Summary: A light-hearted and fun romp through space. Then not. The Lunar Cry begins.
TW: minor nightmare fuel/body horror
Space!
-Talk about a change in tone. The music turns light and goofy, accordion stuff. Vaguely reminds me of music playing at (American) Oktoberfests I’ve been to.
-The rocket blasts through space.
-Some bored astronauts and administrators on the space station prepare to receive the incoming rocket. (That’s a sentence I really never thought I’d type when I started FFVIII.)
GUY IN SPACE SUIT: “I’m gonna go check up on Adel.”
I WAS RIGHT ABOUT ADEL BEING ON THE MOON LOLOOLOL
I can’t stop laughing and I’m crying and I can’t see the screen through tears. A gunblade master is flying on a rocket ship to help a time wizard wake up his rebel party member in space near the evil sorceress’s moon prison all while the sorceress from the future is going around possessing people and might possess the evil space sorceress too.
This is so fucking goofy and out there and I LOVE IT. It just throws all this shit at the wall and sees what sticks. I can’t blame anyone for totally checking out and backing away from this plot slowly, but this works for me so much. EVERYTHING sticks! (except the timers and some of the card rules)
I’m aware that FFIV’s plot is similarly goofy, but it took itself so much more seriously that it felt completely different. Compare the FFIV moon theme – a great and dramatic one in its own right – to this one.
And that’s NOTHING compared to the militaristic intensity of “Lunar Subterrane,” but that’s not quite a fair comparison. That was the final dungeon theme on the moon. I’ll be curious to hear what FFVIII chooses for its final dungeon music.
-Some astronauts help guide the rocket into the space station while the wacky accordion music plays on.
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Lunar Base
-The party gets unfrozen. The perspective is weird to emphasize the artificial gravity.
-The main scientist here is Piet.
-We get Rinoa to a medical chamber where she’s put in a cryo-thingy.
-Staff up here rotates back to the planet every 6 months so that they stay fresh. Major concerns about anyone becoming lax in watching Adel.
-So we’re not actually ON the moon right now, but very close to it.
-The crater on Centra is due to the “Lunar Cry” (there’s that term again) 100 years ago.
-Monsters act weird when the moon’s gravity is in a certain state. Very FFIV: TAY-ish.
-AHA! The Lunar Cry is the phenomenon when a bunch of moon monsters are affected by gravity in such a way that causes them to all drop to the Earth at the same time.
-Adel’s prison looks awesome.
It’s hermetically sealed, built to prevent anything from getting in or out, including radio waves or anything like that.
-Esthar’s president is an astronaut, floating outside the prison to inspect it.
-Hi, Ellone! Interesting – it seems like she didn’t have a huge, overarching master plan with sending Squall back to the past. She just used him to help her revisit things, to see if she could change anything. She learned that she couldn’t, and was happy to see she was loved.
-While the past can’t change, revisiting the past can provide perspective that changes the viewer. A wise outlook.
-She’ll try to help here, but doesn’t know Rinoa. I wonder if her just seeing Rinoa in that medical chamber is enough.
-I found literally the worst Triple Triad rules in history.
Lost Cerberus in the one game I played and I don’t really care. I just assume I’ll lose most other games with this ruleset I could play, so cutting my losses at one.
-We start heading towards Rinoa’s room, but something ominous is happening. The scene shifts to Rinoa’s room before Squall, Quistis, and Ellone can arrive. The accordion music cuts out and turns solemn. Rinoa’s medical chamber opens on its own.
Is Adel stirring? (All this build-up has me thinking of her like an Elder God who should not be awakened.)
-Red alert! Sirens blaring and the PA calls emergency staff to the med center.
-AAAAAAARGHH!!!!
This was a fun and goofy setting and now a dazed and MULTIPLE/ILLUSIONARY Rinoa is floating out of her room with a force field around her that knocks back anyone who approaches.
Was I wrong about Ultimecia being transferred to Seifer? Maybe she stayed in Rinoa.
-Her movement is just so unsettling.
-Rinoa floats into the command room and pushes a button that lowers the shield on Adel’s prison. Oh shit here we go.
As a Cabin in the Woods fan, I can’t help but think of: [spoilers for the movie of course]
TW: Gore, horror.
Only one seal remains on Adel’s prison. Rinoa floats away to remove it.
-Squall looks down at the moon again, and what I thought was lava is actually a CRAPLOAD of monsters packed together with red glowing eyes.
-The Lunar Cry is beginning.
-JESUS FUCK THE MOON
This episode started out fun-loving and goofy and it turns into LITERAL NIGHTMARE FUEL JESUS THE MOON IS AN EYEBALL OVERFLOWING WITH MONSTERS HAJKLFHAJKLFHAKL
-THE MONSTERS THE MONSTERS THERE IS A SEA OF MONSTERS
-THE “PUPIL” ON MONSTER MOON STARTS TO EMERGE AND STRETCH TOWARDS THE EARTH PROVIDING A CHANNEL FOR THE SEA OF MONSTERS TO SWARM
WHAT THE SWEET MOTHER OF
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Next time: Not much, just a little bit of apocalypse and a couple of evil sorceresses to deal with.
