#smt2

KANEKO'S CRIB NOTES LXIX: Music Tensei-Vision; or, MegaTen Video

HELLO! This is 🙈 [Bubbles the Chimp] 🙉, the once dear pal of Michael Jackson. Ever since I signed that NDA over what I saw at Neverland Ranch, life hasn't been great for me but in the years since I've staved off some of my inner chimp aggression by becoming an avid fan of the artwork of Kazuma Kaneko as featured in the Megami Tensei franchise (fuck that AI slop in Tsukuyomi, though). Well, wouldn't it figure for an ape with my luck, Kaneko finally registered an X (formerly Twitter) account with the creative moniker of kazumakaneko666 and has been answering inquiries about his artwork, including the MJ-related bombshells in this post.

Not only is Kaneko not dead, he returned with a vengeance that would almost make the very concept of Kaneko's Crib Notes obsolete, as if he wanted to take Soren and Eirikr behind the barn and end them for their decade-plus of work on this blog! It's a fury not seen since I allegedly "went apeshit" at Neverland in the early 2000s and was subsequently sent to live in Florida at the Center for Great Apes, where I learned to type and first played Megami Ibunroku Persona. Great game, if a little plodding.

And my chimp ass loves the Black Eyed Peas. Fergie for LIFE!!!

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BAAL: SMT2 Baal's costume is cribbed from the costume MJ wore for his Egyptian-themed video for his 1992 single "Remember the Time"; in the tweet, Kaneko admits the reference isn't entirely accurate for Baal but that " it couldn't be helped" at the time.

ISHTAR: SMT2 Ishtar's wardrobe is cribbed from the skimpy ensemble worn by supermodel Naomi Campbell for MJ's next 1992 single/music video, "In the Closet."; to quote Kaneko's tweet, "Ishtar is a primitive goddess, so the real image is that she doesn't wear clothes or anything, but being naked would be a problem, you know."

ASHERAH: The lines on Asherah's body are not inspired by Ultraman's Dada as previously posted in 2018, but rather by the Zentai bodysuits worn by the backup dancers in the Black Eyed Peas' 2009 music video for "Boom Boom Pow".

Color Illustrations from Megaten Battle Royale Vol. 1 (2002)

A "strange obsession?" I don't think there's anything strange about it. Japan is one of the countries that successfully resisted European Christian attempts to proselytize. That's going to leave as mark. Of course, it's much more complicated than this.

This is a topic I touched on for the Fan Myths series:

Under Myth #7. Also note the bit about the cultural "booms" (ブーム; crazes/fads) Japan used to go through. As far as I understand, these booms often resulted from NHK documentaries about said subjects. Apparently Cu Chulainn/Irish myth was one such boom during the 80s, and is why Cu was even in Megami Tensei in the first place (apart from "Fairy King").

So yes, I think Japan's own history with the West, not something "strange", has affected the SMT demon roster, as evidenced from this old demon origins bar graph done circa Nocturne in 2003:

How the categories are defined is not as straightforward as you might expect, though--"Europe" is mostly stuff like Norse and Greek and Fairy demons more than Christian ones. Angels and demons tend to get slotted under "Middle East." Some examples from SMT2 Akuma Daijiten:

Shin Megami Tensei I: Several years, not counting the timeskip. Travel and survival is going to eat up a lot of time, and you see each of the factions rise, fall, and grow as you move around. The first section in Tokyo seems like it should have been at least a month, since the Heroine's Resistance movement needs time to gather enough steam to be a known threat

Shin Megami Tensei II: Been a while, so I can't remember details. Also seems like a few years.

Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne: No more than a year. Don't have any hard evidence for this, but it's enough time for the students to develop their own perspectives on the world, without the years weighing on them.

Shin Megami Tensei IV: This one has a canon guideline. Basically, the artbook says that Gaston was nine years old when Navarre was eighteen. Gaston is eighteen now, and it's a 1:75 time ratio between Tokyo and Mikado, so we know that around 43 days passed between Flynn's Gauntlet Rite and the endgame. But there's still a lot of room for fudging, especially since Flynn spent time in Mikado and parallel timelines. I also think that the Prentices had at least some rudimentary sword training before going into Naraku.

Shin Megami Tensei IV Apocalypse: The only game that shows each day, and there's ten of them. But since it's from the new moon to the full, I say it was fifteen days, and Nanashi did sidequests between plot days. The last dungeon could take longer than a day; there's no more time pressure, and someone in the Ring of Gaea on Anarchy says the Cosmic Egg was there for a few days.

Aleph ~ Shin Megami Tensei II