Our eyecatcher this time is Sojiro, one of the few Confidants that have basically made it to the 'main cast' in my head alongside Sae and maybe, arguably, possibly, Mishima. Sojiro's story is pretty great, as a good adoptive dad that's just trying his best to provide for a child that he loves dearly but doesn't really know how to best manage. I know there's something similar with the main paternal figure in Persona 4, from what I know, except it's workaholism more than anything? Sojiro's Confidant story also involves Futaba very much, and I generally do like the Confidant stories that really feel like they tie in -- even if not completely -- with the bigger world as established by the 'main' quests. Sojiro's a generally likable person, and I do like that his Confidant basically acts as a bit of a Coda for the whole Futaba arc.
Currently, I'm left to do Ohya, Chihaya, Iwai, Shinya, Futaba, Yusuke and Haru; as well as the plot-mandated Morgana and Igor. Ohya and Chihaya are basically close to 10, but the rest... I do think I'll have to 'sacrifice' some of them, although I'll try to do most of the non-party members before the final dungeon.
Also, since I'm mostly focusing on social stuff for the next couple of playthroughs, I don't really have too many new personas to talk about... most of these new faces that I encounter in the Twin Wardens' little challenge thing! I won't go through every single one of the 'Alice' boss fight, just so as not to overload this article, but we'll go through most of them!
__________________________
Mara
- Monster Name: Throbbing King of Desire
- Arcana: Tower
Okay, okay. Let's get this one out of the way. People like to meme about the Shin Megami Tensei franchise as either 'the one where you fight God himself, who is evil' or 'the one with the ding-dong enemies'. Mara in the original Buddhist myths isn't exactly associated with penises. He's known as 'the Evil One', a tempter, who uses the mundane and negative aspects of life to tempt people. Mara (meaning 'death') personifies unwholesome impulses, unskillfulness and the death of the spiritual life. Mara sits over the Desire Realm, which includes the mortal world, and ensnares souls in Samsara by deceiving them with promises of happiness, and is the ultimate obstacle of any who desire to achieve enlightenment into nirvana.
And... Mara's original design in the very first Shin Megami Tensei game is listerally a cock and balls with some tentacles and a yawning mouth, but he has since been revised to look a lot more menacing, putting the phallus on a golden chariot and giving him a lot more tentacles. Those tentacles are very nastily ridged, and he's also got a bunch of bug-like hands sprouting out to presumably roll his little chariot around. That mouth right underneath the glans also looks disturbingly disgusting. And, of course, there's the fact that that bright golden chariot contrasts not only Mara's green body, but there's just a certain bit of discomfort for me seeing a phallus-shaped object right above a bunch of very spiky blades. I guess Mara uses those spiky chariot things to 'penetrate' enemies in different ways?
A Mara also appeared much earlier in Kamoshida's palace in an 'imperfect form', using the animations of a Slime but also looking like a dick. He's the Tower arcana, because get it, giant dick. One of the Mementos targets that's explicitly a sexual criminal also manifests as a Mara. Oh, and most of the moves it learns are all charged with erection or penetration innuendo. The designers, evidently, were having fun.
Vasuki
- Monster Name: N/A
- Arcana: Star
Created by the special fusion of several snake-themed Persona, Vasuki is another serpent king in Hindu mythology, similar to Ananta-Shesha. Vasuki is the second king of the nagas, and is described as having a gem called the Nagamani (snake's ornament) on his head. Shesha is his older brother, and Manasa is his sister. Vasuki is normally depicted as coiling around the neck of Shiva, who had blessed and worn him as an ornament. In Chinese and Japanese mythology, he is known as one of the Eight Great Dragon Kings. Vasuki played a significant role in the legend of Samudra Manthana. He allowed the devas and the asuras to bind him to Mt. Mandara, using him as a churning rope to extract the amrita from the primordial Ocean of Milk. The strain caused some of Vasuki's serpent poison to spill out, but Shiva would swallow the poison to prevent it from destroying the world.
Persona's depiction of Vasuki is not just a giant snake, which is just as well since we've gotten a couple of giant snakes and giant multi-headed snakes. Instead, Vasuki is depicted as a more epic version of the lesser Nagas, a pretty cool-looking one at that. I really like his headdress and the smug look they give him, and that headress really looks like his humanoid head is being swallowed by another larger head, yeah? They made him look a bit more different than the regular Nagas, which I appreciate.
Lakshmi
- Monster Name: N/A
- Arcana: Wheel of Fortune
Another one I got from fusion (all my other 'fusions', like Black Frost and or Thor, already got covered as bosses before), Lakshmi (लक्ष्मी, Lakṣmī) is the Hindu goddess of beauty, luck and love. She is the wife of Vishnu, and one of the Tridevi (alongside Parvati and Sarasvati), often depicted as standing atop a lotus. Lakshmi embodies the ideal woman, and charmed many gods with her dance. Normally, she is depicted with four hands, symbolizing the four goals of humanity.
In Japan, she is known as Kichijouten, one of the Seven Lucky Gods, and is said to rise from the oceans after the Churning of the Sea of Milk, part of the creation myth. And... I really don't have much interesting things to say beyond that. Her design is sure respectful enough to the source material, other than the number of hands. I really don't have much else in lieu of commentary here, so I'll acknowledge that Lakshmi is the 'ultimate persona' of the Wheel of Fortune arcana, meaning that you only have access to fuse her after reaching Rank 10 of the bond with the Confidant, which in this case is the fortune teller Chihaya.
Belial
- Monster Name: Missionary of Depravity
- Arcana: Devil
We're going a bit into some of the Personas I met in one of the Velvet Room Twins' special battle, though I'm going to split a bunch of the new Personas I met over a couple of articles so as not to overwhelm me. Belial here is another name that's pretty common in demonology, most likely due to the typical confusion with the whole Baal thing that we mentioned before when talking about him. Belial itself is a word that means 'wicked and worthless' in Hebrew, but would later be used as a representation of the devil. The term 'sons of Belial' was translated literally in some older translations, where modern translations usually use a more generic term like 'the wicked men'. Of course, like Beelzebub, 'Belial' became a name associated with a demon. In demonology, Belial is one of the 72 demons of the Ars Goetia, and has a lot of alternate spellings of his name. Belial is noted as one of the 'four crowned princes of hell' that was created after Lucifer, and normally appears in the form of a beautiful angel riding a chariot of fire.
However, Belial has shown up a lot in random media, and his depiction in Persona is a pretty generic giant demon-dragon-man with draconic wings, red skins, a reptilian tail, horns, and the like. I do like that the posture looks so hunched, like he's a snake that grew limbs or something? I guess they just picked one of the more well-known demon names for the archetypal 'cartoon devil' look, and decided to attribute it to Belial. Pretty neat, but even in this game alone there has been a lot of more interesting-looking demons.
Alice
- Monster Name: Mysterious Little Girl
- Arcana: Death
I really wouldn't have pegged Alice as the one they picked, though, since in the source material she literally is just some girl that wandered into either Wonderland or a mirror-world. You'd think they would pick a fictional character that has got a bit more 'powers' in the source material like Peter Pan or Jack Frost (which does show up) or something, but okay! I guess there's a creepy-ghost-demon-child vibe to Alice. They play up the 'creepy ghost child from The Shining' in some of Alice's older artwork, but she's subsequently just a little blonde girl with creepy eyes. I do find that in a bestiary with so many over-the-top demon designs, this does make Alice stand out a fair bit more than if they had still kept the original stringy-haired-demon-girl design from the original SMT.
The lore for Alice gives a whole new writeup, noting that she's a 'mysterious blond girl' with great power, and offers a possible origin story -- 'some say she is the ghost of a girl who died a sad death. Others say she is a spirit born from someone's imagination'. It's an interestingly ambiguous origin story that does make this completely fictional Alice myth sound 'believable' alongside all the other real-world myths!
Alice has a couple more extra things going on for her. She doesn't even show up in any of the 'special' fusion listing, although the game did tell me that I unlocked her maxing out Takemi. Turns out that the special battle is a clue, because Alice spawns with two Goetia demons -- Belial and Nebiros. There was absolutely no other way for me to figure out, but Alice can only be created specifically by fusing these two demons, because in the other Shin Megami Tensei games, it's a bit of a running gag that the two of them are Alice's family or something. Cute!
She has a specially animated 'Die For Me' attack which summons a bunch of giant teddy bears (not Bugs, a unique model!) that have dynamite strapped onto them. Alice is the 'ultimate Persona' for the Death persona, which is very interesting that thanks to the history of this character in the franchise, it's ranked much higher than many of the demons in the game.
No comments:
Post a Comment