- A misfortune believed to be sent by God as punishment for sin.
- The Last Judgement.
- Britney Spears's covers of "(I Can't Get No)Satisfaction" and "I Love Rock n' Roll" (you have to hear how the lyrics to "Satisfaction" have been rewritten to be less male and less, uh...well, about sex. @_@ And the girl can't sing. Quit moaning into the mike. BAD COVER! NO BISCUIT!!)
- Stabbing Westward's cover of "Bizarre Love Triangle". Now, I have nothing against SW. I kinda like one or two of their songs, and I have an album. However, this was just so mind-melting to listen to. The synth-tastic "Bizarre Love Triangle" replicated using guitars and drums just sounded so...odd. This was just a case of nothing being wrong with the cover itself, it was just that the rock reworking of the song didn't really...match with the song's lyrics or feel or maybe I just couldn't shake the thought of the original.
- Smashing Pumpkins's cover of " Never Let Me Down Again". Good freaking god. The original song was a synth-poppy mountain of ghei. But it was a synth-poppy mountain of ghei that I am really really fond of. ( Dude, Krisit, 'ghei' is not pronounced with a K. You just have to put a little unF into the 'gh'.) Anyways, SP chose to strip this down to a light, gentle instrumental version, which I thought was kinda interesting. But then Billy Corgan starts singing, and I just about fell over. I thought it was impossible to make Depeche Mode songs any ghei-er, but I WAS WRONG. Oh, I was wrong. Billy Corgan sings the song in a wispy, breathy voice that makes me think of fuzzy uke sweaters. It's not a bad cover either, it's just...so...ghei. In the frightening way.
Thursday, January 10, 2002, 01:37 p.m.
o/~ I would go out tonight, but I haven't got a stitch to wear~ o/~I find it vaguely amusing that the Smiths are, like, #21 on Spin Magazine's list of top 50 most influential bands. XD I'm not complaining, it's just that it's amusing to find out that I listen to a lot of Influential Bands, where here I thought I was just listening to a lot of stuff that came out when I was age -10 through 10. @_@ As Krisit said, I should have been born about 15 years earlier than I was; I'd probably have been right in my element musically. XD Hell, the Ramones were #2 on the list, right after the Beatles.
This IS the last persona gameblog, don't worry. I beat the game, and really, I was only gameblogging this heavily because a couple of people asked me to. So, here we go:
Where did I leave off last time, anyways? Woogie and Ulala met up with their Shadow forms, and this time I beat them, no problem. Woogie was extremely weak to ice and water attacks, and Ulala to Earth. So I killed off woogie first with a set of Ice Crush fusions, and then Ulala with Stone Rise. Then Eikichi was released, but he's unconscious, and Tatsuya's really upset. Philemon appears and says that he has to take Eikichi out of here, because his continued presence would just strengthen Nyarly. So he disappears with Eikichi.
The Personae I stuck with for the final dungeon were Artemis on Maya, Hastur on Ulala (for Lovecraft tentacle factor), Bishamonten or Mucalinda on Katsuya, Phoenix on Tatsuya (gotta love that Sama Recarm) and...Prometheus on Baofu. I'd stuck Mediarahan on Prometheus, so he actually became my healer. I'd stuck Magdyne on Hastur, giving me my earth spell for fusions, Artemis had a lot of ice spells, Mucalinda had ice and water, Bishamonten had Attack and Sword and Fire spells, and Phoenix, of course, had fire. I think Artemis might have had a wind spell...SOMEONE had a wind spell. So basically I was very well balanced elementally, and could perform a lot of fusions with just that set of personae. (Hastur naturally had almost all Dark spells, which helped with enemies weak against dark. One-hit kills all the way.) Ulala was by FAR the fastest; her AGI stat was in the mid-eighties _O_ I think the personae I kept putting on her had AGI +1 level-up bonuses. Katsuya was the strongest; his STR stat was somewhere in the 70's, for the same reason that Ulala had such high speed. He was five or six levels below Tatsuya, and he STILL had a higher attack power. And this was all without Legendary weapons. Not bad, actually. I bought everyone the strongest weapons I could, and made Katsuya and Baofu good weapons at the Padparacha. I never went back to town during this dungeon...I COULD have, but I just wanted to beat the damn game. Next time I will!
OK, after this world was the world of....um...Conviction? I think. We saw a massive-ass flashback to Baofu's past; Reverse Odysseus (a negative-image version of his first Persona, Odysseus) was holding his old partner, Asai Miki, against a tree by the throat and choking her and slamming her against a tree. Baofu yelled at Odysseus to stop, and Miki was calling for Baofu's help, but finally Reverse Odysseus broke Miki's neck against the tree trunk, and Baofu kind of lost it. O_O;;; He was about to kill Reverse Odysseus, when Maya has the choice of stopping him or not stopping him. I chose to stop him, because I guess the idea is to help people find their inner strength, and if Baofu gave in to his hatred and need for revenge, that would be bad, right? So Maya steps between Baofu and the vision of Reverse Odysseus and Miki's dead body, and then Baofu just kind of gives up. He says that it's pathetic...he claimed to hate Tatsuzou and the police and his useless Persona for causing Miki's death, but in reality, he hates HIMSELF the most of all for being unable to save Miki. He thinks Miki would still be alive if he hadn't gotten her involved in this, or had . (I guess there's your symbolism; Baofu's persona (in reverse) is what he sees killing Miki. And personae are, of course, aspects of the people themselves...paging Dr. Jung?) Miki appears to him as a ghost and tells him not to beat himself up over this, that she knew the dangers involved with her job, and that he's wallowed in his self-hatred long enough. And then she disappears. Baofu laughs bitterly and says that yes, he was planning to use the group all along...he needed their help to go after Tatsuzou, because he didn't think he could do it himself. He thought he'd screw it up again.
Baofu: I'm pathetic...I didn't even tell you my real name.
Ulala: I...I think it's a nice name! A cool name! It...has a nice ring to it...
Katsuya: I see..."Saga Kaoru" died on duty five years ago...this person in front of me is completely different than him...*smiles suddenly* He's a bit misguided, maybe....a "free spirit"...or a "loveable lush"...
Ulala: Aren't you forgetting "twisted person"?
Baofu: XD
It's so amusing. Tatsuya comments that he's never known anyone like Baofu before, and Ulala whispers to Maya, "Remember that fortune I got at the beginning of all of this? I think it came true after all." (re: meeting someone cool) Baofu coughs and says, " Well, uh, there are a lot of things, you know..." and Katsuya snickers. It's funny to see Baofu embarrassed.
Right, moving on...more dungeon. Raar. Then we go to the world of Instinct, where it's Maya's turn! (Actually, Baofu knows exactly how this dungeon's going to go; when the ominous buzzy heartbeat begins, he turns to Maya and goes, " Looks like it's our turn, Amano...") Nyarly appears to Maya and asks, "so, now that you've come this far, who are you mad at?" Maya can either answer, " At YOU!" or " I'm just....very sad..." and I picked the latter, because I Must Not Give INNNN To My Anger! Nyarly - who's still in the form of Evil Gakusei Tatsuya, says something about how Maya can never have Tatsuya, because he's MINE! Or something like that. This pisses Maya off, and she draws her gun, and Nyarly encourages her to fire. You can now choose whether to shoot Nyarly or not. The first time, knowing that this was be the wrong answer, I shot Nyarly....and then Tatsuya himself received the gunshot to the chest, and his HP went down to 1. >_@ I snickered and reloaded the game, this time choosing not to fire. Then Nyarly froths some more, and I THINK this is when Shadow-Baofu and Shadow-Maya appear to be battled. IIRC, Shadow-Maya was weak against Physical attacks, and Shadow Baofu I think I just killed with random Huge Damage fusions. Not hard, really. This time Lisa's released, and Philemon takes her away too.
Two more worlds....what worlds am I missing? The World of Judgement, maybe? I forget. The last world is probably the World of Judgement...
JUDGEMENT (n)
Those are two definitions for it, anyways. Fits the game best that way.
So, um, Nyarly's waiting for them in the final chamber. He mox0rZ Tatsuya hardcore, and asks him if he's told the others what REALLY happened when Maya died. Tatsuya goes "..." of course, so we have Massive Flashback.
So, Maya's dead, and all the other kids are freaking out. Nyarly cackles that this is what real life is like - bad things happen, and you can't do SHIT about it! He disappears as Tatsuya takes a swipe at him. Philemon appears and says that he can bring Maya back and undo all the bad that's happened, but at a price; all four kids have to forget everything completely. Eikichi doesn't want to - none of them do - because he says that they should show Nyarly that things don't always work by HIS rules, but Philemon says that they have to. Basically, he's going to wipe their memories back to childhood, and rewrite their lives from their childhood to the present day, creating a whole new timeline. So all the kids agree to forget...even though they hate the idea of forgetting each other. Eikichi disappears, then Jun, then Maya...then Lisa kisses Tatsuya and tells him not to forget her before she disappears. Man, Gakusei-Tatsuya had weird hair, but he was cute when he blushed. (Ah, so 'Chinyan' is Cantonese for 'darling' or something? I've seen it in all my doujinshi when Lisa addresses Tatsuya, and it's NOT Japanese...I know that Lisa was trying to teach herself Cantonese, wasn't she, from HK flicks?) So Lisa disappears, and Philemon asks Tatsuya if he has any final words. There you can choose whether to hit Philemon or thank him. I socked him. Philemon's mask falls off, and you see that Philemon is Tatsuya with long hair @_@ Creepy. He says that I am you, you are I, etc etc, and then everything whites out.
Anime cutscene! All four kids, sans Maya, are falling through a trippy landscape. Eikichi says, "We've had some tough times, but I was glad to meetcha," and disappears. (I'm trying to do this from memory; so their quotes may be paraphrased ;;^^ bear with me!) Jun puts his flower to his lips ( hahahaha, it's the Filomela! "I forgive you!") and says something in his girly-boy voice that I completely missed BOTH times I watched this cutscene. FOR GOD'S SAKES, BOY, ENUNCIATE! OR HIT PUBERTY SO I CAN HEAR YOU! I think it was something about how they'd surely meet again. Lisa's crying and asking Tatsuya not to forget her, and Tatsuya's freaking out. " No! I don't want to forget this...how can I? Guys! Don't leave me! Don't leave me all alone! Don't go! No----!"
We switch back to the present, where Tatsuya's going T_T and Nyarly's cackling. " You didn't tell them, did you? You couldn't ask them for help because...the reason this world is on the brink of being destroyed is YOU! YOU ALONE!" Basically, since Tatsuya hadn't forgotten, he was creating a paradox - remember? Paradox man, paradox man~ o/~ and that paradox was causing the two worlds to merge again, strengthening Nyarly and making THIS side in danger of disappearing. Nyarly cackles about how Tatsuya was fated to be such an angstball monkeyspank or something. Tatsuya starts building up a massive angst-attack...and then everyone interrupts him.
" Hey, Tatsuya, 'fate' is nothing more..."
" Than a prophecy made too late. When something bad happens, it's easy to just say..."
" 'It was fate!'"
Baofu essentially tells Nyarly that he sux0rZ, and Nyarly fumes. Tatsuya says that he made a mistake, but he'll fix it, and he won't turn his back on this world again...or himself! Nyarly and Tatsuya power up simultaneously - they're mirror images, of course - and we launch into the final boss battle.
Nyarly's first form is the Moon Howler, which is black and looks vaguely humanoid, but still somewhat tentacly. My fusions did shit damage on him - 300 HP apiece, maybe - but it wasn't bad; I brought him down with little problem. He's got maybe 9000 HP, maybe a little less. After you defeat that form, Nyarly takes his final form, the Crawling Chaos, which is All Tentacles, All The Time, with a thousand ghostly white faces all over his body. It looks really cool. He says that they're the first humans ever to see this form, so they should feel 1337 or something. Man, what a pain. He had 18,000-some HP, and was void Dark and Almighty. My fusion that did the most damage was Hydro-Boost, for some reason, and again, about 300 HP each. Rar. He has some bitchmonkey attacks; the worst one usually was an instant-kill for 2-3 out of the five characters. Luckily it never killed Tatsuya or Baofu, so I had a Sama Recarm/Mediarahan thing going. I had to do this several times. Mostly I was careful and conserved the SP of my attackers, only letting them attack in fusion. I used a Soma when everyone's SP became dangerously low, and used my healers/revivers to give them Chewing Soul as necessary. (Or other SP objects.) Nyarly's other attacks aren't that bad, really; some didn't do any damage at all. Must have been the personae I picked; I bet they were Dark attacks. There was one bitchmonkey spell that sealed off my ability to switch personae..but that was OK, my current lineup had everything I needed. This wasn't an easy battle, but it wasn't anything like that damn Former Sugimoto Regen guy. >_< I just had to hang in there and keep everyone alive, with SP, and attacking. I hammered away at him bit by bit, and then I guess he cast some magic spell on me that rebounded off Maya and Ulala (they had Magic-reflect personae) and that did him in at last. I was actually surprised; it'd only taken me like half an hour or 45 minutes!
Then there was the ending, which was bittersweet. I really liked it. Yay for bittersweet endings! XD I loathe smarmy endings where all loose ends are tied up just a bit too neatly. If you're curious, I transcribed a HEFTY chunk of the ending dialogue here - sorry about the word wrap. >_< It tells what all the main characters did after the end of the story, how the story ends - if it has really ended - and, uh...yeah, even what's up with the Persona 1 people! :D Ah, Nate, you wanker you. :D And if you have any questions about the ending, email me.
Phew. And that's that. My car isn't QUITE dead yet...it's hanging in there. More on that some other time.
Now Playing: the Smiths - This Charming Man and Reel Around the Fountain (you know, they ought to take all these Miserable Musicians and stick them in a trust-building daycamp somewhere. You know, with campfire sing-alongs, falling backwards into each other's arms and being caught, tie-dying t-shirts...I think the results would be both amusing and horrifying. What do you think?)
Tuesday, January 8, 2002, 12:46 p.m.
" Have you been dating that delinquent boy from Kasugayama HS?"" Which one?"
" The one in all the makeup!"
" WHICH ONE? XDDD "
" ......o.o;;; "
Thank god I'm not a doujinshika. The FUBAR shit I'd come up with...and I'd draw it just to be scary, not because I actually liked that particular pairing. XD
With any luck, tomorrow or later tonight will be THE LAST Persona gameblog. I'm in the final dungeon, world 3/5. Whew, I stayed up too late with this. But it was worth it, because I saw Shadow-Katsuya and Shadow-Ulala!
In real world news, my car's transmission is shot, and I have a massive headache. Tickets to Japan bought. I was going to work on my financial aid stuff, but my father reminded me that without my W-2 forms, there was little point. Got into a massive fight with my parents last night that blew over twenty minutes later, as usual, with each of us calling to apologize. Real life has been boring recently, I guess. Which is good in a way. I suppose I'm cocooning until winter is over.
I'm behind on blogs, anyways. Sorry, I'll read them tonight. X_x
PERUSONA 2 GAME BROG, the second-to-last one!
Before I entered Sumaru Castle, I ran about Sumaru City, prepping myself. Amusing convos:
In the Sumaru Genie:
Ulala: Awww, Tatsuya says they used to call him "Tatsu" on the Other Side. (Tacchan, I presume)
Tatsuya: She asked me what they called me...all I did was answer...
Katsuya: *smile* "Tatsu", huh? That's a cute nickname...what about me? (Puu: I dub thee 'woogie', Kacchan. Anyways, Ulala already calls him "Big Suou" by now, which he claims is undignified. XD)
In the Padparacha:
Glittery-Eyed Girl: Oh, you turned out to be unreliable after all! If that man hadn't been there, I'd have been killed!
Distressed Man: Calm down...it couldn't have been helped...who was he? He had a #1 on his back, didn't he?
Baofu: A #1, huh? Well, besides 'him', there's just that track star...
Katsuya: A #1...judging from their testimony, we can infer that it was probably 'him.'
Ulala: "Infer" my ass, you know it was Nate! (Puu: XD)
So it seems that Nate is out and about protecting the people of Sumaru City, and the main characters are very relieved that someone like that is covering their backs. I would be too; he may be a wanker, but Nate has 1337 skillz.
Sumaru Castle. Jeez. This would have been harder if we didn't have a knowledge of astronomy and mythology. Basically, the setup is this: you arrive in front of the castle, and there are eight warp points in front of you; seven in the shape of the Big Dipper, and an eighth placed apart from the constellation (perhaps representing the North Star; it's sort of in the right direction, I think? Maybe not.) Anyways, it's a sort of puzzle-castle. Each of those warp points leads to a floor of the Castle, and in each floor is a plaque telling how to 'pray to the kotodama', giving you a letter. Each plaque is named after a star. Once you go through all seven, writing down the star name and the letter, you go to that eighth warp point, and it'll tell you that the faithful follow the path of blah blah blah, giving the star names in a particular order. Punch in the associated letters in that order, et voila; the door to Utena opens. Actually, Ka and I are cheap. We found the first two letters - P - E - and then we guessed the associated constellation: PERSEUS. So that's the password, and we opened the door to Utena. The only things you really have to pick up in Sumaru Castle - although it's lovely, all faded browns and blacks and golds, like an ancient Japanese castle - is the personae of Amano Maihime and Suou Tatsunoshin and Kuroda Junnosuke on the third and seventh floors respectively.
I must admit those three personae made us snicker. It's a different 'Tatsu' and a different 'Jun' (I looked 'em up in my guidebook) but the last names are, of course, the same. Well, mostly; it's the same 'Kuro' in Kuroda and Kurosu, I mean. What the heck is this, the game pandering to the people who liked the TatsuJun pairing? XD~ No, you can't have the legend of the Samurai and the Princess, you have to have the legend of the Princess, the Samurai, and the Ninja. @_@ Or at least that's what I'm assuming Kuroda is supposed to be. I was amused, at any rate.
Anyways, in Utena, you segue straight into a boss fight with Tatsuzou. Easy. Really easy. He's weak vs. ice, I think, and I'd learned Ice Crush or whatever the fusion with Diamond Dust is called. XD~ I was using, um, Artemis, Mucalinda, and......jeez, Bishamonten with that, I think. I also had Prometheus equipped with Mediarahan to make my life easier, and I had Phoenix and Hastur as backup. After you kill Tatsuzou, you get directly into ANOTHER boss fight, which was....uh...oh right! The mummy of Gozen - Kiyotada Sumaru! Right, right, I couldn't remember that. Also sort of easy; keep bashing at him until he dies. I LOVE personae that reflect magic. XD~ I was in my mid-50's level-wise here. I know, I know, I'm not levelling enough, maybe.
Much 1337 FMV/CG here, too. The ship takes off, the Dragons start rampaging, mass destruction, and we enter the Collective Unconsciousness (Monde Mandala or something?), where we can see Philemon's sanctum in the middle. But we're greeted by- NYARLY-CHAN! *ahem* OK, ok, Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos. Whatever. He's standing on one of the intersections of the giant kaballistic diagram in the form of Tatsuya XD He looks just like Tatsuya in his HS uniform, with yellow eyes and a really creepy grin. Anyways, much mox0ring and taunting goes on, and Nyarly-chan reveals that he is holding Jun, Eikichi, and Lisa hostage, and if Tacchan wants them back, to come and get him. As he's talking, Nyarly switches forms from one character to another, forming their Shadow alter-ego. Shadow Katsuya, Shadow Baofu, etc etc. The trick here is to NOT reawaken Eikichi's memories, I think. Because if Eikichi remembers everything, it'll strengthen Nyarly, right? And he'll become much harder and higher-level accordingly. We need to keep Eikichi from remembering, to keep Nyarly's boss stats low. And that depends on our answers to the questions he poses us in the dungeons. Dangit. Oh, and another cool thing; when Tatsuya rushes Nyarly-Tacchan, Nyarly catches Tatsuya's sword in his bare hand - and TATSUYA winces. If this continues, this'll make the boss fights painful for my characters X_x Anyways, you run about the Monde Mandala (I ran into Shub-Niggurath! yay! Of course, it was a tentacled, Lunatic-class demon. Foo. I was hoping that Hastur and Shubby-chan would at least talk to each other, or burble and wave their tentacles.) First world was the World of Reason, and at the end, we reach a room with a massive flashback to Katsuya's high school days.
Mr. Kashihara: Suou...are you sure you want to give up your dream of being....a dessert chef?
16-year-old Katsuya: That's 'Patissier.' :P
(Puu & Ka: AUUUUGH!! XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD)
Mr. Kashihara: Yeah, uh, what you said...but do you really want to do this?
Woogie: Yes. After law school, I will enter the police force.
Mr. Kashihara: Well, with your grades, you can go wherever you want...but do you really want to do this? Is this about your father?
Woogie: That's irrelevant. Please excuse me.
It was hysterical to see Ulala and Maya's facefaults when they realized that Katsuya had wanted to be a des....uh, a patissier. XD And man, having Mr. Kashihara as your HS guidance counsellor? o.o; I know he wasn't Nyarly-chan THEN, but I can just see him telling kids that there was a good career in being the mindless slaves of the Olden Gods from Pluto, blblblblblblraaaar! XD
Then Shadow-Woogie asks Katsuya if he didn't, deep down, resent his father and brother for making him give up his dreams. And then Shadow-Woogie says he's in love with 'that woman' (Maya and Tatsuya go O_O) and tells Woogie to stop lying to himself, to admit that he resents his brother and hates having to be the perfect older brother all the time. Katsuya wavers, and his glasses go opaque, Baofu tells him to stay sharp, and Ulala tells the 'Big Suou' to snap out of it. Katsuya draws his gun and levels it at Tatsuya, who doesn't even flinch. Then you have Maya's choice! Does she yell at Katsuya to stop, or tell him that she believes in him? Well, the right idea seems to tell him that you believe in him, because then Woogie goes " Tatsuya...what he says is partially true..." does a no-look fire and nails his Shadow with a critical hit, " and partially untrue. I'll always be your big brother, no matter what. The mistake you (Shadow-Woogie) made was to use that face to get between us brothers! Begone!" Ah, the beauty of brotherly love, to quote Maya. XD Nyarly sulks that that's no fun, and disappears. Now, if you talk to everyone, Ulala teases Maya that now she has to pick between the little brother and the big one, Tatsuya says, " I see, he'll take care of Maya...now I can stop worrying." But Katsuya says, smiling, " Ms. Amano, take care of Tatsuya, OK?" Then he blushes. " Um, Ms. Amano, what he said was partially untrue..." Ka and I were rolling on the floor cackling. Embarrassing woogie is such cheap fun. XD Baofu said, "That brother-complex couldn't even kill his own little brother...dammit, just watching him embarrasses me." XDD
But I found it amusing what the brothers basically had to say regarding Maya:
Tatsuya: *angst* Aniki, you can take care of her now.
Katsuya: No, you'll take care of her.
Tatsuya: No, please, I must insist, she's all yours.
Katsuya: No...grr...just...take her...she deserves...better...
Tatsuya: No, you take her!
Or perhaps that's my catty take on it. I don't dislike Maya at all; in fact, I like her quite a lot! I just don't think that personality-wise she's a good match with Tatsuya, however canonical it is. As Ka said, both of them need someone to take care of them, sort of; they're dreamers and slightly impractical. While they're busy with their 'positive thinking', someone has to clean the apartment and make dinner and make sure bills are paid. Right now, Ulala's doing that for Maya, amazingly enough, but man...
The next world is the World of Intellect, where you meet Shadow Ulala. Ulala's flashback is of she and Maya sitting in a bar, and Maya's staring out the window while Ulala talks. Ulala says that she's a bit jealous of Maya, because Ulala has such lousy luck with men, while Maya gets to pine over Deja-vu Boy. " Dammit, why do I have to be the ugly skank around here? I cook, I clean, I'm domestic, I'm in shape! What's wrong with me? OK, so maybe my curves are the best...ever since I got this desk job...I'm a little jealous of you, Maya, you're so lucky." Maya, however, has fallen asleep in the middle of Ulala's rant. "Why do I even bother...oh well, she does work late. Come on Maya, let's go home, here's your purse, don't forget it..." (Yes, they used the word 'skank'. XD Atlus gets +50 1337 for their localization.) Shadow-Ulala taunts Ulala that Ulala has never felt comfortable with herself, has never found a place for herself, and takes care of Maya to cover up her massive inferiority complex. Ulala doesn't even deny it, she just frowns and says that the Shadow didn't need to rub it in. Then the Shadow asks, " You, you're supposedly her best friend! Has she found herself yet?" Your choices are: a) It's not for me to say, or b) Ulala found herself long ago! The correct choice is a, I think; the correct choices seem to be the ones that force the characters to stand up for themselves and face facts. If you'd told Woogie to stop it, he apparently would have acted weak and ashamed of his feelings, and that would wake Eikichi's memories partway. If you tell Ulala that she's already found herself, she'd act weak too. But if you say that it's not your place to say whether Ulala has found herself, then Ulala says, "That's right! I don't have to FIND myself, I'm not LOST anywhere, I need to MAKE myself! My future is mine to shape!" This annoys Nyarly and he disappears again. Baofu is rather amused and impressed by Ulala's little breakthrough. XD " Not bad, coming from ULALA."
Next is the World of Judgement, and the battle is vs. Shadow Katsuya and Shadow Ulala. I didn't get a chance to beat that yet; I'll do it tonight. It was CREEPY; the shadows used the same phrases as the real people, but their voices were....altered. @_@ I thought it was cute when the Shadows taunted the real Ulala and Katsuya, telling them to fight to prove themselves, and the two yell in unison, " You're on!"
Phew. Yes, that's what I did last night. I also read some Rushdie and worked on a layout. Of course I'm boring. :D
Now Playing: Iggy Pop - Nightclubbing
Tuesday, January 8, 2002, 12:00 a.m.
Don't run away, it's only me o/~Let me finish off my massive persona game brog before I forget everything. X_x
OK, where was I, the undersea ruins? The enemy is Guido Kandori, who has a couple of mecha - four, I think? and is strong against everything. No problem, really; he attacks very slowly until all the mecha are gone, and if you're doing fusions that hit all enemies, he's taken some serious damage before he's ready to whale on you. Use your strongest fusions that do 'huge' damage. And that's all, really. After you defeat him, Nate and he talk for a while, and it's actually kind of interesting. Kandori isn't stupid or even particular megalomaniacal; he considers himself to be the Darkness to oppose Nate's Light. If that makes any sense, you know? Anyways, he bites it, and Wang Long Chizuru stays in the collapsing ruins with him.
Everyone escapes in the sub, and I think, FINALLY Tatsuya's going to join my party. But NO. He has to be angsty and mysterious and stuff first. Finally someone - Baofu? - convinces him that they won't stop bothering him until he explains what the heck is going on. So he says "Fine, fine, follow me, and I'll explain, and THEN will you leave me alone?" They go to Mt. Iwato, and he leads them through this dungeon of sorts, punctuated by stops at the Pools of Mirrors. These pools can show the past, I guess, and you get major tasty flashbacks to Persona 2: Tsumi (and even to Persona 1! You see Mary, Nate, Ellen, and 'PIASU no shounen' splitting up at the end of the game and vowing to, like, be 1337 people or whatever). Tatsuya explains about Masquerade, how Jun-kun had been the Joker, how he'd known Eikichi and Lisa, how Maya had gotten killed, the flashback to the burning Araya shrine, and so on and so forth. Maya, of course, is really shocked to find out all of this, especially because now it's obvious that Tatsuya's really besotted with her. Ka-chan has blogged about why we don't particularly like the Tatsuya-Maya pairing, but whatever. Tatsuya also explains the deal with Philemon and Nyarlathotep - Nyarly-chan's name is mentioned for the first time! - and says that Nyarly's behind it all. So, having unloaded his angst-fest, he expects everyone to leave him to his tragic fate, and is pissed off when the adults just grin at him and ask him if he seriously expected them to leave him alone once he'd explained everything. You go, Maya-gumi! Tatsuya's such a little monkeyspank, anyways. Nate says that he's leaving now to coordinate things in the outside world. Basically, he says that although he was born with the power of the Nanjo Conglomerate to wield, he wants to earn his OWN power and respect. I like Nate, even though he's a wanker! So Nate leaves so that you can integrate Tatsuya into your party.
Man, at this point I seriously want to smack Tatsuya. He's being self-absorbed, thoughtless, and rude (and the game even says as much; it CALLS him self-absorbed) and he doesn't seem to realize how he's hurting his brother. Katsuya assumes that Tatsuya's coldness is his own fault, and thinks he's been a lousy brother. The demon contacts at this point reflect this; Katsuya tries to tell Tatsuya that he's been worried, that their mom's worried, and asks him if he's been eating well, and Tatsuya just ignores him. Eventually he gives up and asks Maya to ask Tatsuya if he's OK for him(Katsuya). Angstball monkeyspank! In fact, just about the only person Tacchan WILL talk to right now is Maya. I actually was so annoyed at his angsting that when given a choice whether to make Maya hug him or slap him, I had her bitchslap him twice across the face. Which, of course, made him put his tail between his legs and apologize to Maya for making her mad. I almost felt sorry for him then; maybe later I'll replay that scene and let him get his hug. Monkeyspank. Now that I know he eventually starts behaving himself, I'm feeling a bit more charitable towards him.
While I was playing this, I began to wish there was a good translation for 'baka'. See, Maya calls Tatsuya a 'dummy' before slapping him, and I thought, " Hm, that doesn't sound quite right...but she wouldn't say 'fool' or 'idiot' or 'moron' either...he IS baka, but how would you translate that?"
Tatsuya was also being really nitpicky; Katsuya wasn't his REAL older brother, because of the whole "this side" and "other side" distinction, but somehow Maya was DIFFERENT, and she was OK to sparkle at because she was Maya? Nevermind that the other-side Maya is DEAD. Look, Woogie Jr., you can't have it both ways! Either everyone on This Side is real and essentially the same as the people on the other side, or they're ALL NOT THE SAME!
Tatsuya was about to leave when Baofu asks him if he knew that Katsuya had been saving money out of his paycheck for him. Katsuya is horribly embarrassed and blushes, and this actually stops Tatsuya. You ungrateful little bastard, be nice to your aniki! So Tatsuya agrees to stay for now. (Katsuya later grumbles that he's glad Baofu made Tacchan stay, but did he HAVE to blab about his savings? XD Baofu got Katsuya back for the Saga Kaoru thing by having Nate investigate HIM. XDDDD )
The next dungeon is the underground ship Torifune, reached via the subway. Ulala tries to make woogie jr. feel more included, which I thought was nice. Ulala is a nice person. Woogie Jr. then asks Baofu something about what it's like to be an adult.
The audience for the Persona games is obviously around my age. The main characters are age 23-25 (except for Baofu, who's 31 or something), and 18-year old Tatsuya is still considered 'the child' of the group. Compare this to, uh....Gundam Wing or something, where they're all 14-15, and aren't considered immature. There's a lot of philosophizing in Persona about individuality and maturity, and it's pretty interesting...either Ulala or Katsuya said that when they were little, they thought they'd know all the answers when they were adults, but now they realize it's all ad-libbing, and you have to lie a lot to yourself. Tatsuya asks Baofu if he's ever gotten tired of life, and Baofu essentially tells him that it's easy to die in a bad situation, but it's much harder to live through it, and only a child would think that way. It's really interesting, I think.
Anyways, the Torifume. It's a really interesting dungeon, very...golden and high-tech-y. Tatsuya warns them that this place makes their thoughts into reality, and tells them to empty their minds....which, of course, he is the first to disobey, and the entire place becomes as hot as a furnace. (He must be remembering that fire at Araya.) I personally was hoping for the entrance of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man - and the best thing is, it is TOTALLY possible for the game designers to include him XD I mean, hell, look at their Lovecraft jones! XD Anyways, they go through a bunch of special rooms, and at one point, Tatsuya and Maya are left alone together. Here we have...
THE BATTLE OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS!!
Tatsuya: *goes off into a corner and sits down*
Maya: *copies him*
Tatsuya: ....
Maya: ....
Tatsuya: ....
Maya: ....
Tatsuya: *gets up and walks a little way* ....
Maya: a) Th...thanks for saving me... b) You're kind of cold...
Tatsuya: (either option) ....
I'm NOT MAKING THIS UP! XDDD Main characters are cursed with ellipses-talk, and put the main characters from two different games together...you get this. XD Honestly, that's what they did!
All of a sudden, Tatsuya just disappears into thin air, and Maya-tachi all race around to find him. They find him in the Room of Guilt, where he's tied to an altar by metal versions of Lisa, Eikichi, and Jun. They accuse him of forgetting about them, and not caring about them, and Tatsuya obviously DOES feel bad about this. But when Metal Jun raises his sword and brings it down on Tatsuya, Tatsuya reaches up and catches the sword in his bare hand.
Tatsuya: " I'll accept my punishment. But....not now."
Puu & Ka: *mimicking his tone of voice* " Maybe later, though!"
Then we get the boss fight: us vs. the Metal trio. It was amazingly easy; once I realized that Jun was the Healer, I focused my Huge Damage fusions on him. (I apologized to Jun when I killed him, though; I'm such a sucker.) The English voice they gave Jun annoyed me; they gave him a typical girly-boy voice. Dude, his original seiyuu was Shibuya Shigeru, the guy who did Gene Starwind. No matter how girly Jun looks, he still goes to the high school for juvenile delinquents. He has a masculine voice, not a simpering girly-boy one. Well, Eikichi seemed to be weak vs. fire, and Lisa mostly cast status effects and a...dark spell? So it wasn't hard at all, really.
Afterwards, Katsuya bandages up Tatsuya's hand, gently scolding him that he thought he'd taught Tatsuya to grab a knife by the handle, not the blade. Tatsuya says he's sorry, and Katsuya sighs and says he hopes his brother from this side is sorry too. And Tatsuya repeats, " No, I mean it. I'm sorry." And Katsuya gets up and goes away, and you can actually see him rubbing at his eyes. It's SO CUTE! Ulala says that it must be nice to have siblings, and everyone basks in the long-awaited family bonding moment. Then they move on to the next boss fight, and from then on, Tatsuya's demon contacts with everyone change :DD Instead of Katsuya trying to talk to Tatsuya and Tatsuya ignoring him, now Tatsuya starts sharing memories of the Katsuya he remembers, asking Katsuya if he remembers the same things. Like comparing their heights against a wall or something. And Tatsuya says that when he was little, he got a bad fever, and his aniki cried because he was so worried. Katsuya coughs and stalls and says he doesn't remember that. XD And now Katsuya directly nags Tatsuya himself, instead of asking Ms. Amano to ask him if he's eating properly. And Tatsuya now whines that he's not a little kid, leave him alone, in a proper little-brother fashion, not like a stranger who doesn't understand why Katsuya is bothering him. :D
The boss is the former General Sugawara, which has been transformed into some kind of immortal turd by the power of Kotodama. I'm not kidding you; he's got some serious Regen power going, and he looks like a turd. Every turn he regains 400-700 HP, which makes killing him A GIANT PAIN. Ka-chan actually beat him while I was taking a nap, but man, I think it took her an hour. Anyways, he dies, the Torifune takes off, and we now have a flying city. However, Narumi, the newest suburb of Sumaru city, wasn't on the original spaceship, so I assume that everyone in Narumi-ku died a horrible flaming death. XD Well, except for Nate and company, of course, and shopowners. We find the shopowners in other shops, and hear that Nate's off coordinating battle efforts or something. Next I have to go to Sumaru Castle, but I have other things to do in town, personae to get, rumors to spread, and so on, because Sumaru Castle leads kind of directly to the final dungeon, and I'd better be ready for it @_@
I need to stop listening to Miserable Music by Miserable Artists for Miserable People. @_@
Now Playing: Smiths - This Charming Man & I know it's over
Monday, January 7, 2002, 10:00 a.m.
I think you're quite right, Joy.Here's what I found:
±¨¸´ [bao4 fu4] /make reprisals/retaliate/revenge/retaliation/
Groovy.
Now Playing: XTC - Making Plans for Nigel
Friday, January 4, 2002, 04:24 p.m.
" You little wanker! Apologize!"Ugh, I'm hitting critical mass with my gaming, I think. I'm almost done with Persona 2 ( I blew through 60% of the game in two days, I think; but then again, I clocked in 15+ hours in those two days, if I had to guess a number. I had been idling at around 25 hours, and now I'm over 40 hours) and hopefully I can take a little break from it. Poor Ka, she's so long-suffering. But I swear, some games are so much more fun when you have someone to trade the controller and to make snarky comments at the TV with. While I played, she'd sit there and draw - she's got pages of Persona fanart lying around by now, and it's adorable - and we'd talk, and sometimes she'd be on the computer. She played a couple of hours of dungeon herself. So I feel a little less like a bad host. Sorry, Ka! ;;^^
Ka is also cleaning my apaato while I'm at work. ;;^^ Wah~ Ka, you don't have to do that!
Wow, I'm tired. I went to bed at 3:30 (explanations later) and when my alarm rang at 7 am, I had to sit on the side of the bed for a few minutes and pep-talk myself into moving towards the shower. I'll take a nap later; I have two doctor's appointments today, one of which involving every girl's friend, the stirrups. >_< What I do for my prescriptions...
Dude, it's fun having people visit, as Krisit said. Although I don't know how much fun poor Ka is having, what with me being at work half of the day and a scatterbrain the rest, it's nice having her around. :D I showed her some Haunted Junction last night, and soon we'll watch Six String Samurai, which she's been wanting to show me. Then there's all the anime I need to watch @_@ Hunter x Hunter, One Piece, you know, all that stuff I've been meaning to watch but haven't?
With a new year, I've got a crapload of things I should take care of ASAP. My tickets to Japan will be bought today, and I should fill out my Federal Application for Student Financial Aid (I thought it was FAFSA, but this is FASFA...hmm, what's the original acronym then? I must have it wrong) ASAP. The first day you can fill it out for this year was 01/01, so I should get on the ball. Federal loans are going to pay almost all of my lovely $30,000/year tuition bills and living expenses. I also need to start looking for apartments in Milwaukee. Man, what a pain. But I'm also a little excited, I guess...
Bleh. I just read my email and found out that I really upset my parents the other night. I swear to god, I want to pull out my hair sometimes when it comes to them. Apparently I really hurt them by something or other I said. They're attributing it to me being stressed out by having guests - which I'm not at all o.o; - but I guess that's easier for them to think than the fact that I was annoyed at them. My mom thinks I should come over and console my dad, and I'm just - so tired of it all. My relationship with my parents just really depresses me sometimes.
KYA!! I'm coming in to Kansai International Airport now; I've tweaked my flight plans. Um, you can get me from there, right?
I haven't had a chance to read blogs in a day or two, so no social blogging. @_@ Let's just do my obligatory gameblog. Spoilers sort of abound, but not that many, because I'm too lazy to type it all out.
OK, last night I started out with the factory and ended after the Mt. Iwato thing. That's a decent chunk of the game...three dungeons? Four? Before I went into the factory, I thought, " Hm. Factory. Factory = giant mecha as monsters = need electricity fusions before I go in here." So I stopped and picked up Sif and, um....someone. I forget which of my other persona had Zionga too. Well, two Zionga = Lightning Blast, a very useful fusion that hits all enemies for large damage and can give them the Electrified status effect. Tasty. Especially vs. mechanical things. I got tired of filling out maps, so I just proceeded straight to the boss, who was a giant armored mecha of some sort. No problem whatsoever. I was level, um...geez, late 30s, if I had to make a guess. What was awesome about the Factory was that you got to find out Baofu's past as Saga Kaoru, P.I! Actually, no, he's Saga Kaoru, ex-Special-Investigator for the Sumaru something-or-other. He's a special prosecutor - well, he WAS. Then he became bitter and stuff and grew out his hair and learned to hax0r. It explains why he puts so little faith in the police and why he keeps muttering that he dislikes Persona. What I find amusing is Ulala's reaction to finding out his past - she's already been calling him "Bao", and she says that since "Saga" is so new and weird to her, she'll just stick to calling him "Bao." And she interrogates Baofu on his dead (female) partner. XD It was adorable; Woogie asked Nate to investigate Baofu's past, the smart boy. So when Baofu is about to shoot Yung Pao, he's able to call out his real name and stop him. W00t for the w00g. I also thought Yung Pao was interesting - well, what he said before he died, I mean. None of this "Curse you!!" business you'd expect in an RPG villain.
About this time, some of the contact combos begin to change; Katsuya had initially refused to join in Ulala and Baofu's drinking combo, but now he's more than happy to, and becomes a maudlin drunk, confessing that he's a cop, right, but he actually wanted to be something else, and that he understands if the demon's sad too. Ulala tells him to drink more, and Baofu says he's drinking too much. XD Baofu apparently has a higher tolerance than the other two; they're red-faced and smashed, and Baofu looks quite sober, grinning as he calls Ulala a sloppy drunk and tells Katsuya that he's had too much. It IS amusing to be the sober person around drunks, isn't it?
The next dungeon was the cruise ship where Tatsuzou and Guido Kandori had gone off too. Of course, rich wanker-boy Nate has a speedboat of his own, so we used that. Around this time I got the rumored 2nd CD, and killed the 100km/hr Hag on the fourth floor of the Seedy CD. Dude, this so-called 'dungeon' was an effing cakewalk. Even WITH persona sealed. I was so overlevelled that it just took one turn with everyone on attack to kill any demon they threw at me. Even the Hag was a one-turn affair. But that weird chick on the first floor who wanted the Hag's High-Speed title gave me a full set of incense for it, so it was an easy side-quest. Tonight maybe I'll work my way through the basement of Juvenile Delinquent High - er, I mean Kasugayama HS.
Anyways, the cruise ship. I'm hot on the trail of Tatsuya, who has been causing mayhem and destruction wherever he goes. That little punk. Woogie, spank him when you catch up with him, OK? The dungeon wasn't bad; I headed downwards generally, figuring that I wanted to head for the submarine in the base. Eventually I ended up at the Helipad, where Tatsuzou was escaping, and Woogie Jr. was kicking ass and taking names. The new enemy was FOUR of those cheap giant mecha. Ooooooh. Again, electricity fusions, bam, bam, bam, bam. No problem at all. Then it's off to find a spare sub to chase Guido-tachi to the Undersea ruins, because Tatsuzou's trying to sink the cruise ship and they can't stay there. At the sub dock, Katsuya finally catches up with his long-lost little brother, who is piloting one of those giant mecha and is yelling at them to take the last sub. What does he say? " TATSUYA!! You don't have a liscence to pilot one of those! You'll get hurt!" XD Anyways, they all head for the underseas ruins, and when they get out of the sub, they notice that Tatsuya's caused another mess again, totally trashing Guido's getaway sub. Baofu's impressed by Tatsuya's 'mad skillz,' and notes that Tatsuya really can open up a can of whoopass when he's mad.
So. The Underseas Ruins. GOD I HATE THIS DUNGEON! RARRR! There are so many pitfalls and backtracks that it made me want to gnaw out my own heart. I suppose if I'd been clever enough to save periodically through the dungeon, I could just reload and not backtrack, but gggrrrr. Tip: Once you get to the Room of the Seal, and the heartbeat starts, don't go up through the pillars. Take the staircase behind you. Trust me. The staircase in the pillared room is inaccessible from this side, and you'll just fall through the floor.
Errrr...I'll finish this gameblog at home.
Now Playing: God Lives Underwater - Fly on the Windscreen (yay, good cover!)
Thursday, January 3, 2002, 12:34 p.m.
" I feel violated and happy at the same time!"I could explain the above quote properly - it WAS I who said it - but it would, um, be complicated. Let's just say that it involved a discussion of biting.
Anyways, New Year's. Ka-chan returned to C-U on Saturday night, and Juri called later that night and hit me with a Persuade/Guilt Trip for 9999 damage. XD So I agreed to bully my parents into giving me the car, pick up Krisit the next day, and drive up the next day - er, make that Monday. So Krisit called on Sunday, expecting me to come pick her up for a small New Year's celebration at my house. I informed her that we were going up to Chicago after all, and she started packing as we spoke. Sorry about the lack of warning, but ;;^^ So! Sunday night Ka and I drove down to Charleston to pick up Krisit and bring her back to C-U. ( Charleston's something like 45 miles south of here.) On Monday morning, we stopped by a bookstore to pick up a crapload of books, and then I drove up to Chicago with Ka and Krisit, ending up at Juri and Gregly's new house deep in the suburban jungles of Aurora. ( You know, where Wayne and Garth lived, if you don't know Chicago suburbs.) Their new house is really really nice, and has an Entertainment Center that is truly amazing. And Gregly has the magic that is known as TiVo. O_o; Pausing TV! The novelty! So we all hung out - that would be myself, Krisit, Ka, Juri, Gregly, Laura, xio , and Matt. We played You Don't Know Jack for a while, where I demonstated my knowledge of the mating habits of bedbugs and complete ignorance of Scrabble. XD Damn j00, Gregly! :D Then Ka, Xio, and I drove out to the Mitsuwa in Arlington Heights, which is 30 minutes away if you don't get lost, and an hour away if you do. We got there just fine, and I bought a bunch of manga that looked interesting. I don't have the authors on me right now, but I remember one was Ragnarok, there was a volume of Shadow Skills, another volume of something-or-other by Okada Megumu, volume 7 of MPD-Psycho, and two volumes of something shounen with interesting stylized art and the predictable amount of jiggle-factor. I can't remember the name - it was Fuu-something. I saw King of Bandit Jing, Kristina, but it was, like, volumes 2-5, and I need #1 first. After we ate, we headed back to Aurora, where we promptly got lost for half an hour ;;^^ Look, man, unfamiliar suburbs at night with multiple names for the roads are confusing! XD I didn't know Ogden was also Route 39, or whatever it was :D But it was fun, actually; we had a Special CD in and we were traumatizing Xio with the Rammstein cover of a Depeche Mode song. XD
But we eventually got back, and people started to arrive. Uh...let's see who came. Me, Juri, Gregly, Matt, Xio, Krisit, Laura, Brian, Ka, Kate, the other Kate, the other Kate's boy-toy, um..Tom, Seth, Pete...who am I missing? Rar! Well, it was fun. We DDR'd some, and I showed yet again that I crumple pads that aren't taped down, simply because I must push off the pads with my feet when I dansu-dansu. It's so odd. But luckily I wasn't the only one who showed an amazing ability to wrinkle pads while dancing. Then I hooked up my PS2 and we played ParaPara Paradise. After that I don't remember what we played too clearly; some Garou, Guilty Gear X, Typing of the Dead...most of us were at least slightly buzzed, you know. Kya-chan called at like 11:45, and Ka, Krisit, and I fought over the phone for about an hour. ^^ After midnight...uh...I do remember playing more Typing of the Dead. And Kate's bare ass. (Don't ask.) And having to explain to Seth that being called a Hair Guy by Ka-chan was actually a compliment. It was lots of fun, actually, except poor Juri was sick and had to go to bed early. ;_; I have this weird memory of Juri giggling maniacally, sitting down by Greg, and announcing that she was gay and going to run off with me and Laura. Gregly nodded and smiled. " That's OK!" Then Juri clung to him and giggled some more. The weird thing is that Juri didn't drink at all that evening. I guess she's just Special like the rest of us. XD
Um...on Tuesday morning we had WAFFLES OF 1337NESS, made by Juri and Laura, and Ka braided my hair while I was distracted by Typing of the Dead. Krisit, Ka, and I left, drove to Champaign to pick up Krisit's stuff, drove her back to Charleston, and then back, at which time I was so tired I could barely stayed awake. But Ka showed me some kickass Skies of Arcadia stuff. That game is so cute. I should get it.
Yesterday I went to work, and when I came home, I put down roots in front of the TV and fired up the Playstation. At 6 pm yesterday, I had 26 hours logged on Persona 2. By the time I shut off the PSX, I had a solid 35 hours. Sad? Yes. Pathetic? Yes. Fun? Oh hell yes. Ka-chan was so patient with my sudden need to play video games, and I remembered to let her play at least a couple of hours of it. There was much Woogie goodness, and Ka-chan learned to like Baofu for his personality, even though he looked so, er, odd. Playing Persona with other people around is fun, I'll tell you that. And now for my giant-ass game blog that nobody is going to read! I'll be talking about the plot, so I suppose there are spoilers. Nothing major, though, I'd say.
br>
I THINK I started off in the Nanjo Labs, right about the time I picked up Eikichi. Darnit, Eikichi is just so cute. He's such a normal teenage boy, you know? The other guys in the game are, to put it politely, Special (Tatsuya the Angster, Katsuya the Super-Responsible Serious Woogie, Baofu the, um, Baofu, Nate the Justice-Boy Wanker) but Eikichi is the most normal of them, I think. He's a bratty, narcissistic, yet incredibly nice viz-rock lovely delinquent boy in makeup and a skirt. Um, I know that sounds weird, but I mean it! I also like Nate's odd friend Chris, which I need to finish Persona 1 to meet. I really, REALLY prefer his p2 redesign to his p1. ;;^^ It's cute, though; his original scary design had a collar and a little chain leash, right? His new 'salesman' look has a haircut and a dark blue suit, but his conservative grey tie has little chains as the pattern. XD
Anyways, I was in the Lab hunting for Eikichi's classmate Sugiwara, who had performed the Joker curse (to kill Eikichi) and had been abducted by the NWO. Eikichi, being "KONO MICHEL-SAMA", wasn't going to put up with this BS and snuck into the Nanjo Labs to look for his classmate. Even though said classmate wanted to kill him. Dammit, Eikichi, you're so nice. In the basement of the labs we find a bunch of 'demonized humans' that had artificially been infected with the Joker persona. Eikichi is given the task of herding all these people out of the labs, while my group went on. I really should have written down the personae I was using; I'm guessing Hel, Maia Custom, Ryume, Surya, and Tenhou Gensui. I was about Level, um, 29 or 30, if I had to guess correctly. I saw the Tsuchinoko in the sewers, BTW, but I couldn't kill it before it escaped. It's weak against Sword, isn't it?
Anyways, I leveled up to about lvl. 33, and then hit the boss fight. I snuck into the main labs, and Baofu hax0red into the databases to see what research was being done on humans - the formation of Demonized Humans, of course. He downloaded all the info onto his laptop, and they were about to leave (after a cutscene that you see in the OP, with the giant silver containers full of seething Joker (Kegare) energy) and, uhhh...we get caught. Of course, the person behind all this Nefarious Research was Guido "The Rock" Sardenia, now known as Guido Kandori. (I love how Atlus was like, " Hm, we changed his name in the first game...let's change it partway back.") I really like Atlus' translation job; they were stuck with the old Anglicized names from Persona Revelations (Nanjo Kei --> Nate, Kandori Takahisa --> Guido Sardenia, Eriko --> Ellen, Maki --> Mary, and so on) and they did what they could to keep those names but not change any others. Keeping the Anglicized names is necessary for the people who have played Persona 1 (Revelations), the only other Persona released in the US. The cool thing is that these characters are in multiple names; changing Nate Trinity completely back into Nanjo Kei would kind of ruin the whole '1337!!' factor of recognizing a character from the older game. You know?
Anyways, Guido Kandori was dead, but he's been revived by the power of Kotodama or whatever. He's got weird symmetrical scars on his cheeks that make him look kind of like an android. Guido has captured Eikichi, and threatens to kill him unless they give him the laptop. Baofu bitches about the trouble tag-alongs cause and kicks the laptop over to Kandori, while Eikichi yells that they shouldn't do this for the likes of him. Guido's about to shoot Eikichi when the door bursts open, deflecting the bullet, and Woogie Jr. dashes in to tackle Guido himself. Woogie Jr. promises to protect Maya and everyone else this time, and the others all escape while he tackles Guido on his own. Katsuya's worried, but Baofu says that Tatsuya's more competent than any of THEM are.
Guido: It's you again, Paradox boy...
Puu: Paradox boy?!
Ka-chan: (as Tatsuya) Can't you call me Paradox guy, at least?
Puu: Or Paradox man??
*Puu and Ka look at each other
Both: o/~ Paradox man, paradox man, doing the things that paradox can~ what's he like? It's not important! Paradox man~ o/~
*ahem* Well, anyways, turns out that Baofu removed the HD before giving Kandori the empty laptop shell, so all is well. Until they get attacked by the Demonized Sugiwara. I tried a couple of things on him - he has a nasty blizzard breath spell, so careful about equipping Fire Persona - but Fire really did a number on him. A couple of Blazing Hell combos and he was toast. Afterwards, Sugiwara collapses, and Eikichi yells at them that they didn't need to KILL him, they were no better than murderers. And then Katsuya smiles and tells Eikichi to look closer, and Eikichi realizes that Sugiwara's still alive. Nate says something wanker-ish and noble like "Your feelings for your friends do you credit, young lad," and Eikichi goes " You are a real man!! I want to be your apprentice!!" which made me burst out laughing. YOUNG LAD? Nate, you wanker. You're, like, 21, if I had to guess an age. It's been 4 years since the SEBEC incident, and you were in HS then, so you can't be older than 22. Eikichi is a senior in HS, so he'd be, what, 17? 18?
Anyways, they go back to Baofu's lair, where they hear about a whole bunch of seminars being held to purify people of their Kegare (negative emotions and sin and crap) and Sasaki Ginji, the producer for the group the Muses, was the sponsor, uh, speaker, uh...he was just going to be THERE, OK? So I gathered rumors (unlocked the Nekomata rumor demon in Kuzunoha) and headed over there. This time I was equipped with Hel, Maia Custom, a Cups demon, and a Rod demon, and...darnit, who else? Kerepres, probably. I can't remember. Level 32 when I entered, Level 37 when I finally beat Sasaki Ginji. Right, these seminars were sucking the Kegare out of people and turning them into what the game calls "Strangely Positive People" and I call "Positive-Thinking Naz1s." (dude, they do the 'heil!' salute and say "Let's Positive Thinking!" or "Let's be positive" in the US version). Sasaki Ginji is weak against wind; I used Wind Cutter a bunch of times to defeat him. The Shoggoths were a giant pain, but they didn't possess anyone much, and practically everyone was requipped with a Recarm spell, so I let the possessed ones die and then revived them, and defended until all Shoggoths had died so that Ginji spent all his time Sama Recarm'ing them instead of attacking, letting me fire off my Fusion spells. Boom, he's gone. But then Woogie gets a call on his cell phone from "Sneak", telling him to meet him in Aoba Park. I went there (at this point, I was like "I want more plot, screw finding the Nata demon to get his Paopei ^.- to summon him as a persona" so I just rushed through and hit the Concert Hall in the park, where "Sneak" was obviously the Police Chief who had been Woogie's father's best friend. We got some major-ass plot development and character background - namely, why Woogie became a cop. It's a long story. Play the game or email me if you're interested. Anyways, the Captain shoots the Chief, and I found the Captain and some soldiers, I guess. Not a big deal. Fusions, fusions, etc etc. Then Baofu goes back to his lair and overhears Tatsuzou talking about a meeting with the Taiwanese mafia dude Yun Pao or whatever his name is at the Abandoned Factory in Konan. Baofu goes tearing off after them, and Ulala is all worried and shit. It's really amusing; she refers to him as 'Bao' now. I get to the Factory after equipping and whatnot, and discover it's a trap. Right now I'm going through the damn factory, and at that point it was 1 am and I was dead tired, so I turned off the game. Phew. I must keep going! I must get Woogie Jr. to join my party! I'm level 40, equipped with Loki, Sif, Maia Custom, Genbu, and Surt. I figured that if I were going into a factory that made mecha, I'd better have some Electricity fusion spells handy.
Anyways, that's all for now. Rrrrgh, tired.
Now Playing: Kate Bush - Cloudbusting
Wednesday, January 2, 2002, 11:31 a.m.
Booyaka.I just reserved a ticket for 3/19 - 3/28 from O'Hare to Osaka(Itami). The price? $455.
Let me say that again: BOOYAKA.
Kya-chan, I hope getting to Itami won't suck too much for you. I swear, going to Kansai International would cost me $200 more. >_@ If you want me to try to get to some other place that's more convenient for you to grab me from, let me know where and how. I don't mind bussing or whatnot around if it'll help.
This was another shining example of the "Nobody Takes Effing Discover Card" rule, too. It's gonna show up on my parents' Visa bill instead, even though I fully intended to pay for it myself. Oh well, I TOLD THEM that nobody takes Discover, but...and it's hard for me to get a Visa on my own because I'm not a student anymore, I'm part of the working poor, to be flippant about it. Nobody - no banks, that is - believe that I can pay off a credit card bill, despite my amazing abilities to the contrary. ( See Priya run. See Priya pay off a $500 monthly bill with only a slight veinthrob. Pay, Priya, pay.) Bleh. My credit's clean, at least.
Now Playing: Velvet Underground - Venus in Furs
Wednesday, January 2, 2002, 09:24 a.m.
A thousand dreams that would awake meHappy New Year, everyone. Let's hope that this year is better than the last.
Joy, I got your card when I got back from Chicago last night, and I opened it and squealed like a fangirl in the covered parking area. (Ka-chan can attest to this!) It's soo~~ cute! I hope things are going at least a little better with you and your parents - believe me, I understand. Last night my mother told me at dinner that she'd scheduled a doctor's appointment for me, and that she wanted to come with me. She didn't quite understand why I was so annoyed; apparently my objections that a) they had scheduled it without asking me when it was convenient for me, b) they were scheduling my doctor's appointments FOR me - what am I, two years old? and c) I did not need someone to hold my hand in the doctor's office and if they had questions, to tell me and *I* would ask them, didn't make sense to her. Bleh. Ka said I needed to live even farther from my parents. I think I agree. They mean well, but for god's sakes.
Anyways, as you can see, I totally feel your pain, Joy. Maybe - MAYBE - Woogie Jr. can do something about your playstation problem. Maybe. Woogie Jr. needs to check out a certain store in an angsty fashion, because that's how Woogie Jr. does things.
Shannon yo! When are you working? We want to see you sometime soon. :D I'll try calling you tonight.
You know, song covers are sometimes good things, but most of the time they are really...er...disturbing. Some song covers that worry me:
I'm pretty busy now, so I'll blog more about my fun New Year's experiences later.
Now Playing: The Pixies - Vamos
age: 20
d.o.b: march 9
location: IL
sign: pisces/metal rooster/revati
aura:gold // color:brown
alignment: neutral evil
evil: kinda evil (7.5)
keirsey: INTJ
Big O - Cowboy Bebop - DiGi Charat - Trigun - Petshop of Horrors - Excel Saga - Gokudo-kun - lain - Saiyuki - Basara
iggy pop :: david bowie :: rolling stones :: orbital :: BT :: depeche mode :: ABC :: english beat :: velvet underground :: lou reed :: brian eno :: roxy music :: dido :: modest mouse :: morphine :: placebo :: magnetic fields :: adam ant :: siouxsie :: cure :: t rex :: beastie boys :: neuroactive :: bauhaus :: underworld :: air :: juno reactor :: tricky
friends / #-gumi / victims
eminyu : jurinyu : htk linkblog : ka-chan : mii-chan : krisit : dess : kya-chan : angie : deshi : rnm : chi : xiola : wufie : gregly : koukou : matt : yasha : becca : janeru : tay : tamanyu : steph : katie : megly : stephen : kai : rence : shannon : may : joy : kristina
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Nobutoshi Canna : Andy Lau : John Hargrave : Neil Gaiman : Katakura Kei (DJka) : Minekura Kazuya (mangaka)
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As for the title of the blog itself, it comes from the Placebo song "Without You I'm Nothing." Actually, the album version of the song is only so-so. But the UNKLE mix featuring David Bowie kicks my ass. It kicks your ass, too.
Strange infatuation seems to grace the evening tide.
I'll take it by your side.
Such imagination seems to help the feeling slide.
I'll take it by your side.
Instant correlation sucks and breeds a pack of lies.
I'll take it by your side.
Oversaturation curls the skin and tans the hide.
I'll take it by your side.
tick - tick-tock x3
tick - tick - tick - tick - tick - tock
I'm unclean, a libertine
And every time you vent your spleen,
I seem to lose the power of speech,
You're slipping slowly from my reach.
You grow me like an evergreen,
You never see the lonely me at all
I...
Take the plan, spin it sideways.
I...
Fall.
Without you, I'm Nothing.
Without you, I'm nothing.
Without you, I'm nothing.
Take the plan, spin it sideways.
Without you, I'm nothing at all.