Okami

0:16 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Other Castle. The Other Castle, I'm Andrea. And my name is Tom. And here at The Other Castle, we cover the plot, lore and more of video games, your favorite video games, video games you don't know anything about, you know, maybe like this one. Yeah, our game today, Okami, is one of those hidden gem video games that not a lot of people played. I'm excited, I don't know anything about it as we're going into it, but I know a lot about a lot of other games. If you wanna check out the full back catalog, including some exclusive episodes, you can check out our website, theothercastlepodcast.com. That's the othercastlepodcast.com. And that will take you to our Patreon, where we have secret episodes. I just did Among Us. I have a Halloween episode dropping very soon on a, oh, a game that's very storied, and Tom's done a lot of other DLC pieces on there, so if you can't get enough, go for it.

1:06 Yeah, go check us out over there. It's just $2 a month. We also run during the off season, so you can have The Other Castle with you all year long. That's a threat, not a promise. And then you also have the ability to sign up for our Discord and our newsletter at our website. Those are completely free. Anybody can join us there. I'm currently bullying Tom on the Discord to get a tramp stamp. It's not gonna happen. It could be funny though. For you. You should do whatever moves the plot forward. Have you ever played a video game? I don't know how getting a tramp stamp is gonna do that. It's a canon event, it has to happen. Well, anyway, so like I said, we're doing the game Okami this week. I know nothing about this. So few people do, and we're gonna learn all about it.

1:49 Okay, so I'm not weird for not knowing truly anything about this game. No, I didn't know anything about this game other than one little aspect to it, and we'll get into all of that. So I was introduced to this game by my nephew Avery right around the time of its release. Okay, what timing lies, when did this come out? 2006. The world was in a different place. Very different place. On the brink of a recession. And I'm 14 years older than my nephew, and I have to admit, it was hard for me to take their opinion on games seriously. Right, because you're like, you are a child, no. And I saw the silly little dog game with admittedly really cool art, but nobody I knew other than this kid was talking about it. So you're like, oh no, it's a weird kid thing.

2:30 Yeah, so I ignored Avery and I never played it. I get it. Over the years, Avery insisted I play it, eventually declaring it their favorite game of all time. Oh. But still, I ignored their recommendation. And then years and years later, YouTubers started talking about it. And that's when you noticed. Yeah. Not with a family member you've known their entire life who is truly trying to connect with you on a level of, let's explore this media together. I've had a great experience with it. I'd love to share that with you. You said, nah, I'm waiting for new Master 69 to drop the facts and lore. Yeah, I was waiting for that entirely. You're a butthole.

3:13 Well, out of nowhere, it seemed like everybody was talking about Okami and it was getting mentioned as like this sleeper hit that everyone missed out on. Oh, cult classic for sure. Not even a cult classic. Oh, they missed out on the cult entirely, just a full sleeper. Yeah, Avery was literally the only one that could have prophesized this. Well, I used this show as an excuse to finally play it. I do that a lot now. It's mostly justifying, oh, I'm just gonna download a bunch of games real quick and throw it on the credit card, deal with it tomorrow, but I feel you. And honestly, everybody's right, including Avery. Oh. I really missed out on this game along with just about everyone else.

3:53 And now you wanna commit to a recording you saying I was wrong? Oh yeah. Wow. I was wrong on this one entirely. No ego, good for you. So Avery, this episode's for you, bud. Our journey begins with a little game called Resident Evil. I've heard of that. A man named Hideki Kamiya was hired to work on the game as a developer. And he would later go on to direct the second in the series. He would then direct other Capcom mega hits like The Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe. Holy shit. And after completion of Viewtiful Joe, Hideki and a few other creatives wanted to make their own games.

4:34 Up to this point, Capcom had assigned all of these projects to them. They were making the games they were being told to make. Hideki Kamiya banded together with a couple others and convinced Capcom to open a small studio to facilitate original passion projects. And they opened up Clover Studios as a result. And Clover Studios stands for Creativity Lovers. Oh, I love that. But Capcom didn't let them jump right into making their own games. They first let them practice by porting Viewtiful Joe to the GameCube. They said, you can start here, okay? Don't fuck this up.

5:15 And then they were assigned the task of making a sequel to Viewtiful Joe, as well as a couple spin-offs. And these did fairly well, so Capcom finally gave them the go-ahead to create an original IP. And Hideki came to the table with a simple idea, a game about nature. Ooh. Hideki Kamiya grew up in very rural Japan, lots of forests and greenery everywhere. As an adult, he worked in a major city. He didn't realize how much he missed nature until he went home for a visit and was reminded of the beauty of his childhood. Oh, that's beautiful.

5:56 And he wanted to make a game that reflected that loss of nature and the attempt to gain it back. While working on the GameCube port of Beautiful Joe, he saw another team port the first Resident Evil to the GameCube as well. He was so blown away by their port, he realized that there's a lot of collective talent at Capcom, and he wanted to utilize all of that talent to create a game about the beauty of the natural world. But that was really all he had, just a vague concept. While discussing potential story ideas, they started looking into the history of Japanese folklore. I love Japanese folklore too.

6:38 Like, they have some really great cryptids in these worlds. So beautiful. They very much do, and a lot of them are going to show up in this. Oh, good! It was also always really closely tied to nature. They read up on a few legends, seeing that there was a bunch of animal gods in many of the stories. And so they selected a god that took the form of a wolf, as it reminded Hideki of his childhood pet dog. Heart of me immediately goes to Princess Mononoke. I don't feel like you can fault me for that. No, it's a pretty straight line to draw. They kicked around some ideas for around a year, and the most they got done was they made a mood trailer for the game to kind of show the idea, but they were really just treading water.

7:25 Finally, a Capcom exec lit into them and asked, when the fuck are you going to make this game? You know, part of my heart was just saying, they got to stay on payroll for a year, and all they did was make like a Pinterest board of, wouldn't this shit be cool? Literally, right? God damn, like I am a content creator partially for my job. If I am like taking a full week to think of a tweet or something, that's the equivalent of what they kind of did. Well, it's a team of people who have always had a boss not having a boss for the first time. Oh no, so they went, uh... When do we start? Bunch of introverts waiting for someone else to speak first. Yeah, exactly. Oh shit, okay, I get you. So that's when they finally started to like hunker down and nail down a concept.

8:08 The original idea was to make a realistic world and environment using the PlayStation 2, and that mood trailer reflected those graphics. And just about everyone hated this look. Oh no, because a lot of games looked very similar in the PS2 era. Yeah, it was very clunky looking. And the PS2 just wasn't there yet in terms of processing power to make it look as good as they were wanting. Totally, and just to speak on the aesthetics, I know I just said that a lot of them looked very similar, but when you look at the PS4 lineup, you have Firewatch, you have Life is Strange, you have Red Dead 2, and it's all through the same system. Very different art styles entirely, but everything in the PS2 looked exactly the same.

8:50 Yeah, right? It was a very polygon sharp heavy world. Entirely. And this was also going to be a PS2 exclusive, so it was really important to look good on that system specifically. And PlayStation, of course, historically loves pouring their love into their exclusives and being like, look how fucking cool the infrastructure is. Yeah, exactly. Well, one of the artists was doodling during a meeting, and they were doodling in a traditional Japanese art style called Sumie, or ink wash in English. And someone looked over his shoulder and saw this, and they realized it would be easier, cheaper, and better looking to do the game in this style.

9:31 Mm. So Takayasa Sawaki, the doodling artist, went on to be the new creative director for the game going forward. He was the doodler, Tom. You have to put some respect on that man's name. Yeah, this is all thanks to someone just kind of looking over his shoulder while he was fucking around during a meeting. And they took this ink wash style and combined it with the semi-popular cell-shaded art style to create the look of Okami. For the gameplay mechanics, they settled into a style that many people have gone on to compare to the Zelda franchise. Oh. And Hideki has gone on to say that while nobody sat down and said, hey, let's make a Zelda game, he admits that without Zelda, there wouldn't be Okami.

10:18 I get it. A lot of these games, especially as we're starting to cover the older ones that have these deep roots in modern games, it's very clear where our pipeline's been in terms of gaming and evolving the entire infrastructure. Yeah, you start to see the games that these people grew up on. Right, yeah. Also, that same year in 2006, a Zelda game would actually release Twilight Princess. Oh, no. And that game would also feature gameplay where you play as a wolf. Oh. But Okami came out first. While a vast majority of the characters and stories in this game are based on actual Japanese folklore, Okami's central plot remains original, serving as the narrative thread that ties together all the other tales within the game.

11:03 So this isn't Hades. No, not like that. But it does have a lot of actual folklore to it. Oh, that's cool. So it respects it, but it is also respectfully its own thing. Yeah, very much so. Upon its release in April 2006, the game garnered rave reviews from just about every publication. Critically acclaimed. Nines and tens across the board. Oof. Heralding Hideki Kamiya as one of the greatest creatives to ever grant his gift to the world of video games. Holy shit. Ultimately landing it on best of lists and must plays of 2006 articles. It even beat out Twilight Princess and this season's Gears of War for several major game of the year awards.

11:50 Wow. And despite everything I just said, Okami went on to sell a grand total of 270,000 copies. Oh no. Worldwide? Worldwide. Grand total on the PlayStation 2. It was a complete and total failure. So to put in perspective, it's a couple years of development and paying an entire staff of people that much money just to make it. So you're definitely not even breaking even. You absolutely lost money on that. Lost all the money on it. And nobody has any idea to this day how it happened.

12:32 Perhaps Capcom didn't advertise it well enough. Is it possible the announcement of the PlayStation 3 the same week as its release created a dark cloud that blocked Okami's son? Maybe the world just wasn't ready for such an ambitious title. Some questions would be answered, and some new ones would arise two years later, when it received a port to the new and insanely popular Nintendo Wii. Capcom beefed the release of the launch by making one of the biggest bonehead mistakes a company can make. Oh? And Andrea, as a marketer, this is your worst nightmare. Oh no. The box art for the Wii version of Okami was discovered to have an IGN watermark in the corner.

13:20 Shut the fuck up, no! Like the printed box art? The printed box art had somebody else's watermark on it. Oh, my heart is in my butthole. I am so stressed out right now. Someone on Capcom's art department just downloaded a picture off Google and never noticed this watermark. I am genuinely anxious right now. Why would you do this to me? Holy shit. Oh, this game is so fucking cursed. They didn't even download one without the fucking watermark on it. This is so stressful.

14:00 So Capcom would go on to release original replacement box art and offered a couple options for free. Because what the fuck? Because they beefed it. Oh. To their credit, the new art was pretty incredible. Not that it really mattered, because it only sold another 280,000 copies on the Wii. Oh. In 2010, Guinness Book gave it the official award for being the least successful Game of the Year award winner in history. You've achieved something insane. Where you put out an excellent product and no one gives a fuck about you.

14:43 It was such a failure that Clover Studios shut its doors for good. Two months after the release of Okami. So they really only put out Okami? They did have one other game come out that was like finished, that released after the studio was already shut down. But that's a game nobody's giving a shit about. They made one perfect game, closed their doors, and then had to also release something they probably didn't finish after the fact. This is a very stressful just lead up to the game. It really is, right? It only gets better though, I promise. Okay, because I am like my hair's on my armor standing up. I'm not comfortable right now.

15:25 Hideki and the rest of the creative team blamed Capcom for its failure. They said they interfered too much and never really delivered to them the studio of creative freedom that they were promised. They felt like they were on a leash. They still did, yeah. They have since joined forces with some developers that made the Oddworld games and they formed Platinum Games. Oh. They would go on to make some huge titles like the Star Fox and Bayonetta series, as well as Nier Automata in partnership with Square Enix. But someone at Capcom, nobody really knows who, still had a soft spot for Okami. They loved the game and wanted to see it succeed. So late in the PlayStation 3 life cycle, they got approval to do not just a port, but a full remaster of the game.

16:12 Oh, okay. A company called Hex Drive was hired to remaster Okami. And since a big part of the blame for the failure was believed to be the system on which it was released, they thought maybe, just maybe, it'll do better on PS3. Plus a lot of similar titles had done well since its original release that were similar in style and gameplay. You know, the mid-aughts were also an interesting time for journalism and internet reviews and things like that because people were starting to learn how to look for things. Okami could easily have been swept up and people catching up on other things they missed and stuff. Fully. You know, I want to blame the times as well.

16:53 I think, contextually, it was ahead of its time. It might have been, you know. It kind of fell into that same world as, like, Psychonauts. Where it was ahead of its time and people just weren't ready for it yet. Yeah, and people, yeah, emotionally, like, they didn't think that gaming could be like this yet. Yeah. Well, Hex Drive did an unbelievable job remastering the game, and they brought it up to 4K resolution, dubbing it Okami HD. Oh, I love that. Now, of course, the PlayStation 3 couldn't pump out 4K, so it played in 1080p. But PS4 and 5 do run at 4K, and it's fucking stunning. We have a big TV, too.

17:34 That shit looked beautiful. Yeah. The remastered game released in 2012, and again, rave reviews, possibly even better than the first run. Because this is truly a perfect game, plus nostalgia, plus it's slightly tweaked to look better on my TV. This is actually perfect. The HD remaster took a piece of art and made it a masterpiece. Polished a masterpiece. Totally. It still didn't necessarily go crazy with sales. God damn it. What is going on with this game? But over the course of the last 11 years, it has sold around 4 million units now. It's only taken decades. Yeah, because it's on all major consoles now, and as well as Steam.

18:15 The lead character of Okami has now featured in the Marvel vs. Capcom series. Oh, that's great. Yeah, so you can have the wolf from Okami fight Wolverine if you want. Capcom also released an offensively bad semi-sequel that is better left unspoken about as the people who made it clearly never touched the original as they inexplicably changed the gender of the main character. Just surprise. Not realizing it was a female wolf in the first game. Like I said, it's offensively bad. To this day, Okami is Hideki Kamiya's favorite game that he's ever made.

18:57 And he's been teasing a real sequel for years, but no official word as of this recording. Okami is nothing you're all expecting, regardless of what your expectations are. I expect nothing. It's earthbound, meets stray, mixed with Ghost of Tsushima, tossed with Psychonauts and a heavy dose of Zelda and Kingdom Hearts. That is a salad I want to get down on. Get ready, Goombas, because our very long journey is about to begin. This is Okami. Just a warning, since you gave one in the last episode, this game has multiple endings. Oh, shit.

19:38 I was like, what did I warn about? Oh, no. Well, to those of you who have played Okami, I hope you heard me wink. The game opens on the starting edge of a traditional Japanese scroll. Being Japanese, it's scrolling from right to left, as that's the direction in which Japanese writing is read. A paintbrush touches down on the scroll and writes, Story by Hideki Kamiya. Hell yeah, get your title card. It scrolls left to a blank section of scroll, and the paintbrush touches down again. It paints a small Japanese village, all in that Sumie art style. And that's like very thick paint strokes, a lot of black, a lot of some contrasting.

20:23 Yeah, and it usually gets mixed with some water, so that way it bleeds. Oh, that's so pretty. It stays in black and white as pink cherry blossom petals start falling across the screen. The entirety of the game is told through text on screen, but the characters who speak still have voices, they just don't speak any actual language. Oh, is it kind of like in Undertale where the characters have a tone that's played for them, like they have a note as their voice? Yeah, that, or I was actually going to say the robots in Stray. Gotcha. Very similar, like... It's a little Charlie Brown, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And the voices are actually people saying words, but then the audio engineers would distort and reverse it for the character voices.

21:06 Wow, that's... it almost feels needlessly complex, but I can appreciate that they were saying something and they were like, oh, well, we can translate this very easily if this is the vocal line. That's the irony of you saying it's very complex, is it actually helped them make it easier to translate. Yeah, I talked myself there, it's fine. And we're introduced to Kamiki Village, a tiny hamlet surrounded by cherry blossom trees. The trees were treated with the same reverence that was reserved for gods. Oh. And even though they were a village of good, respectful people, the village wasn't without its secrets. The pure black silhouette of an eight-headed, hydra-like dragon beast named Orochi descends on the picture of the village.

21:52 Orochi's presence creates a fog that blocks the sun. Without the sun, the cherry blossoms can't bloom, and we can't have that now, can we? Orochi's many heads have glowing red eyes. Every full moon, the villagers of Kamiki would throw a festival in honor of Orochi and are forced to sacrifice someone chosen at random, as Orochi had commanded. The rest of this opening story is told in still images in that same art style, but occasionally a character's silhouette will take up part of the screen, but it's all still in static black and white showing off different parts of the village. As the night of the festival draws near, a mysterious white wolf appears as if from nowhere, just on the edge of town.

22:38 The villagers see this beautiful white wolf wandering town at night and name her Shidanui, which means unknown fire in Japanese. And it's a term used for Japanese cryptids like the Kappa. The wolf is suspicious of anyone that tries to leave the village and follows them around, ushering them back. Just kind of hall-monitoring, like, no, no, stay at the party. Yeah, you don't get to run away from this. People assume Shidanui is a servant of Orochi, sent to keep the people in line until a sacrifice occurs. So no one can sneak out and be like, haha, it's not gonna be me if I'm not there. Yeah, exactly. The village's local hero warrior, a man named Nagi, confronts Shidanui, demanding that the white wolf fight him so that she may be vanquished.

23:25 As we learned in Gousetsushima, the culture of this era required both parties to agree to a fight. Only consensual. Yeah, so it's wrong to be the first to attack an opponent. But since Shidanui doesn't leave, Nagi attacks anyway. And Shidanui dodges every single blow effortlessly. That's fucking cool. On the night of the sacrifice, a white arrow is fired by Orochi randomly into the village. And this signals the start of the festival and selects the home from which the sacrifice will come. I was worried it was going to be a raffle. This is way cooler. Yeah, no, it's a random arrow. The arrow sails into the village and impales itself into the side of the home of a woman named Nami, the most beautiful woman in the village.

24:12 This marks her as the sacrifice. The warrior Nagi does not like this one bit. But she's hot. Yeah, he has a huge crush on the beautiful Nami. Plus, like the couple name of Nagi Nami is just too damn good to pass up. Oh, I love that. So Nagi goes out looking for Orochi all on his own in order to confront and kill it before it has a chance to eat Nami. I would rather burn this place to the fucking ground than let the hot girl die. Hell yeah, lead with boners, baby. Nagi finds Orochi's lair in a place called the Moon Cave. He bravely goes into the cave and confronts Orochi head on.

24:54 For hours, he hacks and slashes and stabs at the beast, but he doesn't leave so much as a fucking scratch. With eight heads worth of fangs bared, Orochi advances on the exhausted Nagi. Just as he is ready to succumb to his fate, the white wolf Shidanui jumps in to save the day. She isn't a servant of Orochi at all. The night-black Orochi and the snow-white Shidanui battle it out. A blur of fern scales. Shidanui is ready for every one of Orochi's attacks. Orochi even tries its fire breath, and Shidanui simply blows it out with a gust of wind summoned by some mysterious power.

25:39 The big bad wolf, that's fucking sick. Yeah, it took so much not to write Huff and Puff. I respect that. The two continue fighting, and Orochi eventually overtakes Shidanui. Shidanui now has red splashed across her white fur, and with her last bit of strength, howls into the cloudy night sky. Whatever power Shidanui has is mighty, as the howl clears the night sky, revealing the crescent moon beyond. The light of the moon shines on Nagi's sword, giving him the strength and courage he needs to help Shidanui. With this renewed confidence, Nagi charges Orochi, and in a blackout rage, cuts off all eight heads of the beast, and he lands on the bloodstained ground below as the final head falls next to him.

26:33 This is all being told in a cutscene? Yeah, this is all in a cutscene that's in black and white silhouettes. It's like a gory shadow play. That's fucking sick. Shidanui is still fucked up from the battle, and Nagi carries her back to the Kamiki village. There, the villagers gather round as the town doctor does their best. But it's not enough, and Shidanui closes her eyes one last time. Oh, fuck. Peace and sunshine return to Kamiki village, and the villagers build a shrine with a statue of Shidanui to honor her sacrifice in saving them. Nagi's sword was also honored, was given the name Sukiyomi, meaning moon reading, which is the noble practice of getting very drunk on expensive alcohol with your friends while you stare at the moon and recite poetry.

27:24 I have fully done that. I'm not happy. But you've done it. But I've done it. Well, they display Sukiyomi by driving it into the ground inside the moon cave, sealing away Orochi like a cork in a bottle. The scene suddenly shifts from black and white static pictures to bright, brilliant color, and the scenery is alive and moving. We're looking at the mouth of the moon cave, as it is a cave entrance on the side of an oceanside cliff. There's trees lining the stone steps up to the cave, and they're swaying in the heavy breeze.

28:08 It's now 100 years later. The sky is a dark and dreary orange color, and the camera flies into the cave mouth. A shadowy person approaches the shrine, where the legendary sword Sukiyomi is embedded, and asks, could it be? Is this really the sword that vanquished Orochi? And the figure reaches out and clutches the giant sword in its hands, and pulls the sword free. Black smoke erupts from the hole left by the sword, and from the smoke we see 16 glowing red eyes. You dumb dipshit! The figure drops the sword and runs, as Orochi emerges from where the sword once stood.

28:52 Orochi erupts from the cave mouth, sending fire over the land, burning everything in sight. The sky goes from orange to black, as the fog takes over all of Nippon once again. Also, Nippon is the name Japanese people use for Japan, and it's the name they use for Japan in this game as well. So I'm gonna be calling it Nippon, not to be a weeb, but because that's what they say in the game. I wanted this to be very clear, from a point of accuracy, not weeb-ness. Yeah. Despite the black mist taking over Nippon, one village remains immune and free of the darkness. Kamiki Village, where the statue of Shiranui is located.

29:36 The camera stops in front of the statue, where our adventure is about to begin. A brightly colorful person in greens and pinks flies into the scene, and lands in front of the statue of Shiranui. She's introduced as the wood sprite, Sakuya. Oh, fun! She says to nobody in particular that this is just like the last time, when it was prophesied to happen. But this time, there wasn't a prophecy. Unless this is part of the prophecy, and the last one wasn't part of the prophecy. Either way, she's used up the majority of her wood sprite powers, thinking she wouldn't really need them anymore. So this next trick is probably going to suck for her.

30:18 She summons a giant disc in her hands. It looks kind of like a big saw blade. She says, Amaterasu, now is the time. Shine your light on this broken world. She throws the disc into the air, and the parts that look like the blades of the saw blade glow bright orange and red. And it turns out not to be blades, but flames. Oh! And the disc is a shield. The flame shield flies around and lands flatly on the back of the statue of Shiranui. A bright light shines, and the wolf springs to life. She's white with red markings and dark black lines for highlights.

30:59 And every single aspect of this game looks like a Japanese painting come to life. Oh, I love that. And even the outlines of the characters never stop moving. We are introduced to Shiranui's real name, the Okami, Amaterasu. And Okami is a strong wolf with the power of a dragon, kind of. That's cool shit. Like there's a lot of definitions for this word, but most involve a wolf in some way. Sakaya says that you are Amaterasu, our mother and origin of all that is good. She's so grateful to have you back. There's great evil afoot and your help is needed.

31:43 You stare at her and then lick yourself and take a nap. Oh, you're just a dog, oh. You will react as a dog to everything people say. Regardless of what they say. Is that the sprinkle of spray you were saying? Like, no, there's a lot of personality of the animal in this. Yeah, so much animal. Like, they thought, how would a dog react to this? This is not a noble creature who's like, I bear the brunt of the world. This is just a sweet little doggo. Right, and she goes, Amaterasu, look up. The sky is literally falling. Shit has genuinely never been worse. Can you please not take a nap right now? Then Sakiya starts itching herself.

32:23 She says it feels like something is inside her clothes and she starts shaking, trying to get whatever it is off of her. Is she on meth? Then she starts laughing hysterically. Oh, she's definitely on meth. And we get an overhead shot of her gigantic cleavage as a glowing green 3-inch something comes flying out of her bosoms. I don't like that you said something. I'd like you to be more specific. Well, it's a beetle of some kind. Oh. But it can speak. The glowing green speck jumps up and down indignantly as he was just trying to make that boring conversation a little more interesting. With boobies? Sakiya says, Bug, were you napping in my clothes again?

33:05 Again? I don't like that. No. And the bug goes, Bug? I've told you a dozen times before. I am not a bug. I am a wandering artist. He's a bug. And my name is Issun. Issun shows Amaterasu his art just to prove he's a great artist. It's a pen and ink drawing of Sakuya. And it's a very good drawing indeed. There's a lot of attention of detail. Of the boobs. Oh my god. Issun was not intended to be in the game, but they were having trouble writing a story with a silent protagonist. Oh yeah. Yeah, the team at Zelda always made it look so easy.

33:47 You don't feel alone when you're late. So they created Issun to be a flea-like companion that could be your guide throughout the game. A literal flea, though. Yeah, right. Holy shit. And they thought it would be funny to make him foul-mouthed and lecherous, just to keep people off guard and the interactions between Issun and you hilarious. I kind of appreciate that, because the players with silent protagonists, you could latch on and be like, hell yeah, let's be lavish as fuck, or be like, I'm taking my silence as I do not stand with this. You do get a genuine kind of blank slate. Issun goes, see, I made her even cuter than she is in person. Issun stands on your nose and goes, you look like that statue here in town, which makes you eat, Issun.

34:32 Good, I love this. Issun breaks free of your mouth and starts jumping up and down, pissed off, no longer glowing green, but now glowing red. His aura changed like a fucking mood ring. He says, you've asked for it now. He's going to use his prize sword, Denkumaru, against you. He pulls a needle out and starts to threaten you. Oh, that sounds darling. But a loud roar echoes through the land and Issun jumps on your shoulder all, oh God, what was that? Please save me. We're best friends now. Sakiya says that she's used everything she has to bring you back and that the rest of her powers will be going back into the earth, where they will manifest themselves in the fruit of a specific tree called a guardian sapling.

35:19 These saplings are scattered all over Nippon. With your special powers, exclusive to you, you can make the trees bloom, and Sakiya's power will protect the area from Orochi's darkness. She fades away as one of those saplings appears, with a single fruit on it, but the rest of the tree is dead. Issun says that you're supposed to have some kind of special power according to her. Maybe one of those powers can help you get that fruit down. There's also a doorway that's magically appeared at the base of the tree. So without any knowledge about these powers you supposedly have, you decide to head into the doorway. Valid.

35:59 Which leads you to a kind of astral plane. I think you'll start to see why I say Splash of Psychonauts in this game, because it's a strange as shit game. It's Psychonauts because you're on mushrooms, clearly. Yeah, the whole time. I've definitely walked through a tree into an astral plane before. Is that last time we were in Palm Springs? Totally get it. I'm fully on board. Here we're given some tutorial stuff like how to save our game, how to run and jump and attack and headbutt. But most importantly, bark. Oh, just like Stray? Just like Stray. That's perfect. If you can't pet the dog, you can be the dog. And if you can be the dog, you better be able to bark the dog.

36:41 Also, as you run, you notice a trail of flowers sprouting along in your wake. Your mere presence brings life. That's beautiful. You eventually come to a bridge that has been blown up. There's no way to cross it. Issun says it's time to use one of those Amaterasu powers you're supposed to have. Also, Amaterasu is a long name, so Issun decides he's going to call you Ammy from now on. Cool. And also, there's a lot of debate on how to pronounce Ammy. Oh. I'm going with the Japanese pronunciation. I'm pronouncing the letters the way a Japanese person would. Ammy is the way I'm going to say it. It's not Amy. It's not Ammy. I don't know. Amy.

37:21 Ammy is the way I'm going with it. I back you. So anyway, Ammy, you ever heard about the spirits of the brush? Well, it would take too long to explain anyway, so Issun chooses to just show you instead. I appreciate that he's impatient. So impatient. Oh, Issun is very impatient. The world stops and the color drains. The environment shifts from 3D to 2D, and it becomes just a painting on a scroll. A giant paintbrush descends on the scene and draws the parts of the bridge that are missing. Once the bridge is drawn, the world returns to 3D, color is restored, and the bridge is now brand spanking new.

38:06 That's fucking cool. Issun says this is one of the brush techniques of the gods. It's how they create and fix things for themselves. Issun has spent his entire life learning this single technique. And there's 13 in total, one for each of the gods of the brush. They used to all belong to a single god, but when that god died, the power got split up. But no mortal could ever master all 13 anyway. The best you could hope for is like two or three. So Issun directs your attention to the sky. He points to a constellation that has lost one of its stars. He tells you to use the brush stroke of the gods to draw the missing star, and it will reveal one of the gods to you.

38:50 That's a lot of environmental implications too. Right? There's a lot of tides that are fucked up because of this. Yeah. So now you are given the power to stop the world and draw on it. Through button holding and joystick moving, you control the paintbrush, and you can manipulate the world around you using it. But only if you've gotten the required power for it first. And honestly, I didn't find out until I was researching this, and I heard one of the developers say, it's supposed to be Amaterasu's tail. Oh, okay. That's kind of cool. So you add the star to the constellation, and it creates a flying dragon in the sky, named Yomigami.

39:32 Yomigami flies to you and says that it's been a long time since you last saw each other. It was the day you died, and the 13 brushstrokes were divided amongst the 13 gods. The dragon tells you that you must reunite the 13 brushstrokes if you hope to defeat Orochi and restore Nippon to the peace it once knew. With that, he grants you the first power, the power to restore things that are broken. If you encounter objects that are missing parts, you can draw what's missing and restore it, much like Issun did with the bridge. Issun is more than a little jealous that you picked up this new technique with these that he spent his entire life learning. You just got it handed to you. Cool, cool, cool, cool.

40:13 Yeah, but whatever. You continue onward through the astral plane and go through a door that brings you to another shrine. This shrine being the Cave of Nagi. Here, a 30 foot tall stone statue of Nagi, the legendary warrior of Kamiki Village, is standing triumphantly with his sword raised. The problem being, the sword is broken. Oh no. Time to use your new powers and you restore the sword, making this statue now closer to 50 feet tall. Hell yeah. The sword is pointing up, and when you look up, you see another constellation with missing stars. You complete it, and another god appears.

40:53 Can I ask you, when you're doing the paint strokes, physically what are you doing? Is it just kind of like pushing the stick around as the paintbrush flows, or? Yeah, you're using one of the L2 and R2 buttons. Oh cool. And so you're using the joystick to kind of guide the paintbrush. Tricky. All right, cool. When it moved to PlayStation 4 and 5, you can use the center tracker to guide your thumb over it. I love that. It does not work well at all. Oh, that's a bummer. Do not recommend it. I don't love that. Never mind. It was developed for PlayStation 2 initially. It's still for that. Yeah, they did the trackpad as a flex, but it's not the point. So this constellation is a tiny little mouse that rides around on a big ass sword, and his name is Takigami.

41:36 He's fucking sick. I love the idea of a mouse on a sword. I love all of these gods. Honestly, they're great. He grants you the power to slash things while in paintbrush mode. Oh, you know he parties. Issun sees you master another brush technique with ease and is starting to get suspicious. He says that Shidanui was the god that held all 13 techniques at once. Maybe you're a descendant or something because Issun already thinks you look just like her. He thinks it's actually pretty cool that he has Nagi and Shidanui reunited, even if you're not really Shidanui and this is just a statue. He appreciates the symbolism of the moment. Yeah, but hey, you might be, so Issun wants to come along with you because he wants to study how you keep learning these techniques so easily.

42:21 He's fascinated by you. On your way out, you have to use this new slash ability to clear some obstacles. As you exit the shrine, you are attacked by your first enemy. And here you learn how to battle. And it's an interesting battle system, too. You'll see the enemy in front of you on the world map, and they'll be represented by a giant flying scroll roaming the countryside. You can try and sneak past or confront them head on. If they're a lot stronger than you, they're gonna chase you down if you get too close. Once you engage in battle, a wall of magic goes up around you in a circle. Wall of magic. Yeah, and that's when you find out the type of enemy that you're actually facing.

43:01 And you'll always be in a battle arena like a JRPG, but it's more of an action RPG once you start battling, like Psychonauts or Kingdom Hearts. Oh, cool. You can even use the brush techniques in battle. Restore isn't very useful, but Slash sure as shit is. What if I just cut you in half, bitch? Yeah, and you do a lot. That's fucking cool. Once you defeat the enemies, you'll get money and prizes for how well you did in the fight. Now, with your new powers, you head back to the tree with the fruit on it. You cut down the fruit, and it hits the cold and gray ground beneath it. From the spot where it hits the ground, a shockwave of green and pink and purple and blue erupts and spreads.

43:44 The grass grows, the trees bloom, the color in the area is fully restored, and the dark and gloomy day becomes bright and alive around Kamiki Village once again. You descend into Kamiki Village itself, and the townspeople have all turned to stone. Oh, shit! Yeah, they're all frozen where they were standing. Whoa. Issun tells you that just a couple hours ago, none of them were like this. So whatever has happened, it happened very recently. Issun suggests that you go to the highest point in the area to get a better view of everything. Maybe from there you can see what's off. I appreciate him as a quest giver who is impatient because he's like, this is crazy.

44:25 Here's our next step and we're moving now. Like that is a Virgo. This game does move at a breakneck speed because so much happens. When you get there, you realize it's daytime, but the sun's not shining. Oh, no. Issun says that one of the brush strokes of the gods allows you to turn night into day. Wouldn't it be cool if you already knew that one? So you drop into paint mode, draw a circle, and the sun appears in the sky. You just have to draw a circle? Yeah, because you did already know that one. Oh, nice. Issun says that Amaterasu is the name of the sun god. Finally, Issun realizes you are the sun god Amaterasu.

45:07 So of course you already knew that one. Now he doesn't feel so bad that you're able to pick up these brush techniques so easily. He's like, I was too hard on myself. He's like, yeah, you're a fucking god, of course it's easy for you. He then says, the flowing brush is like music from the heavens. It's from a poem his grandfather once wrote in defense of the importance of art in the world. Issun says that all great artists must name their brush. And since you are mastering the techniques, you need to name yours as well. This feels phallic. It's a little phallic. Since you can't speak and can only bark, Issun names it the celestial brush. That's pretty. The two of you turn to head back into the village to see if the sun coming out had worked when an old man approaches you.

45:52 His name is Mr. Orange, possibly the great-great-grandfather of Orange Kid. I thought you'd go in the direction of Reservoir Dogs. Fuck me for that. He says that you look like Shiranui, but like a dumb version. But that story is like a hundred years old now. There's no way you're the same dog. That dude's like a hundred years old, right? Some enemies attack, and you leap into action, tossing the Mr. Orange to safety as you battle the attacking creatures. You take care of them, and Mr. Orange has retreated back to town. Good. Fuck you. Issun says that it's crazy. Mr.

46:32 Orange didn't even see you as the god that you are. Your powers have been so weakened. But this just makes Issun excited, because it means your adventure is about to begin. Time to head back to Kamiki to talk with the villagers and figure out what to do next. Hey, why were you guys stoned? Here you can do all sorts of things like talk with people, gossip, cause trouble, compete with another dog for a little boy's affection, you know, that sort of thing. Ultimately, you need to move on past Kamiki to get to the next brush technique. Problem being, there's a big boulder blocking the one road out of town. Can we slash it? No, unfortunately, you try it and it doesn't work. Ah.

47:13 A merchant who is trying to pass the boulder suggests you go back into town and fetch Susano, the current local hero. Also, this is another name that people debate how to pronounce. Susano is the best I'm gonna get. Sorry, everybody. I won't debate you on it. Go for it. He should be able to take care of this boulder no problem. Susano isn't just the current local hero. He's also a direct descendant of Nagi. Oh, it's like when they do a reboot of something and they're like, nah, it's definitely the main character's grandkids. Yeah. Issun says not to let his pedigree fool you. Susano's a lazy sack of shit who doesn't deserve his ancestry.

47:56 You go to his house and witness his laziness firsthand, as he never even knew anything about people turning to stone because he just slept through the whole fucking thing. Oh my god. That's not his problem if he sleeps through a stone coma. Right. But it's the middle of the day. He's fast asleep and you have to physically attack him to get him to wake up. Oh my god. And he finally does and stands up. On his back, we can see a big sword, the length of Susano himself, who is an impressive six feet in change. But the sword is carved out of wood. Poorly too, because there's still a branch with a leaf sticking out of it.

48:37 He says that he fell asleep while meditating. He was definitely meditating. Not that it's any of your concern. Shut up. Why are you waking the greatest warrior who's ever lived? Issun tells him that he needs to come with you to the boulder. Susano sees Issun and says, Oh, not you again. Oh, do people hate him? Yeah, he goes, stop bugging me, you bug. Clever. Well, as we already established, Issun does not like being called a bug. Yeah, stop bugging me, you bug is like the best he had. That's embarrassing. He just woke up. He is embarrassing. Yeah, and Issun turns red and he hops up and down all angry.

49:17 What's his resting color? Green. Okay. Issun tells you to grab Susano. We're taking him with us whether he likes it or not. You grab Susano and throw him on your back against his will, and he rides you out of his back and back to the boulder on the edge of town. And this looks insane too, because you're a normal, medium-sized dog. With a six-foot tall man. Yeah, exactly. But despite his massive size on your back, he turns into a rag doll and just kind of flops around as you run your destination. Oh, that's so awkward. I love it. Yeah. He's a floppy boy. He is so floppy. Susanoo is pissed thinking you wanted to bring him here to fight you, and he threatens you with his mighty sword, Tohinbaku, which means life ender in Japanese.

50:05 That's punk as fuck. Yeah, but it's a wooden sword. The merchant still waiting by the boulder says, Excuse me, Susanoo, before you engage in dog battle, would you mind removing the boulder so I can get moving? Before you punch this dog in the face, help me get to work. Yeah, he's like, you're Nagi's heir, aren't you? A boulder shouldn't really be a problem for you, should it? And Susanoo's all, Yeah, but I really want to kill this dog really quick. And the merchant's like, Where are you, though? And Susanoo says, Besides, that boulder's too big even for me. So he says he's gonna go and train up before he can move it. He's a punk bitch, I don't like him. Yeah, and then he fucks off back to his house to train. Issun says he's lived in this village for a long time and has never once seen Susanoo train before.

50:50 So you better go check on him. He out here lying. Yeah, and when you get to his house, Susanoo is shit-faced. Just downing a jug of sake. He tells you that it doesn't matter if he trains. That boulder's too big. He's training for the beer Olympics, honey. He was not specific. He says that if you get him another jug of sake though, he'll consider moving it for you. Jesus. And you complete a fetch quest, which you'll do a lot in this game because- You're a dog. You're a dog. You'll have to meet tons of characters, and many of the fetch quests have many fetch quests within themselves. And eventually you get him his replacement sake, and he's reinvigorated. He says that not many people know this, as it's a family secret.

51:34 But Nagi was fucking wasted when he defeated Orochi. Sake is a part of the family secret power. He then offers a demonstration on some nearby practice dummies. The more shit-faced I am, the easier this is, trust me. Yeah, it's the legend of the drunken master. That's great. He grabs his big wooden sword and dashes at the practice dummy, and absolutely nothing happens. But we're given the prompt to drop into paintbrush mode. And when you do, you use your slash ability to cut the dummy in half for him. So he thinks he's doing it, and you're just sitting there fixing shit for him? Yep, that's exactly what's happening. Ugh, the things we do to massage people's egos.

52:16 He then points at a big ass rock and says, and now we do it Susanoo style. He's calling his shots like he's playing pool. He is. And he says, I'm going to use my special move, exploding implosion. No. Those are antonyms. I know. He doesn't know that, but I know that. You use your powers to cut the rock in half, and Susanoo is like, holy shit, it worked. He looks up the hill at the boulder, and excitedly heads off to take care of it, now, quote unquote, knowing that he can. He points at the boulder and once again says, Susanoo style, exploding implosion. He swings at the boulder, and you're once again taken into paintbrush mode, so you can cut it into pieces.

52:57 You can cut it now. This time it works. The merchant runs up to Susanoo, who is confusedly looking at his wooden sword, wondering just how the fuck he did that. He's like, I am a god. The merchant is thankful as nobody thought he could actually do it. And Susanoo's all, yeah, I didn't think I could either. I appreciate that he lets the guard down for a second, and he goes, no, for real. That was fucking great. Well, he puts the guard right back up, and he's like, I mean, no, of course, I knew I could do it. I'm the great Susanoo. The merchant says he's so happy that the legend of Nagi's family is true and that Susanoo is here to once again defeat the darkness that has overtaken the land. And Susanoo's like, right. That's totally what I was gonna go do next.

53:38 That was my plan. Then Susanoo starts to believe maybe it really is his family's legacy that allowed him to defeat the boulder. Maybe he does possess this power after all. He's that TikTok audio of them going, am I better than everyone? So he dashes off in search of a monster to slay, laughing as he does. Issun sees this and he's like, shit, he has no idea that was us, does he? He's about to get himself killed. It's pretty funny, anytime you use your brush technique throughout the entire game to help a person, they think it's something they did and you never once get credit for it. I think it's funny.

54:18 It's hilarious. Because the dog is fully pulling the strings and is like, yes, you think you're special, go on now, live your life. But the argument becomes, Amaterasu is a god, so is she just answering their prayers? Yeah. Something to think about. No. No. She's just doing it for him. Definitively no. It's a battle mechanic. Yeah. I solved your riddle. Well, you decide to chase after Susano to keep him safe, and then a wisp of magic happens, and a woman in a dress with an ass cheek window descends from the sky. Oh! You can just see her full butt.

54:59 Wait, describe this to me. So it's a full length dress, and just like the top part of the butt crack is showing. It's like the skim's low back keyhole dress. What is that? It's exactly what it sounds like. Kim Kardashian built this dress with her hands. Built! And it has, it's a long full body dress, and on the back of it, there's a little keyhole where you're supposed to show your butt cleavage. Yeah, that's exactly what Sakuya the Wood Sprite, who apparently had died to resurrect you, is wearing. Yeah, Kim Kardashian. Wow. I think this is the first time we brought a Kardashian up. Ever.

55:39 Ever, yeah. I don't watch the show, and I don't follow them on social, so I don't know a lot. I'm surprised you knew about this. But that dress went so fucking viral of bitches being like, does Kim Kardashian really want me to show my butthole? I'm going to work. Guess I'm showing my butthole now. I work at a bank. That was a cocktail dress. Anyway, so Saki is not dead anymore, I guess. No, she's rocking skims. She's out here. Yeah, she says that she's been watching you grow and learn new powers and has been very impressed. And Issun goes, so what's my reward, babe? Which, let's just pause for a second to talk about Issun, because he, by today's standards especially, is pretty problematic at times.

56:25 Because he's a dirty little pervy boy. Yeah, to put it mildly, Issun is horny. I mean, we met him in cleavage. Yeah, exactly. And because of just Issun, this game is honestly the horniest game I've ever played. You've played several Leisure Suit Larry titles. I know. And we've covered, like, The Quarry. We've covered Until Dawn. We've covered so many horny as fuck games. And Issun puts them all to fucking shame. Wow. So, like, on a scale of, like, one to David Cage, this is, like, past the point of Heavy Rain?

57:07 Yeah, it really is. There will not be a single woman in this game that doesn't get some form of sexual comment from Issun. Wait, OK, I want to pose this one to you. How's it stack up against Lollipop Chainsaw? It's a different kind of horny, but it is still just everybody gets sexually harassed by Issun. Everybody. Oh, I don't like that, but I'm excited to hear someone else go through it in a fictional setting. At the same time, I mean, we're talking about the designers who put this ass window into the fucking dress before Kim Kardashian did. I appreciate that they, like, consent for fighting every time. Consent for the weird bug, like, negligee creature.

57:47 Who gives a shit? Yeah, so I'm not going to mention every time he's horny, because honestly, it'd be exhausting to do so. That's the entire fucking thing. That's his character. But just know, if we're talking to a woman, as soon as probably saying something awful on top of whatever I say he's saying. You know, humor's come a long way since 2006. It really has. Because I'm sure also of the era, this no one gave a shit. Yeah, no, they definitely didn't. This is very much a product of his era. Like we had said, this is like the Spike TV dude stuff. Oh, that is that time. Yeah, where they're like, titties. That's the joke. And you're like, what? It's a recurring joke, too.

58:27 I'll tell you. Oh, God. Saki responds to Issun's request for a reward saying, you didn't do shit, so you don't get shit, little bug. Angry Issun tells her he'll crawl back up that kimono if she doesn't stop calling him bug. This all goes ignored, and she goes on a long tale about how she's barely alive anymore. She was able to save enough energy to have a body, but that's about it now. Her power, though, is spread across all of Nippon, and there are those guardian saplings scattered that she's connected to. If you can rejuvenate those trees, they'll spring the rest of the area back to life. Rejuvenate enough trees, and all of Nippon will be protected from the darkness.

59:12 Issun says, All right, Furball, I guess it's time to go save the world. Bork, bork, bitches. You, however, were asleep for the entire conversation, and Issun has to pounce on you to wake you up. That's so tender. And when you wake up, Issun says, Let's go, Furball, because your adventure is about to begin. Issun tells you that the locations of the Guardian Saplings are conveniently located near areas where you can learn the rest of the brush techniques. Convenient. And then once you learn them, Issun can steal them from you. I do appreciate the honesty. Yeah, also you can save the world or whatever. From here out, you have a bit of an open world to explore, but different sections will be blocked by dark energies in an area, and in order to rid the area of dark energies, you have to rejuvenate the guardian sapling.

1:00:02 Until then, the people in that area will mostly be turned to stone, with the exception of a lucky few who maintain a safe enough distance from the dark energy. After the energy is cleared, you can complete side quests and explore the areas and villages along with their inhabitants at your leisure. Sounds so eerie to be walking through a set piece of like a bunch of stone people that are just comatose in the stone. That's so scary. Yeah, and it's lacking like a lot of color, and it's so dark and just dreary too. Do you have any connections to Pleasantville through this, or is that not really the same vibe? Oh, it does not relate at all, no. I mean, I get what you're saying, but it's not really the same kind of vibe. Totally get it. I'd also be remiss if I didn't tell you about the feeding mechanic.

1:00:44 For the dog? Not for the dog. You can't pet other animals in this game, but you can feed them. You carry little bags of feed for different kinds of animals. As you encounter them on your journey, you can stop to feed them, and they'll give you some praise in exchange. That sounds so cute. So you get to the next area, and when you find it sapling, you realize you have no idea how to rejuvenate it to begin with. So you set off to see if you can figure something out. As you explore, you eventually run into Susano, who is in a cave pushing against the wall to no avail. He sees you and says that you need to stop following him.

1:01:24 He's not taking on apprentices at this time. He's so hammered, he thinks you're trying to interview. Yeah, plus nobody is supposed to know about this cave. It's his special place to hide. I mean, train. It's my special place to hide. You use your brush powers again, this time to paint the sun onto a wall, and this somehow causes the wall Susano is leaning against to disappear. Behind it is more cave, which Susano runs down to find a good place to nap. A train. You chase after him and find him in a small cave room deeper inside. He's angrily yelling at someone in the room with him. Oh. You look over, and it's a big, goofy looking bear in a clown costume.

1:02:05 This sounds adorable. He's fast asleep while standing on a gigantic ball. Susano tells the bear to get the fuck out, and Issun goes, dude, it's just a sleepy bear. Leave him alone. Always be kind to bears. Yeah, but Susano doesn't care. And prepares his newest special attack. Susano style. Susano. Oh, no. Unfortunately, you have to use your brush powers to slash the bear. I hate this. Fortunately, it doesn't hurt him. Oh, thank god. I was so stressed out just now. He just falls off the ball and continues to nap. Susano laughs at the bear saying he has slayed the foul beast.

1:02:47 You moved someone while they were asleep, and you didn't even do it yourself. You fucking dork. Now he says he has to go slay the other foul beast in this cave, and he runs off laughing with confidence. The ball that the bear was on turns out to be the solution to a puzzle you have to solve. And in doing so, you were granted a new constellation to solve so you can obtain another brush technique. The first of three monkey gods, named Sakigami, god of flora, grants you the power Green Sprout. It will cause any dead plant to instantly grow and prosper. God, I wish I had that for my real life. Oh, it would make my job a lot more easy.

1:03:27 So now you have a power that can help you rejuvenate those guardian saplings all over Nippon. You head back to the withered sapling and use your Green Sprout power to revive it. The greenery spreads and the land is no longer cursed with darkness. From here out, that's mostly the game loop. But this loop will have a ton of variety as each time you'll have to complete a different environmental puzzle before you can revive the sapling. After a tree is revived, you can explore the area and do some side quests from the colorful cast of characters. And one side quest takes you to a pyrotechnist named Tama. He helps you find a constellation that will grant you a brush technique. And when you complete the constellation, the pig god Bakugami, god of explosive force, comes rolling in on top of a giant ball that happens to have a wick sticking out of it, as it's a firework shell.

1:04:22 He gives you the ability to create these firework shells with your celestial brush, so you can blow certain things up like walls or enemies. Oh, hell yeah! The power itself is called Cherry Bomb. That's fucking cool as shit. Yeah, you're like Bart Simpson. And you can make them big or small, and it's one of the coolest abilities in the game. I love a good explosion. Yeah, it's really great. The guardian saplings are not the only dead plant life you have to restore either. There's a lot of dead plants and trees throughout the land you'll have to restore as well. Most of the time, it's completely optional. Some of the time, it's completely required, and they do not tell you which is which. Surprise! But they do grant you some cool items and cutscenes.

1:05:03 For example, if you revive all the plants in Kamiki, you can meet Mr. Orange back at the tallest point in town. He does a break dance that, he says, will make all the cherry blossom trees bloom. In actuality, it's you once again using your celestial brush to actually make them bloom. Mr. Orange collapses, exhausted from his work, and from the tallest cherry blossom, we see a figure appear. It's Sakuya, still not actually dead. But now that the sun is out, she's in a bikini. She reveals to you another constellation, this time of the second monkey god, this one named Hasugami, another flora god.

1:05:46 He grants you the ability to create gigantic lily pads on water, so you can stand on them and use them as stepping stones, because while you can swim, you tuck her out really quickly and can drown. That's cool. So yeah, these lily pads make it possible for you to get to some locations that previously you couldn't. You follow a river through a cave using your lily pads, and through the other side, you come out onto the next zone covered in darkness, called Agata Forest. These names are great, aren't they? Oh, I love it. Being a forest, finding this guardian sapling takes a minute. By some anomaly of nature, this one is inside a cave. And when you restore it to health, it eradicates the darkness from the area, opening you up to some new quests.

1:06:31 You also get your next weapon type in the game, a rosary. And it's not like the Catholic rosary. Just gonna ask if it was a cross on a chain. It just means it's a string of beads that you'll use as a whip. I fully thought that only related to like the Christian rosary thing. That's interesting. This is the only other area that I've ever heard somebody use a rosary. So I don't know if this was just a translation situation. I actually didn't look into it. As you exit the cave with the newly restored sapling, just as you are about to explore the area, you hear a flute play. You see a person with long blonde hair wearing a pink kimono and an eagle's head for a hat. Oh, I'm sorry.

1:07:13 I'm not gonna let you get away with an eagle's head for a hat. Are you talking the way like Davy Crockett had a raccoon head? It's unclear because it's such a stylized game, whether this is a hat that looks like an eagle's head or if they are literally wearing an eagle's head for a hat. Okay, you definitely know it's a real eagle's head. First of all, yes, that's what we're committing to. Second of all, do you think it's taxidermy? Is it on top of the second thing? Is it stuff? I guess that's taxidermy. Is it raw? Is it live? Is it just hollow? I have so many questions. Well, it's like Issun is wearing a hollowed out beetle for a hat, so I don't know. That's just like cannibalistic as fuck.

1:07:54 That's some Mad Max shit. Right. Well, you see this person way up in a tree playing the flute. He says that when danger is on the air, the cries for a hero brings him running. He is Waka, the god's gift to man. Oh my god. Bonjour. Yeah, okay, I get it. This guy is definitely wearing this to, like, peacock, which is a technique used by the pickup artist. Yeah, maybe it's a peacock head, not an eagle's head. There you go. Yeah, it's a little on the nose, but I'll allow it. He recognizes you as a god, unlike everyone else you've encountered so far. He descends the tree to see what you're all about, because he's pretty impressed to be meeting a god. He said that he was mining his own business, hanging out near the entrance to the Moon Cave the other day, when he saw a mysterious figure come running from inside.

1:08:41 So Waka chased after the mysterious figure. To cover his tracks, the figure pushed a huge boulder to block the path to Kamiki Village, and that's when Waka lost them. There's always a god damn boulder. He wants to know if you know anything about that, and as he asks this, his flute turns into a fucking lightsaber. Oh! He introduces you to his weapon, named Pillow Talk. Oh, are there any good men in this? There are, yes. Okay, because we haven't met any yet. Pillow Talk, ugh. And then he says, Magnifique, let's rock, baby. Why is he Pepe Le Pew?

1:09:23 Because I know if he's not giving real French, he's giving cartoon French, you know? He's definitely cartoon French, yeah. And just to say, let's rock, baby, is actually an Easter egg line because they use it in every single one of their games. Really? Yes, they do. Let's rock, baby? That's what they hung on to? Yeah, it started in Devil May Cry. The two of you fight, but it's not a fight to the death. You wear Wakka down, and he says, enough. You fight differently from the last time. Issun and you are like, what, do we know you? And remember, we the audience know that Orochi is back, but nobody else has realized this yet.

1:10:04 As far as they know, the darkness just kind of came out of nowhere. Wakka finally reveals to Issun and you that the darkness covering Nippon is from the power of Orochi. When Orochi was sealed away, it was Wakka's job to keep an eye on the cave to make sure Orochi never escaped. He's kind of fucking up lately. Yeah, Wakka was called away to the capital the other day, and whoever snuck in must have known he would be gone. And Wakka returned just before all hell broke loose. Whoever let out the eight-headed dragon was in on Wakka's work schedule. I'm taking notes in my Sherlock binder. Once again, you fall asleep during someone's explaining what's going on.

1:10:46 Well, you're just a little guy. Yeah, but fortunately Issun was paying attention once again. Do you ever get belly rubs? You get them very often. God, you're a very good dog. And Wakka's like, look at you. You kind of suck now. Oh! Our fight was a huge disappointment because you should have finished me off with a quickness machete. Mach... fuck you. The fact that he's dropping uncomfortable French into this shit makes it so much worse. Oh, yeah. He is being very, like, direct and confrontational, and then to add his, like, fucking ho ho ho flare at the end is so condescending. I like to think of him as Cajun, actually. If you think of him as Cajun, it makes him a little cooler.

1:11:28 Okay, so he's, like, Gambit? Yeah. You need a lot more training if you think you're gonna take on Orochi again. As soon as I'll, fuck you, we got this, we still kicked your ass, just point us in the direction of the shadowy figure, and we'll take it from here, you dick. And he gives you a vague hint that he calls a prophecy about finding a giant log, and then says, au revoir, baby. It was le log, I must go find my prophecy in the log. And he leaps into the air and flies off on the wind. Asun hates cryptic clues, and he's complaining about it, but then realizes you've been asleep during all this, and Asun jumps on you to wake you up.

1:12:10 He's such a Virgo. Sorry, he's just like, oh, I know this person entirely. Now that you have more information, you go out to see if you can find out about this mysterious shadow figure, and also to find a log, apparently. Are you talking a wooden log? We're gonna find out. Oh, because it could be a log of data. This cryptic bastard. As you explore the forest, you find a kid standing by the water with a pole. He says his fishing line snapped, and now he can't fish anymore. So you use your celestial brush to create a fishing line, and now you can fish in the game. Rappero.

1:12:52 Because every game has fishing. Wow. You really gonna go there. Oh, it's a thing now. God damn it. You'll meet people from time to time with the same problem, but that's how you'll fish, because you're a dog. You won't have a fishing pole otherwise. You have to have a human companion to help you. And I like the idea that you need a human companion. Like a chaperone? Yeah, to your emotional support, human. But this kid with the fishing pole also has a missing dog. And this game having a lot of inspiration from the Zelda series. It has dungeons to explore as well. And the missing dog was last seen going into one.

1:13:34 They are puzzle dungeons, so it's not a lot of story going on. But the one here in the forest gets you another constellation featuring the final monkey god, Tsutagami, also a flora god. The power he gives you is a little complex to explain. Throughout the game up to this point, you'll have seen these flower blossoms sort of flying up in the sky. Think back to like the South Park game, when you saw things you knew would later become mechanics you can interact with, but they were completely meaningless to you until then. I haven't unlocked this yet, but I need to mentally remember to come back here. Yeah, this game has a fuck ton of things that are exactly like that, where you know it's there for a reason, but that reason hasn't revealed itself to you yet.

1:14:17 So the game gives you a lot of backtracking opportunity to be like, no, no, go back and like re-explore this. There's a ledge over here you couldn't get to before kind of shit. Yeah, they create a lot of replay value this way. I love that. And this is one of those strange things, and it's a flying flower blossom. The brush technique allows you to draw a line from that flying blossom to yourself. When you do, a vine shoots out from the blossom, wraps itself around you, and pulls you to the floating blossom. Sometimes that blossom blooms and becomes a platform. Sometimes it doesn't, and it just drops you. Often there's another nearby, and you need to do them in like a chain while falling in order to climb higher. Yeah, it feels like sometimes this could be a gamble.

1:14:59 Yeah. From time to time, you'll also encounter an object or even the occasional creature, and you can use the vines to lift up said object or creature. Ooh. You reunite fishing boy and his dog, and the boy says that he's fucked up a lot lately in the eyes of his father, so he wants to impress him by rebuilding a nearby bridge that had recently been destroyed all by himself. When you eventually make your way to this destroyed bridge that's supposed to be going over a raging river, you see that the kid's idea is to use his fishing pole to let people tightrope walk across the fishing line. Yeah, this kid's not very smart.

1:15:42 I mean, I appreciate the energy, but everything about this is stupid as fuck. It's still a D for effort, kid. But suddenly, your prophecy senses start tingling, and you look down the raging river, where you see Susano struggling to hold onto a gigantic log as it comes hurtling down the river. He got his log! The kid's fishing line is totally in the way, and it's going to catch the log. The fishing pole belongs to the kid's dad, and he refuses to let go of it, so you grab onto him in the hopes of keeping him from going flying. But instead, the log catches the line, and all of you are dragged onto it along with Susano.

1:16:26 God damn it. You go hurtling down the river, and in order to get out of this predicament, you use your new vine powers to stop the log, like your Tobey Maguire and Spider-Man 2 stopping the train. The log shoots back like a slingshot, and lands very conveniently as a bridge across the river. It was the perfect length and everything, huh? Yeah, it was. And you and your party lands with a thud right where you started. Except for Susano. He's nowhere to be seen. The fishing kid is like, Wow, look what I did. He totally is like, I made this happen. Totally stealing your glory once again.

1:17:06 He is made for management, honey. Well, weirdly, thanks to Waka, we now have a destination, the Moon Cave. But we also know we need to keep powering up and gain celestial brush powers on the way. Across the bridge, we get to the next zone covered in darkness called Taka Pass. Don't lose your head over it. You run into Waka again and he's like, so, how was the log ride? Issun asks Waka, if you're such a good psychic, how come you didn't predict Orochi, dumbass? And Waka seriously stares at you for like a full 30 seconds before going, sorry, did you say something, little bug? Wow, he's cunty.

1:17:48 That was really cunty. He still thinks you're not ready for the battle to come and wants to spar again to test your skills. After the fight, he reveals that the Moon Cave is actually very close. But before you get there, you're gonna have a dog gone hard time getting there. Does he stare you deeply in the eyes when he says dog gone? Oh, yes. Oh, I don't like any of the men in this game at all. And then he disappears saying au revoir, baby. Blech. He soon wants to head in the direction of the Moon Cave ASAP, and the two of you head in that direction. He is so driven. I love how impatient he is. He's like, you know, with other games, they're like, hey, we've got a minute.

1:18:29 Why don't you go loot around and like see what you can get? No, this bug is like, get the fuck on the road. After restoring the Guardian Sapling here, you get to explore Takapas a bit more. Takapas is a bit of a hub spot where it branches off to other areas and towns. Issun notices a windmill in the distance that isn't spinning, and he wants to know why. So you head to Kusa Village, where the windmill resides. When you get to Kusa Village, you see that it's not covered in the Orochi darkness. But there's still something strange here. It has a dark mist on the air. This is haunted in some other shit. Yeah. Completely unrelated.

1:19:10 Even stranger, your celestial brush doesn't work. Oh shit. Stranger still, you're no longer a god. You're just a normal white dog here. Issun says this place is just covered in pure raw evil. What that evil is, he has no fucking clue. We find out that the windmill runs everything in this town, from the water in the well to the cleanliness of the air. Since the wind stopped blowing, everything has gone to shit. You and Issun decide to see if there's anything you can do to help. You head higher into the mountains surrounding the town where the windmill is located. At the top is a palace where the local royalty oversees the area.

1:19:54 You rescue the princess, Princess Fusei, from some baddies, and she nervously asks if you would listen to her story of what has happened here. Issun says, oh, you just go ahead and talk, sweetheart. I'll listen to anything you need to say, girl. The windmill is actually a shrine, and the wind gods protect this area from dangerous monsters. Her family slash religious order called the Satomi Clan was sworn to protect the shrine from ever stopping its spinning. About a year ago, her husband, the High Priest, got sick with a common cold. The monsters sought as their opportunity to strike while he was weak, and they killed him while he was taking a sick day. The Crimson Helm, a creature most foul, took over the shrine and plunged this place into a windless hellhole.

1:20:42 Princess Fuse came to stop it, but was taken captive when she tried. Now, the only hope is to gather the eight Satomi K-9 warriors to stop the dreaded Crimson Helm. They have a whole parallel second shit happening. They've got their own fucking problems going. Yeah, and it's very parallel to the overall full Nippon situation. Yeah. Again, all these stories are actual folklore, so they're just kind of trying to string those together, you know? Yeah. The Satomi K-9 warriors haven't been needed in years, so they're mostly all pets now, having long retired. They're just pets now!

1:21:24 Oh! Yeah, and you have to run around and find them all to let them know they're needed once more. I'd love to think there's one just eating sticks of butter on the kitchen floor being like, this is the fucking life. I used to be a warrior. Yeah, so you head out to go and explore more of Nippon while looking for these dogs. As you explore Nippon, you occasionally see some Kami gates, and they are those passageways that are really sacred in Japanese culture, and they usually appear on paths towards shrines. And one of which you'll see has a path leading through it, and the path goes straight into a wall. A man can be seen pushing against the wall. As you run to the man and pass through the gate, the world around you changes, and you're suddenly in a new location.

1:22:12 It was like a magic portal. Going back through the gate again will take you back to Pataka Pass. If you go around the gate instead of going through it, you don't cross over to the other location, and you can talk to the man pushing against the wall. Oh, that's cool. And he says that he knows the passageway to Sasa Sanctuary is around here somewhere. This is one of the two times the game does this, but it completely catches you off guard because they at least repair you for the other time it happens. And Sasa Sanctuary is the home of a bird kingdom. Oh! The sparrow kingdom, to be exact. The king's daughter is missing, and he refuses to let you into his kingdom while she is missing.

1:22:53 And he's according to his underlings, who speak for him. He's just a gigantic fat bird that just grunts because doing anything else is just too much effort. Is he bigger than the wolf? He is bigger than the wolf, yeah. Is it a pretty sparrow that we're talking about? So we have this like oversized beautiful sparrow. No, it's a big fat brown sparrow. Oh, it's not even like pretty. No, it's really just like supposed to be this big lump of a bird, and then everybody's like, oh, the king is almighty. Hell yeah. The daughter is being held captive by some monsters possessing an elderly couple, and you have to kill the elderly couple to save the daughter. After you kill the olds, you can enter the kingdom. Kill the olds.

1:23:34 Once inside, you do some mini questing and you get another constellation. This one is named Nudagami, and it's a snake inside a glass ball full of water. That's fucking sick already. Yeah, it's like a sea serpent. It's the god of water, and they give you the power to manipulate water. You can't create it, but if you're near it, you can use your brush to create a path for the water to flow as like a jet. Ooh. You find another of the canine warriors here as well. And then you also hear about a celebration that's going to be thrown at Kamiki Village soon. One to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of Orochi's defeat. The timing's not great for that.

1:24:14 Yeah, but the town would love it if you could show up for it. And you agree that if there's time, you'll be there. You also find out that because Orochi is back, the town is being forced once again to offer a sacrifice. And the whole arrow thing is going to happen once more during the festival. Oh, shit, so he will fully show his face and be like, it's me, I'm the problem, hi. Yeah. I'm going to shoot down one of your houses and take one of you. Just right back to work. Like GLaDOS. I'm almost impressed that he didn't want more vengeance, you know, like they did lock him up and seal him in the fucking cave for a hundred years. Yeah, but he needs a sacrifice in order to get to full power.

1:24:55 Okay, so he's building up to the big revenge, got it? Most definitely. You'll run into people on occasion preparing for the festival too, and you'll have some side quests to help them prepare. One of which is Kushi, the sake master. She needs fresh water from a spring, and you help her, but are attacked by monsters. Spring water? How extravagant. She's like way high up in the mountains too, getting the best water. Susanoo shows up because he has a crush on Kushi. And he picks up his wooden sword to protect her, but he's also scared shitless. He's an idiot. He does his latest move, Susanoo style, passion strike.

1:25:36 You help him again, but this time, he isn't really trying that hard. When they're all dead, he stares at his sword and says, I knew it. It hasn't been me this whole time. Something is possessing my sword. Oh, yeah, that's the next logical thing. Curse you, foul demon. You won't control me. And he runs off. Still holding the sword? Yeah. He's like, I'm gonna take the problem with me, though. Susanoo's so dramatic. I fucking love him. I love that he exits most scenes by screaming and running. Like, that's his MO, and I appreciate it. After recruiting the final K-9 warrior, which happens to be the Fishing Kids dog from way back when...

1:26:20 Aw, it all came together... . you get your next constellation. This one is the rabbit god Yumegami, god of the moon, and your opposite, as you are the god of the sun. He gives you the power to turn day into night, so now you can completely control when you want it to be day and when you want it to be night. That's cool. You return finally to Princess Fusei, and it turns out that the dogs themselves are completely arbitrary. It's really the powers they possess that you need. The K-9 warriors all immediately lose their power when you enter the room, as each of their powers chooses you as its new master.

1:27:01 The entity is like, I would rather be in the big dog. Yeah. So now you have the power of eight other dogs at your disposal in order to defeat the Crimson Helm. When you enter the shrine, a door blocks your way. You find Sustano there, meditating, trying to open the door thinking that the dark forces controlling him are beyond it. Oh, he was actually meditating. I thought that was... He was meditating and then he slumped it over, snoring. Quote unquote meditating. No, he was genuinely meditating. The power of the canines is what's needed to open the door. And since you have that power, the door opens. Which of course, Sustano thinks he did.

1:27:43 And he runs through the door, not knowing that the Crimson Helm is what's awaiting him on the other side. Loves exiting a scene by running. Turns out the Crimson Helm was birthed from the pool of blood left behind when Orochi was killed a hundred years ago. So yeah, it's got some evil to it. Yeah, that's like the most evil and the most goopy. Gross. The shrine is a dungeon, and with some puzzle solving, you get through it. It culminates in you reaching the top of the windmill where you get another constellation. This one is Kazegami, a horse god and god of the wind. With this power, you become Jim Sakai's father.

1:28:26 You are the wind! Yeah, you now have the power to control the wind. You use this newfound power to get the windmill spinning again, and the dark, evil power of Crimson Helm is blown away. But before you can leave, you must first confront the Crimson Helm, who also, as it turns out, has the key to get you into the Moon Cave, which is called the Serpent Crystal. Crimson Helm is really just a beast creature, no personality or anything to offer, but it has the head of a dragon and the body of a bull. That's cool. And it's pure skeleton. That sounds cool as fuck. Wait, it got so much better.

1:29:07 And it catches on fire. This is cool as fuck. I was like, it can get cooler, trust me. You attack and fight, and as you were about to kill it, seven dragon heads made of lava come rising up out of the ground to protect Crimson Helm. Susanoo cries out, step aside, I'll handle this. Oh, you dumb dipshit, sit down. And Asuna's like, shit, better get your brush ready. Susanoo dives at each of the heads, dispatching the fire demons with his wooden sword. Oh, he's so stupid. With only Crimson Helm left, he calls in the power of the wind to spin him like a top for his newest Susanoo style, Wind of Wrath.

1:29:53 He flies at Crimson Helm like an out-of-control helicopter, slicing him into pieces. Susanoo again looks at his sword and says, he knows that it was not he who did that. There's no way. He curses the gods, asking them to stop mocking him. He has really bad main character syndrome, and I know for a fact he's not the main character of this game. Yeah, he didn't ask to be Nagi's descendant. He never wanted to be the hero. He just wanted to live a simple life of leisure. I mean, we all agree he should have been swallowed, but what the fuck? Well, he begs the gods to remove this burden from him, to let him put this life of heroism down.

1:30:40 He's so lazy. With these words, the shadow of one of those flaming dragon heads rises up out of the crimson helm. It floats in front of Susanoo, and he clutches the sides of his head and screams out, No, not that, shut up! And he runs out of the shrine in terror. Oh shit. The dragon head rises into the air and fades away as you look on helpless to stop it. You look up to see the serpent crystal, ready to grab it when you hear, Bonjour! Oh god damn it. And there's fuckface Waka, holding the serpent crystal.

1:31:20 Sacre bleu. He's all, thanks for the help mon ami. And leaves you with another prophecy that you will rendezvous with a sweet little thing. Au revoir baby. You leave the shrine and meet back up with Princess Fusei. She thanks you for restoring the wind and you depart to go back to Kamiki village for the 100 year anniversary festival. Thank you for turning the weather back on. It's been a real clutch for us. Yeah, it's real helpful. Thank you. When you arrive in Kamiki, the entire town is outside Susano's house and they're fucking pissed. Oh. Mr. Orange says that Susano drank all of the special sake Kushi brewed for the event.

1:32:04 Wow, that's a dick move. It's a special recipe called the Eight Purification Sake to represent the eight heads of Orochi. Yeah, and like, we had to go get some fancy ass water and shit. Susano shouts from inside that he doesn't care. He needed a drink and it was the first one he saw. He's the fucking worst. Also, Kushi brewed like a hundred gallons of this sake. Truly enough to feed a village. Yeah, and Susano drank all of it. Does this remind you of her wedding? This sounds like Andrea's bridal party at our wedding, which did the exact same fucking thing. They drank all of the beer for the wedding reception before we even got married.

1:32:47 While we were getting ready, they drank all the beer for the wedding reception. The bridal party was a little rowdy, I'll admit. But we had fun. We had beer for 75 people. You had five people in your bridal party. Yes, so the math was math-ing in terms of a couple beers per person divided by a much smaller sample size of a bunch of women I know. Oh, goodness. You Oakland girls know how to go hard. We go hard. We don't go home. That's funny. But I mean, that's to say it's possible. I understand where he's coming from. Well, Issun explains that it's not just any special recipe. The reason Shiranui was able to defeat Orochi was because she got Orochi drunk on it first.

1:33:32 It's the only substance in the world that could do that. Wow. Without it, there's not much hope of defeating Orochi. It's literally monster moonshine, bitch. Yeah. From the house, we hear Susano. He says that all of this, it's his fault. Yes. Orochi is going to win, and it's all his fault. I bet it is. I believe that. And Mr. Orange is like, no shit, you drunk, you drank the special sake. And Susano says, no, you don't understand. He summoned it. He summoned it. I was the one who awoke Orochi. Obviously. Fuck you. I was the one who tried to pull the sword from the shrine.

1:34:14 I brought this hell down on us, and then I ran home and hid because I was scared. Yeah, and he's a bitch. He didn't believe the legend of Nagi was true. That's why he went for the sword. He wanted to show the world that the legend Nagi was a lie. He was a truther? Yeah, but it wasn't a lie. The legend was true, and for some reason, the gods are helping him fight back, no matter how hard he tries to lose. Because he wants to lose these fights, he feels he deserves to be punished for unleashing Orochi. I do too. But instead, he keeps on winning. Suddenly, a roar is heard across the land.

1:34:55 An arrow appears in the sky and launches itself at the village. The town panics as Orochi selects the person to be sacrificed. It flies and lands in the roof of Kushi, the sake master. Oh no, that's like the most helpful person in the village. And the town looks at her like, sorry about this. And she says, fuck that. They all really looked at her and gave her a damn that's crazy. Susano, I know you have a crush on me. So you're gonna save my ass. Do you understand me? Hell yeah. She runs home and comes back with a jug of glowing golden sake.

1:35:35 Oh. She says this is her newest creation. A sake twice as strong as the ape purification sake. Sure, it was the only sake that could do the trick a hundred years ago, but this sake that she calls Thunder Brew is far superior anyway. Thunder Brew is so punk rock. And she runs off to go offer the sake to Orochi herself in the hopes that Susano will chase after her. Which honestly, good for her. She's dead if she's a sacrifice. So she might as well risk her life in order to save it. No, this bitch is smart. She's proactive. She's like, I have been working on some shit just in case for this very specific reason.

1:36:16 Wow. No, she's cool as shit. Unfortunately, Susano is too scared, and he doesn't chase after her. Oh, he's the fucking worst. But you're no yellow belly, so you chase after her. You catch up and she says that she knows Susano will follow. He just needs time. But she is still determined to get Orochi drunk in the hopes you can defeat him like you did a hundred years ago. You offer her a ride, and she hops on your back's side saddle, and the three of you ride off to the moon cave. I like that. You arrive just as Waka is about to use the serpent crystal to open the doorway. He says he sees the rendezvous with the sweet little thing is going as planned.

1:36:57 Issun calls him a half-baked prophet, despite all his prophecies so far coming true. Waka smiles and uses the serpent crystal to open the gateway to the moon cave. As soon as it opens, the shadow of a dragon's head comes flying through the doorway, and it snatches Kushi off your back. In doing so, it also pulls you past the threshold of the doorway with it. As soon as you cross, a magical barrier rises once more, locking Waka out and you in. Issun yells at Waka, saying he knew this was going to happen. And Waka says, actually, he thought only Amaterasu was going to get pulled in.

1:37:40 The rules say only one other being can come across it with the sacrifice. Like, citing the fucking rulebook on demons and shit. But Issun's just a bug, so he must not count as being anyone. Besides, weren't you planning on going in there anyway? Before he departs, he has another prophecy. Hey, look, the moon! Au revoir, baby. As we run into the depths of the cave, we see that Susano did in fact follow, and is at the mouth of the cave as well, scared and hiding just out of sight. And don't worry about that rule Waka just said about only one other being out loud, because it won't get addressed.

1:38:20 You go into the cave, and it's another dungeon with puzzles, including one where you have to use your celestial brush to paint a mask you can wear to trick the guards of Orochi into allowing you to continue through the dungeon. That's cool. And you can actually paint on this, like, piece of paper, and it'll appear on your mask. You know you're on the right path because at one point, you find the jug of Thunderbrew, and decide to pick it up as it's still full. Orochi has a ton of minions in this dungeon, but with your mask, they think you're one too. And you have to help them prepare the official sacrificial meal for Orochi by gathering ingredients for sacrifice stew.

1:39:02 While in this dungeon, before confronting Orochi, you manage to obtain another constellation, your ninth so far. This one is Moegami, a mix of a chicken and a phoenix, and it's smoking a fat bowl. It is the god of fire, and it gives you the power to control fire much the same way you control water. You can't create it, but you can draw a stream of fire from any fire source you find. That's cool. You help finish off the sacrifice stew, and ring the dinner bell to summon Orochi for supper. You ask to go to the dinner hall, and they give you the point of no return.

1:39:42 Are you sure you want to move on to the final boss speech? When you select yes, despite not having collected all 13 brush techniques, the sooner you decide that you are ready to take on Orochi, you enter the throne room, and it's a hellscape of jagged rocks and a fiery background. In the center is the shrine where the sword once plugged the hole, keeping Orochi sealed away. In the center of that shrine lies Kushi, out cold but breathing. You run down to the shrine, but just before you approach it, a circle around the shrine cracks as if it had just turned a quarter of an inch. Kushi awakens as the whole shrine lifts in the air.

1:40:26 Up from under the shrine comes eight snake-like scaly dragon heads as Orochi emerges for the first time. I hate it. Orochi sees you and says, It's been a hundred years since you imprisoned me here. How is it possible you're back too? Issun says, Hey, catch! And throws the thunderbrew at one of the heads. It catches it and chugs it down without question. You know that you're being approached for a fight, and the opposing team is like, Would you like a snack? And you say, Absofuckinglutely. It's an offering of your last meal.

1:41:08 It's not. Whatever. Well, we see Orochi's eight heads begin to glow a bright yellow as the thunderbrew works its way through its system. Assun says, The time is now, and the world drops into paint mode. With a swipe of your brush, you slash across the eight throats of Orochi, and nothing happens. Orochi has a magic shield up, and it makes the celestial brush useless. Aw, fuck you! The eight heads turn on Cushi, and descend on her with bared fangs. Just as one goes to strike, Susano shouts out, Hold it right there, vile serpent!

1:41:50 Dork. Susano appears, no longer dressed as a bum, but as a true warrior. But still with a wooden sword. Cushi cries out in excitement, saying she knew he'd come. Ahead of Orochi's faces Susano. Orochi says, finally, the descendant of Nagi has arrived, and he can get all of his revenge out of the way in one go. With the blood of the Nagi family shed, it will unlock Orochi's true power, as was prophesied a hundred years ago. Assun's like, hold up, if Susano dies you get stronger?

1:42:31 Where is that prophecy written? He really said, can we check the rulebook? Orochi ignores Assun and explains to Susano that he doesn't need to die to fulfill the prophecy. He can also swear allegiance to Orochi, and in doing so, that will also fulfill the prophecy. If you want to keep your life, you could turncoat. Yeah, and Orochi will share that power with Susano. Assun is like, shit, Susano sucks, of course he's gonna want more power. Yeah, and he's lazy. He wants the easy out. He wants someone to just hand him shit. And Susano says, You're right, Orochi, I do seek power. The power of the Nagi bloodline.

1:43:13 How dare you try and hurt an innocent woman? Oh, I had no faith in him. I, Susano, the world's greatest warrior, will destroy you where you are, you vile serpent. He's gonna die, isn't he? Issun looks over at the tipped over jug of sake and realizes it wasn't the Thunder Brew. It's the Eight Purification Sake after all, and it's pouring into the cracks around the base of Orochi. The real battle with Orochi begins, and you use all of your brush powers to defeat it. Specifically, you use your water powers to guide the sake into the mouth of Orochi, getting it drunker and drunker.

1:43:55 Oh, that's clever. Then, one by one, you beat each of the eight heads into submission. Susano asks for your help, because in the original story, the moon was shining bright, but right now it's not. So you draw the moon and cause it to shine down on the scene just as it had 100 years ago. Susano lifts his sword high above his head, and the wooden sword catches the light of the moon and turns to solid gold. Whoa! That's fucking sick! This time, it's time for Susano's style, Blade of Truth.

1:44:36 Susano charges each head, and you help him with your slash paintbrush technique. He slashes seven of the eight, and Issun says, Let's take this last one down, Ammy. And you charge at the final head, and Susano says, No, down boy, I don't need your help with this one. Okay, nerd. Now for the ultimate Susano style, Celestial Cleaver. Susano leaps 30 feet in the air, and swings his sword down on Orochi, and with not a single drop of ink on our part, slices Orochi's final head and body, hot dog style, into two pieces.

1:45:21 When he stands up from his superhero landing, Kushi lands in his arms. That's fucking cool as shit! He apologizes to her for putting her in danger. She tells him to stop being so serious and to laugh with her, because he won. The bad times are over. Now is the time for happiness. And the two of them laugh and laugh together, happy to be safe and free. The dark power surrounding the area evaporates, and we see eight shadows fly off and away. As a reward for defeating Orochi, you receive a new weapon. Now you have a sword to go with the shield and rosary beads.

1:46:01 It is the reborn version of the original sword that sealed away Orochi, which Orochi ate when it was resurrected, in order to prevent it from ever having to get put away again. The scene pauses and turns to black and white. We get a narration saying that, 100 years after the first defeat, Amaterasu and Susano were able to once again defeat the evil Orochi and save the world from its darkness. The sword that was gifted to Amaterasu would go on to help her on her many adventures to come. But for the meantime, Kamiki Village celebrated a new peace. Not realizing, those eight shadows that flew away from Moon Cave were about to bring a darkness they had never seen before.

1:46:48 Oh, shit! Don't celebrate yet! Come on! Because now, our adventure is about to begin. Let's fucking go! You didn't think it would be that easy, did you? 14 hours. I hit this point in the game at the 14-hour mark. And you're like, this was a great run. Hell yeah. I was happy. I was celebrating that I had just beaten it. And then I saw the words, this is just the beginning. And you went, of a franchise? Because what the fuck? The game's over. I was thinking they were joking, and I checked the website, how long to beat. And this was at the 14-hour mark for you? Yeah. Okami clocks in at 35 to 40 hours.

1:47:35 That was just the prologue, Goombas. Walk me through your emotional journey. I was flabbergasted, as was absolutely anybody who's ever played this game. You're like, I defeated the evil, what the fuck? Remember at the beginning when I said this game has multiple endings? This is what I meant. Oh, multiple ending points of the natural story. Like the Lord of the fucking Rings. This is not the last time this will happen. So anyway, honestly, Susano, not that big of a character for the rest of the game. Really? We just kind of move on from that? Yeah, his heroic arc, pretty much over. He just kind of fucks off to Kamiki Village for the rest of the game.

1:48:16 Okay, thanks dude, bye. Yeah, we've only just begun to explore Nippon. We've seen a fraction of it at this point. And remember, we only have nine of the thirteen brush techniques, and we just got a new weapon. This game is far from over. And as frustrating as this may sound, the best is yet to come with twists and turns and adventures you're not going to expect. We are taken to a scene without any of our heroes. We see a crystal ball, and in that crystal ball, we can see Waka. A voice calls out to Waka, saying Waka needs to return to the capital at once. Waka says that while Amaterasu may have beaten Orochi this time, next time won't be so easy.

1:49:00 And the scene fades away and goes back to the Moon Cave entrance, where you are coming out of the mouth. You look in the distance and can see that Kamiki Village, already prepared for a ceremony, is partying like the Ewoks as they celebrate the defeat of Orochi. You can interact with the townsfolk as they get drunk on sake, they shoot fireworks in the sky in the shape of you, Issun, and Susano. That's so cute. You eventually come upon the tree that houses the remaining spirit of Sakuya, who is still in her sexy bikini, which Issun can't help but comment on how hot she looks. She opens the portal back to the astral plane that you entered at the start of the game.

1:49:40 That's where we got our first bunch of powers and where that Nagi statue was. Yeah. You head back to the Nagi statue, and you find Susano and Kushi there giggling and flirting. Kushi starts to realize, you're no ordinary dog, are you? Good things only seem to happen when you're around, which means you must be a god sent to protect. She promises to keep your secret. She knows it would probably be really annoying if everyone knew. Susano says that you are now his best friend, and tells you that he also renamed his new golden sword to the Susano Blossom. They both tell you to take care of yourself, but get the fuck out. We're done here though, right?

1:50:20 Yeah, they came to this distant cave on the astral plane to be alone, thank you very much. Issun says anyway, he still wants to learn the last four brush techniques and tells you that you should go to the capital city next because there are bound to be shrines to gods there. As you exit Kamiki, Sakuya appears one more time. She says that when Orochi was defeated, she didn't feel the evil leave. She said it felt more like it shifted. She's not sure what that means, but just be careful out there. And Asuna's like, baby, don't you worry your pretty little head, we got this girl. She's like, cool, but seriously, there's some evil out there still, and most of it is coming from the capital.

1:51:03 Just keep your wits about you while you're there. Because she also noticed eight shadows traveling toward the capital city. That's not a good number here. Yeah, she seems to be the only one who realizes this shit ain't over yet. You traveled just outside the capital city. There's a drawbridge over a deep chasm, and it's currently raised. Turns out, a sickness has swept through the city, and the bridge was raised to stop the sickness from spreading. And just a fair warning, considering this game was made in 06, the parallels to COVID are disturbing in this section. One of the guards is an expert archer who is bored from his guard duty. To pass the time, he fires arrows across the chasm into a giant cannon for practice.

1:51:47 You think just shooting arrows loosely into the sky would be a little triggering? Right? If you use your fire powers to light an arrow on fire as it flies across the chasm, it makes the cannon explode, and it causes the drawbridge to lower. That's cool. The guard is like, shit, and he runs off scared he'll get blamed for it. You cross the bridge, and as you enter the outskirts of the capital, you recognize a darkness spread across the land. Issun is like, what the fuck? Even with Orochi dead, his darkness still affects the world? That sucks. Well, I guess we better find a guardian sapling nearby. You hunt it down and revive it, and the area you're in is the next hub zone.

1:52:30 It leads to the capital as well as a few other locations, including a sunken ship. Oh, that's cool. Which Issun says he's never seen that there before. We meet a person who says that the ship was wrecked by a water dragon in the area. It used to be a servant to the people of this area, but one day it started going berserk and attacking anything that came into its waters. It's probably not foreshadowing. You finally head into the capital, called Seon City. Issun was expecting this to be a bustling, busy city, but instead it's a gloomy and boring one. The streets are empty and there's a haze on the air, making everyone mopey. You explore a bit and you see that the canals that line the city are all empty and dry.

1:53:12 The natural spring that supplies the water is tapped. It doesn't have any water left. And the people whose job it is to figure this out are too depressed to think or act on it. Oh no! You do help get the spring flowing again, but you still can't get the mist to clear. You head to the castle at the center of the capital city, and Issun says Queen Himeko lives here. She rules all of Nippon. Issun says you can't trust royalty. So even though he doesn't know much about her, he knows he can't trust her. Not a great start. What he does know is this mist is making people sad and sick, and she's not doing a damn thing about it.

1:53:53 So he wants to know why. As you head into the castle grounds, you notice that the mist that hangs over the city is heaviest around the castle itself. So you figure this is all connected somehow. Just before you enter, we hear, look what the cat dragged in. A dog? As we see fuckface Waka standing in the way. Ugh! He asks, what took you so long, ma chérie? I'm gonna punch him. Issun questions why every time something bad happens, Waka is nearby. How do I get him banned from Duolingo? Well, Waka says that he was gonna ask why we keep following him. Besides, why are we worrying about who's following whom when there's a depression mist over the city?

1:54:36 Literally, depression is taking over the city. Get over yourselves. He tells you that even the strongest defenses have cracks, even if they're the size of a needle. He says it's more of a tip than it is a prophecy. Au revoir, baby. Ugh, I fucking hate him. I knew you would. That's why I threw in the fuck face. Every au revoir baby really just chips away at my sanity. It's not fun for me. You attempt to enter the castle, and you approach a woman in a library full of scrolls. She appears to be the palace executive assistant named Priestess Rao.

1:55:17 She stands to introduce herself, and she is extremely busty. Titties. She has a foot of cleavage, and when she moves, her boobs take a few seconds to stop swaying regardless of the effort. The physics they had to code into this. Right. This sweet little game about exploring the outdoors as a god dog is pretty great. Well, Issun takes one look and says, holy cow, this sister's stacked. Oh my god. She says, it's cute. You have a little fairy with you. Oh, she didn't call him a bug.

1:55:59 That's actually progress. Right. And Issun goes, for the record, it just looks like I'm staring at your melons. And she's like, what's that little fairy? What melons? Melons. Melons. Issun goes, never mind. What's going on with the mist and the water dragon and the queen not doing shit about it? And she explains that this is all relatively new. A few days ago, a shadow descended over the coast. The day after they heard about the defeat of Orochi. Then this mist appeared, and the queen has been sick this whole time. Or else she would have done something about it. She sends you on a quick fetch quest in order for you to prove that you are Amaterasu, the slayer of Orochi, as Issun is saying you are.

1:56:41 You try to sneak into the palace, but the guards shoo you away. So you try a side entrance, which is also guarded by a couple of bumbling dinks. They talk about the emperor, not the queen. They say that he got sick the other day, and ever since he got sick, this mist fell on the city. Doctors have tried to visit, but he sends them away acting stubborn. Also, why did he lock up that poor innocent girl Kaguya? Oh, shit! A mystery for another time, because you just need to figure out the mist shit right now. I mean, I'm also invested in this. Nearby these guards, you find a small crack in the exterior of a palace wall.

1:57:23 From the crack, mist can be seen spewing out of it. But it's just a crack far too small to fit into. Another mystery for another time. You return to Rao, and she tells you that the queen isn't abandoning her people. She's actually praying for their safety. It's really hard work, and quite frankly, exhausting for a politician to offer thoughts and prayers. All the way off. She tells you that the sunken ship off the coast has a treasure on it called the fox rods. The treasure can be used by the queen to amplify her thoughts and prayers, and that will dispel the mist from the region.

1:58:10 Issun's like, yeah, that sounds super believable. Sunken treasure that turns prayers into action. Sure, lady. Too bad my boss here will never go for that. But Ammy does agree to go, because sunken treasure and magic powers, of course. Yeah, obviously. You use your moon powers to fuck with the tides surrounding the boat. Oh, clever. And you cause a whole, like, Ten Commandments Universal Studios water wall around it, and it puts the boat on the now dry ocean floor. The ship itself is a dungeon, so you puzzle solve and fight your way through it. The big, and I do mean big, difference here, being that Rao rides on your back with this one. Oh. Bouncing along boobily as she is the only one who knows where the foxrods look like.

1:58:53 That's what happens when you don't have women in the writers room. You explore the entire ship, but the foxrods are nowhere to be found. Instead, you find a different rare artifact. It's called the lucky mallet. It's used to shrink anything to a teeny tiny size. Immediately, you think of that crack in the palace wall. You leave the ship and decide to swim back with Rao on your back. As you're swimming, she gets really nervous. Glancing around and asks you to go faster. Oh. Issun says that if she needs to go to the bathroom, just go ahead, Ammy won't mind. Just pee, pee yourself on the dog.

1:59:34 But that's not the issue. She's scared of the water dragon patrolling the area. The one that sunk the ship to begin with. Oh yeah, okay. Right on cue, the water dragon appears. And Rao is like, bye bitch. And she jumps off your back and sprints across the top of the water to safety. Oh. Because apparently she could do that. She got so scared it initiated Jesus Protocol, where this bitch sprinted across water. That's fucking cool, I'm not gonna lie. Jesus Protocol. You manage to make it back to land yourself as well before the dragon can catch you. You head back to the palace wall with the hole in it, and the lucky mallet comes to life to shrink you down.

2:00:17 Thank Issun asks, are you ready to get hammered? And when you are, the lucky mallet waves over your head as you shrink down, down, down, and fly through the crack in the palace wall. You come out on the other side, the size of an insect, somewhere in a palace garden. Issun says, man, you should see the look on your face right now. And you look over, and you are now the same size as Issun. Oh, he didn't shrink, just you? You just shrank. That's funny. This entire time, Issun has just been a little glowing green sprite. His body has always been a black void, and his helmet is just that of the hollowed out beetle that I mentioned.

2:00:57 But now that you're the same size, Issun is a young man. This is cool. He's dressed kind of similarly to Susano, honestly, just kind of in a purple jumper. Oh. But he's also wearing a green cape. And honestly, seeing him, you realize he's probably not horny, necessarily. He's a fuck boy. He's not like a pretty boy fuck boy. He's more like that effortlessly cute 19-year-old guy your parents warned you about. Boyish charm. Yeah, Issun can get it. You look at him confused, and he gets mad at you because you don't recognize him. Come on, who else is this handsome? Ha ha ha ha. He jumps on your back and rides you like a steed. And the two of you make an exceptional fighting team as you unlock some new attacks with him on your back.

2:01:41 You have to be careful running through the garden though, because feet will randomly land in front of you as people wander the palace garden. While exploring, you see through a window a crying girl. She's clearly in a prison cell, and we may have heard about her earlier. Oh. She asks if someone is there, and Issun says that her crying sounded fake. What's going on? That's a shitty thing to say. Hey, you seem really like you're making this up. Are you lying? What's up with that? It's one thing for a woman to cry, but when you can hear it through the door, you know they're just doing it for the attention. Oh my God. I need you to say that that's a BoJack quote.

2:02:22 That's a quote from BoJack Horseman. I'm sorry. To not sound like the dumbest, cuntiest sack of shit. Yeah, no, terrible person says that line, too. She says it wasn't fake crying, but that she is just a bamboo sales rep. What? I'm not crying. I have a terrible job. Her name is Kaguya. She came to the capital to sell some bamboo, and the next thing she knew, she was being thrown in jail for no fucking reason. Oh shit. Even worse, she offers up extra information that nobody requested, and says that she has no idea where she's from or who her family is. Oh no. And assumes like, well, you're kinda cute, so I guess we'll help you out.

2:03:07 I know this little white fur ball next to me doesn't look like much, but he's Amaterasu, the sun god, so we've got this. He's the sun god, we're good. You continue into the palace and eventually find a jug of sake. To you, it's ginormous. From the jug is coming a calming white mist compared to the black and green mist outside. You go inside and Issun says that it's like all his cares in the world were lifted. You use your new wind powers to push the happy mist out of the jug, and you go flying out with it. This causes a constellation to reveal itself, the first in a very long time now. This one is from Kasugami, a stumbling drunk sheep, and god of the veil of mist.

2:03:54 He gives you the power of mist, which is way too vague a name for a power that slows down time. Oh, I wouldn't have guessed that, I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, this is a nonsensical power to go with this one. Sometimes you'll encounter an obstacle blocking your path that moves too quickly for you to pass, but now you can slow it down and pass by without issue. And yeah, you need to do that in order to get further into the palace. You eventually find the emperor himself. He's fast asleep, and the evil mist is coming directly from his open mouth. Oh. His breath is so foul, it's ruining the entire city.

2:04:34 What is wrong with men? Itsun says, there's clearly something evil in there. And your only choice is to dive in. Is the bad guy of this game gingivitis? It's gingivitis. I thought it was the dragon. Now I think it's gingivitis. Turns out there really is something evil living inside of him, and it is responsible for the mist over everything, and it's called the Blight. So you have to kill it in order to dissolve this mist once and for all. Once you do, a black shadow escapes the emperor. Oh. Resembling the form of Orochi. And it flies away from the city and into the distance.

2:05:17 It's probably nothing. Issun looks at you as you both realize your adventure is about to continue. God damn it. The evil mist is finally lifted, but you still find yourself inside the emperor's gut. Issun says that you could ratatouille the emperor from here inside his stomach. Ooh. And make him go release that kaguya girl, the one being held captive. The hot one. Issun jumps around inside the tummy and suddenly he's in control of the emperor. Oh, he actually was like, kidney, liver, found the brain, let's go. Yeah. We're taken to a view of the emperor, stumbling around like he's three kids in a trench coat.

2:05:58 Is it giving a little being John Malkovich? A little bit, yeah. It's just like stumbling around and trying to move and like awkward in the body. Oh, okay. As you stumble around, servants stop you to be like, hey, hey, hey there, emperor. Look at you up and walking. Way to go, sir. You're the best. You make it to the cell and Kaguya is scared that the emperor himself is there. That must mean those two little ones she sent off must be dead. And Issun says, yes, they are. Now make me 100 dumplings. Oh my God. Issun starts laughing and Kaguya recognizes his voice. You free her from her cell and tell her to tear ass out of there as you plan on doing the same.

2:06:43 She takes off running and Issun makes the emperor sneeze. Causing him to spit you out. Oh, clever. The sneeze is so strong, it forces you to return back to your normal size as well. He sneezed you so hard, you grew. It's impressive. And the emperor is like, well, thanks for saving me and the city. Talk to my wife about the water dragon though. I don't know shit about it. He also knows nothing about Kaguya or why she was taken captive. You run into Kaguya just outside the palace and she reiterates that she knows nothing about her origins. She just remembers waking up in a bamboo forest one day as a child, and a bamboo farmer found her and raised her.

2:07:27 The only thing she remembers is seeing a royal crest. Her adoptive father, whom she calls grandfather because he's very old, is creatively named Mr. Bamboo. He works out of Sasa Sanctuary where those birds live, and Kaguya goes to Sasa Sanctuary to talk to him about the day he found her. You follow and get super involved in their family drama. The obvious thing happens next. Kaguya says that the very spot they're standing on is calling to her. She then uses your help and digs up a spaceship made of bamboo. Oh my God.

2:08:08 That has been buried in the ground beneath your feet. Sure. Mr. Bamboo had hoped she'd never find it. He was farming here one day. Then this metal bamboo spaceship thing came down out of nowhere and Kaguya came tumbling out of it practically dead. And he's like, I guess I'm responsible for this. Yeah, she was Superman. As soon as he picked her up, the big metal thing went into the ground and he never saw it again until now. It burrowed itself. It was like, I've done my shit. I'm out. He took Kaguya in as his own and raised her as a daughter and sales rep.

2:08:50 As a daughter first, a sales rep second. Kaguya says she must go now to find out her true origins. But first, she gives you a trinket you're going to need in the next section. Then she gets in the spaceship and blasts off into the night. Good for her. Here's the thing. This entire sequence is a real life 1200 year old folktale. Including like the aliens and shit? Including the rocket ship and her name being Kaguya. That's pretty good. I'm not gonna lie. I love that this is a little like grim fairy tales all coming together. Right? Back in the capital city, you use your new time-slowing power to sneak past Queen Himiko's guards and make it into her palace.

2:09:38 Because the king and the queen are sleeping in separate houses these days. Not to be a gossip because you didn't hear that from me. But like, the facts are facts. You enter her palace, and her handmaiden says that Queen Himiko foresaw your arrival. She's waiting for you in her throne room. You're confused about this, obviously, but go along with it. When you get to the floor with her throne room, the ground is literally lava. Oh shit, that's cool! It's a defense mechanism. Fortunately, the trinket you just got from Kaguya makes you immune to lava. God, that's convenient. Yeah, thank goodness, and you can swim in it like it's water. You get to her throne room, which has a proper marble floor.

2:10:21 The ceiling is 40 feet tall, and the room itself is a massive empty square, with Queen Himiko sitting in a chair with her back to you. She refers to you by your name, and even calls Issun a wandering artist. Despite her being the first person to address him by his preferred descriptor, Issun starts going the fuck off on her for letting her people suffer. Only an ugly old hag would sit there while her kingdom falls to ruin. The Queen sobs, crying because she feels so helpless. She has failed to help her people. You don't understand. She's been praying so hard, you guys.

2:11:04 Genuinely. She turns around, and she's young and stunningly beautiful. Issun immediately turns a shade of pink as he falls in love at first sight for the 15th time in this game. She goes on to explain that her bloodline has a magic crystal ball that allows her to see some aspects of the future. It's how she knew you were coming and your names, for example. She says that she's been trying to find a magic island. An island that only monsters can find and access, called Oni Island. She believes that whatever is happening, it's starting there. The island moves and appears elsewhere at random.

2:11:47 That's why she needs to track it through the crystal ball. But it's still an island only monsters can get to. So you need the water dragon to help you get there. Problem is, he's an angry pissed off asshole right now and isn't in the helping mood. Which means you need to get him in the mood. You head into the next zone, and it's at least not covered in darkness. But it is where the island appears most often. And the water dragon patrols these waters as well. Before you get there, you hear bonjour as fuckface Waka shows up again.

2:12:28 He asks if you enjoyed your quote unquote little adventure in the palace. Issun says to just fuck off, but Waka questions Issun and his talent as a wandering artist. Lots of people say they're an artist or a writer or a poet, even though they've never actually made anything. And I'm sure just about everyone listening knows someone like that. Plus, Waka was talking to a little friend of his recently who was a true artist. He said that his grandson slash apprentice ran away from home recently. And when he did, he stole his master's drawing of the wood sprite Sakuya, probably in order to pass himself off as a real artist.

2:13:15 Probably not relevant to you two though. That's crazy though, huh? Oh, no. No prophecy today, baby. Au revoir. Ugh. In order to befriend the water dragon, you need to go to where it lives, which is in a place appropriately named the Dragon Palace in the land of the Dragoonians. That's cool. A local fisherman points you in the direction of the Dragoonian taxi service, which is a dolphin named Orca. The fisherman asks to hitch a ride to the land of Dragoonians, and Orca launches the fisherman out to sea, saying he isn't worthy of visiting. But the god of the sun?

2:13:56 Hop on, King. And yes, Orca has that energy. Good. You hop on its back and say, Hi-ho, Orca! Away! Before entering the kingdom, you have to prove yourself worthy by climbing this insanely tall tower that goes so high into the sky it disappears into the clouds. It's called the Cat Call Tower, and you can hear the mewing of cats the whole way up. There's a special texture on the exterior of the tower that allows you to cling to it, and you have to climb for a solid five to seven minutes up this fucking cat scratch post. That's a big cat tower.

2:14:36 At least when you get to the top, they reward you with a fast travel spot, so you never have to do that shit again. Oh, good times. Here you get a new constellation, the cat god, Kabegami, god of walls. Ooh! When Kabegami descends from the heavens, she immediately pounces on Issun and starts pawing at him on the ground. I love everything about this. After she gets off him, she grants you the ability to paint that special climbing texture onto certain walls, allowing you to get to new places. Thanks to the fact this game has zero fall damage, you can just leap off this hundred story tower with no issues to the ground below. Oh, hell yeah!

2:15:16 Now that you are worthy, you hop on Orca, find the doorway to the land of Dragoonians, and dive into the seas below. For some reason, even though you can't swim really well, being underwater is no problem for you. In fact, it's exactly the same as being on land. Oh, good! There's just bubbles floating past you. You arrive at a palace inhabited by merfolk. Again, this is a section lifted directly out of Japanese folklore. At first, the merfolk don't want to let you enter. But when they hear that you're the white wolf sent by Queen Himiko, you're like, oh yeah, come on in. You confront the queen of the dragons, named Otohime.

2:15:58 He soon yells at her for letting the water dragon run amok. It's hers to control. Now get it under control. She goes on to explain that she actually sent for you. They can't stop the water dragon, and they need the help of a god to get it under control. So when she heard Amaterasu was working with Queen Himiko, she sent Orca to come get you. Not that anyone bothered to tell you this beforehand. Everything was fine until about a month ago. Oni Island appeared, and a darkened evil force claimed it as its home. The water dragon being the protector of the area went on the attack, but it was soon overwhelmed by some vicious, multi-headed creature, and it was beaten so horribly that it went insane, and nobody has been able to tame it since.

2:16:44 But also, it's not like a pet either. It's the sworn guardian of the merfolk. It's honor-bound to protect them, which is why losing it is so devastating for them. Asun's like, cool, cool, cool. This was clearly the multi-headed creature's plan all along. We need the water dragon, so it made the water dragon crazy. You can't kill it because it's the sworn protector of the region, and you need it to get to Oni Island. But you also can't tame it, so you can't just ask it to help you either. She says that there is another way to get to Oni Island. You just need to steal the essence of the water dragon. Steal the essence? Yeah, then she can control the water dragon using it.

2:17:28 And you can find it just right inside the dragon's belly. Oh yeah, super easy, barely an inconvenience. Yeah, all you have to do is dive in and pull it out. She says it's easier than it sounds. The water dragon does sleep, and it happens to sleep just right outside the throne room. It won't hurt the palace as long as they leave it alone. It's the rest of the water that's in danger, really. There's a gigantic hole in the ground, and the water dragon sleeps by backing itself into the hole and falling asleep with its mouth wide open. Who does that? It's like the Sarlacc pit in Star Wars. You jump in and find yourself, for the second time, in another creature's stomach.

2:18:09 It's another dungeon, and you puzzle solve your way through. And it's kind of similar to Monstro and Kingdom Hearts with the same color schemes even. You find the dragon's essence and take it. You also happen to stumble upon the fox rods, too. The thing Rau, the busty priestess, said would be needed to kill the dark, evil creature taking over Nippon. They're a series of colorful vials held together by a wooden vial holder. The dragon begins to stir and starts to bleed internally, as you can see blood dripping all around you. Ugh! You removing the essence really fucked this thing up. Sounds like it. And you have to run like it's the escape scene in Aladdin as this dragon starts coughing up blood.

2:18:53 You scape out its mouth just in time to watch it convulse and twitch one last time, as it spirals into the water below, disappearing. You really fucked that dragon up. It seems like, shit, really didn't mean to kill that thing. That wasn't the plan, but oopsies. Now it doesn't even matter that you have the essence. Without the dragon, you can't get to Oni Island. But then a bright flash of light comes from the water below. A merman comes swimming up to you. He says that he is King Wada, the 27th king of the Dragoonians. He explains that he was the water dragon.

2:19:35 I like that the merman's name is Wada. The Dark Lord, which is what he calls the creature who attacked him, found out that the water dragon could get through to Oni Island. And that's the reason why it went after him. King Wada swallowed the fox rods. As he could tell, the fox rods were the source of the majority of its power. But the fox rods drove him insane and caused him to lose control. He apologizes for the lives he took while in that lost state of mind. But his time has officially come. He tells you to give the essence to the queen still. It has a couple tricks left.

2:20:16 And tell her he loves her. Then, King Wada floats to the bottom of the ocean once and for all. Wow, he's just like, I'm done. Yeah. I'm out. You arrive back at the underwater palace. But you were distracted by a swinging set of melons, as Rao is waiting for you outside. Jesus Christ. She said she saw the battle with the water dragon from her study. So she rushed to the Dragoonian palace to check on everyone. Issun tells her about the daring battle and the death of the king. She immediately asks if you can still even get to Oni Island with Dragon being dead. Issun blows past this and says, and look, we got those fox rods you were looking for.

2:20:57 Turns out that's the Dark Lord's secret weapon. And she's like, you're right. I was looking for them. Give them to me. Issun says, now hold your melons right there, Messy. Oh my god. This is the Dark Lord's secret weapon. He's gonna be after it. Ammy's a god, so we're gonna go ahead and hang on to these. But you disagree and toss the fox rods to Rao. She holds them and says now she has the power to protect the queen. Then she runs off back to Queen Himeko's palace with the fox rods. You give the dragon essence to the queen and Issun explains how the dragon died and about the king, her husband, and what he said.

2:21:41 She explains that her husband turned into the dragon the day Oni Island showed up in order to protect the kingdom. But whatever happened to him during that fight it made him stuck in that form and drove him crazy. Issun explains about how the fox rods are what made him crazy. And the queen says, well, where is this great secret weapon of the enemy? Surely we must use it. And Issun tells her that Queen Himeko's assistant has it. This queen is unsure of that decision, but what's done is done. Hopefully she's not a deceitful, lying, betraying, backstabbing bitch. Fingers crossed. There's a lot of evil out there, and it'll do anything to get those rods back. She's sure of it.

2:22:21 The dragon's essence is inside a glass ball, and the ball lifts into the air and displays an image. The queen says her husband must have left one final message before shuffling off his mortal coil. The image is of a temple Issun recognizes. Busty babe Rao is seen running across the grounds of the temple, and a shadowy creature is lunging at her. It's big and has several long, familiar looking appendages coming off of it. Issun kicks you into high gear, and the two of you take off for the temple. The Dragoonian queen says she will come up with something and will be ready for when Queen Himeko finds the next spot Onii Island appears.

2:23:04 You make it to just outside the temple, and you see Rao, but something's wrong. She's translucent, like a ghost. Oh, shit. But she's still running, and she's running toward the temple, so you head in that direction. You follow the ghost as she guides you toward the backyard of the temple. She continues on and walks right through a solid rock wall. When you approach the wall, turns out not to be solid, but an illusion. You walk through it and find a well that goes deep into the ground. With no sign of Rao in here, you dive into the well. It takes you down a long hallway, and at the other end, is a room directly adjacent to Queen Himiko's throne room.

2:23:47 It must be some kind of escape tunnel for the queen, should something go wrong. You go inside and find her royal secretary unconscious. When you arrive in the queen's actual throne room, you find her lying on the ground, dead. Rao is there too, and she says it was terrifying. A monster was chasing her. She thought she had lost it, but it somehow followed her and then killed the queen. Issun is a little confused. The crystal ball the queen had was supposed to cast a barrier around her at all times, making it impossible to touch her. How did it break through that magic? Issun asks Rao for more information, but you can see through her bullshit.

2:24:28 Issun asks, what are you doing as you bare your teeth and growl at Himiko? Rao's voice deepens and slows, and her eyes become black with glowing red pupils. She says that you have proven quite formidable, Amaterasu. She took you to that sunken ship, hoping the water dragon would kill you. She sent you inside the emperor's body, and you somehow escaped and stopped her poison mist. But then your dumbass went and killed the water dragon. Now, her fortress on Oni Island is impenetrable, and the only person who can read the crystal ball is dead.

2:25:13 Not only that, but you also gave her back the fox rods, the key to her power. Now, you die. Fuck her. She then slides on a mask that we actually saw in Ghost of Tsushima, worn by the character Tomoi. It's a white fox mask with orange and gray markings. Also, just in case Queen Himiko has any secret airs, Rao shrinks the crystal ball down and swallows it whole. The two of you fight, and you eventually beat her down until she coughs up the crystal ball again. She's hurt and panting, and you charge at her to finish her off.

2:25:53 Just as you leap in the air for your pounce, she kicks you in the face, and you go flying back, falling to the ground. Oh, that sucks! You attempt to stand up, but fall down again as this fox-faced busty broad squats down like she's taking a big shit. Is she tea-bagging you? No. Nine fox-tails erupt from behind her. Oh, shit. The rest of her body transforms, and she becomes the legendary nine-tails. That's a Pokemon. Gigantic and foreboding, still completely in shadow with glowing red eyes. She says that Amaterasu has fought well, but this is just a taste of the true power of the Dark Lord.

2:26:38 For now, she will retreat back to Oni Island and gather her forces for a true epic battle. The nine-tailed fox vanishes in a puff of darkness, and Ammy is left hurt and broken beside the dead Queen Himeko. You look around the room and see the crystal ball. You're unsure if it's a trick of the light, but you swear you've seen Queen Himeko in the crystal ball. Hmm, it's probably nothing. Well, you approach it, and it is her, sitting in the ball seemingly alive. She says that she chose not to allow her spirit to move on, and instead inhabited the crystal ball in order to help you find Oni Island.

2:27:18 I live in a ghost ball now, because I wanted to help. Now, I'm the ghost in the machine. She shows you where Oni Island will appear next, not far off the nearby coast, at sunset. And it will vanish again once the sun dips below the horizon. As the image of the location vanishes, the crystal ball cracks. The powers she used to show you the next location destroys the ball. She sends out one last round of thoughts and prayers as she is forced into moving on. Issun says the sun sets in like 20 minutes, so we need to haul ass to the coast if we're going to make it to Oni Island.

2:27:59 When you get to the coast, you've seen Queen Otohime, the queen of the Dragoonians. She says that she could feel Himiko's pain from deep in the ocean, and she followed that pain to this location. Issun says it doesn't matter. The water dragon is dead, you can't get on the island anyway. Otohime says the dragon's not dead the same way Himiko's dead. The dragon essence will allow Otohime to become the dragon herself. It's what her husband used to become the dragon last time. With that, she turns into a bright flash of light, and then grows and lengthens until she's a 50-foot serpent rising high above the land.

2:28:40 Holy shit! Like, is she actually Jafar? Right, it's very much like that. Yeah, because also Jafar put Jasmine in an hourglass, which is not dissimilar to having someone in a crystal ball. There are some parallels here. Yeah, we were running from the serpent's bloody cave the same way, too. Yeah. Well, she looks around and finds Oni Island. She flops down from where she is on the shore, and her head slams through the barrier around Oni Island. Oh! As she becomes a massive serpentine bridge spanning the gap to Oni Island. Holy shit! She tells you to hurry. She's not going to survive this for very long.

2:29:21 As you are about to cross her back, Issun stops and asks you, Are you sure about this? You're not going to need to take a nap or use the bathroom or anything, are you? This is your point of no return again? We're doing this again? Yeah, it's not your typical point of no return speech, but you let him know you're ready, and you cross over the threshold onto Oni Island. The majority of Oni Island is a dungeon, so again, puzzle-solving and platforming. And it's a lava dungeon, but you're immune to that now, so it's not that big of a deal. That's cool. You enter an old stone castle and continue through the island dungeon. While I have so far left out the puzzles in these dungeons, this one has a fun one worth mentioning. You have to race a magical flying scroll named Toby.

2:30:04 Toby says he's the gatekeeper of the castle, and the only way to move past is to beat him in a series of several races throughout the temple. Issun says, Well, Toby, this is full throttle Ammy, so you're on. Talking about you like you're a Fast and Furious spin-off. You race Toby to the top and eventually make it to a balcony of the castle. Outside is a gigantic stone tiger statue. On the tiger's back is a longbow, kind of turning the tiger's back into a makeshift crossbow. The sky around the roof is dark and stormy with a lightning storm raging.

2:30:45 Using your celestial brush, you paint an arrow into the longbow's strings. The arrow is shaped like a lightning bolt, and after it manifests itself, the tail of the statue pulls the bow string back and launches the lightning arrow into the sky. Hell yeah. The arrow pierces the clouds, and the storm vanishes, revealing the starry sky behind, along with another constellation. So sometimes shooting an arrow into the night is a good thing. Yeah, right? Sometimes devastating. Devastating. This one is Gekigami, and it's the tiger statue come to life, complete with a longbow on its back. It's the god of thunder, and it gives you another power similar to water and fire that allows you to draw a path for lightning to follow.

2:31:31 It soon reminds you, this was the 12th technique that you've learned. Just one more, and he'll have seen them all. I mean, and you'll have seen them all. Use this new power through this castle dungeon a whole bunch, because honestly, you're not going to use it outside this dungeon, like, ever. So you might as well. Yeah. But you also get to do a whole 2D platformer section as well that's really fun. This whole time, you're also racing Toby in sections. Fucking Toby! While he's a flying scroll, he's also fully sentient, and as you race, he becomes more and more fond of you. Oh! He's also very polite the whole time, saying things like, Good sir, this is the most excellent race, and as nobody has ever challenged me thus far in my time as gatekeeper.

2:32:16 He's so formal. Very formal. You go to your final race with Toby, and as you beat him, he tells you that he is most honored to have been beaten by you, good sir. He is grateful that it is you who will get to witness his final moments of life. And Issun asks what he means. Why is this your final moment? He explains that he failed as gatekeeper. You beat him in every race, which for him was the most fun he's ever had in his life. So to die now would be to go out on a high note, and he's happy you get to see it. This is so weird. It's so strange, right? I don't like this bonding technique.

2:32:59 And he says, farewell, good sir. And he returns to normal paper, floats to the ground, and turns into a flower. That's not how recycling works. But okay. He's one of those pamphlets that had the seeds in it. You go out onto the roof of the castle, where it's flat and immense. The perfect setting for a boss battle. Issun gives you another point of no return speech, and when you accept, you step foot onto the roof as Issun says, let's teach this fox-headed wench a lesson. At least he wasn't commenting on her tits this time. Issun hops on your back, and while swinging his needle for a sword says, he's here to avenge Queen Himeko.

2:33:45 Now get out here, wench! But nobody comes. It's quiet, and the clouds are filling the sky. You howl up into the sky, and it causes the clouds to part, revealing a full, blood-red moon, as well as the final constellation. Issun is shocked to see it here. There's so much evil on this island. I don't think he understands how the sky works. You complete this constellation, revealing the nine-tailed fox. An eerie sound emits, and the constellation burns bright red in the sky against the blood-red moon, whereas every other constellation had glowed blue and white.

2:34:33 Nine-tails, the dark lord of the coast, confronts you, no longer shrouded in shadow, wearing the mask we saw in Rao. He says that he serves the evil Yami, who rules the land of darkness, and that he will kill you like every other god he's killed before. And Issun goes, Yami, land of darkness. Never heard of him. We're just here to kill you. I don't give a fuck about that other shit. And nine-tails is like, you know Yami is ruler of like all evil things. Ultimate darkness? No, not ringing a bell.

2:35:13 We'll just know he's a true god, not like those animals you keep playing with. Anyway, you'll never know Yami now, because this is the part where I kill you. And then Issun says, this is the part where he kills us. No, I'm kidding, it doesn't happen. And then the achievement turns on, the part where he kills you. I know how this goes. And Ninetales attacks. He's basically a gigantic, much stronger version of you, and he even has his own celestial brush. And when you go to use yours, you can see his brush drawing things too, just in red ink as opposed to your black ink. That's horrifying. Yeah, and he can cancel yours out.

2:35:54 Have we seen anyone else with a brush? Not at all. Oh, that's so cool. This is totally a surprise. You have to kill each of its tails, which are tipped with miniature rouse, and when you do, a single-tailed fox is all that remains. Ha, fuck you, single-tail. He's big, the mask is gone, there's scars across the whole body, and he's missing an eye. Ooh! But that just makes it more pissed off, and now it's even harder to fight. You eventually kill Ninetales, once and for all, as its dark soul rises out of its body and floats away. The narrator tells us that Queen Himeko was finally avenged.

2:36:35 Her killer brought to justice at the paw of Amaterasu. Hell yeah. Oni Island, no longer with a master, began to fade away around you and turn to cherry blossom petals lost on the wind. Queen Otohime of the Dragoonians survived the transformation into the Water Dragon and returned to her castle at the bottom of the sea. The spirit of Ninetales, however, merged with the soul of the spirit of the Blight that created the sickness that overtook Seiyan City. Once merged, the souls followed the dark cloud that was Orochi's spirit to the far north of Nippon. Ammy sensed this movement north, and Issun reluctantly agrees to go towards the danger.

2:37:18 Issun was under the impression the adventure was supposed to be over. That last constellation being a fake really pissed him off. But it also reminded him that if the adventure ends, so does his time with Ammy. Regardless, he knows that he still has one more constellation to go, as our adventure is about to crescendo. Shut up. It's like, Jesus Christ, I'm in a time loop. As you make it back to shore, you hear a now all too familiar, Bonjour. God damn it. Fuckfacewaka asks you how the fox hunt went over on Oli Island. The fox hunt?

2:37:58 Fuck off. He directs you to the next area north, saying that there's a big storm coming. And before he goes, he has another tip, or prophecy, or whatever, saying one zap and the door opens. I'm sure that's nothing. It's fine. Fuck you. Now you see me, now you don't. Au revoir. Ho ho ho. Using some lightning, you open an underground tunnel hidden by a secret passage that takes you to the north through the mountains safely. When you arrive on the other side, it's a snowy, bitter, cold environment. Issun tells you it's too cold for him, so he hunkers down in your fur to keep warm. You find a hut in this frozen tundra, and there's a fire roaring inside.

2:38:42 Issun hops down to relax, and you lie down. From the other side of the fire, a figure rises and draws a sword. Issun goes, whoa, whoa, come on now. We just want to get warm. Wait, what are you doing here? It's nobody we've seen in the game, but Issun definitely recognizes them. They're a person, and they're wearing a blue pig mask. They have spiky pink and black hair, and they're dressed like they're trained to fight, more like a ronin than a samurai. And if you've listened to our Ghost of Tsushima episode, you know the difference. You stand up and start pacing around the fire while the person continues to brandish their sword at you, unspeaking.

2:39:25 The flames dance between you two, and the flames and smoke distort each of your bodies to the other. You circle the fire until the person's back is to the entrance of the hut. Once there, they turn and run out the door into the snow, never saying a word. Issun turns to you and goes, did you see that fucking sword? That was a Hitori Hanzo. Now, he didn't give it like a swordsmith's name or anything like that. He just had like that same energy. It was a dope ass sword. You head back outside, only to find the mystery person waiting for you. Sword still drawn, and they charge at you to fight. They just wanted more space. I get you.

2:40:05 You fight the mystery Ronin and eventually wear him down. But this is no ordinary fight. This is more like a fight in Hades, because that literally wasn't even his final form. Oh shit. The mystery person turns into a black wolf with a pink mane. Now you're basically fighting your doppelganger. Oh no, it's like an MCU fucking origin movie. Yeah. After you defeat this wolf man, he reverts back to a man and calls a stop to the fight. He's like, I tried meeting you on your level. I still gotta ask it. God damn it. He says that he is impressed with your skill. His name is Oki, warrior of the Iwina tribe.

2:40:47 Issun wants to know why a warrior has a sword that's so nice. It shouldn't be used in combat. Oki says, oh, you have a ponkle with you. A ponkle? Wait, is that Issun? I haven't seen you around these parts in ages. Oh shit. I heard you died. Wishful thinking. No, I'm kidding. He heard Issun got sick of painting and ran off in disgrace. Oh shit. Yeah, that's more accurate. He says that it's cool Issun has somehow managed to find himself a wolf companion, but the two of you are still nothing like Shidenui and her ponkle sidekick. Issun is all, whatever. Why do you have that sword? Oki says that the time has come to wield it.

2:41:29 The Izo Fuji Mountains, which once watched over this land, have been taken over by dark forces. While this area has always been cold and unforgiving, now it has become overrun with monsters and creatures of pure evil. Oki is out here protecting the Oina tribe by preventing anything from making it into town. The dark forces over the Izo Fuji Mountains are twin demons called Lechku and Nechku. Oki is actually one of the last soldiers alive. Snowstorms have wiped out so many soldiers already, so Oki is setting out to scale the Izo Fuji Mountains to confront Lechku and Nechku and free these lands from their onslaught of evil.

2:42:10 This sword is prophesied to contain insane power, but it will only unleash that power when it is truly needed. Oki is just really hoping that the battle with Lechku and Nechku is a big enough need. But if it is, he'll know because the sword will start glowing like sting when orcs are nearby. Sorry, that's a Lord of the Rings reference, Andrea. Okay, I was like, that sounds cool. I don't know what that means though. Issun says sorry for being so nosy about the sword. He got in a lot of trouble for touching it one time, so he's just jealous Oki gets to actually use it. You decide to go to Webkir, the village Oki and Issun are from, to make sure everyone is okay while Oki goes to slay the twin demons.

2:42:55 This area is covered in Orochi's dark power and you have to find a sapling in this blizzard. While searching, you see the archer from just outside the capital city, the one that blew up the cannon. He says that he moved here to the north because his arrows always cause bad luck wherever he goes. He can't bother anyone up here, especially if he just practices archery by shooting at the side of a mountain. I can't fuck anyone up here. Well, you guide a lightning bolt to his arrow as it flies through the air, and the electrified arrow makes the side of the mountain explode. When it does, it reveals a guardian sapling conveniently growing where the mountain once stood. And the archer is like, okay, I've clearly been chosen by the gods to be an amazing archer.

2:43:41 Everyone really takes everything to ego. Right? Just like, I am godsent. Like, okay. I need to spread my gift to the world, so farewell dear wolf. I'll always remember you were there when I realized I'm amazing. This is a story about context. Seriously, right? And then he just kind of fucks off into the snow. You revive the sapling, and it doesn't eliminate the snow, but the blizzard dies down a bit, and the sun is shining bright. You get to Webkir, but it's not sunny here. The blizzard is really bad. Issun says he's never seen it like this. It's almost completely frozen over, and nobody is outside.

2:44:23 So the two of you explore the town to see if everyone is okay, just indoors. But nobody is answering their door when you knock. You finally find someone outside, a person named Samical. He's the top warrior of the Yoina tribe, and he protects the town elder. If you want to get to the elder, you gotta go through Samical. Issun asks what he's doing just standing outside in this blizzard. Samical goes, Oh, that horrible, grating voice. Is that Issun? Good for you, bitch. That's called branding, baby. He tells Issun to go back to the Ponkle Village if it's not already buried under snow.

2:45:05 He has problems of his own to deal with. And take that stupid white dog with you. As he says this, he turns into a wolf the way Oki had. Oh. So You and Issun explore some more when you are stopped by a lady dog named Kai. Issun knows her and starts asking about everything going on. She goes, there's a lot to tell. Come back to my place and I'll tell you everything. She tells you a story about the twin demons, Lechu and Nechu. They were locked away in the Iso Fuji Mountains centuries ago. But then a dark force came from the south a couple days ago and freed the twin demons. The elder tried to go kill them, but he couldn't and Samical had to go rescue him.

2:45:50 He's been the acting chief ever since. Okie has never liked Samical, and when he declared himself as chief, Okie stole the sword and set out on his own. Oh shit. A little known legend about the Iso Fuji Mountains is that all evil was rumored to have been birthed from here. Oh, it's a Hellmouth. Yeah, it's completely a Hellmouth. So the arrival of all this darkness is being rumored to be a sort of homecoming for all evil beings. Oh my god, that's amazing. Also, her little sister Lika has gone missing in this blizzard. And she's not sure if she was kidnapped or got lost in the storm or what, but like, she holds the fate of the village in her hands, but she's not going to explain that as a howl is heard and Kai says that you're being summoned.

2:46:37 No big deal. Samical says that once the elder heard a white wolf was here to see him, he wanted to see you as well. You go into his home, and he's asleep on the floor. He jumps up when he sees Issun and says he's going to tan his hide for touching that sword. He chases you a bit, but calms down pretty quickly. He's an eccentric elder, and his name is Kimu. He says, Issun, I have to admit, you've grown. Barely at all since I last saw you. He also explains how little sister Lika holds the fate of Webgear in her hands. He says that every year, he personally does a volcanic incantation that causes the volcanoes in the Iso Fuji mountains to heat up and keep the region warm.

2:47:25 Isn't it crazy that that's like a real job in some cultures and villages? Right, the dancer? Yeah, like the dedicated weather rain man person, and that's like a 40 hour a week job. You know? And you're kind of worshiped? Yeah, the way I do marketing. This person's like, all right, gotta prepare the Q4 fucking season spells. Season spells. That's wild to me. After the demons took over the mountains, the volcanoes haven't gotten warm, and that's why these blizzards are freezing everything. Oh, how? Elder Kimu got severely injured in his fight with Lechku and Nechku, and Lika is the only other person with the power to perform the volcanic incantation.

2:48:08 And then Elder Kimu takes in your whole body for the first time, and he can see that you're not a wolf. You're a god. God damn it. Not just any god. You're the Shiranui. You'll be able to find her no problem, and you'll defeat the bad guys. Hell yeah. He tells you to go to a forest they believe Lika may have wandered into, and you have to go through a place called Lauchi Lake to get there. When you get to the lake, you find a giant boat crashed into its frozen surface. You're standing on a plinth beside the frozen lake, and Issun says this is where that sword Oki had was enshrined. Issun explains this boat has been here for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years.

2:48:51 Oh shit. His grandfather told him once that the iron boat fell from the heavens above and crashed into this frozen lake. Since it came from the celestial plane, it was being piloted by the celestials, the gods in other words. Unbeknownst to the gods before they set out, the boat was full of monsters. Oopsies. They attacked during the journey and crashed here, which is why it's thought to be the birthplace of evil. Wow. Yeah, I mean, that's how Venom started. All the celestials died but one. He managed to flee to safety, and he went into hiding in the mortal world, never to be seen again.

2:49:33 I would do that. Right? I would definitely do that if everybody was dead. It's why the ruler of darkness still sends his forces from this lake out into the world. They're looking for that lone survivor. Nippon has never been the same since. The two of you head into the forest, which is locally known as the Consuming Forest, to find little Lika. And it's known as the Consuming Forest because it's very easy to get lost and lose your mind. Kai catches up and offers to guide you through the forest. Lika's her little sister, after all. Besides, right now, the only thing keeping the villagers alive is the sun coming out every single day. But there's a solar eclipse in a couple days.

2:50:15 Oh my god, of course there is. What the fuck? And one full 24-hour period of no sun will freeze everyone to death. Holy shit. Climate change is real. That's my big takeaway. Right? Yeah, I mean, if you think of, like, this black cloud, it's pollution. Ugh. So we need that volcanic incantation, Asap. She says she can tell you're the legendary Ashita Nui too. All of these dog people can, really. She says the fact you can put up with Issun is something only a god could do anyway. I love how he's getting shit on. Truly at every point in this game.

2:50:57 As soon as you step foot in the forest, you hear, bonjour. Ugh. Issun, like you, has had it with this motherfucker and demands he tells you what he's up to, because it's clearly nothing good. He says that he seeks a path to the heavens. And Issun goes, aha, I knew it. Your nefarious plan has been revealed at last. It's why you keep showing up at the worst times. It all makes sense now. You want to be there when Ammy dies, so you can take her place in heaven and leave her stranded and unable to move on. Oh, yeah, that tracks. Yeah, this is so obvious. Wakka's like, what the fuck are you talking about?

2:51:42 I'm looking for a boat that I heard was nearby. It supposedly fell from the heavens. Calm down, you little weirdo. I appreciate the insane energy, though, that your little fuckboy is bringing to every situation. Right. Then Wakka's like, you know what? I don't have time for this. Not even a prophecy. We don't even get the baby at the end of that? No, no baby at the end of that one. He's literally just au revoir. Fuck you. Yeah. Are we breaking up? He's just kind of over you right now. I think he's dumping us. Yeah, and he just disappears, honestly. Kai says she has a feeling she knows where Lika went, and she thinks Issun does too.

2:52:22 And Issun just kind of stares at her while she talks. She says she's been playing there since she was a kid too. Right, Issun? And Issun is just silent. Snitches get stitches. Keep your mouth shut. I feel you. She says Lika likely went to the Ponkel Village. And Issun's like, Oh, please no. She tells him it's the only way. He's a Ponkel, right? He is a Ponkel. Are these his people? These are his people, and he does not want to go home. Oh, I mean, he's embarrassing to everyone else in the world. Can you imagine being from his hometown? Oh, no, I love this.

2:53:02 Issun is furious, but he reluctantly agrees. So long as we don't go crazy before getting there, as it's deep in the forest. And you make it to a clearing. There's no snow here, and it's lush and green like a desert oasis in the snow. There's a little stump in the center of the lush green, and it has a small glowing doorway to it. Floating around are little fireflies, making the whole thing look like a fairy village. Kai welcomes you to Ponkton, home of the Ponkles. He's straight out of Ponkton? Straight out of Ponkton, yeah. Oh, that's good. I love that. She says Issun has probably told you all about it on your journey.

2:53:46 And Issun is like, not really, nope. Really tried to avoid that. As you approach the stump, Issun goes, well, you're too big. We tried. Let's go. But then the lucky mallet from before. Oh, of course. Descends from the sky for no fucking reason and shrinks you down to Ponkle size once more. Hell yeah. Now that you're down to that size, Issun says that you're going to have to go in there alone. And he just flat out refuses to go. He's like, absolutely not. Oh, all of the money. I'm not going in. That would be great if he did a lot of people money. I can see that. He has some slimeball like, hey, throw me a 20, I got you tomorrow energy.

2:54:27 And did it to everybody just before dipping. Oh, yeah. Inside the tree is the most adorable little tree village. Everything is made from like flowers and plant life. It's like the Ewok Village or the tree village in the stray. You use vines and leaves as roads and bridges, and the houses are built into the stocks of plants. They also use like insects and like spiderwebs and stuff to get around as well. Oh, cool. The colors are vibrant and bright, and it's one of the prettiest sections in the game. You meet other Ponkles here, and you find out the majority are also artists. They're all trained by the Chief Ponkle to paint.

2:55:09 Chief Ponkle. I know this is a real ass community. They're too funny. This is so cute. Some talk about a former student of his named Issun, who ran away from home to help a god. After he took so much money from us. Yeah, because others talk about Issun like he's a coward and bum and a shitbag. Yeah, he definitely borrowed money from that guy. Without Issun though, you can't respond to anyone. You just kind of do a lot of barks and nods. Yeah, you just do a little nodding and staring at them, and they just kind of keep talking at you. Well, if you're the kind of person that emotionally unloads on a dog, what do you expect? And they all do. Yeah.

2:55:49 Well, the ponicles say they typically can understand any animal, but with you, they get nothing. Well, you're a god, so it's different. So you have a really difficult time communicating, but you look exactly like this painting that is in Chief Asaku's house. And it has red markings and everything just like you do, so maybe you should go talk to him. He may or may not worship you. You should look into that. Well, you have to be mindful, though, because his vision is almost gone. Hmm. Very Francisco de Goya. Is it? I don't know who that is. He's a painter who started losing his vision, and as he did, his art got thematically and aesthetically darker and darker. Beautiful, beautiful artist. Well, you enter into Isaku's home, and there's a big painting on the wall of you, but you're much larger, with a weapon you've never seen.

2:56:37 I look fat in this. Sorry, that's all I heard the dog thinking going, damn, I look thick. Well, there's also more markings on your body, and you actually look a little bit older. Isaku is an old ponkle with a hollowed out beetle for a hat. He says, I recognize that smell, which makes you bark in response. And then he says, and that bark. Ammy, is it really you? Isaku says he never thought he'd ever see you again after the last battle 100 years ago. He says, I know I can't see it, but you're crying right now, aren't you? Dog's just staring dead-eyed. Yeah, completely. You're not crying at all.

2:57:18 You're looking at him like you've never seen him before. You're looking at him like, please, do you have any cheese I can eat? Well, this just reaffirms for him that you are Amaterasu as he says, ah, yes, ignore me like always. That's the Ammy I remember. What a fond friendship. He says that he's no longer the young man you remember. He's now the self-proclaimed legendary swordsman, Isaku, all thanks to you. I appreciate when people cop to being a self-proclaimed legend. The game actually does it. It's like every time you meet a character, you get this whole introduction screen and stuff, and it says what their name is, and the self-proclaimed was in parentheses.

2:58:00 They made a judgment call. They did, and they don't do that with any other character. I love that. Hisaku says you seem smaller and weaker than he remembers you being. So rude. He says you don't have all 13 techniques, do you? What happened to you? Something's wrong. But he blames it on the lack of faith in the gods from people as the reason for it. We need more thoughts and prayers. We do. He tells you that he knows you well enough to tell you, you can't do this without all 13. So don't even attempt it without the last one. Then he asks where your current companion is. And when you don't respond, he's surprised. Not that he was expecting anyone. He just heard rumors.

2:58:40 But they were only rumors. No big deal. But anyway, in order to defeat the forces of darkness, you need to select a companion called your celestial envoy. Hisaku was the sixth one to come from this village, and he's trained everyone he can to be worthy of being one as well. But you need to select the seventh yourself. Hisaku is too old to do it again. He tells you to go into the village, get to know some Ponkles, and tell him who you choose. Your celestial envoy's job is to paint you during your adventures. Oh. They are then tasked with spreading your legend far and wide.

2:59:22 Your powers magnify significantly if people believe in you and pray to you. You can't become the Ammy that will defeat the Dark Lord without that faith. While exploring the village, you do find out more about Laki, the little girl that's missing. She actually wandered further into the forest, and went through something called a Spirit Gate. It's a gateway that takes you to another place and another time. It's a mysterious thing that nobody dares mess with, because those that have gone through it and come back, say they've made terrible mistakes that ruin their lives. So usually stay the fuck away.

3:00:02 Other than that info though, you don't have much to do here, but explore and talk to the people. It's a great village too, so you should explore every nook and cranny, because in one house you can find one artist's many practice sketches of butts. Worth it. Yeah, I love this game. It is so many pictures of butts and then a couple peaches. Just for like a study. Yeah. I love everything about that. When you return to Isaku, he says he can tell you're planning on going through the Spirit Gate, but you're not allowed to. It's too dangerous. Also, since you asked, no, he doesn't have a grandson anymore.

3:00:44 He ran away and stole one of his best drawings when he did. You head out to Issun so the two of you can go after Lachie through the Spirit Gate anyway. Issun is not into the idea at all. The Spirit Gate is very fucking dangerous. A Ponco villager you had talked to named Maya comes outside the village and hears Issun. She says, it's so cool. You really did become a celestial envoy like the rumors were saying. Oh, I figured that's the road we were taking, but I'm gonna let you take us there. Yeah, and Issun's like, what? Celestial envoy? Oh my god. He's like, no fucking way. That's chump work.

3:01:24 Oh my god. And Maya asks, wait, are you even painting anymore? You need to do your job or Ammy's not gonna have the power that she needs. Issun literally tells her to put a cork in it. And says, let's go to the Spirit Gate, Ammy. Willing to face the greatest danger known to get out of this conversation. I'm ready to die. I've accepted it. I'm good. Let's go. When you get to the Spirit Gate, it looks a lot like the door to Kingdom Hearts. Oh, like a big ass door? Yeah, just a big ass door in the middle of the forest. It's tall and white stone with a big doorway. And Issun says it's been there as far back as recorded history, to the time of myths and legends.

3:02:06 Nobody knows where it came from or who built it, but only the chief Ponkle can open the door. I love that you keep saying Ponkle. Like, that's not the cutest fucking noise. Isn't that the greatest word ever? Ponkle. Just saying Ponkle is fun. But you're like, they're ready for war. These little flea people. And they're also not going to explain how Lika got through the door. But anyway, being the chief's grandson, Issun figures it's probably a bloodline thing. And he uses his little needle sword, Denkumaru, to run it down the length of the crack in the door. And the gateway opens with a blinding light beyond it. And Issun says Isaku would probably kill him if he saw him do that.

3:02:48 And just as you're about to enter, Okie appears behind you. He says he's shocked to see the spirit gate open. He's only heard horrible things about it opening. And he still has that magic sword, and it hasn't started glowing silver yet. So he figures he must need to destroy the horrible things that are beyond that gate. Yeah, good guess. Issun tries to stop him, saying you're just going after a kid, and nobody knows what's on the other side. The whole killing mission is not it, my guy. But Okie doesn't care, and he runs into the open doorway. So you follow, and the doors close behind you. On the other side is a lush, green, bountiful and beautiful field.

3:03:29 A familiar one at that. You're just above Kamiki Village, right about where you started the game. Okie says, this is where the legend of Orochi began. That must be why the sword has brought me here. And he runs down into the village proper. Issun says, something's weird here. The moon's full, but we just had a full moon like a week ago. You start to head into town, but you see a very small child, and it runs up to pet the doggy. She says, I am the wood sprite, Shakuya. Issun asks if she's any relation to Sakuya. Also, shouldn't her tree be right around here somewhere? Issun tells you to leave the kid alone and to head into the village.

3:04:11 Don't talk to a child. Yeah. Your first stop is Susano's house. It's nighttime, and he's out by the training dummies sleeping, as Susano's want to do. He's dressed in samurai armor, and he has a big blue sword on his back. He wakes up and says he must have fallen asleep while training to fight that no-good Shiranui. Shiranui has been coming here every full moon for the last 99 full moons to make sure Orochi gets its fill. Oh my god. He realizes he doesn't know who you are and introduces himself as Nagi, the greatest warrior who ever lived. We're in a time loop. We're in a time loop.

3:04:55 Well, then he takes you in fully and freaks out because he realizes you, Oshiranui. Issun says, Susanoo, snap out of it. You're not Nagi. You're Susanoo. Stop living in the past. And Nagi says, Look to the moon, you tiny thing. The moon is full. And tonight, Orochi will select his victim. As he says this, darkness creeps in, and Orochi's presence can be felt on the night air. Nagi says that it's time to end your reign of terror. Shidenui, I challenge you to a fight. Honestly, you make quick work of him, and he gets knocked out. It soon starts freaking out.

3:05:37 He puts everything together and realizes, we're a hundred years in the past. This really is Nagi, and we're really in Kamiki Village the night Orochi was defeated. He then recalls the legend of Shidenui appearing, as if from nowhere, and kept the villagers in line on the night Orochi scheduled a sacrifice. Yeah! Which, if you're here, then where's the other Shidenui, the one from this timeline? The villagers are all gathered outside Nagi's home, much like the villagers did at Susuna's. Mr. Grapefruit says that Shidenui has been spotted roaming the streets, and Nagi needs to do something about that mangy mutt.

3:06:20 But as he yells this, we hear the roar of Orochi, as the white arrow appears in the night sky and fires itself into the village. It lands in the side of the house of the most beautiful woman in the village, Nami, the 100th victim since Orochi began its reign of terror. Nami yells out, Nagi, I believe in you. You've trained hard to defeat Orochi, and I know you will rescue me. Come find me in the Moon Cave. She tells the villagers to go hide in their homes. In the meantime, she's going to prepare herself for the sacrifice and get into the official sacrificial robes.

3:07:00 So all the villagers have the robes ready to go if they get their number pulled? Yeah, they absolutely do. Wow, the commitment. Yeah, she's way more accepting of her fate than Kushi was. The problem, though, Nagi didn't hear any of it. He was knocked out because of you. Oh, shit. Yeah, Issun's like, shit, did we just fuck up the timeline by knocking him out? And Issun decides to run through the rest of the legend so that you can make sure Nagi does all of it. So the legend says that Nagi went to the Moon Cave and he dressed up as Nami and waited as bait. Then when an Orochi came for the sacrifice, Nagi jumped up and slayed it.

3:07:42 So step one. Mrs. Doubtfire. Exactly. We need to dress Nagi up in drag. You go to Nami's house, and we find her bathing in the nearby pond, and she's fully nude. And Issun wants you to be quiet and take your time as you sneak up and steal the sacrificial robe that's on the shore. She also has a jug of eight purification sake. I bet she's got a jug. It's there with the sacrificial robes that you know to grab as well. You dress him in the robes while he's still out cold, and toss him on your back to carry him to the moon cave. And now it's weekend at Bernie's. It very much is, right? And if you recall, it's kind of a run from there, but it's a hundred years earlier and not as many monsters, and the music is swelling and epic, and you get grand wide shots of you running to your destination.

3:08:34 All with this guy just like flopping around on your back like Susanoo was. You get to the cave, and the darkness here has fully taken over. Everything is dead and gloomy here. It's so awful, Issun says just the fear of this place is enough to keep people away. Orochi isn't even bothering to put up a magical barrier over the entrance. You don't give a fuck. Issun starts to spin out about the whole time travel thing. He says if you slayed him a hundred years ago, and then you died, then you got resurrected, but you're weaker than last time, can you even fight him without being at full power? Great questions, we don't know.

3:09:14 Also, why were you slash Shidanui there for 99 sacrifices before actually doing anything? Girl, right? He's sure you had your reasons, but what those reasons are, he can't imagine. Maybe it was just the fact that you weren't strong enough yet or something. While he thinks on it, Nagi wakes up. He looks at himself in drag and wonders why he's here and why he's in a dress. Issun says that we're just going along with his plan. Dress up as the sacrifice and slay the dragon. Just like you planned, Nagi. And Nagi's like, yeah, my plan. Yes, exactly, good, good, let's go. At this, a shadow of a dragon head comes flying out of the mouth of the cave.

3:09:55 And grabs Nagi, knocking you back just like last time. Two seconds later, though, Nagi comes flying back out of the cave, as Orochi could tell the difference. Also, like last time, a barrier went up after he snatched Nagi. And now you have no choice but to go in after it. Leaving Nagi behind, you head to the shrine inside the Moon Cave, where you last faced off against Orochi. When you arrive, Oki is there as well. He says the sword led him here, and he just walked right in. But he's ready to fight Orochi, if that's what it takes. He's like, well, I'm already here, so I might as well. Yeah, I'm here to defeat the bad guy.

3:10:36 Issun sees the altar where Kushi was laying as the sacrifice last time. This time, Lika, the little girl who started all this bullshit by wandering through the spirit gate, is in the sacrifice zone. Orochi emerges like it did before, eight dragon heads. This time, the dragon head and necks are completely covered in golden samurai armor, where they were just flesh before. Issun reminds you, this thing killed you a hundred years ago, or today, or whatever, and you were at full power. You're not at full power yet, so you need to be really careful.

3:11:17 Oki dives into the fight with no regard for Lika's safety, and Issun pours the eight purification sake into the same moat around Orochi like the first time. The fight is very similar to the first time you fought Orochi, just now you have more powers to use against it, but you're getting the heads drunk, then beating them unconscious. As the final head falls, Oki stands, as Susano did, facing the final head. He tells his sword, it's time to glow silver, and he dives at Orochi's head. Do the thing, buddy. And Oki gets fucking tossed by Orochi. Immediately? Yeah, his sword never glows.

3:11:57 Oh, that's embarrassing. Oki stares at his sword in disbelief, as the remaining head rises, ready to finish off Oki. But then we hear, hold it right there, vile serpent. Everyone, including Orochi, turns to see Nagi, the greatest warrior who ever lived, holding his mighty blue sword. Yeah! He says, it is time, vile serpent, to meet your end by my blade. He jumps from the high platform from which he had dramatically appeared, and does a dozen flips into the air. Full superhero landing and shit. And lands on his fucking neck. Oh, oh no!

3:12:38 Oh, that's like, I mean, that's Christopher Reeve's superhero landing, I guess. Holy shit. I'm sorry, is that too dark? Was that bad? He's been dead a while, it's okay. Is it? It's a guess. It's kind of fucked up. Immediate guilt. He says, no worries, he's got this. Nagi calls to the gods to clear away the dark clouds that cover the sky, so that his sword can unleash its true potential. Issun says, that's right, she had a Nui howled and cleared the clouds for Nagi and the legend. So you howled to the heavens, and the clouds part. Hell yeah. But it's a moonless night.

3:13:18 You use your celestial brush to paint one, and the moon glows bright. Hell yeah. It shines down on Nagi's sword, and it goes from blue to gold in the moonlight. And Oki looks on in pure jealousy, but Nagi goes, what the fuck is this? Why is my sword gold now? Well, whatever the reason, the gods must intend for me to wield it. Absolutely. Time for Nagi style. Blade of truth. Just like with Susano, we use our slash technique to help Nagi cut each head of Orochi's off. Except the final head, which Nagi says, it's time for the ultimate Nagi style, celestial cleaver.

3:14:01 With no help from you, he slices Orochi in half, hot dog style. You watch as Nagi defeats Orochi, and little Lika lands safely on your back without a scratch on her. The narrator says that Nagi's destiny was finally fulfilled, just as legend had told. The now golden sword was named Sukiyomi, and it was used to seal away the foul beast for 100 years in the Moon Cave. Everyone left the Moon Cave happy and free of the influence of Orochi, except for one. Oki fumed with jealousy that his sword didn't do the trick.

3:14:42 He wanted to fulfill the destiny, but instead he got tossed. He took his burning feelings and returned through the Spirit Gate to his own time, where he skulked off angrily. Back at the slain Orochi, Nagi laughs while celebrating his victory, taking most of the credit. Issun tries to get you some credit, but high above, a purple flaming circle appears. Oh no. Issun says this can't be good. A giant rock appears out of the flaming circle. Issun tells Nagi to watch out, but it's too late. The rock slams down on top of Nagi, crushing him.

3:15:24 Or so we think. Nagi is lying on the ground cowering, but the rock isn't crushing him. Instead, a glowing, white and red wolf is there, stopping the rock from crushing him. The wolf is bigger than you, has more red flair, and carries the weapon you saw painted in Isaku's painting. This is the max-powered, 100 years ago, Shidanui. A hundred years younger Isaku hops off Shidanui and tells you this battle hasn't even started yet. Nagi gets up, grabs his Shidanui, who is injured from stopping that rock, and runs.

3:16:12 You take off in another direction, with little Lika still on your back, running her all the way back through the spirit gate. Once back in your normal time, Issun says, that was crazy, Shidanui never actually fought in that battle, you did. That Shidanui was fully powered, all to stop a rock, and apparently that killed her in the end. Orochi wasn't the thing that actually got her in the end, it was a fucking rock. You look up and see that the sun has a small sliver blacked out. The solar eclipse has begun. We need Lika to perform the volcanic incantation, like right fucking now, but too bad she's a toddler and has no idea what that is.

3:16:57 She asks, is it that funny song grandpa sings? I know that song. So you haul fucking ass back to her village, through the forest at a full sprint while the sun slowly fades to black. You make it to the doors of the Izo Fuji mountains. Kai is there and she says that Okie just came through and broke open the doors to the mountains. Those doors keep a majority of the cold out of the village. By breaking the door open, it won't matter if the eclipse happens or not. The freeze will kill everyone. Oh shit. She doesn't understand why Okie would do something like this. He's a good person. Issun tries to explain that something happened to Okie when he faced Orochi.

3:17:38 There's a darkness to him now. He decides to go in after him while Kai takes Lika to go start the volcanic incantation to at least mitigate some of this cold. Before heading through, Issun explains that we're about to head into a place called the Waku Shrine. It's built into the side of the Izo Fuji Mountains. At the top of this shrine, surrounded by the mountain range, the twin demons, Lechku and Nechku, take the form of two gigantic owls. Who? They're two big owls. Who? Lechku and Nechku. Got it, thank you. They had been trapped as statues here in the shrines for centuries.

3:18:18 But the other day, they suddenly woke up and caused this winter storm that threatens to kill everyone in Webkir. Issun starts to piece together that all of these legendary evils keep getting resurrected. So he thinks back to what Ninetales said about Yami, the Lord of Darkness. All of this has to be connected to this Dark Lord Yami somehow. Waku is one last dungeon, and yes, I promise it is the actual last dungeon, with ice-based puzzles to solve in order to get you through it. At one point, you find a 40-foot gramophone outside on a mountain's ledge. And a gramophone is an old-fashioned record player with one of those big-ass cones that act as a speaker.

3:18:59 Oh, those are cool as shit. And coming from the cone of this gramophone is the blizzard that's freezing everything. Oh, no. So you and Issun set out to break it. Once you do, the blizzard stops, and the sky clears, revealing the 13th and final constellation. Oh, shit. It is the charging bull god Itagami, god of ice. The ability he grants you is the ice version of the water and fire techniques. When you learn it, Issun starts jumping up and down, excited that you learned all the brush techniques. And he says, What's Itagami doing? You look over, and Itagami blows a magic horn.

3:19:41 The other 12 gods come rushing to his side, and they merge their power to become a new weapon. The weapon you saw Shida Nui wielding in both of Hisaku's painting and in person a hundred years ago. A bright red shield representing the sun, and it has a magical blue and gold trail of swirls representing the 13 gods, and it's in constant flowing motion like a cape on your back. Issun says, Now that you have all 13 brush strokes, you better get them back alive. What's the point of learning all of them if we're dead? Oh, entirely. You head back into the temple and continue onward to the twin demons.

3:20:24 You finally find one, Nechku, alone. You bear down, ready for a fight, but you're interrupted by you. Shutenui from 100 years ago appears, glowing brightly. That's so good. Nechku turns and shoots a barrage of ice at Shutenui. Shutenui bitch slaps the ice and shoots it back at Nechku, hitting it in the face. You see this and howl, which prompts Shutenui to join you. And the two of you team up and fight Nechku together. This fight is epic, and when you use your celestial brush, you can see Shutenui using theirs too, just like in the Ninetales fight, but this time it's helping you.

3:21:05 Honestly, if you wanted, you could just sit back and let Shutenui do all the work. She's a fucking beast. And she's bigger than you by like half and way stronger. That's what's up. As you defeat Nechku, Issun tells you to go for the killing blow so you can show off for Shutenui how badass you are. As you're about to, the other demon comes crashing through a wall. Lechku is flying very sloppily, and you notice, Oki is riding this owl's face, hacking away at it with his sword. Oh shit. He finally tosses Oki off, and he lands near you and Shutenui. He says, this must be it, the battle that will awaken a sword and make it glow silver. It has to be, right?

3:21:47 Lechku revives its twin, and the two prepare their next attack. Issun and Shutenui both try to stop Oki, but he turns into his wolf form and leaps in the air at the twin demons. The owls use their special attack, which freezes time, and Oki is stuck, paused in midair, alone and vulnerable. You're all frozen where you stand, and watch in horror as one of the owls raises a sword high over its head, ready to strike down Oki. And then Shutenui's all, bitch, I'm a goddess. And she breaks free from being frozen and headbutts Oki out of the way.

3:22:28 Hell yeah. But in doing so, takes the stab instead. Ah shit. Getting stabbed unleashed a powerful blast, injuring the owls, causing them to act erratically. Shutenui falls and lands dangerously on the edge of the mountain, and slips over the lip. You dive for her, and manage to just barely grab Shutenui by your mouth. Issun jumps off you and starts pulling on your tail trying to help you keep Shutenui up. Okie looks at the twin demons, weak and vulnerable. Then he looks back at you, struggling to keep your grip on Shutenui. He says that he could end this now, take out the demons and be the hero.

3:23:13 Then he looks back at you, then back at the owls. A lightning strikes a nearby tree, and it falls towards you. The tree suddenly gets cut in half, and Okie is by your side, as he helps you pull Shutenui up and back onto the mountain's edge. The three of you watch as the two owl demons fly away. Issun says, Okie, look. And with his first act of true heroism, Okie's sword finally glows silver. He realizes that he was a selfish prick this whole time, and that now he understands what being a hero really means.

3:23:54 Issun's like, yeah, but you still need to kill the owls. We need to tie up loose ends though, buddy, okay? Okie turns into his wolf form, and the trio of wolves howl together at the moon. You go back into the temple, because you have to go through the mountain some more to get to where the owls went. Shutenui is still really beat up, so Okie stays with her, saying he owes her his life. He says not to worry. When you get to the fight, he'll be there. So, you have some more dungeon to get through to where the owls went to hide. When you make it to the owl hideout, Okie is already there. Issun asks, how the fuck did you do that? Okie says that almost as soon as you left, a Ponkle showed up and said he was going to take care of Shutenui and to come help.

3:24:40 So, he took a shortcut. You and Okie fight the owl demons simultaneously, and it's a huge fight with a few phases. Okie is a great companion too, and you can do team up attacks and shit. And when you defeat them, they burst into cherry blossom petals. Oh, that sounds pretty. But a black essence rises up from where they were. Their spirits rose and joined a passing black cloud, joining with the essences of nine tails and the blight. You watch as the cloud descends on the celestial ship, buried in the icy, louchy lake. Shidanui, beaten and bloody, looks at the glowing sword and smiles.

3:25:20 Hisaku creates a tear in the fabric of reality, and we can see the moon cave from 100 years ago through the tear. Shidanui walks through, and the tear seals itself back up. Issun says, Shidanui is going through that tear to go save Nagi from that boulder right now. And you realize why stopping that boulder took so much out of her, ultimately leading to her death and her legend to be told. Oki and you head back to the village, where Lika does her little dance. The volcanoes become active, warming the city and their hearts. Oki apologizes to everyone for stealing the sword, and returns it to its plinth by Lao Chi Lake.

3:26:03 As he does, the sword glows a bright silver, and it illuminates the boat in the frozen lake. The light from the silver sword begins to melt the ice. The boat immediately rises up out of the water, and flies a few feet above the water. A doorway opens, and a rainbow bridge descends from the boat to the snowy shore below. The grand climax of this game begins, with you, as a dog, crossing a rainbow bridge. But just as you step onto it, Issun stops you. He asks, do you understand what happens when you cross the rainbow bridge?

3:26:45 This is it. There is no coming back from this. That boat is the literal source of all evil in this world, and it has gathered there, and is inviting you to come inside. For the final time, Issun tells you, this is the actual point of no return. Do you have the resolve to do this? When you answer yes, Issun decides to have a quick heart to heart. He says, our journey together began so long ago, in the valley of Sakuya's chest. Go to hell. Then he goes through the rest of the adventure, and all the times it was about to begin, and all the creatures and demons you've faced and beaten, all the times you thought the adventure was over, all of it leading to a ship of such absurd legend, nobody believed it to be true, and it turned out to be true.

3:27:39 You're like, yes, it's been great. For Issun, this is enough of a life to have lived, but he also wants to keep living it. So for him, this is the end of his journey. For you, it's about to begin. He's got to go back to Plonkton. And you're like, what the fuck? He says that he told you from the start. He planned on stealing the 13 brush techniques, and then he was going to leave. So he's leaving. He never cared about you, so just go, you stupid dog. Go and save the world. Oh, my God. And then you hear, he's right, Moshari. Ugh. And fuckface Waka descends from above.

3:28:20 Jesus Christ. He says that your way is into that boat. Issun has a different path. Issun's like, God damn it, I genuinely forgot about you. It's been a while and I enjoyed the silence. Waka says that he's finally found the boat used by the Celestials. He can finally go to the heavens. Issun says, you know what? I don't care anymore. I'm gone. And he turns and leaves. Waka asks if he's afraid he won't make it into heaven. Issun asks what he means. And Waka says that only those worthy of heaven can even get onto the boat in the first place.

3:29:02 He says Issun knows that. He's heard these legends a million times. He's just afraid he won't be found worthy, so he doesn't want to go. Issun says that has nothing to do with it. And to prove it has nothing to do with it, Issun says fine, he's going. And he charges at the door. Okay. But he's deflected by a magic barrier. Because Issun is not worthy of going to heaven. That tracks. Waka says you're a celestial envoy. You knew you weren't welcome on this trip. And with that, the rainbow bridge vanishes. Oh shit.

3:29:42 And Issun drops while you and Waka stand safely inside a doorway on the side of the ship. As Issun falls, Waka says he has one last prophecy for him. And he lifts your front paws as he says, It takes two to tango. And a spotlight hits the two of you standing there in dancing pose. A song begins. Oh, what the fuck? And the two of you dance together as he continues with his prophecy. Is it like the way people dance with dogs? The dog like kind of stands on their back legs. Bully. That's exactly it. That's so cute. He says the bond of the brush shall intercede.

3:30:24 He tells Issun from way up here to think of those he's met with a lot of resolve. Think on them and spread the word. Then Waka turns to you and says, We have a date with destiny. Better not keep her waiting. You and Issun stare at each other from afar. As the door to the boat closes, and you go inside after Waka. The interior of the ship is an old school final boss zone where you have to fight each of the bosses you fought along the way in succession. You at least get to choose the order and regroup after each fight. And Waka immediately fucks off, and while inside the boat, we also meet the spirits of the Celestials who died when it crashed here.

3:31:07 They all know you, as you were once among their numbers. They said Orochi attacked the Celestial plane, and you were battling him. The two of you fell from the heavens to the earth below during the battle. From there, Orochi took over Nippon, demanding a sacrifice every full moon for years. You could only watch, helplessly. Every year, knowing the prophecy of Nagi would bring about the end of Orochi, but in order for that to happen, everything needed to go as planned, and that included the sacrifices. So you kept the people in town during the festival, and in the off season, trained up until Nagi was ready for his fight with Orochi.

3:31:51 The rest of the Celestials had boarded the boat to escape the demon army that Orochi had brought, but they didn't realize the boat they boarded was commissioned by the demons to take them to a new home on another plane of existence. The boat was built by a group called the Moon Tribe, a group the Celestials considered allies. The Celestials were all killed, and the boat wrecked here. The Celestials go on to tell you that you must take your rightful place back in the Celestial Plane. From there, you can overlook everything and keep the world safe from there. But first, you have to kill all the demons on this ship before it makes it back.

3:32:34 We find out that Susanoo freeing Orochi was part of Orochi's plan, as he called the Susanoo in his sleep, leading to him being freed. After his defeat, he unleashed the other demons from the boat on the lands, all in an effort to keep you distracted while he made his way to this boat. But much like Darth Vader, Orochi isn't the actual Big Bad. Orochi has a master, and that master is Yami. And just before confronting Yami, you're told that Waka is a member of the Moon Tribe. Oh shit. He fought by your side when Orochi attacked the Celestial Plane.

3:33:16 He fled with the Celestials on the boat, and that he was the person that survived the crash. They'll never forget everything he did. You go to Yami, and it's just a gigantic metal ball. Oh shit. Waka is there, and he's using his lightsaber to hack and slash at this ball to no avail. Because he's like, what do I do with this? But the ball is also not really doing anything either, and it just kind of floats there. Waka comes to you and says that this is Yami, Lord of the Darkness. You haven't seen him, but he's always been there. He's just black on the night sky. He's been casting a shadow on the world for years now, and it's time to end its reign of darkness.

3:34:01 As Waka speaks, we watch as the eclipse of the sun that started this horrible day is finally complete, and the sun becomes blocked. Yami springs to life, spinning, and suddenly the 13 constellations of the gods fill the night sky. You watch as their essence is ripped from your body, and join Yami. You fall to the ground, a plain white wolf, powerless. The ball opens up and reveals the true form of Yami, and he's a little gray manatee in a fishbowl. Is that as adorable as you made it sound, or is it dumb?

3:34:42 It's so fucking cute, it's ridiculous. Okay, there is a good chance that could have been dumb as fuck. Can we be real? It's a little dumb, but in the cutest way. But it's like so cute, you're like, but it's pretty good. Well, don't let it fool you, because he fires a laser burst of light at you. But Waka stands in front of the blast, blocking it with his sword. Waka says he owes the Celestials. He proudly built the boat that the Celestials escaped on. He had no idea that Yami had snuck his forces aboard it. He was told the Celestials had commissioned it, but it was a Trojan horse unbeknownst to him.

3:35:25 Waka reveals that he was the one that told you the prophecy about Nagi, and that you took it seriously, waiting for the prophecy to come true. He thanks you for trusting him, despite so many deaths that had to occur. This is all a full conversation while he's resisting this laser. This is a very involved conversation. That's fucking great. Finally, it overwhelms Waka, and he's knocked back, and he falls off the side of the boat without so much as an au revoir, and falls through space to the nothing below. You know, I'm good with that. You stand tall, completely powerless, and howl at the moon, as you engage Yami in the battle for peace across all realms.

3:36:13 And Yami is like the ball from The Incredibles. It can roll, it has arms and legs that can sprout, but it can also catch fire, it can electrocute you, all sorts of fun stuff. You can hit him still as a normal wolf, and eventually he gives back one of the celestial brush powers. Through the course of the fight, you slowly regain your abilities one by one, often requiring you to use that power in the next stage of the fight to hurt Yami. You finally regain all 13 of your abilities and defeat Yami. As he explodes, Issun jumps up and down on your nose saying, let's get one of your famous howls. And you rev up to do one of your howls and then stop, realizing Issun's not here.

3:36:59 Yeah, that's right. He's kind of here in a ghost form. Oh, are you hallucinating? He nods his head at you and then vanishes. You are fully hallucinating. You look around and howl into the sky, surrounded by the 13 god constellations. And then you get picked up by Yami and thrown about. He yeets you? He yeets you. You yelp in pain as you hit the ground, and you are once again a plain white wolf. Oh, shit. The ball morphs into a giant hand, and another round of battle begins. Ding ding. You stand up, completely wiped out from all this fighting.

3:37:40 Yeah. Then you hear Issun say, Ugh, that fur ball is always spacing out. Ammy can't do a thing without me. Suddenly, you start seeing all of your friends that you've met along the way as ghostly apparitions floating around you. Saying that they never realized you were the sun god all along. They cheer you on when they find out. Then, like it's the finale of Earthbound. Spoiler alert. All of your friends start praying for your safety. Thoughts and prayers. Praying that you bring back the sun, which is still blocked from the eclipse. Praying that you defeat Yami. The ones who knew you well send you special messages of encouragement. We even see Chief Issaku of the Ponkels and Issun's grandfather.

3:38:23 He prays for you and then says that this artwork is that of a true celestial envoy. Issun is doing his duty as a celestial envoy at last, and is spreading your legend far and wide across Nippon. It's about damn time. Get on the team, buddy. The faith from the people in you can give you the power you need to defeat Yami once and for all. Finally, we see Issun, and he's jumping around town, throwing artwork depicting you in all your glory. He tells the people of Nippon that without the God of the Sun, rice won't grow, plants will wither, and laundry won't dry.

3:39:05 Think of all the laundry. Pure chaos. Issun leads the whole of Nippon in prayer as they lift up their voices to the heavens, asking you to bring back the sun. With the support of the whole of Nippon, the constellations all burn bright, and you see their essence return to you one by one. The sun bursts through the darkness of the eclipse. And finally, you stand, burning a bright white. The large Shidanui-sized Amaterasu, God of the Sun. Hell yeah! With another howl, you engage with Yami for the true, final time.

3:39:47 No more false endings, no more moving the goalpost. This is the fight to end all fights. Literal darkness versus literal light. The fight ends, and we hear, Bonjour! And Waka comes flying down in a drop top flying saucer. Sure, yeah. Good for you, buddy. He says that without Issun, you would have been fucked. Good thing Waka gave him that motivational speech back at the Rainbow Bridge, huh? This is because of me. You leap into the flying saucer and lick Waka to death, and he pets you and calls you the goodest girl.

3:40:30 She's a good girl. He says that it's time to head to the celestial plane and to set things in order there. Get ready, Mashari, our adventure is about to begin. Oh, my God. Your friends watch from Nippon as you and fuckface Waka blast off to the celestial plane. The end. Isn't that the ending of Grease? Yeah, that is. That's the exact ending of Grease. Okay, I mean, spoilers for Grease. Blast off into the sun. Yeah. That's wild. Yeah, and then you get like a really great credit sequence with the scrolling and everything. You see all your friends on it, and all the creators are on there.

3:41:13 That sounds beautiful. I love the art in this. It is gorgeous. It is, and the sad thing is the Wii version fucked up the credit sequence of this game, too. Shut up. Is there a watermark on that? No, there's not. So it's actually kind of funny. It's because of a watermark, though. Oh, they out here fucking up. So these credits featured the Clover logo, but Clover was no longer in business. Oh, shit. And due to not wanting to deal with copyright issues, they just cut the credit sequence entirely. They're just like, no one gets any flowers. Fuck all of you. Yeah. That's shitty. That's super shitty. Like, people still worked on this.

3:41:54 Right, and it is a really beautiful piece of scrolling artwork and silly animations. And they really couldn't go in and just move the logo out. And that was Okami. That was incredible. Thank you for taking us through that journey. That was wild. It was a road trip. It was like Hercules. At the end, it was Greece. Down to the fucking dance sequence going into like, we're blasting off again. It's just amazing to see how many different touch points it had from other games and stuff like that. I was really blown away by that. Oh, this was such a fun adventure. I can't believe that nobody played this game.

3:42:35 And, you know, maybe this will help. Yeah, maybe we'll push another couple copies, right? Yeah, you're welcome. You're welcome. Now, that's really cool. And it's wild that people didn't talk about this because really people kind of love to geek out on shit like mythology and folklore and cryptids and shit like that. But they like to do it on things that they understand. Maybe that was the issue. A little cultural curve for this one. It might have been. This is very fantastical. It's very high fantasies. Very much so. I mean, I get where that could be a barrier for some people. That was great, though. Thank you so much. Well, thank you all, too. We hope you enjoyed that. If you enjoyed the show, please make sure you like it, you subscribe to it, you leave comments, you rate it, all the different things you can do.

3:43:21 We appreciate anything. And if you want to hang out with us, you can check us out at theothercastlepodcast.com. That's the othercastlepodcast.com. It has links to our Discord where you can talk to us. If you have an um actually, go for it. You also have the links to our merch store and our Patreon on there. Yes, you do. And speaking of Patreon, we just want to call out everybody that is a part of it. So we have Omar, Aaron, Cyrus, Trevor, Molly, Krisha, Molly Mock, Jackie, Ellen, and Tijen. Thank you all very much for your help and support. We appreciate you greatly, and we will talk to you on the Discord. Yes, we will. Thank you so much, Goombas. And this is Tom and Andrea reminding you.

3:44:02 Au revoir, motherfucker. And don't skip the cutscenes. Bork, bork. Have a good one. Bye.