i've been playing the original Monster Hunter on my totally real ps2 recently and honestly? it's been SUCH a blast
it's slow as shit and clunky as hell and the camera controls were designed by a school bully. but using the analogue stick to attack is actually pretty chill once you adjust to it, especially with how simple the weapons are.
i'm about ~13 hours in and i just fought my first gendrome. i'm taking my sweet ass time. it feels good. it's a weirdly tranquil experience. i can just zone out and gather mushrooms for an hour straight and do nothing else. it's like the video game equivalent of sitting on the porch watching the sunset and drinking a beer with your uncle, interrupted by the occasional getting mauled by a pack of raptors.
also it's a BEAUTIFUL game, and i mean that genuinely, even by today's standards. sure it's crunchy looking, you can see the individual pixels on item icons and the jpeg crust on the skyboxes, but the locales are so lovingly detailed; all the sounds and ambience blend together so nicely. my god the way i just stood there in the swamp just listening to the thunder and splashing in puddles of water i was like. i'm home
anyway. yeah i get it now. i understand how this strange game ever got a sequel, let alone blew up into what it is now. they put a lot of love into it and it shows. i love u monster hunter for the ps2
Something about that trip through memory lane... Yes, I finished the game, we will be using color names still purely for convenience.
(Spoilers for ZENO 4.01, mainly focused around endings 1, 4, and 5).
I plan on going through each individual ending like I did in my last post in a bit, but I think that our time spent in Kuro's memories is worth a post on it's own... So, I'm here for that!
I genuinely thought I was hallucinating when I saw "the Yankee" from the short story appear in game... It's actually rather nice to see more of that particular dynamic! A whole section of the game explicitly dedicated to just how relevant he was to Kuro's life was absolutely far from my expectations, but I'm not really complaininggg!
If it was left relatively vague how much Kuro was projecting him onto Aka in the original short story, there's very little room left for interpretation here. Just as the Yankee was Kuro's first time seeing something close to "love" in the original story, he's his first experience with "friendship" here.
The memories feel jarring. Everything we've seen until starting down the paths for endings 4 and 5 paint their lives as better. Through what I've been dubbing in my head the "true recollections", we see how much worse off Aka is- he's holding the guilt for not just Natsu, but the entire family- and now it's Kuro's turn. His life isn't necessarily immediately "worse", his backstory largely mirrors the original game- but his crimes have certainly escalated (bioterrorism charge was a tad shocking I must admit!)
It's a bit of an aside that it's rather surprising Fuyu is the one doing the best overall really. He lost his entire family, sure, but joining the police force and pursuing his revenge through the law is a nice take for him? I like that his desire to avenge Natsu has instead been channeled into helping people as a whole by apprehending criminals, rather than being a rather uncaring and cruel doctor, and it doesn't seem like he ever got ZENO here either. It's a nice change of character.
This version of Kuro is fascinating to me. We aren't directly sure of when he actually developed ZENO, but he's both developed a treatment and a method of inducing it. He wants his existence to have meaning, so he wants to be eaten.
The park from Ending One reappearing also reframed an entire ending in a nice way! He once shared food with the Yankee there, and it is the place that he first got a taste of the love and friendship he wanted. The steamed bun that he planted a false memory into Aka of them both sharing (though somewhere else entirely), and the one he genuinely shared with the Yankee in this exact place. Ending One sees him without either, but still waiting to be able to share that food with them. He's really and truly lost the two people he sees as closest.
He places the Yankee on such a high pedestal he wants to give up his life to be eaten by him, to serve almost an "ultimate purpose" of sorts. In the original game, his desire to eat those he loves stems directly from witnessing Natsu's death. Here, we're never told directly where it stems from, just that it's his goal.
The version of Kuro we see is very chilling in a way that the original game never truly was. The original game focused heavily on how, at his core, he was an abused and neglected child who sought affection the only way he knew how. This take reframes Kuro as someone drowning so heavily in the "perfect" ideal he has fully sacrificed his sense of self, but rather comfortable abusing any power he has to achieve his goals.
He's disliked by Aka, the person he wants to be his best friend. His coworkers talk about him behind his back plenty. He doesn't have a sense of self, only a sense of being "useful or not", and so he wants to be eaten. "Love" is being taken advantage of and used for all you're worth, and he wants someone to do this for him.
It makes it rather ironic, that he so heavily abused the trust anyone else put in him. Using his creation not for treatment, but to reach this ideal, lying to his patient about it just to be able to achieve it. Pretending this is all in the name of "treatment", when it isn't. He purposely made the Yankee's symptoms worse (or possibly induced the disease to begin with) to be eaten, and it backfired when he chose to stab himself. He wanted to remake Aka into his "best friend".
He truly believes that there is no consequence if the person cannot remember. It puts him against Fuyu, someone who's entire purpose here is to ensure others face consequence, rather nicely. Though this isn't really explored as much as it could be.
It's also ironic, when the Yankee haunts him so much that we see the harsh, chilling environment fade away to show him as the sun itself. He's so integral to Kuro, his first real experience with "love" and "friendship", that he doesn't ever fade. His very attempts to escape his past lead him to projecting that same past onto Aka, almost like he's trying to mold him into what he and the Yankee could have been.
Both endings see him pay the price for this. He repeatedly uses other's trust in him against them, he thinks he can escape just fine as long as he creates a "perfect" world for them.
Where the "true ending" of ZENO Remake (or well... you know, the positive ones) is about reaffirming that the connection Kuro and Aka have made is genuine, important, and strong, the "true ending" of ZENO 4.01 is about rejecting that connection as something based in falsehood and deception.
There is no happy endings when they know the truth.
It's almost sad, that this version of Kuro will never get to grow the sense of self or identity that his counterparts have the chance to. But while the ending of 4.01 is still a complete rejection of their friendship, it's nice that it ends on a somewhat hopeful note.
"It's just a short friendship until you die."
At least for a little while, there's hope for a "real" connection.
the president is awarding a posthumous medal of freedom to the self-proclaimed fascist and proud white supremacist charlie kirk. not surprising, but still chilling…this regime is increasingly comfortable using official channels to honor and celebrate the most evil beliefs in the world
Okay. Where The Fuck is the permit office bunker. Scar said. And I quote. Both. "We can't have mobs here." And "Nothing can grow here." Hey man. Wtf does that mean.
