Shin Megami Tensei 5's Nahobino Fusion Scene

As awful as the ending of Shin Megami Tensei 5 is, it’s worth noting that the preceding events of its finale are disappointing garbage, too.  Case in point?  The Nahobino fusion scene.

So, in the Empyrean, the final dungeon (if a linear path with no real detours containing a total of 5 fights altogether can be called such), you reach a point, towards its end, at which you catch up with your faction’s allies (Atsuta and Koshimizu if you’re Chaos, Dazai and Abdiel if you’re Law, Yakumo and Nuwa if you’re Neutral), and your faction’s enemies.  When you get there, you find that your comrades have managed to get their asses kicked by your foes.  And I mean that your buddies got thoroughly wrecked; they’re down on their knees, barely keeping it together, while their foes don’t look to have suffered a scratch.

So I’m justifiably annoyed from the start as I roll up on this debacle, cuz like...really?  You assholes couldn’t have at least softened them up a little for me?  I’m already clearly gonna have to clean up your mess here anyway, but you couldn’t have at least landed a goddamn punch beforehand for my benefit?  There isn’t even a speck of dirt on our mutual foes, guys, these fuckers look immaculate and I know that that’s not from any association with the Virgin Mary. I know because she’s in my party and I checked with her.  She says she had nothing to do with it, y’all just weak as shit.

How the hell did my allies lose this fast, for that matter?  I entered the portal to this place, like, 30 seconds after everyone else.  These fuckers must have been speedrunning defeat!  Forget being brought down by their foes--there shouldn’t have been enough time for them to kill themselves, for Nocticula’s sake!

But at any rate, the horses you’ve backed are getting turned into glue when you find them in the Empyrean.  So you show up, and you find that you’re just in time to watch the victors of this off-screen skirmish decide that now’s the time to finally fuse together and become the Nahobino they were meant to be.  And watch you most certainly do, because Zon Kuthon forbid the protagonist of Shin Megami Tensei 5 ever, ever not indulge in Voyeuristic Paralysis Syndrome whenever he’s given the opportunity.  Make even the slightest attempt to stop his enemies from merging together to form a real, actual fucking god?  Nah, not when there’s more important stuff for the protagonist to do, like standing motionlessly and staring emotionlessly.  More on THIS little bad habit in a forthcoming rant, believe you me.

So yeah, with nothing stopping them, your faction enemies do their little fusion thing, and...fuckin’ hell, just thinking about this is giving me an aneurysm because it’s so goddamn stupid.  They fuse together, and your allies are killed by the Dragon Ball Z power-up winds that result from it.  I mean for fuck’s sake, guys.  It’s not enough for you assholes to make record time at getting the shit beaten out of you off-screen, you have to make the cherry on top dying to a breeze?  Jesus Christ, your faction allies in this game make Shin Megami Tensei 3’s ISAMU look less pathetic by comparison.  At least when HE decided to up and die even when his faction was the winning team, he did so from the wounds he received from his off-screen battle.  He wasn’t murdered by lethal hype.

Hey, here’s a question: where the hell was YOUR wave of destructive power-up wind, huh?  I’m talking about way back at the beginning of the game, when the protagonist first joined with Aogami to become the Nahobino.  Didn’t see any radiating burst of power then!  And it would’ve been handy, because the circumstances for that joining was that our hero had run afoul of a handful of minor tutorial monsters and Aogami was trying to protect him from them.  Why do a couple of secondary characters becoming a Nahobino release such a shockwave of raw power that it kills off experienced demons and demon hunters, but when the blasted protagonist does it, it doesn’t even lightly nudge a single level 3 experience-fodder enemy?

The whole thing really devalues and cheapens the characters you’ve allied with, too.  Let’s say that you’ve chosen the Chaos route, for example.  Doing so means that the very first and only time you see Koshimizu in any kind of combat situation, it’s specifically to watch him get trashed.  Isn’t this the same joker who’s been talking up how much better it’ll be if Tokyo is protected by a posse of local gods like him?  Not instilling a lot of confidence in that future with your career win-loss record of 0-1 there, Champ.

And it’s even worse if you’ve sided with Law.  Because the last time you saw Dazai and Abdiel, Dazai was showing off the fact that his baseball cap was apparently weighted training clothing and taking it off quadrupled his power level.  More importantly, Abdiel achieved the climax of her character arc and went through a cool, intimidating transformation, becoming a fallen angel as she embraced the need to defy God in order to achieve His goals.  So we go from the culmination of Abdiel’s story, the impressive and perhaps even chilling fall she undergoes to become a terrifying dark avatar of blasphemy, to...colorful wind disintegrating her after an enemy effortlessly beat her off-screen.  

Yeah, I sure do love it when a character goes through a whole personal arc to achieve a higher state of being for absolutely no goddamn reason whatsoever.  “My gods, the power!  The POWER!  I’ve never felt anything like it!  By my estimate, I am now strong enough...to bruise my enemy’s knuckles a little as he beats my ass into the pavement!”

Objectively, I also recognize that this sequence is bullshit if you picked the Neutral path.  I have to admit, however, I find it more difficult to be affronted by this scenario, because getting to see that sneering, arrogant fuckwit Yakumo get his self-important ass handed to him like the sad weak little shit he wants to pretend he isn’t...well, it's better for my mental state than professional therapy.

Even just the fact that any of this is happening at all at this point in the game is dumb and makes no sense.  Why the fuck were these 4 idiots all battling normally before you show up, anyway?  Everyone’s in the Empyrean with the intention of taking God’s throne because each pair can become a Nahobino, and only a Nahobino can actually use said throne to dictate the nature of the world.  So why the ACTUAL FUCK did NONE of them choose to power up BEFORE this moment!?  If you find yourself battling against enemies who are of comparable strength to you, and everything is on the line, wouldn’t your first move be to transform into your ultra-powerful god form to gain the advantage?  Actually, rewind.  If you find yourself in a race to get to God’s throne and use it before your competitors, wouldn’t your first move be to transform into the Nahobino form that can actually make use of said throne, so that you don’t have to waste time doing so once you’ve actually made it there?

No, actually, rewind even further--why not just transform into one’s god form before even entering the damn Empyrean realm to begin with?  What benefit was there in not just doing it from the get-go?  If we go by the example of the protagonist, there’s no time limit on the Nahobino fusion, , no stated plot restriction preventing them from doing so.  It’s not even like it’s an irreversible process; we’ve seen Aogami and the protagonist separate multiple times at will.  Atlus, if someone gains the ability to become an honest-to-themself god, with no downsides whatsoever, there’s no one alive who isn’t gonna DO that immediately!  Especially if they have something very important to accomplish which such a transformation could help facilitate!

It gets even more idiotic when you realize that the losing pair in this scene are also just as capable of transforming into a Nahobino.  It’s dumb enough that the victors wait until AFTER their success is guaranteed to unleash their secret weapon, but your faction allies basically have just chosen to die, because they’ve refused to play their trump card even as they get absolutely demolished.  It’s like people who refuse to use up their best healing items during a game’s final battle, only somehow even more moronic.

Jesus Christ this game is garbage.  On the rare occasions it actually deigns to DO something with its story, this is the kind of stilted, irrational, careless schlock that results.  And I’m still not even done with taking Shin Megami Tensei 5 to task for its failures yet!  There is more, significantly more, to come!  You wouldn’t think you could write more sentences about how bad a game is than there are in the game’s own script, but I’m pretty sure I’m gonna get there, if I haven’t already!