Storm serpents Narwa and Ibushi are perhaps some of the most extreme creatures in the Monster Hunter series, but that won’t stop me trying to analyse them!
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Nah Elders are More smart then Humans and Wayvernians
22:33 What the Hell is that?
I really like their designs, it feels completely alien yet is grounded in real-world inspirations, I just wish their arms were a little smaller to really hammer the point they've adapted specifically to fly and the arms have become vestigial
So the thing that I found most interesting about Ibushi and Narwa, is their name. In every other intro cutscean, a monsters name is displaced separate from their title. It also happens with subsepcies and other variations. However Narwa and Ibushi have their titles not only separate from their names but also in their names. They are "Wind Seprpent ibushi" and "thunder Seprpent Narwa". What I am saying is that, those aren't their specie names, but the individual nicknames given by the villagers. Just some food for thought.
the only monster i want to have human like int is fatalis
I'm pretty sure the Serpents don't have any mind control abilities, and the mind control effect we see on the twins is a result of their Resonance ability instead. Resonance appears to function similarly to a radio antenna, but for emotions, and so the "mind control" occurs when the Serpents' emotions are strong enough to overwhelm the twins and drown out their own thoughts. I imagine the Serpents "speaking" through the twins is not the Serpents' own words, but instead the twins unconsciously putting those emotions into human words like sleep talking.
Such a stupid pair of Elder Dragons! I really hope they aren’t in Wilds.
maybe Narwa needs certain fluits from Ibushi to ready her eggy beyond just sperm.
I personaly just like how Allmother is basicly intersex Narwa.
That "resonance" stuff is straight up idiotic tbh. I found it extremely weird and goofy since my very first playthrough, but tbh everything about wyverians are all over the place. At least from a perspective of someone who only played gen 5 and gen 1 😅
First time I actually hear someone criticising Rise for making monsters in general feel like nothing and this is my biggest problem with Rise tbh. You go on a hunt and while you're fighting a monster and an elder attacks? Free damage! How? Well you use as a puppet with some bug silk obviously, unless it's an apex for some reason. Pack of Veloci used to be a danger for a small village, now a village can fight off a horde
The Allmother theme slaps.
I honestly think that Bioenergy is involved in Narwa's ascension to the Allmother state rather than any genetic transfer, as much of a cop-out as it is.
As for sexual cannibalism, it makes sense that as a long-lived (and possibly monogamous) elder dragon, Ibushi wouldn't let itself be killed by its mate if it wants to make babies, as it can only do so every 50-100 years. Perhaps the Allmother state is indeed a means by which an Ibushi can insure its mate has the best chance to survive her pregnancy. It's just that the weakened Ibushi that HR Narwa consumed was on death's door, so the process finished him off, as you stated.
In the case of Ibushi and Narwa's mouths, there's an animal in the real world that has the same arrangement, and an aquatic one at that – the moray eel. In my eyes, the Sky Serpents would act similarly to such an animal, except they'd be more active hunters – they'd use their storms to trap and batter anything airborne, then use their teeth to either deliver a killing blow or grip the weakened/dead prey while swallowing it whole. Perhaps they also include aeroplankton
This may also fit into their preference for environments like the Coral Palace as a place to nest. Perhaps there is (or was) a population of Sky Serpents that used the New World's Coral Highlands as a nesting spot. It's also possible in my mind that the Highlands themselves were created by an incredibly ancient and powerful Ibushi/Narwa pair (or Sky Serpent ancestors) that yanked them out of the sea an unspecified amount of time after the unbelievably colossal Dalamadur(s) died there and served as the continent's Bioenergy foundation.
From the very start I was certain that hinoa wasn't hearing ibushi she was just straight up going insane, and honestly my theory is still out there hinoa's "possession" might just her stressing so much of ibushi's destruction she started hearing voices in her head and started going insane
Someone needs to check up on her cause she cannot be trusted with an oversized weapon
The fact you made these two Elders make complete sense is crazy. I know that the monster hunter team didn’t put THAT much thought into their designs, but literally the fact that you made each design choice of theirs make complete evolution sense is just 🤯
Have you ever given any thought to content based around the Pokémon franchise? I know it’s significantly more fantastical than Monster Hunter. But I feel like a lot of different mons would really gel with your style of content.
I genuinely love these two. They fight completely differently to all other monsters and their themes are top tier.
Now listen.
I’d take Rampages all day any day over Siege fights like Zora etc.
Yeah, Rampages weren’t anything special either, yet they at the very least wasn’t as nauseating and sleep inducing as literally 99% of siege fights op in MH prior. So, they are, if anything, basically lesser evil🤷
Also about those whole ”possession” part, I always thought of it as if the twins simply felt the emotions of Elder Serpents at that moment, yet they just phrased it in that weirdly ominous & even kinda poetic way. And if that’s the case then I’m fine with it, because at the end of the day Serpents never really speak, nor really possess anyone.
YAMA TSUKAMI MENTIONED! Yama video when?
I could see the pharyngeal jaws of Narwa and Ibushi to be an adaptation for soft-bodied, large-sized aeroplankton, similarly to the throat spikes of leatherbacks and penguins. We do see that animals exist on a scale from macropredator to filter-feeder- leopard seals are a good example of this, having powerful jaws to tackle moderately-sized prey like penguins and other seals, but also possessing molars that can be used to strain krill or small fish from the water, with up to 83% of their diet being krill consumed in this way when large prey is scarce. So perhaps this is an inverted version- large pouch-like external processing to capture and strain small prey, with the larger jaws being used to snag animals such as the assorted soft-bodied aeroplankton we see in World. So perhaps there's a whole ecosystem up there, inhabited by creatures such as Iceborne's Wintermoon Nettle that are only rarely seen at surface altitudes.
PDA that's actually harmful to the ones exposed to it lmao. 😂
23:30 there ARE some elders that are explicitly intelligent, though it seems more a couple extremely long lived individuals like the ancient fatalis that toppled the ancient civilization as revenge for overhunting.
The end of this video made me realise how amazing this theme is! I do actually really like these elders! Super cool monsters, I wish I got to hunt them more!
you should do a magnamalo video id love to hear your opinions on him in further detail
I personally like the idea of elder dragons haveing human like level's of spaience, that said I do agree that they should never be too anthropomorphized.
Though in regards to Ibushi and Narwa I never really got the impression that they were evil in the story. While yes they were causing mass havoc their main motivation was to simply find one another and raise their children safely, if anything they seemed to be portrayed more sympathetically compared to other end bosses.
Traumatic mating is the most hardcore concept I have ever listened
Has anyone else noticed that elder dragons are more akin to amphibians and fish rather than reptiles?
2:32 Spider Warning, the way my soul left my body 😅
Thanks for the info on horizontal gene transfer. I never knew about a thing like this and now i'm overflowing with ideas! Again Thanks.
As a note, elder dragons being intelligent and aware of their actions is not new. Alatreon is fully aware of its destructive abilities, and thus prefers to isolate itself to prevent such a thing.
Edit: stated in the MHWI book
With the way Narwa and Ibushi slowly drift through the air with mouths agape, I don't think them being sky whales is speculatory, I think it's straight-up canon.
i really like how you dont use any background music in your videos, i wish more video essays did that.
The aware of the destruction and suffering and not caring can also be billionaire CEOs. Eat them as they say.
Will you do a video on Amatsu as well? I really enjoyed this one.
Despite the issues with their execution i LOVE the allmother narwa theme excellent
I absolutely love the idea of the serpent elders being derived parasites of the Giga-Megafauna that MH call home, seriously makes incredible sense to me upon retrospect and comparing their anatomy. This is now my headcannon.
The weird shape on the serpents's outer, lower jaw always reminded me of pelicans, maybe they can, sometimes feed on fish or smaller leviathans by using their bioluminesence to lure fish to the surface, and in the case of Ibushi, use their element to create more favorable conditions that would make fish aproach the surface
Hmm. It feels like Rise would work very well as an in universe story based on more grounded actual events. The Wyverians being affected by the calls was twisted by the storytellers into demonic possession, maybe with some instances of sleep deprivation and stress induced hallucination to really sell it as something supernatural.