#im behind on all my Frankenstein stuff rip

[waateeystein]

Another year of me wanting to watch a ton of Frankenstein movies in October, another year of grad school taking up all of my time. Maybe I'll pull a Victor and just drop out lmao.

[midyearflowers]

ok normally i dont like looking at leaks but i couldnt help myself with age of calamity and so i watched all the cutscenes as a movie and i have thoughts (heavy spoilers ahead obvs)

oooooooohhhhhhhhh my god. look i dont even care that they retconned botw’s canon getting that happy ending was awesome. like yea im disappointed that its more of a fantasy version than what actually happened but also i didnt have to watch all the champions die horribly and alone so i think its a good trade off. it was kinda expected cause the warriors games arent actually direct canon but whatever. im still absolutely gonna get it once i get a switch (god knows when that will be) but im excited for the gameplay. the demo looked fun, and the story is pretty fun too tbh so im gonna love playing it for myself. i definitely wanna check out all the boss fights, especially the final few

the champions of the future coming back in time to help the champions of the past was a great touch and yes i cried like a baby during miphas section. she gets to see her baby brother all grown up :’) also when sidon shows up going “no you cant take her again” my heart shattered. theres definitely a split timeline cause the future champions obviously mean that the real calamity happened, and they acknowledge that in their future the champions are gone (nintendo came to my house and killed me instantly with the zora stuff i swear to god) them then getting sent back to their own future aka the doomed one was kinda bittersweet cause like they get to see and assist in a victory but they dont actually get to keep that happy ending so its like F

the fortune teller dude never got a name i think, but he wasnt too remarkable tbh. there wasnt really any backstory about who he was and how he was related to all this and how he even came to be working with the yiga clan. or how he got a hold of the corrupted egg guardian/how it ended up corrupted in the first place. so that was a little disappointing but since he died at the end im assuming he doesnt have any importance in actual canon so it was probably just “we need a mastermind behind it all and kohga aint it” kohga realizing that he was on the wrong side and joining the good guys was nice imo. after seeing the fortune teller literally rip the fucking souls out of the yiga members (that was fuuuuuucked up) he knew he messed up and had to help stop what was put in motion. i know most people dont like 180s for villains but i like them so.

holy shit this calamity ganon form was so much cooler than the base game!! like damn dude we couldve had it all but instead we got fucking macgyvered frankenstein spider shit. this form looked so much better, it had the signature hooves and was mostly humanoid like ganondorf or bipedal beast ganon. the red hair was there and the way it was styled i got major demise vibes which is awesome, it kinda feeds into the theories of this ganon and what we saw in the sequel trailer

i still hate the king tho. we at least got him admitting to zelda that he was being an ass but the flashback with the egg guardian having been built/repaired by young zelda and shared with her mother then being taken away by the king seemingly right after her mother passed away (basically the equivalent of taking a childs comfort toy away saying “youre too old for this/this is garbage”) and i will never forgive him for that. no amount of apologizing could make up for how he treated her, especially from such a young age after experiencing the death of her freaking mother. like i get youre grieving and have to prepare your kingdom for a huge threat but maybe have some compassion for your daughter? maybe? just a little??

the way zelda awakened her powers in this story was great too. still happened cause she wanted to protect link but her refusing to run and leave him to die so she can live hit right in the feels. despite having no fighting skills or powers she wanted to act instead of run. anyways i love and stan this incarnation of zelda

overall it was a very epic feeling story and im pretty pleased with it despite the changes they made. i knew not to take it too seriously from the start, its just a fun button mashing game where you take out hordes of enemies at once but set in the old hyrule. i cant wait until i can play it for myself

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Im curious as to why you hate Makoto for ripping of p3pfemc's looks but consent to Royal-chan for the same thing? ( I know you hate Makoto for a lot of other reasons, like her personality and such, but it seemed like you disliked her since prereveal/release?) If Royal chan ended up being a completely unrelated character to femc, will your opinion of her change ? (no hate really, i jst wanna know. \V/m )

It's no prob! In all honesty I didn't even think about this kind of question, but the answer came right away, so I guess time for a not so deep reflection.

So like full stop, if Poniko isn't connected to the FeMC and it's just Atlus messing with me, yeah I'mma be PISSED. Will I rip on her looks like no tomorrow? Maybe, depends on how it’s handled (like how bad they burn me, and even then I might wait for a spinoff cause they might go into the connection there rather than Royal). I think it's obvious I went harder on Makoto because I don't like her for other reasons, and so any small thing about her annoys me (tbh Yusuke's design annoys me too, but not as bad cause....I kinda just don’t care about him and who he’s copying as much, but I'll get to that in a bit)

Anyway I think we need some historical context, because I think it’s important. When Makoto (and Yusuke) where first shown......FeMC had been ignored for A LONG time. We had a non-canon play (which no one really talked about), and that was it. No game related stuff, not even featured in the game where people were getting ripped out of timelines. FeMC were BURNED. I’ll be honest, when Yusuke appeared......While the parallels between P2 were obvious (not just with him) he reminded me of Minato as well. It annoyed me we had to have the token blue hair character since the rule had been made since the P3 era (kinda enforced with some black haired characters from P1/2, combining P2 games together that is, if you want to include them), Atlus said they’d be trying new things..... but like....whateves. But my association with him as Minato increased....when Makoto came along. 

Ngl I wasn’t pleased with the reveal of the last three girls (even didn’t like Haru, for ironically now what I love as an alt rewrite for her as, as I thought she’d be a mean and person full of herself due to calling herself ‘beauty thief’....Yeah all types of crazy here, I do love sweet Haru tho. And the reason for my opinion changing on the alt non-canon personality rewrite is just I.....see the appeal in it for the group dynamic now, while at the time I was afraid of disliking any of the characters or having them be disliked by the fandom.....which big laugh now haha :’D .....I want my happy P5 self back ;w;). Anyway back to the three girls, ngl one of the reasons I wasn’t happy was how they just dumped 3 more characters on us (too big a cast so can they handle it?, silly has to do more VA videos, I want the smaller cast back oh god don’t screw this up, and so on and so on). As for the characters, while Haru’s appearance in the trailer mislead me on her personality (for whatever reason)..... I just.....there was something about Futaba and Makoto I didn’t like. Futaba just rubs me all the wrong ways for reasons I can’t describe for back then (maybe the fact she looked like she’d be a troll and she kinda is), but Makoto it was clear...... She was ripping off FeMC’s look. The brown hair and red eyes.....the fact that Yusuke looked like Minato.....it felt like they were trying to draw them as expies of the P3MCs. And it pissed me off. I didn’t want an unrelated character look and remind me of the FeMC, I wanted FeMC herself! Why are you stealing her look????? And while some FeMC saw this and rolled with it as a joke (Hamu/Minty/Shin dressing up as Makoto/Yusuke/Goro to get into P5), other’s didn’t know who the FeMC was and thus.....didn’t see the blatant expy/rip off design. Seeing people be like “her character design is so original and cute and blah blah blah”.....it annoyed me....obviously (it didn’t help she grew in popularity doing absolutely nothing too, so initially it was all about her looks, and then I’ve been told a lot of her fans, at least male, has been mostly them saying the like her design and her hair and her eyes, and no everyone who likes Makoto is an FeMC fan so....yeah.....I mostly hear how it’s just about her design so I’m very focused on that in regards to her specifically BECAUSE of the fans). And yeah I know it was a bit petty/shallow reason, but I didn’t outright hate her atm, she was stepping on my toes badly but I was holding out till the game (where it finally cemented my hate for her, and now I legit hate her for petty, shallow, deep, and complex reasons). And lordy lord lord, it did not help Makoto’s name was Makoto, because that was a name some FeMC fans gave Hamuko (cause Makoto Yuki was the closest ‘canon’ name we’d get to P3MCs, and some people adopted it for both MCs cause it was gender neutral, so Niijima coming along and taking THAT away sucked ass, and I know different kanji, it still sucked tho). It just....felt like Atlus was spitting in FeMC fan’s face..... But anyway, I kept it in....for about....2ish years. Even when I was trying to stay positive.......and even when I was slowly starting to come out with negative opinions. I tried to keep it in. 

Finally I decided to make it framed as a joke, because I started to see Makoto ripping off more characters than just FeMC (FeMC, Aika, and Naoto in the detective novel to be precise, but what got the ball rolling was realizing that it was Aika who Makoto ripped the hair and motor vehicle from with the FeMC’s color scheme). That’s where my brain started going other places than just being restricted to FeMC, and I started being more critical of Makoto’s design outside the FeMC (tho that still burned me). Because, imo, it’s not original, it annoyed me people would say she was original when she was really just a Frankenstein rip off of other characters (other loved characters, FeMC and Aika were pretty popular in their own right). It only continued to cement in my mind that....anything ‘original’ about Makoto was a farce, she just copies while the original gets left behind.

Tldr; FeMC had been snubbed for years, along comes two design expies that remind you of P3MCs (3 if you wanna include Goro/Ken but Goro looks different enough imo), Makoto is named Makoto (a name some used for FeMC), and Makoto is praised for her design for being original and blah blah blah when it’s not (for multiple reasons besides the FeMC, kinda more the fans reactions fault but I was already having design issues so it just bugged me more when they’d say these things). So yeah it felt like Makoto stole aspects of the FeMC, and it’s not like FeMC has a lot for herself, which really just stepped on my toes. Combined that with legit hating the character when I finally get to see her in action (and it’s because of her actions and writing that I hate-hate the character, but prior to that it was just her stepping on my toes while trying to keep an open mind into liking her), the stuff said before gets amplified more than before.

But months later, after the first post of me ripping on Makoto for taking FeMC and Aika’s design (tho my later posts were in drafts I just didn’t post them till later), something amazing happened on Aug 4th. FeMC finally came back to us. And holy shit obviously I was happy, but it doesn’t dismiss the fact I was aware of how much of design rip off/expy Makoto was, and it wasn’t just FeMC anymore. But gdi if the fact that the FeMC wasn’t being ignored anymore didn’t change the outlook for me as an FeMC fan. FeMC was back, she’s loved, care was put into her character in PQ2, just.....skdfalf;a so happy ;w; But also so hopeful, she was acknowledged again, she had been cut from the 20th anniversary event in official art, and that hurt us, but now she’s back back. And she was a main character in PQ2.....which leads to you questioning, what next? 

Which brings us to Poniko, the one post hopeful outlook. Obviously she’s not starting in the same place as Makoto. Poniko has been revealed post-PQ2 FeMC....which means Atlus isn’t ignoring Hamuko (in fact a lot of the creators were stating they WANTED her back), we know the creators do love Hamuko. There’s also the fact.....Poniko looks less like an expy like Makoto (who imo looks like Soejima trying to emulate Kaneko’s art style, esp the eye shape, same with Yusuke too). Poniko? It goes beyond ripping off a design, she looks like she’s almost fully lifted from Hamuko, it just looks like Hamuko wearing a different outfit. Just straight up copy and paste. And would I have been pissed if she was revealed alongside Makoto? Maybe, or I might be theorizing that she is Hamuko herself like now (tho I think it’d get more push back due to Hamu being in Atlus’ basement for so long so it just being claimed as delusional and unlikely), or both (and then pissed when it’s revealed it’s not Hamuko). It’s just....she looks SO MUCH like Hamuko it can’t be a coincidence, and after PQ2 it feels less like one as well. Just.....the posture, the cinematic parallels, the hair color, the eye color, the eye shape, the eyelashes, the face structure, the way she stands.....Poniko just screams “I AM Hamuko” not “I just look like her because.” And it helps that other people in the fandom also see this too, some are hoping she’s a new person, but it seems people at least acknowledge that very obvious similarities between Hamuko and Poniko (while that didn’t really happen with P5 with Hamuko/Makoto). 

And....tbh I feel like I might sound like I’m splitting hairs (at least with the words I’m using). And it might sound weird that I think Makoto ripped off enough Hamuko it pissed me off, but Poniko just.....is a copy and paste of Hamuko, just straight up Hamuko in a different outfit and hairstyle but it doesn’t. But it’s the historical context I think that sheds that light. And the fact Poniko might just BE Hamuko, and so it’d make sense if that was the case for them to look like each other (while it doesn’t make sense for Makoto to look like Poniko). 

I guess it also helps that I personally had the headcanon Hamuko and Minato weren’t related (just strangers on the bridge in two separate cars), and they both survived the bridge accident but one became the leader of SEES and the other went on to live and do their own thing (until maybe a spinoff game pulls them back in). And while I.....well recalling it now I considered a reincarnation once in a hc scenario (opted for time travel forward cause that makes sense 8U I won’t go into it I had my reasons 8U), but looking at the 1st year symbol on Poniko (and reincarnation in other MegaTen works, I mean c’mon reincarnation is in the title) it feels plausible. And it works for Poniko because of the time the incident and the time to be reincarnated takes place (1999 being the accident and April 1 2000-April 2 2001 being the time frame she was born), which wouldn’t ever work for Makoto because she was born in 1998 (so even if I HAD considered Makoto it wouldn’t have worked, esp since they never tell us she jumped grades, it’s not possible....and while I’m all for hc and grey areas, this is something that WOULD be explicitly told because it’s not common in Japan and Atlus has been explicit about characters not in the ‘right’ grades before, just an fyi there 8U). 

I dunno I feel like there’s distinct clear reasons that I can fit them into separate categories. And yeah if Poniko isn’t Hamuko I’mma be burned too, BUT I’mma wait till a spinoff post-Royal before I get pissy.....cause I don’t expect clear answers to other past games in another game’s mainline entry (I only expect shallow shoutouts tbh). So yeah, just so you know where the deadline for my expectations are. 

[tumblunni]

OH MAN I somehow ended up unironically adoring Junya Kanashide??? He's seriously my fave p5 villain so far. Man we REALLY needed a good comic relief case after yusuke and makoto's sad back stories. So uhh yeah.. Spoilers for the third case of the game! But not really spoilers that matter or anything, unless you really wanna be surprised by the exact lunacy of Mr world's most ridiculous boss fight XD OKAY RIGHT LET ME BLABBER Like... It was SO GOOD that he's a complete outside context villain who has no connection to anything and just does stupid ordinary mafia crimes. It was great as a sort of framing device excuse to focus more on makoto's redemption arc/search for her own definition of justice. And it didn't really matter that she got her persona from fighting a guy she only just met instead of someone emotionally relevant, really her biggest enemy was her own self hatred and it symbolized her breaking out and showing her true personality for the first time! So yeah it worked perfectly that we had a stupid funnyman with no motivation except money, who gets like 5 minutes of screentime in his own plot. Makoto's was kinda the 'villain' for this whole arc anyway, it was so triumphant to finally see her join the team!! Thank you terrible money man for making this happen! Oh and BTW I seriously need to take a second to mention how makoto is literally the only character who had any sort of combat training before becoming a phantom thief. She spends ten hours filling the role of 'cliche catty student council president sitcom nemesis' and then suddenly 'oh BTW i know aikido' *runs off to punch shadows without a damn persona* And then instead of being all traumaness in her transformation sequence she just rips the mask off before the damn thing is even finished, and SHATTERS THE FLOOR TILES WITH EACH STEP! Shy nerdy sassy girl just EXPLODES into angry badass who's been hiding behind this prim and perfect mask for so long! And her persona ISNT EVEN A PERSONA?? She JUST punches shadows. Her persona is a fucking motorcycle that's like distant support friend compared to everyone else. Popemobile: "kick his ass honey I'll hold yo flower" ITS LITERALLY A POPE MOTORCYCLE IM NOT EVEN MAKING A JOKE!! so she punches fucking shadows and then drives her magic motorcycle out a window so hard they break thru the metaverse and land back in the real world sorry I CAN NOT GET OVER how much I love makoto!!!! ... Sorry that went offtopic. .. ANYWAY that's why terrible funny trash villain man works well as an excuse for her plot to happen. But I still enjoyed him a lot on his own merits! He's introduced as this honestly kinda scary and cool mob boss for like five minutes. I dunno if I would have preferred if he was actually a decent enemy like that? Like literally the ONLY time I've ever seen a fat mob boss character not played for laughs is the kingpin in spiderman. So seriously its an untapped market! BUT I do really adore his random subverted expectations terrible shadow self that is terrible in all the right ways~ The closest we get to any sort of personality description for this guy is that he's someone who pretends to act tough but is really just a selfish child who wants to live in the lap of luxury at any cost. Which might explain why his regular world design is honestly kinda inexplicably adorable?? He's got a total baby face when every other fat character in persona is drawn like frankenstein's monster. Its really rather creepy having this tiny chibi face on the evilest of all evils! And it is kind of a shame that he had a rather unique polite and soft spoken voice in his scary mob boss form, that was genuinely terrifying! They shoulda made his comedy shadow self sound even slightly similar, there's a million ways to do a funny version of that voice. Like an exaggerated nerd one! But every shadow seems to share the same voice actor for some reason?? Or else the distortion effect is so loud they all sound the same. ANYWAY His shadow self is just himself but dressed up like a banker with a fake mustache. Its hilarious cos he's still like a friggin 5ft tall 16 year old?? Also he's purple??? What??? And then he has this big fakeout demon transformation and his deadly sins form is just... The same guy with fly wings. Beelzebub is the most horrifying bonus boss in EVERY OTHER SMT GAME and this is what we got! I CANNOT BELIEVE And then (no joke) he starts doing terrible white boy rapping, and pulls a GIANT ROBOT out of nowhere to make up for his lack of boss form! The 'piggytron 2000', a giant death star piggy bank that shoots eyeball lazers. And then (NO JOKE) his ultimate move is turning it into a disco ball and COSPLAYING GANGNAM STYLE TO KILL YOU. Yes. This is a canon occurance in the persona universe. And then its just the most fun and low effort boss fight to make up for his deadly hard super long dungeon. It was over too fast! 10/10 would crush beetlejuice psy under a giant disco ball again And what is weird is that this terrible nonsense shadow is also like the most competent one they fought so far?? His dungeon is SO AWFUL and he actually spots you sneaking in and actively fights against you the whole way. His shadow self has ten times the screentime of the original! And he actually has the last laugh by not repenting at all, even though the real version of him is still gonna end up confessing his crimes either way. He just fades away with a big ol shit eating grin after revealing some important plot stuff to the heroes. Like.. Real junya was completely incompetent but his infinitely sillier shadow has apparently been operating independently of him and knows all about the phantom thieves and was making deals with some mysterious ultimate villain guy we had no clue even existed??? And now we're left with no answers to that, and shadow junya is probably still wearing that asshole grin in hell. Also his Treasure turned out to be completely worthless, its literally monopoly money with his face on it. Not even an intentional troll move or anything, that was LEGITIMATELY his single most important possession! Completely free of all character depth, right to the very end~! Oh god, everyone's FACES as they try and justify 'well its probably a metaphor about how he was a kid pretending to be badass', and then deciding the briefcase is probably worth more. Best ending to a thoroughly enjoyable brief moment of levity in a sad sad game! I salute you, gangnam Beelzebub! ... Also this mysterious villain ringleader person would probably be kicking the self if they knew the phantom thieves only found out about their plan thanks to disco monopolyman. This is why you don't make deals with comic relief, yo! XD