#synchro monster

Fabled Leviathan

I know this guy’s meant to be a king or some other sorta ruler type guy, but his design always immediately reads to me as “jester.” I think it’s his silly pointed armor shoes, but his color scheme of red, black, and gold does not help, especially where his ultra bright red hair is concerned. Colors aside, his armor design is cool and fancy, and I particularly enjoy his blue waist cape and its shading that makes it look like swirling smoke as it blends into his throne. Something about the way Leviathan is sitting makes it look like his throne is undergoing a weird, twisting motion along its length. Or maybe it’s just the shift in focus from the sides at the bottom to the middle at the top or even its whole placement in the art, but it’s a bizarre optical illusion regardless. Definitely fits with the dark, demonic void he’s in! The fact that he has the cool S on the armrest parts is funny as hell though. I can only assume it stands for “skull.” And of course, as a Fabled card, we get our fun little imp friends making an appearance. I only just realized they have names of their own, being: Vio (purple), Heresy (green), and Breach (yellow). They’re always cute and add a bit of whimsy here, particularly Heresy perching on Leviathan’s shoulder (the glowing outline means they don’t mesh well with Leviathan’s shoulder spikes, but the pose is cute anyway).

Cooky★Yummy Way

This one deserves a high rating just for all the different expressions on the Yummys alone. The poor little upside down one that lost its checkerboard cookie. The startled one on all fours. The one running away in the background and the lion one hiding above it. The absolutely devastated one laying on the ground crying because some cookie pieces broke off. Even the one covering its mouth in shock. Man I just love all of them :) Snatchy gets much less characterization in this one due to the angling of their body/head, but I still enjoy that the light up parts of their suit have adopted a yellow and orange coloration that matches the Cooky Yummys. A detail I like on the Yummys is how their little cookie hoodies actually look like they have proper hoods (especially visible on the black and pink one at the bottom center). I also love the big, cookie flowers thrown in here for some added flavor (haha). Really helps sell that we're looking at the Cooky biome, while also giving the Yummys some proper background interaction.

Lollipo★Yummy Way

Looking at this card for a very long time made me realize something: all of the depictions of Snatchy on the Yummy synchro monsters have the light-up/non-white parts of their suit match the specific Yummy type in the card. As in: I noticed that the left arm of Snatchy's suit here matches the pink and green striped raincoat of the Lollipo on the right. Very cute little detail. What’s even cuter, however, is the Yummy looking like a little baby in Snatchy’s arms once again. Just the fact that it’s smaller than the other Lollipos right next to it has convinced me that this one is, in fact, a baby Yummy. Completely baffled by the pure joy being expressed by every Lollipo here. The Cupsies look like they're fleeing in the foreground on their card, and a little sneak peak at the Cooky card shows that they continue to experience the horrors from Snatchy's presence, but the Lollipos???? They're just here to have fun I guess LOL. What's great is that Snatchy seems to be enjoying themselves too! Love that adorable smiling, winking face.

Atomic Scrap Dragon

My love of robot dragons is not limited to the ever iconic Cyber Dragons or the fun and shiny Power Tool Dragon, as it also includes dragons like these: mashed together piles of junk that are very imaginative, a bit messy, and a little dingy all at the same time. One of my favorite parts of the Scrap monsters is the dramatic lighting they have going on, and Atomic Scrap Dragon exemplifies this property perfectly. It has both extremely bright, oversaturated areas (mainly around its orange atomic power core in its chest) and pure black shadows, creating some extreme contrast that makes this dragon look 3D (its heads especially). Does the pure black hide some of the details in here? Maybe, but I also don't feel like the loss of those details detracts from anything here. Actually, I really think it helps bring out the finer details here, like the double rows of little sharp teeth in each head's mouth, the little gear shapes in place of noses, and the corrugated metal sheets that make up the wings. Unrelated to the lighting extremes is the small and easy to miss flame trails flowing out of the dragon's mouths, which I love. It took me seeing this card here, completely isolated from any card borders/text to see that it uses the colors of the trans flag. Which is kind of baffling, because the white Synchro monster border should make it more obvious. But damn, the combo of blue glowing outline and pink laser afterglow is pure perfection.

Askaan, the Bicorned Ghoti

Who needs a regular old horse with a single horn on it, when you could have a sick ass skeletal flying fish with two horns??? AND a bunch of glowing yellow eyes? Man do I wonder how it actually opens its (clearly visible) jaw though, when there doesn't appear to be any sort of mouth line on its transparent skin. I was completely fooled into thinking Askaan was underwater (where you'd expect any normal fish to be), and I had to refresh my memory that the Ghoti are fishy aliens that live in space. Thus, those aren't clusters of bubbles and water surrounding it, but instead, asteroids and space dust. That look a whole lot like bubbles and water! An amazing yet subtle detail. Aside from that, Askaan's bioluminescence colors paired with its transparent body make for a lot of fun details. Like, light actually helps define a lot of the forms here, instead of the more typically used shadow.

Power Tool Braver Dragon

Where to even begin here? Power Tool Dragon is cool enough on its own, but we've gone a step further here, because funnily enough, this actually isn't OG PTD. It's actually our good pal Life Stream Dragon wearing a sick suit of armor that is modeled off of PTD, only it's been upgraded in several areas. Most notable and striking is the weapon upgrades; PTD's original right arm has been turned into a powerful hydraulic clamp, while its left arm has a massive and deadly looking version of the drill from Double Tool C&D. Also, if you look closely, its tail shovel has been turned into what is likely a pair of pliers (or maybe a flamethrower? It's hard to tell where the flames are coming from lol). It's interesting to compare this card to PTD, as PTD actually has very little red in its design, but this card went a little wild with red accents. They do fit very nicely with the swirling flames at its feet, though. Another interesting note is that the two cards share the same background, only rotated a bit. Final point: the prismatic shine effects off the clamps teeth, the drill, and the background add nice little bursts of color contrast.

Skeletal Dragon Felgrand

Now THIS. THIS is what I want a Felgrand Dragon counterpart to look like: a radically different, ultra rad design that still is very recognizably Felgrand Dragon. They really went nuts with the prompt "Take Felgrand Dragon and make it look fucked up." From the elongated, skeletal limbs to the weird purple veins to the absolutely horrific exposed spine, this monster screams "undead dragon." Don't even get me started on how well done the foreshortening is on this one. Perfectly seamless AND you get to see all those freaky details on its close up hand. The decision to pair Felgrand's normal colors with purple was excellent and really brings this card home for me. It even has purple wing membranes now!!! Not to mention the evil, entropic energy radiating from it now. Man I can't stop staring at its literal actual spine though.