Where did I put my new headgear… frick! Oh well , hi Island guests! I decided to have a bit more fun with my blogs and well that means I am doing a lot of silier topics rather than reviews! It has made blogging a lot more fun! Yet also a whole lot less useful! So let’s hope you read these things because you like me or my content rather than that you read my stuff to see if an anime or game is for you! I came up with a new little concept where under certain conditions I pit two options against each other.. and then I pick! Today we will answer the important question! Which Pokémon will taste better?!I only want the finest cuisine now that I am going to ascend manager status!
Beef: Taurosor Miltank
There aren’t all that many Bovine options in Pokémon, Bouffalant escaped the Abattoir because of the relation Miltank and Tauros seem to have.. almost as if a male and female side of the same coin. We all know which one of the two is scarier, but which one of the two would be tastier? For those of you who don’t know, yes it is established that people eat Pokémon and these two are the most commonly mentioned being turned into burgers. Fan theories basically say they are the same pokémon in a way but gender variations..like Gardevoir and Gallade as it were. Or Glalie and Froslass. So we already start with a pickle.. they will probably taste fairly similar. Tauros meat will be a bit more muscular and chewie while Miltank is a bit more plumb and has more fat.
So I do believe that Miltank would be the more commonly used protein. It has the less pronounced taste. However I do believe that Tauros would be the more flavourful one. Miltank lives off its own milk a bit..which I can only imagine reducing it’s taste. Tauros seem a bit more wild.. and might have a bit of a gamey aftertaste which I really could fancy..but best of all, Tauros has multiple tails.. Oxtails are great in taste and for soup and sauces. Good for graveys as well. So I am convinced that Tauros is the more flavourful one. Yet is it always tastier?! The common population says no. Chicken Fillet is still a lot more popular than chicken thigh and people really prefer the more neutral tasting meats. I however am not the safe cut kinda girl! I prefer the pieces of cow others pass up on , so I’ll go bull as well!!
Pork: Grumpig or Pignite
I’d make chicken a category but there is only one chicken pokémon, so I think white meat is scarce in the world of Pokémon. So let’s pick our source of Pokémon Bacon. PIloswine is another option but I’d say that that again is more gamey and it would be the Miltank and Tauros story all over again. Besides Ground, Ice type sounds like the meat would be really tough and would need to marinate a lot.. we don’t always have time for that so for today we will compare two pigs with similar body types. Pignite is a fire fighting starter from the fith generation, while Grumpig is a psychic type from the Hoenn region. At first glance the latter has a lot of things going for it. It’s a psychic type that is known for using its psychic powers to eat berries. Which means it will have a lot of sweet, subtle meat that could be delicious! I am also very interested in eating something purple!
On the other hand Pignite is a fire , fighting type. The meat would be more firm and probably not as flavorful as it would eat whatever 10 years old starting their journey would feed it… so it will probably be fed a lot of pot noodles and redbull. Yet it has a very plumb body and some fats that can be beautifully rendered. I bet it could taste nice with some apple and thyme, maybe some sauteed onions. The most important clue to which one is the tastiest we find in their pre-evolutions. You see Spoink the prevolution of Grumpig dies if it ever stops bouncing on it’s own tail.It has an insanely stressful life.
Stress can be tasted in an animal. Alternatively , Tepig is a starter which means it is bred to be friendly towards 10 year olds. Which means it probably has a plushie little life as soon as it is born where it is groomed to be friendly to be people. Which I assume would be done by getting food, pets and other forms of love.. so it hungers for that same type of affection in a 10 year old.. those who evolve to early or who aren’t picked live with the professor for a while .. but some will eventually just be sold off for meat, but before that a Pignite will have had a good life.. and you can taste that. Besides it’s a fire type! Which means it practically is self crisping bacon! That alone would make it the winner.
Duck: Kantonian Farfetch’D or Galarian Farfetch’D
So since I wanted to do at least some form of edible bird comparison I settled on a bird that I love to bits… but also love to eat! Ducks! In this case.. we even compare the same Pokémon.. but from different parts in the world. You know much like how Irish Mutton is kind of tastier than Dutch Mutton. And yes while I would love to have a pet Duck, I still would eat them. Same would go for other pets.. on the premise they were bred for meat.. not as a pet that got not picked and turned into meat instead. So which one of these ducks… would be the tastiest. They both have a leak, in varying sizes. Galarian Farfetch’D has the bigger leak so I think it is safe to say that would be the tastier leak! It has also much more rich and vibrant colours. Ratio wise I also think Galarian Farfetch’d would be the more balanced meal!
Yet when I look at the duck itself I can not help but feel that the Kantonian Farfetch’D would be tastier. I do not know why… but sometimes you see a pig or a cow and think.. that seems like a tasty animal.. while other times you think, eeeew, I don’t want that in my Big Mac. It’s that whole Bancho-Vibe Galarian Farfetch’D has. I’d think kissing a princess would be nicer than Kissing Jolene Kujo or Poison from Final Fight.. would be not as nice of a kiss then Sailor Moon. Sometimes you just know these things right?! I feel Galarian Farfetch’D would be the junkfood duck! The one that ends up in the peking duck at that budget chinese restaurant while Kantonian Farfetch’D would be found at Bistro La Duchesse du Carnard Douce, or something! Now it would be awesome if we could mix and match! Kantonian Bird.. with Galarian Leek.. but that sounds like that might be a delicacy I can’t afford.
Fruit: Cherubi or Applin
I failed to come up with a good vegetable this or that. My initial idea would be Oddish vs Bouncesweet.. but Oddish is Poisonous. So out go the turnips. Then Amoonguss versus Shinotic for Mushrooms.. but Amoonguss is poisonous. Shroomish and Shinotic are too different. In the world of Pokémon.. if it’s green it is most likely bad for you! The kelp of Dhelmise drains life and don’t even get me started on how many leafs might actually be Razor leafs?! No it’s best not to eat your veggies in the world of Pokémon! Fruit however offers a few options. Cherubi and Applin are both tiny pokémon with relatively low stats and a mostly harmless move pool. I think Applin might learn apple acid….but apple vinegar is a kitchen staple so that is safe. Apples and Cherries are both fairly popular fruits but both have a bit of a problem. The cherry has mutated into having a second head which might be a bit of an unsettling sight.. after all cherries might be to tiny to cut off the face.. so for those not wishing to eat something with a face.. this could be trouble.
Applin however is an apple that has a worm in it.. only in this case the worm is a tiny dragon.. somehow this causes it to merge with the apple and the idea of a worm in an apple is a pretty gross idea. Besides that there are plenty of normal apples in the pokémon world, but cherries are uncertain. Why eat the one apple that can fight back? I personally think that a worm living in an apple and having merged with said fruit is probably ceviched in the apple acid and might actually taste nice, still it is a pretty gross idea.. much more so than a two faced cherry! My favourite cake is a Black Forest cake and my favourite fruit is a cherry! Though peaches are close.. but since there is no peach Pokémon.. I had to pit the cherry against the apple.. and while the Apple definitely has the tastier evolution.. I can’t escape the feeling that the little red guy looks super tasty! Both in it’s regular AND shiny form!
Dessert: Slurpuff or Alcremie
Let’s end with desert! This one is a tough one. Alcremie is very VERY close to being my favourite Pokémon of all time, but could I imagine myself eating one?! Yes! Alcreamy is the whipped cream Pokémon, decorated with fruit and other things. That is pretty tasty! I loved whipped cream, it is neutral and you can make a delicious dessert with it by combining it well.. it’s everything’s best friend! Slurpuff on the other hand is a Meringue. which means it is egg whites whisked into stiff peaks and usually a lot of sugar! Meringue is a great desert if you combine! Like with Sea salted caramel and dark chocolate.. or with lemon! Slurpuff also has a great nose .. amazingly so! So he can help you find the ingredients… but that is kinda cruel! So I won’t do that! I really love Slurpuff and Alcremie so I would need to eat pieces of them in a dish I can not make a dish with them!
Alcremie has a big pro over Slurpuff though, it comes in many flavours and options! Depending if you spin your cream right or left and how hard you can whip there are 71 Alcremies for you to whip up including it’s gigantamax cake form. However there are a few pretty gross sounding Alcreamies as well! Mint cream with Clover?! Salted Cream with Ribbons?! Those don’t sound very tasty… but they do look adorable. So this begs the question.. do we compare the average Alcremie flavour against Slurpuff.. or the best tasting one?! Caramel Swirl with Strawberry sweet Alcremie sounds pretty delicious! Or how about a Lemon cream with Blueberry one?! Pretty good if you feel like something more tart!. There is an alcreamie for every mood! And they are not that hard to make either! Meanwhile for Slurpuff you have to find some whipped dream… and I might prefer that to eat that over a Meringue. Plus spinning is good to lose all those calories Alcremie will put on!
And that’s it! A feast of Pokémon has been served! Which ones do you think I called wrong? Do you have another good idea for a This or That?! Which Pokémon would you not mind eating? Let me know in the comments while I go rest up after such a hearty meal! May all your pokémon be tasty! Oyasumi!
Hello Little Lights! For those who have been keeping track of my Twitter Account this might not come as a surprise! Yet I have recently played a RomHack of my favourite franchise that I really want to talk to you about today! What if we combine Pokémon with YuGiOh?! I got my game on and tried this rom! A journey began …but I felt like this game was missing something, perhaps some spirit… or maybe even the heart of the cards?!
Creature Swap
In the past I have already played Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Team Training. Which was a Dragon Ball Rom hack of the same base game. Fire-Red. However where in that game we do see some locations reskinned and renamed here we travel through good old Kanto. No Domino city here.. though that makes sense. YuGiOh is fairly barren of locations. As it is very much set in one city and one island and maybe the Egypt of the past.
Yet even then in that ancient egypt there wasn’t much dueling going on. PokéDuel also only really has references up to to 5d’s and those are very minimal. Rather than being Pokémon YuGiOh this kind of feels more like Pokémon YuGiOh Abridged. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. There are 163 new creatures to collect, so for those well versed in YuGiOh lore and even those who just saw an arc or two of the first season.. there are still plenty of monsters to add to your team that you will know.
Gym Leaders have also been replaced including their respective typing. A lot of monsters even have custom typings and every monster has somewhat altered movesets so they seem more interesting. For example Dark Magician Girl will learn psybeam, but also a lot of moves like attract, sweet kiss and barrier to mirror the role of a card she had in the series. It goes so far that this actually has a fairly large impact on the game as YuGiOh monsters tend to not have a lot of moves in the anime,, the card monsters in this game reflect that and get a lot more stat boosting, or status inducing moves.
This game is not something you should play without a healthy dose of full heals! So gameplay wise, I actually found this rom to be a fairly interesting departure from the Pokémon formula ,and instead we go for a slower type of gameplay, with more tactical plays to be made. Neat! So just by swapping creatures around and typing availability the game changes a lot!
Examples of gameplay changing is very noticable in Dragon Type cards. If you know a bit about YuGiOh, you’ll know Dragon cards are very common in the game, so Dragon Types.. are not always that tactical to have. Dark type is SUPER common as well , so is the normal type. So fighting types are very strong to have in this game, many of the 5d’s cards are steel type after all. Water types are really uncommon only existing in the form of Humanoid Slime and Archery Girl as well as the Legendary Fisherman and a handful of other cards.. but going from one of the most common typings to one of the least common means you will have to adjust your strategies! And that is the saving grace of this game! It offers a very interesting take on Pokémon battling and will make you a better fighter.. Unfortunately the rest of the game isn’t very good.
Dark Mirror Force
First of all this game is UGLY! I don’t want to rip on peoples pixel-art and people are still working on this game but it is made public , so I think I am allowed to have my opinion here.. and this game isn’t pretty! Overworld sprites are okay.. because famous duelists have been ripped out of those GBA store games like Resheff of Destruction or that narrative god cards game. You will recognise them Tea, Tristan and the others quite easily! ..It does result in some problems though!
For example Pegasus is an Elite 4 member.. but instead of his iconic look we get the Reshef of Destruction restyle.. where he called himself Sol! Odd choice! Dartz is a Gymleader and obviously he has no sprite so that one looks very odd! And then there is the fact that a YuGiOh sprite is twice as tall as the trainer sprite.. so we get some odd ratios in the overworld.. as well as regular pokémon still appearing in that world.. it looks odd to find a Kabuto Fossil while the item uses the dome fossil to revive Exodia Necross. It just screams fan remake.. something that was less apparent in a few other hacks.
In battle though is where the game really looks like a digested Kuriboh. The Dark Magician sprite is FANTASTIC, so is her back sprite… but some of the duelist and some monsters look like …..crabcakes..that have been eaten by a dog.. and passed out. Some art is really good! The starters look pretty amazing! Other art however looks like it has been drawn in paint. Some of the monsters are absolutely non recognisable. Like Change of Heart of Buster Blader. What am I looking at?! However I could find myself liking this if it had been done ironically!
The problem is that there is no style which makes that paint work look uglier than an Orange shouty man.. if you had soaked him in a tub of red beets.. all pruned up and all! Some trainer sprites are just heads. Their portraits from Starway of the Destined Duel.. while some have been made in pair style. Other times they are simplified version of the overworld sprite. There is no style though! Odion’s head is completely blown up large and in your face, while the Elite 4 is custom sprite work.. The same goes for the monsters. I should be scared when I see a five headed dragon for the first time! Not laughing my ass off. Cyber End Dragon is supposed to feel menacing. .. not like a nest full of baby birds crying for momma to feed them.
Release Restraint
Besides the ugly sprite work is how limited the game feels! Dialogue has been replaced with YuGiOh dialogue.. but it has been done randomly! Up to a point where one guy in a Pokémon Center can mention his Pokémon while the other makes a comment about dueling on MotorCycles. There is no immersion in this world as the game is very much unfinished at least in terms of feeling. There is no cohesion, and what is said feels a bit like a retread of YuGiOh Abridged.
Take Lavender town for example, the entire ghost tower is one giant Pot of Greed joke! Which is fun, I laughed but if every character in the tower there makes the same joke, I would have rather seen a funny reference elsewhere. It feels as if the creators of this Romhack were to afraid we would not like their jokes so they mostly used the ones of little Kuriboh.. and that is a shame!
Because WHEN the game does it’s own thing with the franchise it does it nicely. Before entering Rock Tunnel for example you encounter a duplicate of the old man laying on the ground sprite.. with a little girl sitting besides him. She makes a joke that her Grandpa had a near heart attack at the announcements of Pendulum Summons! I hate that mechanic myself so I laughed really hard.. it also combines this iconic Pokémon thing with a relevant joke in the YuGiOh and that is where this game can shine! In lavender town you can find a man who makes a very good yugioh/ this is a rom hack joke. Where they used to burry pokemon and people… now they bury cards. \
There is soul in that! Yet then they add in green hair Kaiba.. as a reference to season 0 of YuGiOh, but when defeated he says, screw the rules I have green hair. I like the joke.. but not as a line for when defeated. It would be funny if they had replaced the Saffron City guard with it. and when letting you through he could say the line. Weevil is in Erica’s joke and he makes a joke about all women that surround him.. yet the old man outside has not been given new text.. missed opportunities. Team Rocket is just a team rocket. That would make for a great henchman joke.. with finger guns! It just lacks that sense of cohesion.
Mai replaces Surge and could have been made more interesting by replacing “there is a switch there” by .. what’s this you picked up a strange scent.. and the second line with, you found a scented card. Just something, Blaine’s Quiz was still a pokemon quiz, I would have loved Yu Gi Oh questions! It just feels like random people did random parts of the game and it has been stitched together like a patchwork quilt.. where the creators tend to thread on the safe side just a bit too much, despite their amazingly interesting battle system.
Kaiba versus Marik
In the end we end up with a game that feels a bit like a match between Kaiba and Marik. It definitely has some interesting back and forth in terms of gameplay.. but something is not feeling right! The two personalities are too similar and the same kind of lines are repeated back and fourth without much to keep you engaged. You’d miss that sense of Grandeur that Joey or Yugi can bring to a match! Kaiba versus Marik also seems like a match that is not meant to be.. if it was in the anime, we would probably see Joey and Yugi doing some other stuff at the same time.. time skipping trough the match with the field constantly growing bigger and crazier but we would lack the rhyme or reason! And it’s a shame! Because the ingredients for a great game are here!
I had some of the best pokémon battles in this game from a tactical sense and it was fun to play the game at a different pace! Yet at the same time I kept asking myself questions, why does Kuriboh evolve into Kuribabylon with a Moonstone? Why does Relinquished transform into restrict with that same item?! I get why Neos turns into Neos Aqua Dolphin with a water stone, but why is Celtic Guardian a Grass type.. and at that why is he pretty much the only grass type in the game?! It is a game that gets really close to getting it right.. but leaves too much work undone to feel as a proper attempt at a crossover ..for now!
Give it a try if you are a big fan of both franchises AND Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged, otherwise I’d say it’s a good idea to let this one sit in it’s cocoon of evolution for a little while longer. I really enjoyed the more status and effect heavy way of battling , yet at the same time it slows the game pace down a lot, and Pokémon already has a fairly slow pace of it’s own! So it is something you would need to keep in consideration. More times than you’d want you’ll find your monsters Paralyzed , Confused and Attracted, which does fix some gameplay issues..but creates others of it’s own. In the end I think that is really what this game is. Rather than an evolution of Pokémon Games, this aims more to feel like a Spin Off…. as if we would get Yu-Gi-Oh.. but on Motorcycles..or something!
My little lights! As you may have noticed.. or may not I have been using the term “Pinkie Plays” for my Let’s play style blogs! This one is titled Pinkie Played.. past tense! That is because this will be the format for my game reviews. I recently saw a let’s play of a game and I immediately fell in love with this game. It was a game called Monster Sanctuary. After completing the game… I am STILL in love with it. Oh Team 17 you made me one lucky moth.. I can destroy creatures and gather strength on my own! Happy days!
What is Monster Sanctuary?
Monster Sanctuary is a game published by Team 17, it was created by Moi Roi games and designer, Denis Sinner. If mister Sinner would fail as a game designer, he will always have a career in porn with a name like that. He might have to change the pronunciation of his first name a bit. Do I think he will ever need to go into porn?! Hell no! This game is whoops sitting meat. Scoring an 8.1 audience score and a 7.5 score on Metacritic with a very positive review rating on Steam, this game is sitting well. Myself would probably even rate it a smidge higher than the Audience score.. at an 8.6 or 8.7 or so. Monster collecting games in general review a bit lower than most of their peers because there is also a lot of hate for the genre. People who know this type of game isn’t for them to review it anyway in the hopes to burn it down and that is a shame. Because even if you aren’t a big Pokémon fan there is a lot to love here! With a 16 bit esthetic and the 2d exploratory platforming.. this is a monster collecting game like no other.
This game plays much more like Metroid than like Pokémon. Except there is no shooting. When you touch monsters, you engage in combat.. which is turn based and involves Monsters selecting their moves. These moves can either be magical or physical and belong to one of the four elements. (Air , Fire, Water and Earth). Some attacks can be neutral as well. Every enemy has a set of weaknesses and resistances you have to work around and explore. To a Pokémon fan it would feel as if 4 types aren’t enough but it is handled remarkably well.With very deep combat, that is also very easy and much more intuitive to grasp. Each monster can be examined before a combat round starts and weaknesses are always available to you.. so no need to learn all 101 monster’s typings and stats. This game makes collecting monsters more fun than in Pokémon. If you want to beat Pokémon you need to catch a decent team of 6, and while here you also battle with a squad of six, you are constantly encouraged to find the eggs of more monsters. That’s right, you do not capture monsters in this one.. you hatch them! You can gain eggs from random groups of monsters..by performing well in combat and using tactics and playing smart!
The reason why you need to capture more monsters is because there are plenty of monsters that offer you new ways to travel around the world. In the first area you might for example discover a small crevice you can’t fit through. Samus would use her Morphball to get through but since you do not have a fancy suit.. you will need to capture a Changeling that DOES morph you into a ball.. or cuter, a Rainbow Slime that can turn you into a slime. You might need a bird to hover to a treasure high above.. but your current bird can’t fly far enough. You might need to catch that derpy looking Dinosaur you saw flying in the other room.. but that one is hidden behind a switch with a lighting icon above it.. what monster do you need to activate THAT! While you can only train up 6 monsters at the same time you can travel with basically endless monsters so you can make sure you can use your favourite monsters to get past a certain obstacle. Wanna clean up . .you can always donate monsters to the army or bring some of the monsters you can not currently use to the farm. There are so many options!
What do you do in Monster Sanctuary?
In the game you take the role of a nameless Monster Keeper.. a Keeper is the word use for those who try to keep the Sanctuary safe by taming monsters. Humanity lives in a sheltered habitat that is called the Sanctuary and it’s many zones are inhabited by many monsters, that for the most part have been ..fairly friendly but recently the creatures have become a bit restless. As more Monsters of “Champion” Quality appear. It is the task of a Monster Keeper to defeat these Champion monsters before they can rile up the monster populus and make the area uninhabitable for humans. You play a boy or a girl, who is part of one of the four important bloodlines. There is the Bloodline of the Eagle, The Wolf, The Lion and the Toad. All belonging to a certain elemental bias. Such as the Eagle belonging to the Wind and Fire element. The Wolf of Water and Wind, the Lion of is Fire and Earth and the Toad is Earth and Water. I of course chose the toad.. why?! Well it’s a Toad that belongs to the grass element! That shall forever be my starter and my number 1.
The Journey starts with you traveling across the land , searching far and wide to find enough Champion monsters to increase your Keeper Rank so you can finally live up to your three rivals and your grandfather’s reputation. However you soon uncover that an evil organisation of Alchemists is trying to destroy the Monster Keepers. Performing all sorts of weird and unsanitary experiments with Alchemy. One name keeps popping up! Marduk, a leader of the Alchemist that supposedly has found a way to make himself immortal. Now he seems to have found a way to take away monsters that are bound to people and his motivations seem to be rooted deep in Monster Lore.. something evil is coming! You have to increase in rank faster than any Monster Keeper before you.. to stop whatever is hiding in the dark. Of course this is a retro style game so the story at times can feel a bit irrelevant.. but it is there and entertaining for those who choose to partake…but it is equally fun to go about and explore things on your own volition. Very little parts of the game are sealed behind linear progression, though you might wonder why you are hunting for a certain artifact in a new area if you do it all yourself.
The game counts 14 areas of which one works like a hub and safe house where you can shop, craft, get exposition and donate monsters to the army. Another one works as your post/game “bonus” content hub. Here you do things like challenging bosses you have defeated before to get greater rankings or fight against a series of challenging monster teams to see if you have truly mastered the game.. this area even has a room in which you can take your monster team online and battle other players. The other 12 areas are your basic Metroid like areas, in which you can find more monsters and sometimes items to explore terrain and overall find treasures and the likes. I only focussed on the story content part of the game and getting most of the monsters and I ended up putting about 30 hours in the game before reaching the end. I DID go out of my way to explore.. but I haven’t even scratched the surface off all the battle challenges, I have not done much of the postgame yet. This means the game for me is well worth it’s price of admission!
What is there to like about the game?
My response to the game is overwhelmingly positive. Let’s begin with the monster themselves. The games 101 monster count seems a bit lackluster at first, but when you realise that this game doesn’t really feature evolution that suddenly becomes a whole lot more impressive. Each monster is their unique thing.. except for the slimes there aren’t really any sprite swaps either. Only about 10 monsters evolve.. and in their cases it’s more like special ways to get a new monster, that require a specific monster and an item to create a new monster. Their designs can radically change so it really feels like there are 101 truly unique monsters. Later in the game you unlock the ability to swap monsters towards either the light or the dark. While it doesn’t change their ability a Dark Shifted Monk has significantly different stats than a Light Shifted Monk. So every monster has 3 slight variations. Unlike Pokémon their levelup path isn’t set either.. in this game you can choose skill trees.
Every monster in the game has four Skill trees, some with more abilities than others, but basically you choose how your Catzerker will develop. Do you let him focus on Neutral damage with a lot of points invested in getting more and more powerful critical hits? Or do you want him to use his Fire and Wind abilities to take advantage of enemies that are weak to that. Perhaps you want your Spirit Toad to be focussed on AoE Attacks with the chance to poison your enemies as you go.. or perhaps like me you want to build him like a completely support focussed tank, that can buff as he heals and heals as he buffs. Are these choices not working out for you? Resetting their skills costs next to nothing! Once a monster reaches the max level of 40, they get an ultimate and you can choose from three of them. This leads to one of this game’s greatests boons! All the monsters feel like YOUR unique monsters. Yes there are Meta’s you can look up, yes some builds will work better than others.. but you can build your own challenge level here and my Toad isn’t exactly like any other Toad.
This of course also leads to a lot of depth in combat,which is reflected by the many areas of the game. Each of the twelve zones tend to have about two subzones. For example in the great forest you first encounter a lot of woodland critters like monsters, bugs, bears and plant like creatures. More often than not they have a fire weakness, though there is some diversity, a bias can definitely be sensed. The second part of the woods is overrun by Goblins who all are strong against magic but weak against physical attacks. Since each combat sequence sends out three monsters, you find you’ll have to swap out members semi regularly if you want to make it far. Luckily the game offers an easy level up token, that allows you to add levels to weaker monsters, for almost no money.. the downside to this token, you can’t use it to level higher than one level below your highest rank monster. If your highest monster is max level.. and it gains enough experience.. that is not wasted.. instead that monster now produces level-up tokens to save you from grinding. The diversity in the world, the leveling and the biodiversity in this game all come together. Which makes everything feel unique.
The game is also very generous with rewards, there are lots of secrets for you to explore! Remember that one room you could not enter before because you had no monster that could activate a pressure Switch?! Now you can.. and the reward in the chest is better if you get it at this level then later on. However if you choose to press on that item you find can later be upgraded to still be a viable find! Everything in this game oozes freedom. There are completely optional areas, but going there offers you some of the best gear. There are even secrets upon secrets which for example lead you to unique monsters such as the Team 17 iconic Worms to be added to your team who have skill trees that mimic the feeling of the little crawlers. There are plenty of cool references to the material the game maker “borrowed” from as well to show that this is a game made out of love! And you can play it your way!
What is there to dislike?
Like any game this one doesn’t escape having a few downsides though. The most prominent one is the “loot chance” aspect of finding an egg. Say you discover a monster that can cut through vines.. by performing well you get a higher star rating.. the higher the star rating the higher the chance is to get a rare item. Eggs always fall in this slot.. but many monsters also drop something else. So unless you get a five star rating (which guarantees a rare drop) you getting a monster is already locked behind TWO RNG checks. To alleviate this a lot of monsters have overlapping abilities. Catzerker can cut the vines and destroy hidden walls, but Magmapillar can Burn the vines and light torches. So overall progress is never locked away to harshly behind RNG but later on you will encounter elemental switches at hard to reach places. While my Frost-Slime can activate Ice switches it might not be able to hit a remote one.. because you need a monster whose “activate ice switches” requires that trigger to be projectile based. There is no way to find out what variant a monster has until you catch it and if they don’t drop their egg due to RNG things can feel a bit frustrating.
A major grip I had with this game was not being able to put waymarkers on my map! It feels like the SNES metroid map, where you just have to remember that one room had no light and that the other room has a strange keyhole. On the one hand this really sells the classic vibe and in a way I like it but on the other hand.. since the map is so big that there is not a single screenshot of the entire explored map out there you can understand it might be kind of frustrating if you remember you encountered a room somewhere you can solve now.. but for the live of you , you can’t remember where. I have a good memory when it comes to those things, and since the areas look diverse enough it never feels atrocious but a quick reminder at times would have been nice. The game at times lacks those quality of life improvements modern games have.. I think just to be retro. For example the final boss is a two tiered fight.. if you lose the second you’ll have to repeat the first and since I work with a stall team that for me was a 20 minute fight I had to do over, I had no trouble beating it. It just took time.
Which brings me to the final gripe I have with this game and that is the level of Tedium at later levels. This game HAS to be played relying on buffs and debuffs, if you focus on assault alone the enemy will debuff the heck out of you and it will feel like you are taking down a dragon with a potato peeler. While I had debuffers in the Underworld my debuff removers were weak to the enemies typing so I could not use them all that much.. which means in some fights my damage was reduced by 25% six times over or so.. When I got that specific monster (a spider that ensnares you with web) he became a staple in my team as well and I debuffed the heck out of enemies.. but combat can feel really slow. The game has a combo system.. the third attacker deals the most damage, and the first two build up your multiplier.. however if you have to switch because you are debuffed into infinity you also nerf your non impaired team members. While the game doesn’t punish you with DEATH too often, it does with a lot of delays.
So is it good?!
Overall it didn’t really kill my joy for playing this game, I loved it in the end and already want a sequel! This game is very dear to me! I really enjoyed the time I spent with my monsters and have formed a bond with them. The combination of Pokémon and Meteoroid works super well and I would love to see more things in this universe. There is a lot of lore about every monster, like every “pokédex” entry is four or so pages long filled with much more text than in Pokémon, you can learn about their history and their current day use.. these monsters are very concrete and well balanced out.. every monster feels different and you can make it stand out from its peers! Adding platformer gameplay to that just made it more fun to me.
It does make the mistake of going retro, just a bit to much in parts but for me as a retro gamer that is more of a minor annoyance something I have to do to get to the good stuff.. but the good stuff is worth it several times over, even if a sequel would not improve anything I would still buy it without a second thought.. and retro games all had that tedium or that sense of annoyance about them as well. It is just a shame that I do see this game take a lot quality of life improvements then skimping out on others. Perhaps if they had more static save points and leaned more into the retro I would be less upset.. which is kind of weird.. I would be less vexxed if the game was less good. Maybe I am just kind of sad I nearly got my perfect game.. and it JUST missed out on that. Kind of like getting that perfect gift for christmas.. the watch you want but there is this one tiny scratch you barely notice yet it gets under your skin! Regardless of that scratch though you should most certainly pick this game up!
Thank you for taking your time to read about me playing with monsters again! I do that a lot huh! If you want to help me get more monster games, consider supporting me on Kofi or Patreon! Of course you can also just tell how much you like Monster Games and I will probably be coaxed into it anyway.
Hello again my dear mortals! This week will be crazy for me so content is going to be a bit strange here. I am settling into my new place and while I am writing this I am working a lot on getting the final things packed! EggSandwich being a pal provided me some relief! How? He nominated me for The Bubble Tag! Of course for Halloween Month I am doing it a bit different! My Bubble.. is a strictly spooky one!
The Rules
Lyn the Otaku Author created this tag! It is a great idea and such an orginal tag that provides some good spirits in these strange times! Which people would we lock ourselves in with!.. Well I am fairly late to the bubble party and so.. I am not sure if the people what would be in my bubble can be trusted! So I made a new one! A bubble of people with whom I .. assuming we would befriend each other.. would stand a good change to stay safe! You can’t become sick if you become undead!
Other than giving him credit which I’ll happily do I shall also provide you with another shout out to EggSandwhich who tagged me for this! I will do a monster special version of this tag for Halloween but the actual one I will be tackling as soon as I return from my moving week. Here are the rules for those wanting a copy pasteble thingy
Put ‘The Bubble Tag’ somewhere in the post title and as a tag on the post.
Thank the blogger who nominated you and link back to their post.
Select up to nine people, real or fictional to join you in your bubble.
Nominate five bloggers.
Stay safe.
The Bubble
Thus it is time to craft my bubble. For this specific version of the tag I will only use monsters! Though the word is the biggest sense of the word. Vampires, ghosts, or anything occult goes. If there is some way you can call it a monster, other than in the personality sense.. it is allowed! So here we go! What bubble will we create?! Here are my 9 picks!
Vampire Willow (Buffy The Vampire Slayer)
Let’s start with my most dangerous choice here.. but Hubba Hubba! Vampire Willow is something I am extremely into! In the episode where she gets “isekaid” we see her having some semblance of a redeemable persona.. before she gets killed. Still.. she is undead.. she is a lesbian.. and she does have a facination.. of sorts with pink girls. While I would have to give up on the sun to be with her. it would mean I am in no danger anymore! Can’t get sick if I am undead! She would probably not be the one I’d let me turn.. because.. I do not fully trust her and ..well her vampirism form is akin to dying and a demon living in your body! She is one of the few people in the world I would wrinkle the sheets with and let’s be honest, besides the internet and games there isn’t that much else to do right now! At least not in the Netherlands. While I love gaming.. she is here for variety!
Jeanette Voerman (Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines)
Jeannette would be my ideal sire! She is a Malkavian Vampire which provides a healthy dose of insanity on top of your personality! The Vampire the Masquerade vampires keep their old personality but I’d see the things in a whole new way. I would get incredible insights in how the world truly works. Jeanette is incredibly fun and volatile as well, you never know what you will get around her .. which makes things rather exciting and a whole lot less stale ..also stable which Google Docs suggest to me is the word I was looking for! She would be a great insane big sister type!
Eucliwood Hellscythe (Is This a Zombie)
Having two rather insane vampire chicks that I adore live in my house means I have a high risk of death..with the way the world is right now.. and not just the pandemic.. I also risk death. So it is always good to have a necromancer at your side. Given how Jeanette probabaly never will shut up it is also nice to have a quiet person in the house! I could just draw with her or sip tea in silence! She can bring me back as a zombie.. which is better than nothing! At least I know it would not ruin my magical girl chances!
4. Wisemon (Digimon)
Wisemon is a powerful digimon that can mess with time! So he is a great backup if Eucliwood fails me.. and my plan backfires. However Wisemon also has the power to be anywhere in time.. so he can get me the good take-away before it’s gone, he can get my Cyberpunk 2077 before anybody else does and he can get me all my shows that will get delayed! It will be a hassle but.. it is something! I am pretty sure he can also reset my internet bundle on my phone so I can use it as a hotspot where-ever my bubble might be! That way I could have a bubble in the woods or on a tropical island!
Mii-kun (How to Keep A Mummy)
Mii-kun is mostly here because it is so cute! Still undead though so it is also perfectly safe to keep it around as well. With 9 people things tend to get crowded so it is best to take this into account. Mii-kun takes no space, isn’t too noisy and is mostly just fun to be around! He will also be a very good distraction for Jeanette who is sure to love the heck out of Mii-kun. I also want to see if I can teach it to hum the Mii-Channel theme! So It gives me a mission.
Ryuugajou Nanana (Nanana’s Burried Treasure)
A “ghost” girl that is into gaming and in return only wants pudding seems easy to please. Sure she has expensive tastes.. but we got Wisemon who can reset my bank account to a moment prior to a transaction. Just by ordering to the front door she would probably rush over to receive those puddings ..and my other groceries! Besides that she is a gamer and I do love to play video games so we could play Mario Party together or bond over some Smash Bros Ultimate. She would be the ultimate partner to finally play Overcooked with! And if I can ever venture into the world she may tell me about some super valuable relics to boot! So heck yeah she is in my bubble!
Brook (One Piece)
I assume at one point humanity will even grow more stir crazy at it is.. so eventually the internet will be done.. luckily Wisemon can connect to the wifi of yesterday and such .. but the monster has to sleep at some point! So we need entertainment for that time and Brook is perfect! his music is catchy and he is Skeleton! So we can use his ribcage as a jewelry cabinet and such! He is no slouch in fending off the looters either. He sings some jaunty tunes and I can see him develop a beautiful friendship with Mii Kun.. and who knows alongside him maybe one day my dreams to become an idol girl can come true!
Dark Magician Girl(Yu-Gi-Oh)
So is this one a monster? Well yes of course she is a monster in the game of Yu-Gi-Oh, she even has her own squad of magical girls as an archetype these days! Perfect opportunity for me to get recruited into the squad. Magician Girl Pinkie! If not DMG seems to love to play analogue games. She might make good Waifu Material as well, in case Willow doesn’t work out! She is like the ultimate 2d! Even in her own universe she is most of the time 2d! Which means she is easy to store in my house! She doesn’t take up space unless I want her to! She has played with capsules/figures/cards and dice so she truly is a pretty good game master, so with her in my deck I never get bored!
Rimuru Tempest
Two Vampires, A skeleton, A ghost a mummy, A witch, A necromancer and an overgrown Jawa! That is some pretty solid squad..I figured I would add a cute little dragon Maid .. to cook and clean for us.. but this would leave me with a few problems. First of all.. it would be to Harem like and I don’t want that. Secondly.. with Tohru present everything would devolve into utter and complete chaos! I am not a great bubble leader! I am a great lieutenant, a second in command but I am the weakest off all of these by far. My leadership would not be accepted and some are to chaotic for me to control! So I need a strong person, that is also a classical monster. Since the Blob is a thing Rimuru would absolutely work as a monster. His special skill besides being super overpowered is making a community out of monsters so tadaa it’s perfect! Our leader will be Rimuru.
To Be Continued
Tohru would be the 10th Nakama we sneak in because DMG is a card and we can hide her and Mii-Kun easily enough! That being said this would not be my actual “real” Bubble.. that one I shall return to when I get back from moving.. that is the one that I will use to nominate 5 people to do this tag. Until then you can self nominate by being a Coconut or by commenting that you want to take on this tag! I hope my Bubble will not burst! Arceus knows that a guy called Murphy is going crazy at the idea of this being my actual bubbl.
Who do you think will be in my real one? Who would be in your monster bubble? What are you doing for Halloween this year?! Let me know in the comments and I will see you all in my next post! This is Pinkie and her Dragon Maid she hid illegally in her bubble signing off!
Hello again dear Mortals, Halloween draws closer, so of course the mystical forces that might be rise! Now of course they would not stay away from the fictional island of Paradise. So today we visit a small story about what happend for Halloween on Paradise. Like always the manager is hard at work when stuff suddenly turns strange! Can she survive a night of terror find out in this little story!
The Broomcloset
Manager Pinkie was sitting in her office. Working on her Pink Little Laptop to make sure she had plenty of cocktails to distribute to her guests on the lovely island of Paradise. She didn’t like working late on Saturdays but due to her moving to another Cabana on the island she had to spend quite a few extra hours in a day! She looked at the callender.. 31st of October.. time was going so fast. She looked at her laptop and saw a half finished blog, plus some of the fictional work to be done on her island on her fictional computer… and sighed. Almost done! She would get a hot bath and an early night sleep…well as far as you can call it early. It was already getting close to midnight. Just as she was about to wrap up her work, suddenly all the lights in the office went out. Even her adorable Jigglypuff Light. By the glow of her laptop she looked out of the window and see that the entire resort was out of power. That was so strange. She opened a drawer of her pink desk to look for a pink little mobile phone. She called Indigo but no one answered. Was he in the Dinosaur Suit again?! Maybe Sunny could help her find the fuse box. So using her little pink phone as a little pink Flashlight the manager set out in the hotel to go find her janitor person who loves to be called a cabana boy.
“Why are these hallways so empty?” she wondered while her heels clicked on the marble like hotel floors.Their echos bouncing around the luxurious hallway filled with Pokémon paintings. Through the window she could see the outside lights that would provide light to the front of the hotel were out to! What was going on here? Did all the fuses blow at the same time?! Then the ground shook as the hallway was bathed in a pink silver light. Shadows of some of the Yu-Gi-Oh statues lengthens as it were lang shadowy figures trying to approach her. A loud clap followed. A thunderstorm! That must have knocked out the power. Yet she never heard the first one. Could it be that she was so sucked up in her blog that she missed it?! No she was loafing around right?! This was so strange! Having encountered no one she encountered Sunny’s broom closet… she had an awkward experience there once. Thinking Sunny wanted something from her and screaming while he actually just wanted to show her some yellow caterpillar with a horn he found in Pokémon Go asking her to identify it! This time however she suddenly heard clear moaning noises from the closet. Did he have another person in there?! Her guests needed her though so she would apolgise to Sunny later. She gave the door a brisk but clearly audible knock. In the tempo of Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing on Rainbows!
No answer.. just moaning! She would have accepted a.. “be with you in a minute” or even a “not now” but this was just plain rude. The moaning continued. She knocked again, this time knocking “Space Unicorn” ! The same thing happened though! No answer! What in Arceus’ name was going on. Annoyed Pinkie pulled open the door and there she saw Sunny! In his hand was the lantern he so often carried around.. but blood seemed to be dropping from it.. and a head shaped object seemed to be inside. Her eyes glanced over to Sunny, his hair looked even more sloppy than normal, his normally so sunkissed skin had a pale quality even blueish.. his mouth mask was not moving up and down at all.. as if he was not breathing! He moaned… and then uttered a single world. BRAINS! With a new lighting strike very close by her phone dropped to the ground as she yelled .. staring into Sunny’s much more dead eyes! Z-Z-ZOMBIE!!!! YEEEE AAARGH!… Pinkie Ran out the broom closet tripping over a Yellow bucket! With a loud smack she landed on the floor.. but the adrenaline rushing through her kept her going.. tossing her shoes at Sunnies head she managed to dash off .. she had to get Indigo! He could help!
The Security Office
The manager had to go to Indigo but she also had to keep her guests safe from this zombie! That did not seem to be that much of an issue though! As she approached the lobby no was there. Zombie Sunny slowly waddled after her and could not keep up.. A new flash of lightning made her scare and hide between the reception desk for a while. She was pretty sure she saw a presence. Zombie Sunny kept chasing.. he would soon be here and her lungs already felt like they could burst. She could not keep running forever; she wasn’t built for it. So she looked up the administration book and found a yellow marker on the desk. She quickly ripped out a page and folded a plane out of it! She began to colour it yellow as fast as she could.. She was just about done when a cold bluish hand slammed on the reception desk. He was there.. just before he could grab at her Pinkie tossed the yellow paper plane down the hallway to the staff rooms again. With a slow look behind his back Sunny turned around and shambled back into the hallways. That would buy her a few minutes. How did he become a zombie?! Did he get bitten by some weird mutated fish?
As Pinkie got up right to dash to Indigo’s hut. She noticed that zombie Sunny left a blue streak on the desk! Weird.. it could be dangerous though She would not want people to get infected by this. Even if it put her at risk. A bit of blue got on her hand and she felt sick to her stomach! She had to prevent herself from being infected.. so she ran into the kitchen. The chef wasn’t there .. which was weird..there should be some chefs to prepare midnight snacks! Did they go out to fix the power as well! Without a doubt Pinkie took the sharpest knife she could find and cut her ring finger off! She bit on a spatula to prevent screaming and drawing attention. Using some kitchen towels she made herself a bandage. She had no time to waste. She had to go to the security office. Using the emergency exit she left the building. Knocking on Indigo’s door.. in blind panic. As she knocked some organ music seemed to play inside.. and another thunder rumbled the area. “Come in.. Fleshy Mammal” she heard from inside. “What an annoying greeting” Pinkie taught before she opened the door. Inside was Indigo..but his leather coat ..had been replaced.. by .. a cloak! He turned around and looked all pale, his eyes red! “I smell blood,” he said. Pinkie gasped and screamed!Vampire!! Indigo is a vampire! “Pinkie look in my eyes” Indigo said.. but she was too smart she would not be hypnotised.
Pinkie dashed away ..now chased by a Vampire and a Zombie. What happened here?! Had she crossed over into the Twilight zone?! Did it have to do with the blue goop she found? What is with this weird thunderstorm! She saw flashes but no bolts.. and the sky seemed without a cloud! This seemed like some occult stuff! Wait! Occult! Maybe her horror expert Kuro could tell her more! Slightly woozy she began to ran towards the pool bar, the vampire in hot pursuit. As she look behind her to see if he was catching up she saw Vampire Indigo reaching out his arm .. then she suddenly fell.. as if tripped by telekinetic powers.. sparks shot out around her. and a sharp burning sensation in her knees. When she got up she realised she lost her glasses! Everything was blurry.. What happened. Did she just get hit by a spell?! Indigo drew closer! “I am not dying today,” Pinkie said to herself as she crawled back up. In an attempt to get away she took a dive through one of the hedges.. surprisingly it worked! She realised her entire weight just broke the branches as she stumbled off.. it seemed to have shook off Indigo!..Which makes sense she guessed.. wooden stakes and all. She outsmarted a vampire! But she pretty much ruined her dress.
The Bar
Tears began to well up in Pinkie, was she gonna die?! I mean she would rather be a vampire then a Zombie.. when suddenly she saw Sunny Shamble near the pool area! She had to go the long way around to reach the bar! Could you sneak past Zombies?! Her bandages smelled like a freshly defrosted steak! If she went through the gardens she might avoid Sunny all together and reach the bar via the beach. So she ran into the gardens. Huge Spiderwebs were everywhere. There in the bushes she found the cook! Motionless his white outfit stained in red liquid.. at least she thought it was the cook! He had a chefs hat on! Having -5 in both eyes she was fairly blind without her glasses. Whoever this man was .. and she assumed it was the chef! He was dead! She wasn’t sure who killed him. The bottle of cooking wine.. used for their famous Coq au Vin was the weapon he made his last stand with! Suddenly she heard “Pinkie” behind her and Irina stood behind her. dressed as Ghostface from Scary movie.. but the mask was made up instead! So she could still recognise her! In her hand bloody knife glistend.. Pinkie screamed and hit bonked Irina on the head with the Winebottle. It was empty so it did not make that much of an impact.. but enough to give her a window to dash away.
From the gardens Pinkie ran onto the beach, her feet struggling on the star-shaped sand! And yes star shaped sand is a thing! It is difficult to run in! Irina chased her.. and she looked angry! No way Pinkie would let herself be taken down by a slasher villain that isn’t even an Island OC. It gave her strength to run again. Still half blind! Maybe she recognised Irina through the alcohol smell! Why was she wondering this right now?! Eventually she reached the bar.. out of breath. Kuro looked at her and said. What’s wrong Pinkie you look terrible?! Do you need a drink. Pinkie nodded..while trying to catch her breath. As Kuro poured her a Hibiki.. a purple hand put the glass in front of her. Pinkie looked up and saw two horns on Kuro’s head.. teeth very sharp and a skin totally purple. They wore a demon red and black Yukata. Before Pinkie could take a sip she stumbled back.. tripping on a barstool. She fell.. and she kept falling. She felt almost as if she was sinking. Kuro was an Oni..she had no chance.. now she fell and was sinking.. did she knock herself out?! She was dead anyone she would just let herself sink. It was all over. She opened her eyes.. and saw a black shadow looming over her..as she took a breath a sharp pain filled her lungs! Then two strong hands grabbed her and she was being dragged towards a big dangerous looking presence and then it all went black.
Paradise
Pinkie woke up with a shock! “Stay off my body” she yelled wildly swiping at her environment. Kuro the demon stood before her. “That’s it I am cutting you off for tonight” they said. Pinkie gasped in terror! “What will you cut off?! I already cut my own finger off you don’t you think that is cruel enough?”. The face on the demon changed from Malice to concern. “You did what?” Pinkie began to see everyone more clear again.. she was surrounded by monsters .. even the chef Irina murdered was back. “Didn’t you die”. The Chef looked at her and grinned “Wheeen …Didz.. Eye..Die..?! *Hic* Isszzz.. Spilled…..wine…all over.. me.. Rini…brough…goood… booze…*Hic* I had.. a bit much…and…all over..my stuff..*hic* fell in the roses’. Pinkie looked confused. “So Senpai is not a slasher villain?” The woman showed Pinkie she had a plastic knife and said “No.. the only thing I butcher is my spelling sometimes” Pinkie coughed up a bit of water , still skeptical. “Then why did you chase me?” Irina looked a bit shifty… “I kinda felt bad that I got your chef so drunk.. when he passed out in the bushes I wanted to tell you it was my fault not his..but you looked so upset I thought he would get fired because I forced him into a drinking game with me”. Pinkie felt like a Pokémon she was so confused it hurted.
“But if you are not evil, then why doesn’t the demon attack you” Kuro grinned. It’s the 31th of October! It’s Halloween… it’s a costume! All the staff dressed up! Look Indigo dressed up as a Vampire and Sunny is a zombie. Pinkie once again asked why she was chased then Indigo replied that he saw her distressed and possibly injured so he chased her.. but when she tripped over the electrical wires that caused the lighting effects and spooky music on the island he had to fix that first..or it would be a hazard for guests. Sunny was just having a little fun and did not think Pinkie actually believed he was a zombie. He could not bite her anyway because he was smart and still wore a mask! Pinkie looked at the wrapped up hand and was afraid to ask. “Then was that blue zombie goo?” Sunny shrugged..”I had a lot of fun colouring myself with the body paint so I might have added a few extra layers.. I tried to make myself a Yellow zombie but that did not work too well.. so that paint was very thick”. He smiled sheepishly while Pinkie unraveled her bandage. “So I cut off my finger for nothing?”
Everyone stared at Pinkie’s missing finger and suddenly people began to laugh. “Oh Pinkie that is so you” Indigo offered to bandage it up more properly. “Let me wrap that up for you a bit nicer and then we will go enjoy the party you silly girl” The manager blinked. “This isn’t that funny”. Kuro looked at her and said “Well at least now you can do a very cool Assassin Creed cosplay” Pinkie grumbled “I don’t like any game but the second” Everyone laughed again. “Time for drinks” Irina yelled and as she opened the little first aid tent Pinkie saw a huge beach party going on. Everyone was in a costume. “I was so busy working I did not even notice it was Halloween” she thought to herself.. still her friends all took this cut finger very lightly! As if they are characters in a story that was wrapping up and the writer did not care about the details.. and suddenly everything goes all happy! Kuro gave her a pad on the back “gotta get back to work…i’ll make you a pink cocktail.. and hey your final girl costume is pretty genuine now” Pinkie looked at her dress as everyone went out to party. Pinkie looked at her destroyed dress, felt her dishevelled hair and looked at her hand one more time.. “Final Girl huh…seems there are plenty of people here still.. I guess I will party for now..but next year..I will be the true final girl! The only one left alive” Pinkie laughed like a maniac in her tent. She would know what her friends did last Halloween……next year!
Hello again mortals who dwell on my island! For the spooky month I have been watching this strange.. little anime made out of short stories. Season 1 was a banger, season 2 was so… and now I watched the third season. Is it better than season 2?! According to most it is. I think it is! It does something in its final episode that makes everything better… but that also kind of messes me up in the format I do these reviews… what is going on!?
The Twisted Season
The third season of Yamishibai delivers WAAAAAY more on the horror than season 2. While it keeps on the same directors as the second season and I expected it to be kind of bad it almost feels as if the stories chosen have since been adapted to the direction style. There is a sense of more randomness in this season. Where season 1 focussed on retelling the classic ghost stories, season 2 seemed to “set up” for classic stories this third season seems to go bigger and bolder. It seems more focussed on original creatures slightly inspired by folklore rather than borrowing from it heavily. In a way I’d argue these stories feel more like “Creepy Pastas” and that works out really well for me. I get everything much more! There is still the “what the heck did I just watch” vibe but never did I wonder “does this references anything.. am I missing something”. So one of my biggest issues with the second season and even the first season has been fixed. However this comes with a new problem.. but I am not sure if it is an actual problem..because.. later we see that stylistic choice connects to a certain story.
The Narrator of season 1 and 2 has been replaced by a young boy who hears voices from the other side which makes him draw. These drawings form the inspiration for the new stories. Stories have no more explanation on who the main character is and we are drawn in from the sketch. It is a stylistic choice I like a lot that can add some extra tension. We do not always know who the main character is and it offers that extra bit of insecurity in some cases. In others it requires the story to set up the characters just a tiny bit more which already makes them slightly more endeared to us. At the same time though this does take a bit away from the Kamishibai show illusion. In this season we also see a slight artstyle change. The Kamishibai like images that the show is famous for feel more colourful and cheerful! They lack the grim eeriness of the first two seasons. Almost as if these target a younger audience.. which makes sense because this storyteller is a lot younger. And just like his mind seems to be a bit distrubed so do these stories change in a similar vein.
The stories seem more focussed on body horror and blatant monsters rather than ghosts that follow a certain set of rules. No instead we focus more on creepiness of twisting necks, changing shapes and gruesome implications. We lose a tad of subtlety and cleverness but in return we get a much more intense dramatic build up.. where the crux of the show isn’t always at the end. Sometimes it even happens near the middle of the episode. A few stories had me pretty scared and there certainly is a lot less “missed” opportunities. However since the narrator is a young boy..the scares seem to reflect that mindset. What would an eight year old come up with as a scary story. This results in this being the season that has some of the scariest creatures you have seen so far, who are further away from any logic.. or stories that would really resonate with children a lot…but the end scares are often a tad childish.. so in a way this is the season of untapped potential. The idea is there but the punchline often misses.
The other side!
Yamishibai season 3 ditches the classical ghost-stories more in favour of monster stories.. while there are ghosts and spiritual forces, they are a lot less subtle about their ways. Where season 2 had people startled, cursed or possessed by the end.. in this season the forces do not inconvenience you here the forces are downright trying to get you killed or mamed. This makes season 3 a very different show as season 2. Where moral lessons seemed to form the core to induce the haunts of the second season here it seems more to be induced by over conconfidence seasons don’t feel as preachy and instead more like a classic horror movie! Like the past two blogs about this show I will discuss the plot synopisis after which I give each episode a micro review! Be warned if you think a synopsis is a spoiler.
Episode 1: Lend it to Me
A young man visits a bathhouse after work, he seems to be the only male guest when a woman asks him to lend him stuff she did not seem to get at the checkout counter. The two have a talk and she sounds cute! Then the requests the woman begins to make start to get stranger and stranger and she begins to ask more and more aggressively.
What a great way to begin this season! It is a very good episode that properly introduces the scares. At first you do not know why! Why does the girl ask for a pair of scissors or a razor! Why is she so upset he hasn’t got one! The way old gritty movie filter that shows gives the bathhouse a bit of a grimey derelict look and the disembodied echoed voice from over the wall makes you wonder what will happen. When it is time for the big creature reveal we get a very brief and surreal shot, that can easily leave you jump-scared. It does not come where you expect it either. The creature design is wacky and makes you wonder what you have seen and ends in some very weird end credits.. that leave you pondering.. we do not get an “end..” we get a sketch.. that looks like a horrifying cap off. A very strong start and one of the better episodes of the series even.
Episode 2: Tunnel
Two friends are driving through the mountains when a wrong turn makes them realise they are short on gas. Encountering a tunnel that seems the quickest way back to the interstate they drive in and of course run out of gas. Tired from pushing the car they take a break when they see two children just outside the car window…but is it really just two children?!
While the first episode crossed us over from the Old Yamishibai into this new one .. this completely embraces it’s new style. The way that it seems to reach it’s climax in the middle of the episode is quite strange.. but we see why when it is clear this show pays as much attention to scaring you with the aftermath as the actual event. Sometimes an ambiguous fate is not enough. This season is more like “Oh My God they are eating her, and then they are going to eat me Oh my goooooooddd!” .. but not in the Troll 2 sort of way.. you are told what these monsters are capable of and what you should fear… only to reveal the truth is even more hopeless. This season caters into the fear of certain death and in this episode it is down very powerful. The last show in the tunnel is amazing and the linke we can make to it is nothing short but dreadful! One of the seasons highlights for me.
Episode 3: Rat
A young couple just started to live together in a new apartment , to save some money they went for a very cheap apartment which has a rat infestation. The girl being afraid of the rats gets bitten by one. Her partner then has to leave on a business trip and leaves her alone with nothing to defend herself but a rattrap. He tells her she has to get used to the rats..and we see her being slowly pushed to the brink of insanity as she tries to follow her husband’s will.
This is one of the lesser episodes for me! The reveal in the end was quite predictable and feeling odd. This is the first story that really seems to lean into the younger and more inexperienced story teller scenario. Or I could just be justifying this while in the end the episode isn’t all that scary. The visuals are noticeably brighter here in that the two episodes that went before and while the visual style does fit some of the episodes I think for this episode it all feels too bright and too clean. Let us feel they live in a rat infested hellhole instead of a clean house with some adorable little critters. The ending visual is super silly and it doesn’t seem to end as powerful as most of the other episodes. No matter how I look at it this one is an odd one out! I do have to give it some credits though for the tense scene before the conclusions so it is not totally without merit.
Episode 4: The Noisy Hospital Room
A fairly young man wakes up in the hospital after a nightmare, seeming himself being operated on in a room he was told by a nurse not to visit. When his vivid nightmares have given him cold-sweats however he has to explore the hospital to find him some change of clothes or he might catch a cold. During his search for a new nightgown he learns some horrible truths of this hospital.
A mid tier episode that is a bit bogged down because of the odd sound design that is present throughout this entire season. There is a lot of laughter, whispers and other effects that are meant to sound creepy that in fact sound rather cheesy. Like A Wilhelm Scream doesn’t really invoke fear anymore even if someone meets a gruesome end. The twist is deliciously evil in this episode but once again the entities seem slightly over designed giving it a slightly comical appearance. It feels more like something you show you kids in a picture book as a monster than something you need to be scared off. The strong dialogue that clearly captures the fear by the good voice acting can’t save the episode from mediocrity either as it is slightly drowned out by stock effects.This is the first episode that uses a number of fake outs to set us up for a proper scare but unfortunately fails to deliver a proper scare afterwards. Too childish for adults but a great story for a scaredy cat and wouldn’t you know it I have the perfect score for that!
Episode 5: Museum of Taxidermy
Taxidermy is that art of stuffing a dead animal and turning it into a “stuffed” statue preserved through the ages. Now that that has been explained for those who do not know .. or did not know the english word… this episode is set in a museum filled with stuffed animals. A couple staying in town runs in there to take shelter from the rain. Luckily the museum is free and they take a peek. The woman gets fascinated by how lifelike the animals look, particularly interested in a dog that almost seems to follow her with her eyes. Her boyfriend decides to prank her and shet gets mad and leaves.. trying to enter his hotel room later he finds her unresponsive and his own key missing.. So now he has to go back to the museum and search for it.
Where the sound design last episode was pretty shitty here it shines in telling a message. The fact that the hotel is called Hotel Otherside.. and the young boy narrator keeps screaming for things to happen on the other side.. hints at a connection between the stories and the real world which this episode really makes clear. Something is odd.. as if we are in a twilight zone of sorts. It banks heavy on that feeling and ends up with a satisfying punchline and amazing end visual. It is sick, it is twisted and it looks just silly enough to not be full of gross-out horror. It walks the fine line very well and we have a clear idea what happened on the other side..even though we never get to fully see it! Very nice with enough classic horror vibes form both the Twilight Zone and House of Wax to be deemed one of my top 3 episodes! Yet this time it has some competition and the third place spot!
Episode 6: “That Side” Festival
A festival is in town. Asako and Miki attend all sorts of fun activities together. They are having a great time until Asako gets mesmerised by a booth filled with mysterious masks. She loses sight of Miki and asks herself loudly where Miki went. One of the masks seems to respond with “That Side” suddenly the fair isn’t the same place it used to be anymore and everything goes extremely twisted and dark.
A mid tier episode that has some amazing visuals but at the same time it feels so over designed that it stands out a bit. The cotton candy vendor on the Other Side of things for example spins cotton candy by vomiting his own intestines on a cotton candy stick. While it looks gruesome it also looks like.. too much. It gets a cartoony quality. There are a lot of creatures here that look extremely silly and rudimentary. It is a great ride and I bet it would be awesome for a horror artist to check out these designs. This episode has some heavy Spirited Away vibes through it.. but then a darker take. It however misses the finality of the rest of the season and while I don’t need finality in all episodes I really wish here we would at least see the girl become bound to this new world or lose herself in it or something. It needed a nail to the coffin sort of speak. Without it.. it is nice but is exactly down the middle for me when it comes to spookiness. I can’t mark it as that so I will label it Scares without Nightmares…but if you can get past the odd designs you can scale this up one tier!
Episode 7: Behind
During Summer camp one guy insists on bothering the girls dorm even if his friends are too pooped to pop! When he keeps insisting his friends ask him how he has so much energy! He tells them he doesn’t but he has been having nightmares, people laughing and a creature then coming into the classroom and turning his head around on his neck but he knows that if he sees whatever is doing that .something horrible will happen.Later that night one of his friends wakes needing to go to the bathroom when he hears cracking sounds from his friends neck.
A very scary episode that is really hindered by a single really weird visual! It feels so silly it ruins the entire episode. Luckily I came to play Yomawari and I could accept the weirdness which gave me some appreciation of it. If you want to know how silly the visuals go…look up the game Hylics or Hylics two, a surreal RPG “series” and you have an idea on how odd it will look. I would have loved to see this episode go a bit more subtle myself but the combination of “have you heard’ and then seeing another effect occur is pretty cool. Is it linked together, are there dark forces at work here what will happen outside the dream.. what happens inside the dream. There is a light and a dark theme going on as well. That once again seems to be describing the existence of two sides. Had the ending not looked unintentionally comical this would have been my third favourite episode or maybe even my second favourite but now it has to do with fourth place.
Episode 8: The Empress Doll
Daphne, Fred, Shaggy and Velma travel to a haunted house and go to investigate it. Well it’s not really those four .. but still four meddlesome kids visiting a haunted house and encountering a presence. This one seems to be of an Empress Doll.. one of those stacks of porcelain dolls on a stair things you might have seen them before! While the house seems clear and safe at first a glance trough a mirror allows them to peer into a world yet unseen.
While the episode does start really suspenseful the end screen is yet again another very derpy looking monster. Which ruins the tension. What makes it worse is that the big “kill” makes no sense. We see someone suffer in a certain way. Making us believe either their soul was taken or they got so scared that their mind just shut down. Yet suddenly things completely shift and it makes no sense in the timeline of this episode. When did that happen?! Did they leave the person behind? If so that is rather poorly established. Once more the tension build up is great, reminding me a bit of the Amityville Horror series which I really like. It also is somewhat reminiscent of the Warner siblings horror series like Annabelle. It succeeds in once again establishing “another side” but fails to deliver another scare.
Episode 9: The Fourth Man
A girl in highschool overheard a rumor about an urban legend about “the handshake men” . These are people who will ask you for a handshake. If you refuse to give them a hand they will crush you into a meatball but if you happen to encounter a fourth one you have to refuse or they will bite off your hand. Later at night the girl is asked by her sister to go to her school as she left her notebook there and cant finish her homework afterwards. On their way back the girl encounters a strange looking man asking for a handshake.
This easily is the best episode of the season. It follows that Urban Legend feeling of the first two seasons but doesn’t require any prior knowledge due to explaining the myth entirely. It feels like a genuine Japanese ghost story, similar to Red Cloak, Blue Cloak, just a bit more tame. It has several jump scares, fake outs and misdirections and the conclusion it reaches in the end is satisfying! While we do not see anything gruesome happen there are some pretty heavy implications being made here that reminds me of some Goosebumps like novels I used to read. It has atmosphere, good visuals and nothing too silly to ruin the experience! This is definitely a story you can tell by the campfire or during a horror D&D campaign. If you watch anything be sure to check out this one!
Episode 10: Merry-Go Round
A young couple is visiting a mini theme park sitting on the roof of a Mall. They have only just arrived when they encounter a creepy clown, giving the girl a red balloon. Soon after it is announced the mall is already closing. Super disappointed the girl pouts when the clown offers her one last ride on the Merry-Go-Round for free. The girl gets on and seems to have a lot of fun but she might have misinterpreted the words “one last ride”
This one really benefits from the brighter visual style. Of course the clown giving away blood red balloons immediately evokes memories of It. Yet when the Merry-Go-Round goes round and round this episode seems to start to take more and more cues from the bad Nightmare on Elm Street movies. It delves into the absurd once again and so many elements seem to not play a role in this. There are a lot of creepy people around the Merry-Go Round but non of them really seem to have any correlation to what is going on. Maybe they do but the connection is not made clear at all. As a result this episode feels really disjointed. It does have some creepy visuals and I don’t even mind what happens in the end all that much but the dialogue, the set up and the result do not seem to match up. As if I am watching three different writers create a four minute story. While I do enjoy extreme random horror at times, in a four minute interval it is too much to make this enjoyable.
Episode 11: Cuckoo Clock
A young girl staying over at her grandma’s house with her mother for a few days discovers her Grandma’s clock and is immediately obsessed, wanting to see the Cuckoo pop up every hour she has some good and innocent fun. On her first night there the girl wakes up a few moments to midnight, very thirsty! She goes downstairs to drink when she notices the clock will nearly reveal the Cuckoo again.. when at twelve the Cuckoo doesn’t show up.. the girl goes to investigate a bit closer… she shouldn’t have!
This episode was okay! I really do like the episodes where people get obsessed with Mundane objects holding less than Mundane powers. This is another one that can feel insanely silly but this one still feels like it could be an actual ghost story of the orient. This is how you do silly episodes! It once again uses body morphing for a shock effect but this one is done kinda cool, even if it also looks very odd. The story beats the story hits feel logical next to each other and while it is not all that scary it is just a fun four minute watch. Reminding me a bit of those Goosebumps Junior novels! Safe for your kid! Fun for the family!
Episode 12: In the Water
It’s the competitive swimming season. One particular schools ace is put under a lot of pressure from his coach so now he has to train and train and train. Luckily he can train at night since he has been given a key to the school’s pool! Just after dark at 8 in the evening, the boy decides to go for a final training session. During this session he notices something odd in the pool! He thinks he is seeing things because he is put under so much pressure and decides to train anyway! He gets into trouble for this choice…. in record time!
This is one of those episodes that is a bit bogged down by cultural differences and plot convenience. Working to hard so you hallucinate seems to occur in many Japanese man according to this series though! Still it seems like a bad idea to jump into the water when something seems off.. it damages this horror experience for me. I doubt a semi-pro swimmer would risk jumping into the water if something dangerous might be in it. It doesn’t help that later in the episode the swimmer tries to flee the pool by swimming to the stairs.. while he could easily push him up onto the dry land way before that. How could he not push himself to saftey as soon as he could?! Fear?! In the end I doubt it would matter as the deed had more or less already been done.. but jeesz this man seems to tried really hard to win himself a Darwin Award. Also the creature/visual has no set up, no reason to be there and it is super ugly as well. As in.. it’s ugly..but it is also not very well drawn with very weird proportions that also lead to other visuals shown before not making sense. Bad episode!
Episode 13: —Drawings—-
Yes I actually did type what this episode is about! Well done in discovering it! This episodes ties all stories together as from the intro of the boy drawing we don’t cut.. we see the boy drawing! A teacher finds him and asks what he is doing .. he says nothing and walks off. She later finds out he is in her new class and tries to befriend him by asking him to draw her. He refuses telling her she is boring. As she discovers more he finds out the boy has been sketching all sorts of people who have gone missing… the boy shows up and finally agrees to draw her, and it is revealed that this boy would grow up to become the storyteller of the previous season and his stories turn kids into monsters for more stories in the future!
This episode is great for the scale! It really brings all the other ghost stories together but for that reason I have hidden the plot of this episode from you! It connects everything, intro, outro and episodes. Visuals shown in the intro of season two suddenly make sense, and the odd choices this movie makes in terms of narratives all make sense now. Some of these flaws in the stories described earlier were clearly put in with intention! While I commend them for this bold choice it also comes with a problem.. Did people make it this far? Since it is so episodic and stand-alone one could easily watch these episodes out of order yet this one SHOULD be watched last. It doesn’t follow the rules of the show but it is amazing. The ending feels disjointed but delicious. Appealing to fans of the series and making me excited for a fourth season. The story that is interwoven in this episode feels a bit short.. as a lot of time is spent on the epilogue but it still is deeply satisfying.. though I can not rank it among the other episodes.. This is it’s own thing and it is quite good! Yet not perfect.
Into the Darkness
This season to me is much better then the second one! Albeit a tad to obvious and odd at times, I think this is for me might even rival the first season. Yes there are more lows and the highs aren’t AS high but it was enough! Where season 1 over-achieved at times this one just does the job it needs to do and it does it well. I never felt that lost and the final episode was a little cherry on top of an already pretty good season. Even as a Gaijin you can understand all these episodes and never do you have to google something to appreciate the story. Watch these after midnight just when you begin to feel.. Oh I am really tired.. that is the perfect moment where the weirdness can get to you less.. but the scares can get to you hard! I will at least give the fourth season a chance now as well! So be sure to come back for more soon!
Greetings mortals, welcome back to Paradise! Halloween is all about monsters, creatures and things that go bump in the night! Pokémon are created by Creatures Inc! Yet tonight..or whenever you are reading this..just make it night because that is more haloweeny, we are gonna create life ourselves. Like our friend Average Joe made Pokémom out of Symbiotes or Godzilla creatures so shall I make monsters out of the classic monsters. However We will go one step further and twist their designs into actual Pokémon.
The Rules
So a scientist like me Professor Pinkenstein should make it clear that we are playing with some rules today! My dear people! Not only will I just look at a iconic monster, give them a typing, some moves and an ability! We will all also reshape them into something pokémon like. After all most of the iconic creatures are humanoid in nature and while it can fit pokémon.. I was never one to take the easy way. We will discuss the creature’s biology and pokédex-like information and come up with a new name for it. Of course I can not really draw so these will be college creatures. If you are an artist and want to draw them for real.. I am up on featuring these images in a follow up post…but I don’t think I know anyone who actually draws?! Now let’s create some life.. or in many cases unlife.
Frankenstein’s Monster
Let us begin with the iconic Mary Shelly Creature..Frankenstein.. To determine what pokémon it has to be we first have to deduce it’s typing. In many cases we are dealing with undead so ghost types can apply basicly to everything.. but we will try to keep it diverse. However since it’s very much interwoven in Frankenstein’s monsters lore it is brought back from the dead.. I think we will keep that typing. The other element should be obvious as of course we go for the Electric type. Most monsters on this list probably would more or less function like a legendary. Narratively it would make sense that Frankenstein’s Pokemonster would follow the same brief. The Pokémon Professor of the Horror Region Professor Manchineel (Yes that is a tree and it’s super scary) was once the champion of this region . He defended the world against the evil team but in the battle against their leader lost all his pokémon and the evil theme began to rule the region. Trying to bring back his old team his efforts were in vain.. he did not have enough power… but maybe… he could bring one of them back?!
For this design we will create a chimera of dead Pokémon. But how do we decide what Pokémon to pick?! Well we do that with an Easter Egg. Originally in Red and Blue there was a hidden “boss” fight against Oak. Presumably after the Pokémon League based on their levels. This fight was triggerable through glitching but wasn’t activatable anymore in game. To homage that we are going to build the chimera out of Professor Oak’s team. That is, Tauros, Exeggutor, Arcanine, Gyarados and the starter that wasn’t picked. Now since the correct answer to pick as your Gen I starter is Bulbarsaur that means the Rival would pick Charmander so Bulbasaur would be the one left behind. Trained up to a Blastoise he will become part of our Chimera. Yes I know more people love Charizard.. and thus Bulbasaur would be the one left behind…..but this is my list…also the head of Blastoise is much easier to cut out and work with then Venusaur’s or Charizards so there! Tauros would form the main body with Arcanine legs and some Gyarados fins. The extra exeggutor heads are added as extra heads this time..except.. this time we will use the main head..because that was the professors friend!
With Tauros as a main body we can basically say that it made the rest type neutral and being revived from the death we get the electric ghost monster we know as Frankenstein..but a pokémon version.Alternatively we could look at canonically dead Pokémon..but that’s a bit of a hassle. Using Tauros as it’s main body and a Blastoise head the creature also has the physical bulk you expect of a Frankstein’s monster. The body type makes it more suitable for physical attacks, which also seems to be in line with the classics. So for moves I think it should know Volt Tackle a strong electric physical move. Shadow Punch, Rock Smash and Recover are it’s other moves with Shadow Punch dealing Stab Damage, Rock Smash .. being a symbol for it’s smashing power and hopefully like with a few old moves we can get a base power increase for it somewhere as it would help as a great weakness coverage. As an ability Volt Absorb makes the most sense as it negates the power of electricity. The ability Simple will function as a second and possible hidden ability. State Wise I think the most comparable Pokémon would have to be Golurk, with offence and defence flipped. Chimerstein seems like a nice name for this Pokémon.
Dracula
So making a Pokémon about Dracula should not be too hard? Should it?! Well he is very humanoid so we are going to have to deviate from his design quite a bit here. Let’s start with his typing. He is undead rather than dead, so I think Dark is a fair base typing for him. However.. there is one problem. Dark ..while it does have moves like Bite… doesn’t have any leeching abilities. In the Alola Region they finally made the move Leech Life Good with a great base power. I think that is Dracula’s de facto move! To use it efficiently however we have to make him a bug type! Dark-Bug seems like an odd typing for Dracula, but in the confines for Pokéon it really works. We will place it in the humanoid body shape and give it some lore to fit Dracula. “A Rich Boy and his Zubat once went on an adventure on a river when they saw strange leech like creature toppled their boat..no one ever saw them again” Leeches haven’t been much of a thing in Pokémon. So for this story.. a leech attached himself to a Rich Boy..while his Zubat tried to pull it off..eventually an evolution much like how Slowpoke evolves into Slowbro ..by having a Shelder bites its tail happens.. only this time a human was involved.
Designwise this puts us a bit in a pickle! Do we make it look very human? No.. people don’t really like that. Do we give it too many clothes.. no, it will have a cloak that will look like it’s made out of spider web.. or some kind of pupa covering some silken cloth or something fancy. .It’s face will be hooded but underneath will be a leechy face.. similar to Digmon’s Nightmare Leech. Then it will have a crobat like wings but larger. It’s shape is humanoid but only in shape. It will definately be one of the creepier Pokémon you encounter. The mix and match of body shapes will allow for a wide moveset befitting Dracula. Pokédex entries could state that the pokémon is afraid of wooden poles as the last thing the boy part remembers was his raft breaking. Or rumors that you can defeat this Pokémon with a single Solar Beam. It is so ugly that it can not face it’s own reflection, crying over the handsome face it once had. And so we have designed a Dracula inspired Pokémon.
The Pokémon Ability it should have is Dry Skin. This is a rather complex ability but it gives our Dracula a weakness to fire and actually gives him damage under the direct sun. He absorbs water..which is kind of unfortunate..but Holy water seems more like a Fairy Type thing anyway… and Dracula would be weak to that. The ability of course represents his weakness to the sun.. but it also works well with the moisture rich leech part! So hey I am happy with that. As moves Bite and Leech Life are a given and I feel Mist or Haze would make a good supportive move.. well not GOOD but flavourful. The last move should be something in the lines of Hypnosis, Charm, Attract or anything of the sorts. Of course he would be able to learn some other things such as Transform, Phantom/Shadow Force and all the Drain moves. Stat Wise I feel it should be something like Mega-Lucario. Good names would be Draculeech, Leechferatu or Tepeech.
The Wolfman
So for this one I have something special planned, the wolfman is a hard one to give a typing too. It seems very much a normal type. There is no real element to connect it too. We could give it the dark type again but what if you want to run an all monsters team?! Plus Normal Dark isn’t really a good typing at all. So instead for a secondary typing we look at an important element for a werewolf.. the moon. The moon is very much connected to the Fairy Type on numerous occasions. Many of the Moon stone evolutions are Fairy Types. The move moonlight and Moon Blast are both fairy type attacks and Clefairy is said to live on the moon. Which again IS a Fairy type. Plus this would make our Pokémon to be weak to steel type attacks.. mimicking it’s weakness to silver! It would also be efficient against fighting types.. and as you all know punching a werewolf is a very bad idea so that makes sense. Most werewolf movies are about the transformation process about being cursed to be a werewolf and for this I think I have a perfect answer.
We came up with a new regional form. Horrorian Ditto, The Ditto from the Horror region. Being a silverish slime with wolf-eyes, a tuft of fur and a wolf-fang would form the basis for this pokémon. Normally Ditto has the ability transform, which lets it transform into the pokemon it is facing straight away. However Horrorian Ditto will do the exact opposite. If it hits the opponent with a physical attack.. it’s specially designed ability will trigger. Fur-Curse.. which will transform any pokemon it hits into Horrorian Ditto. This resembles the involuntary transformation aspect about lycanthrophy very well. Regional Ditto would be a great way to take your opponents ace away and force them to have a flexible strategy that doesn’t rely on a single pokemon! With Eviolite you can make sure your variation is much sturdier.. but YES Eviolite! Because we need to add more wolves! When exposed to a moonstone this Ditto will evolve. Taking the shape of an almost liquid werewolf still transforming with some parts being thinner and slimier. He seems to be in constant pain..this new form shares its ability still but now is much more powerful.. but as a trade off you can give your opponent something THAT powerful too.
This new werewolf form of Ditto shall be known as Idemoon. This is a portmanteau of Idem and Moon… Ditto got its name sake from the latin expression Idem dito. A phrase mostly used having the same mindset or wishing them the same you just wished upon them. It also has a bit of a sound like it’sa demon. Idemoon would be a bit like better Slaking. Statwise it isn’t AS amazing but it can attack every turn, it just changes it’s opponent in itself with a contact move meaning you can never hit it super effectively. This pokemon however will shine in double battles. You basically force your opponent into a typing you can always bring a counter to. Moves this Pokémon should learn are. Slash, Bite, Play Rough and Moonlight. It has a high stat total but a fairly low defence to make sure it can take itself out without making games needlessly stally. Slash and Play Rough are Normal and Fairy Type moves that get buffed by having the same attack type bonus and Bite… well it’s a wolfman after all.
Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde
For now I want to conclude this with one final pokémon the form of the classic by taking a spin on a pokémon that already does this kind of thing. Morepeko is a hamster that can be cute when it’s full or evil when it’s hangry! It has a move that works very well but I want to do it better. So this monster really works well with that. Better Morepeko doesn’t need to be a Pikaclone so we can get rid of the pretty useless electric type. For the Mister Hyde side of things we can use the Dark Type.. in Japanese the thing is literally called evil type and it would work very well for Mister Hyde. The second typing could be the Fairy Type as more or less it’s natural opposite. However since Dr Jekyll is a scholar and a man of science and of the mind I think the psychic type makes more sense. This will later also come into play with the moves and such. Alternatively Fighting type could work for Hyde as he often is depicted as brawn..but this is not always the case. For the design I am thinking of it being a top hat. and a tophat just. With lore on how it was worn by a man who always doubted himself.. he wanted to help people but he also hated everyone.. one day the hat went mad and attacked its owner then immediately it tried to heal it again.
Why a Top hat? Well I think it is a nice symbol for the tale and I love object pokémon. It also keeps the humanity aspect of the character but puts it in a monster much more in the vein of pokémon.Plus we can make a wink to the fact that it might be a had of the Mad hatter, and then we can cross this sort of blog over in Fairy Tales some day. The Jekyll side of the hat would be colourful but simple, clean and gentlemanly. It features a monocle and perhaps a cross to symbolise it belongs to a doctor so maybe we can add a moustache as well. In Hyde mode the hat would look torn, more chaotic darker.. but also more details… loose stitching, a bearded look and some tokens it can take from it’s victims. One of those things that looks like it will bite your head off. I think Morepeko design wise makes some very smart choices but it could have done more.
And here is how! Aura Wheel might be cute as a move but I suggest an adapted ability which works as follows. This pokémon gets the moves. Heal Pulse a Psychic Support move to heal adjacent team members, Dark Pulse an Offensive Dark Special move.. because.. it’s a Hat .. it can’t physically attack. Amnesia , to boost it’s defences and explain the weird memory lapses the character experiences and Milk Drink..I know that last one seems a bit weird but it is the closest move there is to pokemon chugging a potion..since potions in pokemon work as sprays! It provides healing and you will want that on this pokémon because it has an ability similar to Hunger Switch.. just more useful. We will probably call it Potion Chug as well or Face Swap.It comes with an extra. If you use Heal Pulse while in Jekyll form you get a random stat increased.. kind of like Acupressure the move. The same happens if Mister Hyde uses a dark pulse. Of course this pokémon can forget Milk Drink and Amnesia for moves like Psychic and Bounce..so your Opponent is always guessing when will you buff and when will you go against the grain.Kind of like this duo! Their name shall be……
I don’t know actually! So how about I leave that up to you?! How should we name this pokémon?! Let me know in the comments and the best one gets a shoutout and becomes the official name for this thing! For now the monster making is done and I will crawl back to stir in my cauldron!I could use a new broom to fly on by the way! So if you happen to have broom money laying about consider supporting my Ko-Fi and ensure you won’t be stitched into my next monster! I am probably joking anyway.. but who knows!
Welcome again my dear island guests to the already third installment of Pinkie Get’s Anime Powers. Today I am gonna be that Trekkie that is enthusiastic about a Star Wars Movie. So get your nooses ready! We all have wondered how it would be to insert ourselves into anime. Today I am going on forbidden ground for every harcore pokémon fan! I am stepping into the digital world… if DIGMON!
The Digidestined
Character Name: Pinkui “Denise” Nettainoshima. Digimon Partner: Kotemon Crest: Perseverance Age: 13, Keeps saying she is 12 to be the youngest of the group though. Digivice Colour: Pink Role: Group Leader Fighting Style: Brain and Brawn Quirks: Wears goggles over her glasses, pacifist, cries easily.
Digimon has a weird trope to give characters a western nickname. Taichi becoming Tai, Yamato being nicknamed Matt. So I thought I should honour this and go for an a japanese name with a typical western nickname. Why Denise? Because that is my username of preference in the real world! Big reveal!. Like most digidestined I’d have to go back to being a child, but since my real life age of 33 at the time of writing is something my friends mock me for..being so old. I am gonna include a gimmick that Denise is a lot older than the rest of the group but lies about her age.
Unlike in Bleach and in Jojo’s I’d take the role of the main character. The goggle wearing Digidestined leader. Why? Because I think my journey fits that of a leader very well. I could also fill the role of TK being the good hearted benjamin of the group ..but I don’t really have peers to bring with me for that. Hence I take the leadership role for this one. Denise would travel to the digital world during an online shopping spree with her friends Midori “Bean” Kuraitamashi and Futotta “Lyn” Kohatsu. A three member all female cast that can later get two new members. So since your in the digital world feel free to insert yourself if you wish.
Being the group oldest Denise has to lead the group and be prepared to save this world from an unspeakable evil. Let’s go Meta here and say that Denise is trying to spread positivity around the internet while it is becoming more and more negative. The digital world is slowly becoming more corrupted creating negative versions of Digimon. Yiyimon would have brought some positive internet people to the digital world to fight these Nega-mons as the new digidestineds. These negative digimon reduce the power of natural digimon so they cant fight for themselves as they are being pushed down. Denise would have a hard time coming to terms with this task though. I am very pacifistic in real life and will do anything to avoid a fight. But sometimes we have to realise we do have to take arms and fight for what we believe in. Sometimes in a more literal sense than we would have though
Thus she is paired up with a Warrior digimon.. something that doesn’t immediately gel with her. However during their journey they both learn to accept each other. Denise trying to outsmart while her Digimon is trying to overpower. Both can bounce of of each other fairly good as well. With Denise talking to get under their enemies skins to create openings for her digimon. Or by having her digimon display their powers by words Denise uses that example to lower morale. In the end both would prefer to spare their targets and save them from the negative corruption if possible.. but I would take a much more reluctant role in it. Trying to cling on to the false idea that violence never solves anything.. (in an anime world)
The Setting
Before I adress the Digimon itself a quick summary of the rulesets I am using. Digimon across its (I want to say ) six main anime series and plethora of games had several rulesets to play by. First of all there is the classic Digimon Adventures Rules.. later added upon in Adventures S2 trough armor eggs and mode changes as well as an emphasis on DNA digivolution (or Yogress) Digimon Tamers added the aspect of swipeable modification cards. Blue cards and fusing with your digimon to achieve your mega form. Frontier had the digidestined collect figurines/spirits which they could transform with and could become digimon, completely eliminating the rooky stage. Saviours had alternative evolution pasts and a guy punching Digimon for energy as well as burst states and more. X-cross did not focus on evolving but on combining digimon and Applimon focussed on chips like megaman battle network and installables and such.
*Shivers*
While for a collectable creator admirer like me the Xcross universe would be well suited it has no narrative element. My story would be… “fuses a bunch of pink things to create a bigger pink thing that looks like those other pink things combined” . It just doesn’t translate well. The Frontier Ruleset would be too much of a collectathon and it lacks that digimon feeling. It would just be another transformation. Applimon I really disliked so that one is out of the question. Armor Digivolutions where something very heavily connected to the story arc of S2 and I would not want to tell that same story over again so those are out. Which leaves us with the ruleset of Tamers or the original series. I feel like explaining every modify card would be to tedious and uninteresting but I do have some prepared for those interested to know. I feel for recognisability going with season 1 and subsequently tri would work best. That being said I will use any and all digivolution lines that have been established in all forms of media. Kotemon (my rookie) for example was introduced in Digimon World 3.. but mine follows another evolution path. Since in the world digital world evolution is not a straight line like pokémon but an ever branching path. Still by all means my digmon SHOULD be able to achieve any of these forms.
Lot’s of goggles lots f rules!
The Digimon
In Training Stage: Kapurimon
When first traveling to the digital world Denise would be paired up with her digimon in it’s In Training Stage. It’s the same stage as Koromon and Molitmon for example. “That pink blob face” for the most of them. Unfortunately for me.. mine would not be pink. I get a white and blue cat ball thing that looks fluffy and adorable as well. Like virtually any intraining digimon it’s attack is to shoot slightly acidic bubbles. It can also emit a soundwave from his helmet that paralyses the enemy. Yet this form would not last long. I would say that it would not digivolve the first episode because we try to avoid battles from the offset.. but definitely in the second one.
In the first episode Kuwagamon (it always has to be the first thing you fight in digimon) shows up.. drastically influenced by the Negativity.. not a Nega Digimon just yet.. but close to losing its mind. While Bean and Lyn’s digimon evolve in the first episode and they get their signature Lopmon for Lyn and Kamemon for Bean early.. two are not enough to hold off the feral Kuwagamon at bay. But I do not want to hurt it..after running in the second epsiode Kapurimon convinces me to let it fight as well .. paralyzing Kuwagamon before bravely dashing in and digivolving into………. KOTEMON!
The Rookie : Kotemon
Kotemon is a tiny dragon like person in a Kendo suit. It’s signature attacks are Fire Men and Thunder Kote (both based on Kendo terms/strike areas) . In this form it would be my companion throughout our digimon journey. It would be a very loyal and brave digimon that does tend to rush into battle if I am not there to stop it. For me to compliment it it would have to be a rather naive digimon.. she would be brawn I am the brain. I chose for it to be female as well because that way I can try to cute it up at times.. much to it’s dismay as knights do not look cute and pink! Luckily I carry a lot of ribbons with me. Kotemon and me would be fairly far apart in the beginning but get close rather fast when we both realise we do not seek to harm others. She learns to respect how I can negotiate and I respect that sometimes we have to brute force our way into things.
We both learn of each other. It might teach me some basics of Kendo.. like splitting a water melon on a beach. She refers to me as my Lady even when teaching me something she treats me like a superior. II would teach tricks to get her way without being the bad guy.. and how to read an opponent. As a gag I try to keep peaking behinds it mask and it keeps hitting me on the head going “Menmenmen”.. knocking me out or scaring me of.Bean who has to learn patience gets a Kamémon a turtle like pokémon that is very mellow and slow. Lyn who is always tardy and not very strict with her promises gets Lopmon.. an energetic little bunny. Lyn adores turtles and Bean adores bunnies so it’s almost as if they have each others digimon which cause some interesting group dynamics.
Kotemon is a Data-Attribute digimon that is of the Reptile type. While Typing does not oftenly matter in Digimon (unless it’s somewhat logical like setting a tree digimon on fire) and doesn’t offer super effective attacks or something.. Attribute is quite important in the world of Digimon.. even if it rarely mentioned. Digimon generally can be of three attribute types. Virus, Data or Vaccine. Virus monsters are stronger against Data, Data beats Vaccine and the latter trumps Virus.
It is nothing of major importance unlike in Pokémon but I thought you should know. Some are digimon are attribute free. Kotemon can attack with her flaming sword (Fire men) or give people an electrical gutpunch (Thunder Kote). It is a bit of a balanced digital monster with both decent defence as well as a good offence. Which landed it in the Balance Digimon pack in Digimon World 3 along with Patamon and Renamon. For those who don’t know who that are it’s that bubble firing ear bat wing ears piglike thing TK has in the original series.. and that yellow thing you found when googling furry.
Champion Stage: Gladimon
Imagine Silver Chariot from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures and the Kool-Aid Guy doing a fusion dance. This is what you get … Denise’s Champion Pokémon is Gladimon. One of four possible Kotemon digivolutions. In case I refer to it as evolutions that is not actually a mistake. In Japanese the term digivolution does not exist. There when the great theme of brave heart plays the digimon shouts out their name followed by Shinka. Which literally j means evolve. The term was most likely changed to not overlap with pokémon as much. Being a sub girl myself though part of my brain clings onto my first experiences while another draws from recent memory. Hence the confusion! Gladimon would arrive to our show in episode 3. Kuwagamon returns but now as Nega-Kuwagamon. It power has increased and having accepted we have to fight I evolve my sweet little Kendo dino into … chibi Alphonse Elric. Gladimon is a Vaccine type.. and is part of the Virus Buster family which would seem like the perfect tool to stop Kuwagamon.. who is a virus type! But than we find out that a Negative Digimon changes it’s typing..so it is strong to what it was previously weak to. So nega-Kuwagamon is a Datatype! After a hard fight Gladimon still manages to pull out the win! But then we get introduced to the Dark Destineds. Self imposed travelers who have gained access to the digital world where they are harvesting parts of the digital world to form an army that can rule the earth and bring back an ancient evil that will wipe out all that resist.
Gladimon has only existed in Digimon Masters and not a lot is documented about it. It’s attacks are Wheel Rush wish we are going to assume works a lot like sonic’s spin dash and sword dancer.. which probably speaks for itself. Gladimon is a fair bit tinier than most champions. It would be about human size. Maybe even just kid sized. It’s a sizable increase from Kotemon , about 100% but compared to Greymon or Birdramon and basically all the Adventures cast it is a very tiny champion. It does seem to have stretchable arms though to compensate. In this form Gladimon would have the personality of a kid playing a knight. She would speak in clichés about glory and knightly things! In this form she would call me Princess, and her catchprase would be “I’ll save you Princess “ before rushing into battle. It will get is in trouble a few times.. as in this form she is a bit of a Leeroy Jenkins.
Oh yeah! I am so onto something!
Going Further Beyond
The Crest
In the original adventures series you needed a crest of virtue to push your digimon to the level of Ultimate.. the third main stage of a digimon’s line. Usually signifying a trial to overcome. Perseverance would be mine. I have to save the world and bring positivity towards people and to do that I sometimes must do things I do not like. I must endure some hate and negativity and I must not let it discourage me. It is a journey that I figured would make a lot of sense as a counterpart for Tai’s bravery. We hit the same story elements while offering me some choices that are much more in line with my nature.
I will have to accept we have to kill some digimon who are tainted so they can be reborn as clean versions but in the area that holds my quest we encounter a digimon that once helped us and befriended us..but now he has fallen to the corruption.. the only way to save it is to kill it. This is the path we were set upon and even if things get very rough we must persevere.It seems like a nice heroes journey that fits in the world of Digimon. Bean would get the crest of patience and Lyn would get the crest of Commitment. Two real life friends who have to learn those lessons but something I also feel could be good journeys for an anime character to learn.
The Ultimate: Knightmon
When exposed to the energy of my crest and my perseverance Gladimon can digivolve to Knightmon! Now this is a tall digimon yet still not as large as some of it’s peers. In this form my lady knight actually becomes a full fledged knight whose signature attack is called Beserker Sword.. which basically means she goes monkeydoodoo with the thing. She also has the ability to slam her giant sword into the ground or use it as a bashing weapon to blow enemies away. According to my sources she will also have access to an attack called “the Duel” speaking of duels.. next episode will be about what Yui-gi-oh deck I would use. I shall be honest though I have no idea what the attack does.. so let’s say for narrative purposes Knightmon says she has the attack but I think it sounds to omnious and ask her not to use it because I do not want harm to come to her. Then in one episode we finally have to use the attack.. and she seems to lose the duel.. I actually toss a rock at the enemy which than glows with a strange energy! “Stay away from my friend” I would shout.. before my Digimon gets hit again.. but the impact sends the rock to me. A strange gem called a positivity gem is formed.. and by believing in my digimon she could achieve her final form.
But before we move onto that some semantics first. Knightmon is a Data Attribute. Hey it switched back again! It still is part of the Virus Buster family and is known for its tremendous physical strength and extreme loyalty to it’s master. Which at one point can create another point of conflict for me as I do not want something or someone to blindly throw their live away for me. I want it to think on it’s own as well. Which is why it decides to use “the duel” eventually. In this form Knightmon would call me My queen. Her personality is a bit more “out there” being very stoic in rest but as soon as I get a scratch she practically turns into a barbarian swinging around her berserker sword.. falling back into old habits. After Kotemon originally transforms into her she starts to see herself more and more as a tool and less like a person that matters and I have to save her from that image! She matters to me after all. In the end with a gem of positivity ..or a little ray of sunshine if we rebrand it later we can finally fully connect and we get it’s final form…. and it’s PINK!
The Mega: Crusadermon
Crusadermom is a Virus Type, Virus Buster Holy Knight.. Jeesz! She did it all! Good job my friend! It is one of the Royal Knights in the digi universe. These are basically the guys protecting the gods. Even though they are powerful enough themselves. Her fighting style would be a mix of that of the pokémon Bisharp and Goku from Dragonball Z. Where she uses her extreme speed to use the slicy ribbons on her body to damage the enemy. But she can also at an instant teleport in their face and shoot sonic booms at their chest with that cannon thing! Which apparently is called a Pile Bunker. She can create laser nets with her normal hand palm and Tornado’s with the Pile Bunker as well. So she is definitely a force to recognised with and one of the stronger Digimon out there. Something we would definitely need to stop Nega-Apocalymon. Have I told you already her design is pink! PINK! So perfect for me!
Pink, Ribbons, Monarch.. Definatly mariage material
In this form Crusadermon would refer to me as Denise. Signifying she finally sees me as her equa instead of her superior. Which in my turn makes me realise how much I meant to Kotemon and it’s other forms. Since it’s a bit of a staple to give the destineds something that goes beyond the level of Mega for the final battle we would use something like Positivity charge.. where Crusadermon becomes Posi-Crusadermon or something of that nature. Or maybe we learn to do a synergy attack with that mysterious new member? Who knows? Why do I wear goggles over glasses? Who knows! Maybe because I can hide my tears better as I was a crybaby! Maybe to be hipster.. or maybe you have your own answers about all of this. Let me know how you’d finish the final boss or why I double dip in specs in the comments or tell me what would be your digimon!
Remember I love you all, and don’t forget to keep smiling! Stay Positive
Pinkie's Paradise 