#oh shit i forgot to even put garbug in the poll

[thewapolls]

ANTLION, SANDSTAG & MYRMECOLEO I bundle together here because the first two are basically identical, and MYRMECOLEO seems like it's just a weird lost part of the SANDSTAG line. Myrmecoleon is both the scientific name for the actual Ant Lion insect, but also the name of the mythic creature, aka ANTLION, from old medieval bestiaries. (I feel like it's super backwards that the original WA design was by far the coolest, WA2 was kinda goofy but accurate to the old bestiary illustrations, but then the later model is just kinda meh?)

SANDCRAB, originally called SAND SCISSORS in Japanese, I'm throwing in here because it's become kind of a companion monster to SAND STAG. And it's the central pillar of a different monster family.

HERMITCRAB & HAMMERTAIL are the other two uses of the original WA1 model, neither of which survive into the rest of the series, so they get to band together here. Funny enough HAMMERTAIL is the name of a D&D monster, basically just an Ankylosaurus, introduced as part of the Eberron setting... but that was introduced in 2004, well after the original WA. (Weirdly the HERMITCRAB never came back in WA2 as a recolor of the OANNES enemy, but we'll get to those later...)

ROCKBUSTER doesn't appear to take its name from anything in particular. (Maybe referencing a Beast Wars transformer with the same name? But he debuted as part of the Beast Wars Neo series, which came out the same year as Wild Arms 2, so I feel like there wasn't time for it to come out first and then still make it into the game in time for release. Is there some kind of Japanese thing about rock busting crabs I'm just not aware of???)

SCORPIUS is a funky little link in the tree. Originally a WA3 recolor of the SANDSCISSORS and ROCKBUSTER, it vanished for a few games and then came back as a totally different arthropod. It feels weird that it becomes a flying insect and not a scorpion but ti could be a play on the SCORPIUS constellation making it "in the sky"?

VESPER, which I'm pretty sure was just meant to be VESPA, as in "wasp", is just a recolor of the SCORPIUS in WA4 and 5. (On the one hand I think it being a big wasp/hornet is sufficient enough, but there is also technically a VESPA constellation; it was an alternate name of the Apis:"bee" or Musca:"fly" constellation which kind of neatly aligns it with SCORPIUS' shtick.)

but notably, even though SCORPIUS in WA4 is where these two trees cross over, this model actually started back in WA3 with GARBUG, another classic D&D monster that has probably fallen pretty thoroughly by the wayside over the years. Understandably large bugs just don't have quite the same sticking power as Goblins and Kobolds, or Dragons and Gelatinous Cubes. (There's also the CHIMERA WING, just another of several elemental CHIMERA mosnters in WA3.)

CRAB BUBBLER blowing bubbles is just a thing crabs do, it shares a model with the enemy GIANT CRAB in WA2, which is also just a thing some crabs are. In fact the GIANT CRAB is actually called RAID SCISSORS in Japanese, although I don't know that that's any sort of reference either.

GRODINE. Fascinatingly, this is the source of what would become the enduring crab enemy design, totally unrelated to the preexisting crab enemies when first introduced in WA2 as a random boss type monster. It appears to be based on a series of "(Flying)Saucer Organism" toys, specifically one named BLACK DOME.

DEATHMASK being a big crab enemy is a reference to the villain, Cancer Deathmask, from Saint Seiya.