Bleach TYBW E17 Review: Beast Titan

Bleach, Thousand-Year Blood War, Episode 17: Heart of Wolf

So unlike the last couple of episodes, I don't actually think there's a whole ton that they changed or altered for this one. After the handful of fights, we get what I think is the marquee fight for this batch of episodes -- Komamura's last hurrah against Bambietta Basterbine.

The other female Sternritters observe as Bambietta's crimson-red Vollstandig is visible in the distance, and we get the conclusion of the fight between her and Shinji. And... some people were hoping that Shinji's going to get a better showing with his Bankai against Bambietta, and I honestly wouldn't mind him saying 'Bankai' only to be interrupted. Even if (and that's a big if) Shinji gets an extra anime-exclusive fight, I don't think his Bankai would work well in this 1v1 situation. 

Bambietta announces her schrift, "E" for "The Explode", and does the honestly most logical thing against Shinji's sense-reversal technique -- blow everything straight to hell. As Shinji gets sadly blown up and knocked down, we get the arrival of Komamura and his bucket-helmet again. Momo comes in to fight, but Komamura likely saved her life by knocking her out of the way before Bambietta's explosions erupt. We get some explanation about Bambietta's "The Explode" powers, in that it doesn't shoot reishi bombs, but rather the reishi blasts infuse things and turn them into bombs. 

...which the anime-exclusive extension of the Komamura/Bambietta fight in the first cour explicitly contradicts by Komamura being able to slice one of Bambi's spherical blasts, but eh. 

Bambietta attacks Komamura and reveals his brand-new human form, and we get a flashback to explain Komamura's training with the Wolfman Clan's elder, his great-grandfather. It's... it's kind of a shame because we didn't really get any more exposition that the manga didn't already give us. I do think that we did get a fair bit from this scene, and I know that the Wolfman Clan is a reference to the Six Paths of Samsara (which other parts of Bleach had drawn from) but we really didn't get a whole ton out of this. 

In the past, we get the Elder's explanation about the Humanization Technique, and how the Wolfman Clan hasn't atoned fully for the sins that sent them to the Animal Realm. Breaking down the chain of sins would allow them to briefly regain their original human form, but the Elder tells Komamura to basically give up his heart... which Komamura literally does by ripping it out and placing it on the bowl before the Elder. Komamura also gives this whole speech about how he has a debt to repay to Yamamoto, who was slain by the Quincy. 

And in the present day, Komamura summons his Bankai. Or rather, his upgraded Bankai -- Kokujo Tengen Myo'o: Dangai Jo'e. The anime is a bit more deliberately slow with Dangai Jo'e's debut, showing Kokujo Tengen My'o in its original armoured version. Bambietta flies up and starts attacking the armoured giant. Komamura talks about how his original Bankai is imbued with life... but Dangai Jo'e isn't. And as the armour falls, we get to see the armoured, emaciated form of Dangai Jo'e with all the glory of its fiery eyes and large mustache. 

And Dangai Jo'e is CGI, but it's... pretty okay? It's meant to be creepily distracting, so I do think that the stiffness of its movement is appropriate in this situation. The fight is pretty, and relatively faithful to the manga. We've got Bambietta flying up and shooting bombs at Dangai Jo'e, while Komamura explains that the power of The Explode is only frightening to something that's alive, and Dangai Jo'e is dead. Or rather, unkillable. This is punctuated by an explosion on Dangai Jo'e's chest corresponding on Komamura, revealing that his chest has a hole in it. 

Komamura talks about how his body is now an empty shell driven only the desire to enact revenge on the Quincies. Dangai Jo'e begin pursuing Bambietta, and we get a bit of differing arguments. Bambietta yells about how the point of a battle is to avoid dying... while Komamura counters that he had staked his life because Yamamoto did the same, and he had 'left his life behind' even before the battle. Dangai Jo'e slashes his sword and hits Bambietta with it, causing a very beautiful backlit explosion. Bambietta's bombs are pressed against her as she's knocked away by the gigantic blade. Poor Bambi! 

However, in the cave, the Elder praises Komamura for being 'one of them'. And the portrayal of the Elder is truly sinister, huh? He's reveling at how Komamura's allowed desire for revenge to take over him, how he's doing the very things he condemned Kaname Tosen for...  but in the Elder's point of view, it's a good thing since revenge is what their clan stands for, and he's proud that Komamura 'returned' to their clan... while eating his heart. Damned creepy demon dog!

And it is kind of a sad, we do get a very cool shot of Juhabach and Uryu in the Quincy castle, watching as Kokujo Tengen Myo'o: Dangai Jo'e rises up from the giant explosion in the distance. It does remind me of something from Attack on Titan, and really does highlight how Komamura, at this point, just wants vengeance for Yamamoto... and he's still so far away when he falls to his knees and his secret forbidden technique just... shatters. The Elder pointing out the Tosen stuff is really what makes this scene not feel like a gigantic waste of time and Komamura's character... I really honestly wished that Juhabach one-shotted Komamura just to take him out or something, but I also kind of understand just how tragic that Komamura fell to the side-effects of his literal deal with the devil and reverts into a real dog. 

And... we really still don't get much of an explanation for this, which I was kind of hoping we did. But Komamura gets the backlash of that forbidden technique, and is cursed to lose his human body. Iba shows up and brings Komamura with him, asserting that Komamura did nothing wrong and that they'll attack Yamamoto together. And this is when the title, "Heart of Wolf", appears. And... that's the end of Komamura, and I honestly always thought that they really could've done more? I do appreciate the Elder's monologue at this point, though, comparing Komamura to Tosen. 

We get the weird shadow doors appearing next to Cang Du and BG9, although this time there's a slight difference as Uryu is the one ordering these two defeated Sternritters to return. I do wonder if the execution scene will be different, and if we'll learn the meaning of BG9's "K" then? Bambietta, also defeated, doesn't get the Uryu treatment. However, her four lady friends show up and she's clearly terrified as Giselle walks up to her. 

We also get the conclusion of the Kyoraku/Haschwalth confrontation. Haschwalth destroys Nanao's barrier, only for Nanao to erect a hexagon-patterned one, noting that she's got time to create a new barrier by the time Haschlwath absorbed the previous one. We get some cool shots as Haschwalth destroys the barrier and Kyoraku posing, before Haschwalth retreats as he's summoned by Juhabach. Pretty fun scene. 

We get also the conclusion to the extended Ikkaku/Yumichika/Shuhei fight against Mask De Masculine. Shuhei panics when he realizes the allied reiatsu that disappeared is Komamura, but then Mask's eyes and mouth glow as James cries over him, causing Mask to come back to life with the power of The Superstar. We get a cool shot of the three lieutenants pulling out their shikais, then Mask just bullrushing them, knocking them into the air, and then slamming all three down with a single punch. Poor Shuhei gets bullied even more, getting pinned and held in an elbow grip as Mask goes HEY ONE TWO THREE! 

...And then two glowing lights, Rukia and Renji, fall down from the skies down into the city. Mask and James talk to each other and decide to investigate these new, flashy foes. Shuhei uses Kazeshini's chain to attack Mask, being pissed off at the 'three count', but Mask just pulls Shuhei towards him, clotheslines him, and is about to stomp on him when Kensei shows up and stops Mask's foot with his own. Kensei and Rose then basically challenges Mask to a fight. 

And in the post-credits scene, we get Ichigo still in the Irazu Sando. It's far more interesting, as Ichigo gets more and more tired. Ichibei talks about how everything, every weird flash that Ichigo is seeing, is the weight of what Ichigo is trying to protect. They are the 'everlasting memories and revelations' from the power of the Soul King. Ichigo is surrounded by a whole ton of glowing energy (presumably representing his different Reiatsu types?) while Ichibei asks Ichigo if he's going to be a vessel that can hold the power... or a bowl that shatters. We get a creepy image of Ichigo's body turning tumorous and erupting in an explosion, which is a vision of what happens if Ichigo is a 'bowl that shatters'. But Ichigo holds his blade up high and everything seems to revert to relative normalcy. Ichigo then walks through the Torii gate... and into the bright-purple-and-red parlour of Senjumaru Shutara. This one is particularly surprising since nearly all of Senjumaru's scenes in cour two have been cut so far. But both Senjumaru and Ichibei's trainings are ones that we didn't get to see, and it's definitely welcome to see both Senjumaru and Ichibei be far more involved in these post-credits Ichigo scenes!

Random Notes:

• We get to see Giselle and Candice disengaging their Vollstandigs, with Giselle's Vollstandig appearing way earlier than it did in the manga. Mark Giselle as one of the two or three unknown Vollstandig users from the end of the previous episode!
  
• We also get the removal of the remark about Candice only learning Vollstandig recently. 
• I didn't realize it until after I posted this review, but there is a split second that we can see NaNaNa activating his Vollstandig -- his is the orange pillar. We don't actually get to see him with angelic wings or whatnot (and neither do we get to see Cang Du or BG9's holy forms) but at least we know the identities of the pillars from the previous episode!
• Man, poor Shinji just kinda looks... pathetic as Momo carries him away, huh? Hopefully he gets a bit of a better showing later on before/during the Royal Palace fights...
• She doesn't manage to do a damn thing, but the balls on Hinamori Momo for getting ready to throw down with Bambietta with her honestly rather underwhelming Tobiume.
• It is really interesting that they decided to fold both Senjumaru and Ichibei's palace trainings together!
• Kubo would later reveal that 'Mask De Masculine' is just a construct created by the real Sternritter, James... and it is kind of notable that for all of the showboating that Mask does, the one that actually makes the decision to investigate the two falling objects is James. 

Bleach TYBW E16 Review: iaknaB s'ijnihS

Bleach, Thousand-Year Blood War, Episode 16: The Fundamental Virulence

Slightly late with my reviews to these. I'm kind of playing catch-up! But 'Fundamental Virulence' did admittedly have a fair amount of changes from the source material. We even start off with some brand-new scenes of minor Gotei 13 characters like Iba, Momo and Isane fighting a bunch of Soldat. Again, lots of these scenes really do help make the war feel like a proper war!

The first half of the episode deals with the ramifications of the previous episode's fight. Sternritter "I", Cang Du, arrives to claim his fight against Histugaya, and drops the body of Matsumoto onto the ground from his cloak. I've always wondered, back in the day, if Matsumoto was really killed off here? She does come back later to life, but under the powers of the 'Zombie'. The hollow look in her eyes and the nasty slash on her neck, plus Cang Du's serious personality makes me highly doubt it, but it is honestly rather odd that the death isn't really played up that much. Cang Du then activates Daiguren Hyorinmaru, preparing to kill Hitsugaya with his own Bankai. 

We then get a good chunk of the Mayuri/Urahara conversation, and I've always found it hilarious how Mayuri was absolutely willing to turn off the communication out of spite just so Urahara doesn't get the credit, potentially dooming the Soul Society in the process. We get most of the explanation about the Shin'eiyaku pills, and how the Hollow reiatsu is poisonous to Quincies... but we get an additional line of explanation that fixes a plot hole in the source material, which is "J" Quilge Opie being able to use Sklaverei to absorb Ayon into his body. Where back then the fandom assumed that Quilge's able to integrate Ayon's Hollow form due to his "Jail" powers or something, but turns out Quilge being transformed into that monstrous form is a sign of his Quincy nature rejecting the Hollow Reiatsu. It's a nice new bit of tying up the loose ends on this front for sure!

Again, a lot of these Mayuri/Urahara scenes are streamlined but most of the funniest lines are retained, like Mayuri being petty and Urahara being like five steps in front of Mayuri, Shinji talking shit about Urahara's line about 'if you don't know me, I'm Kisuke Urahara', or that one random generic 12th Division goons briefly being impressed by Urahara and being shushed by his buddies. We actually get to see the spy insects that were only mentioned in the original manga, which are hideous insects with baby faces. Some of them are conjoined together! That's nasty. 

Again, a lot of these explanations were already in the source material -- like Urahara's observation about how the Quincies never stole the Resurreccion of the Arrancar -- but the way it's shown here is so streamlined and minimalized that it's a bit easier to swallow. 

I still do think it's kind of a shame that we don't get anything about the Visored Captains and their already Hollow-form Bankais, or that the stolen Bankais subplot just get wrapped up rather quickly like this, but eh. 

We wrap up the remaining fights, then. Hitsugaya touches the pill and causes Cang Du's stolen Daiguren Hyorinmaru to partially explode in blood. BG9 is about to use a gigantic mass of tendrils to stab and skewer Soi Fon in so many parts when Omaeda speed-blitzes in and takes Soi Fon away, before giving her the pill. Good job, Omaeda! We get a hilarious line of BG9 asking Omaeda to 'speak up' because his robotic ears are still ringing from the previous explosion. Soi Fon, however, just summons her Bankai, Jakuho Raikoben, and in a pretty amazingly-animated explosion, unleashes the mother of all gigantic explosions that engulfs BG9. This anime does know how to make pretty explosions!

We get a bit of a martial arts fight between Cang and Hitsugaya that's a bit extended from the original material, including a barrage of kicks from Cang that is a bit more similar to his showing in the first cour. There's a nice contrast between the two, too, with Hitsugaya's Daiguren Hyorinmaru being light blue, while Cang's stolen one is purple. Each of them also has one wing, and Hitsugaya's got a hollow-eye partial-mask on his face made out of ice, which resembles an eyepatch. That's cool!

And then... I'm honestly not sure if the subsequent exchange makes a bit more sense in the original Japanese? Hitsugaya constantly talks about how Hyorinmaru can't attack itself, causing Cang to get angry at Hitsugaya for personifying his sword spirits and Bankai spirits and the like... which... isn't like, an opinion that the Shinigami have but an actual fact that is observable throughout the series. And the Quincies have been watching from the shadows, so Cang doesn't really have an excuse! But then he randomly talks about how he "does not believe in pantheism", which is defined as the belief or worship of multiple gods, which... I think is meant to be a jab at Christianity, but it's just such a non-sequitur in a completely unrelated discussion that it just makes Cang Du's line here sound rather nonsensical. 

Anyway, we get a badass voiced line by Hyorinmaru as the giant ice dragon spirit briefly shows itself behind Hitsugaya, before we get the final clash. Cang Du launches a 'She Jin Zhao' attack (a blast of reishi shaped like a snake, which isn't very clear in the anime) but Hitsugaya just unleashes a gigantic pillar of ice shaped like a cross, snarking that he can't make it a pentacle to fit the Quincy. 

...and then Hitsugaya falls, while a dark shadow walks towards him. Sorry, Hitsugaya, this is it for you for a while!

We get to see Bambietta and As Nodt see their own Medallions break and the Bankai leave them, while Uryu and Juhabach observe from their throne room. But far more cooler (and unexpected) is the anime-original scene hinted at in the trailers, and taken from the quasi-canonical sequel novel series, Can't Fear Your Own World... which I finished reading earlier this year! Shinji is faced down by several dozen Soldat, and Shinji talks about how he's pissed that his own soldiers are killed... but then talks about how some of his abilities can only be used without allies nearby.

And then as some fancy jazz music happens, and some upside-down nonsense goes on with the shots of Shinji, he says the words he never said in the canon manga... BANKAI. Sakashima Yokoshima Happofusagari. 

Absolutely love the jazz music that plays here. We get several shots, in a pop-art style, of the Soldat shooting their own comrades in their heads, and Shinji even gets to slash the neck of one Soldat that just happens to fall into his lap. It's a very random showcase of Bankai, but it's definitely much more welcome in giving Shinji something to do instead of being one of the prominent captains that never does anything in the source manga. Now dealing with 'all the Soldat' does seem rather underwhelming, but it is actually convenient that around the time of the second invasion, the Soldat really cease to matter as it all comes down to the Sternritter versus the captains/vice-captains. The idea that Shinji just murdered almost all the Soldat in this scene, and the fact that this cour does emphasize the Soldats running around a bit more in the earlier episodes, does help to make it a bit more important. 

Now the question is... is this it for Shinji's Bankai? Is this just the anime going 'yep, you guys get to see the Bankai that's shown up in novels and video games', or are we going to see Shinji use it in a subsequent fight? There are a lot of lesser Sternritter like Meninas, Liltotto, NaNaNa, Robert and some others that didn't quite get the most dignified deaths, and I definitely wouldn't mind if Shinji got to wipe some of them out. 

Meanwhile, we get an extended fight sequence between Ikkaku, Yumichika and Shuhei against Mask De Masculine. In the manga, we just see the opening of this fight and then later on once the three guys are taken down, but we actually do get a proper action scene between them! Mask gets to really ham things up a fair bit, and he's definitely a character that comes off better with a voice yelling English words like SUPERSTAR and COMEON! and IMPOSSIBULLL! The actual action scenes are fun, if basic enough, like Mask slamming Ikkaku and Yumichika together before spinning Ikkaku around with his spear. Shuhei then returns the favour by saying that it's a 'chain deathmatch'. The fight seems to end with Shuhei tricking Mask by releasing his chains and allowing Ikkaku to get a good shot in with Hozukimaru, drawing blood from his face. 

We get a nice little anime addition of Bambietta looking at the now-useless medallion, turning it into a bomb, and blowing up some random nameless shinigami on a building -- a nice little expansion that does add to her flippant attitude. Bambietta rampages when her four cliques leave her behind and start blowing shit up, complaining that she looked like a fool, and that her target, the 'doggy' (wan-ko) isn't around for her to murder. 

And then we get Komamura's badass aerial entrance, slamming down in his fully-armoured, newly-helmeted masked form. And I absolutely love the addition of several lines and to remove Komamura from the initial part of this fight (where he already doesn't do anything anyway). Knowing what we do know about Dangai Joue and the time limit, it never really made sense in the manga for Komamura to stay behind and fight a relatively lower-ranking member like Bambietta. The anime adds several lines of saying Komamura's main priority is to avenge Yamamoto's death and how he's hunting down Juhabach's head right now... but he's going to only take time here because Bambietta's attacking the 7th Division. 

We get a cool one-liner from Shinji when Bambietta talks about the entry of 'heroes', and Shinji says that they can't really be heroes. Komamura actually leaves in this fight, while Shinji uses Sakanade to fuck with Bambietta's senses. The funky jazz music returns, with some fun uses of perspective, cutaways, and even a spiralling effect to really get Shinji's Sakanade release be fun. 

And, hell, Shinji even speaks backwards when he introduces himself as Hirako Shinji, Captain of the 5th Division, which is creepy and cool! We get some fun psychotic-angry expressions on Bambietta's face as she just unleashes her Explode powers while Shinji gloats, and... I do really think that Shinji looks less like he's prolonging the fight out of pride in this one and just trying to find the time to sneak in a deathblow. 

And then we get the badass scene as multiple Sternritters unleash their Vollstandig, including Bambietta and Mask (who are in a pinch)...  and it leads to the badass shot of the Seireitei with six Vollstandig pillars exploding up into the sky, which is always one of my favourite panels in this part of the arc. 

And then a lot of the beaten Sternritters seem to get a second wind. Bambietta is ready to lay down the smackdown, while Cang Du explodes from his icy prison (which never amounts to anything in the manga). 

We get another post-credits scene, where Ichigo is still wandering the Irazu Sando -- the Road of No Entry. We get a lot of ominous visions which I assume will be explained in full in a subsequent episode, but those that read the aforementioned Can't Fear Your Own World novel would know that the shots do correspond to the backstory of the Soul King given in that novel series, where his limbs were torn apart and imprisoned by nobles. None of the shots are clear enough to really understand without pausing the shots and piecing things together with foreknowledge of the novels or the rest of the manga, but we do get an ominous shot of Ichigo's eye gaining multiple pupils... which, again, doesn't really mean anything beyond being ominous, but manga readers will know that this is the sight of Juhabach and the Soul King's Almighty powers!

Overall... I do really like this a lot. A lot of the chapters that were adapted into this episode has had their contents changed, but mostly for the better. The jury's still out on whether this is a good enough showcase of Shinji's Bankai (who knows, he might use it in a more major way in a subsequent fight, either with Bambietta or against some other Quincies... but I do really like the more sensible explanation of certain plot holes like Komamura's objectives and the Quincy/Hollow poison thing. Adding more shots of what the more minor characters are doing is also always welcome!

Random Notes:

• The anime keeps the plot-continuity error line from the manga, where Cang Du talks about how this is 'the first time Hitsugaya saw his Bankai from the other side', despite Cang Du being one of the two Sternritters to use the stolen Bankai in the first invasion.
• While previously Mayuri's sunflower cloak just glows in rippling white, later on it glows in rippling rainbow colours. 
• Ikkaku and Yumichika are shown receiving two Shin'enyaku pills, which led some people to speculate that Yumichika has Bankai. While Shuhei and Ikkaku do have Bankai, it's also telling that Omaeda also got a pill (which he gave to Soi Fon) so I assume just everyone that is at roughly vice-captain level got a pill. Notably, Ikkaku consumes the pill and Yumichika doesn't. 
• We still have no idea if the weird dome-shaped structure that BG9 summons is the robot-man's Vollstandig. It still disappears after he decided to stand back up again, but it's not given the same glowing animation as the other Vollstandigs were in the anime. 
• Actually, poor Yumichika doesn't get to do much in the action scene, huh? He just gets bashed against Ikkaku and thrown into a building, and doesn't even get to release either Fuji or Ruri'iro Kujaku. 
• We get to see seven Vollstandig pillars by the end of the episode. We do know that two correspond to Bambietta and Mask De Masculine, and another one to Candice (who we'll see next episode). BG9 and Cang Du also activate their Vollstandigs to escape death, though Cang's Vollstandig was initially blue and we don't get to see a blue one in the next shot -- that might be an animation error, though. Not sure who the other two are?
  
• Thanks to the skies being red and the lighting being relatively consistent, the line about Ikkaku and Yumichika discussing that it's night and the shadows are darker has been removed. 
• It was actually rather nonsensical that Komamura would just stand around while Shinji fought Bambietta and not do anything but save Momo, especially considering that we know about the time limit. So it's nice to see that he goes off to hunt Juhabach and presumably only goes back to fight Bambietta when there's a clear danger to Shinji's life. 

Reviewing Monsters - Pikmin 3, Part 3 (Bosses)

And this will round up my coverage of Pikmin 3, which will involve most of the minibosses and bosses. This has been a fun ride! I'll be back, I think, whenever Pikmin 4 is out and all the bestiary has been uploaded to the fan-wikis. I really did feel like Pikmin 3 pushed a lot of the enemy design to feel a bit more different from the first two games, at least in terms of the new enemy designs. 

Again, it's always fun to see the wacky scientific names assigned to these creatures, as well as the large amount of thought that went into the speculative evolution of these critters. I do really think that there's something a bit missing in Pokemon and especially Zelda's bestiaries because we don't quite have something anywhere as thorough as Olimar's amateur-biology-student observations about these creatures. There's also always the knowledge that the planet PNF-404 is actually a post-apocalyptic Earth, so these creatures are actually descendants of our modern-day critters, giving these monsters an extra 'oomph' of creepiness, whether the designers intended it or not!

It's also always interesting to talk about the bestiary of a game that I have never played as of yet, only seen gameplay footage online. Maybe I'll finally get to playing the franchise with Pikmin 4? With how long it's taken me to complete Persona 5, though, I highly doubt it'll be any time this year...

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Bug-Eyed Crawmad (Camabarus subterranid)

We've had the Hermit Crawmad in the previous game, but this member of the Camabarus genus is instead subterranean, as its name implies. It looks a lot like the Hermit Crawmad, but it's got two gigantic eyeballs with pink eyelids, connected to the main crustacean body with eyestalks. The end result does look like a weirdly modified Spore creature that someone wants to make look as uncanny as possible. Which... actually makes the Bug-Eyed bastard look very creepy when it stalks your characters! Olimar notes that the gigantic, overdeveloped eyes helps it to detect prey in cloudy water or low-visibility mud. Like its partial inspiration, the mantis shrimp, these Bug-Eyed Crawmads allow it to see polarized light, ultraviolet, and infrared light. 

The Bug-Eyed Crawmad will pop in and out of its interconnected underground tunnels, and grab Pikmin and gobble them up. As with any Nintendo enemy, the gigantic eyes are the weak spots, and hitting them enough will cause it to show off its weak underbelly. This guy is quite huge, which Olimar notes is a sign of its repeated shedding and a marker of its age!

Shaggy Long Legs (Pseudoarachnia capillum)

We get a couple more variations of what's still my favourite boss from the franchise, the Beady Long Legs family. A lot of what I said about the original Beady Long Legs still applies here -- what a unique 'spider' the creature is, with the distinctive planet-like orb and four 'sci-fi spider-walker' legs jutting out of it. Lots of spiders are hairy, of course, but they normally manifest in fur-like coverings, and not this... this whatever the hell is going on with Shaggy Long Legs here! Its joints are in puffballs, but the central orb is just a mass of hair that reminds me of Cousin It or Sadako or something. It's so gloriously dorky!

Apparently these hair are actually protective, shielding Shaggy here from the frosty weather as well as the Pikmin attacks, and you have to get rid of the hair to expose the core. The game actually has several coloured variations of the Shaggy Long Legs, and Olimar suspects that this is merely due to 'regional characteristics', and not caused by stress or age.

Baldy Long Legs (Pseudoarachnia calvitium)

Yet another variant that only appears in certain game modes is the Baldy Long Legs, which is... basically the Shaggy Long Legs, but bald. Alph wonders if this is a Shaggy that's born bald, or if it already lost its hair in a previous fight, but its species name marks it as a separate species to the Pseudoarachnia capillum... or is it? Olimar notes that "this is merely a Shaggy Long Legs that has lost its hair", but it's classified as a separate species and classified separately because 'the hair never grows back'. It really does depend on whether the Baldy lost its legs through... the course of evolution over several generations (at which point there's argument in making it a breed or a subspecies) but if it's lost its leg in its current life, then it's just a bald Shaggy! Olimar, just because someone goes bald doesn't mean it's a completely different species!

Armoured Mawdad (Tuberclipeum rex)

Huh! From the name, I assume this is meant to be another monster based on the crawdad, and so probably the big boss versions of the 'Crawmad' enemies? What a much cooler-looking face, though! I think it's those creepy, almost dinosaurian eyes embedded into the side of a much more monstrous head. The base silhouette is really all this thing has in common with an actual crayfish, because everything other than it looks significantly more creepy. Instead of two giant clackety claws, it's got what appears to be tentacles. We've got the aforementioned almost dinosaurian eyes. The mouth looks like it's transplanted from an angry ape. And those legs are like teeny-tiny little creepy legs that the wiki compares to a gecko and knowing what they're supposed to be makes me even more creeped out. And of course, the main body of this critter is enveloped in admittedly a rather natural-looking exoskeleton... but it's so pale and slimy looking. I didn't think much of this design initially when I skimmed through the wiki, going 'cool, lobster boss', but the more I look at it, the more I appreciate how nasty this thing looks. 

The Mawdad is described as being able to scuttle across the ceiling and the walls with its dozens of (ew!) gecko legs, which is honestly something that I wouldn't think too much about if it had regular centipede or lobster legs, but tiny gecko legs! God, I don't know why that little detail bugs me so much. To make this thing feel even weirder, Olimar notes that the Mawdad makes its home inside the 'hollow stumps of enormous trees'. Weirder and weider!

As noted by Alph, the exoskeleton is actually made out of crystal, and it's kind of a common theme through some of the enemies in this game to be weak to the brand-new Rock Pikmin. Olimar even notes that the Mawdad still moults like a regular crustacean, but its crystal shell is so hard that it has to keep slamming itself into rock walls to shatter the exoskeleton before forming a new one. Obviously, the underbelly of this thing is its weak part. 

Vehemoth Phosbat (Tectupervus pteromys)

And this is the adult form of the Phosbat we saw before and... hoo, what a difference! Obviously the same colours and the fuzzy texture is the same, and I guess from a distance this thing could pass as a 'moth' or a 'bat'. But man, that gigantic mouth and the layout of its face looks like they belong more on a Star Wars alien or something! A lot of random features are packed into this thing, and I'm trying to dissect what it is. It's got four fleshy wings and a giant fleshy tail, four stumpy legs, a gigantic screaming-baby mouth, two eyes located on a fuzzy dorsal side, and a mass of what appears to be parasitic/symbiotic stalk-like fungus growing from its top. What a weirdo! 

It's normally perfectly camouflaged in the dark, showing only its fuzzy black upper side, but when approached, it will light up all of its pink extremities that glow brightly, and its primary method of attacking is to inhale really powerfully, sucking in everything in front of it. It's like a fleshy, disturbingly realistic version of Kirby or something. Also, like its near-namesake Venomoth, the Vehemoth Phosbat is able to flap around and unleash toxic dust from its hairs that choke and cause the Pikmin to panic. Olimar identifies this as 'mildly toxic scales' that paralyze small insects and make them vulnerable to the sucking motion... a common misconception that is associated with 'scale dust' from moths, which aren't actually poisonous. 

Interestingly, Olimar's comments notes that the Phosbat is 'forced to live in the darkness' due to its extreme photosensitivity, though I'd say that it's more of a case of the Phosbat being so well-adapted to the darkness. Apparently, the Phosbat doesn't just camouflage, it actually turns transparent by having its chromatophore cells 'absorb faint light sources'. I do like that Olimar notes the irregularity, noting that highly-specialized cave-dwelling creatures are normally troglodytes (they have atrophied eyes and albinism) but presumably the Vehemoth Phosbat's chromatophore adaptations compensated for that. 

Sandbelching Meerslug (Gastropoidae anguilii)

What a name! Sandbelching Meerslug! It's apparently one of the biggest bosses in the series, being a giant fat slug creature. It's got gigantic, disturbingly human lips, spines down its body, and tiny bright-blue beady eyes above those pale-white circular structures that I assume is meant to resemble a slug's pneumostome. Being a homage to the many, many giant sand-worms in fiction, the Meerslug burrows through the ground and causes waves of sand to wreak havoc in the battlefield, while also creating sinkholes like an antlion. It can also spit out balls of sand. 

It's rather interesting -- slugs (and the genus does identify this as a gastropod) aren't really a creature that I'd associate with sand. It's very interesting that they wanted to portray some kind of Dune sandworm but instead of going with a regular worm, they decided to do it with a giant fat slug monster with swollen purple lips? Or, well, lip-butt, because Olimar identifies the main orifice as 'both mouth and anus', which isn't something that applies to slugs (they have regular anuses at the other end of the body) but to some species of sea cucumbers. 

He sure is a different kind of boss than I'd expect, but... I'm not the biggest fan of this one? I'm normally all for giant worms, giant slugs, and giant antlion-style desert bosses, but the Meerslug is a weird combination of all of those that just didn't click for me. 

Scornet Maestro (Spourgitis advenus)

We saw the regular Scornets that this thing commands, and what a weirdo! Unlike the Meerslug, I feel like the Scornet Maestro is a great combination of seemingly random features that work. The whole theme is that this thing is a beehive commanding little bees, but with music instead of pheromones. It's also a bird for some reason, with a giant beak that also doubles as a harp, which it plays with two gigantic hands (which gloriously end in insectoid tarsi!). The general shape of its body also resembles a beehive and simultaneously the plumage of a bird, and the whole package is just such a bizarre, insane creature that would feel at home in a setting like Alice in Wonderland or something. 

The Scornet Maestro is part of the 'huntinpeck family', and Olimar describes its rather interesting life cycle. The Scornet Maestro wanders around and doesn't have a particular nest, waking up from hibernation in the spring and traveling with a male partner towards areas with plentiful food. We never actually see the male, but Olimar describes it with the typical sexual dimorphism that many insects exhibit. According to Olimar, the male is smaller, with a white body and blue extremities, and no wings. It's interesting that while we only really see that the Scornet Maestro uses her music to control the tiny Scornets, Olimar still identifies the Maestro's musical cues as something to 'issue pheromones' to control the sterile workers. 

I really don't have much more to say here beyond the acknowledgement of what an utter weirdo the Maestro is, and yet the design all somehow gels together so well. It's such an abomination of different features that manage to still 'feel' like a fantasy creature, if you get what I mean!

Quaggled Mireclops (Trestripods gigahenum)

Huh? Huh! Every game, we get a weird non-biological weirdo. Discounting final bonus bosses, it was the Mamuta in the first and the Waterwraith in the second one. And now we've got the Quaggled Mireclops here, which looks like something out of Shadow of the Colossus or Dark Souls or something, though knowing the scale of this game the Mireclops is probably the size of my foot. I really do like the design of this thing, being just a rock overgrown with moss, with spidery knobbly legs jutting out on all sides, and a mass of plants that serve as its 'head'. I also appreciate that they didn't quite go for a typical spider or crab layout, making this thing look positively alien.... though I suppose there is room to argue that this thing is mimicking (or is based on?) the Beady Long Legs. It's not just a plant and rock monster, however. Those star-like 'flowers' on the top of the fruit is actually its eyes, and there's a part of the rocky body that opens up like a cartoonish clam mouth, complete with a tongue that it swallows up your buddies with! Click here to see the creepy enemy here!

The titular 'clops' part of the Mireclops is the gigantic fruit-like head, which isn't just a fruiting body but its 'core' of sorts. Again, it's a bit hard to see from this full body shot, but those two flower-like bulbs are actually eyes on eyestalks. Alph identifies it as a 'fruit-like protrusion', and I assume that our heroes probably mistook this thing as a regular fruit (the plot in Pikmin 3 involves them coming to planet 404 to harvest fruit to feed their overpopulated planet). Olimar theorizes that the 'fruit-like growth' is actually a symbiotic parasite that feeds off the nutrients gathered by the giant rock body. Brittany is a bit confused on the true nature of this, whether it's a plant or an animal, but good ol' Louie insists that the fruit part is glorious.

As usual, Olimar's notes are what explains the most about the weirdness of this creature, because the Mireclops is so huge and has to consume a lot of food to support its mass. In addition to its gigantic mouth that presumably just consumes anything that wanders too close like a mollusk or a trapdoor spider or something, those massive legs are actually 'roots' to drain nutrients from the environment. Olimar also notes that the Mireclops hoards so much nutrients within its stony body that it's actually a detriment to the environment around it, and killing the Mireclops will actually transform the in-game terrain and create a small garden. A weirdo! I like him.l 

Mysterious Life-Form / Plasm Wraith

So our final boss is another member of the 'Wraith' family, who we previously saw as the Waterwraith in Pikmin 2. It's first encountered as a Mysterious Life-Form, the amorphous blob-thing on the left, before it transforms into the Plasm Wraith -- explicitly called a nyudo, a type of yokai, in the original Japanese. And... not the most impressed with the Plasm Wraith from a design standpoint. it's a mass of distorted humanoid shape with a single hole in the middle, a pot belly and squiggly legs, as well as nubby limbs sprouting on either side of his head. It sure is a creepy, distorted humanoid, made of gold. Creepy and different, but it doesn't feel any more special than the Smoky Progg, Mamuta or Waterwraith.

The game, however, delivers a great accompanying lore and story that makes this unexplained creature a bit more unsettling than just being an unexplained gold blob baby out of nowhere. The Plasm Wratih has taken a disturbing infatuation with Olimar, constantly trying to 'rescue' Olimar back and having some kind of sick attachment to Olimar. Whether it's love, mistaking Olimar as its young, thinking Olimar is some kind of precious item or pet... there's just an extra bit of creepiness about this very unexplained behaviour compared to if it was just a giant monster that goes rawr and demands you fight it. It's not trying to eat your guys or be territorial, but as Charlie points out, it wants to keep Olimar but not hurt him. 

The Plasm Wraith's whole deal is that it's mutable, and it can morph into whatever it needs to be. In practice, it has a bunch of wacky attack patterns that I won't list, as well as able to bud parts of itself off to create facsimiles of previous enemies you've faced. Olimar compares the Plasm Wraith to the 'ectoplasmic incarnation' that was the Waterwraith, but concludes that Plasm Wraith is different. Olimar doesn't elaborate on what the Plasm Wraith, though he acknowledges that it might be involved with the strange evolution of the creatures of the planet. That's more on the world-building and lore-theory side, but I do appreciate that amount of thought given to a creature in a setting!

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And with that, I'm done with Pikmin 3! That has been a wild ride!

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean S05E20 Review: Frog-Brained

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean [Season 6], Episode 20: F.F. The Witness

So yeah, we're entering the crux of the Ultra Security House Unit arc, which took up way less time to watch in the anime than in the manga. And it's not that the manga version is bad or anything, but it's just that the way the arc was restructured in the anime ends up making everything flow so smoothly. Again, I did express some frustrations about how the Green Baby plant horror sequence ended, and it's debatable whether Dragon's Dream and Yo-Yo Ma having relatively traditional Stand fights with a twist to them ends up being better pacing or not. 

This episode is basically split into two concurrently-going storylines, with F.F. hunting down D&G in the prison, while Jolyne and Anasui have to deal with the sentient automatic Stand Yo-Yo Ma in the swamps. The bulk of the screentime focuses around Jolyne, Anasui and Yo-Yo Ma as they escape with a stolen boat in the nearby swamplands, as they try to evade the patrolling guards with heavy-duty machineguns. Yo-Yo Ma continues to get himself into wacky hijinks like falling and impaling himself on the ship's controls, alternating between causing disturbances like that, or teaching Jolyne and Anasui how to camouflage themselves with leaves.

There is a pretty cool confrontation when one of the guards' fans accidentally exposes Jolyne and Anasui, leading to one of those cases where we get to see Stand users fight against people armed to the teeth. Anasui's descriptions of the machineguns had been pretty great at hyping it up, but then seeing Anasui abuse the fact that normal people can't see Stands allows him to literally lob Yo-Yo Ma into one of the boats, causing the machinegun of one boat to tear apart another one. 

While all this chaos is going on, we get some really uncomfortable close-ups of Yo-Yo Ma's salivating mouth, and there are a couple of sequences that seem to be red herrings of sorts. Initially, it seems like Yo-Yo Ma attacks with mosquitoes, which bite Jolyne during the chaos of fighting the guards and leave a bunch of holes in her body. 

Then we get to see the horror of Yo-Yo Ma's assault, which... I have to be honest, I never really got that vibe from Yo-Yo Ma. I'm not sure if the effects simply aren't grotesque enough, or if we have just seen creepier ones in Parts IV-VI (Jail House Lock, coming up soon, is much more effective in its creep factor). Jolyne is unable to speak because there are holes in her tongue, and I guess Yo-Yo Ma's acid just dissolves and makes holes without pain? We get a comedy moment where Jolyne tries to communicate with Anasui, and Anasui thinks it's a form of flirting and goes in for a kiss.

It really is rather odd that Jolyne doesn't try to write it out -- not with pen, no, but with her strings, which she does with the "Be All Eyes" a couple of sequences later. 

We do get Yo-Yo Ma doing all sorts of nonsense, like pulling out frogs and offering to make Jolyne a sexy miniskirt out of frog skin, which is just kind of an example of weird dialogue to come out of JoJo. Jolyne tries to keep both her and Anasui's vision away from Yo-Yo Ma, which prompts it to attack... and Jolyne catches the mosquitoes with Stone Free. However, the other side of her face starts to succumb to the attack, which finally clues Anasui in to the fact that they're under attack. 

And, again, just like the Dragon's Dream arc, poor Jolyne gets sidelined a bit in this fight, but it is Anasui's first proper 'solo' battle. And Anasui tries his best to figure out what's going on with Yo-Yo Ma... and initially, all he does is punch a lot and kill a bunch of mosquitoes. Yo-Yo Ma alternates between being ominous and being obsequious, and we get another ridiculous JoJo scene as Yo-Yo Ma empties all of his pockets, which, among others, includes two rhinoceros beetles, several frogs, a karaoke microphone, some berries and a broccoli. 

As Anasui kicks the random junk around, Yo-Yo Ma monologues about how he's only here to kill Jolyne, and as an automatic Stand that's all he can do. But he's willing to leave Anasui alive if he leaves the boat. Meanwhile, Jolyne figures out that the attack came from the spraying of the river water, upon which Yo-Yo Ma has poured his very caustic acid (in the manga, I think this is specifically identified as human-flesh-dissolving enzyme, but I'm not sure if the wording is the same here). Anasui begins to speed up the boat, which increases the spraying of the polluted water onto their forms. 

...and then, rather abruptly, Yo-Yo Ma starts to jump on all fours, hide from the cawing birds, and even chases after one of the frogs that he pulled out of his trousers, which according to him has a NICE BODEEEEH! in English. Turns out that in one of the many times that Anasui struck Yo-Yo Ma with Diver Down, he merged his brain with a frog's brain, which neutralizes any intelligent capacity he has. 

Now I'm not mad at all that this happened. Is it a bit too similar with the whole "merge things together to defeat the enemy in contrived ways" that Gold Experience and Crazy Diamond shorthand that the two previous parts sometimes do? A little bit, but Diver Down has been shown to be able to deconstruct and reconstruct things in ways that Anasui finds pleasing. It's just that... well, I don't know. I think I just never really felt the threat from Yo-Yo Ma, and it veers too much into the comedic routine for me to take it seriously, and Anasui having disabled Yo-Yo Ma just happens rather abruptly. I dunno. Not my favourite fight in Stone Ocean, that's for sure... but I do like that Anasui at least gets a victory over Yo-Yo Ma instead of just waiting until F.F. finishes off his user. 

Meanwhile, the happenings in the Green Dolphin Prison is a fair bit more exciting, for the lesser amount of screentime it was given. The guards find the tree-i-fied corpses in the Ultra Security House Unit, being rightfully bamboozled at the results of such a grotesque Stand. The guards find the only survivor there, D&G, and take him in. There's a very cool moment where both Pucci and Foo Fighters are watching from where they are hidden, both trying to figure out what the best way to accomplish their mission is. 

...of course, in-between counting prime numbers, Pucci decides to take the near-dead, inverted-ribs Guccio and insert a Disc into his brain... and it's neither a memory Disc or a Stand Disc, but rather... a music Disc? I mean, there has been no real indications that Whitesnake couldn't do it, but it's rather hilarious that Father Pucci uses his insanely powerful Stand to do something as mundane as to play an orchestral piece (Handel's Messiah) that he really likes... with a distorted, dying man. 

Pucci really wants to interrogate D&G personally, and question him what he saw in the Ultra Security House Unit in regards to whatever happened with Dio's bone, which I thought was a rather unique twist of this arc. Yes, Pucci did instigate the conflict that goes on, sending his minions to fight Jolyne, wanting the bone to do whatever it was going to do... but he has no idea what is going to happen. And with the religious reverence he has towards Dio, he is nothing short of ecstatic about what he could see. 

And as Pucci is about to bullshit and/or sneak his way into the ambulance, turns out that F.F. has disguised herself as one of the paramedics. F.F. is about to riddle D&G full of bullets with her finger-gun, but then the other paramedic, controlled by one of Whitesnake's Discs, attacks. F.F. deals with the other paramedic, but then realizes that Whitesnake is there... only for Father Pucci to reveal himself, showing off his true identity and kicking off the climax of this second big arc of Stone Ocean as he forces Foo Fighters into prioritizing attacking him or D&G. 

Overall... yeah,  I think I said my piece about the Yo-Yo Ma fight enough in the reviews of these two episodes. And looking back, I do think that I'm not the biggest fan of this batch of fights. I get that it's meant to give Foo Fighters and Anasui a fair bit of focus as they get big solo fights. But while both Dragon's Dream and Yo-Yo Ma were pretty interesting Stands conceptually, I wasn't the biggest fan of how they were portrayed as antagonists and how they were ultimately disposed of. But hey... at least they don't take like 10 chapters to slog through! 

Random Notes: 

• 
  It really is kinda funny that everyone else in Stone Ocean is being some kind of over-the-top fashion model... and then we have D&G, who's just has a minimal-budget gladiator outfit. I'm sorry, at least Guccio, with his fashion disaster look, ends up looking distinctive. D&G just kinda looks like a background character rejected from Spartacus or something. 
• In the anime, Yo-Yo Ma has a band sticker from the rock band R.E.M. among his belongings. I guess while the JoJo anime can still use band names as the names of Stands or characters, actually showing them as the band itself is a big no-no in terms of copyright.
• While Pucci does listen to Handel's Messiah, in the manga he specifies that it's the version conducted by Gardiner in 1982.
• I really did wish they showed more effort to destroy Yo-Yo Ma. I've always felt like it was the biggest showcase of the heroes being fools in this part -- sure, when they were splitting up I would buy that the three heroes only have time to each launch a single strike, but I really wished they played up Yo-Yo Ma's indestructibility the same way they did Notorious B.I.G. or Superfly, making him feel truly unbreakable. 
• Man, sure hope those guards didn't actually get eaten by crocodiles. 
• I did remember the first time I read this arc and thought that Jolyne being unable to speak meant that the Stand was a rehash of Clash and Talking Head from Vento Aureo.

Reviewing Monsters: Persona 5, Part 17

How about that sudden twist in the main characters' collective guts in-between the Okumura arc and the beginning of the Nijima arc, huh? It's a bit of a shame that because I watched the anime, I kinda know the story about Akechi Goro, but seeing it play out in real time, and with the build-up done throughout the course of the game, I do believe that it's done relatively well in highlighting Akechi as someone that's a bit more prominent than the other non-playable confidants, but the exact nature of what is kept relatively... interesting until the big reveal.

Anyway, like Makoto, Akechi ends up being introduced as a bit of an antagonistic force, the 'doubting police' trope like Commissioner Gordon. And while Akechi is certainly quite special, I really think that having him and Kasumi already be friends with our protagonist and having interactions with him to build up some degree of trust is actually a pretty great aspect of their characterization. I honestly do think that this would've benefited Haru, too, out of the main characters -- we meet Morgana, Ann and Ryuji early on; Makoto is an antagonist for the first leg of the game; while Yusuke and Futaba have very believable reasons not to meet our main cast yet. 

Anyway, this time around we're exploring Nijima Sae's Palace, which takes place in the form of a casino! I haven't actually explored a lot of the casino area, but there's enough between the Personas I met there and some new ones I encountered from fusion to do an article. 

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Robin Hood

• Arcana: Justice

So yeah, Akechi's Persona is Robin Hood, another rather traditional 'roguish thief' in the same vein as Arsene or Zoro. After stretching the label of 'thief' and 'rebel' quite a bit, it's neat to have something that goes back to relatively its roots. And Robin Hood has a very... superhero-y look to him, yeah? I can't pick out an exact superhero that serves as the inspiration to this, but there's a very "Superman" vibe with that super-heroic upper body. Must be that chiseled chest and the hilarious 'RH' symbol on it. 

Robin Hood is an outlaw in English folklore, who operated during the medieval period, who is a skilled archer and swordsman who 'robs from the rich to give to the poor', leading a band of Merry Men. He opposes the oppressive government at the time, the evil Prince John who stole the throne from his brother Richard, and specifically the local Sheriff of Nottingham. Robin Hood supports the rightful ruler Richard, but is branded as an outlaw because of this. 

And... well, Akechi's story is that he's actually fighting for the sake of justice, being aligned with the police as the 'detective prince'. But he found himself aligned with the Phantom Thieves in this work, so that's why the Robin Hood themes. Robin Hood's normally associated with green colours, while Persona's Robin Hood elects for bright, gaudy whites with red and blue accents. Oh, and he also has a giant fuck-off bow that would make the Quincies in Bleach proud. Like some of the 'JoJo Stand-esque' personal Personas of the main characters, Robin Hood's head appears to be robotic, and I do like that the red 'hat' kinda evokes Akechi's own bird-mask.

Not the most excitedwith this one, though I do appreciate how different he looks compared to the rest of the main playable cast. I mean, buff superhero with a giant bow and arrow is kind of hard to be similar to. Anyway, this is the last 'base form' playable Persona that we encounter for the main cast of Persona 5 Royal, though I am aware that the game has at least a couple more spin-offs in Strikers and P5X... I might play Strikers at some point in the next couple of years, but probably not anytime soon! I mean, I have to get through Royal first, and at this point I'm just approaching the climax of the original game's plot!

Byakko

• Monster Name: N/A
• Arcana: Temperance

We start off now with a bunch of Personas that I fused in-between the many cutscenes that was going on. Byakko, or Baihu (白虎), is the White Tiger and the third of the Four Symbols of the Chinese Constellations -- we've met the Xuanwu (Genbu) and Zhuque (Suzaku) before. The Baihu represents the West, the season of autumn, and the element of metal ('wind' in Japan). 

There are also a bunch of myths related to tigers in ancient China, where tigers are treated as the 'king of beasts', and white tigers are thought to be particularly wise and powerful tigers that have reached 500 years old and has became a mythological creature. The white tiger is said to only appear when a virtuous emperor appeared, making it a good sign. 

Persona's Byakko is pretty much what you'd expect from a white tiger monster, having the general anatomy of a white tiger and a bunch of flowing extraneous aspects on its legs and head that flow around it. Not sure how I feel about the tail, which trails behind like a whip... maybe I would take it more seriously if it didn't have a little puff on the terminus? Also, bizarrely, despite being associated with wind in Japanese myths, Byakko is highly specialized with Ice-type skills.

Atropos

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

After Clotho and Lachesis, we finally get the final member of the three Moirae Sisters, the Sisters of Fate... Atropos the Shearer. Atropos is the most memorable of the three and the one that most myths focus on, because she's the one associated with death. She holds the shears (or scissors) and she snips off the threads of someone's fate near their death. She is the 'Inflexible One', and alongside her sisters, controls the destiny of every living mortal. With this, Atropos is sometimes conflated with other aspects or facets of death. I really do think I've spoken enough about the Three Fates when I talked about Clotho and Lachesis, though, so you guys can zip back and see what I have to say about them. 

Looking at the designs of all three sisters in Persona/SMT, yeah, Atropos is just a variation of her two sisters. Where Clotho and Lachesis wore red and white bodysuits respectively, Atropos wears the obvious black. And where Clotho and Lachesis wore that... strange... material as a cape and a skirt respectively, Atropos wears it... as a weird head-frame-thing. Okay!

Kushinada

• Monster Name: Lamenting Sacrifice
• Arcana: Lovers

This is almost a palette-swap of Kikuri-hime that we talked about recently, only swapping the tomoe into combs. Which is... a lot more hilarious to have two large haircombs on either side of the lady's head. I do appreciate the alteration, though. This could have very easily been just a generic palette swap, but changing just a bit of the accessories really does a decent job at making them feel more unique. The comb is also relevant to Kushinada's lore!

Kushinada-hime is a figure from the Japanese creation myths, which we thankfully have covered a while back when I talked about Izanagi. Kushinada is the daughter of two lesser gods, Ashinazuchi and Tenazuchi, but was most notable for becoming the wife of the storm god Susano'o. Susano'o was expelled from heaven, and when he traveled near Izumo Province, Susano'o meets Kushinada's parents, who were weeping. They were tormented by the giant multi-headed snake Yamata no Orochi, having to sacrifice one of their daughters every year to prevent the Orochi's rampage. And Kushinada is their eighth and final daughter. 

Susano'o was taken aback by Kushinada's beauty, and asked her hand in marriage. Kushinada agreed, so long as Susano'o deals with the giant snake. Susano'o transforms Kushinada into a comb ('kushi') and hid her in his hair. There are several versions of the myth, but the more commonly-known one has Susano'o masquerades as Kushinada-hime, and then tricks the Orochi into getting drunk with eight vats of sake, before slaying the giant snake with his blade. After the Orochi was slain, Kushinada-hime would then marry Susano'o. 

Both Kushinada and Kikuri show up as enemies in Nijima's Palace, and while I do feel like the thematicness of a Palace's 'wild' Shadows have decreased by a fair bit, there is a notably large amount of women in Nijima Sae's Palace are ladies -- Kikuri, Kushinada, Valkyrie, Queen Mab below... while there's a mixture of 'holy' Shadows (like Power and Unicorn) and 'demonic' Shadows (like Ose) 

Queen Mab

• Monster Name: Midnight Queen
• Arcana: Magician

Okay, Queen Mab is... an interesting character in mythology. The actual spelling of 'Queen Mab' is taken from William Shakespeare's play, Romeo and Juliet, where she is one of the characters mentioned as a 'fairies' midwife'. She would appear in other literature as well, sometimes characterized as a prankster that plays midnight pranks upon sleeping folk, or as the Queen of the Fairies. 

There has ben theories, however, that Shakespeare borrowed or corrupted the name Mab from Medb (anglicized as 'Maeve'), the Queen of Connacht in Irish mythology. Queen Medb is a warrior-queen, and is involved particularly in the Ulster Cycle, best known for starting the Táin Bó Cúailnge ("The Cattle Raid of Cooley") to steal Ulster's prized bull. In these myths, the hero Cu Chulainn (who we covered before!) would face off against the forces of Queen Medb, slaying her pets, warriors and handmaidens and ultimately winning the clash between the two kingdoms in single combat. There isn't really much to connect the cunning warrior-queen Medb with a tiny sleep-inducing prankster, so most historians agree that the most Shakespeare borrowed was the name. 

Persona's 'Queen Mab' takes the 'fairy queen' interpretation and notes that she's 'identified with Titania', a completely different character from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, though I can't find any references about the 'mead mixed with blood'. Her appearance is... again, maybe it's because I'm watching JoJo recently, but she's another one that I feel would fit right at home within the aesthetics of a JoJo Stand. I find the bright green and blue crisscrossing lines of her bodysuit to be memorable, and... she's got a rather interesting almost helmet-like face. The lavender hair and chainmail upper body is neat, too. It's not a design I particularly like, but it's a memorable design at least!

Orlov

• Monster Name: N/A
• Arcana: Strength

Another Treasure Demon, and at this point I'm honestly just including them for completion's sake. Same old, same old. The Orlov is a diamond stolen from a Hindu temple in 1747 by someone who disguised himself as a monk there. It originally served as the eye of a temple deity Sriranganatha, and would ultimately end up in the hands of Count Grigory Grigoreivich Orlov, and ultimately made its way to being embedded into the scepter of the Russian Empress Catherine the Great.

Pazuzu

• Monster Name: N/A
• Arcana: Devil

Popularized as the 'demon' in the classic horror movie The Exorcist, the actual Pazuzu is a deity from Mesopotamian mythology, where he is the personification of the south-western wind, ruling over wind demons called lilu. Pazuzu is revered as both a dangerous, monstrous wind, but would also safeguard homes from other demons, being particularly protective of pregnant women and mothers -- who he would defend from his rival, Lamashtu.

I don't really have a whole ton to say here. The artwork for Pazuzu is pretty stylized but ultimately faithful with the complete statues of Pazuzu that have been recovered -- two pairs of wings, a somewhat leonine head, a humanoid body, and even the post of having one hand raised (though it's the wrong hand here) is similar to the main picture of Pazuzu in Wikipedia.

And... and that's honestly all I have to say here? I don't know. Pazuzu's design and origin mythology are pretty sufficient for what he is, but I really don't have much to say here. 

Fortuna

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

Oh! This one is interesting. I really like the weird design of this one. Fortuna is a goddess of luck in Roman mythology, and obviously the English word 'fortune' comes from her name. Fortuna is the daughter of Jupiter and Venus (Roman counterparts of Zeus and Aphrodite) and is often shown to be veiled or blind, thanks to the phrase 'luck is blind'. Fortuna is associated with a ship's rudder, a cornucopia, or a wheel of fortune.

Most Roman gods are extrapolated from Greek ones, but Fortuna's Greek counterpart, Tyche, had different origins (she's the daughter of Tethys and Poseidon, or sometimes Zeus) and slightly different realms (Tyche presided over the fortune and prosperity of a city). Fortuna herself had a cult around her, and would be merged and associated with other goddesses, notably the Egyptian Isis. She's one of the gods that would still be used as a representation as 'Lady Luck' or 'Lady Fortune' even with the heavy spread of Christianity... and would be the very being depicted on the Wheel of Fortune tartor card. 

And, well, there's a pretty interesting design here! They could've just made her a generic lady in a dress, but they literally made her body a literal 'wheel of fortune', embedding a wheel in place of her abdomen. Really do like that her black-and-white strands of hair from her top and her skirt form like a pinwheel around the central 'wheel'. Fortuna's actually a goddess of both good and bad luck, and I think this is what the differently-coloured cloth represents? Anyway, I didn't expect to like her design quite as much! 

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean S05E19 Review: Carrots that Look like Snoopy

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean [Season 6], Episode 19: Birth of the Green

This episode begins with a short prologue showing what happened to the poor, memory-less Kujo Jotaro. Jotaro has regained his Star Platinum Stand Disc after Jolyne's efforts earlier in the part, and we get to see a bunch of nameless Speedwagon Foundation doctors work to figure out the catatonic Jotaro. He's able to regain some functionality, but basically remains a vegetable (heh, get it?) that sits on the bed and can only understand simple words. The doctors theorize that he has no 'will to live', since he's lost his memories, but he still has Star Platinum manifesting and strike out at anyone who tries to touch Jotaro's head. 

In a rather strange (and never really explained IIRC) bit, though, the shards of glass from Jotaro's brief attack cuts the name "Jolyne" into his flesh, which is reflected all the way in Green Dolphin Street Prison where the same wounds manifest on Jolyne's arm -- which she asks Foo Fighters to not heal over.

It's a short moment and I think it doesn't really hold a candle to Jolyne's earlier team-up with Jotaro, but I do like that Jolyne finally realizes that her father's distance from her had been an effort to protect her and her mother from powerful phenomenon like Stands and Stand users. 

There's also a short moment where Anasui basically guilt-trips F.F. to get Jolyne to trip and fall into his arms so that they can share a 'romantic' moment, and... to be honest, I've never really cared for these aspects of Anasui's bizarre idea of flirtations. It's nowhere as funny as I think it's intended to be, and especially not when our heroes are there about to fight against other Stand users. Jolyne's "trip" ends up causing her to see the ugly, deformed man who's playing with Dio's bone, and she uses Stone Free to catch up. 

I do really like how the 'little man', as the fandom calls him, initially seems to be set up as another Stand user, perhaps the user of Survivor (since at this point we've seen Westwood, Kenzo and D&G) because he has a somewhat unique model... and then his skin just peels off, and his body contorts horrifically as Anasui notes how he's growing taller and taller. It's one of the more gloriously grotesque bits in JoJo and it is drawn even cooler with colours as we see that this man who plays with Dio's bone ends up morphing and transforming into a plant -- a small tree is growing out of his mouth with his teeth haphazardly embedded into it, and we get to physically see his eye whirling around and transforming into the center of a flower bud. It's gloriously disgusting body horror!

It was at this point that our heroes realize that all the dead prisoners on the maximum security ward have been transformed into plants, with trees that grow straight up from their bodies. It looks positively horrifying! JoJo's never been a stranger to body horror, but I do have a special revulsion (which is a compliment in this case) for the sight of the short prisoner getting his face transformed into a tree. 

We get a pretty tense moment as Anasui yells at Jolyne, realizing that Jolyne, too, is sprouting leaves and branches... and there were some bits where it seems like the growths has disappeared. It doesn't take long for our heroes to realize that the rate of plants growing from Jolyne's body is proportional to how much sunlight strikes her skin, though, which is... still horrifying, but there's something quite 'natural' in the unnaturalness of sunlight affecting the rate of plantification. 

Anasui does some very close inspection, including nibbling on the flower, and later on uses Diver Down to attempt to beat the plants out of Jolyne, and... it's not really possible for Diver Down to do much when the plants aren't really growing out of Jolyne, but Jolyne herself being physically transformed into a plant. The trio also quickly figures out that it's not actually an enemy Stand, but the sheer eldritch qualities of Dio's bone itself, which Jolyne's string made contact with when she grapples onto the short prisoner. 

We get some argument about protecting Jolyne as opposed to getting the bone, but Jolyne's priorities, like any Shonen protagonist, is to get to the bone first. We also get to see that the plants and bone has created the Green Baby, a strange, humanoid baby with the Joestar star symbol. Jolyne grabs the baby as she keeps turning into a plant, but then F.F. and Anasui just pull her into the shadows and... the plantification stops. I really am not the biggest fan of this sequence just ending like that. I've always found that the bone turning everyone around it into corpse-plants or whatever to be such a strange, bizarre, reality-warping thing that the way it's solved is just that "oh, the Green Baby evolves so the effect is gone" feels extremely anticlimactic. Especially since the anime does such a great job at ratcheting up the horror! 

We also get a bit of a handwave about Survivor's user. It really does feel like after the Westwood fight, Survivor kind of ceased to be relevant since Jolyne, F.F. and Kenzo all basically fight without having the berserking effect of Survivor going on. They just find Guccio, a frightened, meek prisoner, and Anasui kind of talks to him, giving this whole speech about how everyone has the same number of ribs. He then lets Guccio off once he's sure that he's not going to turn into a plant. 

This ends up becoming a trap for D&G, because the moment D&G touches Guccio, Guccio's ribs turn inside-out like a goddamn Pillar Man, piercing and crushing D&G's arms and causing poor D&G to cry in pain. Guccio shambles off, cursing his luck before presumably dying, while D&G is placed out of commission. This, I feel, is a much cooler 'first look' into Diver Down's ability and Anasui's far more brutal personality, compared to his interference in the Dragon's Dream fight. But I digress.

Basically, all the solitary prison enemies are dealt with except for D&G's Stand, Yo-Yo Ma, who is this bizarre green guy with a fat belly and overalls that, uh... just immediately eats the cocoon with the baby in it. Stone Free, Foo Fighters and Diver Down unleashes a barrage of attacks on it, until Anasui freaks out about Yo-Yo Ma's smell. Yo-Yo Ma just becomes a very helpful sycophant, making chairs, offering a foot massage, and even telling them about his master. The group decide to split up, with Jolyne and Anasui taking Yo-Yo Ma with them while F.F. remains to hunt down the Stand user. 

As Jolyne, Anasui and Yo-Yo Ma go off on a boat and Yo-Yo Ma gives a detailed explanation as to how to pilot the boat, we cut away to see F.F. with her lower face and neck melting, begging her allies to keep an eye out on Yo-Yo Ma because it's only pretending to be placid and calm. And... it is kind of dumb that they just bring Yo-Yo Ma with them, but admittedly the anime's voice acting does such a great job at portraying it as being harmless and being kinda meek that I can see why in their panic, they would bring Yo-Yo Ma along with them. 

Random Notes: 

• I love that Jolyne compares the weird plant baby to "carrots that look like snoopy" and "raddish that look like breasts"
• Of course the creepy tree-tongued prisoner makes a
  RERORERORERORERORERORERORERORERORERORERORERORERO noise. Kakyoin would be proud. 
• In a reversal of the Sports Maxx arc, the anime arranges the Green Baby/Yo-Yo Ma arc chronologically instead of starting in medias res from the boat escape. It flows much better like this, in my opinion!
• An anime addition is that Yo-Yo Ma specifically offers Jolyne the manga Pink Dark Boy, the manga written by Rohan Kishibe in Part IV, instead of a generic volume. 
• Man, the staff at the Speedwagon Foundation really do look... weird, don't they?
• Jotaro's muscle tissue is apparently going down after losing his memories! Oh no! His JoJo physique! (Or it could just be the art style).
• Wait, is Star Platinum defending Jotaro's hat instead of his head? Is that the joke?
• I also really do like that the Speedwagon Foundation people are all completely aware of the existence of Stands, even if the random gnome doctor is presumably not a Stand user.
• Guccio is, of course, based on the fashion brand Gucci. If you can't tell that he's Survivor's user, his very questionable outfit has "SURVIVOR" plastered all over it in English. 
• D and G (sometimes people parse his name as D&G or D an' G) is based on the fashion brand Dolce & Gabanna.
• Yo-Yo Ma is based on an American-Chinese cellist of the same name.