The theme of ‘Aboveground Urban Area C’ pounds and drives and I feel like the coolest motherfucker of all times striding through the demon-haunted streets of post-nuke Tokyo.
A Bulgarian cyclops bull known as a Stonka whispers in my ear and uses ‘Me’ instead of ‘I.’ Stonka’s adorbs Muppet-talk changes my life, demonic words as spiritual steroids, getting me jacked for this or that gruelling boss battle.
And once I put on that Black Demonica Suit?
I never took it off.
Even if it put me at a disadvantage in the late game.
That was my look.
Usually,
I walk the Neutral path
to express my atheism,
to signal to all angels, deities, devils, and demons
that my ass needs smooches,
and that the line forms on the right, my Dears;
but this time around I was drawn to the Chaos
because the game starts me off in a weirdo Samurai-Christian theocratic dictatorship
and that shit
made Horned Chaos make too much damn sense to me.
I needed to obliterate the Homeland,
because I was double-done-with-its-shit.
And so I fought the Law.
And the Law ceased to be.
Yeah.
It kinda snuck up on me.
And despite my Megatenist Neutral Ideals,
SMT IV reminded me all too well
how often Enemy begins and ends in the Home.
In my mind’s newly mutated cyclops eye
-the demon whispers are working-
I fantasize the movie version as a Tokyo-based version of Escape From New York,
directed by Takashi Miike,
with special EFX by Jim Henson-Meets-Rob Bottin.
The Stonka’s fierce,
and fiercely kawaii.
-February 2021
