While I was writing this chapter,
Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers went on sale for
fifteen dollars in the 3DS eShop, so of course having been planning to save up for it my immediate course of action was to grab the game as soon as possible (backing up my SD card and wiping it to make room...) Between obsessively going through fusions and messing around with the Nemechi function I stumbled across this little gem. One of the exclusive demons you can buy through Nemechi is a direct throwback to
the Goblin I gushed over before, with a nearly-identical spell list. Tarukaja, Sukukaja, Makakaja and an upgrade in the buff dispelling Dekunda! Of course for irony, he's now weak to Expel. It's really neat to see the little guy live on as something more than a one-note demon, as Goblin hasn't had this specific buff-centric skillset since the original
Shin Megami Tensei.
Getting back to what I was addressing last time, Pascal's secret purpose is at the Cathedral of Shadows. I'm not wholly certain if you're expected to just stumble onto this through natural gameplay or not, because this isn't actually hinted at in the slightest.
Pascal is recorded in the COMP as a very special type of demon, the sole member of the Dog race with undefined stats and skills. We can't summon him, but he is fuseable, and no matter what we fuse him with or whether it's a dyad or ternary fusion, the result is a level 43 Cerberus.
Cerberus is a rare exception to the law of subjugation because he's derived from Pascal. The trade-off to being able to use a level 43 demon at our level is that he can't be fused with anything and can't be deleted, so he takes up a valuable slot in our limited roster when he is with us. Of course, he also won't be sticking around for very long, though we can summon him at will for now. Cerberus' design is one of the earliest of Kaneko's iconic characters, recycled in tradition from the
Megami Tensei games.
Cerberus is a St-based demon who's mainly around to use his Feral Bite, a costless Extra attack that deals amped up physical damage. He also has Samarecarm (revives one party member with full HP) which is a good use of his MP pool, and Fire Breath which is less useful for the same reason that we don't pump Champion's Ma stat.
The Mega CD and PC Engine releases changed Pascal's mechanics somewhat; what I've gathered from Japanese sites is that in the Mega CD SMT he initially makes a level 43 Cerberus identical to any other in all but name and sprite, but that when he rejoins you again later he'll be level 63 with a new sprite based on
Megami Tensei II's Cerberus. His spell list is unchanged, but level 63 Pascal has
greatly inflated stats far outstripping those of a regular Cerberus. He also has an additional property of gaining 1-2 extra attacks.
There's some interesting merchandise for the original
Shin Megami Tensei floating around in Japan, and one of Pascal's forms got its own gashapon figure as the secret item in Kotobukiya's sixth SMT-based One Coin Figure collection, and the name "Great Pascal." This design comes from a set of concept artwork for his demonoid form that was ultimately not used in the SNES or Mega CD games but was implemented for the PC Engine.
PC Pascal also retains his unique Dog race and has stats balanced between his other versions, is level 65, and gets Fog Breath (halves enemy hit rate), Stun Bite (phys damage and paralysis) and Critical (inflicts heavy phys damage on one enemy.) Personally I prefer his Great Pascal design and moveset, the only thing amazing about Cerberus for his level is having mixed utility from Samaerecarm and heavy physical damage on the same demon. The fact that Samaerecarm is totally independent of Cerberus' Ma stat makes it a welcome addition compared to Stun Bite or Critical, either of which is redundant in the face of the other.
The Mega CD is responsible for a number of other revisions that carried over to PC Engine, including to this game's compendium with a lot of mid-level Law and high-level Chaos demons added, and I confess I'm uncertain how many of these iOS maintains. I do know that in the PSX release Cerberus doesn't have any of his unique sprites, and that in all versions of the game if you choose not to fuse Pascal he'll
still become a demonoid on his own later in the game.
Fusing a demon with your dog seems like it would just be black humor, but Pascal is going to be quickly integrated into the story and his strong bond to his master is one of the recurring themes in the mainline
Shin Megami Tensei games. It can seem like a cruel experiment to randomly throw your dog together with a demon, but this is also the only way that Pascal can really survive with or without you in a demon-infested world, and the fact that he can eventually choose to become a demon on his own if you don't fuse him suggests that this is his way of protecting his master.
To complement last time's Dancing Onmyouji video I should take this moment to point out that
there are Great Pascal cosplayers on god's green Earth and I am caught halfway between enjoying the silly fun and being in abject terror of fursuits. I am grateful to see Great Pascal contemplating whether or not he'll be admitted into the dog park though.
After some deliberation I choose to fuse Pascal with
Pixie to create Cerberus, reasoning that she's easy to rerecruit as necessary.
Voice: Please present your ID card.
>Touya used the ID card.
The ID card dropped by Amenojaku leads us to our next destination, the south entrance to the Echo Building.
Echo is still a relatively easy dungeon, comprised of five very short and compact floors, with an elevator that provides unrestricted access to each. Nothing save for the boss at the top is threatening enough for me to waste Magnetite summoning against, and the main demon we encounter here--the Dark-aligned and thus unrecruitable Gremlin--is even weak to gun damage, so between the protagonist's gun attacks and Champion's physicals there's very little need for Gentleman to waste his MP on the trash mobs.
Touya obtained Amethyst.
Worth noting, treasure boxes in SMTI work differently than they do in II and III. In this game, they just flat out give you a reward for opening them like any of the cardboard chests, and the distinction between them is that the treasure boxes contain gemstones. In SMTII, the treasure boxes will only give you their gems on the correct moon phase, and if you open them at any other time, the box yields nothing. In III/Nocturne, the treasure boxes have a % chance to give you their real item whether it's an incense, a gemstone or something else entirely, but if they don't give their item they yield a life stone instead. If you open a treasure box during a full moon in Nocturne, you're guaranteed to get that box's item, whereas the probability waxes and wanes according to the other phases with the new moon having a 0% chance and 7/8th phase having an 87.5% chance.
The Echo Building has Knocker, Zombie, Gremlin, Kobold and Andras in its encounter list, with Andras and Kobold being the only new things that we can recruit. I mistakenly thought that you needed a full moon in order to open treasure boxes for the right reward and ended up grinding double my previous Magnetite, although the XP scaling is such that we didn't gain many levels off of this.
Fallen Andras is a pretty good demon for his level, but he's lacking in focus because of how spread around his stats are. He comes with Agi, Pulinpa and Hapirma, so he would definitely benefit if those 3 points of St were invested in Ma instead, or In. The difference between Ma in In is that In affects the accuracy of status effects while Ma has more weight in magical damage calculation, so status-centric demons like Andras want high In, but those that have both offensive spells like Agi and statuses like Pulinpa can benefit from either stat. Andras also resists both Expel and Bind, and has no innate weaknesses, which is great. We're about to reach the point where I have to be choosy with what's actually in my party and only have three or so main demons due to Gentleman and Champion taking up space, and Andras is too much of a Mario to really make the cut right now.
Kobold meanwhile is a weird Super Weredog with mostly similar but inflated stats, with a similar buff-oriented set in the defensive Rakukaja and the evasive Sukukaja, but lacks Weredog's Extra skill. He's also weak to Force, magic and Almighty. Most resistances are shared between members of the same race, hence why Kobold's weaknesses are the same as Knocker's, but there are exceptions like Goblin only resisting Expel when Pixie resists both Expel and Bind despite them both being of the Fairy race.
I step out of the Echo Building to go fuse more at the Cathedral of Shadows, preparing one last demon for the upcoming boss fight. Like I said, Pixie was easy to rerecruit. One of the problems at the moment is that I've reached my stock's limit by carting around six demons at once, which for a fusion nut like me is a huge roadblock as I'm a fan of recruiting every possible demon and fusing all possible combinations as soon as they're available. The iOS port has a Demonic Compendium that also records demons that you've just met though, so you don't have to fuse every demon for completion.
Fusing Fairy Pixie and Jirae anything (but I choose Brownie) results in Brute Azumi, one of
the best early game demons. Azumi has fantastic St for his level and is one of the first demons to really try and min-max its specialties, comes with the spells Zio and Media (party heal) and the Extra skill Water Wall. Zio isn't really important and Media is just a utility spell, but Water Wall is great for trivializing certain fights because it completely negates all Fire-elemental damage for several turns. With 10 Ag, Azumi is easily keeping up with the other party members in turn order, and has steady HP & MP for what it's trying to do. Azumi has no weaknesses and
reflects Elec damage, making it great for the early game. Unfortunately, this is pretty much as good as Azumi ever gets across the games, as it's a rarely-used demon who's never even been in the
Persona subseries and the Wall-type skills disappear from the franchise completely after
Soul Hackers.
This is what my party setup looks like going into the fifth floor boss chamber. I owe an explanation here, as I haven't quite clarified how the whole row mechanic works in
Shin Megami Tensei. Functionally, it's a less visual version of the
Soul Hackers interface (more appropriately, the Saturn and PSX
Devil Summoner games are SMT's direct successors) in that characters on the back row can't use the normal attack command or physical skills because they won't reach, but also can't be attacked by physicals until the character in front of them is dead. The hero is here to shoot things and provide support, Gentleman chucks around magic spells but doesn't have useful physicals, and Goblin is a pure buff character, so these three go in the back while our phys-heavy Azumi, Cerberus and Champion stand at the frontlines. It's a very efficient way of handling fights, but the system is so opaque that most people never mess around with it.
Yuriko's presence in this dungeon
mirrors that of the hero's mother during the Echo Building vision sequence. Her views are diametrically opposed to the mother's, making good on the idea of Yuriko as the figurative Crone of the narrative, while Nadeshiko is the Maiden and the Mother is already named.
Summoner: My brethren! Come to this world, from the Expanse! Hrm!? You again?
>Run away?
>NO
Summoner: I cannot defile the chamber where my brethren will arrive. Let us take this outside! I won't allow you to escape this time! My plan will not be thwarted!
Again, the idea of a shrine as the boundary between the sacred and profane. Blood cannot be spilled within a purified Shinto construct. Confronting the Summoner is the first time we hear the
theme of Chaos.
Douman is level 15 while the average level of our human characters is 10, has four times the HP of Orias as well as the multitarget Fire and Force spells Maragi and Mazan, and the party-wide Nerve damage + Bind ailment skill Shibaboo. This fight would be crushing at our level, but there are two factors in play that trivialize it. First is Cerberus, who is the "normal" answer to this puzzle. Cerberus vastly outlevels both us and Douman, and his Feral Bite will rip out a good sixth of Douman's hit points, allowing him to effectively solo Douman. The other factor is Azumi; Douman's AI is strongly biased towards casting Maragi for party-wide damage, and in my fight with him he cast Maragi
every turn only for it to be negated by Azumi putting up Water Wall. The first Water Wall hadn't even worn off by the time the fight was over, so I got through this with no damage.
This is what Cerberus' damage output looked like after two Tarukajas. Feral Bite started out going for 84, then climbed up to 128, then 171. That's 75% of Douman's HP in three attacks. The rest of my gameplan was pretty simple. Azumi switched to physicals after putting up Water Wall, Champion followed suit, Touya used guns, Gentleman threw Zan and Goblin just buffed the party's attack with Tarukaja so Cerberus would end this faster. Douman drops ¥720 and 300 MAG on defeat.
>Touya obtained Kikyo Amulet.
Cerberus: Grrrrrr...
The music used for terminal rooms carries the same core melody used in
Shin Megami Tensei IV.
>He abruptly disappears...
This is the Echo Building COMP terminal. If you wish to use it, access it now.
And there goes our dog. From the terminals we can save, teleport to another linked terminal, or leave. We have no more business in Kichijoji, so it's off to the Research Lab terminal.
Very well. Teleporting to the Research Lab terminal.
The Research Lab is functionally like an extension of the Echo Building dungeon, with only two or so new encounters added to its list. The dungeon is a downward climb through two floors to get to the new district of Tokyo, with some optional exposition nestled into different rooms. Note that since Cerberus left, Gentleman is automatically forced to the front. We'd need to summon another demon and swap its position in the formation to give Gentleman protection if that were really necessary.
Researcher: There was a secret...project about computer communications...taking place here...We were developing...a Terminal system. Two or three days ago...demons attacked. Everyone was killed...or made into zombies...You should...hurry and...get out of here...
This conversation is pretty exemplary of the differences even small translations can make. Aeon Genesis' translation ends the conversation with
"...Hurry... ...Get out of here..." which gave the impression that the researcher, having been turned into a zombie, was losing control of himself and wanted the protagonist to leave before he would get hurt or eaten. The way that Atlus phrases it is more conversational, and it's debatable which approach is the original intention. The Japanese script reads「…はやく ここから……にげろ…」
"...Hurry from this place......run..."
Orc: Your human disguise is top-notch...Hm? Wait, you really ARE human!
Orcs are part of the Dark-Law aligned Jaki race and so can't be recruited. They're weak to Gun and Elec damage, so Touya rips them apart easily, and the random encounter version can sometimes drop the Sanjiegun sword, which would otherwise run us ¥20,000 in a store.
Man in Wheelchair: This is the research lab where the Terminal system was under development. But it wasn't immune to Gotou's influence...By the way...have you found the Demon Summoning Program useful so far?
>YES
Are you satisfied with the number of demons you can recruit?
>NO
This has been a huge problem for me, actually. We can only store six demons at a time, but there are currently nine usable demons available to me, and I'm a huge fan of recruiting and fusing everything I can. Need to fill up that Compendium somehow. There are approximately ~269 demons in the game and I've only filled about 10% of the Compendium/"Dictionary", even though it counts both seen and fused demons.
Man in Wheelchair: In that case, I'll up your computer's memory.
.........
There, all done. You can store two more demons now. That should let you put the Demon Summoning Program to even better use now.
The Sendagaya-Shinjuku area that the lab is located in is about two and half hours away on foot from Kichijoji, so the terminal system is bridging an enormous distance with its instantaneous transport. This section of the game can feel somewhat overwhelmingly open, but in reality it's just a bigger box than Kichijoji, with the Shinjuku mall just a ways north.
In this shot the mall is to the south, but we want to see what's playing on the jumbotron before proceeding.
Gotou: This civilization is rotten to its core. Our society is built on exploitation of Gaea, the earth. As prejudice, poverty, and war engulf the world, we have awakened ancient demons. This was done in order to prepare for the true crisis.
Much as Stephen is derived from the physicist Stephen Hawking, Gotou's likeness is based on that of Yukio Mishima, a famed 20th century author who advocated for traditional Japanese values, a revival of imperial nationalism and the divinity of the emperor. Despite these views, he was not a militarist and regarded the emperor as a symbolic construct of Japanese sovereignty rather than as the human individual occupying the throne. Born into a samurai family, his career as a novelist came first and he became famous for broaching the topic of homosexuality in the early postwar years, while his later venture into politics was influenced by the turbulent relationship between Japan and the United States. Mishima was both an accomplished author and politically on the right, and is remembered as an ambiguous figure in Japanese history. He was a scholar and playwright, but devoted an inordinate amount of time to body building and doing military exercises with his civilian militia the Shield Society, alongside the Japanese Self Defense Force. Mishima is mostly known these days for the 1970 Mishima incident (三島事件
Mishima jiken, sometimes called the "Mishima plot" or "Mishima affair") his failed
coup d'état at Camp Ichigaya near Shinjuku, where he attempted to stage a revolution through the JSDF to reinstate the emperor's powers and thereafter committed ritual suicide when it failed.
Gotou: We have drawn on the power of the ancient gods to fight this horrific conspiracy. Our aim is for gods and mankind to coexist and create a utopia!
>The speech goes on...
Gotou's speech has thematic similarities to the final address Mishima gave during the incident, criticizing the moral character of the nation and dealing with the underlying threat of the west corrupting the national spirit. Mishima's argument was against materialism and greed, as he was addressing high-growth era Japan's abundant economy, while Gotou's is written to be more about general ignorance towards environmentalism and humanitarian needs, which is appropriate for the early 1990's. If Mishima's views sound too outlandish to be real, keep in mind that there is a long rhetoric of anti-westernization spanning more than a hundred years in Japan, and a wealth of literature to draw from on the idea that westerners are trampling over the country through unequal treaties and biased economic policies that have been replicated repeatedly from the first invasion by Commodore Perry all the way through the Allied occupation of Japan. This goes hand in hand with the idea of Christianity as a religious invasion of the country, discussed in the previous chapter. As early as the 1890's one of the great fears of government leaders was "the notion that outsiders from across the seas would poison the souls of Japanese people, convert them perhaps to Christianity, and demolish their true identity." (Gordon 110) The motivating fear throughout the empire-building of the Russo-Japanese and Sino-Japanese wars was that mainland Japan would be colonized by the west as China had been before her. That fear persevered long after it was no longer a practical reality, until by the close of the Pacific War in 1945 the prospect of an international occupation of Japan was treated by the Emperor Shōwa as "endur[ing] the unendurable." (Gordon 225) Closer to the present day, fears of western imperialism materialized during the postwar occupation of the 1940's and early 50's, most prominently in the American-authored constitution of Japan, and in the
Anpo security treaty that guarantees the United States the right to maintain military bases in Japanese waters (as well as a certain degree of extraterritoriality extending to the bases) with no such provision for Japan in turn. I'll get to this in more specific detail further down, it's taking up a lot of space, but suffice to say the
Anpo was a major factor in Mishima's turn to right wing politics.
Gotou's mannerisms are also directly based on Mishima's--compare this photograph from the day of the incident to Gotou's sprite above. It's clear that Gotou is intended to be a version of Mishima that succeeded in inspiring the SDF to rebel, but he's also the embodiment of the self-centric ideals espoused by Nakae Choumin's Champion of the East. One thing that should be considered is the presentation of Gotou's speech. While the key points are mostly the same, Aeon Genesis' translation is
severely longer and more specific in outlining Gotou's nationalist views;
"I am Gotou, commander of the armed forces, and leader of the country in this time of martial law! Civilization as we know it has rotted to its very core! This is because its very roots are founded in the exploitation and abuse of this great planet, Gaia! Meanwhile, the hatred and mistreatment brewing between fellow humans eats away at our own existence like a cancer! In such a world so filled with prejudice, poverty, and war, we need help, and so we have awakened the ancient gods known as "demons" to aid us! We have done so to help prepare ourselves for the true danger, a heinous scheme being plotted behind the scenes: the Japan Obliteration Project! There are those who plan to destroy our country in order to lay the foundations... for a new, totalitarian regime that will enslave humanity under the iron fist of a cruel dictator! In order to stop this mad conspiracy, the gods of old have lent their power to us! When it has been broken, they shall help us establish a new Utopia, where humanity and demonkind shall live side by side in happiness!"
This version of Gotou's manifesto is about twice as long as the iOS translation, and it bridges his points about the problem of human infighting, his reverence for the demons-as-old-gods, and the Japan Annihilation Project, which comes out with no introduction in Atlus' script. The allusion to Gotou's opposition as wanting to create a dictatorship is also absent, which diminishes the impact of the opposition between the Law and Chaos factions as well as the potential dangers of each. Aeon's script isn't entirely innocent either, as the dictatorship line wasn't in the Japanese script. Having read the Japanese script, I can say that Aeon Genesis' translation is more faithful to the content and style of Gotou's speech, but Atlus' translation preserves the brevity of the original. In Japanese Gotou has an authoritative but minimalist manner of speech, making very short and to-the-point sentences that invoke huge sweeping concepts like discrimination and poverty. "Obliteration" is also more appropriate than "Annihilation" for translating まっさつ
Massatsu which is synonymous to erasing or denying something--here taken to mean not just the physical destruction of Japan, but its cultural erasure as well, destroying the ideas as well as the place.
 |
| Gotou, from Kaneko Works Vol. III |
I started Mishima's final completed works, the
Sea of Fertility tetralogy, but am still in progress on
Spring Snow and have it on hold while I work through
Death in Midsummer. At least in translation his fiction is very flowery, and each paragraph is like a journey trying to get around to the point of what's going on. He's not worse than Paulo Friere, but Friere was writing about an objective reality and not trying to cultivate prose. Mishima is intensely visual, lacks brevity, and I admire his idealism more than is healthy. He's not a bad writer, but I would never read his books for the pleasure of it.
The Shinjuku section of
Shin Megami Tensei is about confrontations with idealists of Gotou's type, and it's where we have our first meetings with the respective alignment representatives. The underground mall features the first Law and Chaos healing houses, as well as the armies of both alignments debating their dilemma for the player, and a profession of faith is necessary to move the storyline along.
I meet this little guy in the entrance to Shinjuku mall. Pyro Jack was called Jack O' Lantern in Aeon Genesis' translation, but his original name in Japanese is ジャックランタン
Jakkurantan "Jack Lantern" which is a more direct counterpart to "Jack Frost." It's my view that ditching both translations for the direct Jack Lantern would be better, because it's supposed to be a play on words that complements Jack Frost before anything else, but the Pyro Jack and Jack O' Lantern translations both make for a more readable and fluid script. In another life I hope to be a worker for Atlus who spreads the great gospel of Jack Lantern and
Soul Hackers Odin.
Statistically Pyro Jack is the magic version of Azumi and that makes him wonderful. He comes with Agi, Maragi and Agilao, so he has both levels of Fire damage (remember that
if... invented third level magic!) and multitarget damage as well, but he's somewhat overspecialized due to how easy it is to block or resist Fire damage in this game. Pyro Jack is weak to Ice and absorbs Fire.
Gaean Priest: You who bring Chaos to the world...What brings you to the Gaean Ashram?
>Explanation
Did you come to learn more about the Gaea Shrine? This is a place which those who value their freedom can use as they please. Lawfully-inclined dupes, however, must pay a tithe of ¥1000 in order to use it.
Let chaos take this world...
And this is where I realized my mistake. In the Aeon Genesis translation you had the Church of Mesia, the Temple of Gaia and the Kaifuku, so I presumed that Atlus would reuse the Church and Temple names and use Ashram exclusively for the Neutral healing house. Instead every location is called an Ashram, although the terms Shrine and Church do come up if you ask for them to explain their position. Aeon handled the priest's dialogue as being less apocalyptic and erring more on the side of the inevitable, wording his introduction as
"That which has life will eventually die. That which has form will eventually crumble." Atlus' translation instead sounds as if the Gaean religion were about choosing to destroy the world, instead of accepting the destruction as natural. I can't argue in favor of either one from an accuracy standpoint without the Japanese script in front of me, but I can say that the wider distribution and reception of Aeon's script has probably influenced a lot of players to have a more positive view of the Gaeans than those whose first experience with the game is in the iOS port.
Gaea itself takes influences from a lot of different places, and this is where I'm once again disappointed with the backgrounds of the Game Boy Advance/iOS ports, because it makes it difficult to highlight specific detail. The statues flanking the shrine seem to draw from the extensive Buddhist sculptures developed in medieval Japan, and in particular were probably influenced by the well-known paired
Niō statues at the gates of Tōdaiji temple in Nara, established 1203 CE. (Mason 187) Having superficial similarities to the raging Myō-ō statues, the Niō are protective guardians of the historical Buddha and colossal statues of them are frequently set up outside of temples. It's difficult to see in the iOS release, but in the SNES release you can make out the details of ogre-like faces on the Gaean statues, suggesting an imitation of the exaggerated rage of the guardians. So for the purposes of a small shrine within a mall, the statues instead guard the interior rather than the exterior.
The star banners are a common symbol of witchcraft and pagan belief, and they're used a couple times in
II,
if... and
Nocturne in connection with traditional demon-summoning rituals. The statue at the back of the shrine is harder to place, but I'd suggest the numerous examples of Bodhisattva statues used to inspire ascetics towards enlightenment as a starting point. The style of wooden lotus lantern lining the shrine is likewise imagery borrowed from Buddhist temples (寺
tera as opposed to a Shinto shrine 神社
jinja) and the heavy borrowing from Buddhism is interesting because the Gaean religion has a clear Shinto slant with an emphasis on the living nature of the Earth and the
lack of an afterlife. Like the native syncretic beliefs practiced in Japan since c. 600 CE, the Gaean religion is a combination of spiritual thoughts aggregated from different sources, drawing from Shinto, Buddhism, Luciferianism and imported demonology.
The Gaean religion was referred to in English as the Cult of Gaea for a long time, mainly due to the influence of Aeon's multiple translations and Aeria Games' exporting of the official MMORPG
Shin Megami Tensei: IMAGINE, but the Japanese term is ガイア教団
Gaia Kyoudan "Gaia Religious Organization." As of
Shin Megami Tensei IV they're called the Ring of Gaea in English, but still referred to as
Gaia Kyoudan in Japanese, so the name for them has only changed for overseas players. They are supposed to be distinct from the Messiah group however, which is called the メシア教会
Meshia Kyoukai "Mesia Church."
Related to its influences, the PC Engine port of
Shin Megami Tensei introduces among its new demons the Shinto goddess
Amaterasu, tied with Yama, Abaddon and Fafnir for the thirteenth highest level Chaos demon. That should give you a good view of where the Ring of Gaea is spiritually.
Note that Gentleman has to pay double the healing cost of anyone else here, and the opposite holds true for Champion. The protagonist's prices instead fluctuate based on his current alignment.
Messian Pastor: What business do you have with the Messian Church?
>Explanation
Welcome to the Messian church, the abode of God. This facility is used by all those who place their faith in God. Though we still accept ¥100 donations from those more chaotically aligned.
May God remain at your side...
One notable difference in translations is that in Aeon's script, the Pastor says that
"If you give thanks to God in the form of money, I have holy artifacts available for you." Contrast the more frank Gaean Priest who says,
"Give us money, and we'll share our artifacts with you." This is emulating the mutual value placed by both Christianity and Buddhism on sacred relics and remains, and the medieval practice in the Catholic faith of selling indulgences to commute punishment for sins. Both religions have based entire economic systems on pilgrimages from site to site, wherein an influx of pilgrims creates prosperity for the area surrounding a reliquary through the both the pilgrims' natural needs for housing and food, and through their generous donations to the religious sites. The abuses of indulgences and the cult of saints surrounding this money-for-soul economy were cause for objection by religious reformers like Martin Luther, who criticized the Catholic authorities for essentially selling salvation to the public. Indulgences themselves could only absolve one of temporal punishment for sins (and of time in purgatory) while confession and forgiveness were still requisite, but the heart of the issue is that money should not be changing hands
at all where salvation or enlightenment are concerned, because money is itself a means of cultivating greed (and therefore sin or the loss of enlightenment) in its receiver.
This comes off as an internal criticism of both the Order of the Messiah and the Ring of Gaea, as their theoretical religious charities are in practice just another type of shop. The preoccupation of
Shin Megami Tensei with religious groups reflects the general popularity of new religions in Japan throughout recent history. The first wave of these came in the 1870s as a challenge to the Meiji government, with multiple religions starting up by way of a maiden-prophet being possessed of divine inspiration and dictating a new sacred scripture. (Gordon 86) One common element among them was the 世直し
yonaoshi "world rectification" through which all wealth would be equalized, eliminating the severe class inequalities in early modern Japan. This gave the early religions a strong communist slant that put them in opposition to the developing capitalist economy, and sometimes lead to attempts at violent uprising. Much of their support came from former samurai and peasant farmers. In the 1930s these new religions instead emerged out of mainstream Shinto sects and went on to claim several million adherents, with their prophets and maidens claiming to be living gods. (Gordon 159) These religions were popular because they provided concrete solutions to the economic and personal hardships of individuals living through the trauma of an industrialized society. They provided a sense of community not found in traditional Buddhism or state-sponsored Shinto.
Following a period of oppression during World War II, in the postwar period the new religious movements resurged with support from those who had been left behind in the race for middle class affluence. The Sōkka Gakkai ("Value Creation Society") drew its roots back to the '30s and had seven million adherents by the late 60s. (Gordon 258) Unlike most of the '30s religions, the SG were a Buddhist offshoot known for their aggressive proselytizing and "pray now, believe later" policy. Adherents could test drive the religion by praying in a skeptical spirit, then after their prayers were answered, begin believing in it. SMT's discussion of new religions proved timely, as just three years after
Shin Megami Tensei and a year after
Shin Megami Tensei II, the March 20th sarin gas attacks were instigated by the Aum Shinrikyō cult, a new religion today known as Aleph. Originally formed in 1987 by the blind Yoga practitioner Asahara Shōko, the Aum Shinrikyō were believed to constitute around fifty thousand members by 1995, and sought to hasten the end of the world by releasing nerve gas into the Tokyo subways. (Gordon 316) The police suggested that their end goal was to install Asahara as the new emperor of Japan to prepare for the end of the world in 1997. The apocalypse cult's beliefs were a hybrid of Christian teachings, Nostradamian prophecy-fulfillment and Yoga practice. Nearly fifty-five hundred passengers were injured in the gas attacks, while twelve were killed. Knowing that these acts of terror were possible, SMT's critical position on new religions and the amount of sway they hold with people appears precognizant; that we ought to safeguard ourselves from being swayed so easily by the lure of an apocalypse.
>NO
Woman: Oh, my, that's not good. Join our Messian Faith and let us pray to God together. If we would all pray to God, He will surely save us...He will send a Messiah to help us.
Well, specifically I don't believe in the god she's presuming of. The main division between the Messian cult and most of Japan's new religions is that the Messians aren't founder-centric and they believe that the Messiah is yet to come rather than already here.
Man: ...is Lucifer. The angel who was once the most beautiful in Heaven. Lucifer descended to the earth to grant wisdom to mankind. In doing so, he incurred God's wrath. But even after that, he fights against God. Now is the time that we must praise and worship Lucifer...
This is why I attribute the Ring of Gaea as practicing Luciferianism rather than Satanism. They have a Promethean view of Lucifer as a bringer of fire and morning star opposing a corrupt deity, rather than advocating for the self as god. Aeon's translation also makes mention of Lucifer's courage and that God transformed him into a demon, and the Gaean worshiper attaches the Lord title to him to express his respect.
Yuriko is waiting here outside of one of Shinjuku's three bars, specifically the Neutral bar. In Aeon's translation she has a separate line offering to have coffee with her. Just as there's an Ashram for each alignment, there's also a bar for each alignment, with their respective adherents decrying the opposition in each. This point is untested, but I suspect that like with the Ashrams, using a particular bar will cause your alignment to gradually sway towards that bar's alignment. Note that once we speak to the bartender, she's no longer here.
Bartender: Do you have the Demon Summoning Program?
>YES
Do you think it's okay to let demons kill as they please?
>NO
Do you think it's wrong to bring about peace through overwhelming force?
>YES
I have something for you. Take this. It should help you find the one you're looking for.
>Touya obtained the Matchbook.
This sequence is paralleled in SMTIV, where Flynn needs a similar Matchbook to enter Cafe Florida, which likewise served as the Neutral headquarters in that game. The only thing really disagreeable about this sequence is that you're required to respond from a Neutral prospective to proceed, but it doesn't make much sense from a storyline perspective that you proceed without such an alignment. Unlike later games, the first SMT essentially presumes that you'll start out from a Neutral perspective and then be seriously swayed by one of the alignments.
American Soldier: Our forces have taken steps to prevent that.
The Law bar is also an American one, and the presence of American soldiers in Shinjuku invokes a particular anxiety of the Japanese political scene. The use of the US military is a kind of timestamp for Japanese media analogous to the animosity overseas to Japanese car manufacturers post-World War II, as anywhere from 1945 onward the United States is a handy stock image of invasion and loss of cultural identity, as well as of subjugation at the hands of outsiders. A lot of this is centered around the initial outcry and public demonstrations against the SCAP from '45~52, and politically in the history of unequal treaties that dispelled Japan's tariff autonomy from 1858 to 1895, but because the presence of US military bases has continued to the present and has been contemporaneous with Ryukyuan independence movements, there's an enduring recognition of the Americans as criminals and violent outsiders throughout the 70's and
especially the 90's.
Shin Megami Tensei was released in 1992, three years after the death of the Shōwa Emperor, and the crime rate surrounding American bases in Futenma, Sasebo, Iwakuni and Yokota was as well known then as it is today.
American Soldier: He took action because he couldn't allow the confusion in Tokyo to continue any longer. His actions are well-intentioned and the right thing to do.
Okinawa in particular is a hotbed for dialogue on the stationing of American troops; between 1972 and 2009 a sum 5,634 criminal offences took place at the hands of US servicemen involved with Futenma base, including 25 murders, 358 burglaries, 127 rapes, 306 assaults and 2,829 thefts. (Hearst) This topic proved timely for SMT, as just three years after the game's release the infamous '95 rape incident rekindled Japanese fears about American troops. (And yes, this was contemporaneous to the sarin gas attacks discussed above; it's called the "Lost Decade" for more than economic reasons.) A 12-year old girl was repeatedly beaten and raped by three American soldiers off-base, but instead of being turned over to the Japanese authorities they were initially taken into protective custody by the Americans. (Gordon 333-334) Animosity towards the soldiers quickly intensified, with false rumors circulating that they were able to roam the base freely and were--in an image painted by some clear stereotypes of the time--seen eating hamburgers. (Watanabe) More than eighty thousand Japanese demonstrated against the American bases in wake of the rape, and while western sources are fond of remarking on how the soldiers would have had harsher sentences in a military or American court, the Japanese courts finally being able to try, sentence and punish American soldiers for crimes committed on Japanese soil represented a major victory for Japan. More than just punishing the criminals, what mattered was also that Japan was able to threaten the soldiers with being tried on their own terms (in the minds of the soldiers, they could be tried in a more
"primitive" court) acting as a deterrent against future crimes, and establishing Japanese sovereignty.
To those directly affected by the recklessness of American soldiers, the bases are like a protection racket run by the US military and complacently agreed to by the Japanese government, sacrificing the people (chiefly the Okinawans, who have been on historically ambiguous terms with the Japanese mainland) for the "greater good" of keeping China at bay--of course, the US has never directly come to Japan's defense in open war, so the basis of this whole agreement is dubious given that it's amounted to saber-rattling.
 |
| 1872 woodprint, “Joshu Tomioka Silk Mill” from hana-b.jp |
The contemporary anxiety of sacrificing the people to foreigners evokes the original rumors surrounding the silk mills of the 1870s. Early Japanese modernizers and would-be robber-barons faced resistance from the public because of a story circulating that the Europeans the national government was housing were cannibals. The red wine and the lard that the French cooked with were thought to be human blood and fat by the country people, and when the national government sent out calls for young girls between fifteen and twenty-five, it was suspected that instead of sending their daughters off to learn industrial silk reeling, the Japanese people were actually sending them to become supplies of blood and fat for the Europeans living at Tomioka. (Tsurumi 27) The rhetoric of sacrifice for the country and imagery of sending one's daughters off on long journeys conjured up comparisons to other kinds of sacrifice, like the commonplace practice of impoverished families sending their daughters to faraway prefectures to become prostitutes. The widely-believed rumors of cannibalistic Europeans being housed and offered human sacrifices by the government also fell into the trappings of premodern mythology, with the Europeans being analogous to the eight-headed serpent Yamata no Orochi who plagued Izumo province, and was offered young women as sacrifices to appease his appetite. Unlike in the Orochi story, this time there was no Susanoo to come save the day. Fittingly for the topic of
Shin Megami Tensei, the sericultural myth proved to be an apropos metaphor for what the Japanese government was willing to do to its people in the name of modernization. Thus the narrative of foreign occupation runs deep in Japanese history, replicated repeatedly much as the core narratives of world mythologies echo one another across time.
Along with Pyro Jack, this is the first area we can recruit Jack Frost proper. He's even better with Ma than Pyro is, and has the Ice version of his spell list; Bufu, Bufula and Mabufu. For added dualism, he's weak to Fire but absorbs Ice.
American Soldier: I would listen to anything he has to say to me.
In Aeon Genesis' translation the American soldiers spoke in broken English (or rather by translation
convention, Japanese.) This line for example was,
"Ambassador Thorman great man! I do anything he say!" while one of the other soldiers said
"Our American Ambassador Mr. Thorman saw disorder in Tokyo, he stand up to it. He is true justice!" The American soldiers were like cavemen in Aeon's script. This is a somewhat accurate localization; in the original script they spoke in a combination of kanji and katakana, reflecting their heavy accent and the typical flat affect that accompanies speaking a language you've just learned, and occasionally they dropped particles and polite terms which left the sentences semi-grammatically incorrect. For comparison, in the Japanese script of the PSX release this soldier says 「トールマン大使素晴ラシイヒトデース彼ノ言ウコトナンデモ聞キマース」
TOORUMAN-taishi subaRASHII HITO DESU kare NO iUKOTO NANDEMO kiKIMAASU "Ambassador Thorman is great person I listen to anything he say." The grammar is mostly correct but he forgets to use the topic marker
wa after "Ambassador Thorman" even though he does use
desu (equivalent to "is.") An alternative approach would be to render the words written in katakana in all capitals in the translation to English, and the words in kanji with regular case rules, or to screw around with punctuation.
Whether or not Atlus was right to not preserve the speech patterns (with the alternative not necessarily being AE's version, as there are many ways to render the Americans' dialogue) in translation is debatable. I would say that it was definitely authorial intent to present an offensive stereotype of American soldiers; but was it authorial intent to present that stereotype to non-Japanese readers? The stereotype is a tool intended to evoke the general anxiety surrounding foreigners, but if that anxiety can't be cultivated in an international audience, the tool falls flat and loses its narrative purpose. I'm in favor of the caveman soldiers, but it's true that if the cavemen
just look like they're making fun of those silly jingoist Americans instead of being a legitimate threat to the safety of the protagonists' world, there's little reason for them to be in the game as-is. Is it the position of the translator to decide that? Both no and yes are correct answers.
Views on the SDF in Japan are somewhat negative. Civilian jobs are seen as much more prestigious, while the role of the Defense Force errs mostly to the side of disaster relief in the public mindset. Gotou's power grab is against the antimilitarist values of the general public.
SDF Officer: He's in a building northwest of Shinjuku.
A little more color to Gotou's character. He's willing to give authority to a young bully like
Ozawa, ostensibly because Ozawa has the innate power to command regardless of his moral compass. Thus despite protecting native Japanese interests against Thorman's forces and trying to defend the country from annihilation, Gotou's faction enables wanton strength without reason.
At the disco...
Suited Man: ...We might be able to fit two or three more people in here, though.
We can't enter the disco while the party is four or greater, so we have to send back our demons to enter. As a trade-off, there are no encounters inside of the disco.
J.B.: More specifically, for Nadeshiko. But he doesn't know what she looks like, so he's capturing all girls with her name.
The Matchbook is our ticket to Nadeshiko's home base, and this establishes that Ozawa is a mutual enemy for each of the main characters; a bully to Champion, kidnapper of Gentleman's girlfriend and the antagonist to the protagonist's partner.
And this is all you
really need to know about the Japanese views of the United States.
This man is missing a line; in AE he says
"They might try to invade or conquer the country, or even drop nuclear bombs on it!"
American Soldier: Ambassador Thorman said that he would order missiles to be launched at Tokyo. That's why I ran away.
Embedded here in the bottom floor of the disco is a lone deserter, who casts a shadow over Thorman's faction. The Law and Chaos factions each have their own shortcomings, but where the Chaos faction is out in the open and uncompensating for its faults, the forces of Law hide their less than desirable traits and favor deception over honesty. Compare his line in AE;
"If coup d'etat succeeds, and demons gain power in Tokyo, ambassador Thorman says he will drop nuclear missiles on Tokyo! I go awol when I heard that. That is too far!"
Dryad took forever to recruit. She gets Media and Marin Karin (inflicts Charm, works on virtually everything) and the Extra skill Joy Song, which inflicts happy on the entire enemy party. Dryad has no weaknesses and resist Expel. Overall she's good in boss fights and more technical battles, but I'd prefer to have a more straightforward demon like Azumi or Jack Frost to make an easily programmable strategy for recycling through the game's Autobattle feature.
Goblin's time in the spotlight is sadly limited and it would be better to choose either Jack Frost or Pyro Jack for the time being rather than try to run them both. Having two Fairy order demons available, I have the option to fuse some combination of Goblin, Jack Frost and/or Pyro Jack together at the local Cathedral of Shadows to create Element Aeros. He has Mazan
and Bufula which is absolutely fantastic for his high In and Ma, and he also gets Hapirma. No weaknesses, resists Expel and Bind, and comes with all the benefits of an Element race demon being able to rank up and down other demons. The total number of fusions we can make at this point are impressive, so I've cut it down to the relevant ones;
Dyad fusions
Lv6 Fairy Goblin/Lv9 Fairy Pyro Jack/Lv8 Fairy Jack Frost x Lv10 Brute Azumi =
Lv15 Yoma Kimnari
Lv6 Fairy Goblin x Lv8 Fallen Andras =
14 Divine Angel
Lv6 Fairy Goblin x /Lv8 Fairy Jack Frost/Lv9 Fairy Pyro Jack/Lv12 Fairy Dryad =
Lv11 Element Aeros
Lv6 Jirae Kobold x Lv8 Element Erthys=
Lv16 Jirae Tsuchigumo
Lv6 Jirae Kobold x Lv12 Fairy Dryad =
Lv13 Brute Bogle
Lv8 Element Erthys x Lv10 Brute Azumi =
Lv13 Brute Bogle
Lv10 Brute Azumi x Lv8 Fallen Andras =
Lv17 Ghost Ghoul
Ternary fusions
Azumi x Dryad x Pyro Jack =
Lv28 Megami Kushinada
Azumi x Dryad x Andras=
Lv24 Night Nightmare
Everything else is either too high level, too low level, or easily recruitable. Andras and Erthys will roll over into the level 66 Fallen Flauros. My current level ceiling is 13, so Bogle (a mostly-phys demon with weird stat distributions that let it do status healing and second level Elec magic) is the most immediately accessible fusions, and will complement well with Angel (the same but with Light instant kill magic and Media) but we can recruit her as a rare encounter from an upcoming dungeon. Kimnari has second level Fire and Ice spells coupled with somewhat underwhelming (overly spread out) stats, while Tsuchigumo has amazing St but awful Ma despite having Shibaboo and Angel's Hama, and Tsuchi has the typical Jirae resistances that pushed Knocker and Brownie down a peg. I won't be fusing Tsuchigumo, but Ghoul is more alluring despite lacking good skills. Ghoul would open up the possibility of fusing into Dark demons, as Ghoul himself is Dark-Chaos, and because Dark demons are unrecruitable, fusion is the only means of getting them into your party. Fusing them is difficult work; if the fusion is incompatible it will result in either nothing or the Dark demon reverting to a Slime, whereas if it is compatible it will behave as if the demon had just ranked up. Compatibility is dependent on the average level of the fusion material demons being a multiple of 3
and on the Dark demon's level being greater than that of the other material demon's level. Alternatively, fusing two Dark-aligned demons will bypass the typical Element and same race rules to create another raced demon (in this case, two Ghosts creates a Spirit, who aside from the Lv29 Phantom and Lv44 Legion are garbage.) The Ghost race on the whole is weak to Fire and Expel but resists Gun and Nerve, and while Expel is a terrible weakness to have resisting Nerve makes them invulnerable to half of the status ailments, and the higher level Ghosts switch to dropping their weaknesses for blanket resistance to magic and null/reflect Curse. A Ghost order demon can also eventually be ranked up into the
totally fantastic Lv22 Man Eater who gets both Sexy Dance for multitarget Charm and Stun Claw for paralysis, as well as Demon's Kiss which
lowers the enemy's levels.
Basically we should really fuse Ghoul even though his short-term value is limited to being a bad high-level Azumi clone. Any demons that is level 13 will rank up Ghoul into Man Eater, so it's not a bad investment. Setting aside Azumi for that in advance (Andras can be rerecuited in Shinjuku mall), I would fuse Kobold and Dryad into Bogle and Goblin and Andras into Angel, then reserve Bogle for fusing Ghoul into Man Eater.
A note on the possibility of fusing Aeros and then fusing him with Erthys. Whenever a same family fusion wouldn't result in an Element-race demon normally, it's overridden under a separate set of rules; the new demon will be a demon in the
same family whose level is nearest to the combined level of the fused demons divided by 2 and increased by 3. If the fusion results in one of the fusion material demons though, the result defaults to a Lv13 Foul Slime.
However these same-family rules are actually inapplicable to fusions between Elements, who have their own separate procedure. Each Element fusion results in a specific demon, with Erthys and Aeros fusing into Lv19 Jirae Bugaboo, a strong St-oriented demon with second level and multitarget Ice spells. The Element-specific fusions in general aren't great, as Bugaboo like many others can be recruited in the wild, but it could make use of the lingering demons left over after all these fusions are carried out.
These rules are so obscure that you'd never uncover them without either a strategy guide or through personal experimentation and documentation, but that's part of the thrill of fusion.
Shin Megami Tensei has an effect of cloistering you away like a fourteenth century ascetic pursuing the occult through the study of tomes and ancient wisdom, only in this case the tomes are Media Works strategy guides from 2003 and the ancient wisdom is abandoned Japanese Geocities webpages. One aspect of fusion that many of the early Megaten games are missing is the pursuing of it for its own sake, as without any skill inheritance you can't simply try to perfect a party of demons on your own terms with Victory Cry and Megidola all over the place, but the retroactive introduction of a proper Compendium somewhat alleviates this since you can at least pursue 100% completion. Fusion, like the study of alchemy, is a transformative pursuit not just upon the materials but upon the master.
So of course I fuse Bogle from Kobold and Dryad and immediately run into one in Shinjuku's basement. Dia, Zionga and Penpatra for light status ailments. Weak to Gun and Elec. He immediately replaces Azumi in being my human shield.
This is just how staggering Shinjuku is. I'm in the practice of mapping the whole area thanks to
Strange Journey, and this completely banal location dwarfs any of the actual dungeons that we'll see for a while to come. As far as the map is concerned, the green arrow is the party, up and down yellow arrows are stairs, T is a Terminal, S is a shop, red and blue are Shrines and Churches respectively, while green is the Neutral Ashram and purple is a Cathedral of Shadows.
Shinjuku is the first time we can encounter the game's three Fiends--the empty room above the stairs on the far western side has a random chance of spitting one out--but we're too low level to handle them. I'll address Fiend mechanics, and how they've been changed for iOS, when we actually go after all three for Compendium completion, around level 28 or so.
Down a flight of stairs...
>YES
Man: Yeah? Show it to me...Okay, that's the real thing. Go ahead.
It's a bizarre conceit, but the "town" areas of this kind can be more dangerous because enemies don't drop Magnetite in here so it's harder to keep a large party of demons summoned.
Gentleman: So you're the leader of the resistance.
Resistance Member: Hold on there! I'm not the leader. We don't let outsiders meet our leader face-to-face.
Woman's Voice: It's all right. I will meet with them personally.
Resistance Member: Are you sure...? All right then. She's in the back.
Young Woman: Touya...Gentleman...Champion...I have been waiting for you to come here. I am the leader of the Resistance, Nadeshiko.
Gentleman: Your name's Nadeshiko, too?
Nadeshiko: I know you recognize me from somewhere. I was saved by all of you when I was being sacrificed in a dream. And so, I waited for you. For you to come and help me for real...There is something I must talk about...Right now, right here in Tokyo, a man named Gotou is summoning demons. And with that power, he is trying to remold the world in any way that pleases him. Seeing this threat, the American ambassador Thorman is taking action. He has called for his nation's army to come to Japan and suppress the situation. We cannot stop Gotou alone, nor can we hold back the American army. At this rate, Tokyo will be destroyed. Please, help us. First, we must save those who were captured for having the same name as me...
Gentleman: You know where Nadeshiko is!?
Nadeshiko: After that, we must subdue Gotou's recently recruited henchmen...Ozawa's gang...
Champion: Hey, what did you just say!? Did you say "Ozawa"!?
Nadeshiko: ......Please. Lend us your power.
Gentleman: If I can be of any help to you, I would gladly do so.
Champion: Any enemy of Ozawa's is a friend of mine. I'm in.
>Will you help the Resistance Leader?
>YES
Nadeshiko: Thank you very much.
Aeon Genesis' translation specifies Gotou as the current regent in Tokyo, and phrases Gotou's world-creation as being
"a world molded after his own personal ideals." This suggests a more specific world than Atlus'
"any way that pleases him." AE also says of Thorman that he
"convinced the American government to send their troops into Japan to suppress Gotou's coup d'etat and will impose their will instead." The emphasis on government, and the idea that the United States will be imposing their will on Japan in Gotou's place should they succeed, casts Thorman's faction in a much more negative light. Finally, Tokyo's destruction is worded more specifically, with Nadeshiko stating that
"If Gotou's forces meet head-on with the American army, the carnage would be overwhelming, and Tokyo would likely be reduced to rubble in the conflict."
Woman's Voice: Hmhmhmhmhm...So there you are.
Yuriko: I'm taking Nadeshiko to Ozawa...
Overall I believe that Aeon's translation emphasizes the imperialist undertone of Thorman's occupation better, while Atlus' is working within the constraints of the app's limited space and potentially trying to avoid controversy. There is one exception where caveman dialogue is used, but it's an isolated instance that I believe is a relic of a point when the American dialogue was going to be translated differently.
Resistance Member: What!? They took our leader!? This is a catastrophe. We don't have any time to lose. We've got to hurry and save her!
>The Resistance members all ran out.
Between the commotion I fuse this. Media, Hama (Light elemental magic which deals 100% damage to two enemies) and Penpatra. The access to Hama will expedite most of the difficulty associated with SMT's early roadblocks, while that gigantic St makes her a great early demon even when Expel is resisted or voided outright. Lu is actually really awful to have points in, because only the protagonist's Lu affects the chance of finding an item, getting a first strike and escaping, while everybody else just uses it for accuracy and evasion when these are already covered more effectively by other stats. Weak to Sword, but nulls Expel and Curse.
Where Yuriko stood outside the Neutral bar...
Resistance Member: Our leader is going to be publicly executed in front of the Government Office! Please, save her...
The Government Office is the famous Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, a major landmark of Shinjuku. Tochō for short, the building itself is the seat of government for the entirety of Tokyo, and the building as a whole is symbolic of the government's authority. The Mega CD port of the game featured it prominently in its opening cutscene, with a very memorable image of Yuriko standing before it that matches up eerily with real world photos of the building itself.
Interestingly, among Tochō's numerous statues there is currently a modern piece on Adam and Eve eating from the fruit of the tree of knowledge, Munehiro Ikeda's
Adam y Eva. It may or may not have been installed in the courtyard when
Shin Megami Tensei was in production; the courtyard statues were commissioned during the Metropolitan Government Building's construction from 1988 to 1990 and based on the various photographs of the statues circulating the net, the inscription at the base of
Adam y Eva might read 1991. On the other hand, some of the statues at the site were installed as late as 1995, like
An Appeal for Peace. SMT was released in 1992, and the building was only completed in 1990, so this history all came together very quickly within the span of a few years.
Adam y Eva is a more positive interpretation of the story, the statue is about the acquisition of knowledge rather than the fall of man, and it notably lacks a serpent in its tree.
Bartender: I should have been more careful. The Resistance is done for now...
Before proceeding to the execution site, there's a location we need to visit north of the Shinjuku underground as the deadline for completing this sidequest is approaching fast.
Champion: Ozawa! It's time I paid you back for that day...
Ozawa: You're that brat from Kichijoji...Still playing demon slayer, huh?
Gentleman: Why are you trying to capture Nadeshiko? Where is my Nadeshiko!?
Ozawa: I don't care about her, or even Gotou. Only Gotou's power interests me. Eventually, I'll take his place. I can already summon demons, after all. But I don't have time to deal with you. Why don't you play with this guy for a while?
Aeon's translation specifies that he's interested in both political and military power. Kaneko's artwork of Ozawa portrays him with a three-star rank, making him a Lieutenant General under Gotou and implying Gotou himself as the standing General of the ground forces in SMT. What's more interesting is that Ozawa doesn't wear a uniform, his rank is stitched onto his regular clothes. Both Ozawa and Gotou value each other primarily for their merit as powerful men, and as far as Gotou's faction is concerned foregoing the dress code and regulations of the SDF is acceptable as long as you have the power to back your decisions. If nobody can defeat Ozawa by force, he has every right to do as he pleases; which is more or less an invitation for the player to intercede.
Baykok is supposed to be a difficult midboss, but the Ghost race has a blanket weakness to Expel so Angel's Hama oneshots it for 80 damage.
>Ozawa left...
Champion: Dammit! Where'd he run off to!?
The Metropolitan Government Building is pretty accurate in the GBA/iOS port. It was less obvious in the original Super Famicom release because the view of the world map was top-down instead of isometric, giving each building a flat appearance that made it difficult to understand architectural features.
Here's a look at my party going in. The execution sequence is one of the most difficult early roadblocks, as the first boss fight that requires you to have some level of mastery over the system to proceed. I would compare it to Matador in SMTIII or the Minotaur in IV. Bogle and Angel guard two of our human characters, while Champion stands up front so he can get in close with physical attacks, freeing the low-HP Jack Frost to cast Ice magic. Unfortunately, Ice magic is a pretty poor pick for this fight, and Pyro Jack would probably have been better.
Soldier: The public execution will be starting soon.
Gentleman: Look, it's Nadeshiko! We have to hurry and rescue her!
Champion: Cool it! What good will it do her if we rush out?
Yuriko: We've finally captured Nadeshiko...The leader of the resistance that was such a thorn in the grand Gotou's side! Gotou has graciously forgiven this woman for the relentless sabotage she ordered...But her crime of defying the mighty Gotou cannot be so easily wiped away! And so, this woman Nadeshiko's sentence...is execution! Wait...There are rats lurking among us! Come out voluntarily, and you'll get good seats.
The execution sequence is harkened back to in in
IV, but the irony of the situation there is that it's
Yuriko being executed, by the Law faction. Aeon has Yuriko go on a bit more in detail and invoke the nationalist undertones of the Gaean religion, accusing Nadeshiko of terrorism and sabotage against
"our great country" and the death sentence in their translation comes from Yuriko herself so that it's clear that Gotou himself has no interest in executing the Resistance leader.
Yuriko: If you'd chosen me to begin with, maybe you wouldn't have come to such a sad end...Now, execute them!
In AE, Yuriko tells the protagonist that
"this wouldn't have had to happen to her" instead.
The first wave of eight demons is weak to Fire and Expel. Champion's Maragi back-to-back with Gentleman's Mazan wipes out the whole opposing party. Normally I wouldn't use Champion's magic, but because of racial weaknesses Mazan was actually doing less damage despite Champion's Ma being 5 while Gentleman's was 22.
The second wave shares the firsts' weaknesses, and so goes down the same way.
The third wave is the first time we have to deal with multiple targets; we can attack either half of the eight-demon party, but each character can only be attacking one half. Angel solos the Lemures with Hama for two turns while everyone else focuses on the Soldiers, who last about as long as their predecessors.
The fourth and final wave is where you can see our MP reserves starting to dwindle, but thankfully Champion's magic has served its purpose. Ghouls would ordinarily be very difficult opponents, but like the other Undeads in Yuriko's command they're vulnerable to Expel, so Angel saves the day once again.
Yuriko: Looks like I'm done here...
Nadeshiko: You'd better hurry out of here. This hideout's no good anymore, so meet me at that bar.
Slightly awkward wording, specifying
"this hideout" without being inside it. Aeon approaches the line with
"We can't use our old hideout any more, so come find us at the bar."
In the Kichijoji underground...
Nadeshiko's Voice: Have Touya and the others come?
Resistance Member: Yes, that's correct.
Nadeshiko: Touya...Gentleman...Champion...Thank you very much. Not only did you save my life, you have saved the last hope of avoiding Tokyo's doom. As thanks, I will tell you the information we have obtained. Gentleman, you search for Nadeshiko...She seems to have been taken to the coup's headquarters in Ichigaya.
Gentleman: So that's what happened...
Nadeshiko: Champion, you know Ozawa well...We have located where he and his group are hiding. We will soon begin an operation to raid that place and capture Ozawa and his men.
Gentleman: Touya, I am going to go rescue Nadeshiko. If I don't hurry, I may be too late.
Champion: Sorry, but I'm gonna take part in the Resistance's operation too. I can't let Ozawa get away, no matter what.
Nadeshiko: It seems you're all alone now...Please, won't you come with me? We must meet with Gotou and the American ambassador at Ichigaya to save Tokyo.
>Nadeshiko joins your party.
Nadeshiko: The coup unit's headquarters in Ichigaya are east of Shinjuku. The American Embassy is in Roppongi. We will need to pass underground from Yotsuya, south of Ichigaya, to get there. With this Fake ID Card we have prepared, we will be able to enter both locations.
>Touya was given Fake ID Card.
Nadeshiko: Now, let's go.
Again, in AE she's more specific;
"In order to save Tokyo from destruction, we either have to convince one of them to stop what they're doing, or get them to reach some sort of compromise." The idea that the Neutral option is to stop refute both of their ideals is understated. Nadeshiko also mentions public transportation being shut down as the reason that you need to use Yotsuya, and the omission of all these smaller details in the translation leads me to believe that much of the script has been cut out for memory purposes.
Unlike Champion, Nadeshiko comes preleveled with +1 St +5 Vi +1 In +2 Ag +5 Ma and +1 Lu. I really hate this even compared to leveling up her directly because it's suboptimal stat building and every point matters. Nadeshiko will never be attacking physically and only Touya's Lu matters, so that's two levelups wasted by the game, and because you only get 118 points total to allocate on stats with a cap of 40 and a base of 5 (so 35 points to cap), only three stats can be maxed. On Nadeshiko that would be In, Ma and Vi with Ag at 18, so with a point in St and a point in Lu her Ag is going to be cut in the long run. She does come prefurbished with an entire set of equipment, as well as the second level heal Diarama, status cures Penpatra and Posumudi, and multitarget Elec spell Mazio, making her an effective dual replacement for both our lost Gentleman and Champion.
Of course, the first thing I do with her new gun is put it on the protagonist.
Soldier: What? Oh...you have an ID card. Very well, you may pass.
I delegate to meet with Gotou at the Ground SDF headquarters in Ichigaya first, as he's at the center of the whole situation.
The map's representation of Camp Ichigaya is just the center of the building, where Yukio Mishima made his last speech from the balcony of. The real-world building extends out into a square around a central foyer.
Camp Ichigaya is a relatively compact four-floor dungeon, and it's much easier to get through the second time you're going through it than the first. It's not sprawling like Shinjuku, but it is definitely bigger than any of the previous dungeons. The most dangerous thing about it is that it has squads of Army Zombies in its encounter list, which as Dark-aligned demons can't be recruited and tend to come in swarms, so Angel is carrying the team throughout the first floor and basement level.
The flip side of Shinjuku's factionalism is that the SDF soldiers are just as fanatical as the US army. Gotou and Thorman's methods are functionally the same, just with demons swapped for nuclear weapons. No matter which side you support, you can't claim the moral high ground in how your goals are achieved, so it becomes a question of if you agree with or oppose the two leaders.
>Will you save her?
>Yes (Law, -1)
No (Neutral, +/-0)
Girl: Thank you! My name is Nadeshiko! I was kidnapped and taken here.
The basement level of Camp Ichigaya is optional and is primarily used as a prison. Regardless of whether I support Thorman or Gotou, there's no reason to keep detaining these girls when the Resistance leader's identity is now known to Gotou.
>Will you save her?
>Yes (Law, -1)
No (Neutral, +/-0)
Young girl: Thank you. A little while ago, a man named Gentleman came. He tried to save us, but a huge bunch of guards showed up and he couldn't do it.
There's three of these girls in all, each of which serves as a Lawful prompt for the player. It's an indicator of one of the flaws in Gotou's system that two thirds of the girls that Ozawa captured were too young to possibly be the Resistance leader, and that this went completely unnoticed by the rest of his faction throughout the entire process of arrest and detainment. Ozawa's shotgun solution to stopping the Resistance is to keep arresting every Nadeshiko in Tokyo until they find the right one, showing the weakness of his simple-minded brute force approach.
>Will you save her?
>Yes (Law, -1)
No (Neutral, +/-0)
Woman: Thank you. There was another girl with me, but they took her away somewhere.
This would be a reference to Gentleman's girlfriend. After saving these three girls my alignment is at around 121 after factoring in my use of the Gaean and Neutral Ashrams, which is leaning towards Law but still ten points short of actually qualifying as Lawful. I admit that I haven't paid much attention to how many demon summoning is affecting my alignment, because it's only shifted by like 0.1 each time something is summoned.
Soldier: I'm starting to get scared...
These guys are the other tough encounter in Camp Ichigaya, particularly on the top floor where it's difficult to trigger any other demon encounters. They come in packs of seven and have no skills, but can hit hard with physical attacks. Humorously however, as the first human enemies that can be negotiated with, you can actually recruit them and store them in the COMP like any other demon.
The main benefit of human characters like the Gaean Suicide Unit is that they have no Magnetite or summoning cost, and while they have no skills their stats also cater pretty well towards being physical walls for guarding your casters. They're weak to Guns and Elec with no other resistances, but being totally free is a huge boon to the team.
This is the first dungeon where I had to start hitting up demons for Magnetite. They make no demands if you ask for it, they just start chucking 600 MAG apiece at you once you get them to the point where you can negotiate freely.
Gotou: I'm sure you're angry at me for what I did to Nadeshiko, but please hear me out. Currently, there is a plan to create a "Millennium Kingdom" in the name of God. The Millennium Kingdom...The people living there are promised eternal peace and prosperity. However, only a handful, chosen by God, are allowed to enter. All others will be massacred by the US military in God's name. Even as we speak, the ancient gods of Japan protect this land from missile attacks...However, we are not strong enough. I ask that you aid us. I will give you some time to think about your answer...
Atlus' script is much more barebones compared to Aeon Genesis'. Compare this transcript of Gotou's introduction in their translation;
Commander: Welcome, my friends. I've been waiting for you. As you may have guessed, I am Gotou. I'm sure you've got a bone to pick with me about Pascal, but hear me out, let me try to explain where I'm coming from. While I wanted my subordinates to keep the resistance out of my hair, I certainly didn't want her executed. That was entirely their idea. Quite frankly, I haven't paid much attention to what they've been doing, as I've been busy with more important matters. There's...a plan that's being carried out. Behind the scenes, very secretive. The gist of the plan is to create the "Thousand Year Kingdom" in the name of God. Only a select few know about it. Maybe you've heard of it before, a lot of old religious texts mention it. The basic idea is that those that live in the Kingdom will be promised eternal peace and tranquility. A paradise on Earth, if you will. Problem is, there's a catch. It's like an exclusive club, and only those that worship God get a chance at membership. Anyone else? Well, they get the lovely runner-up prize of getting to be slaughtered at the hands of the American army, courtesy of God's orders. You may not be aware of it, but at this very moment there are nuclear missiles pointed at Japan to accomplish this end. The only thing that's keeping them from blowing us all away is a force field that the ancient gods have put up to protect us, and even they can't hold out forever...As far as we've come, we're still weak though. We need an ace in the hole. I think you'd be the perfect candidates. I want your help. I won't force you to make up your minds now though. I'll wait here for you to make your final decision.
The key points that Atlus' translation omits are that Gotou denies responsibility for Nadeshiko's execution, the secretive nature of the Millennium Kingdom, that one must worship God to enter, that the United States is using
nuclear missiles, and that the ancient gods are holding the attack back with a force field. On the other hand, the Atlus translation does specify that the ancient gods are the Japanese ones. I'm critical of the official translation because it makes Gotou's arguments much weaker and recasts him as unapologetic for the execution, which is opposed to how he was originally presented.
Gotou's full name given in
Devil Summoner is 五島公夫 "Gotou Kimio," identified on the news as a first-class officer of the Ground forces. The use of Mishima's fictional proxy as the leader of the Chaos faction is appropriate in light of Mishima's own views. He criticized modern society in
Mishima on Hagakure, believing that because of the emergence of a "technocracy" where individuals and celebrities were reduced to puppets performing their one skillset, that to "degenerate into a single cog, a single function becomes [society's] greatest ambition." (Mishima 20-21) Like Gotou, he was opposed to the oppression of freedom and believed that Japanese society was on track to become a system of cogs in a greater machine.
The calligraphy on his wall's hanging scroll reads 天照大御神
Amaterasu-Ookami "Great God[dess] Amaterasu" honorific language for the Japanese goddess of the sun, Amaterasu. The sun goddess is a favorite deity for nationalists to crowd around because descent from her lineage (through the grandchild of Amaterasu's grandson Ninigi-no-Mikoto) is the basis for the divinity of the Japanese emperor. The scroll is really for Gotou's own benefit; it's an aesthetic display of the writing itself as an artwork, and the recessed space it's hung within is a common feature of traditional Japanese architecture used for such purposes.
This is all we can do in Ichigaya for now, so it's time for some fusion back in the underground followed by a trip to the American embassy.
Attempting to fuse the Suicide Unit has...erratic results. How human fusion works is still a big mystery for fusion enthusiasts, and the results have been shrugged off by many as "random." The thing is that, if
Final Fantasy XII fans have proven anything in the past eight years, it's that there is no such thing as a random number. The Cathedral is producing human fusions in a logical, predictable way--but because the results of those fusions are pulled from a list of possibilities rather than having one single possible result, the fusions appear random on the surface. Even Japanese fans are strained for information here, but I'm going to present what I could dig up.
1. The results of a dyad fusion between a Messian- or a Gaean-race and a demon are randomized.
2. The results of a ternary fusion involving a Messian- or a Gaean-race and two demons are always a Slime.
3. Humans cannot be fused with other humans.
4. Fusion results are based on the level of the material demon, and unrelated to the level of the human being used. The exact formula is
(Random number between 0 and 31 + Demon's level divided by 2) with the result that is
closest to the material demon's level being chosen.
5. The resulting race will be different depending on if you use a Messian or Gaean in the fusion.
6. In the case of human and Dark demon fusion, the laws of Dark fusion are applied.
7. You cannot fuse a human with a Foul Slime.
It's known that there are more rules being observed than just these, but you can infer them from these seven. Generally humans from the Church of the Messiah will result in Lawful demons during fusion, while humans from the Ring of Gaea will result in Chaotic demons. Each combination of a human with other demons has, in most cases, ten possible fusion results, and the two human races are more likely to produce races of the following, sorted from most to least likely;
Messian: Jirae > Jaki > Fairy > Divine > Vile > Avian > Flight > Raptor > Avatar > Holy > Element
Gaean: Touki > Brute > Tyrant > Yoma > Night > Fallen > Femme > Dragon > Snake > Drake > Beast > Wilder
Because the level of the material human is unrelated, all recruitable human characters are effectively interchangeable, while the level of the material demon is the most important point.
So we know that fusing the Suicide Unit with any of our demons will produce one of ten possibilities, and many of those will be out of our range. How do we decide what to experiment with? By ruling out what we won't use. Andras and Azumi will be set aside for fusing Ghoul, and Bogle will likewise be saved for fusing into Man Eater, and Angel should probably not be used because even though she's in an upcoming dungeon she's Light-Law and Light-aligned demons can't be negotiated with in this game. That leaves Erthys, Pyro Jack and Jack Frost. Right now I'm planning on rerecruiting one of them after fusing the two Jacks into Element Aeros, then recruiting two Beast order demons to fuse into a Flaemis. For Compendium completion, the Elements are some of the few demons that can't be encountered in fights at all, and fusing three separate first tier Elements will create a second tier Element of whatever affinity was not used in the fusion. So Lv8 Erthys, Lv11 Aeros and Lv17 Flaemis will result in Lv30 Undine, giving some long-term viability to doing Element fusions now. On the other hand, this means giving up three slots in my COMP for the next thirteen levels, which inhibits fusions until that time. Doing the Aeros-Erthys fusion mentioned above to create Bugaboo at Lv19 would also be an option.
What this means is that I'm probably going to use Jack Frost as the material for Suicide Unit's fusion. No better case study than Atlus' own mascot, right?
Lv15 Gaean Suicide Squad x Lv8 Fairy Jack Frost
Lv7 Night Imp
Lv8 Fallen Andras
Lv10 Brute Azumi
Lv12 Fallen Gamigin
Lv13 Brute Bogle
Lv14 Touki Spartoi
Lv15 Yoma Kimnari
Lv16 Beast Tan-ki
Lv18 Fallen Forneus
Lv19 Beast Nekomata
Lv21 Yoma Apsaras
Lv22 Drake Worm
Lv24 Brute Momunofu
Lv27 Fallen Berith
Lv28 Night Lilim
Lv30 Touki Yaksini
Lv31 Fallen Sytry
Lv33 Femme Lamia
Lv35 Night Celuluk
That's at least twenty possible demons right there, although the game liked to keep throwing Imp, Lamia and Nekomata at me in particular. Of these I find Nekomata, Kimnari, Spartoi and Tan-ki the most appealing; Spartoi has extremely high St and Vi as well as both Sukukaja and Rakukaja, and an Extra command that acts as a guaranteed Critical hit with lowered accuracy. Kimnari has pretty reasonable magic and physicals. But Tan-ki wins out because I can rank him up into Nekomata by way of fusion with Flaemis.
Ghoul has the Stun Bite Extra skill for paralysis and physical damage to one enemy, as his high St and Vi make him comparable to Spartoi. He's weak to Fire and Expel, but resists Gun and Nerve. This is definitely one of those demons that's just a stepping stone onto something bigger.
Flaemis ranks up Tan-ki into Nekomata. She's pretty well balanced with 12 St and 12 Ma, 106 HP/82 MP and agility on par with our human characters. The big draw of her is the Extra skill Feral Claw and her Marin Karin spell; Claw hits two enemies at once for no cost, while Marin Karin inflicts Charm.
After a lot of other silly running around in the two dungeons I fuse Lv12 Fallen Gamigin and Lv7 Flight Harpy (a worthless phys demon from the Embassy with 15 Ag and nothing else going for her) to create Lv14 Night Cyak, potentially one of the best early game demons who in my previous playthroughs normally replaced/supported Angel as the Chaos equivalent to her. The big thing he has is Zionga and Hama, so he can do the insane damage dealing Pixie did to bosses without it being a oneshot while also doing Angel's Expel instant kill on trash mobs. He also nulls Gun, Nerve and Curse, making him completely immune to status effects and half of the physical equation in the game, which helps compensate for his middling HP. This is basically the last window to use him, he's instrumental for the upcoming boss fight and I can't believe I forgot about the little guy.
Even accounting for the Yotsuya underpass connecting it to the world map, the American Embassy is much shorter a dungeon than Camp Ichigaya, spanning two very brief floors with few dead ends and much less troublesome encounters. This dungeon's tileset is one of my favorites in the original SMT, moreso in the PSX release than on the Game Boy Advance or iOS. It feels like an environment that's actually inhabited but could be just as mazelike in reality as it is in the game.
The halls were much more beautiful when modeled in 3D, but either incarnation of the Embassy surpasses the bland white walls of the SNES game.
US Ambassador: It's good you came. I'm Thorman, ambassador of the United States. I've heard so many about you! It's nice to finally meet you eye to eye! We've sent our troops to guard the people from demons. But bad news...That won't be enough. The problem is Gotou. He plans to summon the dread lord Lucifer to Tokyo. We must make sure to stop him before that can happen. But we're not strong enough to fight the demons...But you! Maybe you have that strength. Please...Get rid of Gotou. With your help, we'll bring peace to Tokyo once more. No decision yet? Do you need to hear again what's at stake?
>NO
Thorman: Have you come to a choice? Are you going to aid us?
>NO
Thorman: ...I see. So you're fine in leaving Gotou be? Hmm...
>NO
Thorman: I am faithful that if you think hard about it, you'll pick to help us.
I'm pretty certain that answering "Yes" to his third question starts a fight. Comparing this to AE's translation;
American Ambassador: Welcome! Nice to meet you hello, everyone. I am Thorman, the American ambassador. I apologise my Japanese not very good. I hope you can understand me. I hear rumor about you! I give you big welcome! We bring out American army to save everyone from demons. But...we are not strong yet. Gotou...He want to call Lucifer to Tokyo. We need to defeat him first. Lucifer want bring many imprisoned demons to world. We just soldiers, we not trained to fight demons. You can fight demons please help us, defeat Gotou. If Lucifer is summoned, terrible, terrible for Japan! There will be no way to sotp that many demons that he will free. If you defeat Gotou, peace will return to Tokyo. We will be able to bring back former era of peace. You not make up your minds yet? Do you want to hear my story again?
The detail about his poor Japanese, Lucifer summoning imprisoned demons in Tokyo, the soldiers being unable to fight demons and setting things back to the way they used to be are not present in Atlus' translation.
One of the benefits of the Let's Play as a format is that it presents all of the main evidence in direct quotation of the script and assists a macro-view of the issues at hand. Summarizing Gotou's arguments, the established world order is complacent with the problems of war, famine and pollution. Society is engaged in acts of inequality and infighting brooked by systems of severe class division, an out-of-control global military-industrial complex engaged in continuous war, and mass pollution created by the harmful exploitation of the Earth's natural resources. These problems each originate from humanity becoming out of touch with the natural order and divorced from its relationship with Gaea, the personified Earth. Furthermore, the Americans are cooperating to try and cultivate an expatriate totalitarian dictatorship in Tokyo. According to him, the "Japan Annihilation Project" that Gotou uncovered was on the verge of establishing that dystopia. Gotou aimed to attack the JAP preemptively by summoning demons from the Expanse--which he revers as the ancient gods, and also sees as the key to restoring humans' natural harmony with the Earth. The JAP would break Japan's free will, but his answer is to preserve it by living side by side with the demons in a utopia. Even if the JAP's existence cannot be corroborated, it is known that the Americans are preparing to launch a missile strike against Japan because of Gotou's martial law, and the Japanese gods are presently defending the country's air space from that happening.
But Thorman counters that Gotou's use of the demons will be catastrophic for Japan's welfare, and that the general has a secret plan of his own to summon the demon lord Lucifer once the occupation is dealt with. Lucifer's rise would bring with it an unstoppable effusion of demons that would cast the whole country into chaos. If the occupation is victorious and Gotou is defeated, then peace can return to Tokyo and a return to normality made. Whether returning things to normal is a good thing or not is debatable; the world that Gotou is trying to change is already ruinous and on the path of environmental destruction, corporate exploitation and global war. Given the option, would you prefer the world as it is today to the possibility of improving it? The catch is, if both of them are telling the truth, then Thorman has no intentions of returning things to normal regardless. Returning Tokyo to normal would only be for the greater purpose of cultivating the Millennium Kingdom. Gotou wasn't being particularly up front about his plans to summon Lucifer either, and his demonic utopia may not be feasible. The Gaeans view Lucifer as a Promethean lightbringer, while the Americans see him as the dread lord of hell. The Messians see God's Millennium Kingdom as a paradise and the long-awaited salvation of mankind, where the coup forces view it as a totalitarian dictatorship building a paradise of the minority on the exclusion of the masses. The Resistance is opposed to favoring either argument, arguing that martial law should be lifted and the American occupation be ousted to restore domestic democratic control. However, while the Neutral solution would genuinely restore the world to the way that it was before, it also wouldn't do anything to answer the problems of the world at large in the process. Returning to business-as-usual would mean resuming the steady destruction of the Earth and banal day-to-day evils, charting a course for destruction through rejection rather than progress through compromise. Thorman and Gotou each have a solution to the problems of contemporary society at the expense of making sacrifices on one front or another, but Nadeshiko only has a plan for opposing those solutions with no model for the future.
Given the options at hand, the choice is between being
safe or
free. Thorman favors containing the situation at the expense of the public, Gotou's demonic utopia would grant freedom with no other guarantees. Neutrality grants either everything or nothing with no certainty of curbing these same questions from arising again. If we return the world to the way it was, then eventually another Gotou and another Thorman will break that Neutrality once more in a ceaseless cycle, but if we try to change the world for the better then the situation becomes
winnable. And I'm inclined to side with Gotou; free men guarantee their own safety. Agency once surrendered cannot be taken back. Ironically, the only certainty of the Millennium Kingdom is that of a softer failure. If it turns out that the Kingdom is less than a perfect paradise, then there will be no way to undo the new regime--whereas the very essence of Gotou's demonic utopia is constant change. The failure of one system means the rise of another, polishing the system to satisfy the world's needs. If Lucifer is a poor king, then a better one will take his place by force.
>YES
Gotou: Ah, so you will aid me! Then I want you to head to the US Embassy. I want you to convince the US ambassador to stop their attack. I'm counting on you...
From this point on, Gotou disappears from his chamber. Siding with either Gotou or Thorman begins an early game alignment lock.
Ambassador Thorman: I see...So, then...
Thor: Very well. I, Deity Thor, shall end your lives here!
The biggest change made to this fight from the Super Famicom release is that Thor is no longer susceptible to Charm status effects, so any turns spent casting Marin Karin are wasted. Our damage dealing is a problem; Thor has 482 HP and most of our characters are struggling to clear 20 damage a turn. We're also effectively barred from having a party exceeding five characters because the Demon Summoning Program can only have three demons in the party at a time. Thor only gets one attack and even Mazio usually hits for just ~13 damage, so we're not in any real danger of dying, but the fight can seriously drag long because of our limited damage output. Cyak is a lifesaver here, Zionga is easily dealing ~40 damage per turn, so even though we end up expending his entire MP pool before the fight is over the damage is well worth it. Rusalka takes over most of the healing in the fight since her physicals aren't very useful and Marin Karin is out, which frees Nadeshiko to spam Mazio and inflict paralysis. Thor drops ¥1440, 600 MAG and +32 (Chaos) alignment points on defeat. That puts my alignment squarely in the range of 153, nine points into the boundary of Chaos. If we had instead chosen to attack Gotou when I approached him before this, then turned on Thorman in turn my alignment would also get -32 (Law) points and end up still at 121.
Thor: But my hammer has been swung already. Tokyo's annihilation by ICBM is imminent. This city will perish, together with all its demons! Glory to the Millennium Kingdom!
Thor pulls this on every single route, even Law. He never intended to restore peace in Tokyo; the nukes would always drop as soon as he got the chance to use them.
The game gives us thirty seconds until Tokyo becomes another Hiroshima. Most players end up flailing around at this point, while some who've done more grinding use Traesto to escape to the world map, but it's perfectly viable to get out of the Embassy and through Yotsuya pass within the time limit. I made it with five seconds still on the clock. In a bit of black humor, there's an American soldier en route through Yotsuya whose dialogue changes to
"Why so hurry?"
Nadeshiko: You have to survive! There's no time left. ...Goodbye, Touya.
>Nadeshiko cast Traport.
How the next sequence actually happens confuses a lot of players. Traport is a spell that sends you to your last visited save point.
In this case, the last save point we were most likely to use was in the Shinjuku underground. A terminal, enabling us to use its teleportation before the ICBMs hit.
But teleporting to Kichijoji would not save us from Thor's hammer. You'd need to be in at least one of the neighboring prefectures to avoid a nuclear attack on Tokyo--Saitama is about fifteen miles from Shinjuku and it's still doubtful how far from the epicenter you'd need to be to go out unscathed.
However, there is one
other way to use the Terminals; to reach the Expanse.
Some ports of
Shin Megami Tensei are more blatant about the ICBM strike than others. The Mega CD release shows the actual moment of impact to drive home the close of this arc of the game, and it's a feature that I wish had been preserved in subsequent editions.
To end this chapter, I'll show delve into the Kikyo Amulet's Vision. My Compendium is currently at 51 demons or about 19% complete.
Lightning strikes in the chamber.
Douman Ashiya: Finally...A thousand years, hm...? I sealed away part of my soul, predicting another Onmyodou would appear eventually......And it seems that time has come to pass. How wonderful it feels to be truly reborn! The Demon Summoning Program...Its spell is the equal to those I knew from my time. Now, where is my hated adversary Seimei...? Has he reincarnated as well...? There's too much I don't know. First, I must bide my time and build my strength...and then take over the world! Hell on Earth shall follow afterwards...! Hahahahaha...
An Onmyōji is a practitioner of a specific branch of Japanese magic, Onmyōdō, a system of divination that fuses natural science and occultism, much like the esoteric Christian magic of the medieval period. The field has been historically significant in Japan, with there once being a government-maintained Bureau of Onmyō until the ports were opened by the west in the 1850s and it was banned. At one point Onmyōdō was so large as a field of magic that rival Onmyōdō practitioners were common, with the most famous being the historical Abe no Seimei and his opponent Ashiya Douman. The demon Douman is thus a historical figure reenacting the events of his life just as a god in the franchise reenacts its myths.
Seimei's reincarnation is probably intended to be Stephen, as the creator of the Demon Summoning Program and modern Onmyōji.
Shinjuku is the last time that
Shin Megami Tensei comes together with a sense of normalcy. The arc is a massive zero-sum game treading towards an unwinnable course of nuclear destruction. The only question within it is how it will approach that end, and the player's ideals are tested within this framework as the only fluid thing in Tokyo. All else is unchangeable, the player is the only one who will grow under these circumstances. Hereon out SMT delves ever deeper into weird, unfamiliar territory that strips away the everyday environs set up by Kichijoji and Shinjuku, to get at the demonic nature of humanity lying beneath the skyscrapers and shopping malls.
Touya: +8 Vi +4 Ag
Gentleman: +4 Ma +3 Vi
Champion: +6 St +1 Ag
Nadeshiko: +1 St +5 Vi +5 In +2 Ag +5 Ma +1 Lu
References
Gordon, Andrew.
A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Print.
Hearst, David. "Second battle of Okinawa looms as China's naval ambition grows."
The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, 7 Mar. 2011. Web. 18 May 2014.
Mishima, Yukio.
The Way of the Samurai: Yukio Mishima on Hagakure in Modern Life. Trans. Kathryn Sparling. Basic Books, 1977. Print.
Nakae, Chōmin.
A Discourse by Three Drunkards on Government. Trans. Nobuko Tsukui. Trumbull: Weatherhill, 2004. Print.
Tsurumi, Patricia E.
Factory Girls: Women in the Thread Mills of Meiji Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. 26-198. Print.
Watanabe, Teresa. "U.S., Japan OK Pact on Military Crime Suspects."
Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 6 Oct. 1995. Web. 18 May 2014. <http://articles.latimes.com/1995-10-26/news/mn-61240_1_military-facilities>.
