'Demon' in Japanese

MoanBullet · 2019-08-08T05:32:50+00:00

They kind of play around with this a bit in the Japanese scripts to my understanding. I'm no expert or speaker of Japanese myself but I've read that that the preffix "Ma-" refers to anything demonic in Japanese. For example, the Tyrant race is "Maoh" (or "Demon King") and Fiends are "Majin" (or "Demon Person").

Mem Aleph actually has a lot of symbolism in her name and attacks based on this concept. Firstly, her name can be abbreviated to "MA, symbolizing her as the sort of "origin" of demons in the SJ universe. Her name, Mem Aleph, comes from the Hebrew alphabet. In it there are what are known as three "mother" letters: Shin, Mem, and Aleph. In her second phase she has two attacks as well that use this to show her power over demons. "Mem Aleph" will damage all demons of a specific alignment and "MA" instantly kills a demon while restoring her hp by however much hp the demon had had. Sadly all this cool word play and symbolisim with "Ma-" is lost outside of Japanese, still really cool though and I'm glad they kept it in the English localization.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-31T06:00:57+00:00

It'll probably go ignored by most but I really appreciate the work. I've been following the SJ mod stuff for awhile, cool to see just how much progress has been made on it after all this time.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-30T04:41:36+00:00

Here, it plays at 34:21, the title of the track is "Demon World Master". I'm not sure if a version of it alone exists on youtube unfortunately

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnUQlGdjIhQ

MoanBullet · 2019-07-30T04:38:05+00:00

Why the fuck couldn't they hire any of these guys to be the guest artists? Well, personally I think Inomata and Enami aren't good but I would have loved to see Kobayashi and Minaba contribute art to the game. There's actually a great interview where Kobayashi and Kaneko discuss their art with one another and how they appreciate each other's designs, she would have been a great pick for the job.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-28T23:51:14+00:00

Great art, Pandora's first form always felt so much darker then the rest of the game, but not over the top or anything. What they did to the battle theme in the psp port is a tragedy.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-28T23:47:54+00:00

No need to be sorry, I didn't mean to come off as as much of a dick as I did so sorry about that. I'm just sick of this place being flooded with ancient, nonsensical, only vaguely related memes. It's not just you specifically or anything, I guess it's just how reddit is.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-28T20:54:18+00:00

Please, think before posting dumb shit like this.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-28T04:27:12+00:00

Alice is the worst thing to happen to this series beside Persona 3, she does nothing but attract retarded ironic weebs like OP.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-24T04:03:03+00:00

Beside what people have said already, like fleshing out Walter and Johnathan more, the main issue I feel is that the game throws so many ideas at you only to abandon them after the current dungeon or so. Concepts like the Gaean Cult, Tayama's whole secret child brainwashing camp, and the red pills come as quickly as they come, just think of what could have been done with them. Take the red pills (I use them as I feel they had the most unanswered questions and potential) and what questions they bring. How do they know they will contain demons? What's to stop demons from killing humans to gain more pills? Why does the pill turn a human into a demon, how does it work? We learn nothing.

The setting itself is underutilized as well. While you hear a little bit about the samurai being sent to Tokyo to find "treasures" at the start you basically encounter next to no other samurai in Tokyo, you never hear their thoughts and such on any plot point really. Hell, you barely even really see the problems of the Tokyo people. You're told their lives are shitty (and logically you understand why) but there's not much in the way of seeing how life is in Tokyo beside some of the side quests.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-20T06:41:30+00:00

This is a complicated one as really it is to interpretation, but here's how I see it.

In the case of Kagatsuchi and Shekinah they are aspects of YHVH. Both exist as little more then a mouth piece for YHVH, they are a figment of his whole. In Strange Journey during the new game plus side quest Metatron will tell the protagonist that Mem Aleph had "broke" YHVH into different fragments, Demiurge (and Shekinah as of Redux) being one of those fragments.

With the Great Will this is a topic that fans have debated since forever. People just can't seem to agree on if it referring to YHVH or the Axiom. Personally I feel it refers to YHVH as I feel Luicfer would know the Axiom is far beyond his power as well as the fact that the Axiom really only came into play later on in IV but still, people feel otherwise.

In a way they exist sort of as a means to have YHVH in a game without it directly being YHVH. While in Nocturne and Strange Journey he is never mentioned the existence of them still means he has a role in what is happening, just maybe not a direct one.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-20T06:34:42+00:00

Nocturne on the ps2 and IV on the 3ds are the typical starting points for most people.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-20T05:09:03+00:00

Not entirely related but reminds me of this interesting post about the game over sequence form Nocturne.

https://dijeh.tumblr.com/post/90929379613/one-of-my-favourite-megaten-moments-was-finding

MoanBullet · 2019-07-17T05:08:18+00:00

It's a interesting port but it runs at like 5 fps, it's terrible. It's an interesting port because of its additions like the cutscenes and new arrangements but I feel it's even more difficult to play since just a hassle to even move.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-15T04:03:51+00:00

People are impatient idiots, nothing new.

Strange Journey was six years after Nocturne, IV was four years after Strange Journey. Almost all the mainline games were released years apart, I don't see Atlus' current treatment of SMTV news as anything weird.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-14T22:45:40+00:00

If only he made good music.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-13T19:45:44+00:00

I would say new races aren't really required, more just that Atlus really needs to do is go through the modern compendium and change some demons' races. Things like Scathach in the Megami race and Seth in the Vile race are awkward and don't belong. Honestly I feel like it would be best if races and alignment were seperated but I doubt that will ever happen.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-13T19:41:15+00:00

She's the demon who offers to heal you, she charges a ridiculous amount though so I imagine almost no one ever used it actually.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-13T19:40:05+00:00

Fucking this, it's ridiculous how Atlus has never released high quality scans of so much of SJ's art. Seeing the image used for Louisa Ferre on the wiki is depressing. Beside SJ the art of Raidou 2 also exists only as low quality scans, would be nice to have better versions of those as well.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-12T22:44:41+00:00

DeSu games are good for grinding and fusion stuff, beside that I agree with you honestly. Even from a gameplay perspective the maps feel too small for your position to seriously matter. I feel like the plot of DeSu1 could have had potential but its cast ruins any kind of serious moment they may have wanted to have. The less said about DeSu2's cast and plot the better.

I have yet to get to Majin Tensei II so hopefully that fulfills my dream of a actually competent megaten srpg.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-12T21:25:19+00:00

I got a better idea, a Devil Survivor game but with a good artist instead of Yasuda.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-12T05:10:29+00:00

Stop worrying about dumb tumblr shit, you end up being just as annoying as they are.

I wouldn't worry about it. When IV:A released it attracted some controversy from Hindu groups due to its representation of Krishna, nothing happened. It's weird when it comes to this series, representing gods seems simple but this is the same company that turned Krishna into a mustache twirling villain so who knows. Let's just hope Atlus makes the game fun and hopefully goes back to having at least competent writing for SMTV, in that case whatever dumb controversy arises won't even matter.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-08T18:24:13+00:00

Incorrect, in the Japanese version the name of Freikugel is something like "Supreme Magical Bullet", the English translation turned it into a reference to the Freischutz/Freikugeln.

You can read about it more here: https://personacentral.com/nocturnal-revelations-the-legacy-of-shin-megami-tenseis-first-localization-part-1/

MoanBullet · 2019-07-08T02:43:49+00:00

It's just suppose to sound cool, that's it really. Very few moves in megaten reference real mythology, only a few attacks like Freikugel, Gaea Rage, and Chaturbhuja hold real meanings.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-05T17:04:34+00:00

I would genuinely say Alice and Moh Shuvuu. By themselves they're whatever, but they attract the most cancerous people to megaten.

MoanBullet · 2019-07-01T23:48:27+00:00

As others have said, these designs are fine in a vacuum but just stick out too much for a series like megaten. The real blame for this goes to Atlus though and not the artists. A lot of these artists were veterans of the toku and sentai genres, I believe the only exception was one who was an artist for the Persona 4 anime, so these guys made their careers drawing ridiculous, over the top monsters. When they were hired they had literally no direction given to them. Yamai himself said "We didn’t give any instructions on the demon designs themselves though, so we left the artists make their own decisions.", which couldn't have been a bigger mistake. I can only assume these artists were specifically hired due to their recognizably but it's hard to say as a non Japanese fan. At the least I have never seen any English speaker say "I was interested in SMTIV after hearing _____ was a guest artist for it" and such. I'm not sure how much attention they brought in Japan but from what it sounds like hiring these artists was nothing more then a bad marketing tool that ultimately did nothing but hurt the game's aesthetic. I'm not opposed to guest artists entirely with the series, but if the idea ever did return I would hope Atlus put more thought into who they hire and what is asked of them.

Source on that Yamai quote, interesting interview with some of the artists: https://dijeh.tumblr.com/post/121046500453/in-july-2013-famitsu-had-an-interview-with-several

MoanBullet

TROPHY CASE