Another period of downtime in-between arcs, and I also got distracted by Pikmin reviews. Well, there's a lot of fusions I did in the interim between finishing the Okumura storyline and starting the next one, and I thought I'd go through some of them first!
I actually did spend a fair bit of time just kind of grinding out Mementos while listening to podcasts and just... not using SP, since I'm kind of already able to take out most enemies without even using skills. All this just to wrangle up Personas to bring back to the Velvet Room to fusion, mostly because I was really trying to rank up the Velvet Room twins' Strength confidant, but also to pad out the inmate registry. I can see the 'gaps' in the levels, and I'm trying to fill some of them out -- like with Daisoujou here, which I think I really should've been able to get during the Futaba Palace.
Also slowly working through the Confidant stories. I do kind of want to clear a lot of the characters I met earlier like Sojiro and Kawakami just to get them over with, before I really go through the newer characters that are introduced to me a bit later. (Doesn't help that Ohya and Shinya are both rather uninteresting so far, though that might be the byproduct of me not really developing their Confidants beyond the first couple of ranks). Also need to get to finishing Maruki's Confidant at some point before the deadline, huh?
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Hecate
- Arcana: Lovers
The second of the playable Confidants I got to maximum rank was Takamaki Ann of the Lovers. and... Carmen evolves into Hecate, the goddess of magic and witchcraft in ancient Greek mythology. Her design here is pretty interesting, where we've got a pretty cool devil-sorceress woman that looks right at home in Devilman or something. I like that her cape's inner surface is kind of meant to evoke a bat or a dragon's wing. I do find that the pokey boobs are a bit too much, though they do admittedly blend to the shoulder spikes. I really like the two giant eyeballs sprouting out from the demonic horns. She's got two pairs of smaller versions of those bright blue eyes on her 'face', and that's just such a weird look in the best way. In lieu of Carmen's disturbing BDSM gnome-slaves, Hecate now holds two dog-heads on a leash. Really love the energy and psychotic look on these dogs!
Hecate's part of being in Greek lore is a subject of interesting debate, because there are many theories about where the goddess 'Hecate' came from and how she was 'adopted' into the Olympian myths. Most scholars agree that she originated from the people known as the Carians... and I think the designers are somewhat conscious because Ann is an 'outsider' due to her heritage to Japanese culture that was ultimately accepted and integrated into their friend group.
Interestingly, many depictions of Hecate depicted her as having three heads, which previous Shin Megami Tensei games have taken literally, but I do like that the three-headedness plays into Carmen's original design of having three 'heads'. Persona's Hecate holding dogs is also because the mythological Hecate is associated with dogs! As the legends about Hecate are numerous, she had taken the roles of the goddess of the underworld, of childbirth, of boundaries, of the moon, and others.
I didn't catch it when I awakened Ryuji's Seiten Taisei, but the description of the rank 10 Confidants for both Ann and Ryuji note that they have evolved their Personas into 'mythological tricksters', so they graduated from using Personas that borrow names from either real life or 'newer' fiction into full-blown mythological figures, which I thought was a pretty cool way of acclimatizing the likes of Carmen and Captain Kid into a game where normally you fight with real gods and demons.
Ose
- Monster Name: Cruel Leopard
- Arcana: Fool
Ose's design is, uh... interesting. They went for 'leopard that shapeshifts into a man' and went for a leopard-man, with insanely toned abs, but... yeah, that gigantic metal codpiece certainly is the aspect of his design that draws attention, yeah? Pretty neat cape and twin swords, too. A relatively simple design, but a neat enough adaptation to look unique.
This guy is one of the enemies that you fight in the prologue (and I didn't review any of those), but is a bit more memorable as part of a sidequest that ends up causing you to seek out and find one of the Confidants that you unlock the latest in the game, Shinya Oda of the 'Tower' arcana. It's rather bizarre that Ose is meant to represent a man that feels invincible because of his belief in his skills in a gunslinging video game, but... Ose uses swords? Okay.
Legion
- Monster Name: Fused Ghost
- Arcana: Fool
And, well, since then, 'Legion' has shown up in a lot of fiction that has some basis in Christian mythology and demonology. In Persona, Legion is a colour-swap of Choronzon -- or perhaps the other way around, and I do like that the 'amorphous blob of evil' that Choronzon represents also fits with 'a mass of 3000 demons occupying single entity' that Legion is. Not too much to say here, though I am admittedly a bit confused why Legion was assigned the Fool persona instead of Devil or Death.
Red Rider
- Monster Name: N/A
- Arcana: Tower
The second of our Four Horsemen of Apocalypse is the Red Rider, who visually... isn't that interesting. Admittedly his buddy the White Rider did set the bar pretty high with his eyeball horse, though! The Red Rider in the Book of Revelations is supposed to 'take peace from earth, and that men would slay one another', representing War. Because people sometimes get confused between 'war' and 'conquest' (they're really rather different if you think about it), the White Rider sometimes gets slapped with 'pestilence' as a result. As described in the Bible, the Red Rider carries a sword.
...and I really don't have much that I haven't said for the White Rider. He sure is a skeleton guy on a horse, and he looks pretty neat.
Daisoujou
- Monster Name: N/A
- Arcana: Hierophant
Okay, this is an interesting one. The Daisoujou, a Soujou -- which are high ranking Buddhist monks appointed by the government in power, who has the authority to manage all the Buddhist temples within the domain. Now someone who has achieved the title of Daisoujou is one of these Soujou who had attained Buddhahood during his time, with the title being bestowed to several people over the years.
The design of Persona's Daisoujou, however, is someone in these monk clothing, but he's a skeleton in the middle of prayer. This might look similar to anyone who played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, where the monks at the end of each shrine are basically the same thing. The design is based on the Sokushinbutsu, literally meaning 'Buddhist monk preserved as is', which are Buddhist mummies. These monks performed self-mummification by starving themselves (or limiting their diet significantly to eliminate fats in their bodies, which would aid in the mummification), upon which they were entombed alive with just enough room to sit crosslegged. The monk would carry a bell into his tomb (which only had an air hole), and every day the monk would ring the bell, an indication that he was still alive. If the bell no longer rung, the airtube was sealed, since the monk was deceased. 1000 days later, the body would be exhumed, and if the mummification succeeded, the Sokushinbutsu would be revered as a god. Emperor Meiji banned all kinds of suicide, including religious suicide, in 1879.
Yurlungur
- Monster Name: N/A
- Arcana: Sun
There are many myths about the Rainbow Serpent, and some of them don't even view this deity as a serpent -- though Yurlungur is always an animal, and never portrayed as a human. But there's always an association with water and rainbows. Depending on the cultures, Yurlungur is either the ultimate creator of everything in the universe, or be responsible of the ridges, mountains and gorges as it undulates upwards. Yurlungur is responsible for replenishing the stores of water, and without the Serpent, the water will all eventually dry up. Thunder and lightning are sometimes associated with the anger of Yurlungur, and some tribes associate the Yurlungur with fertility or the coming of age, with one of the most prominent myths being the story of the Wawalag Sisters.
I spent quite a while just reading about Yurlungur, and it's a pretty interesting design they have there. Yurlungur in Persona is a double-headed snake, with beady eyes on both ends of its serpentine body, and its body is coloured like the rainbow and has some Aboriginal markings all over his body. The markings glow and pulsate, which I thought is cute. Pretty neat design!
Valkyrie
- Monster Name: Funerary Warrior
- Arcana: Strength
Okay, I think everyone kind of knows what a Valkyrie is, yeah? Valkyries come from Norse mythology, which is a host of female figures that guide the souls of the dead to Valhalla, the hall of the Nordic chief god Odin. After arriving in Valhalla, the deceased warriors become part of the Einherjar, who await the ultimate battle in Ragnarok. Their name comes from Valkyrja, or "Chooser of the Slain". Many, many different Valkyries are described over the different Nordic myths, and depending on the artwork, Valkyries have been depicted as being anywhere from being winged angel-women to merely just female warriors in armour.
Persona's Valkyrie... sure has a fun bit of hair, huh? I think that's the most striking thing about her, that anime hair that curls backwards. The rest of her design is pretty simple. This Valkyrie has a horse, twin swords, a pretty standard chainmail armour and a Thor-esque 'mask' with wings. I'm not sure if it's just the angle or the sheer size of the horse, or that the leg armour blends into the horse's red mane, but the first time I saw her I thought the Valkyrie was a child. Eh. Not too much to say here.
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