And here we are with the last batch of enemies from Scarlet Nexus! These enemies have been on my 'to-do list' for reviewing since the game debuted in 2021, and after I finished watching my friend play through it in mid-2022... but it just took me forever to talk about the game because of how utterly weird these monster designs are.
Anyway, I thought I wouldn't have too much to say about the bosses, and I was about to put them into the end of the previous article... but then it actually got a bit too long, so I moved the Santas from part 2 to part 3, and cut the bosses out into their own article.
A lot of the identities of these bosses are very spoiler-heavy, and Scarlet Nexus is a game that's very heavy on the plot twists and turns, so I'm not going to talk too much about the story contexts of these monsters. I'm also obviously skipping all the OSF characters that show up as boss fights on their own, because... well, they're just humans with psychokinetic powers.
Also, MAJOR spoilers in this review, since I'm going to discuss one of the more major plot twists in the early parts of the game, specifically the identity of a character that got Other-ized.
Gunkin Perry
What a cute name. "Gunkin Perry". The name brings up like, a mascot for a Dunkin' Donuts ripoff, yeah? The end result looks more like a monster that I wouldn't feel like it would be out of place in games like the Zelda franchise who really like their masks... except, of course, the Gunkin Perry is insanely bizarre looking. Its primary body is almost normal, a six-legged beast whose body is covered with shaggy brown fur... and then the arms all end in these mechanical-skeletal-framework arms like one of those broken animatronics from a Five Nights at Freddy's game. Its head is a metallic Y-shaped slab with a hole in the center and a bunch of giant screws or pipes stuck through it. Its tails are random pipes and wires. And on its back is a gigantic metallic organ surrounded by roses and a giant hose-like cannon that the game identifies as 'a water-tank-like organ'. Okay, sure.
The Gunkin Perry is also pretty huge in gameplay, and lives up to its profile calling it as being extremely aggressive and ferocious. It also scuttles and bounces around like a hypercaffeinated bug or something, allowing it to come crashing down on prey. A suitably impressive but still bizarre-looking boss for sure!
Gunkin Fisher / Dispen Fisher
Kinda cheapening the original Gunkin Perry, we do have a bunch of other repaints/remodels of the same boss. Like Gunkin Fisher here, who has a different-shaped mask head which looks kind of like one of those squatting toilets. It's got a much more explicit giant jug on its back that looks like a wine jar, and a lot of meaner-looking spikes.
It's a bit hard to look for information for these bosses online, since they're so similar, but I think the variant called Dispen Fisher looks the same as Gunkin Fisher, just with extra attack patterns.
Dispen Perry
I can't really find too much in terms of Dispen Perry as well, but it's got yet another different wine-jar-hose thing on its back. It's got the same face as Gunkin Perry with those runes carved onto its Y-shaped mask, and it's got fancy gloves at the tip of its hands! Anyway, all these bosses are doing pretty much the same thing, being giant, dinosaur-sized beastly monsters that also double as being very neat-looking cinematic pieces.
Naomi Randall
We have discussed how the true identity of the Others are actually humans... and some humans retain their individuality enough to be horrified by the state of what they turn to. Certain factions would kidnap these sentient Others and keep their berserker nature in check by feeding them 'medication' that turn out to be the human brains that the Others look for. Suddenly, the reason why the Others hunt down brains ends up becoming a bit more clear -- it gives them their sentience back, albeit temporarily. Is that the reason of the weird, more human-like behaviour of some of the Others we talked about before?
Anyway, while we have discussed Alice before (who uses a slightly modified Yawn model, the most traumatic character that gets transformed into an Other over the course of the story is Naomi Randall, whose Other form is perhaps one of the most fucked-up looking creature. Remember that in this form, she was briefly aware enough of what had happened to her that she acted on her own -- and is suitably horrified to learn that she can only subsist on cannibalism.
The shape of Naomi's Other form is also truly bizarre. There are a lot of comparisons to the design of the witches from Madoka Magika, but while most of the more generic monsters do have a heavier 'junkyard' vibe to them, Naomi looks far more creepier, particularly those twin woman figures that look like felt dolls or mannequins, placed on top of a yawning space with a single chair on it. The humanoid figurines have gashes down their bodies, which I thought were just neckties for the longest time. Two branches jut out from the 'shoulders'... while the rest of the body is like a twisted, upside-down human being doing that creepy horror monster movie crab-walk. With the branches serving as Naomi's "arms", the actual humanoid (or human puppet) arms are holding the space (a fireplace?), as if opening it. The actual being uses her elbows to walk around. Strewn around the rest of the body are ribbons and what look like leaves or feathers, and a mass of plants hang down the bottom of the fireplace or shrine or whatever.
Later on in the fights against her, Naomi assumes an upside-down position where it looks a bit more natural for her humanoid limbs, but places the humanoid heads upside-down. The chair falls out, oh no! But the rest of the hole does end up serving as kind of a new 'mouth', with those plants serving as an 'eye'. Maybe that's just my face pareidolia.
Anyway, yeah. Naomi's design is probably a fair bit more disturbing because she still retains so much human anatomy but it's twisted, particularly the fact that part of her is just a wooden room being held by mannequin arms. Again, they really did the right thing in making Naomi have a unique model as opposed to just making her like a Gunkin Perry or whatever, and oh, what a creepy model it is.
Coil Moil
Serving as a boss in the icy-cold location of Hieno Mountain, the Coil Moil is an ice-themed Other and it has another vaguely humanoid figure... from the waist down, anyway, where Coil Moil wouldn't look out of place as like a lesser Resident Evil zombie mutant or something. But the rest of it looks so different. Its arms are completely different, with one arm being like a bent steel beam, and the other arm being a solid pilar encrusted in ice... and so is the rest of its body. As you travel through the icy mountain areas, you get to see 'ice sculptures' created by Coil Moil in its image, which adds to the creepy factor.
Like many Others, particularly the Pools and Yawns, the Coil Moil has a mass of yellow bulbs on its waist, while its head is made by what I can best describe as a metallic chandelier, swirling around and giving the impression of a swirling, vortex-like mouth. It's a very interesting way to imagine a powerful 'elemental' enemy, while still keeping the 'gothic junkyard' vibe of the rest of the Others.
Court Mort
Oh yeah, this guy. The Court Mort isn't actually a boss you fight, but rather a boss you run away from. It's hard to tell from the image, but the Court Mort is massive, basically kaiju-sized and you fight it in a rather weird place where it seems to be much bigger inside than it is outside. The Court Mort reminds me of a massive cloaked beaked figure from afar, but while the trailing cloak of shadows is obvious, the main 'body' is more of a... dragon? A caterpillar? It's got a mass of long human arms that give it that impression, with chains and lanterns hanging down from it, and there are a bunch of red leaves that sprout out where the 'caterpillar' body meets the long cloak. There seems to be an almost cloth-like pattern to the 'skin' covering its body, but the cutscenes kind of make it a bit more clear that it's actually mannequin parts, similar to what the Rummy or Pendu are made of.
Its head is... like a trumpet horn? Except wibbly-wobbly, and has bizarre carving done on it. It looks almost cloth-like, and there appears to be a 'tongue' of mashed-up mannequin parts moving out of it. The size of this thing is just cool, and honestly, it really could've easily be an inhabitant of any number of games as being an ultra-powerful elder god or sealed demon or something, just... swimming and hovering away in the distance as you traverse through hell. The Court Mort containts many other Others within its body, and with its trumpet head can control and direct them with its roar, and that is part of the 'boss fight' against the Court Mort, where it unleashes swarms of lesser Others on our heroes when they infiltrate the space it's in. The in-game encyclopedia does give a possible avenue to its biology, where it sends out lesser Others to collect brains, from which it feeds like a bizarre combination of ant queen and ant nest. This process of Court Mort controlling them also apparently causes the Pendus and whatnot to become dumber and move simpler. Ultimately the Court Mort itself attacks our heroes, though it's less of a bsos fight and more 'escape the Babe Chamber' as it bashes the bridges our heroes are trying to escape from.
Dominus Circus
I do like the ide that these things are based on a 'circus'. This Other is so confusing that the OSF records actually has contradicting reports on what it can do, which, of course, turns out to be because Dominus Circus behaves like a Zelda boss and can shapeshift with its phases. Not sure why the OSF doesn't just classify them as three variants of the same Other model, like... oh, I don't know, call them Shield Circus and Swingy Circus and Mammoth Circus or something? Its original first phase are three lesser each having the same 'top' structure, and all having those weird horse-leg-arms and having heads that end in dish. Bizarrely, the bottom of their ice cream cone looking bodies end up in... okay, I didn't even realize it until I zoomed in, but it's like... upside-down legs pedaling the wheels, like unicycle riders, but the legs terminate in an upside-down dress-skirt that end in wooden spikes.
The 'umbrella' Dominus Circus has a single curved metal bar as a 'head', though he has entire ungulate legs as its arms. Its primary feature is a ratty umbrella encrusted disgustingly, with barnacles -- probably my favourite feature in this set of monsters. This one uses it to shoot water and control it. The one on the right has mostly similar anatomy with umbrella dude, but has a 'sword' that's a spiral-seashell with very messy-looking branches jutting out of it. That's not the interesting part. The creepy part is its 'handle', where the shell has human arms jutting out of it and it's holding on to the horse legs. What the fuck.
And the central Dominus Circus has a disturbingly more organic head that only vaguely resembles an elephant -- it's got a distorted elephant trunk and tusks, leathery wings that loook like a mutant bat, and two horse legs just jutting out like arms. The 'wings' and elephant parts are attached to a bizarre glass dome that serves as this thing's 'head'. This one sprays gases and oil and whatnot.
The final phase of the fight has them combine into their ultimate form, with the elephant head sitting on a much larger upturned dish, and the barnacle umbrella and the stabby-seashell arm being the 'arms' of this spinny-humanoid creature. A bizzare elephant clown demon with aquatic-themed weaponry and upside-down unicyclists involved somehow. Much creepier than the Perrys!
Rotunda Pagoda (and Filler Pillers)
Not at all the final boss (since that is a human character), but the final enemy we'll talk about here. Rotunda Pagoda is located in a massive room with supercomputers, and what do you know, the central machine is actually an Other. It's noted to apparently be mimicking a machine, so is it sitting there, waiting for people to come? Rotunda Pagoda does look like a particularly fucked-up treehouse, with its main body looking like a dead tree, there being a structure like a security tower as its main body, and a single searchlight with an organic eyeball on it. It's cute! It kinda reminds me of a Zelad boss!
It's interesting that the encyclopedia notes that while Rotunda Pagoda is noted to be able to consume electricity, it seems to hunt for humans and prey anyway. It also uses a bunch of insectoid Others called Filler Pillers that it keeps within itself like a beehive and uses them as minions -- you can see them in the Rotunda Pagoda's artwork. They're basically a bunch of junk stapled together and given shards of metal that vaguely resemble buggy wings. The behaviour that Rotunda Pagoda does is to send out its Filler Pillers (some of which are 'equipped' with scavenged equipment) and will only show its vulnerable eye and search for the presence of prey if it somehow senses that the Filler Pillers are killed.
So yeah, there's a definite sense of a guardhose with a searchlight here, except it's also a tree with a beehive that sends out bee soldiers to hunt for prey.
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And with that, we wrap up the bizarre bestiary of Scarlet Nexus! It's still such a treat to talk about this and, again, I reiterate how utterly jarring the Others look compared to the rest of the artstyle, which look pretty 'Tron-ish' in terms of its design aesthetic. Or as much as an anime artstyle can, anyway. But its monsters are these strange junkyard objects and familiar non-organic things pasted together into shapes that remind us of crocodiles and birds and raptors and trees and it's just so disquieting in just how weird they look.
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