are many versions of the song) and she would become pregnant. When Janet meets Tam Lin again, Tam Lin reveals that he was once a mortal man who was captured by the Queen of the Fairies. Tam Lin is afraid that he would be sacrificed by the other fairies to hell because it's near Haloween, and asks Janet to save him. As instructed by Tam Lin, when Tam Lin rides on a horse next, Janet appears and drags him off his horse. The other fairies transform Tam Lin into all sorts of horrendous beasts, but Janet has to prove her dedication by holding on to Tam Lin, only letting go when he becomes a burning coal that she can throw into a well. Thus, Janet managed to free Tam Lin, and the Queen of the Fairies begrudgingly let him live.
...and that's to say, the in-game Tam Lin is sure an elven knight! He looks like he would fit right at home hanging around with Legolas, although his armour is a nice shade of bluish-green. Not too much to say beyond that, the legends around him are pretty neat to read.
Kumbhanda
- Monster Name: Life-Draining Spirit
- Arcana: Hermit
Another miniboss in the dungeon is Kumbhanda, which are a group of misshapen spirits in Buddhist mythology. They're noted to be a similar type of spirits like the Yaksas or Asuras. They are noted to have a 'gourd-like' body, since Kumbhanda can literally mean 'gourd'. This is interpreted as either being able to transform into a gourd, having a pot-belly, or testicles so large that the full body looks like a gourd. Some myths attribute them with the power of shapeshifting too.
I can't really find too much about them, and the description in the Persona Registry notes that they are able to 'drain life energy' and 'has dark skin, stands 3 meters tall'. And... I'm not sure why they have the head of a horse? The overall design as an enemy does look pretty demonic, a man with a horse-head, and Kumbhanda's body is a skeletal, dark humanoid form that... well, it looks pretty cool. He also has a crescent-bladed weapon that kinda looks like a spiky giant horseshoe? Is that the joke? Like his outfit, too. He's got a cape, raggedy red hair that briefly looks like it's part of the cape, and a kasa hat from which he's got a whole lot of chains that end in hooks. Very creepy!
Anyway, this is one that I really feel like the available English-language resources for the mythological basis just isn't complete enough for me to say too much about it, but as a monster design? Yeah, this one looks super-duper creepy for sure. Horse-men are inherently creepy (Indramon from Digimon really terrified me as a kid) and Kumbhanda adds a bunch of extra touches to make him even moreso.
Cerberus
- Monster Name: Guard Dog of Hades
- Arcana: Empress
...huh? Okay? This is Cerberus? With Orthrus appearing in the game, I thought it was inevitable that Cerberus, his much more iconic big brother, would show up. I'm a bit confused at this design, though. This Cerberus is more of a lion. I mean, scratch that. It is just a lion! Cerberus has most often been depicted in myths with three heads, with some other myths giving him fifty or a hundred. Some myths even attribute him with having giant masses of snakes in his body. And artwork tended to portray him with two or three heads. Why is he a lion, though? Well, some mythology question now:
In myth, Cerberus was one of the monsters born from Typhon and Echidna, two giant monsters from whom a lot of other monsters were birthed from (among them Orthus, Chimera, Lernaean Hydra, Ladon, Sphinx, Scylla, Gorgon, Nemean Lion, the Caucasian Eagle, the Crommyonian Sow, among others). Cerberus was most famously remembered by myths as the guardian to the underworld, a giant three-headed dog that loyally serves the god of death Hades. In his final labour, Heracles had to wrestle and bring Cerberus from where he was to the king of Tiryns. Hades allowed Heracles to take Cerberus only if he could wrestle the giant dog without the use of the weapons he carried. So Heracles used the lion-skin cloak that he carried to squeeze Cerberus's heads until the dog submitted. (Though some versions of the myth featured him using a club). After Heracles showed that he had completed his labour, Cerberus was returned to the underworld.
So yeah. Cerberus in MegaTen being a weird white lion is probably just a reference to that version of the myth where Heracles used the lion-skin to wrap itself around Cerberus's head. Which... is an interesting subversion? I dunno. I feel like it's kind of reaching, and in a game that tends to exaggerate iconic creatures of the mythological creatures, this one ended up feeling a lot more... boring. It's just a white lion with weird ears and a giant spiny tail. Even if they had given Cerberus the snake heads that most adaptations never bother to include, it would've gone a long way into making this design a lot less boring. I dunno. I looked at the Megami Tensei wiki and saw basically the same design with three lion heads arranged in a concentric circle from 'Soul Hackers' and I felt like that would've been a much less boring design!
Oh well. Can't win them all, I suppose.
Shadow Kaneshiro
- Monster Name: Junya "Bael" Kaneshiro
- Arcana: N/A
And we go now to Kaneshiro Junya, the boss of this whole palace. A mob boss that specifically targets dumb, impressionable children and blackmails them into gathering money for him. No explicit victims are shown on the other side of things since this game thankfully doesn't go that dark, but he also implies that he's very much willing to sell some of the female protagonists into prostitution to force them to pay their debts.
And, well, Kaneshiro has a badass transformation cutscene, just like the two bosses before him. Whereas Kamoshida and Madarame transformed into eldritch monstrosities -- a giant baby demon and a mass of floating demon pictures respectively... after the same bit of contorting and having his body enveloped by shadow, Kaneshiro transforms into... well, himself. With little fly wings and a fly's compound eyes, and he's constantly rubbing his hands like a fly. Also, thanks to the pose of his hand, in the Japanese language he constantly speaks like a rapper, yo. Which neither the 'real-world' or the Shadow Kaneshiro ever does, so I would like to think this is just a pun based on how his arms are positioned. Or maybe that's just 'coz he's so fly, yo.
Kaneshiro's 'devil' name is Bael, though the themes of gluttony and flies really makes Kaneshiro feel like he should've been Beelzebub (the archdevil normally associated with gluttony) instead. Admittedly, many Christian-based religions have often conflated and confused 'Ba'al', 'Bael', 'Beelzebub' and a bunch of other similar-sounding deities/demons. So... I guess the only real reason is that Beelzebub actually shows up later in the game.
Anyway, the mythological Bael has a super-iconic appearance in the Ars Goetia, appearing as a three-headed being with the head of a man, a king and a toad with a set of spider legs. This design actually have appeared in a Shin Megami Tensei game before, and I am very sad that we didn't get a 3D version of it. Boo!
In the first phase of his boss fight, Kaneshiro just... hides inside a giant pig-shaped safe called the Piggytron. It's not a pig, he insists. Kaneshiro's palace has a lot of pig aesthetics to it, with so many of the safes that contain clues to the palace's puzzles being hidden in piggy-bank safes. Also, Kaneshiro himself is a bit portly, so.
Piggytron is... very unexpected and honestly kinda fun to look at. It's clear that the designers had a lot of fun with Piggytron. He has vulcan cannons in his eyes that trade out for security cameras! It can retract its extremities and roll over our guys like a bowling ball, in its 'SUPER VIP FORM' while Kaneshiro runs around on top of it like a dung beetle! It's got missile pods on its 'spine'! It can turn around and fart poison gas at us! The Piggytron is a bit of a health tank before the second phase of the fight, where Kaneshiro buzzes out of the vault and uses his money to summon his two bodyguards...
Oh. Oh! Two funny fly-people, dressed up in very fetching mafia suits! One of them is offense-oriented and the other one is defense-oriented, as you can probably immediately tell from the designs, but what a fun little combination of the 'mafia' and 'lord of the flies' themes. The whole idea is that Kaneshiro is using his gigantic amount of wealth to create the Piggytron and summon these two hired goons. The real Kaneshiro himself isn't that good of a battler, just a gigantic pile of health, while these two guys are the real annoying ones.
I do really like how they're all four-armed fly-men, with the Hitman-for-Hire being lean, creepy and very fly-like... but the Bodyguard-for-Hire is clearly the standout of the bunch. Two of his fly arms are jacked beyond hell, and he's got two plastic riot shields stained with blood on either one of his huge arms. The Bodyguard-for-Hire will jump in the way of any attack done to Kaneshiro, and you have to use status effects to immobilize the Bodyguard.
Eventually, in a (I think) scripted turn, Kaneshiro uses his ultimate move, 'Make It Rain', which summons an avalanche of giant coins. Eventually Kaneshiro runs out of money, and only a single pathetic coin falls down... at which point, comically, the two fly bodyguards run off because their contract is now null and void. I love this. I love that these cognition-based fly-men come to work all dressed up in suit and tie, ready to die to defend their boss from the invading thieves, and then the second their boss runs out of money (which, by the way, are littering the battlefield) they just shrug and go off, leaving you to pummel Kaneshiro to defeat.
'Base' Kaneshiro is easily the weakest of the final bosses we've met so far, but the flavour of his fight and especially his three minions are really fun!
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