Personal Post: Halloween List: Top 10 Favorite monsters in fiction Part 2

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Sorry but no marriage stealing demons here.

 Welcome back to those who have seen the first part of this list. Now for those who’s missed Part 1 here’s where we are so far.

#10 Kars
#9 Fnaf Animatronics
#8 Freddy Kreuger
#7 Walter Sullivan and his victims
#6 The Heartless

Moving on.

#5 The Shadows from Persona.

You know that little voice in your head that tells you just be an absolute asshole? These guys are were that voice comes from.

 While the shadows technically were introduced in Persona 2 and did serve as the primary antagonists in Persona 3 with the distinct bodies and breeds; Persona 4 was where these two incarnations were mixed together. For those who don’t know Shadows draw inspiration from the term defined by Carl Jung where they are the manifestations of a person’s negative aspects of their self. The shadows in Persona follow this principle to a more literal degree. See also “Rest and Ricklaxation” only not as slimy but just as psychotic in most cases.

 In the Persona series Shadows are physical manifestations of humanity’s repressed negative self. Their MO varies depending on which game you encounter them, In Persona 3 they devour the minds of people who are dragged into the Dark Hour leaving them as soulless husks who beg for Nyx to bring about The Fall and the end of humanity. In Persona 4 when a person enters the Midnight Channel they’re confronted by their personal Shadow who will do everything in their power to get their real selves to reject them thus causing them to assume their true form and kill their original selves to justify their own existence as unique beings.

 More recently in Persona 5 the Shadow Selves of people whose hearts desires are consumed and twisted with negative emotions such as greed, lust, despair etc have their dark desires manifested in Mementos. The most severe cases break out of Mementos in the form of a Palace centered around their personal sanctuary where their Shadows rule over and seek to fulfill their original self’s dark desires. This attracts other weaker Shadows which are enslaved and controlled by the Palace Ruler to be their personal guards to protect their treasures. The palace treasure is the symbolic form of the source of their dark desires which are guarded against any and all intruders.

 When rejected by their real selves; or in the case of Palace rulers when their treasure is at risk of being stolen from a real world confrontation of their dark actions, these Shadows transform into bizarre monstrous forms to kill their opponents. But if their real selves can accept or confront what the Shadows have to say after being pacified in battle they become Personas. But if a Palace ruler Shadow is killed then their real self will have a mental shutdown and die. The Shadows offer a truly sick and terrifying nemesis because while you may try to act the best as you can you can never escape your darker aspects, you can run from your problems but you can never hide from yourself, and your Shadow is everything you wish you weren’t but know you may want to be.

#4 The Witches from Madoka Magica

Oktavia Von Seckendorff, such a poor, unfortunate soul.

 Most people are familiar with the stereotypical depiction of Witches, black hats, brews potions, flies on broomsticks, get killed by someone accidentally spilling water on them. But the Witches in Madoka Magica are nothing like that. In this world certain girls from the approximate ages of 6 to 16 have the potential to form a contract with the alien cat creature Kyubey to have a single wish granted. The catch of course being that once their wish is granted they become Magical Girls and are charged with defeating creatures referred to as Witches. Sounds simple right, but here's the catch though, Kyubey is the sleazy used car salesman of Magical Girl mascot characters.

 I mean sure he will grant your wish and make you into a Magical Girl but he also kind of forgot to mention that if your Soul Gem, the source of your magic turns black either form overuse or if you fall into despair the hunter will quite literally become the prey. Yes aside from looking like the living nightmares of Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton Witches are actually Magical Girls who have succumbed to complete despair and are now mindless monsters who will devour people, cause them to commit suicide and various other horrible unexplained tragedies. On top of the normal Witches that hide away in their inter dimensional Labyrinths and the familiars that sometimes escape their masters to try and grow into Witches themselves there's also the most powerful Witch of them all, Walpurgisnacht the Christmas tree topper from hell who's so powerful its mere presence is enough to cause hurricanes!

 Its not even that the most weak looking witch can kill even the most experienced Magical Girl in just one shot that make them compelling it's that most of them were formerly young girls who just wanted the universe to cut them a break for once. But they all forget that you can't expect the universe to roll over and play dead without giving it a treat. Everything from their familiars to their Labyrinths are drenched in symbolism about their human selves, their wishes and their state of mind before they became these monsters. Now the Madoka Wiki does delve into the symbolism of the original series Witches but with all of the spin offs Mangas and new Video Games (that most likely won't be coming stateside) there's more to come. so in case an alien bunny cat wants to strike a deal with you just make sure you bring a lawyer to check the terms or else.

#3 The automatons from Karakuri Circus

These are the Generals of the Midnight Circus, known as Les Quatre Pionniers. The Geezer with the bird is Pantalone, the Ball Roller. The fatso with Kung-Lao's hat is Dottore the juggler. The woman with the cheap romance novel is Columbine the Trapeze Artist and last is Arlechino, the Guitarist.

  Ohh going hipster on this one since as far as I can tell not a whole lot of people know about these wind up toys from hell so I’ll summarize as best as I can. Though with this entry I'm at the mercy of fan translations as the Manga; Karakuri Circus has to my knowledge never been officially translated so if I get some info wrong you know why. The world of Karakuri Circus is plagued by a group of sentient puppets brought to life by Francine who is the creation of the deranged Alchemist Bai-Jin with a single goal, make her laugh. To that end these monstrosities have spent 200 or so years traveling across the globe in a caravan known as the Midnight Circus and spread a horrible disease called Zonapha’s Syndrome. This disease causes the victim to become biologically immortal but in perpetual pain and the only way to alleviate the pain is for the victim to make people laugh. 

 While the automatons have sentience and can fake emotions they are not real human beings thus they also seek the Philosophers Stone which can create the true Aqua Vitae, a substance which can make them fully human, thus able to comprehend the heart and thus make Francine laugh. But there are ways to put these psychotic Pinocchios down for good. Either destroy them with a specialized Puppet controlled by a near immortal being called Shirogane, overload their bootleg Aqua Vitae blood with Ki infused Qui Gong, if they run out of human blood to mix with their bootleg Aqua Vitae or if they reject their raison d’être, but no matter what they must be fought one on one without a conventional weapon otherwise their full powers can be utilized and could easily slaughter their opponents. Everything about the Midnight Circus is absurd, from their designs to their goals and even their weaknesses. Honestly these seem like what would happen if the Joker ever became a villain in a Tokusatsu show, an army of killer puppet clowns who personify the phrase “you can’t spell slaughter without laughter”, well they'd definitely be more interesting then Jared Leto. 

 Also the only people who can defeat them are master puppeteers who use gigantic puppets as their weapons? What do you know, something else ripped off by Musashi Kishimoto and let me see Karakuri Circus began publication around 1997 and Kankuro was introduced in Naruto around 2000, yep sounds right to me. As for the Automatons themselves while a majority look like clowns with insanely exaggerated features there are ones that look completely human which infiltrate human cities to steal blood and spread Zonapha’s Syndrome. So we have a bunch of deranged, sadistic carnie vampire puppets that want to become immortal so they can make one person laugh to bring back a person who has been long since dead. If that doesn’t sound like interesting monster material I don’t know what does. Forget SweetTooth, forget Pennywise (either version) these beasts are the real Insane Clown Posse and they don't give a shit about how magnets work.

 #2 The Horrors from Garo

While this one is a common Horror they're still nothing short of hell-spawn.

 While I did compare the Horrors to the Witches in my first Madoka Magica article these eldritch terrors also share some things in common with the Heartless. All three are creatures born from the darkness of humanity and will never be purged from their worlds unless darkness no longer exists, so good luck with that. As for the Horrors themselves they're beasts from the Makai World who devour the souls of evil humans and possess them so that they can consume more humans to sate their hunger. However if the human target has a desire that interests the Horror or if the two share a common goal the Horror can enter a symbiotic relationship to fulfill that desire. But the host is still technically dead and in perpetual torment due to being possessed by an entity that pure, dang, nasty evil.

 The only ones who can defend the human world from the Horrors is the Makai Order, made of the Makai Priests and their greatest warriors, the Makai Knights. Horrors are monsters in the purest sense of the word, they see humans as prey, literally feast on pure evil and look like Nightmares made flesh. But the truly terrifying part of these beings is the stone cold fact that so long as humanity has darkness in their hearts (and lets face it it's required to be a balanced person) Horrors will never go away. Hell even the Makai Knights don't actually kill them, when they're defeated their essence is just returned to the Makai World to be eventually reincarnated all over again, so yes this threat will never end. But remember this, where there is light, shadows lurk and fear reigns, but by the blade of knights, mankind was given hope. Now I'm just wondering if there was a Madoka Magica and Garo crossover, project for later then if I get around to it and I catch up on Garo.


Now before I get to my #1 favorite monster here's the honorable mentions.

Headcrab Zombies from Half life, while they're terrifying and the level "We Don't Go to Ravenholm" makes me crap my pants every time I play Half-Life 2 they're just Zombies with the Facehuggers' satanic cousins on their face so not much to them aside from terror. 

The Minions from Overlord, no not the servants of the blinged out Skeletor with the hot imp with the massive rack I mean the little goblin things that serve the Overlord of Evil and his advisor Gnarl. My personal favorites are the bashing browns. Unfortunately while Codemaster's Overlord franchise is dead right now thanks to the hot mess that was "Fellowship of Evil" maybe we'll see these excitable embassies of evil again soon. Just don't introduce a new Yellow Minion tribe or else I'll swear off Bananas forever.

Rachnera from Monster Mutsume, what else can I say, I like girls with a bit of snark, a dark edge and some actual depth to their character. Besides giant spiders are awesome.

The Joker Persona from Persona 2 Eternal Punishment. Less a Persona and more of a parasite this Pseudo Persona is granted to anyone who is infected with the Joker Virus which gets stronger the more the virus spreads. While it does look cooler in its more monstrous stages it just didn't make the cut.

The Bogeyman from Silent Hill Downpour. While I may be sick of Pyramid Head that doesn't mean its initial concept is dead. Bogeyman is the main stalker of Murphy Pendleton and Anne Cunningham. While Pyramid Head represented James' desire to be judged for his sins Bogeyman to me represents someone who needs to be judged. To Murphy when he sees the Bogeyman's face after defeating him in the Monastery his face flickers between his own for how badly he screwed up his life and his son's killer Patrick Napier. As for Anne she sees Murphy as the Bogeyman because she thinks he's the one who  beat her father into a vegetative state. I'd put him on the list proper but he's just a big dude with a cinderblock hammer, gas mask and raincoat. Not that it doesn't work sometimes the simplest designs are the best ones (Mario comes to mind here) but compared to other Silent Hill monsters he's a bit on the meh side, then again so are most of the monsters in Downpour so there you go. 

Alexander from Final Fantasy. I mean come on it's practically a Megazord how is this not awesome? Hell look at this scene from FF9 (AKA the best FF) standing tall against Bahamut with giant angel wings how is this not cool?! 

Songbird from BioShock Infinite. Now when I first saw this clockwork gargoyle I was psyched for the boss fight against this thing. I thought what weapon would work, what would its weaknesses be? But in the end we never actually fight Songbird in the game!

Now my absolute favorite Monster in Fiction #1 The Big Daddies from BioShock.

Yep Mr Bubbles and his many models are my personal favorite monsters.

 While there were entries on this list that had far more interesting backstories and designs I personally love these lumbering foul smelling palookas. Originally prisoners, political dissidents and Plasmid test subjects that were imprisoned in Persephone Penal Colony they were further spliced, brainwashed, had their skin and organs grafted into these diving suits and conditioned to protect the Little Sisters at all cost. And to do that these beasts were equipped with Sea Stone piercing drills, rivet guns, rocket launchers (kind of stupid considering were they are, one wrong rocket into a window and BLAM instant fish tank) and high powered laser guns.

 Just imagine everything that you were just stripped away, existing as a sleepwalking zombie whose only function is to protect a blood sucking ghoul while fighting off genetically mangled maniacs who could kill you if they gang up on you in just the right way. Honestly I think that's the most terrifying thing about the Big Daddies, the very idea that your mind, personality, everything that makes you you repurposed into this beast if you cross Ryan. Honestly that fear of the loss of self, one of many hippocratic actions Ryan permitted in his "self made paradise" is horrifying. So that's my Top 10 favorite monsters in fiction as of this list. But I'm betting you want to know what my least favorite monsters are, well that's what next year is for, so happy Halloween and now to see how the rest of this year unfolds.

Special thanks to my Patreon backer Jesse for his support.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica is owned by Gen Urobutchi, Studio Shaft, and Studio Aniplex.
Karakuri Circus is owned by Kazuhiro Fujita and Shogakukan.
Garo is owned by Keita Amemiya and TV Tokyo.
Bioshock is owned by 2K Boston, 2K Australia, Take-Two Interactive, Ken Levine, Alyssa Finley and 2K Games.
Half-Life 2 is owned by Valve Corporation
Overlord is owned by Codemasters, Lennart Sas and Triumph Studios.
Monster Musume is owned by Okayado, Tokuma Shoten, Monthyl Comic Ryu and Seven Seas.
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is owned by Atlus, arc system works and Sega.
Persona 2 Eternal Punishment is owned by Atlus and Sega
Silent Hill Downpour is owned by Vatra games and Konami Computer Entertainment
Final Fantasy 9 is owned by Square Enix
Beavis and Butthead is owned by MTV Networks and Mike Judge.