VALEFOR (Final Fantasy X)

You say that as if I haven’t already done a review for something from FFX on this blog, anon. But yeah, LETS DO THIS.

INTRODUCTION: This monster is one of the summons available to Yuna, particularly, it’s the first one she obtains.

PROS:
♥ Valefor has like… the perfect amount of spikes vs curves. Look at her little two toed feets. It’s elegant, but just a little dangerous, which is like, the perfect look for some otherworldly summoned monster.
♥ These wings? They’re excellent. The long spines, the hooked ends, they don’t need to be practical because this is a MAGIC monster, and they just went for Look.
♥ Valefor has very nice colors in a game full of absolutely insane, muddled color schemes, which makes this simple, warm three toned palette even more impressive.
♥ Valefor seems to be the dragon equivalent of a feathered dinosaur, which is always very good and excellent, from the beak bird face to the feathers fading into a scaly lizard tail.
♥ I have no idea what those wacky claw things coming off her chest, but if they weren’t there, Valefor would just basically be a big colorful wyvern. Which is like, fine, honestly I like a wyvern more than a standard dragon with four limbs. BUT, this is a wacky fantasy game, so these big curled claw things? Nice addition.

CONS:
♥ I mean, you notice that the pros section is all fairly straightforward. I LIKE Valefor’s design, but that’s it. Valefor sure used to be a human woman (FFX summons are made from ghosts, basically), but for all intents and purposes, she’s basically Yuna’s pet dog.

♥ I just noticed her torso looks like a ladies torso complete with titties, which like, come on. You don’t have to put titties on the dragon to convince us she’s a lady.

RATINGS:
MONSTRUOUSNESS: 8/10
Valefor is pretty completely non-human, but it’s still basically a very nice, fancy dragon.

FUCKABILITY: 0/10
dON’T FUCK YUNA’S PET DOG?

PERSONAL RATING: 5/10
Valefor is exactly adequate as you’d expect the starter summon to be. It’s FINE, but like…. it’s just fine. She’s a good dog, Bront.

ANIMA (Final Fantasy X)

Of course, I was hoping one of you would ask this. Anima is a summon I was legitimately freaked out/scared by as a young teen when I played FFX, which just proves how effectively unsettling she is.

INTRODUCTION: Anima is an aeon (summon) appearing in FFX, mainly associated with Seymour, a rival summoner/antagonist.

PROS:
♥ I mean, there is just…. there’s a lot going on here, I think I’m gonna need an assistant to help me work through all this…

Oh!! Hello!!! YEAH, the main selling point besides the upsetting lore here is the TWO FOR ONE deal, because while you normally just see the main top body, above, Anima’s got this terrible little demon hiding below the surface. If you’re confused here’s the full official art, Anima renders in the game with the bottom friend beneath the ground when summoned, so they’re easy to forget.
♥ Lets start from the top. Both Anima proper and Junior  have some big pointed teeth bookended with curved tusks, Animas looking particularly uncomfortable for her, which is the theme. Anima as a summon represents pain, death, and restraint.
♥ Going off on that, lets look at Anima’s big arms, folded tightly across her chest by bindings. Now, as a child I read it like a straight jacket, and Anima as crazy and dangerous. But that’s NOT the position for that, and if you look at them and the shape of her whole body, you’ll realize it’s actually posed like a sarcophagus. If I remember correctly, it was typical to place some sort of nameplate on the mummies chest so they would remember who they were when in the afterlife, and Anima here has an image of her fayth, the woman used to create her. strapped in that place. That fayth being Seymour’s mother who willingly gave herself to be turned into a summon. And now, look at Anima, she has brown skin that’s all wrinkled as if it’s dessicated, her face and arms are wrapped with linen bandages… That’s right fuckers, Anima is a MOMMY MUMMY MONSTER, this digression into design discourse was ALL SO I COULD MAKE THAT PUN.
♥ Extra arms are ALWAYS great, even when they’re tiny blue arms holding the chains around your neck. Sorry, did I even, I meant ESPECIALLY. They’re weird as fuck because of their placement and I love them. While we’re on arms, check out Junior’s CRAZY claw gauntlet hands. There’s lot of good arm/hand action going on here.
♥ In fact, now that we’ve made clear what Anima is, lets look at Junior. Sporting THREE pairs of horns, once of which is on their chin, all of which have a gross ribbed texture because every uncovered surface on Anima must look dry and unpleasant. 50% of Junior’s face is gaping, toothy mouth, and the other half is dominated by the ominously barely covered eyes. This is a truly unpleasant hellbeast that’s ENTIRELY A BONUS, WHAT THE FUCK!!!
♥ Anima’s eyes normally just seem like glowing orbs in a void, but there’s a moment in a cutscene where they are alarmingly human, which only adds to the body horror aspect of Anima being mADE FROM SEYMOURS MOTHER, LETS NOT FORGET THAT. The way Aeons are made in FFX is honestly kind of existentially horrifying, and none of them capture that as well as Anima. Honestly, if my mother went and became a pained hellmonster against my wishes, I’d be pretty fucked up too. Sorry about your life, Seymour.

CONS:
♥ Anima has the usual problem in FFX of a color scheme that manages to be bright and muddy all at once. At the same time, Anima is a mummy and SHOULD be brownish, so really it comes down to the overly busy details that may or may not add to the concept like the green markings all over her arms. I can’t help but feel like the Sarcophagus imagery would be more obvious if the lining of her “shell” was a vibrant gold.
♥ As much as I LOVE Junior’s general existence, I don’t really get what he’s supposed to mean or represent in the narrative of Anima and her creation. I get why Anima is a suffering mummy creature, I don’t know why her feet turned into a little crowned pointyman.
♥ My only other real problem is that I didn’t fully appreciate how amazing Anima’s design was until somewhat recently, because she isn’t pretty or majestic like say, Bahamut. But she’s sure fucking unique and interesting, and like Yuna, I’d like to share in her pain too.

RATINGS:
MONSTRUOUSNESS: 10/10
Between just the sheer monstruous energy she exudes, and the truly unusual and interestingly executed design concept, Anima deserves all the possible points this category can provide.

FUCKABILITY: 0/10
Listen, I don’t care how horny you are, there is just no way to fuck this giant (BECAUSE AS AN AEON SHE IS IN FACT HUGE, I DIDN’T EVEN LIST THIS AS A PRO BECAUSE SHE DOESN’T EVEN NEED THE BONUS POINTS FROM IT) legless lady. Her lower body is literally just a metallic lump that turns into another monster.

PERSONAL RATING: 9/10
As I said before, I only wish I appreciated this design when I actually played the game as a young teenager, because it honestly might be one of the best monster designs Final Fantasy has ever come up with.

GOLIATH (Gargoyles)

Oh boy, I know people have Strong Opinions on this show, but I am just slightly too young to have watched it as a child. I know people like This Guy in particular, and a brief skim of the wiki reveals he was the only hot one and the human lady got with him so I Understand now.

INTRODUCTION: This monster is the leader of the newly founded Manhattan Gargoyle clan. I’m not sure what it is they do on the show, but since it was the 90s I can only assume the answer is “fight crime and/or evil gargoyles.”

PROS:
♥ FINALLY an EXCELLENT pair of digitigrade legs. These legs are definitely my favorite part of this design, because they ALSO have some lovely clawed toes. The back claw on the heel? Excellent very good.
♥ SPEAKING OF CLAWS, we’ve got some finger claws here too. They’re pretty basic, but they’re there, and I recognize them. I just feel like they could be bigger, because look at his FEET. The head horns are pretty subtle too, but I don’t hate that. if they were much bigger, they’d probably just look silly. But a third pair would have been nice. On the other hand, those elbow spikes are an excellent addition.
♥ Now THESE are some good demon-style wings. Sharp angles and BIG size. I always respect a pair of ginormous wings, partly because it makes their flight close to being scientifically viable, but mostly because it’s more dramatic.
♥ This is…. the perfect amount of beef. It’s hard to fully appreciate because the cowards over at Disney refused to give him distinct pectoral muscles and covered his abs with that horrible belted loincloth, but I know…. they’re there. The name Goliath is well deserved.
♥ I definitely approve of the idea that he’s the BIGGEST STRONGEST TOUGHEST GARGOYLE but also apparently likes to read fine literature. Again, I see why Goliath was such a hot secret crush. Everyone likes a man who has brains AND brawn.

CONS:
♥ If you’re going to put a tail that tiny on a man this big, don’t even BOTHER, Disney. Now, you could argue that a big meaty tail wouldn’t be very aerodynamic. Well, then but some fucking fins on it or SOMETHING, this is just sad.
♥ This fool…. his fashion is very bad. From the aformentioned belted loincloth, to whatever the hell that hair is doing…. Long hair can be very good on a man, but the 90s in particular can’t be trusted to use it responsibly, and I don’t understand what it’s doing with that sharp angle. I’m almost ready to let him get away with the fashion purely for the sheer ingenuity of how he uses his wings as a cool batman cloak, but that hair…. it’s even more inexplicable in his human form.

♥ ”MY HAIR GIVE ME SUPER STRENGTH” -Goliath, probably? Anyway, I’m really not sure how to feel about human Goliath, something about it is off, but I can’t pinpoint why. MORE IMPORTANTLY.
♥ I JUST NOTICED HE HAS CLEARLY DEFINED PECS HERE. DOES THIS MEAN MALE GARGOYLES ONLY HAVE ONE SINGULAR TIT? I SAW THE LADY GARGOYLES, THEY HAVE BOOBS. DISNEY, EXPLAIN. EXPLAIN GOLIATH’S MONOTIT.

RATINGS:
MONSTRUOUSNESS: 7/10
Though I do think it would be even better removed from the Disney artstyle, this is an excellent, handsome monster man. Perhaps almost too handsome for this particular metric. He’s still pretty manlike, despite being purple.

FUCKABILITY: 9.5/10
Not only supremely fuckable aesthetically, but also seems like he would take care of you? Literally the only reason I can’t give him a 10/10 is because I’ve only given that to Cu Alter who, as my personal favorite, has to remain the uncontested most fuckable on this blog.

PERSONAL RATING: 7.5/10
A good choice for an unproblematic 90s fave. As an impartial outside observer, I give Goliath two thumbs up.

H. P. LOVECRAFT (Bungou Stray Dogs)

I didn’t actually plan for this to come right after the post where I dragged the real H.P. Lovecraft but sometimes these things just work out.

INTRODUCTION: I have never watched or read BSD but from what I’ve been told it’s about anime gijinkas of authors who have magic powers fighting each other because they’re all in various mafias. Howard Phillip Lovecraft is famous for writing a bunch of stuff about weird monstrous elder gods from either deep outerspace or the depths of the ocean, or somehow both, because he did this because he was incredibly afraid of the ocean. Thus Anime Howard here is basically just Cthulhu in a meat suit. But I’m not going to talk about that thing because it’s a pretty put and dry Cthulhu design with its many tentacles and bat wings. I’m over it. Meat Suit Howard here is far more interesting and horrible

PROS:♥ Listen we can all pretend we’re over our phase where some weird sleepy goth with dramatic anime hair is appealing but deep down… you know.♥ The only time I find tentacles even remotely appealing is when they are physically improbable if not impossible. Howard shooting just this ridiculous mass of horror flesh out his sleeves is very good as is the relative disinterest I am sure he is doing it with.♥ Anyway, the core of my argument is that there’s nothing especially interesting about that towering cthulhu itself. The real appeal is all of that being crammed into a meat suit that Howard doesn’t seem to have entirely under control. Case in point this man’s neck is just an absolute disaster.

♥ What the fuck, Howard. The weird sunken dead eyes are just icing on the cake. There is literally no reason for your neck to do that but I’m so glad it does. And then there’s the implicating that if he goes to hard his neck just gives up entirely, which he is just REALLY unconcerned about. I don’t know if he’s capable of being concerned since I’ve only ever seen pictures of him looking tired or vaguely startled just by the general concept of being, presumably because of his poorly constructed meat suit binding him to this mortal plane.♥ My understanding is that he and his friend John Steinbeck are antagonists but he seems like a nice man, one time he tries to make a balloon animal out of his tentacles to appeal to a child.

CONS:

♥ The full on Cthulhu form is boring and I’m entirely over Cthulhu’s reign as the Most Popular Elder God.♥ Bungou Stray Dogs is in fact mainly about some other people including some kid who isn’t even some sort of anime author, when it could be about Howard here just trying to get through life as a pile of tentacles in a suit. Like a Haiyore Nyaruko-san except not terrible in every conceivable way.♥ I can’t just dock the tentacles because I think they’re fairly well executed here but they are just so generic. Put some spikes on them or something. At least have the decency to cover them in suckers or something!! Give them some character!!!

RATINGS:MONSTRUOUSNESS: 5/10 The actual monster qualities are pretty rote here, what really shines is the body horror aspect of the setup and the execution of him as just this deeply odd man.

FUCKABILITY: 4/10 I don’t personally find Howard appealing in this sort of way but I know someone is and I’m sure you could do something creative with his head bending all sorts of ways. I refuse to give him sexy points for tentacles because of my personal bias against them.

PERSONAL RATING: 6.5/10 90% of what I see from this show is just that Chuuya guy and his boyfriend. Why does no one ever talk about this goth cryptid or the horrible russian rat man, who are clearly far more interesting and less generic. People are fools.

NYARLATHOTEP (Persona 2)

You heard correctly, and oh fucking boy I’d seen That Design before and Forgotten about it before looking him up for this. Anyway, P2′s Nyarlathotep has a bunch of forms worthy of this blog so I’m gonna break format again a bit to examine them all, from least good to best.

INTRODUCTION: I’ve played maybe a couple hours of Persona 2 so I can’t tell you anything about it, but if you’re not familiar with Persona as a whole it’s about teens summoning their own bespoke monsters (personas) to fight other monsters. Nyarlathotep is I guess an antagonist in Persona 2 but like a lot of things in persona it’s drawing on existing lore. Nyarlathotep is an eldritch outer god from H.P. Lovecraft’s works.

#5: Crawling Chaos

♥ I appreciate how the weird suction cup things the other designs have widen here to become souless faces. It’s a really good look. But other than that, it’s really just a faceless dude with some tentacles, isn’t it. Look at his weird slumped posture, like some 17 year old hanging outside the school waiting for his mom to come pick him up. I can’t respect a man/unknowable eldritch horror with such poor posture. He knows he’s not the best form and he’s fine with it. He doesn’t care.

#5: Kandori’s Persona

♥ Listen, I love a good asymetrical design, but I just don’t know what’s going on here. Surely, it might make more sense in context, but it’s persona, so it also might fucking not. The horrible bony claws are very good though. And I respect his choice to be partly a weirdly dissected religious statue especially because that throws a third arm on it. Also the weird noodle limbs. Like I have mostly positive things to say because all of these designs are incredibly choice. But he’s still 4th.

#3: Joker-Nyarlathotep

♥ I know, I know, “this is just the last one but without the statue face and crazy limbs!” Listen, sometimes less is more. And also while the noodle limbs are charming, I am really digging the way that this dude’s limbs have an extra joint making his legs digitigrade (which is good) and his arms look fucking broken (which is also good in a very different way). The weird block fringe on Kandori’s Persona is interesting but the way Joker-Nyarlhotep here has a body that’s reminiscent of a deeply emaciated person, mouth contorted in a permanent grimace while wearing something vaguely reminiscent of a straightjacket with a bunch of stakes in its heart… This is Peak Persona Body Horror Aesthetic. Classy and Sleek at first glance but the more you look at it the worse it gets.

#2: Moon Howler

 ♥  I mean, this definitely just looks like a rejected Zygarde form on the grounds of being “too unsettling for a children’s game,” but I love its horrible fucked up tripod legs so much. I cannot fathom how they move or even are oriented in a 3D space and that is a good thing. There’s still the vague semblance of a humanoid form but it’s so distorted at this point. I especially like how it does have human hands but I didn’t realize it immediately because they’re submerged in tentacles and I just mistook them for some sort of sub-tentacles at first. I don’t know if those things on its arms and head are zippers or elongated toothy mouths but given I don’t see anything else mouthlike and it’s called Moon Howler I have to assume they are and that’s just excellent. That is entirely the WRONG shape for a mouth it’s TOO BIG that thing is gonna HOWL SO LOUD.

#1: Great Father

♥ I mean, of course it’s this one, the one anon was hinting at. Is it the most monstruous? Perhaps not. But like….. look, it’s a dude who has dads in leather bondage outfits for arms and legs. It’s entirely absurd. Look at the way those leg dads are lolled out. How is this thing standing up, they are clearly not in a position to hold weight. It’s like a reverse uncanny valley where you humaned so hard you looped back around the entirely inhuman because this is just…. I don’t have the words, how the FUCK did Kaneko even come up with this fucking homoerotic eldritch Voltron? What was Nyarlhotep planning to accomplish by doing this. I have no answers, only sheer delight that this design was crafted and then actually allowed to be put in a video game. Designs like this is why Persona has no fucking business being too cowardly to let you get gay. It’s like Persona 3 made Persona super popular and Atlus was suddenly like “OH NO PEOPLE ARE PAYING ATTENTION NOW, QUICK, HIDE ALL THE GAY. WHAT’S THAT YOU’VE GOT THERE, KEN? A YOSUKE ROMANCE ROUTE? NO, NO, PUT THAT AWAY.” Anyway.

RATINGS:
MONSTRUOUSNESS: 10/10
I mean, just by sheer quantity between all of these, though I’d give Great Father alone this rating. I’ve never been able to really get into Persona/SMT but I have a deep respect for Kaneko’s design work.

FUCKABILITY: 1/10
I don’t even know how to approach fucking any of these besides the last one but even then there’s some consent issues with the dad limbs and also just like logistical problems. But it gets one point just for being very horny.

PERSONAL RATING: 9/10
Points only subtracted for the Lovecraft connection because I hate that dead racist coward and how the pretentious neckbeards who love his work have made tentacles such a Big Thing when they are just not that interesting. But overall this is just… Just a lot of great design work.

ANTONIO SALIERI (Fate/Grand Order)

His second asc isn’t relevant to this blog so obviously I’m gonna talk about the first and third. Mostly third. (You can see how old this ask is because at the time Salieri was new, I am so sorry. And for the record I am always Current on JP FGO)

INTRODUCTION: Antonio Salieri was a composer and contemporary of Mozart. While in life they were friends, rumors of Salieri being jealous of Mozart and having caused his death by poisoning have tainted his legacy and  caused him to be summoned into the Avenger class with a compulsive need to kill the man he calls his friend.

PROS:
♥ I am always down for any design that completely lacks a face, and this Persona-ass motherfucker sure doesn’t have one. At least until he turns into just a tired man in a suit for a minute (2nd ascension) before going on to have nothing but a grim mouth full of jagged teeth.
♥ Half his voice lines are Regular Man and the other half are a manic lunatic screaming about murder because Salieri is a heroic spirit in constant conflict with himself and I think that is very sexy of him.
♥ I literally can’t stress enough how much I lost my mind when I saw this lunatic murder fools by playing a shadowy air piano, so please just witness it.

♥ But here’s the real reason he’s on this blog. Look at that MOUTH. He already sorta had claws in asc 1 but LOOK AT THOSE, THOSE ARE SO IMPRACTICALLY LARGE THEY ARE PERFECT.
♥ The hidden charm point of this design is that at its base it’s fairly humanoid besides the whole head area… (which like… making the neck all weird and thick like that to make it impossible or at least unlikely that the weird teeth face is just a mask… excellent move, PFalz) The claws are clearly attached. The Legs are buckwild and have the aesthetic of digitigrade legs while actually being especially crazy boots… the dramatic sillouette of the wing cape and cloat tails… It doesn’t scan at all like Just A Guy. And normally not actually being monstruous would be a demerit but given that this entire state of being crazy and murderous was basically foisted upon him by the collective consciousness I actually love it. Dressed up like the monster he actually isn’t.
♥ I cannot stress enough how excellent those stupid impossible boots are.
♥ While he’s generally humanoid, he is, in these forms, abnormally tall and thin, which is decent on its own, but the sheer scale of the third asc means he does also get Big Points just for taking up a lot of screen space.

CONS:
♥ I do love the third asc a lot but it is admittedly incredibly hard to parse because it’s incredibly busy and while I think it’s cohesively so, it did strike me at first blush as being Too Much.
♥ Why does he go from being Someone’s Persona to Regular Man BACK to faceless monstrosity this seems entirely out of order.
♥ As someone who has rolled for two limited 3*s, Limited/Story Locked 3*s are bad civilization and I need FGO to stop making these fools so fucking choice because their utility is minimal but I Have To Have them, but also Don’t have Salieri. This isn’t really relevant to the content of this blog but I’m mad about it.
♥ I can buy into the monster aspects being artifice because of Lore Reasons but then I can’t exactly explain why he has a horrormouth head. Like I’m not complaining but what’s the idea here. Am I giving too much credit with my meta about the fake monster attributes? Who can say.

RATINGS:MONSTRUOUSNESS: 3/10He’s not especially monstruous when it comes down to it, just a very excellent design concept in both visuals and characterization.

FUCKABILITY: 5/10There’s something fairly sexless about the faceless persona design, Big Pointy Monster is always my jam, but it lacks the inherent horniness that something like Cu Alter’s tits out look generates. Meanwhile tired old man Salieri is highly fuckable if you’re into that sort of thing like me, but since he’s not part of the monster stuff I can’t give him full points.

PERSONAL RATING: 7.5/10I just think he’s neat.