Soren and Eirikr Talkin' 'bout...MegaTen-Maniax, Giant Bomb, KCN, and more
Eirikr: Can you believe this thing is sputtering off the ground?Soren: Not really! But it's definitely happening. Good lord.
Eirikr: It was a true group effort, but finally, MegaTen-Maniax is off and running. So how fast should we drop these pretenses? That is a legit question, too.
Soren: Close to immediately should do. It's a tough act to keep up.
Eirikr: Okay, great, fantastic. Couldn't wait. I'm satisfied with how it turned out, though.
Soren: Yeah, same here. Turned out to be quite a beast, too - was thinking maybe five or six posts max when we started.
Eirikr: I'm all for quality AND quantity. I think we achieved that here. Probably the best thing I've done since the Kool-Aid Man. And I thought that would never be topped and remain the apex of my contributions to society.
Soren: Kool-Aid Man will live inside our hearts forever, quenching our thirst and such. But yeah, this is good work by my estimation. We managed not to pull any punches in terms of complexity, I think. Going to put it to faith that people have appreciated the running gags, though there's also a good deal of inside baseball there.
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Eirikr: Yeah, though let's not pull back the curtain tooooo much. I guess I should also come clean with the original idea for this, uh, feature.
Soren: Feels like so long ago now, but yeah, let em' have it.
Eirikr: On Valentine's Day I made that post asking for questions people would want to ask Kaneko. Of course, I had an ulterior motive there: My plan was to make a fake Kaneko interview, using some of those questions as a base, stemming from the general frustrations from how elusive he's become, but also as an outlet for needed satire.
Trouble is, as the questions piled up, almost all of them were so sincere and genuine that I started to feel really guilty about using them for my original plan. I thought, I couldn't possibly betray these authentic yearnings for an artist gone incognito. Brainstorming for different, yet similar, ideas led me to Megaten-Maniacs (I can finally spell it how I'd actually spell it!).
For the questions, I'd offer the best I could do: Dijeh kindly translated them for me, and I sent them off to Atlus and, hopefully, Kaneko himself. I don't expect I'll ever get a reply, but it's worth a shot. What other outlet do we have? So thank you to those who submitted. You grew my heart three sizes that day!
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| The letter in question |
Soren: Was definitely expecting the submissions to err more on the side of piss-takes, but the love is too real. There would have been a lot of Kaneko-related gags and snark in the original post, sort of like a follow-up to last year's crib. But it didn't feel appropriate at that point. I'm not too torn up that it fell through, though, considering what we got to work with in it's place. Thanks to everyone that gave it a shot, though! Hopefully someone will at least read those questions wistfully or something.
Eirikr: Anyway, as this is Kaneko's Crib Notes official 50th entry, and while we'll get to that proper, I just feel like reminiscing about what's led us here: the beginning for our collaborations, namely Giant Bomb. What brought you to GB?
Soren: In a not particularly shocking twist, it was the P4 endurance run, though it had ended some time ago by then. I distinctly remember seeing it mentioned on the TV Tropes page for the game - the sort of thing I had a voracious appetite for at the time, apparently.
Eirikr: Interesting. I found Giant Bomb just a few months before the Endurance Run, with the Castlevania: Judgment Quick Look Jeff and Ryan did. The way they made fun of that quality product was right up my alley and I got hooked from then on. Being along for the entire P4 ER ride was just a nice little bonus. It didn't take me too long to get into the wiki editing side of the site, either. Much of the SMT stuff, particularly demons, was practically virgin, unclaimed territory. That's certainly a better way to put it than "everyone else was completely disinterested in filling out the Baal page."
Soren: (Laughs) Yeah, I can imagine; most of what was there by the time I started paying attention had your fingerprints on them.
Eirikr: This was Spring-Fall of 2009, for the record. Once Strange Journey came out in Japan and I was there to edit in every update. And you bet I intentionally touched every Megami Tensei-related page I possibly could. By 2010, I was obsessed, and motivated by competition: The Megami Tensei wikia. I wanted the content I was writing for GB to be leagues better than what they offered. While the MT wikia is fine now and I use it all the time (GB's SMT stuff has fallen into disuse and decay since I got banned....for no discernible reason, though I never cared enough to appeal), it was truly terrible back then. Many pages just copy/pasted from Wikipedia. Anyway, you appeared on the scene in 2011, I think. Just as I was gearing up to move to Japan.
Soren: That takes me back. It was pretty dire, as you might expect from a wikia site of that vintage. The motivation to do better on GB was strong, but there were just so few hands on deck that it never really approached viability.
Eirikr: Yeah. You were the only one on the site that shared my very specific passion for the series. You know, mythology and how it relates to world culture.
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| You know, this bozo |
Soren: That's definitely what did it. Our first interaction even came after I created the Hreselvger (sic) page and copied the erroneous compendium into it. Pretty low odds that anyone else would have cared to notice.
Eirikr: (Laughs) Really? That was the one? I had no idea. I'm gonna have to go look that up now... Oh right, I think I may have said something that Hresvelgr isn't the eagle on top of Yggdrasil. Unlike what the compendium info says. Wild.
Soren: Bingo. Of course, that was when we were still hacking it with wall posts, so those are either long gone or in the bowels of our PM notices.
Eirikr: Damn. I did notice later that you left a comment on the Top Ten Genital Demons List. I never expected that list to be so popular and enduring, nor that a few people would plagiarize it.
Soren: Yeah. that thing turned out to be a monster. Didn't even know it was yours until a little while after we started talking. And a sterling subject for internet fame, of course.
Eirikr: And now I'm lampooning the very thing I helped escalate. Change is inevitable.
Soren: Yuuup, life comes at you fast. It was another list that really brought it together, though; the demon catalogue. Did we ever crack 1000? Better check...
Eirikr: We didn't. It stands at 931 demons. It could probably be filled out now, but, let's be honest, the site redesign screwed some things up about the wiki, even as it spruced other things up.
Soren: Ah, that was the number. So close. And yeah, the headaches brought on at that point are still fresh in mind.
Eirikr: And I do have your reply in my GB inbox: "Yeah, dealing with formatting on GB can be a hassle, especially if you start work outside the editor. On a slightly related note, thanks for sprucing up the Hresvelgr page, I really dropped the ball on that one. I had started paraphrasing shit off the SJ compendium for those last 6 entries since, well, Norse/Chinese mythology is pretty far outside my realm of expertise. Think I'll stick to my own sources from here-out."
Soren: Holy pepperoni, that is some Soren of a fine vintage. Actually not nearly as embarrassing as I was expecting!
Eirikr: But that's probably enough teary-eyed Giant Bomb nostalgia.
Soren: Yeah, could go on for a while, but that's the long and short of it.
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| Potentially cogent metaphor for situations various and sundry |
Eirikr: Kaneko's Crib Notes would have its humble beginnings just on my own Tumblr. A chance glance at an Ouroboros plate in an alchemy book set things off. That probably remains my favorite KCN entry. I was certain that SMT's Ouroboros was just a clever infinity loop courtesy of Kaneko. Kinda blew my mind.
Soren: Man, Ouroboros. Still such a great find - just a few baby heads away from the veritable Golden Ratio of Kaneko cribs. And that set off the short run of cribs that were imported to the site later on. The idea of a running feature was already appealing, so I remember being super excited to throw my hat in on the site proper.
Eirikr: Yeah, Melchom launched the sub-blog proper. That was another one I couldn't believe. I knew the idea for direct Kaneko influences had legs when I discovered that one. What's your favorite of the ones we've done?
Soren: Man, there's a lot to choose from with these sets - the actual total must be well over a 100 now. But looking through these, I'd say either Gogmagog or Isis. The former was, of course, the first and at the time longest member of our personal hit-list. Finding the lead on that one was incredible, and I think it's still a great one even on its own.
Eirikr: Yeah, I was gonna cite Gogmagog as another favorite, too. The fact that it was greeting me in most Ancient Aliens opening title sequences is kind of eerie!
Soren: (Laughs) Yes, the History Channel was the master of mythology all along. Isis, on the other hand, is simply one of my favorite Kaneko designs. Brilliant mix of sleek invention and traditional imagery, so getting the down-low on that inspiration was another thrill. Also opened up the gates for more high-fashion cribs in the future, of course.
Eirikr: Yeah, seeing that bolero was surreal. And speaking of CRIBS, this is volume 50. We should probably do one.
KANEKO'S CRIB NOTES VOLUME L: HEQET
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Eirikr: Yeah, a shame. Is that our worst-performing entry? I mean, we can't exactly blame anyone for that. (laughs)
Soren: Ukobach was sitting at 47 last time I checked, so... yes. At least that dude crawled up from the bottom eventually! Silver linings etc.
Eirikr: Wow, good for Ukobach. But onto the next, I was paging through my Soul Hackers guide and I noticed that it's full of Kaneko comments in the demon section. In the Egyptian blurb, he mentions Heqet being influenced by Drew Barrymore from the original Scream. Sure enough, the actress from E.T. and Freddy Got Fingered shares a wig with a frog goddess!
Soren: That's one of those that you couldn't eyeball in a thousand years, so it's nice to have it straight from the horse's mouth. But the references to western pop culture don't seem to end there. Curved pupils are a stand-by for stylized depictions of frogs, but Kaneko's particular take, complete with a bulging, puppet-like quality, appears to be straight from Kermit himself.
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| Kermit, from (popular meme) |
Eirikr: It's easy being green, for once. So there you go, that's officially KANEKO'S CRIB NOTES VOLUME L: HEQET
Soren: Read it and weep: our semicentennial! And the start of an important shift to boot.
Eirikr: Yes. Yes indeed. This marks the end of regular monthly updates for KCN. And that's no joke. Thought I'd pull a GIA and announce the end on a particularly inauspicious day. Hats off to those old geezers who get that reference. But this isn't really the end, just a shifting of gears.
Soren: The dates lined up a little too well, so you'll have to cut us some slack. And yeah, we're not going anywhere just yet; there are still plenty of cribs to be discovered, and we've even got some in the works for the near future.
Eirikr: Yes, in the immediate future, in fact. So going forward, the updates will be sporadic, but will undoubtedly be especially motivated by new and crucial discoveries. Again, the next ones in line will be IMPORTANT, so don't go anywhere just yet.
Soren: Just think of it as a sort of after-party from here on out.
Eirikr: Yeah, exactly. In part, it's because we want to move onto other things. We have something huge planned, though, frankly, I have no goddamned idea how we're going to tackle it yet. But we kind of need KCN off our minds for a bit.
Soren: Yeah, in particular, something(s) a little more original. However it pans out, having the table clear is an important first step.
Eirikr: And you'll hear about it, don't worry. I hate that we can't spill any more details, except that it's related to my other personal project, if you've been following my blog in the past year. It could potentially be under its banner.
Soren: You've been dropping hints on that one for a while now, so pretty much the same drill here. Won't have to go far to find it when it's underway, of course.
Eirikr: So all I can say now is thanks for following us for these years! Wow, it's been actual years for KCN, hasn't it?
Soren: Looks like we've been at it for... two and a half years, good god. That's... a while, yeah. Thanks for sticking with us till now, and happy April!
Eirikr: Thanks for reading! We hope you enjoyed Megaten-Maniacs, too!
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