Reviewing Monsters - Final Fantasy VII, Part 11

My final segment in reviewing the monsters for Final Fantasy VII! It has been a blast, and it took me quite a while to actually complete the previous batch of gameplay. This one basically covers the final dungeon and a couple of ersatz monsters from the Battle Square -- sort of a repeatable battle gauntlet to farm for resources in Gold Saucer, and a way to get Cloud's final limit break Omnislash. 

I spent quite a bit of time getting everyone else's final limit breaks and final weapons, but let's just say that Cloud's... requires a fair bit of work. In order to get Omnislash, I have to be able to win 32,000 points in the Battle Square of Gold Saucer. I've got the 'battle' part well pat, especially at this point in the game and knowing to equip a Ribbon. But to participate in the Battle Square, I needed a lot of GP since I can't take BP out of the Battle Square. And to get a lot of GP reliably, the fastest way is through Chocobo Races. And to reliably farm Chocobo Races, I need to get a Gold Chocobo. And to get that, well... let's just say that even with a guide, it took me quite a while to get the very specific order of events, random battles, breeding items, feeding items, Chocobos that spawn with an exact enemy in an exact location... yeah, it's not something I'm ever looking forward to doing ever again. 

But hey, I got all the ultimate limit breaks and that's the principle of it. And finally it's the final confrontation in Disc 3, the crew of the Highwind against some super-soldier child and a space alien god-being trying to destroy the world with a meteor! The story is honestly pretty damn neat even if it's admittedly not the most innovative compared to a lot of other anime and manga, but I really, really did enjoy the game. Even if some of the biggest moments of the game have been basically spoiled to the world, I'm actually only spoiled about one specific moment, and experiencing the story firsthand -- polygon graphics and questionable translations notwithstanding -- does really make me realize just why everyone and their mother hypes up Final Fantasy VII as one of the best games ever.

Anyway, I'm not here to complain about convoluted side-quests, or to gush about the game. On with the monsters!

Tonberry

So two unique enemies show up only exclusively in the Battle Square, and they are two of Final Fantasy's most recurring enemies! The Tonberry looks exactly as it does in most other Final Fantasy games other than XI -- a little mouthless reptile/fish guy with glowing eyes, baggy robes, a fish tail, and carrying a lantern and a knife. Good ol' Tonberry will only slowly walk towards your character and it's basically a race against time, since if the Tonberry reaches you it'll stab you with its knife and instantly kill you. Slowly it approaches. Not too much to say here, it sure is a classic-looking monster. The Tonberry, alongside the Bomb, are among the Final Fantasy classic staples to make it into the FFVII Remake way earlier than when they actually show up in the original FFVII. 

Ho-chu

One of the four possible final battle for the Battle Square (and you better believe you will need to repeat the Battle Square over and over and over to get enough BP to get your super-duper-awesome loot) alongside the Serpent, Sea Worm and Ghost Ship is the Ho-Chu. Thanks to the mechanics of the Battle Square -- only one character, and you slowly accumulate handicaps at the end of each battle -- the Ho-Chu is a simple enemy with a large HP pool, a decently powerful attack and the ability to cast status effects that ended up being so much more dangerous than it would otherwise be since it's more likely than not that you've lost a huge chunk of your health and might have half your equipment or materia disabled. 

Ho-chu, if you know your Final Fantasy monsters, is Ochu! Or, as I noted during my coverage of FFXIII monsters, the Otyugh from Dungeons & Dragons, which has basically been interpreted and reimagined as a series of giant plant monsters in the Final Fantasy franchise. You can still see the squad body shape, the tentacle arms (now vine-arms) and yawning mouth, but Ho-chu here is very clearly a plant monster. The vine-arms ending in spiky clubs, the leaf-like legs... but, of course, the most charming part of the Ho-chu is that this incarnation has a massive ballerina skirt made up of flower petals. This is apparently the first Ochu in the franchise since the original, and I find it hilarious that they basically took the 'flower monster' of the original Final Fantasy and turned it into a chubby ballerina screaming plant monster. I approve. 

Ruby Weapon

Alongside Emerald Weapon, this guy acts as the game's two 'Superbosses', i.e. enemies you can encounter in the course of the game, but you need some extensive post-game grinding and strategies to beat them. You can encounter Ruby Weapon at around this point in the game, which is the third disc, where there's a suspiciously odd-looking red protrusion in the quicksand-desert around Gold Saucer, appearing only after you've blown up Ultimate Weapon. 

I tried to fight it and, just like Emerald Weapon, got absolutely fucked. He's a pretty cool looking giant robot, though, like some sort of Zoids or Gundam or Evangelion or something. I think they did a pretty good job at making the various Weapons -- especially those with in-game battle models -- look distinct from each other. I do like the Ruby Weapon's long, elongated arms that end in chunky fingers, which is something that I did find pretty charming. This guy's apparently a homage to the Hygogg from Gundam. Not from one of the series I've watched, but I certainly do love Gundam's wacky aquatic suits! The fact that this guy has a long, serpentine head also makes it look kind of different compared to the other Weapons. Throughout the battle the Ruby Weapon will slam his long arms onto the sand and have them emerge behind the party as giant tentacles. Pretty neat. Apparently it's fight is pretty troublesome, and most of the guides I've skimmed noted how it's easiest to do the Ruby Weapon fight with only one character in your party or something? Eh, okay. 

Gargoyle

And, with all the optional enemies and bosses out of the way, it's about high time to talk about the bulk of Disc 3, the final segment of Final Fantasy VII, which primarily takes place in the massive dungeon called the Northern Cave. One of the earliest enemies are gargoyles, which are actually relatively simple adaptations of how they usually are in fantasy. Interestingly, all Gargoyles you meet will be completely still, crouched in their 'stone' form, and are completely immune to most attacks. Anything will trigger its transformation as it 'breaks free' of its stone form, and it flies around as an angry devil. Honestly, not the most interesting enemy in the Northern Cave, but a pretty neat one with a gimmick. 

Dark Dragon & Armored Golem

Y'know what? Let's get the 'repaint' enemies out of the way first. Northern Cave is a pretty large dungeon and there's a lot of enemies found in only specific areas. There are also a lot of repeats, and... and it's very cool to see some of these models again, but I really don't have much to say about Dark Dragon (it's the 'big dragon' model, but black and can cast Ultima) and Armored Golem (a black golem with the same move-towards-the-party gimmick as the Tonberry). 

What is the theme of this dungeon? I'm honestly not sure. Jenova-Sephiroth is resting at its center and it's connected to the Lifestream, but you've got natural-looking animals, demonic-looking guys, as well as artificial robots like the armored golem. 

Pollensalta, Death Dealer & King Behemoth

Likewise, I don't have a whole ton to say about either one of these three. Pollensalta is a repaint of the Jemnezy and Snow "evil ambiguously-human seductress" enemy, but unlike the other two we don't get any real theme behind her; she just casts generic fire and status spells. You can learn the skill 'Angel Whisper' by manipulating her, but it's not like she's got an angel or holy-magic theme to her. Boring! King Behemoth is a golden version of the Behemoth we met at the Return to Midgar sequence. Not much to say about this one, either, although it sure is cool. 

Death Dealer is a lot more interesting. A repaint of the Joker enemy, this guy uses Tarot cards instead of playing cards! The five cards he can toss at you are Emperor, Death, Star, Sun and World; and he can also cast a random 'Roulette' skill that, well, kills anyone it hits... except it's random, and might hit the Death Dealer or its allies.

Iron Man

More accurately translated as "Iron Giant", based on his katakana. Turns out that the Wolfmeister isn't just a one-off model in that Junon train mission. Iron Man here is still cool, with his ridiculously large upper arms and knife, but otherwise you might only meet Iron Man in a specific area of the dungeon, where you jump down from the proper dungeon towards where Sephiroth is, making him sort of a quasi-miniboss. Not much to say here, but he's cool.

Master Tonberry

My bane. Okay, this guy is a right asshole. Design-wise it's just a Tonberry with a different skin and a star over his head, but the Master Tonberry fucked me over hard in this dungeon. I actually didn't even realize that there's a run option on this game (something that's even more difficult for me because the buttons for escaping is mapped to two keys I have no reason to use ever). Master Tonberry basically just walks towards your party from his side of the screen, slowly it approached, and when it gets in front of a party member it just instantly shanks him or her to death with his very mundane-looking kitchen knife. 

The gimmick here -- which I didn't realize after wasting huge chunks of recovery items -- is that you can only attack the Master Tonberry once between each movement. Trying to be greedy and attack more than once will have the Master Tonberry retaliate with the best move ever, the unblockable "Everyone's Grudge". Which deals damage equal to the amount of kills the specific character has done throughout the game. Since you're likely to bring your best party into this dungeon, this is basically a death sentence. Appropriately terrifying. 

Mover

The actual in-game model has two eyes, but for some reason the picture on the wiki only depicts the orange orb? Eh. I'll get this one out of the way quickly, it's a weird super-rare enemy in a specific room of the dungeon, and provides a large amount of experience points despite being weak. The idea is solid, but I dunno... maybe do something more interesting than literally just an orb with simple eyes? 

Parasite

Oh, what a weirdo! Yeah, whether this is just a weird creature or some sort of Jenova-mutant, I'm not sure. These guys appear like floating, flat tadpoles, but with a mass of weird green... hair? Horns? Cilia? They've got those on their 'head' and 'tail', and a bunch of red... mandibles? Feelers? Underneath its 'head', of course, is a massive green eyeball. Despite its pretty cool name, the Parasite is a pretty standard enemy and doesn't try to parasitize you at all, just being a simple status-effect-centric enemy. For an enemy that is named a 'parasite' and looks like a bizarre giant mutant critter, I can't lie, this is kind of a letdown. 

Scissors

When I first saw Scissors, I really didn't think too much of it. Oh, it's a Zaku-esque robot thing, but it's got two huge knives for fingers and toes. It's kind of cool, and judging by its face, this might be a person in a suit of armour or something, covering his face with a helmet and a piece of cloth. I thought that, yeah, okay, a neat killer robot. Weird to find in the final dungeon, but, like, sure, why not? 

Then I didn't kill one in a single attack... and Scissors immediately and instantly kills that character, before splitting into two. That's awesome. This thing is neither robot nor human, and I absolutely love it! The upper body is just suspended by a nasty, Parasyte-style meat tentacle-feet that's impossibly thin to hold up something so big, whereas a mass of claws around an eye pokes out of the lower half. They split into two! That's a pretty damn cool enemy concept. 

Allemagne / Ahriman

Mistranslated and mangled into "Allemagne", we get the return of the commonly-reoccurring Ahriman enemies! I like this version, a giant eyeball and mouth on a fleshy body, with a tail, giant bat wings and bird legs. Not a particularly over-the-top fantasy monster, perhaps, but certainly one that's memorably weird. It's got a couple of nasty attacks, but they are level-dependent so it's not going to really bother most parties. Not too much to say here, but I did really like the Allemagne, it's a very cool and simple monster design. 

Christopher & Gighee

Another rare encounter that can only really be found in a specific room are these two weirdos, who always show up together. Christopher is a weird human (?) that dresses up like a bad Hisoka cosplay, wears a mask, and the sides of the hair taper off into this huge weird two-sided blade. Gighee (or "Ziggy", in the original Japanese) is a weird horse-dog thing with super thin legs, Super Saiyan hair, a guitar jutting out of its butt, and... is that head stitched on to that body? Apparently the enemy is a pun to Ziggy Stardust, which leads me to go 'buh-wha'. Gighee basically uses weird status effects, while Christopher's attacks change depending on whether Gighee is alive or dead. It's honestly really kind of weird and, honestly, the two slightly feel out of place. Or maybe I'm just freaked out at the clown costume.

Magic Pot

A weirdo. This guy is a bizarre bearded purple imp with long elf ears that peeks out of a golden pot decorated with Yu-Gi-Oh hieroglyphics, and basically demands your party give him an Elixir, an item that, while not super-duper hard to find, is also kind of valuable. It is completely immune to anything you can do until it gets fed an Elixir, which, again, is another reason why I eventually had to learn how to simply just run away from battles instead of wasting my elixirs on these guys. The Magic Pot is another huge-yield enemy, although I'd rather have my elixirs. 

Dragon Zombie

OH SHIT, this is awesome. Screw you, Dark Dragon, this is a proper dragon monster! Look at how utterly nastily wretched this guy looks. It's standing in a bipedal form, but instead of regular dragon wings, the Dragon Zombie has a massive set of spidery legs bursting out of his sides like spider legs. I love just how that chest looks like it's just a bunch of ribcages bursting out of a chest, how the flesh just terminates to give way to the knobbly leg bones and the tail-bones. Slightly over the top but such a badass-looking monster undead dragon! This is so, so much more creative than just throwing a pile of bones shaped like a dragon to us. A bit of a rarer enemy, in the dungeon proper.

Alongside the Ahriman and Iron Man, the Dragon Zombie is one of the possible encounters as you get through the final stretch of the dungeon. It's got a bizarrely special (and learnable) skill, Pandora's Box, which the Dragon Zombie will unleash exactly once in your entire save file, and if you don't manage to learn it... whoops? It only does this when it dies the first time. Such a bizarre, weird thing that people probably have to go out of their way to even know about how the skill is triggered, and I simultaneously love and hate this aspect of older games. Not a whole ton to say beyond that, it sure is a cool-looking monster!

Jenova SYNTHESIS

One thing about this game's finale is that... for a game that hinges so much on me falling in love and being invested in the characters and the plotline, the actual final battle feels pretty... hollow. Mostly because we're missing one last huge, grandiose Sephiroth taunting speech, and what we got felt pretty short compared to what Sephiroth has mostly talked about before. Even Jenova's battle feels like it comes out of nowhere... although it certainly is cool. I guess this is Jenova's original body as it reconstructs itself? We've got a naked woman's torso and head, plus two giant tentacles, attached to that giant... dung ball? It's got flower petals, at least. Apparently it's just a mass of flesh, and when the camera pans around to show you Jenova Synthesis's back you see a heart suspended mid-air and attached to the ball by sinew. And that detail really does help elevate Synthesis just a bit.

Apparently, the original concept of Jenova is that she is really pulling the strings, and that the original idea was that Jenova will continually cut off pieces of herself (which would be the previous Jenova bosses) before the final piece, the heart, would shed its hood and fight you in a super form. Very interesting, although honestly at this point in the game poor Jenova just got most of her relevance essentially subsumed by her son, doesn't he? 

Bizarro Sephiroth

Mind you, not that Sephiroth actually got much to talk or do in this final dungeon compared to how huge of a presence he had in the bulk of the first one-and-a-half discs. Honestly, other than a relatively simple and short little monologue, you just jump straight into a battle with Bizarro over here. What a hilariously dorky name, too. Bizarro Sephiroth? Not helping is that I associate the name 'Bizarro' so much with that upside-down clone of Superman from DC comics. This form's actual name in Japanese is "Rebirth Sephiroth", with the katakana for 'rebirth' (ribasu) being valid for "Reverse" as well. I get that the pun is impossible to replicate in English, but then going on to call this guy 'Bizarro' is... bizarre. 

Anyway, I fought this guy with two teams, splitting my party into two parties of three. That's awesome! One of my complaints about Final Fantasy games in general is that for the most part only three out of a far larger party ever get to do anything, and to actually have the group stand on Bizarro's two flanks and attack him is pretty damn neat. Apparently this battle is different on how well you did in the game, too; if you had too hard a time fighting Jenova Synthesis the game takes pity on you and lets you fight Bizarro Sephiroth with one party -- so you don't have to juggle two regenerating sides of a multi-part boss fight. Boss-wise he's honestly just a huge HP sink, and you have to kill him fast enough before the core regenerates the health pools of the other parts, while the core itself is invulnerable while the other parts are up. 

Design wise, this is a pretty neat boss! It's the start of Sephiroth's angel theme, I suppose, since he's just some long-haired supersoldier with an oversized nodachi for the rest of the game. What a weirdo angel he is! He's got a smaller him growing out of the top of his head, and I've always been distracted by how bizarrely muscular his shoulders are before they end up in wings. Kinda neat, I guess it combines Sephiroth's angel theme with Jenova's flesh-aberration theme? Not the weirdest final boss I've seen, but certainly an appropriate look for Sephiroth's mutant form. 

Safer Sephiroth

As with all J-RPG final bosses, of course Sephiroth has an even more humanoid-looking final form after you go through the pretty grueling task of beating down Bizarro. You get transported into a heavenly-looking realm, and you fight Safer Sephiroth. Or, rather, probably intended to be Sefer or Sepher Sephiroth, meaning 'Book of Sephiroth'. It's also got one of the most iconic pieces of music in gaming history, which, no joke, is how I found out about this franchise in the first place. I'd be remiss not to mention just how utterly badass this one musical tract with ominous Latin chanting is. Estuans interius, ira vehementi.  Estuans interius, ira vehement. SEPHIROTH! Honestly, that musical tract is easily one of the best things about this game. 

Also, this form is well, well known for the time-consuming, two-minute long Supernova attack. Where after filling the screen with Ptolemy's diagram of the celestial spheres and some Physics equations, Sephiroth summons a meteor from beyond the galaxy, which vaporizes, in order (and the planets are explicitly named), Pluto, Jupiter and the asteroid belt before slamming into the sun, causing it to bubble, erupt, consume Mercury and Venus, before arriving as a fiery ball of death to consume the party. A far, far worse cataclysm than the actual 'drop a meteor on the planet'. Also, apparently FFVII is set on Earth? Okay?

Safer Sephiroth's design is a pretty cool angelic abomination. Most modern portrayals of Sephiroth post-FFVII basically tend to just have him in his human form with a single black angel wing -- a form he never actually assumes in FFVII. Here he's got a single black angel wing replacing one arm, but he's got a mass of six wings growing out from under his waist like a mass of bug legs, except they're, of course, angelic wings. Actually pretty cool, and far, far cooler than if Sephiroth was just a boring angel man. 

Sephiroth

The final 'battle', if you can call it that, is a battle in Cloud's mindscape as Sephiroth tries to take him over, I think. You fight Sephiroth in his high-def (for the game's standards) form, just a shirtless dude with long hair and an oversized sword. It's also impossible to lose this fight, as you're programmed to one-shot Sephiroth with an Omnislash. It's essentially a cutscene battle, but you get to click stuff! Again... they could've added a bunch of extra dialogue here to really hammer home the Cloud/Sephiroth rivalry, and I have some opinions about the ambiguous ending cutscene... but that's what the extended universe and that one movie is for, I suppose.

And with that... wow, that took me longer than I thought I would! Both playing the game and reviewing the monsters and enemies inside! It's been a massive, massive blast. See you guys for the next one!

One Piece 1024-1025 Review: Kaido vs. Yamato

One Piece, Chapters 1024-1025

Yeah, a bit late to these chapters, but I... really don't have a whole ton to say here? Both of these are primarily action-packed chapters, setting up the presumably climactic final Kaido battle. 

Chapter 1024: So-and-So

So this chapter starts off with a bit of a montage of all the other Straw Hats moving around the castle. There's a fun moment of Usopp making use of Big Mom's Haki to pretend like he has Conqueror's Haki, which causes all the other random Beast Pirate goons to run away. Now this is a fun, comedic moment, but there's always that running theory of Usopp's lies actually becoming reality, which... I'm not going to lie, it'd be hella funny for Usopp to eventually awaken Conqueror's Haki. 

The primary part of the chapter is just Yamato fighting against Kaido, and I do like the brief exchange of 'arrow' attacks early in their segment in the chapter where we really put into scale just how far the difference between father and child is. Yamato's Narikabura Arrow just gets casually deflected by Kaido, whereas Yamato has to hold her ground to withstand Kaido's Vajra Arrow.

We finally get a flashback to Yamato's childhood, where she gets chained up and placed in a prison with some Kozuki samurai. We get confirmation that young Yamato had Conqueror's Haki, and basically Kaido trying to harshly 'educate' Yamato and beat her desire to pretend to be Oden out of her. There's an interesting bit in Kaido and Yamato's dialogue -- Yamato argues that since she's a child of Kaido, the samurai in the prison will kill her. Kaido's response: "but aren't you Oden?" which I think is meant to be a parallel to the dialogue exchange between the two in the present day before the flashback, which is Kaido telling Yamato that if she wants to take the title of 'Oden', then she needs to be ready for all it entails -- including Kaido essentially shooting to kill her. 

In the flashback, the samurai that are imprisoned with Yamato do the same 'a samurai does not feel hunger', which is an obvious call-back to the ending of the Punk Hazard arc with Momonosuke and Kin'emon -- which, well... it's obvious that the samurai imprisoned with Yamato are just putting up a tough front so Yamato would eat the single bowl of rice left there. We later find out that one of the samurai imprisoned there is Shimotsuki Ushimaru, and he ends up helping Yamato read Oden's journal. Ushimaru and his samurai companions break Yamato out of her prison, ultimately ending in their implied deaths. 

A neat flashback, and I also do like Kaido's reply to Yamato in the present day -- 'life isn't a series of simple questions with simple answers'. 

____________________________

Chapter 1025: Twin Dragons

We cut back and forth between Luffy/Momonosuke on the ground and the Kaido/Yamato fight on the rooftop. We get to see a bunch of additional skills from Yamato, including a pretty cool 'Mirror Mountain' ability where Yamato sheds an outer skin of ice that took all the brunt of last chapter's Thunder Bagua attack. Kaido keeps trying to tear down Yamato's self-confidence, telling her that she'll always be alone, and no one will see her as a comrade. Kaido also notes that everyone who helps Yamato dies, which... kind of rings extremely hollow when Kaido is the one going around killing all of Yamato's allies.

Which... yeah, if the sheer amount of other real-life merchandise news hasn't clued you in already, this basically sets in stone that Yamato's a shoo-in for the next Straw Hat, doesn't it? This means we're probably getting a whole lot more flashbacks for Yamato and Kaido, which I am all for. One thing that I really do want with Yamato is to really explore her as a character, which I feel is what we truly need. 

Also, Kaido just low-key reveals how Yamato is a 'child of oni', and considering that she has her horns even as a child, I'm going to assume that this is essentially confirmation that Kaido and Yamato are members of an Oni race. Neat.

On the ground we get some comedy moments between Luffy and Momonosuke. Shinobu's age-up devil fruit, very logically, doesn't actually age up Momonosuke's mind, and only his body. And, well, he's still got the mind of a child, and I completely forgot that Momo has a fear of heights. After we get the Yamato/Kaido fight sequences, we get to see Momonosuke and Luffy just essentially rampage throughout Onigashima because Momo refuses to open his eyes, causing all the other combatants to see this giant pink dragon and get confused. 

The chapter ends with two quasi-double-page-spreads. Momonosuke reaches the roof, right in time for Luffy and Yamato to do a combo attack to knock Kaido on his ass. Both Luffy and Yamato seem to infuse Conqueror's Haki into their blows -- that's what the black lightning is, right? And, of course, we get the dragon-meets-dragon between Kaido and Momo. Kaido is more amused than surprised (presumably we're saving the huge eeeeeh face when he sees Momo in human form) and Momonosuke gets a bit of a character development, announcing his name as Kozuki Momonosuke with no hesitation. 

Pretty cool setup for the final battle -- I'm kind of sure that we'll cut away to all the secondary fights in the next couple of chapters, but this is a pretty hype-building couple of chapters. Admittedly I'm not quite as excited about the dragon-vs-dragon war, and more intrigued about the Yamato and Kaido backstory... but that's just me. Pretty neat series of events all around. 

Series Review: Kamen Rider Ex-Aid

Kamen Rider Ex-Aid [2016-2017] 

"Mighty Jump! Mighty Kick! Mighty Mighty ACTION! X!"

A bit of a shorter review this time around, but this is a review that I've done several times before but it kept getting eaten by the blog. In any case, due to the subject matter, Ex-Aid has always held a special place in my heart. It's about a doctor gamer!

I actually first discovered Ex-Aid around the time I watched Zi-O. Back then I was just watching whatever my friend recommended me, so I went from Gaim to Build to Faiz to Amazons (and I watched Wizard around this time too), and around that time the currently-running series was Zi-O. So when I saw the Ex-Aid tie-in episode and saw the utterly bizarre giant chibi Kamen Rider that did not look at all like any of the other Kamen Riders before. 

And at which point I decided that this weird-looking motherfucker whose entire concept is a homage to Mario going from a short, chibi version of himself into a stronger one with a power-up is probably the most creative Kamen Rider concept ever. 

And, granted, I do have a slightly inflated opinion of Ex-Aid in general because I really do like the concept. It's a bit of a 'make it or break it' bit on whether you like the aesthetics of the show, but I really do feel that however unapologetically loud everything is does add to a huge charm. The other part of the show that's going to make it or break it is Dan "God" Kuroto, a godsend (heh) to the show, which we'll cover in a bit more detail later on. Ultimately, I find both of these aspects to be really fun, so the show ends up appealing a lot to me. 

Ex-Aid is one of the shows that slowly lead to the closing of the Heisei era, and I feel like it's easily one of the more solid ones. It gets compared a lot with Build, the series that succeeded this and tends to be hailed as one of the most solidly-structured Heisei shows ever plot-wise, and I don't think I can argue against that. One thing that I did like about Ex-Aid, though, is how it really does manage to juggle a large cast and a hilariously wacky concept and still play most of it well -- something that several other Kamen Rider shows didn't really manage to do. 

The show's concept isn't all too different with a lot of the Heisei shows. Our hero, doctor Hojo Emu, is a fledgling intern in Seito University Hospital, but he's also a huge gamer geek who alternates between being the genius video gamer "M" (pronounced identically to 'Emu'). Rather coincidentally, at around the time of his internship, a 'game illness' starts infecting humans and spawns monstrous creatures called Bugsters from the patients' negative emotions -- a very Super Sentai-esque concept to monsters. Emu finds himself drawn into the CR, a secret facility under the hospital, where it's revealed that the hospital employs doctors that use Gashat cartridges to transform into Kamen Riders. 

Yeah, it's ridiculous. It's honestly kind of stupid when I put it into words. Doctors transform into superheroes in jumpsuits with video game cartridges to fight a virus that manifests as giant CGI video game enemies. The fight involves getting power-ups that spawn randomly in the battlefield, and there's really no semblance of any actual science to this. The video game cartridges are even inspired by specific game genres, with Emu's Mighty Action X being a Super Mario platformer pastiche. 

And yet... and yet it's still surprisingly earnest. The first chunk of the show basically introduces us to the relatively large cast. We've got Kagami Hiiro, or Kamen Rider Brave, the arrogant but extremely skilled surgeon who can 'cut anything'. We've got the unlicensed doctor and Doctor Black Jack homage Hanaya Taiga, or Kamen Rider Snipe. We've got the happy-go-lucky and all-around goober of a medical examiner Kujo Kiriya, or Kamen Rider Lazer. All of them start off as one-note quasi-antagonists, but as the show goes on we peel back the layers and backstory behind Hiiro, Taiga and Kiriya and all of them get such good stories behind them that I won't be spoiling here. All of them carry their emotional baggage, and they end up working through their issues thanks to their exposure to Emu. 

Oh, and there's the gloriously-named Poppy Pipopapo, a nurse that turns out to be a colourful bubblegum-coloured friendly video-game Bugster being that helps our CR. These form the core of the cast earlier on, with Brave, Snipe and Lazer taking turns at being the guest star of the week. There is admittedly a bit of a frustration with some of the audiences at the time about how much of an uncommunicative jackass everyone is, but since I came into this show fresh from Gaim and Build, I didn't find it particularly jarring. 

Ultimately, as our heroes end up fighting stronger Bugsters and fight over the mysterious Gashats that allow them power-ups, a lot of these early episodes do a great job at being relatively standalone solid episodic stories, while also building up each individual members of the cast. While all of this is going on we've got two enigmatic sentient Bugsters who walk around in humanoid forms -- Graphite and Parad (sometimes translated as Pallad or Parado). Later on, the good guy cast would be joined by the peppy gamer girl Nico, who ended up basically being unlikely buddies with Snipe. 

(Also, last spoiler warning for huge points in the show, I guess:)

But then things quickly delve around Dan "God" Kuruto, and I believe the enjoyment of this show really revolves around how much you tolerate Kuroto. Initially presented to us as the ultimate shady-yet-very-charismatic man, it's rather surprising to remember just how amazingly subtle Kuroto was early on in the show. While the show makes no secret that his company, Genm Corporation, is the creator of the Gamer Driver and the Gashats -- and the Heisei shows are no stranger to huge companies being behind the Kamen Rider technology of the year -- I do like the slow buildup that Dan Kuroto is secretly pulling the strings behind what's going on. It first begins with rather memetic shots of Dan looking utterly creepy and smiling, but Dan Kuroto would be remembered forevermore by the fandom as one of the biggest scenery-chewing lunatic that other successors would try to ape but not do so quite as well. Kuroto's insane god complex (renaming himself with various Japanese readings of 'god' over the show) is pretty fun, and even though the show does eventually give us a sob backstory for Kuroto,  the show also never really stops in preserving what made him memorable in the first place. There is no way to really describe Dan Kuroto without experiencing him in the show, but his status as the face of Kamen Rider memes is most assuredly well-deserved. 

What really makes Ex-Aid feel rather refreshing is how often the show itself evolves. Just at it seems like it has settled into a rather tame formula, it then shakes things up with the rather early killing of one of its supportive characters, Kujo Kiriya, in what's memorable by the fandom as the biggest WTF moments. Which I adored, since the episode where Kiriya figures out the true villain before getting brutally murdered by Dan Kuroto happens on the back end of a Christmas special that features Emu, Hiiro and Poppy singing a Christmas song. Later episodes of the show do end up exploring a lot about mortality and morality, and while it's still ultimately a show with a happy ending, there are several times in the show where I really did appreciate just how deep they are willing to explore the core themes. 

The show itself went through a bunch of reinvention as well as the main villains change. With Dan Kuroto as the hammy Kamen Rider Genm (particularly when he gets his amazing 'Dangerous Zombie' suit and powers) the show is a bit more straightforward in trying to get our heroes to figure out who the identity of Kamen Rider Genm is, and later on, how to kill him. We get a sequence of episodes which I think is probably my least favourite arc of the show where we discover Emu and Parad's backstory. And later on we get the revelation of the true true aim of what's going on, with a real-life MMORPG called Kamen Rider Chronicle... and then the revelation of the final villain, Kamen Rider Chronos. Throughout all this, we get some really great moments surrounding our main characters. Every single major character -- Poppy, Hiiro, Kiriya and Parad's stand out-- get at least a story arc that will make you quite sad. Without spoiling or detailing too much of the plotline in the best parts of Ex-Aid, there are a lot of points in the show where they really question whether Bugsters even count as people, which is easily the highlight of the show for me. 

And yes, I will go and note that the final couple of arcs are a bit... hit-and-miss. And while Dan Kuroto and Kujo Kiriya's first death and rebirth are handled relatively well, later on and especially near the end of the show, I felt like the show played a bit too deep into the whole 'death is cheap in video games' thing. Add that to the fact that while Dan Masamune/Kamen Rider Chronos is a fun villain in his own right, I felt like the show's huge, huge investment and focus to Dan Kuroto and Parad really meant that Masamune's role as the final antagonist does feel kind of flat in favour of having those two more popular antagonists fight on the side of the angels. 

Another very valid criticism about Ex-Aid is how much of its full story is told via spin-offs and movies, something that Hiiro and Emu's actors even made fun of in an interview. We've got a couple of rather fun but ultimately inconsequential spin-offs (though "Dr. Pac-Man" is still my favourite Kamen Rider movie ever); but after the ending of the Ex-Aid show, we've got the "True Ending" movie, and the trilogy of "Another Ending" mini-movies (Brave/Snipe; Para-DX/Poppy; Genm/Lazer) to truly get the final conclusion of the story. And that's not to mention that there are some technically-canon-to-the-show miniseries like the "Snipe: Episode ZERO" prequel series, the amazing yet bizarre "Gorider" crossover series or the tongue-in-cheek "Tricks" three-parter.

Still, unlike some other shows with a lot of supplementary material, I felt like Ex-Aid's cast and general aesthetic (and the sounds that the belts make!) are so much fun that I never felt like it was a chore to hunt down and consume more Ex-Aid material. I felt like Ex-Aid struck a great balance at having the perfect size of a cast, and having every single main character feel fleshed out... especially seeing how the recent Saber didn't do quite as good of a job at doing so. One thing that I also did like is that Emu's role didn't feel like he was just the everyman. In some shows where the cast is so large, sometimes the main character ends up falling into just being a boring, predictable generic hero guy. Which is, again, what happens to Saber but also arguably to the main heroes in Agito, Ryuki or Gaim to varying degrees. I feel like between his interactions with Poppy and Parad in particular, Emu did end up carving a niche for himself in the show and he ends up being a pretty memorable character by the end of the show. 

Ultimately, even with the slightly messy final batch of episodes, I did feel like Ex-Aid is still one of my favourite Kamen Rider shows overall. If nothing else, it has that consistent quality of wackiness and fun that I do appreciate in a Kamen Rider show.

(I've watched Revice's first two episodes. They're neat! I'm not going to do episodic reviews because I was extremely burned out with Saber. But maybe we'll do the same thing I did for One Piece and do like, five to ten episodes at a time or so?)

Reviewing Fanmade Pokemon: Quarantine Crystal, Part 5

Part five of my review of the fan-made Pokemon designs in the fan-romhack Quarantine Crystal. This one took a bit longer for me to publish. Apologies.  

Once more, with thanks to commenter Heckbot, who provided all of the screenshots for the dex entries. 

EDIT: Republished around a week later after fixing a bunch of swapped images and a bunch of typos.

Smucious here is an... interesting one. The idea is for a succubus Pokemon, I think, looking at her and her evolution, and... and it's interesting? There's a pleasantly Digimon-esque vibe to this little critter's design. I like the very fairy-like body, the two tiny bat-wings, the lack of eyes and the fact that its face is just dominated with a single pair of thick lips. It's a lot more of a 'kissing monster' than the official Smoochum or Jynx, which are just... weirdly-drawn humans. Smucious at least looks like some sort of more ethereal-looking fairy-like monster. I wonder if it just visits people in their dreams, or if it physically shows up and drains blood or something like a mosquito? 

Presumably Fairy-type, or Fairy/Dark.

I am very pleasant to see that the evolved form isn't just a sexy lady! Smotherene has the silhouette of one from a distance, yes -- a humanoid torso, more pronounced legs, and the horns have evolved into 'pigtails', but I do like that it's still a creepy succubus demon. It's more obviously a vampire, too, with vampiric fangs and stuff. I don't have too much to say here -- it's a very cool way to adapt a concept like the succubus (something that is very much not a regular Pokemon prompt) into a Pokemon in a way that makes sense, I feel.

A cutie! This one almost looks like some sort of Metroid or Mega Man enemy or something. It's a cute little bat-dragon whose body is a pyramid! I like the little fangs (feet?) poking out of it, and I especially like that it doesn't really have any sort of conventional face. Such a cute weirdo! Kodoroyah is a little fear spirit, too, being a little gremlin that 'spreads fear through the land', but is also absolutely terrified by Smucious.

Dragon or Dark, presumably? Dark/Dragon when evolved? Being either or both would definitely cause its fear of a Fairy-type something that makes sense!

The evolved form, Casanocte, has such a neat 'tokusatsu kaiju monster' vibe to him! I love those two tiny eyes nestled within a black void, and I like the two giant horns bordering the face. Interestingly, while its smaller form is afraid of Smucious, Casanocte is actually a creature that tries to woo Smucious's evolved form Smotherene. So basically just like a little boy who is afraid of cooties, but grows up into a man who woos women? Do these form a breeding pair like the Nidorans, too? Also, judging by the name of "Kodoroyah", and the two giant spikes on the sides of his head, I'm 90% sure that Casanocte is meant to be a homage to the Godzilla monster Destoroyah. 

I wonder if there's a specific area for these more hell-themed monsters to hang out?

We move to what I think is a three-stage evolutionary line. Missteria is a cute little mummy Pokemon! It's also noted as a tense spirit, and identified as a 'Torment' creature. Pretty cute sprite, but otherwise not that interesting if taken alone. But it's not alone! Or, well, not exactly. 

Unfortunately, cute little anime-mascot Missteria ends up being captured by someone and tossed into an iron maiden! Or a Dismaiden, in any case! Oh no, look at that terrified :o face that Dismaiden has! It's not as brutal as traditional depictions of iron maidens are, but there are those bulbs running down the side that might actually be like, needles or sword hilts. Such a clever way to do the 'ghost sealed in an object' trope!

Poor Dismaiden is described as a 'curious spirit confined', and that it ponders about life in solitude. Oh no! Does it become Ghost/Steel when it gains its shell?

And then we get the glorious final form, Bedlamam. Such a cool, cool design! The iron maiden armour of Dismaiden just explodes out in this hideous, eldritch abomination. The spirit of Missteria has apparently merged with the torture device that held her in place. Look at how nasty it is,  and I love that it's using spikes to essentially make a 'face' with those two pointy things as eyes and two more below resembling a bug mandible. And, of course, the parts of the iron maiden that cover the body has turned into a spiky, set of maws resembling wings. And I was right! Those nubs are the tips of needles!

And you'd think that this eldritch abomination would be a terrifying monster out for revenge, but no! "This Pokemon is rather sweet", says the Pokedex. It's curious about the world! Just, uh, don't go around giving hugs to people with your spiky butterfly arms, Bedlamam! I really like this evolutionary line as a set, and I appreciate that it's given a happy ending. Even mummy ghosts that merge with their torture implements deserve happinesss!

Another pretty cool one! Hoplaque here is a little bony fang, but he also looks like a cute little fish! A bony fish, at least. But! But the Hoplaque's dex entry talks about how the buried fang of a dragon Pokemon would grow into Hoplqaues, which act as fierce guardians. It's a reference to a Greek mythology, where the hero Cadmus slew a dragon that guarded the spring of the god of war Ares, and harvested the teeth of the dragon. When he planted them in the soil, they transformed into fully armed warriors called Spartoi. Jason would toss a jewel in the midst of the warriors, and they would fight each other. Hoplaque's just the dragon teeth!

Dragon/Ghost?

It evolves into Phanguard, which is a more humanoid figure, which would be the soldiers that grew from the dragon's teeth. Except this Pokemon actually does retain memories of life as a dragon! Do teeth do that? Do all the Phanguards that fall from the same Brigadoom share the same memories? "It yearns to be one again", so I guess all the Phanguards that come from a single dragon's teeth are all trying to combine into a singular whole again? Pretty cool.

Design-wise, I really like the ratty cape that Phanguard has here, but my favourite aspect of him has to be the head. I thought it's just an unconventional skull or a pumpkin head for a bit before realizing that, no, it's a freaking molar! As in the teeth! Genius. 

In the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, the dragon-teeth were just things that grew into soldiers and that's it for them. But this is Pokemon, so of course the skeletal warriors grew into a giant skeletal dragon. "Brigadoom" is a fucking cool name, too! I do like how this isn't just a dinosaurian skeleton and that's it -- Dracoliches are cool, but this is Pokemon! And I really like the face in particular, with the pronounced lower jawbone. Also love the tattered wings that match that of Phanguard, and I do like that there seem to be a bunch of skulls littered all over Brigadoom's body, like where the front arms connect to the torso and stuff. Pretty cool! Looking at the design a bit more, I guess this is less the 'original form' of the dragon, but more of a bunch of Phanguards merging together to create an approximation of the dragon that they once was? It is a 'legion' Pokemon, after all!

AAAA WHAT A CUTIE. I just like owl masks on little ghostly bodies, okay? There was one of these mask-birds in Pokemon Uranium too, although that one had a more opera theme to it. Oscurasa is much more obviously a ghostly specter that just happens to have an owl mask for a face. Such pleasant colours, too! It's identified as a 'harpy', which is interesting -- harpies, as far as I remember, don't have any ghostly connotations to them. Owls are called 'ghost birds' in some languages, though, so making an owl Pokemon into a ghostly, haunting figure that silently moves in the night and just stares and judges with those massive, creepy eyes... I approve.

Ghost/Flying, I assume? Or merely just Flying, since they're only 'thought' to be lost spirits?

Madrugasa is the evolved form, and it's basically got a more defined bird-of-prey anatomy. Despite looking like a ghost himself, Madrugasa goes off to fly and save people being haunted by ghosts with a dance. A really cool concept for an owl Pokemon, and I do like how relatively simple of a concept it is, but still manages to feel so much more unique compared to Decidueye, the other ghost-owl that Pokemon actually made!

YES! A scarecrow monster! Not just a scarecrow monster, but a creepy-murder-of-crows monster! Two of my favourite horror tropes! Murdermis is a raggedy scarecrow which has exploded and created a massive body made of a swarm of birds (non-Pokemon birds? Or like several dozen unfortunate Murkrows?) to form its body. Very awesome! Murdermis is seemingly benevolent, using his murder of crows to protect the crops, but what about the massive army of birds that he has presumably enslaved with the 'strange force' inside the pumpkin head?

I really like this one. Ghost/Grass? Ghost/Flying? Just Ghost? Very cool concept, whatever typing he is. 

Oh, it's a long cat, I think? I'm not sure if the 'hunter of the mountains' is meant to refer to a specific mythological creature, but Purraatzle is like, a super-long patchwork cat doll that likes to cuddle for warmth. A cute concept, and I especially like the button eyes and the little pieces of stuffing that's peeking out of the sides of Purraatzle's body. It's cute! I think it's meant to be a nod on how humanity's domesticated wild tigers and lynxes and eventually turned them into the adorable kitty-cats that live with us now. 

Presumably just a Normal-type. 

Speaking of kitties, we've got Odditten! At some point, humanity sent Shabbycat into space, but when it returned, Odditten emerged. What a cool origin story for this Pokemon! I don't think modern-day Pokemon does these sort of pulp 80's sci-fi movie origin stories anymore -- stuff like "Grimer was factory goop animated by moonlight" or whatever. But Odditten's a cat that has been transformed by exposure to space! So cool! What alien species did this, I wonder? Quarantine does have a large selection to pick from...

Odditten himself doesn't really seem to care. Look at that swagger! He's a cute space cat with a mask-like face and he's just prancing around making a  ( - o - ) face. I like the shape of the tail, which looks a bit like an alien tree. Not sure if this is in a reference to a specific breed of cat, since we got a bunch of specific dog breeds before. 

Astrotom is the evolution, and, oh, I get it. These are 'glam star' cats and they come from the stars. Astrotom looks a bit more alien, although not by that much, really. It's got a longer neck and longer limbs, but real cats also kind of have surprisingly long legs sometimes. I do like the head design with the way the fur is arranged, it really reminds me of background aliens in like, old comic books or Saturday morning cartoons. 

Since these are space Pokemon, I'm obligated to speculate that they are Psychic-type. 

One of my favourites, due to just how utterly creative it is. Clibble is an adorable little creature made out of staple clips! But look at that face. Look at those adorable baby eyes with the two bug-fangs. This guy looks like a pillbug or something, and it just goes around 'clipping' itself onto machines or ore veins to leech energy! Hell, look at the species name. The 'stable' Pokemon. Because it's based on a staple. 

A pure Steel-type, presumably?

Of course, Clibble evolves into a staple monster, but instead of a robot, it evolves into a Giguard! Such a fucking creative decision by the art team, too, to take the Alien franchise's lead monster and to see that, hey, that giant elongated head doesn't just resemble a human phallus, but it also resembles a stapler! Especially with those prominent fangs! The rest of Giguard's body is basically a stylization of the Xenomorph, but it's okay. I love that it's a giant stapler monster now. 

In a hilarious, twist of how the Xenomorphs reproduce, Giguards are very, very good parents! They will help embed young Clibble into machinery. Get it? The stapler Pokemon helps to staple the clips into stuff? What a good parent. I love this take. And, obviously, since all they're doing is presumably leeching energy, they don't go through anything as horrifying as the Xenomorph's parasitic life cycle. 

And then the final stage transform into the animal that I actually associate a bit more with staplers, an alligator! Although I wonder if Gigerator is actually an alternate evolution, because, see, it's not just an alligator with a stapler for a mouth, it's an alligator with a stapler remover for a mouth!

That alone is neat enough, but they even gave him a backstory! It's a Clibble rejected from its pack, so now it evolves not into a stapler that helps other members of its species, but into a terrifying Gigerator, who rips out staple clips from where they are and eat them whole. An enemy against its own species! A pretty cool idea. I love this whole line! 

Speaking of alien Pokemon that might've created Odditten, we've got Navigazer here, who looks a lot like a Metroid crossed with those pinball beetles from the 2D Zelda games. I love it! I love the fact that the squid-like legs look like the ornate legs of a crystal ball, and the head of the squid ends up basically having a little galaxy inside of it. I enjoy the concept, too -- the official Pokemon Nosepass is basically a personified compass, with a magnetic nose that always points north. Navigazer takes it several steps further, where its internal mini-stars will always align with the corresponding points in the sky. That's such a cool concept for a fantasy creature (or item, really). I love it!

Psychic-type? I just have an instant urge to say anything connected to the stars is Psychic-type. Psychic/Rock, considering the evolutions?

The second stage of the evolution is Obelith, who looks even more like some sort of prehistoric squid. Of course, the head part resembles one of those obelisks that fiction likes to associate with ancient aliens. Was it 2001: A Space Odyssey that popularized this? It probably is. Obeliths have this absolutely glorious creepy description where it keeps forming formations and blinks in sequence, making runways for UFO's that never come. 

I wonder if Obelith actually has any connection to a specific alien species? Is it waiting for Yuefoe, the giant UFO computer mouse? Is the same alien species that left it behind the same one responsible for leaving the Junobe line in the oceans?

And we finally have the final stage, the Moneumenn. Of course, it's a pyramid! Kind of! It's more of a spaceship that happens to look like a pyramid, doesn't it? Or, rather, a beacon, as the pokedex itself points out? I like the description how it is planted firmly, and that there are doors that can never open. I like that the dex entry basically points out that the bottom half of the pyramid, the parts that would be below the sand, look a bit more metallic and sci-fi, and there's even a drill for it to plant itself firmly within the sand. 

I think I like Navigazer's concept the best out of the three, but both Moneumenn and Obelith are pretty dang cool too!

________________________________

A bit of a shorter one this time around. I debated doing all the way to 250, but I decided to cut it here because of length purposes.