My Hero Academia, Season 4, Episodes 21-25:

The final part of My Hero Academia's fourth season, focusing on the Gentle/La Brava arc. 

Yeah, this one took a bit more to make because I was kinda... losing steam? Yeah, basically. It took me a while to make this and I ended up being a bit more concise in talking about these episodes. We'll see what anime season I binge-watch next. It's either the next season of My Hero, or if I do one of the high-buzz animes like Jujutsu Kaisen or Demon Slayer, both of which I've read through the manga but haven't watched the anime fully... or Dr. Stone, which would be a completely new experience for me. We'll see!

Episode 21:

• Yeah, a lot of these school festival arc does admittedly feel rather... filler-y, but considering that we're going to be more or less in full action/drama mode basically all the way to the end of the manga, in retrospect it's nice to have a bunch of episodes in the middle to reaffirm how, yeah, these kids do have friendships and interpersonal dynamics. 
• I do like the brief shot of All Might thinking about his old-school powered-armour support items which made him look like he's hanging out with Iron Man. Silver Age Iron Man, that is, not MCU super-sleek nanotech Iron Man. 
• So yes, the big reason why Gentle stumbled upon Midoriya is because Midoriya was mumbling over Gold Tips Imperial tea. 
• The previous couple of episodes are a bit more slow-paced, but yes, it does sell just why the otherwise 'oh, they're going to cancel the school festival if Gentle attacks, big whoop' is such a driving factor for Midoriya. 
• I do like that Gentle sneaking in throwing his cape to set up an elastic-air barrier is actually framed to make it look like part of his hammy routine. 
• I also really like how Gentle is actually panicking when he briefly speaks to La Brava 'off-camera', so to speak, because he didn't plan on his plans being intercepted by a 'crazy boy'. 
• Oh, that little scene of Jiro and Midoriya discussing about how to take notes? That's amazing. As a proficient note-taker myself, I can appreciate it. 
• I also like the brief showcases of Ashido's dancing lessons and Hatsume's actual advice helping Midoriya in the midst of his actual combat. 
• Man, that shot of Gentle having his eyes glowing looks so creepy, even though the actual things he's saying is actually making him less dangerous to the civilians. 

Episode 22:

• Monoma and Kendo's dynamic is... interesting.
• It is really a nice way to have Midoriya's smarts come into play here as he basically gets the drop on Gentle by quickly memorizing where Gentle puts up his air cushions. Although admittedly the reason that this works is because of Gentle's monologue earlier. 
• La Brava's backstory really is interesting. That sort of hero worship towards Gentle when she's a social outcast is an emotion that I think is extremely powerful, but it's kinda unique here due to the fact that Gentle himself also kind of depends on La Brava because her status as a fan is something that vindicates why he's doing content creation for. 
• Never been the biggest fan of La Brava's love power being something that's so mundane as a power-up, but I do like that Gentle and La Brava themselves clearly don't like the brute force part of this power since it runs contrary to the whole gentlemanly-thief vibe they have going on. 
• "GENTLY SANDWICH! A sandwich is deemed more elegant the thinner it is!"
• Oh yes. The growl that Gentle's voice actor put when he starts ranting to Midoriya about how he's not just fighting for himself, but also for La Brava's dream? Yeah, Yamadera Koichi adds a lot to this character. 
• Man, Gentle's backstory is... it's pretty sad, huh? I mean, the character was all comedic all throughout, but it's kind of the dark side of a lot of these anime and their 'never give up' 'always keep trying' mentality. Sometimes you think when you try out and you're unprepared/untrained for it, you... you really can cause much more damage than if you had stood there and did nothing. 
• "You can mock me and say I'm mentally weak! That's fine!"
• It's so interesting how Gentle's initially self-centered, 'carve my name into the annals of history' dream could be contrasted and compared so well to Midoriya's own. Gentle's such an otherwise hammy character that the amount of thought that the writer put into him isn't really evident until rewatches, but I think the addition of the voice-acting and not having to read this weekly does make the Gentle Criminal arc feel a lot easier to consume, so to speak. I do still think that it's ultimately one of the weakest story arcs in MHA, though.

Episode 23:

•  It is an interesting situation that Gentle surrenders himself with the excuse that he 'tripped and fell' to protect not only La Brava but also Midoriya's desire to keep this fight away from public eyes.
• Ectoplasm sending one of his bodies to escort Midoriya is A+ teacher's responsibility.
• Aww, Aoyama waited and was looking for Midoriya too. How nice of him!
• I like the little nod to the previous arc that Yaoyorozu has like a huge fanbase among the crowd.  
• God bless you, Bakugou. "WE WILL KILL ALL OF THEM DEAD WITH OUR SOUND!"
• It is still very interesting that they got a perfect English singing voice for Jiro. 
• Jiro has the best parents ever. 
• Ye ye fuck off, Overhaul, your specter got banished with the power of a high school concert. 
• I am surprised they are able to say straight-up Azkaban, Gondor, Gandalf and other terms like that without having it censored or altered a bit. 
• Okay, the beauty pageant was a bit more elaborated, but I really don't have too much of an opinion on it. 
• That brief shot of Todoroki putting his head in the little picture board of Principal Nezumi is cute, though!
• At least the police in the MHA-verse are nice enough towards Gentle and La Brava.

Episode 24:

• The Pussycats return! I do like that they still count Ragdoll among their number despite her quirklessness, and we get a brief scene of Tiger apologizing again to Bakugou for failing to protect him.
• Ah, Kota and the shoes. That's cute. 
• HERO BILLBOARD CHART! Which, surprisingly for these shonen worlds, only maybe half of the chart became relevant characters. It is nice, though, that this episode also brings up Hawks from Tokoyami's internship to help build up one of the major characters that we'll be following. 
• #10 is Ryukyu, who we've met before.
• #9 is Yoroimusha, who I remember quitting for just like, one panel. 
• #8 is Wash! WASH WASH WASH WASH!
• #7 is Kamui Woods, who actually did surprise me by climbing so far up in the background of the story. 
• #6 is Crust! I vaguely remember him showing up later on? He's got a cool mask. 
• #5 is Mirko! Everyone's favourite murder bunny. 
• #4 is Edge Shot! He's probably my favourite background hero.
• #3 is Best Jeanist, MIA guy.
• #2 is Hawks! My boy Hawks!
• #1 is Endeavour, of course.
• It is actually pretty heartwarming, as the Pussycats noted, that despite them not doing any hero work since the summer camp, they're still 'within the three-digits'.  
• I really do hope the anime does more with Wash. He (she?) does way too little in the manga. 
• Hawks did make a pretty interesting first impression, huh? Just wanting to rock the boat in this tumultuous times to hopefully stoke the flames of the other heroes so they don't just play safe and continue to preserve the fragile status quo. It did admittedly lead to the epic 'just watch me' line from Endeavor. I did like that Endeavor actually confronted Hawks immediately off the stage. 
• Okay, I don't remember about Hazukashi Teruo or his... uhh... 'shame' quirk that involves him flashing people. 
• Hahaha, Endeavour trying to learn from Hawks about people skills, and his fan going 'nooo you being hardcore is what makes you cool!'
• I always really liked how this Metahuman Liberation arc is basically started off by Hawks investigating rumours, realizing that if rumours are being spread without substantial evidence, then someone wants those rumours to take hold for some reason. 
• Ah yes, the High End Nomu fight!

Episode 25:

• Todoroki's mom returning home and having some fun with her other children is very heartwarming! Again, it's a shame when the Endeavour drama will start up later on, but it's pretty nice to see the focus given to this family.
• I am such a big fan of this manga tackling the fact that a complete piece of shit human being like Endeavour who abuses his wife and kids, who selects kids to succeed him in his career... can actually change. Can actually try and be better, try to be there for his family, while also understanding the fact that some members of his family want nothing to do with him. Like, leaving the flowers without showing his face in front of his wife since even seeing him would be traumatic for her? That's surprisingly sweet. 
• Okay, yeah, the High End Nomu's bizarre teeth and his half-formed mumbling voice is a lot creepier than I thought it would be. 
• Okay, damn, Endeavour's flames turning blue here and there? The studio animating My Hero Academia always had great fire physics from Bakugou and Todoroki's fires, but man, I appreciate this fight so much. 
• HELL SPIDER! Okay, yeah, blowing up that building with his fire net is pretty cool!
• I do like that while Hawks' Quirk is established to be super-badass, we're also seeing him being limited almost immediately and forcing him to prioritize the parts of the building that's the most damaged and stuff. 
• Hawks moonwalking while trying to keep up with Endeavour is such a bizarre scene!
• I do like that Endeavour and High-End are basically analyzing each other -- Endeavour knowing that there are limits to his power, speed and the amount of fire laser things that he can do, and the High-End trying to analyze just when he can trap Endeavour. I do also like that Endeavour is very cautious of Nomu, knowing very well that the High-End's unknown amount of Quirks could be insanely deadly. 
• PROMINENCE BUUUUURN! That was a very cool flashing set of flames
• "It tore off its head and threw it?" That's actually a very dramatic scene as Endeavour gets impaled right in front of the whole world -- including members of his family -- watching. 
• Oh, that one pink-haired fan is a badass kid. "The flames are still burning, TV!"
• One thing that MHA does amazingly well -- which I think a lot of the other manga with 'unbeatable' Big Goods -- is showing just how much to hell and back people like All Might and Endeavour actually still have to fight. Sure, they're fighting enemies on a completely different level than the younger generation, but god damn, Endeavour. 
• Yeah, propelling your unmoving body ahead with heat? That sounds like the ballsy, stupid, self-destructive thing that Midoriya would do. And he has to do it to protect everyone. 
• Oh, I love the little flashback from Hawks' side, talking about no one was seriously trying to surpass All Might due to the sheer gap with the Symbol of Peace, except for Endeavour. And the metaphor of him using little rocks to try and build a bridge across the chasm... very cool.
• Yea, that shot of Endeavour's face as he's about to megaton murder punch the High-End? Very cool. 
  
• Oh, yes. The superhero trope of 'let's take this where there isn't civilians' is always cool!
• A bit forced, but the symbolism of a bio-engineered artificial monster who only cares about fighting strong folk, and Endeavour acknowledging it as something eerily similar to his past and burning it up? I like it. 
• PLUS ULTRA: PROMINENCE BURN! 
• Oh my god, the music of possible despair as Endeavour's flames plummet to the ground... and then the heroic cheer as we see the fist? That's amazingly done. 
• The post-credits scene is Midoriya having a dream of the previous OFA bearers. Neatly ominous!

Reviewing Genshin Impact Monsters, Part 8: Girdle of the Sands

Yeah, the Sumeru patches are a bit more... extensive in the amount of areas they churn out, huh? And it's not like Inazuma didn't have multiple areas either, but the monsters introduced in the Inazuma patches are kind of... all lumped together in the first big patch with the first three islands, and then again in the second batch of islands? If you get me?But, of course, with Sumeru they also have kind of a bigge budget for designing more wildlife and monsters and enemies as well, so. 

And this is the... fourth Sumeru patch that we get a part of the map filled up, and this is kind of the 'Chasm' or 'Enkanomiya' or 'Dragonspine' of the Sumeru patches, in the sense that we reach the 'badlands' -- even relative to the other previous two desert areas. The "Girdle of the Sands" area, north of the two desert areas we've seen before, is another location where the enigmatic Cataclysm tore apart the terrain, leaving behind crystalized remnants of the Abyss and how the energies from this eldritch, otherworldly realm have affected the location. 

Also, while they were originally lumped onto the Desert of Hadramaveth review, I've moved the two monsters introduced in 3.5 here. 

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NEW WILDLIFE:

Tent Tortoise

After barely getting any new wildlife in Inazuma, it's actually very fun that every little sub-area of Sumeru comes with its own new wildlife. I honestly kinda wished they went back and added some additional flavour animals to Mondstadt, Liyue and Inazuma. You can totally see these tortoises hanging out in the Adeptus mountains of Liyue, right?

Anyway, the Tent Tortoises sure are large, land-dwelling tortoises with a fancier-looking head with horns and stuff. Interestingly, they are completely invulnerable, or at least as far as I can tell. Hitting them with any attack just causes them to retreat into their shells and spin around, which means the Tent Tortoises don't drop any kind of materials or drops. Originally I thought this makes the tortoises unique, but then I remembered that the dogs, cats and kitsunes are all also invulnerable. 

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NEW MONSTERS:

Abyss Herald: Frost Fall

Introduced in the story-focused 3.5 patch, we get a brand-new Abyss Herald, the fourth greater minion of the Abyss Order and the first new one since we got the Pyro Lector in Enkanomiya. Since all the Lectors and Heralds all have this idea of being a super-zealous religious order, the Frost Fall Abyss Herald is noted to be 'envoys who must correct any twisted strains and remove any dissonance' from the gospel that are spread by the other Abyss people. This particular one is the focus of the Archon Quest 'Caribert', which is an excellent story... but it didn't even click into my mind that this a new kind of Abyss Herald until he started swinging ice instead of water.

The Abyss Herald model is sure cool-looking, and this one has a lot of different-looking details on his body compared to his three 'brothers'. There's a bunch of shared animation with the original 'Wicked Torrents' Hydro version, which is also the one with two giant blades.

The 'Caribert' part of the main story we go through does imply that this is a 'pure' version of an Abyss Herald, as opposed to the transformed Khaen'riah humans we've been facing in Enkanomiya and the Chasm, but that's more credit to the story than the actual monster design. 

Black Serpent Knight: Rockbreaker Ax

The Black Serpent Knights, meanwhile, debuted a bit more recently in the Chasm. And the Rockbreaker Ax is completely different-looking from the other Black Serpent Knights, who look sleek and very traditionally knight-like. We've covered the history of these Black Serpent Knights and how they have a neat backstory to the ancient fallen kingdom of Khaen'riah, and the Rockbreaker Ax sure does have two gigantic cool-looking axes. According to the flavour text, it's a sword art called 'Truthseeker' -- and something that can be adapted into other weaponry, which the Rockbreaker Ax dudes basically had to do because of limited weapon availability during the Cataclysm. He can combine his two hand-axes into a big double-bladed battle axe, and can use it as a shield. 

There's a rather annoying mechanic that makes him go absolutely berserk if he hits a character with a shield, a neat little counter against one of the more common ways to 'cheese' difficult enemies in this game. Not really a whole ton to say here since I don't normally go into mechanics, he sure is a cool knight dude. Despite the Khaen'riah-heavy story in 3.5, the Black Serpent Knights don't actually make an appearance in the proper 'overworld', and he only shows up in the Spiral Abyss at that point.

Anemo Hilichurl Rogue

Called 'Hilichurl Rangers' in all languages other than English, we get another group of unique elite Hilichurls, the first time that's not another large, bulkier Mitachurl/Lawachurl, or the mage-like Samachurls. These Hilichurl Rogues fill the three RPG tropes of 'warrior, mage, thief', I guess. Very cool-designed, and the descriptions note that the Hilichurl Rogues do not belong to any tribes, and wander around 'searching for the fated genesis of their kind', seeking to uncover the bygone splendor of their people. We learn from 3.5's Archon Quest (which was a patch before the Rogues debuted) that a significant amount of the Hilichurls are cursed non-pureblooded Khaen'riah people, and it's pretty interesting to see that these Rogues apparently have enough sentience to look around for their origin. 

Very cool cape and extra horned protrusions from his mask, and the Anemo variant wields a three-pronged blade shuriken thing. But far more hilarious is the fact that the Anemo Hilichurl Rogue will summon an Anemo Slime that it holds onto with one hand, floating up like a balloon. A cute and adorale little detail for what's otherwise a very serious-looking enemy. 

Hydro Hilichurl Rogue

The Hydro variant of the Hilichurl Rogue wields a scythe and, just like the Anemo variant, summons a Hydro Slime. The Hili-rogue kicks the Hydro Slime to force it to cough out water blobs, which is both hilarious and sad. Again, the Hydro Hilichurl Rogue is noted to be roaming the wilds, in 'voluntary exile', without any affiliation to a tribe. They would lend their aid to other Hilichurls, but never stay and remain with any tribe, and I do like how the descriptions note that these are basically the equivalent to folk heroes or adventurers among the Hilichurl people. 

It is interesting to note that the Hilichurl Rogues also speak a lot. Over the game's multiple events, we've had a lot of events that shed some focus to the made-up in-game language of the Hilichurls, but it's always been the same ten or so phrases about food or danger or friend or gifts. The Hilichurl Rogue seem to really have a lot more words available to them when they speak, which I felt is a neat way to showcase how they do have a fair bit more intelligence compared to their fellow Churls. 

Consecrated Fanged Beast

After the three Consecrated Beasts we had in the previous version (the scorpion, the flying snake and the vulture), we get two more to round up all the hostile Sumeru wildlife. The Consecrated Fanged Beast is a mutated version of the Rishboland Tigers, and I do like how their heads and upper body has basically been consumed and turned into nothing but masses of jagged bone and fangs. Again, the same lore applies here, where the Consecrated Beasts have consumed the flesh of a dead god and survived, mutating their physiology. 

I guess I never really talked too much about the 'phagocytic' modes that all the Consecrated Beasts have, interestingly drawing its name from the way single-celled organisms would engulf and eat smaller particles. The Consecrated Beasts all start off with these phagocytic forms, having higher elemental resistance and I think the flavour is that they're absorbing elemental energy from around it? All the beasts have their unique phagocytic attack where they exit this berserk mode to unleash a particularly powerful attack (the Fanged Beast turns into green mist and creates a massive explosion of grass and vines)... but spawn a 'phagocytic block' that your character can take out (a bit faster with the right element) which will stun them and knock them out of the phagocytic mode. I guess the idea is that one of the god-flesh they consumed got spat out in the process of doing the attack? Now the question is if the beast is the phagocyte, or if the god-flesh is the phagocyte? 

Consecrated Horned Crocodile

Very cool, and this one is obviously the Consecrated Beast form of the Spinocrocodile. I will always have a soft spot for the scorpion because of how badass it looks, but the Horned Crocodile's prominent dorsal spine, the skull on its upper head, the unicorn horn and just how badass it looks. The crocodile, obviously, manipulates the element of Hydro, and its phagocytic attack involves its dorsal fin flaring up into a giant water blade before a similar-shaped attack bursts out of the ground. 

I do also like the flavour text for this being noting how so many beasts had the potential and chance to evolve, but only very few survive the process of consuming these flesh blobs of the dead gods. 

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NEW BOSSES:

Iniquitous Baptist

Introduced with very little fanfare and honestly not even so much of a lore for one of the most powerful-looking Abyssal beings, the Iniquitous Baptist just randomly shows up in an underground cave in the Girdle of the Sands area. Admittedly the area does have a lot of Abyssal lore to it, and is the site of a great battle between the forces of the Abyss and Khaen'riah, but where even the Hydro Abyss Lector above got a role in an Archon Quest, the Iniquitous Baptist doesn't even show up in any of the area's storylines. It really did make me wonder a b it if the Iniquitous Baptist was supposed to be the Abyssal creature that showed up in the "Caribert" Archon Quest? 

Anyway, you're not here for my monster-usage-in-the-plot speculation, you're here for my talk about their design! The Iniquitous Baptist has four arms, which is a bit hard to see if you don't know what you're looking at. The massive skirt and spikes jutting from its back makes the upper set of arms kind of blend in! The Iniquitous Baptist also wields three elements -- Pyro, Electro and Cryo -- the first three Abyss Herald/Lector elements to be introduced to the game. And... his bark is really worse than his bite. Some really great animations and voice acting, but ultimately I found this guy super underwhelming. 

There are some speculations as to how the multi-armed pose of this guy is very similar with the puppet boss forms of both Shogun and Scaramouche, but with how little of a role the Baptist has, and how his flavour text just really doesn't talks about anything beyond the Abyssal beings channeling the power of the gods, I really don't have a whole ton to say here. 

Warden of the Last Oasis/Warden of Oasis Prime

And we finally end this review with... an interesting boss fight. Originally touted among the fandom as the 'Dendro Dragon' in the same vein as Dvalin and Azdhaha, turns out that calling this guy the 'Dendro Dragon' is a huge, huge mistake. Accessible through a relatively long story quest, the Dendro Dragon Apep (named after an Egyptian serpent god) turns out to be a massive wyrm who we only saw briefly but towers over the entire desert. Even the giant sand-worms, the Wenuts, we saw a patch ago, are just the evolved versions of Apep's offspring. Our heroes try to purify the corruption that has tormented Apep for centuries, and in the process of doing so, they enter Apep's body and find out that Apep's body serves as a realm with a lot of elemental-based inhabitants... most of which have mutated into what the game calls 'proliferating organisms'. 

Greatest of this all is the Warden of the Last Oasis, who is this... bizarre... thing. It is best described as some sort of flatworm or planarian, but with a set of eight limbs that help it to scuttle and crawl around. The creature doesn't really move like a centipede, though, but more fluidly writhes and wiggles like... well, a worm or a plant. EDIT: And after a while, people have pointed out that the Warden is likely designed after the sea slug of the Melibe viridis species, particularly an image of a specimen whose body has flared out into tiny tentacle-looking legs. That's cool! With Dvalin, another dragon, being based on the Glaucus slugs and the Seelies being based on Clione, it's kind of interesting that the design team really likes sea slugs and associating them with more mystical creatures like dragons and fairies!

The idea is that this guy is some kind of parasite within Apep's body that we have to purify. It's never really clear whether this thing is an aspect of Apep, a parasite, a particularly large Proliferating Organism (or a colony of it) or if it's a symbolic manifestation of the corruption within Apep, but it sure is a very interesting-looking creature! The game is frustratingly vague about just what this 'Warden of the Last Oasis' is, since every archive or in-game description about it talks about Apep and her backstory with the gods instead -- something we already learn from the in-game story!

The desiccated version of the Warden on the left here is the first phase of the boss fight, whereas his final, third phase is the Warden of Oasis Prime, shown on the right in all its bright green and yellow glory with vines and stuff. Turns out even restoring the Warden of its corruption doesn't make it any less hostile, and you still have to kill it. Both Wardens are cool, and I do appreciate that neither of them really have a recognizable 'face' and just has a mass of vibes, growths and glowing orbs as a 'head' There is a glowing 'nucleus' that looks like some kind of a seed or a fetus? Very weird!

More than anything, I do really want to know just what this thing is based on. They did a 'behind the scenes' for the design of Azdhaha, and if they do one for this weird worm-guy, you'll see an addendum here. 

Proliferating Organisms

And these guys! They don't really show up in the archives, and only really show up as Apep's second phase. After you beat up the first worm, a number of these Proliferating Organisms -- all simple enemies with only a single attack pattern -- show up and try to attack the plot device you're fighting. They all are noted in the accompanying story to be now-amnesiac and twisted versions of the elemental spirits that once lived within Apep... and they look very interesting now as these dull-gray-green creatures that are meant to represent the corrupted versions of the elemental beings that we see throughout the course of the story. The few 'pure' elemental beings that we help enter Apep's realm ended up taking the form of fungus and living among them, which lends me to believe that these guys are attempting to do the same, only with less intelligence and sentience thanks to their corruption. 

There aren't really good screenshots of all of them yet, but I'll go through each of them! The Preliminary Proliferating Organism (shown on the top picture here) is a walking bud that reminds me of Cherrim's wrapped-up mode from Pokemon, and it can alternate between having its 'mouth' face downwards when it's moving around, and flip around when it enters a 'cannon' mode. I wonder if he's meant to be some sort of sea sponge.

The Provender Proliferating Organism, shown in the center of the picture, looks like a much simplified and smaller version of the Warden, rising up with a cobra-like head around the center green orb. This one buffs the attack of its smaller buddies!

The Predatory Proliferating Organism is just... it's a giant clam, but it looks so weird of a clam, alternating between orienting itself horizontally or vertically, having protrusions that look like a fish's fins, and, y'know, being a floating ghostly decay-thing. All these Proliferating Organisms really do have the feel like they're trying to mimic 'physical' life-forms, but just ending up as strange, plant-based approximations thereof. 

The Protective Proliferating Organism looks like two vines that curl together like a DNA strand and rise up to show off the glowing green orb (the 'core', the actual elemental bodies of these things) and create a defensive aura for its buddies. The way it moves really gives kind of the impression of some kind of biofilm or fungal colony or something, doesn't it? A closer inspection shows that it 'stands' on the same fingers that the Warden has. 

The Pernicious Proliferating Organism rolls around like some kind of pinwheel bug covered with spikes and slam onto the enemy. Just another very fun organic-looking creature. 

The Perch Proliferating Organism is another very interesting-looking one, looking like a lantern with two long hands similar to the one the Warden has. While the other five Proliferating Organisms look like some kind of quasi-natural living creature, be they some kind of plant, animal, or microorganism, the Perch looks the weirdest, like some kind of bizarre plant fairy thing. 

Anyway, these guys came as an absolute surprise because no one really talked about them in the build-up to this version. Everyone was hyped about the dendro dragon boss, the four-armed abyss herald and the badass caped hilichurls, but I think I do really like these Proliferating Organisms a fair bit!

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Anyway, this came a bit late. I screwed up writing this article multiple times early on in 3.6, especially when i was talking about the Proliferative Organisms and trying to get pictures for them. Not my best work, honestly, but hey, see you guys next time. 

My Hero Academia, Season 4, Episodes 16-20

It's been a while, huh? I'm reviewing more My Hero Academia, as we continue the rest of season four. Last time, we ended the Overhaul arc. This time, we start the license exam mini-arc for Todoroki and Bakugou. It's not quite as action-packed as the Overhaul stuff, so it's not as intensely-commentated as that arc. 

Episode 16:

• Man, poor Mera's a joke, but I've seen people who push themselves to the point of exhaustion like him, so I don't really find his schtick all that funny. More tragic.
• On the other hand, I've found that Inasa has really endeared himself to me with his bombastic voice-acting.
• "How can turds save humanity?" "Indirectly, as fertilizers-" gotta love my man Todoroki.
• DISCIPLINARY ACTION!
• Okay, I remembered these couple of chapters as being particularly boring to read week-to-week in the manga, but I do feel like it's very important for the world-building to acknowledge that being way too focused on battle prowess and not having 'heart' is not becoming of heroes. As a single episode that's part of a season, though, it does serve as the nice palate cleanser that it's meant to be. (The obnoxious brats are also a lot less obnoxious and more funny with voice actors) 
• Actually liking Endeavor now after the benefit of a couple hundred extra chapters in the manga, I actually do appreciate this early attempt at exploring his other side beyond being a dipshit parent/husband. Him acknowledging -- even backhandedly -- that All Might did have a positive impact on society is a sign that there's more to him than being a hate sink.
• It's also a nice parallel between All Might telling Endeavor to be his own version of the Symbol of Peace, compared to Todoroki attempting to take a different approach. It ended up as a joke, though, unfortunately.
• Is Endeavor yelling SHOTOOOOO a meme that the anime enforced?

Episode 17:

• Of course all the kids have given their powers names. We get appropriate ones like "Assault Dust", "Queen Beam" and "Electromagnetic Bullets" and... the girl with flowers on her hair calls her petal powers "Viral Cosmos", another one that makes a wooden mallet is "King's Ram" and this one kid that makes light rings calls his "Hula Hoop"... yeah, workshop that, kid.
• My favourite kid has to be "Binging Balls", who summons like a swarm of floating chain chops. 
• Damn, that one kid with a giant cannon coming out of his mouth (a.k.a. "Tongue Tank") looks uncomfortable, though.
• Yeah, okay, that whole 'Quick Doomsday Singularity Theory" or whatever that Present Mic and the Shishikura are discussing does sound pretty terrifying, especially seeing how these kids are utterly uncontrollable little gremlins. I mean, sure, these two episodes had an easy out with a clear 'boss' among the kids, but still...
• Bakugou mimicking the 'Glamouroki' is unironically the funniest moment of the episode.
• Some real Gurren Lagann vibes when the rapping starts when our students creates that weird giant ice slide thing. I do feel like the setup for the conflict -- that they can't humiliate the kids but definitely can't lose to them otherwise they'll become rowdier -- is great, but the solution feels overly convenient. 
• Yeah, Endeavor trying his best to be a decent human being to Todoroki is gradual, and while it's very arguable on whether he deserves his redemption arc, I do feel like the discourse its generated is intentional in regards to his character as a complete and utter dipshit who genuinely wants to try and be better. 
• Damn, Nighteye's funeral. It's just kind of a kick in the nuts after the whole wacky fun shit with the preschoolers. 
• Haha, Tokoyami! "This is truly a question of the darkness!"
• Apparently Aoyama usually eats by himself because the cafeteria food does not agree with him... but also wants to shove cheese into Midoriya's mouth. Okay. 
• Yeah. "Aoyama has started showing his true colours" translates to him leering into Midoriya's window late at night, and leaving cryptic messages in cheese. All Aoyama wants to do is to be friends and bond over the fact that their Quirks are totally coincidentally incompatible with their bodies! Poor, poor Midoriya, he got so afraid.  
• Oh, right. Mt. Lady and Kamui Woods teaming up with Edgeshot is shown here in the background as the kids are discussing news. 
• I agree with Uraraka, Ashido's attempts at making acid rain is pretty cruel sounding. 
• Okay, yeah, Aoyama pelvic thrusting into a huge block of stone, then him failing and having the laser trickle out... that's not phallic at all, no /s
• Pretty neat little mini Aoyama episode. Always appreciated this chapter, honestly, even before it became significant in the future.

Episode 18:

•  Yeah, this is the proper start of the 'break' arc. It's... it's honestly a lot of fun, just going from the dancing and the kids actually being kids. I don't think I can really break down this episode too much cause of how light-hearted it really is. 
• Yep, Jiro and Kaminari definitely have a lot more cute interactions that the anime plays up a bit more! I do really like how this arc is basically a soft focus on Jiro -- and the fact that she views her hobby as 'just a hobby' and not at all something constructive to her hero business. Which... is something that I've felt about a lot of my hobbies a lot of time, and I know many other people also struggle with. Not everything has to be constructive! You can have outliers in your interests compared to the rest of your interests! 
• I do like that Kirishima, after going through the Overhaul arc, is kind of worried that they are slacking, but the idea that this is basically a morale boost and a 'life goes on' thing for the other courses is pretty sound. 
• Kaminari's just a low-level pervert with a maid cafe. Mineta gets absolutely hogtied before he gets to speak what's in his mind. 
• Ah, yes, the mental image of Bakugo and Todoroki doing some disco night is pretty hilarious. 
• Eri finally talking to Midoriya and Mirio is very well-done -- the timing that we take a breath from the Overhaul arc, but also the fact that we're acknowledging that her trauma won't just disappear after being saved, after everything that Overhaul did to her. 
• You know, if it was anyone asking Eri on a date other than Mirio, I would've raised red flags. 
• Ah, Gentle and La Brava robbing a convenience store while putting it on not-Youtube. One of the heroes that tried to stop him really looks like he could be a Kamen Rider, with the scarf and everything. 
• I love that Gentle's whole 'Youtube Video' schtick actually gets a fair bit more emphasized in the anime, with some hilarious cuts to different backgrounds, a bunch of random pop-up text and even an outro! 

Episode 19:

• Oh, hey, early cameo by Destro!
• Yep, Gentle Criminal constantly accidentally pouring tea on people... and, honestly, their whole over-the-top lunatic deal are all a lot funnier with voice-acting. 
• I see even in the world of superhero streaming, there are always going to be people that creepily simp for any women on-screen. "SHOW US LA BRAVA!"
• Ah, yes, Bakugo's hidden drumming talent. Which, honestly, I can totally see him being good at, but also him refusing to admit that he's got the ability to do something 'unmanly' like music. 
• Bakugo's angry ranting is rude, yeah, but as Jiro herself realizes, Bakugo's point that the source of the other courses' stress to try and get some self-satisfaction by performing for them is actually valid. It's really a showcase of him starting to grow and show empathy by understanding other people... I mean, sure, he goes straight to "this pisses me off, I want to beat them up", but the fact that it did ultimately come from him understanding and empathizing with people is something I really do appreciate more upon rewatch. 
• ...okay, it didn't quite blow me away as the animation shows for our other heroes, but they got an English singer to get her to sing in perfect English. I thought they were just going to bring in a regular singer as her VA or something, but... that's different for sure!
• "Because of my character design, my hands won't reach!"
• I've never been the biggest fan of long explanations for training and different sub-sets of a power that may or may not be relevant in the future, but... but it's nice to see that the author put a lot of thought into Midoriya's new power-up. 

Episode 20:

•  Yeah, this episode is pretty feels-good with Mirio and Midoriya basically bringing Eri around the school and letting her see how society works. That's all pretty cute. Again, a lot of fun, shorter scenes here and there, but it's mostly just fun stuff!
• I know Romeo and Juliet is probably in public domain, and Return of the King most likely is as well, but the Prisoner of Azkaban? Huh. 
• Yeah, the lady that Hado somehow lost to has... uh... interesting eyelashes. 
• The little short scene of Nezumi begging the police to let them have the festival really does sell that the teachers want their students to have some semblance of good mental health, while also explaining why the police didn't shut down the event despite the fact that there's a whole damn warning from Gentle on Not-YouTube. 
• ...and Gentle's hammy monologue about how he's making this into basically a warning because he doesn't feel like heroes should be having festivals right after a crisis does really make the whole plotline, while light-hearted, still feel like it's a debate of ideals. Neat. 
• Clearly, Not YouTube never got rid of the dislike button!
• All Might briefly noting that he used to have armour does bring to mind a lot of the more... toyetic designs that a lot of superheroes had temporarily in the Golden/Silver Age.
• Again, Gentle and La Brava do feel like a bit of an anomaly and many people describe them as a filler villain that got carried a bit too far, but I really do think that they do work pretty well for a mini-arc villain. The hero (or, well, villain) worship angle from La Brava never really gelled with me, but I've always enjoyed Gentle's hammy monologues, his over-the-top backstory (YouTube is literally his origin story!) and having a voice actor does make it a lot funnier. 

Reviewing Monsters: Persona 5, DLC Personas, Part 2

Part 2 of my coverage of the 'DLC Personas' in Persona 5 Royal. Honestly, these two articles took a long time for me to write because it did take me quite a while to encounter and properly appreciate the DLC Personas. I ended up doing a bit of a readup on the protagonist Personas of P3 and P4 as well, to at least get an idea of what the design team wanted to do with them. 

Obviously, I ended up talking a bit too much in the first segment of the DLC Personas, since these two articles were originally written as a single, super-long article until I decided to split the two up for easier consumption and presentation. 

I almost wanted to do a bit where I talk about every single one of the other party member Personas for P3 and P4, but... that's a lot of work, and I feel like some of them are designs that I probably won't be able to appreciate until I see them in action, not too dissimilar to Makoto's Johanna or Futaba's Necronomicon, both of which look very underwhelming with pictures alone. 

Anyway, while the previous part mostly had personas originating from Persona 4 and its spinoffs, this one features the ones coming from Persona 3! 

[We'll resume with our regularly scheduled non-DLC Persona 5 reviews after this.]

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Orpheus / Orpheus Picaro

• Monster Name: N/A
• Arcana: Fool

Orpheus is the main Persona of the protagonist of Persona 3, and I find him to be much more interesting than Izanagi or even Arsène, for the simple reason that Orpheus is very explicitly a puppet, with some very mechanical-looking joints on his elbow and knees. He's got a giant harp attached to his back, and a red scarf, and the blank expression on this doll-like figure does really give a very striking look. The baleful blue that the default Orpheus has is kind of neat enough, but he looks absolutely killer in the 'Picaro' form. You'll get tired of me repeating this over and over, but the red and black does look damn good. Giving the harp some tiny devil wings is also a nice touch. 

Orpheus hails from Greek mythology, and Persona 3's protagonists do have Personas themed around Greek myths. Orpheus is the mortal son of the king of Thrace, Oeagrus, and the muse Calliope. Some myths credit the god of sun, art, healing and prophecy, Apollo, as being Orpheus's father. Regardless of his parentage, Apollo favours Orpheus and granted him a lyre that he quickly mastered. Orpheus was so skilled with his lyre that animals and even rocks would be compelled to dance to his music. In this way, Orpheus became the most skilled and respected musician and poet. 

Upon the death of his wife, Eurydice, Orpheus's grief caused his mournful singing to cause even the gods to shed tears. Orpheus went to the underworld and touched even the heart of the god of death, Hades, who allowed him to bring his wife back to the upper world on the condition that he walk in front and never turn around until the pair are back in the land of the living. However, in his impatience, Orpheus looked back after he made it out of the Underworld but before his wife has, causing Eurydice to vanish forever. 

Depending on the myth, Orpheus would be torn apart prior to his death, until only his head and lyre remained. Some myths credit the maenads (female followers) of Dionysus for killing him, though the reasons vary -- some say the maenads rip him apart for spurning the gods, while some say out of jealousy for Orpheus would take no other female lover after losing his wife. His head, still singing, would float down the river Hebrus until it was buried in the island of Lesbos. His lyre, meanwhile, was taken to the sky and placed among the stars. 

...if this myth, especially a man going to the underworld to get his wife only to look back and see her vanish, sounds very similar to the Izanagi and Izanami myth I talked about before... well, it's probably intentional! As far as I know, Arsène Lupin has no such myth where he goes to hell, but hey, two out of five isn't bad! Also, I guess looking back to see your dead wife after being warned specifically not to do so would fall under the purview of 'the Fool', huh? 

Orpheus / Orpheus Picaro

• Monster Name: N/A
• Arcana: Fool

There is a second Orpheus Persona, this one associated with the female protagonist of Persona 3 Portable, and one thing I take away from writing this whole DLC segment is that there are a lot of spinoffs for Persona 3, 4 and 5. Anyway, 'female' Orpheus does have a lot of the similar characteristics to male Orpheus, other than the longer hair and changing the shape of the lyre to a harp. The yellow on female Orpheus's main body looks a lot better than the pale blue, I think? Of course, I did use this specific version of Orpheus and its amazing healing skills to basically carry me through any hard battles in the early game, so. 

This Orpheus Picaro is probably one of the most noticeably drastic and most edgiest -- in all the best ways -- of the Picaros. Look at that absolutely badass spike-studded heart! The fact that there's a whole lot more red and the design looks so damn goth is definitely a plus. I think keeping the face porcelain-white to contrast the red/black colours, in contrast to Male Orpheus, works a lot too!

Messiah / Messiah Picaro

• Monster Name: N/A
• Arcana: Judgement

The final form of Orpheus is apparently Messiah, obviously based on Christianity... but the game does get away from making this an outright representation of Jesus by calling him 'Messiah' and basing him off the promises common throughout many Abrahamic religions of the coming of the Messiah, a saviour of mankind that will bring them salvation near the end of days. This guy is the final form of Orpheus, which I felt is also very out of place considering how I peeked into Persona 3's roster of protagonist Personas and they've all been pretty uniformly Greek/Roman-themed. 

And... the design of regular Messiah is honestly kind of bland? It sure is a JoJo Stand guy, but unlike Orpheus or Izanagi he just looks rather... obligatory. The chain of coffins he carries behind him to presumably 'judge', as his Arcana implies, is a nice touch. But man, look at the Picaro version! The blacks and reds are nice, the contrast is neat,but it's the huge golden side-skirts and spiky halo behind him that really makes the design rather stand out. 

Thanatos / Thanatos Picaro

• Monster Name: N/A
• Arcana: Death

Spoiling like the first fifteen minutes or so of Persona 3, turns out that the Persona 3 protagonist (the 'P3P', if you will) doesn't just have Orpheus as his Persona, but also Thanatos, who acts as a 'berserk' mode. Thanatos is the Greek god of death, the son of the primordial deity Nyx, and the twin of god of sleep Hypnos. Despite his role as a god of death, Thanatos is actually the representation of mortality and peaceful death, bringing the eternal sleep of death to everything on the world as a universal constant -- other gods like Keres would be responsible for the more violent kinds of death. Thanatos doesn't even take part in many of the bickering and power plays of the Greek gods, since that part is taken over by Hades, who is the god of the underworld and not death itself. 

Thanatos is not cruel, but he is also indiscriminate and merciless. Some accounts note that Thanatos is hated by all, and hates everyone in return. While powerful, Thanatos could sometimes be outwitted, as happened in the legend of King Sisyphus of Korinth. Sisyphus managed to trick Thanatos into being chained up with his own chains. However, this act prevented all mortals from dying so long as Thanatos is chained, causing Ares, the god of war, to finally grow frustrated with wars that did not end, freeing Thanatos from his binding. Heracles is also known to have wrestled Thanatos once, preventing him from claiming the life of queen Alkestis, to whom the demigod hero is indebted to. 

Eventually, as the myths solidified in making Thanatos more of a gentle figure, his depictions became a winged young boy, not too dissimilar to modern-day depictions of angels. He is associated with upside-down torches, butterflies and poppies, as well as a black sword on his hip. 

Persona 3's Thanatos is probably one of my absolute favourite designs among these DLC Personas. It has a pretty slick black suit design that looks like a World War II soldier or something. Of course, Thanatos has the expected skull face of these death gods, but it's made up of metal and from the way it's textured it doesn't even lead to a proper gullet. It's just a metal, blank-eyed skull and a mandible that opens and closes. There is the sword on his hilt, of course, but the coolest part has to be the row of coffins and chains that form a massive set of cape or angelic wings on Thanatos's back. I mean, using other things like bones or whatever to make your angelic/demonic wings isn't particularly creative in these fantasy settings, but coffins? That's just so appropriate for a god of death, don't you think?

I don't have much to say about the Picaro variant. In this case, I feel like the muted colours of the original work so much better than the extra reds and golds they added, even if Thanatos Picaro does have some fancy head-spikes. 

Athena / Athena Picaro

• Monster Name: N/A
• Arcana: Chariot

Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom, courage, philosophy, warfare, justice, law, mathematics, arts, crafts and a whole lot of other intellectual aspects of life. After Zeus swallowed the Oceanid Metis, the goddess of good counsel, their child Athena sprung from Zeus's forehead fully grown and armoured. Thus, she became one of the Twelve Olympians, the chief gods of the Greek pantheon. 

As that abridged list of aspects associated with Athena shows, Athena is basically associated with any and all 'intelligent' and 'wise' crafts. Even her aspect of warfare involves more of the strategic aspects of warfare, as opposed to her brother Ares, which represents the bloody, gory aspects of war. Athena is worshipped by many Greeks, particularly in the city of Athens, and her symbols include the owl, olive trees, snakes, and the Gorgoneion -- a shield with the symbol of the Gorgons, Athena's hated enemies, on it. 

Athena is involved in many, many myths, mostly as a wise and just goddess who aids heroes such as Heracles, Perseus, Jason and Bellerophon in going through their trials and tribulations. Unlike Orpheus, there isn't a single 'huge' legend about Athena, so I'm not even going to try to summarize all the legends about her here. Just know that you'll run across Athena if you read any Greek myth. 

Persona's version of Athena depicts her with the traditional Corinthian helmet, often with a spear and a Gorgoneion shield. Persona keeps most of Athena's classical looks, but updates her shield into a gigantic ring around her, almost like a hula-hoop. It sure is attention-grabbing, and I do like that there's a 'face' on the shield for you to look at. Persona 3's deuteragonist, Aigis (named after Aegis, the shield associated with Athena) has Athena as her final evolved Persona, and it's pretty neat. I don't think Athena is my favourite Persona by any stretch, even in this batch of humanoid Persona after humanoid Persona, but I do like that the giant orbiting shield-ring does give her a rather unique silhouette. 

The Picaro version doesn't really leave me much to talk about. It swaps the traditional spear for a wicked curved battleax thing, and there's a lot more golds, blacks and reds... it's a nice palette, but I think I'm a bit Picaro'd out at this point. 

Asterius / Asterius Picaro

• Monster Name: N/A
• Arcana: Wheel of Fortune

The next two Personas are from Persona 4 Arena, a crossover between Persona 3 and Persona 4. I am a bit too tired to read even the synopsis of another Persona game after combing through P3P and P4G, so I'm not even going to try, but since Ariadne and Asterius are both Greco-Roman inspired, I elected to slap them here with the P3 Personas. 

Asterius, or Asterion as he's sometimes called, was the name of two characters involved in the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The original Asterion was the king of Crete. His wife, Europa, was seduced by the god of the skies, Zeus, in the form of a bull, and bore three half-god children. Among them was Minos, who inherited King Asterion's kingdom and banished his brothers. King Minos prayed to the sea god Poseidon for his favour, and was supposed to sacrifice a beautiful snow-white bull to earn the god's favour. However, Minos refused to do so, keeping the bull and sacrificing something else. This enraged Poseidon, who caused Minos's wife Pasiphae to fall in love with the bull. Pasiphae and the bull mated, creating the monstrous being Minotaur (literally 'bull of Minos') -- a half-man, half-bull creature who would devour humans for sustenance. This Minotaur was also named Asterion/Asterius after his grandfather, though obviously the name 'Minotaur' was much more common nowadays. 

The Minotaur was eventually trapped and placed in a Labyrinth designed by Daedalus. King Minos would force the people of Athens to send seven young men and seven young women to be killed yearly (some legends say every seven years) at the hands of the Minotaur when his son, Prince Androgeus, died due to conflict with the Athenians. This barbaric ritual ended when the hero Theseus, prince of Athens and son of Poseidon, killing the Minotaur after being securing the aid of Minos's daughter, Princess Ariadne, who gave him a ball of yarn to navigate the Labyrinth. 

Persona's Asterius is... gigantic. It's a bit hard to tell here, but he's emerging from the a shadowy blob on the ground, with his entire upper body dwarfing most of the Personas available. It's a rather simple design and a surprisingly epic one for a minotaur -- a monstrous bull head made of metal and exposed flesh, fangs, chains holding him together and cut-off horns that burn with fire. Again, I do think that the simple original design is pretty neat enough. I like it much better than Asterius Picaro and his Darth Maul tattooed head, but it's still a giant shadow demon bull man. 

Ariadne / Ariadne Picaro

• Monster Name: N/A
• Arcana: Wheel of Fortune

Meanwhile, Princess Ariadne, the minotaur's half-sister who would eventually lead to his demise, is also a Persona here. Princess Ariadne was put in charge by her father King Minos over the Labyrinth. However, she fell in love with the Athenian hero Prince Theseus, providing him with the string that he used to navigate the Labyrinth, as well as a sword. Theseus eloped with Ariadne, and while the legends give various reasons as to why, Ariadne was eventually abandoned by Theseus. Whether he's the cause of Ariadne's abandonment or if he took pity on her, the wine god Dionysus would take Ariadne as his wife. She would be killed by the hero Perseus during his war against Dionysus, being turned to stone by Medusa's head. However, Dionysus would descend into Hades, and bring Ariadne all the way to Mount Olympus where she would become a goddess -- of labyrinths and mazes, of course. 

Anywa , the design of Ariadne is another one of those semi-robotic Stand-style Stands, though I have to admit that her Picaro design looks particularly killer. It might just be the little cage-like compass stucture around her head that she's wearing like a helmet, honestly. It's not easy to see in this screenshot, but Ariadne actually is manipulating a mass of strings that creates a maze-like pattern, referencing the labyrinth she guards as well as the string she lent to Theseus. 

Ariadne and Asterius are the Personas of a character called Labrys from Persona 4 Arena, with Asterius being the 'Shadow' Persona... but, again, I'm not going to really elaborate too much about this considering the fact that the crossover plot is a bit hard to digest.

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And that's it! The 'DLC' Personas did overwhelm me and I did play around with them a lot, but basically in my playthrough I only make them 'legal' for me to use once I am able to naturally fuse them with the Personas I find at that point in the game. I ended up liking a fair bit more of them after using them, even if I'm always never the biggest fan of more humanoid Personas. Anyway, with the DLC's done, back to your regularly scheduled playthrough-based Persona reviews!

Reviewing Monsters: Persona 5, DLC Personas, Part 1

Okay! This is a bit of a more 'special' review, where I started working on this around the time I finished Kamoshida's palace, but I ended up being way more interested in talking about the more varied-looking enemies I met in-game, I got confused on how to introduce some of the special DLC personas, and decided to go 'screw it', compile it all into a single article (which I obviously split into two) and slowly work on it over the weeks months. And since I'm currently in-between arcs in Persona 5, I decided to finish talking about the DLC personas! 

And currently, I'm stuck between the long cutscene-heavy scenes between the end of the Futaba palace and the beginning of the next, as well as playing through The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, so I figured I'd wrap these two articles up and post them. 

Technically, you unlock the ability not just to fuse, but to straight up immediately summon any of these Personas for free. These are all basically pretty high-level Personas meant to be used in the mid-to-late game, originally purchasable as DLC in the original version of Persona 5. But the Personal 5 Royal re-release, which I'm playing, made all of these guys available to summon immediately once you complete most of the tutorials in the first dungeon. After using Orpheus and Izanagi for a bit, I realized that it's really not how the game was originally intended to be played, and I won't really use them unless my own levels have reached those of the Persona in question or if I really need that extra boost and can't be arsed to level grind. 

Also all of these Personas are all important Personas or demons from other games in the wide franchise, but I will immediately admit that I'm only familiar about the franchise in regards to Persona 5 and I saw a bit of the Persona 4 anime before. Which is why I was a bit hesitant about talking about these guys in the first place... they're all protagonist Personas and thus a lot of them have a rather typical 'humanoid robotic hero' look to them, which I always can appreciate. But usually I tend to not be able to talk too much about them. I have only the slightest idea about any of the other characters in the previous Persona games, and so a lot of these reviews will revolve solely around the visual designs and their base mythological inspirations. 

While I don't want to use a lot of these clearly overpowered 'summon a level 65 Persona when you're level 5' guys, I mark myself as being 'allowed' to use them when they start appearing in the fusion ersults of the Personas I collect from the dungeons equal to my level.

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Izanagi / Izanagi Picaro

• Monster Name: N/A
• Arcana: Fool

Each of the old protagonist Personas also arrive in a Persona-5-exclusive "Picaro" variant, which basically means that they get a sick, black-and-red outfit and some punk-rock alterations to their traditional look. The Picaro ones are slightly stronger level-wise, but I will be reviewing all of them in the same entries with their base forms. Picaro is a term meaning 'roguish adventurer', which, again, I think is meant to fit a lot of these more traditionally heroic-looking Personas to the vibe of the P5 cast... though honestly, I think the real reason is that any black-and-red repaints just look cool. 

Izanagi here is the default Persona of the protagonist of Persona 4, the game before this one. All the party member characters from Persona 4 have Personas themed after Japanese cultural or mythological characters. I'm not sure if the 'rebellion' motif is as prevalent in Persona 4 as it is in Persona 5 (the main theme of all these games seem to be more 'self-expression' or 'acknowledging your hidden self'), but Izanagi is a pretty interesting humanoid design. It's another one that really looks like a JoJo Stand, being a humanoid with a badass longcoat (with way too many '90's buckles), a metal mask, very fancy platform shoes, two ribbons flowing down from his head, and a gigantic naginata. But instead of a traditional blade, Izanagi has a combat knife!

Izanagi, I think, is modelled after the 'delinquent' look. Again, I don't really know too much about the plotline of Persona 4 other than the television motif and that the entire game has a 'serial killer' theme, so I can't say whether the delinquent motif fits the character or not, but it sure is cool. Izanagi Picaro basically just inverts the already-existing colour scheme, pushing the red colour of the undercoat out and replacing all the silver. Not sure about the resulting plaid pattern, but the gloves and sword do look a lot cooler! 

The myth of Izanagi-no-Mikoto is one that is intrinsically tied into Japanese mythology and creation story... and to explain all of it would proably take up this entire page. But trying to quickly summarize it, Izanagi and his sister-wife Izanami were some of the ancient gods that were born before the physical world was created. They stirred the primeval ocean with a giant jeweled spear, and created the first landmass, eventually leading to the proliferation of mankind.

Izanagi and Izanami sired many children (all of whom represented the islands of Japan), but during the birth of the fire god Hi-no-Kagutsuchi, Izanami died in childbirth, burned by the flames of her child. Izanagi slew Kagutsuchi in rage, and from the remnants of Kagutsuchi were born volcanoes, while Izanami's body became even more gods. The spirit of Izanami was sent to Yomi (the underworld), Izanagi pursued her there. However, Izanami had eaten of the food of Yomi and was unable to leave. Izanagi attempted to bring her out of Yomi regardless, but when on the way out of the underworld, he looked back and sees that Izanami is in a rotting, maggot-ridden state. Ashamed and enraged, Izanami attempted to kill her husband, and Izanagi ended up sealing her in the underworld with a rock. Thus, their bond is broken.

Izanagi then performed a cleansing ritual to rid of the taint of Yomi... and multiple other great gods were born from this ritual. From his left eye was born Amaterasu the sun god, from his right eye was born Tsukuyomi the moon god, and from his nose Susano'o the storm god. After this event, Izanagi leaves the realm to his three children and is never mentioned in the myths. 

(Also, yes, Naruto's Uchiha clan secret skills all draw names relating from this myth).

Magatsu-Izanagi / Magatsu-Izanagi Picaro

• Monster Name: N/A
• Arcana: Tower

I missed this the first time around! There's a lot of DLC Personas, many of which have different names. Magatsu Izanagi, or "Calamity" Izanagi, represents Izanagi while he was still tainted by the Underworld, before he washed himself from the aforementioned cleansing ritual. In Persona 4, this was the Persona used by one of the main antagonists. 

Regular Magatsu-Izanagi is just... Izanagi, but all black and blotchy with red vein squibbles running through it. A bit hard to see what's going on with this background too, TBH. Not much to say, it sure is an evil form! Magatsu-Izanagi Picaro, on the other hand, goes for something completely new, with a jack-o-lantern grinning face that just pops off, and replaces the black-and-red texture with a classy white pattern not too dissimilar from the patterns on this game's load screens and the Thieves' Den. Ultimately it's still just another variant of the Izanagi model, but I do appreciate them having some fun for the 'Picaro'. 

Izanagi-no-Okami / Izanagi-no-Okami Picaro

• Monster Name: N/A
• Arcana: World

Located much, much later in the level line is Izanagi-no-Okami, and Okami means 'Great God'. And this is basically a 'super mode' of the starter Persona, and this basically symbolizes Izanagi as the god of creation, sky, ocean and night. I guess that's why he is classified as the 'World' Arcana, since this is Izanagi at his full power, presumably after a certain event happened in the game.

A lot of the 'evolution' from regular Izanagi to Izanagi-no-Okami is pretty much expected. The mask covers his face now, his long-coat becomes white, he gains a tie to go with his more formal look, but most strikingly his giant spear becomes two giant blades attached to a ring thing that can be spun. Oh, it's hard to tell by the pose in this, but his shoes now have gigantic blades that point forwards which he stands tippy-toes on, which I thought was interesting. 

Izanagi-no-Okami Picaro (whoof, the name) is also a fair bit more different than his base look, with the bright solid reds and whites being striking. the blades of the weapon are a lot more elaborate, too, with a golden jagged knife on one end and a spike with a a snowflake-like design. 

...not a whole lot for me to say here, actually!

Kaguya / Kaguya Picaro

• Monster Name: N/A
• Arcana: Moon

Kaguya here is the ultimate Persona of the character Marie from Persona 4 Golden, an 'expansion'-exclusive character. Princess Kaguya is a character featured in the Japanese folktale Taketori Monogatari, the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, and it's one that gets referenced a lot in anime. Kaguya was found by a bamboo-cutter within a stalk of bamboo, and was later raised as his daughter. Princess Kaguya became renowned throughout Japan for her beauty, and many men came to court her and ask her hand for marriage, but Kaguya gave them all trials and ultimately refused them all, even the Emperor of Japan himself. Eventually, it was revealed that Kaguya was a member of celestial people that lived on the moon. Kaguya was escorted by her people to ascend to the moon, despite the protests of the Emperor. As she passed to the celestial realm, Kaguya left behind an Elixir of Life to him. The distraught Emperor, refusing to leave as an immortal without the princess, burned the elixir in the mountain closest to heaven. The mountain would become Mount Fuji, whose name sounds similar to fushi, or never-dying. 

Anyway, Persona's Kaguya is... she's got a unique silhouette. The central person, just like a lot of the humanoid attached-to-a-character Personas, looks like an emotionless JoJo Stand, but Kaguya has this giant... disc? I'm honestly not quite sure what it's supposed to be. It's got multiple colourful layers and patterns of it that kind of reminds me of a musical sheet of sorts? Her hands go through the holes in the terminus of both ends of this C-shaped structure. Presumably there might be some additional context if I had played through Persona 4. 

Also, this is one of the handful where I really do think that the black-and-red Picaro form doesn't really look anywhere as cool as the original. Sure, the multi-colours are a bit distracting, but I do think that it's so much easier to 'get' what's going on with the regular Kaguya compared to Kaguya Picaro. 

Tsukiyomi / Tsukiyomi Picaro

• Monster Name: N/A
• Arcana: Moon

Parsed as Tsukiyomi instead of the traditional Tsukuyomi, this Persona also hails from Persona 4, specifically the character Sho Minazuki from Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, because P4 has quite a bit of spinoffs. I've been calling the deity Tsukuyomi for years, though, so I'll stick with the more traditional spelling. I think it might be because Tsukuyomi is featured in other Megami Tensei games as a major character, so they wanted to establish this as a unique entity? 

Tied to the Izanagi legend above, Tsukuyomi was one of the three children born of Izanagi after he bathed after the whole underworld/Izanami debacle, born of Izanagi's right eye. Tsukuyomi is the ruler of the night and representation of the moon. Tsukuyomi went into a disagreement with Ukemochi, the goddess of food, due to the disgusting manner that she made a meal presented to him -- which involves eating up the raw materials and spitting up the completed meal -- and Tsukuyomi would killed Ukemochi. Tsukuyomi's elder sister Amaterasu, goddess of the sun, learned of what happened and was so angry that she refused to ever face Tsukuyomi ever again, causing the two to live in different parts of the sky and separating day and night, sun and moon, forevermore. 

While I vaguely know the plotlines of the base Persona 3 and Persona 4 games, I haven't really read through the spinoffs, so I have no idea if the user of Tsukuyomi is a hero or a villain or somewhere in between. The design of both Tsukuyomi and Tsukuyomi Picaro does feel like they were built similarly to the protagonist Personas like Izanagi and Arsène, being the sort of unapologetic, cool gentleman guy with flowing coats and a badass gentleman outfit. It's a bit hard to see thanks to the background, but Tsukuyomi has like this Spartan helm thing made out of burning black flames that is shaped like a crescent moon, and a giant shadow glaive. 

The Picaro version goes even more obvious with the helmet, and since the original Tsukuyomi already has a 'Picaro'-esque colour scheme, I do think that Tsukuyomi Picaro did need a fair bit more changes to make him stand out compared to his original. This translates to giving him a bunch of metal plating on his limbs, and swapping his helmet to one that really looks like it's stolen from a 300 extra.

Raoul

• Monster Name: N/A
• Arcana: Fool

And now we cut to a Persona that's specific to Persona 5's protagonist, Joker... who, if you remember, has Arsene as his starter Persona. And Arsene... isn't super-powerful. I've been trying to keep Arsene as long as I can, but it takes a lot of effort to do so. Which is why they introduced this guy, Raoul. Raoul is the middle name of Arsene Lupin, and he comes in at level 76, meaning that if you just want to curb-stomp the entire game with as 'canonical' of a Persona as you can get (which I will probably do in replays) Raoul is your guy. 

And this guy is basically the base Arsene look, but with a more mechanical-inspired steampunk vibe. He trades in Arsene's black angel wings for a series of metal-punk bat wings. He also swaps Arsene's demon suit for an absolutely fancy set of vaguely Victorian-ish inspired set of suit, pants and hat, and... he looks pretty dapper, yeah? I do like that Raoul captures a lot of the essence of the base Arsene design while look so different. I like him. Arsene's face, which is normally rendered as swirling shadow, is now a solid metal demon face, which also fits the theme pretty well. 

Apparently the characters in the game do have multiple stages of evolutions to their Personas, and many people note that Raoul is basically fitting for a 'second' evolution before an 'ultimate' one, which we unlock in the climax of the game? I mean, I don't have the full context, but sure.

Gotta Review 'Em All - Abilities [Generation III]

Abilities! Halfway across talking about the Generation III moves, I realized how much a lot of the Pokemon introduced from then on did rely a lot on abilities to bring out the full design flavour. And Generation III was the generation that introduces them as a mechanic, essentially adding a passive ability that's so integral to how the Pokemon functions that other than a few specific moves like Gastro Acid, the effects of these abilities are always active. It's similar to the Poke-Powers and Poke-Bodies for all you TCG players. The origin of abilities actually goes all the way to Shuckle from Generation II, where it has a unique property (not actually translated into a proper Ability!) where a Shuckle holding a berry will sometimes transform it into Berry Juice. 

And again, it is kind of understated since abilities have been with us for quite a while, and a lot of the newer abilities have been synonymous with the Pokemon that have them, but I do really like these abilities for sure. Not all abilities are beneficial either, though the concept of debilitating abilities clearly isn't that popular and I think Regigigas might be the last one they did it for.

Some abilities interact with the overworld outside of battle, and I honestly wished that they introduced a bit more of these! Some abilities also reinforce the idea of Pokemon 'sets', like the starter Pokemon and certain legendary/sub-legendary Pokemon having the same abilities.

Each Pokemon can spawn with one of two abilities, which adds to the "uniqueness" factor of your specific representative of the species. In practice it just makes breeding for a specific "perfect" Pokemon just that bit harder, but it does lead to some fun situations like, say, a random Bronzong you meet might have Heatproof or Levitate, meaning it has protection to one of its two weaknesses (Fire or Ground respectively) but which one? Also, some Pokemon -- like Shedinja, Aegislash and many cocoon bugs -- just have a single ability regardless. 

Later generations, particularly Gen V's Dream World, would introduce the concept of Hidden Abilities, which would grant powerful abilities to seemingly innocuous Pokemon (like Politoed getting Kyogre's Drizzle) but the difficulty of this and the fact that a lot of newer Pokemon tended to already be designed with a specific ability in mind meant that hidden abilities didn't really get too much or an expansion in future generations.

Abilities are introduced much more sparingly after Generation IV, so I can tell you for sure that instead of a generation's worth of abilities being split across multiple articles, eventually we'll have multiple generations in a single article.

__________________________________

Generation III Abilities:

I think because there really isn't a convenient way to really categorize abilities, we'll just play it by ear. First up, we'll talk about four very similar abilities that, in the description, 'powers up [X]-type moves in a pinch', which is to say that they give and extra 50% boost to the power if the Pokemon has less than a third of its power left. Very simple ability to understand, not particularly game-breaking while not being insignificant, and definitely gave us a lot of epic moments in the anime particularly in regards to Ash's Infernape. There's definitely a great underdog feel when the Pokemon seems to be weak, pushed back up against the wall, and suddenly it wins by putting an extra oomph into it! 

• Overgrow (Shinryoku/Fresh Greenery), Blaze (Moka/Raging Flames), Torrent (Gekiryu/Raging Rapids): So we've got Overgrow for Grass-types, Blaze for Fire-types and Torrent for Water-types, and all three of these abilities are exclusives to the starters of the respective types of each generation. Discounting Hidden Abilities, these are the only abilities that the starters can have. In fact, the only Pokemon that's able to have these abilities are only starter Pokemon, and the Unovan Elemental Monkeys -- and even that is as a Hidden Ability. With how many other signature moves and abilities have been relegated to non-uniqueness, it's surprising how much Pokemon's been keeping to this particular gimmick. 
• Swarm (Mushi no Shirase/Bug Notification) Also introduced in the same generation is a similar ability for Bug-types, though with the lack of good Bug-type moves it really wasn't all that useful. I think the idea is that when you attack a single member of the colony, the rest of the colony appears to help out, but it's a battle fantasy that really would be realized much better with actual Pokemon like Vespiquen and Wishiwashi. 

And I'll just rapid-fire a lot of these "immune to status effect" abilities. A lot of them are relatively simple to understand. Your Pokemon has some quality or other that makes them unable to be affected by a certain condition. Unfortunately, a lot of these aren't anywhere as useful as many of the other abilities we'll see later on, and while I do understand the need for them from a flavour and balance standpoint, it does make a lot of these abilities a bit less exciting. Particularly since Generation VI onwards, Poison-types are immune to poisoning, Electric-types are immune to Paralysis, etc.

• Limber (Junan/Flexible) You can't be paralyzed, because the Pokemon's body is so limber. It goes from Pokemon based on invertebrates (Mareanie, Clobbopus) to cats (Liepard, Persian, Glameow but not Purugly, hilariously) to martial artists (Hitmonlee, Hawlucha). The Electric-type Stunfisk also has this, which makes sense, but it's also redundant since Gen VI.   
• Immunity (Men'eki/Immunity) Prevents poisoning. Only owned by three Pokemon, surprisingly -- Snorlax, who eats so much junk he's immune to poison; Zangoose, who has evolved to fight the Poison-type Seviper; and Gligar as a Hidden Ability, since it really should be Poison-type itself.
• Insomnia (Fumin/Insomnia) and Vital Spirit (Yaruki/Willingness) These both prevent sleep. Oh boy, if only I, too, can weaponize Insomnia! But I like that they split these two apart, since they're differently flavoured. Insomnia tends to be given to Pokemon that are nocturnal (Hoothoot, Murkrow, Spidops) or based on spooksters (Banette, Gourgeist). Meanwhile, Vital Spirit is about Pokemon that are so pumped up by their own energy that they literally can't fall asleep. It's not just Fighting-types at all, but just energetic Pokemon in general like Electabuzz or Vigoroth or Magmar. 
• Water Veil (Mizu no Beru/Veil of Water) Prevents burning, and this one is obviously owned by a lot of Water-type Pokemon. It is a bit interesting how many times this was relegated into a hidden ability, with only the Wailmer, Finizen and Goldeen lines having it naturally. 
• Magma Armor (Maguma no Yoroi/Armour of Magma) Prevents freezing. Pretty simple, and exclusive to Slugma, Magcargo and Camerupt, the three volcanic Pokemon right now... Heatmor doesn't count, I guess! But in addition to preventing freezing, it's also one of the two abilities that allow faster hatching of eggs, which is extremely crucial in the GBA and DS era of games. 
• Own Tempo (Mai Pesu/My Pace) Prevents confusion, borrowing a term from Japanese, 'my pace'. Again, we get a lot of the dorky suspects like the Slowpoke and Lotad lines, but also a lot of Pokemon themed around music like Spinda or Spoink who can presumably literally keep their own tempo.
• Oblivious (Donkan/Thickheaded) Prevents attraction. The trope is that the Pokemon is one of those anime characters that's so oblivious to social cues that they can't be attracted, which... considering attraction is kind of a niche ability anyway, makes this ability not the most interesting. We've got a lot of the expected goobers like Numel and Slowpoke and Whiscash.
• Inner Focus (Seishin Ryoku/Force of Will) Prevents flinching. I really do keep forgetting flinching is a status condition in a way. Honestly, the wielders of this ability is pretty varied, going from martial artists to seasoned warriors to, uh, I guess Girafarig can see the attack coming with its second head, huh?

Let's take a break from the status condition related abilities, and talk about some of the abilities that I kind of consider to be rather... 'filler'-y, for lack of a better term. These do really feel like they're just things that animals do, translated into a passive ability. 

• Early Bird (Hayaoki/Early Riser) An ability that several Pokemon associated with the daytime have, Early Bird Pokemon awakens from sleep twice as fast. So basically a less-useful version of Insomnia or Vital Spirit. It's kind of interesting that out of all the Pokemon there, the Dark-type Houndour and Seedot lines have this ability? Interesting. 
• Keen Eye (Surudoi Me/Keen Eye) Keen Eye basically is assigned to Pokemon that has good vision, mostly birds but also certain animals who would need good vision (Furret and Watchog who watches over things; hunters like Sneasel; cave-dwellers like Stunky or Sableye). This ability prevents loss of accuracy from moves like Sand Attack. There's also an interesting little tidbit where Keen Eye and Intimidate would reduce encounters with lower-leveled Pokemon if you have them in the front of your party. 
• Hyper Cutter (Kairiki Basami/Superpowerful Claws) Hyper Cutter, or 'superpowerful claws', prevents the Attack stat from being lowered. I guess when you have huge claws like Pinsir or Crawdaunt or Mawile, you can't reduce the pain caused by something that physically large? 
• Battle Armor (Kabuto Ama/Helmet Armour) and Shell Armor (Sheru Ama/Shell Armour) does the same thing, where they prevent critical hits from happening. It's just the flavour, I guess, where Shell Armor is given to, well, Pokemon with shells like turtles, molluscs and crustaceans; whereas Battle Armor -- or more accurately, its Japanese name, kabuto or Helmet Armor -- is given to Pokemon with helmet-like head ornaments, like Marowak, Type: Null, Falinks and... well, of course, Kabuto.
• Hustle (Harikiri/Enthusiasm) Kind of a generic ability that they seem to just randomly give most random animals, Hustle is an ability that boosts the Attack stat but lowers the accuracy, almost permanently. I get the flavour, it's like a Rattata or Nidoran or something hustling along to quickly defend its territory or forage for food and it doesn't care about accurately hitting the enemy. I do like that this is the only ability Deino and Zweilous can get, since they're blind until they achieve their final form, highlighting how destructive they are at that. 

Let's go back to status ailments, now, because these abilities don't confer immunity, but actually cause them. These are probably the most memorable because these are probably a lot of your first experiences with Abilities where you try to just do damage and then get punished for making contact with the enemy. Or at least, I definitely remember being surprised when these abilities bamboozled me. Very memorable, though these don't really need a lot of explanation. These abilities need your enemy to do a 'contacting' move, which is different from just a 'physical' move as introduced in subsequent generation. 

• Static (Seidenki/Static Electricity) Owned by a lot of Electric-type Pokemon, this one causes paralysis on contact! There's also a bonus effect here where the static electricity increases the likelihood of encountering Electric-type Pokemon. 
• Poison Point (Doku no Toge/Poison Spikes) Same thing, but with Poison-type. Makes absolute sense. You touch a caterpillar or a porcupine, and you get pricked. You poke a Nidoran or a Qwilfish, you get Poisoned! 
• Effect Spore (Hoshi/Spore) An ability somewhat exclusive to the mushrooms, Effect Spore causes a random spore effect inflict the enemy -- causing paralysis, poisoning or sleep, based on the three original spore attacks. It is interesting, again, that while all of the fungal Pokemon can have this, while the two outliers, the plant-based Vileplume and Eldegoss, can only have it as hidden ability. 
• Flame Body (Hono no Karada/Flame Body) This one causes burn on contact, and also has the same 'hatch eggs quicker' as Magma Armour. A lot less restrictive, though I am kind of surprised that not more Fire-type Pokemon have this as an ability.
• Cute Charm (Meromero Bodi/Love-love Body) And this one causes Attraction, obviously given to a lot of the Fairy-types and other cutesy Pokemon like Minccino or Stufful. There's also a minor extra effect of attracting Pokemon of the opposite gender.

And these are a bunch of abilities that confer some sort of immunity to a move type. I feel like these are much more useful, and potentially far more punishing. 

• Water Absorb (Chosui/Water Storage) The Pokemon will restore HP instead of be damaged if it's hit by a Water-type move. Which kind of makes sense, I guess. Vaporeon's made out of water, frogs like the Poliwag and Tympole lines can breathe from water, and the two cactus Pokemon Maractus and Cacnea both have it. Pretty cute little ability!
• Volt Absorb (Chikuden/Electrical Storage) Volt Absorb also makes sense, too, and obviously it's Electric-themed, and a lot of Electric and Steel types have this. The idea is that you get zapped by electricity, which powers up your internal motors or whatever.
• Lightning Rod (Hiraishin/Lightning Rod) And this one is an ability that's only useful in double battles originally, and only useful when attached to a Ground-type Pokemon as depicted here with Rhydon in the Adventures manga. It draws in all Electric-type attacks and neutralizes it... which isn't particularly useful if you're a Pikachu or Manectric, since you still take damage. Generation V really buffed this ability, not only conferring Lightning Rod Pokemon full immunity to damage, but it also boosts Special Attack. Okay! (It also draws in Electric Pokemon in the overworld, like Static). Always one of the coolest old abilities to me. 
• Flash Fire (Moraibi/Received Fire) As opposed to Lightning Rod, Flash Fire always neutralizes the Fire damage, and then boosts any Fire-type moves that the Pokemon subsequently uses. A different interpretation of 'hitting me with my own element powers me up!'
• Liquid Ooze (Hedoro Eki/Oozing Liquid) A bit more unique compared to the previous four, but I like Liquid Ooze. It confers immunity and punishment to any Pokemon that likes to use absorbing moves like Giga Drain or Leech Life, where whatever is being drained from the Tentacool and Gulpin lines (the only two families to have it at the time of writing) is so toxic that it harms the Pokemon that's trying to restore health. 

Here's another batch of abilities that I feel are pretty common, but a bit more exciting than the 'filler' abilities. 

• Levitate (Fuyu/Floating) Probably another one that makes everyone remember a lot is Levitate, which delivers the same immunity from Ground-type moves that the Flying-type does... as explained delightfully by this manga panel of Groudon doing Earthquake and knocking out the Heatran and Vaporeon while the Bronzong hovers over it. A lot of Pokemon have this, and it's kind of neat to give the 'flying' sobriquet to a lot of Pokemon that otherwise isn't Flying-type... Pokemon like Latias or Claydol or Flygon or Hydreigon or Vikavolt, who are otherwise dual-typed. Plus a bunch of ghosts that don't really embody 'flying'. I do wonder why we never got an equivalent ability for 'underwater', but I suppose you can levitate anywhere and you can't submerge in land. Levitate also allows the Tynamo line to have absolutely no weaknesses, since the Electric-type is only weak to the Ground type. 
• Intimidate (Ikaku/Intimidation) Also another one that's pretty, heh, intimidating, Intimidate activates immediately when the Pokemon enters the battlefield, and it reduces the Attack stat of the foe. It's also drives away weaker Pokemon in the overworld. A lot of predatory and scary Pokemon like Gyarados, Arcanine, Mightyena, Krookodile and Mabosstiff have this ability, but it is a running gag in the community that Staravia with its derpy face has Intimidate. I also really like that Masquerain, whose whole point is that it's an adaptation of those insects that have giant eyeball patterns on their wings, have this ability.
• Sturdy (Ganjo/Sturdy) Oh yeah. This ability was completely useless in the generation it debuted, being protected from 1-hit-KO moves like Sheer Cold and Guillotine. The problem is, no one really ever uses them. Ever since Generation V, however, Sturdy now functions differently, stopping the Pokemon from being knocked down from full HP to zero and leaving it with 1 HP. A lot of inorganic Pokemon have this, but most notably are the cave Pokemon. Like all those Geodudes, Gravelers, Roggenrolas and Boldores that infest the caves of Unova and Kalos. It's even more terrifying in later levels, too, when the middle stages of the Geodude and Roggenrola lines can have Explosion! Anyway, pretty cool ability, and one that's definitely memorable for making everyone's overworld exploration just that bit much more annoying. 

• Soundproof (Bo'on/Soundproof) This one gets its own section, because I love Soundproof. It just gives a brand-new category to a bunch of moves that's independent of its typing or the physical/special/status split. It's something that other future abilities would kind of have, in a way, with the introduction of 'wind-based' and 'cutting-based' and 'hado/pulse-based' moves, but Soundproof was here first! Given to Pokemon that generate loud noises (like the Whismur line, the poster boy of this ability, as well as the Jangmo-o and Voltorb lines), Pokemon that live in loud environments (the Snover line, who lives in blizzards) and Mr. Mime (get it, because mimes act without sound), Soundproof confers complete immunity to any and all sound-based moves, which is a separate category of moves that range across different types. There are already a lot of sound-based moves in Normal-type, like Growl, Howl, Roar, Screech, Snore, Uproar and the rest... but there are also a bunch in other typings, too. Snarl. Bug Buzz. Metal Sound. Disarming Voice. Toxtricity's signature Overdrive. Very fun that we have this one ability that a player can literally go through entire playthroughs without encountering, and they bothered to make a separate category just for 'sound-based moves'!

And here we get another batch of abilities that interact with status conditions and the raising/lowering of stats. For the most part, I really don't have too much to say here? 

• Synchronize (Shinkuro/Synchro) An ability almost exclusively given to Psychic-type Pokemon (the only outlier is Umbreon), this one passes Poison, Paralysis or Burn to the Pokemon that inflicted it to them. Again, another way to 'punish' your opponent, and one that has proven to be much less useful now that the Poison, Electric and Fire types have immunity towards their respective status conditions. Presumably, this is like an automatic, weaker version of Psycho Shift?
• Clear Body (Kuria Bodi/Clear Body) This ability prevents the lowering of stats, and I guess the body of these Pokemon are so 'pure' or just so... 'transparent' that you can't alter anything in it? Most Pokemon that have it are inorganic and are purely metal or rock (the Beldum line, Dianice, Carbink, the Hoenn Regis, the Klink line) but also several that are just straight up 'clear', which are the ghostly Dreepy line and the jellyfishes that are the Tentacool line. 
• White Smoke (Shiroi Kemuri/White Smoke) Originally Torkoal's signature ability, and later given to Heatmor (as a hidden ability) and Sizzlipede, White Smoke has the exact same effect as Clear Body but a different flavour, though I confess I'm not sure how a white-coloured smoke is able to cancel out the effects of stat-altering moves. I guess it's like permanent Haze?
• Natural Cure (Shizen Kaifuku/Natural Recovery) This one causes the curing of status conditions when your Pokemon switches out, a bit of a niche ability. You really don't want to switch out too many times, particularly in competitive battling. With overworld status effects being severely less debilitating since Generation VI onwards, this one ends up just being kind of one of the less-interesting abilities out there. This ability's mostly owned by Grass-types, but also a bunch of creatures that are related to healing (Chansey and Pawmi lines) or can recover naturally (Corsola and Staryu).
• Shed Skin (Dappi/Molting) One that brings to mind the glorious visual imagery of Naruto's Orochimaru shedding his own skin like a snake to give a 'rebirth' of himself, Shed Skin allows a Pokemon, at any point in the field, to heal its own status conditions. And I guess it's something that's based in nature too, though not exactly 'shedding skin' and more akin to the original Japanese name, 'molting', where spiders and many other arthropods can actually regenerate lost limbs after a molt due to how their bodies reconstruct themselves during the pre-molting process. Every single snake Pokemon line has this, as well as a lot of lizards and cocoons. 
• Guts (Konjo/Gutsy) When the Pokemon is afflicted with a status condition, its Attack stat is boosted, which... plays into the role of 'the more you hurt me, the harder I will fight'. Not too much to really say here, I'm actually surprised this ability isn't more widespread than I thought it was. 
• Marvel Scale (Fushigina Uroko/Marvelous Scale) Marvel Scale does the opposite of Guts, boosting the Defense stat (but not Special Defense) when afflicted with a status condition. Which... isn't the best thing out there because you can't really guarantee that you'll be facing off against a physically defensive Pokemon all the time. This is Milotic's signature ability, and later given to Dratini and Dragonair (not Dragonite, though!) as a hidden ability. Poor Milotic, this one isn't really all that good. 

• Rock Head (Ishi Atama/Rock Head) Oh, I like this one. It protects the Pokemon from recoil damage, a very simple way to nullify the recoil impact done by powerful-but-with-a-drawback moves like Double-Edge and Head Smash and Take Down. As its name implies, a lot of Rock-types have this ability, but also non-Rock types that clearly have a rocky head like, well, Bagon! Bizarrely, the Cranidos line, which is based on a pachycephalosaur, doesn't have this, despite having a whole ton of recoil damage in its repertoire. Is that why it went extinct? 
• Trace (Toresu/Trace) Whereas Synchronize copies status ailments, Trace copies the enemy's Ability. I kinda get it, in a generation where Abilities are everywhere, you do want something to really counter the stronger ones. Trace is also originally only owned by the Ralts line (an empath) and the Porygon line (who can virtually 'scan' anything!) and at the time of writing only Mega Alakazam has ever received this ability afterwards. But as the generations go on, more and more abilities get added to the pool of abilities that can't be copied by Trace, so as to make it not broken or to not give Porygon an ability it literally can't use, like Stance Change, Gulp Missile or Zen Mode. 
• Huge Power (Chikaramochi/Muscleman) and Pure Power (Yoga Pawa/Yoga Power) And we get two abilities that do the same thing, where it sharply raises the Pokemon's Attack stat. Huge Power is the signature ability of the Marill line (later on, Mega Mawile and Bunnelby get this), while Pure Power is that of the Meditite line. The Japanese names make them a bit more distinct from each other, with Marill's Huge Power being more explicitly a MUSCLEMAN ability  while Meditite's Pure Power is obtained by the power of yoga training.

• Pickup (Monohiroi/Pickup) Soundproof gets its own category, and I will give Pickup its own category, too! It's a very cute ability, where a Pokemon can just pick up random items and give it back to you, and anyone that has kept a cat or a dog can tell, your pets really want to impress you by bringing back random sticks, dead birds, discarded water bottles and oh god what the hell is that in your mouth Bell-Bell spit it out right now! Your Zigzagoon or Munchlax or whoever aren't that disgusting, though, bringing back berries and potions instead. The specifics change over the generations, but when your Pokemon is high-leveled enough and you're lucky enough, you can even get weird items like King's Rock or Max Revives or Leftovers or TM's. Again, this ability stops being useful at approximately two gyms into playing the game, since resource management isn't really a particularly huge part of this franchise, but I love the flavour and the idea of Pickup so much. Also, practically quintessential if you want to do a no-items-Nuzlocke challenge. 

• Illuminate (Hakko/Luminescence) Yeah, this one is kind of useless, yeah? It increases the chance of encountering wild Pokemon, something that... you can kind of already do with moves like Sweet Scent. Pokemon Emerald and later on Generations IV and V would boost a lot of the abilities I've described above like Static or Cute Charm or Intimidate, which already have effects of their own, to interact with Pokemon encounters, so Illuminate only having encounter-boosting as its usage isn't particularly useful. It doesn't even do anything with how the HM move Flash lights up dark rooms!
• Stench (Akushu/Stench) Originally the signature ability of Grimer, and later given to other smelly Pokemon like Stunky, Trubbish, Gloom and Koffing, Stench originally had merely just the opposite effect of Illuminate, which is to keep wild Pokemon away. But they buffed it in Generation V (coincidentally the same generation they gave it to Gloom and Koffing as hidden abilities) to also add a percentage of flinching when a Pokemon with Stench attacks. That makes sense! Grimers are smelly!
• Compound Eyes (Fukugan/Compound Eyes) Oh, I love this one. Given to a lot of Bug-types, Compound Eyes functions similarly to how a lot of anime and manga exaggerate the capabilities of an insect's compound eyes -- by boosting the accuracy of their moves. It's not really all that practical since Butterfree or Yanma or Dustox doesn't really run too many moves that are inaccurate, but I had so much fun with a Compound Eyes Galvantula spamming Thunder in Generation V. 
• Shield Dust (Rinpun/Scales) Owned exclusively by butterfly/moth Pokemon and their pre-evolutions, Shield Dust prevents any secondary effect from hitting them. So, for example, being paralyzed by Thunderbolt will never happen to a Pokemon with Shield Dust, but a move that only does the paralyzing, like Thunder Wave, can still paralyze them. Very sure that a butterfly's shed scales can't do something as epic as this, but it's neat! 
• Serene Grace (Ten no Megumi/Heaven's Blessing) Serene Grace is the opposite of Shield Dust, in a way, where it increases the likelihood of your Pokemon's secondary effects from happening. As the 'serene' and 'heaven' vibes have, Serene Grace is owned by a lot of the more 'angelic' Pokemon, like Togepi, Chansey, Jirachi, Shaymin, and, gloriously, DUNSPARCE! Rock on, my angel tsuchinoko. I had a Togekiss with Serene Grace and King's Rock in Platinum and I just kept making everyone flinch with Air Slash. 

• Damp (Shimerike/Moisture) This one is cute! Damp plays on the trope of gunpowder being so wet that they can't ignite, which translates to preventing the usage of Self-Destruct and Explosion. Both moves have severely been nerfed in recent generations, though, making Damp itself kind of useless. Interestingly, while a lot of Pokemon with damp are the expected aquatic Pokemon like Wooper, Frillish, Poliwag and Tadbulb lines, one Pokemon line that has Damp as a hidden ability? The Paras line. Huh!
• Thick Fat (Atsui Shibo/Thick Fat) A lot of jokes are made about this one, where Thick Fat just provides resistance to Fire and Ice type moves. You're so fat you're unaffected by the weather, I guess, and, well, a lot of chonkier Pokemon obviously have this as an ability. Not much to say beyond that.  
• Sticky Hold (Nenchaku/Adhesion) An ability that's given to a select few Pokemon like Grimer, Swalot, Shellos, Trubbish and Accelgor, Sticky Hold has the Pokemon be so sticky that any Item it's holding can't be removed with moves like Thief or Covet or Bug Bite or Knock Off. It has the funny additional effect of increasing bites in fishing, I guess because the Grimer or whatever sticks to the fish and helps me pull it up? 
• Rough Skin (Samehada/Shark Skin) This one is Carvanha's signature ability, as you can tell by its Japanese name, 'shark skin'. The other Pokemon that can use this is the shark-dragon Gible line, and the shark-poser Druddigon. This one is neat! Any time the opponent makes physical contact with your Pokemon, they get damaged by rubbing against the shark's extremely rough skin. It's honestly rather interesting that we don't get more Pokemon or abilities that do this... you'd think touching a cactus would be painful? Lava? Acid? No? 

Okay, now we have a batch of abilities that deal with fleeing and staying in battle! This is going to be the last of our more 'generic' abilities before we get to some more exciting ones!

• Arena Trap (Arijigoku/Antlion) Probably the first such ability you'll meet when playing through Generation III games, due to how ubiquitous Trapinch are in the desert area. Exclusive to Trapinch and the Diglett line, Arena Trap basically behaves like an antlion trap, where a swirling funnel of sand just holds the prey in place as they struggle and are unable to escape. This makes encounters with Trapinch rather exhausting as you are forced to spend PP and maybe even HP as you traverse through the desert. I do like that, since the flavour is a swirling antlion trap on the ground, Arena Trap doesn't affect Flying Pokemon or those with Levitate!
• Shadow Tag (Kagefumi/Stepping on Shadows) The godsend to anyone that's ever had to deal with roaming legendary Pokemon, Shadow Tag is an ability exclusive to the Wobbuffet line. Anytime Wobbuffet is in the field, the enemy can't flee or switch out, which suddenly makes Wobbuffet and its Counter/Mirror Coat strategy suddenly surprisingly terrifying. Later on a handful of other Pokemon -- Gothita as a hidden ability and Mega Gengar with its permanent Mean Look on its forehead -- get this. The Japanese name is 'stepping on shadows', which really does give the mental image of an anime-esque ability of someone locking in the enemy's shadow. 
• Magnet Pull (Jiryoku/Magnetism) This one is neat! Obviously exclusive to all Pokemon that are magnetic -- Magnemite, Nosepass and Alolan Geodude -- Magnet Pull just locks in an enemy Steel-type Pokemon and prevents them from escaping. It actually used to also affect your allies in Generation III, but was quickly removed from subsequent iterations. Magnet Pull also increases your likelihood in encountering Steel-type Pokemon in the wild.
• Suction Cups (Kyuban/Suction Cups) Suction Cups is the inverse of all these abilities that want to keep you in. It prevents moves that push you away, like Roar or Whirlwind... though the Pokemon can still use its own moves like Baton Pass or whatever to voluntarily and consensually switch out. This one is only given to the cephalopods like Octillery, Inkay and Malamar, as wel as the rooted-to-a-spot Lileep and Cradily. Wait, Clobbopus and Grapploct don't get this ability? Cephalopod posers, I tell you! POSERS!
• Run Away (Nigeashi/Run Away) NIGERUNDAYOOO! Run Away allows your Pokemon to, well, run the hell away regardless of any of these abilities up above, or any other moves that might prevent them from switching out like Mean Look or Sticky Web. Not super useful, and honestly entirely useless in competitive, but it's cute that a lot of the more 'prey' Pokemon like Wooloo, Rattata and Sentret have it, as well as a lot of unevolved dog Pokemon. Get it? Because a tiny dog is very yappy but will run away if you make any half-decent growling sound at them?

And now we're going to close this off with two categories of abilities. Man, this took a while for me to write. We've covered some signature (or previously signature) abilities above like Marvel Scale and Stench, but these are different! We're going to go through a bunch of signature abilities that are very evident in how they really make the Pokemon work in a unique way. 

• Speed Boost (Kasoku/Acceleration) It seemed a bit innocuous, isn't it? This Pokemon is so fast that every turn, its speed is gradually increased by one stage each. This was originally exclusive to two Bug Pokemon, the underwhelming Yanma and Ninjask -- the latter of which was at least somewhat able to make use of Speed Boost. But then time come the time when Nintendo started distributing hidden abilities to everyone, and among the Pokemon that got this ability is good ol' fire-chicken Blaziken. And an already-fast Pokemon gaining speed every turn? That's pretty devastating. While I don't really think Blaziken deserves Speed Boost any more than a lot of the other Fighting-types out there, it does really help to give the fire chicken that extra oomph compared to so many other Fire/Fighting starters out there. 
• Wonder Guard (Fushigina Mamori/Wondrous Protection) Oh yeah. Ninjask's 'twin', Shedinja, is a glorious gimmick Pokemon in that it has only 1 HP. A single HP, because it's a husk. But its ability, Wonder Guard, allows it to be completely and utterly immune to any move that isn't super-effective. Now this sounds amazing, for sure, but this does mean that anything that isn't a damaging move can bypass Wonder Guard. Stealth Rock, poison damage from Toxic, burn damage from Will-O-Wisp... and it's not like Shedinja's Bug/Ghost itself doesn't have a lot of weaknesses. Eventually, come the next couple of generations with abilities that ignore abilities (like Mold Breaker) being a bit more common, it's a bit harder for Wonder Guard to be pulled off. Finally, for balancing reasons more than any lore, moves like Role Play and Skill Swap can't get Wonder Guard. 
• Truant (Namake/Lazy) And while the previous two abilities are beneficial, Truant is an ability exclusive to two members of the Slakoth line -- the first and final stages, Slakoth and Slaking. Later on, Durant gets this as a joke hidden ability (Durant, truant, get it?). And the ability has your Pokemon miss every second turn... and anyone can tell you, skipping a turn in competitive battle for anything beyond setup isn't worth a move, let alone an entire ability! Sure, there are cheeky ways of using, like, Skill Swap or Gastro Acid on your own Slaking to get rid of Truant, but not every move can work on Truant. And it really is interesting. As a Pokemon with a base stat total of 670, Slaking exceeds a lot of the game's most powerful Pokemon, having the same base total as cover legendaries like Groudon, Zacian and Miraidon... but where those Pokemon are considered higher-tier legendaries that are often banned, Slaking itself is often banished to 'unused' or 'barely used' due to the sheer damage of loafing around every other turn. 

• Plus (Purasu/Plus) and Minus (Mainasu/Minus). Originally exclusive to Plusle (who has Plus) and Minun (who has Minus) and if you send both of them in with Plus and Minus in a double battle, they each get a boost in Special Attack. Which... isn't very useful because Plusle and Minun aren't particularly powerful. Later generations would give the Plus/Minus duo to Klinklang and Toxtricity (as well as a smattering of other Electric-type Pokemon as hidden abilities) but they really don't manage to pan out thanks to the specificity of the ability. 
• Color Change (Henshoku/Colour Change) Kecleon's signature move, it's meant to represent Kecleon transforming in that chameleon style to blend in to the surroundings. I suppose it's meant to represent Porygon's Conversion moves, but automatic, but Color Change changes Kecleon to the type of the move that it's been hit with. Which theoretically means that Kecleon resists the next usage of the same move, except most Pokemon have, like, four moves and they're all usually of different typings. Not to mention that Kecleon itself doesn't have the highest amount of defensive and HP stats, meaning that this is a pretty gimmicky -- but neat -- Ability. 
• Pressure (Puressha/Pressure) And before we go to the weather moves, let me just consider Pressure, which is an ability initially just given to almost every Legendary Pokemon out there (though Aerodactyl, Dusclops and Absol have them too), and the idea is that the Pokemon exudes such a great aura, like One Piece's Haki or something, that it terrifies the opponent Pokemon into spending double the PP when they use their moves. It's honestly a bit boring, yes, and they did ease up on giving Pressure to everyone -- they have to, considering the number of Legendaries in Generations IV-V -- but I still like that it exists as a bit of an unifying gimmick. 

The weather conditions Sunny Day, Rain Dance, Sandstorm and Hail are highlighted a lot in the third generation, what with the main plot of Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald revolving around Groudon and Kyogre, legendaries that could control the weather of the region itself. And in addition to those, we do get a handful of abilities that synergize with the weather, like...

• Forecast (Tenkiya/Temperamental) Castform's signature ability, this is basically the ability that allows Castform to transform from its regular form to its sunny, rainy and snowy forms. It's something that the franchise is actually kind of inconsistent about, and I'm somewhat interested in doing a write-up about all the form changes in Pokemon, but I think the consistent part of it is that if a Pokemon can change form in the middle of battle like Castform or Cherrim, it's usually tied to an ability. Unfortunately for Castform, this just deprives him of another potentially useful ability it could've had, like any of these weather-related abilities...
• Rain Dish (Ameukezara/Rain Saucer) Originally exclusive to the Lotad line thanks to its name, the fourth and fifth generation gave Rain Dish as a hidden ability to a lot of other Water-type Pokemon. Basically, Rain Dish will continually heal your Pokemon in the rain weather condition. Interestingly, the fungus-based Morelull line is one of the few Pokemon that could have this. I guess the fungi do like the rain! 
• Swift Swim (Suisui/Smooth Swimming) Meanwhile, Swift Swim gives a boost to the Pokemon's Speed if it's raining, which is a lot more common and seems to be a rather generic ability they give to a lot of Water-type Pokemon, with it currently being the most common ability overall, at 45 Pokemon being able to have Swift Swim! I'm not sure about it, I don't think fishes get particularly faster when it's raining, right?
• Sand Veil (Sunagakure/Hidden in Sand) I do get the fantasy of this very well! Sand Veil boosts the Pokemon's evasion in a Sandstorm, and it also grants immunity to sandstorm damage. Which I think is basically just an excuse for them to have Cacnea hang around in sandstorm areas without it getting hurt by its most common habitat. A lot of desert-dwelling Pokemon have this, and in the GBA/DS-era games, Sand Veil will decrease the chances of meeting Pokemon in sandstorm-y areas. 
• Chlorophyll (Yoryokuso/Chlorophyll) The Sunny Day equivalent to Swift Swim above, Chlorophyll boosts the speed of Pokemon in sunlight, and, obviously, only plant-based Grass-type Pokemon have this Ability! Not much to say here. 

And now we get to the legendary abilities, which all summon or negate the weather. Three of these five abilities are tied to the three cover legendaries of Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald, and prior to Generation VI, the weather effects last indefinitely and weather teams kind of dominated the competitive scene when they snuck Drought and Drizzle into the hidden abilities of certain Pokemon. Since Generation VI, Drizzle, Drought and Sand Stream have all been nerfed to only last five turns. 

• Drizzle (Amerfurashi/Rainfall) Kyogre's signature ability, summoning the power of rain and storms onto the battlefield. The other Pokemon that get this from hidden abilities are Politoed, already associated with Rain Dance itself, and... Pelipper? Okay? It makes sense that rain can happen almost anywhere that there are clouds, although of course in the main storyline of the games and the manga, Kyogre's presence doesn't just cause rain but entire storms and the oceans being whirled and churned. But that's nothing compared to...
• Drought (Hideri/Drought) Groudon's signature ability, Drought. It's also naturally the ability of Mega Charizard Y, and the hidden abilities of Torkoal and the Vulpix line. And... the anime and manga depict this happening differently. The games only ever show the sun shining brightly and drying up all the ocean and rivers, but the anime show Groudon shooting a gigantic white pillar into the sky that instantly clears the sky from all clouds, whereas the Adventures manga interprets this as Groudon literally creating a ball of fire in the sky that functions as an artificial sun that forces the region of Hoenn that Groudon is affecting to be afflicted by perpetual daylight. 
• Sand Stream (Suna Okoshi/Sand Raising) The same effect as the two legendary Pokemon up there, but it's for Sandstorm, and it's tied to Tyranitar! Hippopotas and Gigalith can later get these too, but I am actually quite happy that they decided to give ol' Tyranitar, the pseudo-legendary from the previous game, some love instead of slapping this premium weather effect on one of the newer Pokemon. 
• Air Lock (Ea Rokku/Air Lock) And as his role of the 'peacekeeper' that stands above Groudon and Kyogre, we've got Rayquaza, who arrives with the mighty power of Air Lock, and disables all effects of weather. Not much to say, it's basically the counter to a bunch of weather shenanigans. But while Air Lock is the signature ability of Rayquaza even until now, that's just because there's a second ability that non-legendary Pokemon are able to have, with the exact same ability, and it is:
• Cloud Nine (No Tenki/No Weather) Cloud Nine! Exclusive to the... Psyduck line? Which is a pun because notenki could be read as 'no weather' or 'carefree'. Later on, it's given as hidden abilities to Lickitung, Swablu and Drampa. I guess the 'cloud' pun ended up being carried over to Swablu and Drampa in this case!