I'm aware that I am totally late to the "my thoughts about Skyward Sword" Party. I had the game pre-ordered and got it right away and started playing it right away, so theoretically, I could have done this back whenever every other Nintendo fanboy/fangirl was doing it, but I didn't because I kept getting bored with the game and finding other things to do, I've gotten to the end finally so I feel like I can appropriately make my comments now. I'm not going to go into all my various grievances with the game as a whole (at least not right now), I just want to talk about one little element, Demise.
Demise is your main antagonist in the game and while he has the common decency to stay in one spot and start trouble rather than following you from temple to temple, it pretty much always comes back to demise. Now my problem with this is that demise starts off as The Imprisoned. As far as I'm concerned, it's cute, not terrifying. I mean look at this thing:
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| The Imprisoned |
Sure he's got big pointy teeth, but they just add to the cuteness. I mean look at those little wiggly toes. My first encounter with him, was not upsetting, it just made me giggly. In spite of their obvious design differences his armless largely faceless appearance reminded me of the Mome Raths in Alice in Wonderland. While the Mome Rath thing might just be me, clearly it's not just me thinking it's cute, if this plushie and it's responses are any indication.
The imprisioned form of Demise does go through a few "upgrades" and while once is grows arms it does remind me less of a Mome Rath, it does not get any less cute. In fact it's arms are so gangly and silly looking it might actually be cuter.
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| The Imprisoned 2nd form |
However as one would expect that's not the final word on Demise. Eventually Demise gets all his unimaginable power and becomes Akuma from Street Fighter.
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| Demise from Skyward Sword |
Now it's possible you've been living under a large rock for awhile and don't really know much about street fighter or Akuma. This is Akuma:
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| Akuma from Street Fighter |
Still not convinced? Here's the handy split screen version:
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| Demise and Akuma are totally the same guy |
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| link to the Past Ganon |
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| Ocarina of Time Ganondorf |
So basically Nintendo brought me and the other Zelda fans an antagonist who starts off cute and becomes an escapee from another game franchise. This would be annoying in any game, but Skyward Sword was touted as the definitive back story of the whole Zelda saga, making it especially heinous. Would it really have been so hard to create a legitimate demon precursor to one of the most important and well known characters in all of gaming History?
I don't say this that often, but I'm really disappointed in you Nintendo. I feel like you've done a great disservice to the franchise.
~Stephanie
[NOTE]
Since it came up in a comment, I'd like to point out A) I don't actually believe Nintendo stole Akuma's character design, I think it was more giving him a generic "demonic" character design. B) I'm aware of that particular generic design has some roots in Japanese folklore. For more on either of those things I left a pretty lengthy reply to anon comment to this entry.
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The whole issue here is that you are lacking in knowledge pertaining to what Japanese demons look like and how they're portrayed. If you knew any of that, you'd realize that Akuma is based off of Japanese oni, and that Demise's appearance is a combination of the red demons in Skyward Sword and Ganondorf. Just because you're more accustomed to Akuma doesn't mean he's the inspiration for Demise's final appearance, in fact, even if it WAS what inspired it, it wouldn't matter seeing as Akuma draws inspiration from Japanese demons in the first place.
ReplyDeleteActually, I'm perfectly aware of the Japanese demon angle. Akuma's name is Demon after all. The same facial features are borrowed by a countless number of evil anime and game characters, IE, Demtri from Darkstalkers could be compared side by side with either one of them and while the coloring would be different, he essentially has the same face. And they resemble a rather Stylized Noh Shikami (really a number of the Noh masks are similar) mask which in many ways looks like even angrier versions of traditional temple guardians.
ReplyDeleteReally they don't look that much like Oni, if you look at traditional depictions of Oni, they're generally Bug eyed, more snub nosed and generally troll like. In fact they're a lot closer to the traditional pig like ganon, than demise (or akuma for that matter). So maybe you need a little more knowledge in Japanese demons?
Putting aside, the whole oni's are demons, but not all demons are Oni problem with your comment. Yeah, I get that it's "standard" imagery to a degree. Though is could be easily argued that while it's a common stylization of traditional images it's still not completely traditional so there's some industry borrowing going on.
I mean look at Yoshimitsu from Tekken/Soul Clibur he CLEARLY has a design taken from traditional Japanese art and lore, and though it keeps changing you can usually always see what/who he's suppose to resemble assuming you've got a working knowledge of Japanese folklore and mythology. That being said, there aren't 100 characters who look like Yoshimitsu. And as I briefly illustrated in the body of the blog Gannon didn't used to look like 100 other characters either. He's been kind of moving that way with the subsequent games, but he had his own look, you wouldn't see an image of him and which "influenced" character he was.
All that being said, I never honestly thought Nintendo just took Akuma's design and called it day. I mean as funny as the concept is to me of Akuma simply appearing in the wrong game, the blog is more of an amusing take on how much he looks like Akuma. Sure, I do have a legitimate annoyance with it supposedly being Ganon and that comes up, but it's supposed to be an amusing little blog, not scholarly research. I could certainly write a more research article on Nintendo's decision to go with a generic character design for one of the greatest most enduring villains of all time and the traditional and modern influences of said design. However, it probably wouldn't be very interesting to others or as likely to be read as a playful little hey look at how demise is Akuma thing.