#woolley

Design

PRG took awhile to get a good design to settle on with Woolley, as they wanted him to be cute and likable all around and have a simple silhouette that was easily recognizable. Like Gorogong and Pipijuras, he went through multiple design revisions.

While there’s no direct statement on if any particular kaiju inspired Woolley’s design, he does bear a passing resemblance to another popular Tsuburaya icon: Booska.

Lore

Woolley is just one member of a species of kaiju known as the Yetis, peaceful kaiju who live in herds where they sleep and play all day and subsist entirely on Giga Energy. The reports on his character file actually give us insight into the evolution of his species, and how kaiju might evolve in the world of Gigabash.

Yetis are descendants of a small mammal with thick fur that migrated to the Himalayas sometime in the Pleistocene Epoch. Here they also used local hot springs to help stay warm, but these hot springs were connected to underground veins of Giga Energy. As they were gradually exposed to the substance, they slowly became larger and larger over subsequent generations and came to rely less and less on food for energy. In only a few million years they became 120 ton titans. They remained there until near modern day, and for the local humans it was common practice to go and collect shed Yeti fur to be used in the creation of coats.

At some point though, these Giga Energy veins ran dry, and this forced them to search for a new home. At least some of them migrated to a remote place in Siberia surrounded by mountains that has been dubbed the Yeti Sanctuary, and is rich with hot springs and Giga Energy. It even has an entrance to the hollow earth! The same one Pipijuras uses in his story mode too.

Woolley’s story mode revolves around him getting lost and trying to get home. One day he sees planes flying overhead and follows them out of curiosity, but gets lost in the process.

In his effort to go home he actually goes the opposite direction of where he came and gets increasingly distracted on his adventure, ping ponging across the world and interrupting the events of Pipijuras and Gorogong’s story modes.

It’s during this story mode we learn about a somewhat important location and information about the Yetis, another kaiju we’ll eventually get to, and kaiju as a whole in the world of Gigabash.

The area, which is one of the maps, is the Power Station, a section of Area 51 which seeks to figure out how to properly harness Giga Energy. As you’re aware, humanity has been trying to harness Giga Energy, but they’re having difficulties. Like with almost all of humanity’s power sources, in order to get electricity out of it you need to figure out a way to get it to turn a turbine that can spin a magnet around some electrical wires. This gets electrons flowing and thus generates electricity, and this is the basic principle of creating usable electricity. Apparently it’s hard to get Giga Energy to do this safely, although what part of the process is difficult to do with Giga Energy is never said. Only Otama Tec has figured out how to get this to work with the creation of their Gigatron Reactor, and they’re not keen to share their discoveries for reasons we’ll get to in the next overview. So the Global Titan Defense Initiative, being the dickwads they are, did a little corporate espionage and stole the blueprints of an earlier more theoretical version of the Gigatron Reactor and created the Power Station to test it out and improve it. It uses Giga Crystals (again, we’ll get to it) as the main source of Giga Energy, but kaiju can apparently be used as well since in his story mode Woolley gets captured and chained up to meet this fate. However, the Power Station is riddled with issues in no small part due to the sheer power of Giga Energy. It’s so dangerous that the GTDI makes any employees working there unsubscribe from their life insurance because of course they would do that.

As Woolley travels around the world, he meets entirely new herds of Yetis on his travels in every major location he stops at. These Yetis all have different colorations than Woolley and his herd, and are described as subspecies. It’s pretty likely that when the Yetis migrated from the Himalayas, the population split up in their search for sources of Giga Energy, and these different populations diverged from each other. They aren’t entirely isolated though as a few are aware of each other’s existence and point Woolley in each other’s direction, and it seems that Yetis as a whole have a shared language.

This brings us to something that’s never really explicitly stated but is shown to us and is obvious in hindsight; the kaiju in the world of Gigabash are sapient. The game is a party fighting game so obviously they would have to be smart in universe in order to have battle strategies and know how to use city infrastructure as tools and weapons as the player demands, but it’s one of those things where you realize it and go “Oh, yeah that makes a lot of sense… why didn’t I realize it until now?”. The Yetis in particular have even learned how to use fire, although they use burning vehicles as fuel instead of dry wood.

This shot also shows that Yetis can go bald. Like and reblog this post to slap the elder yeti’s bald head.

Woolley’s story concludes with him staying focused and retracting his steps (which gives us a lot of fun pictures) and eventually finding his way home.

There is of course one last fight, but it turns out that the other Yetis he met decided to follow him, and end up helping in defending his home. Afterwards they end up integrating with the Siberian herd quite well! Even though Woolley spent his story trying to get back to his family, it’s sweet to know that his efforts gave him an even bigger one.

All in all, Woolley is a great character and is a fun and adorable addition to Gigabash’s roster, and his story mode is sweet.