Yeah, the jump between 'part 12' and 'part 13' was quite long, huh? That's honestly mostly because I finished Futaba's Palace at around the first three or four days that they opened up the palace to me, and I cleared a huge chunk of the Mementos missions (and the Shadows I encountered, I listed there) and... that leaves the gigantic amount of free time between Futaba's Palace finishing and the conclusion of the Futaba/Medjed storyline, and a whole lot of cutscenes dealing with the one-week integration of Futaba into the Phantom Thieves group (since she doesn't actually hang out with them during the course of her arc, unlike the previous newcomers) and then there's also the matter of the Hawaii trip, which in turn leads to the whole beginning of the Okumura Palace. A whole lot of cutscenes, and snuck in-between them are all the Confidants I did. Hence, the reason for the relatively long delay between parts.
I don't think I really care all that much for the Okumura or Haru storyline compared to Makoto, Futaba and even Yusuke, though. I do know that a huge chunk of the storyline at this part is really hyping up the enigmatic conspiracy, giving Morgana some character spotlight due to the rather subtle buildup of his inadequacies and his desire to prove himself not useless over the course of the past two arcs... and I do like the buildup to this arc. The foreshadowing to things happening to food-related companies, as well as little bits of dialogue about Morgana's own change in mind, are all done relatively well. It's just that Okumura himself feels like a rather generic backdrop. I suppose we'll see once Haru actually confronts her dad, though.
Confidant-wise, I maxed out Takemi and Yoshida, and am getting very close with Ann, Ryuji and Mishima. I thought we'd get a 'boss fight' for every non-party confidant, but while there's something similar with Mishima, it's mostly just a cutscene and Yoshida's just... well, I think his story would feel a lot better if the generic-looking politicians actually look and sound distinct from each other. The story isn't bad, but it's really burdened by the huge gaps between his parts (since he's only weekly), and the side-characters being very opposed but very boring. Takemi's story is pretty interesting, even if it's obvious. Mishima... the game does a great job at making me really dislike how much of a twit he is until I realize that it's the point of his confidant story, that Joker encouraging him turned him into someone drunk on power for a bit.
Anyway, monster reviews!
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Milady
"Let us adorn your departure into freedom with a beautiful betrayal!"
- Arcana: Empress
So our final 'permanent' party member is Okumura Haru, the daughter of the target of this leg of the story, a super-rich businessman who views his children in what connections they can bring. Which brings us to the trope of arranged marriage, which is something that surprises so much people in the Western world still is a thing that is relatively prevalent -- particularly among the richer people -- in Asia. Haru didn't quite draw me the way literally the rest of the cast introduced so far, but there's also the fact that she ends up sharing a lot of her screentime with the buildup of Morgana's big character moment.
Her Persona, representing the 'Empress' arcana, is named after Milady de Winter, a fictional character and antagonist from Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers. Milady de Winter is often depicted as being a fiercely manipulative villain. While not the main antagonist, she ends up causing a fair amount of grief against our heroes by manipulating, stealing, and charming her way through the setting. She has a particular enmity with the younger Musketeer, d'Artagnan. She ends up getting killed at the end of the story for her crimes of seduction and murder.
And... I have never read The Three Musketeers and it's a bit late when I realized I needed to add Milady into this review, but I must confess that I was utterly underwhelmed when I saw Milady appear for the first time in the cutscene. Yeah, that's a gorgeous and ridiculously large pimped-out dress. And the fact that Milady doesn't actually have a head, and just holds one of those masquerade masks with eyes on it is a nice little detail... but it veers a bit too close to Ann's Carmen for my liking, and I didn't really like that the two more feminine ladies default to "giant lady with a dress" when the rest of the cast have such diverse silhouettes.
...and then as Haru proclaims that she's going to never get used by her father ever again, that gigantic skirt splits open to reveal a completely metallic robotic creature beneath, looking like something from an old-school Japanese sci-fi anime, and that mouth opens up to reveal like two tank cannons and two spinning gatling guns! Ho-ho! That is amazing. There's obviously some bit of symbolism too, in that Haru is depicted as the most demure and traditional among the four main ladies in the team, but she's hiding quite a bit of a bite under it all that she's keeping hidden. These kids hiding an independent and rebellious streak has always been a common theme across the game, but I really do love that in her animations and weapon choices, Haru is indubitably the most brutal, wielding gigantic battleaxes for her melee weapon and toting around a rocket launcher for her 'gun'!
(Unfortunately, Haru's Persona specializes in Psi attacks, which... is just filling in the gaps of the elements... but it's a bit of a letdown because Joker himself has gotten many access to Psi skills at this point.)
Haru's Fiance
A lot of the early enemies in Okumura's Palace are enemies that previously have shown up as either minibosses or Personas I've fused before, like Arahabaki, Decarabia and a couple more below that I actually encountered as 'fused' Persona before finding them in the 'wild'. But like Kaneshiro's bodyguards a couple chapters ago, we do get some unique enemies that aren't able to be obtained as Personas.
The first is Haru's Fiance. I haven't mentioned it before but the theme of Okumura's Palace is a fancy sci-fi space station, so all the guards roam around in the 'sealed' form of Dalek-looking guards and floating orbs. The cognitive form of Haru's Fiance transforms into this big, giant chunky robot version of his real-life self, and... it sure is a big, chunky robot. There's a bit of a Tetsujin 28-go vibe to this guy, other than the creepy entitled-rich-kid lines that he says. I don't really have much to say here, pretty nice translation of the guy's human model into a robot.
This model also later shows up in various colours as other Corporobos, specifically the 'Section Chiefs', but I really can't say much about them beyond 'they sure are coloured different'.
Corporobo MDL-WKR
And showing up as the goons of these larger guys are these exhausted Corporobo MDL-WKR. Middle workers, get it? The idea is that Okumura Foods have grown so hard that they're just pushing their many, many employees to the brink of exhaustion, merrily skirting the line of 'corporate abuse'. Anyone that's worked in the corporate life probably feels some kind of kinship to this? Pretty neat design for this guy, who shows up a fair bit in the cutscenes, and I do apprecaite how they look like wind-up toys that're constantly hunched over. There's a huge sense of patheticness from them.
As a sign as to how they're so abused, the MDL-WKR will use a skill that drops their own HP to 1, but heals their 'boss'. Some of the NPC's that you can eavesdrop in order to gather intel about their higher-ups give some disturbing but depressingly accurate mentalities about how 'this elite corporation is going to be great for my future', 'what a privilege' and 'I'll cause problems for everyone else if I collapse'. A lot of the toxic mentality that stem from success stories of CEO's and whatnot, but doesn't really apply to lower-rung workers. Subtle about how corporate abuse really hurts these lower-rung workers, this game ain't.
Corporobo MDL-ADM
The other minibosses are the middle-administration, who visually tower over the middle workers and wave their rubber arms around as they demand that they do work otherwise it's their head that's going to be on the block when the manager comes around. They also have only little beady eyes and a tiny grill mouth. They always kind of rub their hands together, kind of in an obsequious manner. There's a bit of a subsection of the dungeon where you have to figure out which one among them is the 'section chief', and the lower-level admins are happy to trash-talk their supervisors, allowing you to track down specific section chiefs or managers or whatever. Very appropriate for corporate-job workers in a highly toxic environment, I suppose.
I don't really have a ton to say about these robots, but they are kind of thematic to the whole 'space station where the workers are abused' metaphor for Okumura's rapidly-expanding fast-food business, and since we're going for a space theme, I do appreciate that there really aren't a lot of previous Shin Megami Tensei monsters that fit the bill of being high-ranking enemies here.
Girimekhala
- Monster Name: Rebellious Elephant
- Arcana: Moon
Oh, I like this guy. Girimekhala is a big fat elephant man with blue skin, a stubby trunk and a single eye! Girimekhala comes from Sri Lankan mythology, and is portrayed as the mount of the evil demonic king, Mara. Its evil eye causes anyone who looks into it to be met with misfortune. Is this mythological elephant the reason why Digimon's Mammon (Mammothmon to English speakers) only has a single carved eye? Cool!
I do like this tubby elephant-man, who is surprisingly tough and actually caused a game over on me the first time I fought him! But looking at the Shin Megami Tensei wiki, some of the other designs actually feature Girimekhala as a proper giant demon-elephant instead of an elephant man, and I kinda find that a lot cooler. This one's charming in his own way, though!
Koh-i-noor
- Monster Name: N/A
- Arcana: Priestess
Each dungeon brings to us a new Treasure Demon, and this time it's called the Koh-i-noor, meaning 'Mountain of Light' in Hindi. The Koh-i-noor is one of the largest diamonds in the world, weighting 105.6 carats. The Koh-i-noor has a reputation within the British royal family for bringing bad luck to only men who wears it, and it has only been given to female family members. The diamond is currently set in the Crown of Queen Elizabeth, which is the exact crown depicted in here where the ghost is rising up from.
Kaiwan
- Monster Name: Wishless Star
- Arcana: Star
And let me close this off with a couple of Personas I obtained with fusion. Both Kaiwan and Thunderbird actually do show up in Okumura's Palace, but I used them during some of the Mementos missions I did in-between the Futaba and Okumura arcs.
Kaiwan, or Kiyuun/Chiun, is a deity mentioned in the Bible's Book of Amos, referring to the "star of your god Remphan". It's theorized that he's derived from the Babylonian term for the planet Saturn (Sakkut/Sak'kuth, as mentioned in the line), or just part of the worship of the god Remphan. Basically it's unclear if Kiyyun is even a separate entity of Remphan, due to the lack of context. More interestingly, and I'm going to guess one of the reasons for his inclusion, Kaiwan (with that specific spelling) is an alternate names for Hastur, the King in Yellow from Lovecraftian myths. It really is rather interesting that just like the various Mithra/Mithras-es, that Shin Megami Tensei draws from deities that are both extremely well-documented and some really obscure ones.
And... being described as the 'star of a god' means that, obviously, Kaiwan gets represented as... a gray star with the face of an angry old demon man. Whose facial hair makes a different star, albeit upside-down compared to his star-body. It's again such a hilariously literal and fun interpretation of the original concept, and I absolutely approve! From what I see after fusing Kaiwan and using him in battle, he seems to use a bunch of the same general animations as Decarabia. Albeit, of course, with a face instead of an eye.
Thunderbird
- Monster Name: Storm-Invoking Ptarmigan
- Arcana: Sun
A pretty common mythological creature to see in fantasy games, the Thunderbird has a pretty simple name and a pretty simple concept, isn't it? A giant bird that is so large and mighty that it can create thunder by flapping its wings, and launch lightning from its eyes. The Thunderbird legends come from Native American folklore, and is often seen in artwork, iconography and oral histories of many tribes. In some versions of the Thunderbird legend, it is the governor of the upper world, while the underworld is governed by either the Underwater Panther or the Horned Serpent.
...which is an amazing surprise when Persona's take on the Thunderbird takes on the whole 'looks like an eagle' and gives us... what is this thing? It's like the robot or UFO version of something that's trying to mimic the general shape of a bird, yeah? You've got the wings, the talons, the tail, even a head... but only the silhouette looks like a bird. The wings are stiff and bent in angles that shouldn't allow an organic bird to fly, the head is more like the nosecone of a particularly weird-looking fighter jet, and the 'eyes' that shoot lightning are pointed downwards. Very strange-looking design, and after so many different big birds that we've seen in the game, I actually find it rather refreshing to see the idea of the Thunderbird be interpreted as a metallic robot jet thing. Very, very cool. Very creative. Of course, the Thunderbird shows up as one of the enemies in Okumura's Palace.
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