Final boss name in In the Hunt solved?

[Skyknight]

The name is ユグスキューレ/Yugusukyuure. It looks and sounds Japanese at first blush, yes, but the katakana made me wonder, especially with kanji being used for 荘厳/Shougon. I decided to stick it in Google Translate to see if it could vector any hints out and it gave me...Yggskure? Beginning the same way as Yggdrasil certainly gave me Thoughts, so I checked the tree's etymology.

"Yggr" is Old Norse for "terrible", and was often used in eddas as a byword for Odin. "Drasill" is "steed" or "horse", but can also be used metaphorically for a gallows, like when Odin hanged himself from one of Yggdrasil's limbs in a desperate bid to gain further wisdom. But I think the literal sense of "terrible" is what we want. "Skure", meanwhile, can be used in Norse as "scour", but I'm not convinced it necessarily started in Norse--dictionary.com supplies "scour"'s etymology as coming to Middle Low German from Latin via Old French. I can believe Destroy and Slaughter not being too concerned about one part of their flood system's name being much younger than the other, though. So, in fitting with the deluge it was meant to bring, the system may be properly Yggskure, the "Terrible Scourer".

[Fingolfin]

“Terrible Scourer” — very cool, very interesting

Incredibly thorough linguistic origins breakdown here Skyknight!

Thank you for sharing your discovery and conveying your process of tracking down the name meaning of the last boss of In The Hunt/Kaitei Daisensou.

Kind of mind blowing to see Nazca utilizing Norse mythology in the “back story” for the final boss. Cheers for making all these connections: great detective work!

I’d hazard to guess you’re familiar with The Oxford English Dictionary as a great source for linguistics, documenting word origins and first usage with quotations; however, the $$$ paywall….

OED links
https://www.oed.com/information/about-the-oed/
https://www.oed.com/

[Jonpachi]

That's what I call the old sponge rotting on the corner of my kitchen sink.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

That's what I call the old sponge rotting on the corner of Jonpachi's kitchen sink.

[Sengoku Strider]

I would bet that it was just a made up Norse-sounding word at a time when Japanese fantasy/sci-fi media had dropped ancient Greece like a rock and become infatuated with Nordic mythology. Every interview with Japanese game devs from the 80s/90s seems to go that way. A quick google search did turn up a Japanese jazz/rock fusion song from 1982 with the same name, but upon further inspection that was a typo on the part of whoever transcribed the name for the video. The actual track is called Uvescure ユヴェスキューレ and first of all, hell yes to this album art.





Yu Suzuki totally has this in his collection. But let it not go unsaid that in addition to a shirt that has a drawing of a torso on his torso, this man has quite the striking side mullet.



I salute you, maverick.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Isn't the true final boss whoever your faithful AND YET DESPICABLE former ally is? Remember, after clearing the final boss, both decide LET'S FIGHT and face off IN A DUEL TO THE DEATH to decide who gets THE FAME AND THE GLORY.

Also, I've got a new nickname for my old dish sponge now. Thanks, thread.