#wander and mono

[harrycosmo]

Guillermo Del Toro was inspired by Ico and Shadow of the Colossus when he made El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth).

It’s well known that Guillermo Del Toro is a huge fan of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. The second game came out around the time filming of Pan’s Labyrinth was concluding, but I think it’s quite likely that del Toro would have watched trailers for it. His film is often described as a fairy tale for adults, and it occurred to me how well that describes Ico. Shadow of the Colossus is more like a Greek myth. The first shot of the movie shows Princess Moanna leaving her kingdom through ruins that are very reminiscent of the castle in Ico. Ofelia speaks to the faun in a place with a spiral staircase that's reminiscent of where Yorda is suspended in her cage. Both we and Ofelia are told that she is in fact Princess Moanna, Moanna's soul having returned in her body. When she finally escapes her fascist captor, she glows like Yorda and is reunited with her family as the princess in an afterlife kingdom.

I wrote a post here about Le Roi et l’Oiseau (The King and the Mockingbird) as a source of inspiration for Fumito Ueda. It's an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep, which features a faun/satyr, the same creature with the hind legs of a goat and horns (like Ico) that we see in Pan’s Labyrinth. The ending music, which is also the lullaby that Mercedes hums to Ofelia, sounds a bit like ‘La Bergere et le Ramoneur’ from The King and the Mockingbird which I have previously suggested could be an inspiration for 'Castle in the Mist'.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Ofelia is guided by fairies. Two fairies are effectively ‘used up’, saving her from being killed. The Great Deku tree. The monster sitting at the table looks like a ReDead and when he places his eyes into his hands, it reminded me of Bongo Bongo, the Shadow Temple boss.

Various movie influences - A girl rescuing her baby brother in a labyrinth is like Labyrinth. Doors created by drawing an outline with chalk is from Beetlejuice. Ofelia wears a pair of red shoes like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Alice in Wonderland.

Pan's Labyrinth feels very like a video game and as much like a Greek myth as like a fairy tale. It's something I feel I should have thought of before, how much the quests you go on in action-adventure and RPG games are like those in classical mythology. Think of how Ofelia has to complete three tasks, face three monsters and is rewarded with special items. Her first task, for example, is to get three stones into the mouth of a giant toad for which she is rewarded with a special key. It's amazing how Guillermo del Toro manages to thread this fantasy world together with a real world situation of Ofelia being held captive by a sadistic military officer in Franco's Spain.

[selene-lunette]

Tiktok trend I've seen a lot on my fyp!

[nectarwine]

shout out to me checking in on Mono religiously through my first SotC playthrough cause I was worried she would start decomposing cause I was taking too long

[ryoli]

baby wander rediscovering lizards

[acquired-stardust]

Shadow of the Colossus Playstation 4 2018

[landsoflightanddark]

Sorry for the off-screen pics and video, but here's Wander and Mono's interactions in the game. Also there's a little something about them that I won't be sharing on the blog just so I'm not giving everything away. I'm sure there's a video of what the completed hub is like on YouTube for those who want to see it.

[banjo-be]

Are we all just prisoners of Fate?

Shadow of the Colossus

[wander-bb]

Shadow of the colossus

Wander and Agro

[imsociallyanxiousgetoverit]

definitely not inspired by any posts I just saw but actually Link/Sky would absolutely be the Wander to Zelda/Sun’s Mono

[aroace-poly-show]

. a bitch already took the iesu url. cruel evil fucked up world that should be mine

[harrycosmo]

Fumito Ueda was inspired by… Galaxy Express 999 (1979).

Ueda has cited the Galaxy Express 999 manga series as one of his influences. Watching the film they made in the middle of its run, I could see a lot of Ico and also some Shadow of the Colossus.

It made me think of Gulliver’s Travels, Alice in Wonderland and Firefly as we follow the boy, Tetsuro, visiting different planets. On a planet called Titan, Tetsuro is given a gun by an old woman that turns out to be ‘the only cosmo gun capable of killing machine men’. Ueda's games feature special weapons that are uniquely effective against the antagonists.

Spoilers for the movie ahead!

It prefigures Ghost in the Shell. There's a character called Tochiro who, moments before his death, gets Tetsuro to activate a machine that vaporizes his body and transfers his consciousness into the supercomputer of his best friend's ship, 'Arcadia'. Maetel, one of two Yorda-like figures, explains to Tetsuro, "I am a copy of your mother in her youth. I am a shadow in the form of a human. When I grow old, I get a copy of a new body. That is how I survive through the ages and travel through time." Both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus feature characters whose bodies are vessels for other consciousnesses (Yorda for The Queen and Wander for Dormin). With the line ‘I had become a witch who controlled time’, it actually sounded more like a warning against plastic surgery.

The castle in the movie gets destroyed.

The other Yorda-like figure is Claire whose mother forced her to trade in her body for one made of glass. Her appearance is reminiscent of petrified Yorda and she has a power that makes her glow which she uses not to open Idol Gates but to save Tetsuro from Queen Promethium.

At the end, Maetel says to Tetsuro, ‘From now on, I will be a woman who lives on only in your memories. I will be nothing more than an illusion of your young boy’s heart, a phantom of your youth.’ The lyrics of 'You Were There' for me carry a similar feeling of nostalgia.

....................................................................................

The movie can be watched for free on YouTube.

[selene-lunette]

Working on an edit but I liked the way these two sketches mirror each other

[makudraws]

Crossover

Este es de los dibujos que más amé hacer, hay fallas obviamente pero como me emocioné cuando al fin acabe, es de mis dibujos más consentidos

Fecha: 5 abr. 2020

[gmology]

Shadow of the Colossus (Remake: 2018) | 5 yrs

[libertasforte]

she is pyro yelan

[nemojti]

sometimes i wonder wat games best represent my artistic aesthetic and heres one of them