Metal Black story thoughts

Skyknight · Post by **Skyknight** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 7:40 pm

Randorama pointed out quite some time ago that the part-serpent part-giant aliens (the original Gigantes?) and the split-planet scene after destroying the final boss owe something to the Captain Harlock series (which I can't say I'm familiar with...). Still, working from the imagery, stage names, and song names, there are some suspicions I have about how the game actually takes place...

--Psychic battle. There is, of course, the ending showing the pilot confused about whether the fight against Nemesis was a dream or not, and the names of the third and sixth stages give evidence for the former ("Dreamland", then "Illusion of Mind/Gaia"). On top of that, the background for stage six is probably also psychic in nature (you're in Jupiter orbit, not outside the galaxy, and the situation with the boss fight is very obviously psyche-induced). Still, stage five, the initial approach to Nemesis itself ("star" seems to use the same word as "planet" in Japanese--consider the "stun star" that BabelFish came up with for the colony planet in the X-Multiply story, and the "Granulated Star" stage in G-Darius, with shattered PLANETS rather than stars), is definitely physical. Perhaps from the second boss onwards, the fight is both physical AND psychic--simultaneously a war of might and a war of souls?

--The nature of the Nemesis. If stage 1 showed dried-up oceans, then how did Earth get blue again so quickly (ending)? It makes me wonder if the meteor shower from the prologue wasn't the actual attack, but rather the CARRIER for the actual attack--displacement of Earth by Nemesis. The song for the third boss is called "Dio Panic!", and I'm wondering if the emphasis should be on "Dio"--that is, "god". Also consider the names for the fourth and sixth stages' songs--"Waste Days" and "Time". I'm thinking "waste days" might mean "days/time/history rendered for naught" (in this case, it's at the very least post-Triassic time that'll be effaced), and "Time" might be referring to how utterly ancient the Nemesis are in comparison to humanity (the third boss is a gigantic opabinia--a Cambrian-era creature). Likewise, I suspect that the split-planet is actually showing the destruction of Nemesis (certainly not Earth, not if the ending is anything to go by). And then there's the name of the sixth stage again. The Japanese word for "illusion", "mugen", can also mean "fantasy" or "dream". A dream of the Earth's mind? Perhaps a somehow sloughed-off image that took on a life of its own? According to Randorama, the desolation of the first stage echoes the original Earth-denizens returning Earth to its (and their) original environment--their own kind of terraforming (although how that opabinia is supposed to do anything without water...also the end boss, which puts me in mind of an about-to-hatch shark). Is Nemesis actually an image of Earth from the Cambrian or Triassic, determined to retake its rightful place as the true life?

Perhaps what is happening is that the Nemesis regard themselves as the true gods--although THESE gods have more in common with Shub-Niggurath and Cthuga than Enlil and Amaterasu, in terms of mentality and psyche. And they are NOT happy with being "usurped" by the strictly physical creatures of the Jurassic, then Cretaceous, then Mesozoic (I'm stopping with Triassic because the first and fifth bosses have reptilian qualities, and those existed by the time of that era). Maybe their real grievance is with the Earth/Gaea itself--atmosphere, life, crust, mantle, core, everything--that had the temerity to slough them off? Because they're just coming out of phase, then, it might explain why the Black Fly's fight against them isn't entirely physical...

Thoughts on this (ESPECIALLY if you've got something from the OST liner notes, original Japanese manual, etc.)?

shinsage · Post by **shinsage** » Sun Oct 15, 2006 5:26 am

Haha, you give this way too much thought.
I wasn't aware of Earth's dried up oceans; in the first stage it's sandy, sure, but there's also a city there.
I doubt any battles are mentally projected; I always thought everything was physical, with the last boss being able to warp time and space to create such a fucked up atmosphere.

It could be possible that the Black Fly travelled through time while fighting the last boss, and ended up on Earth millions of years ago.

zinger · Post by **zinger** » Sun Oct 15, 2006 11:35 am

shinsage wrote:Haha, you give this way too much thought.
I wasn't aware of Earth's dried up oceans; in the first stage it's sandy, sure, but there's also a city there.

There's also an oil rig, submarine and a giant crab with a battleship on its back in the middle of the stage!

Very interesting thoughts. Silver Hawk vs. fish is self-explanatory, but what about Black Fly vs. dinosaurs/reptiles, or later Red Wasp vs. "the seed" (Border Down)? Never speculated around the story before, and I haven't played the game for quite a while.

Macaw · Post by **Macaw** » Sun Oct 15, 2006 2:36 pm

Did Taito ever release anything official on what exactly happens throughout the game or did they intend it to be more of a 'open to everyones opinion' type deal?

shinsage · Post by **shinsage** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 4:14 am

zinger wrote:There's also an oil rig, submarine and a giant crab with a battleship on its back in the middle of the stage!

Shit.
It's been awhile.

Shocky · Post by **Shocky** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 9:55 am

shinsage wrote:I always thought everything was physical, with the last boss being able to warp time and space to create such a fucked up atmosphere.

Even the enormous cat that appears and stares at the player during the final (?) stage? Somebody please explain me that cat.

zinger · Post by **zinger** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 2:34 pm

Shocky wrote:
shinsage wrote:I always thought everything was physical, with the last boss being able to warp time and space to create such a fucked up atmosphere.
Even the enormous cat that appears and stares at the player during the final (?) stage? Somebody please explain me that cat.

Skyknight · Post by **Skyknight** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 6:13 pm

In the meantime, I managed to find the bosses' names on the Japanese Wikipedia...although all six were written in katakana...The parentheses indicate a small version of the kana (in other words, it's actually a modifier of the previous kana).

1: a-pa-ru-to-he-(shi)-do
2: fu-(e)-do-ro (Feeder?)
3: da-i-o {and; it looks like a kanji was used} gi-shi-i-n
4: a-ma-zo
5: ga-a-su-to (Ghost??? Ghast? Gust?)
6: Omega zo-o-n (The omega was given as the Greek letter. Omega Zone? Odd choice for an entity's name...)

Also, it seems that the Nemesis are a kind of organic/inorganic chimera. Chimera, here, refers to a creature that has two distinct genetic structures (although how you can call machinery a genome...). This, admittedly, sounds a LOT like the Thiima from G-Darius. However, if I understood BabelFish's rendering of the page which spoke of the chimerae (http://home3.highway.ne.jp/hotaru/gHTH/mb/meatlword.htm) correctly, the Nemesis are greedy for inorganic material with which to sustain their forms. So unlike the Thiima, their chimera nature might be unstable. (I know about how it was said that they only live about ten hours--I have the OST, which came with a little English-language translation of the experiment. However, that was in reference to Amnelian experiments trying to understand how the Thiima even existed, and at least one half of the experimental creature was a bird. Not to mention that neither half of the experiment was machine...And who knows what classified to the Thiima's creators as "short life".)