Be A Man Pit! BUFF Kid Icarus By Leon De Leon and Aneros

Tonight I have a very triumphant piece by Urbanmusiq (Leon De Leon) and Aneros. I asked Leon to please draw Pit Kid Icarus from the famous Nintendo franchise. I wanted his take to be based on the adult bara version of Pit found at the end of the first game. I told both him and Aneros that THIS is the model they should have used for Pit, not some little whipping boy. I have requested this version of Pit from various artists over the years, from Nookiedog and Tonberryknight in 2009, to MioWorks in 2010. (Which Leon colored!) Always I find myself so happy to see a character from my childhood done such justice. Aneros used a new coloring technique for this image. What do you guys think? I think it came out very spectacular. Wait till you see the next one in this set. It's just as spectacular. I love the roman features in Pits face. That strong nose, tight facial features and eyes of a Roman emperor all really stand out though Leons inks and Aneroses dynamite coloring. He looks like a true warrior from mythology now. Damn Nintendo, maybe you should have thought of adding more elements to the characters that reflect the area they are from instead of all the sci fi and generic RPG shit., huh? XD Your Pit doesn't stand out like this! Every time I look at this picture I see new features and details. These two put a ton of love into their Pit.


Getting a great picture of Pit so close to beating the new game, really pulled at my heart strings. It reminded me even more of my love for Kid Icarus. It inspired me to write the following article about the new game. I think about the new game a lot. I have a ton of conflicting emotions regarding it. It's not as bad a game as some say, but it's certainly not as good as others claim it to be. This time I am going to share my thoughts on Kid Icarus Uprising: religion and the loss of hope. :( This is the third part of my look into Kid Icarus Uprising.

Hope is a powerful thing. It's interesting how a little hope can really grab our attentions in stories, especially when we are children. The original Kid Icarus had a lot of hope in it. I remember always loving tales about Medusa. As much as I liked the original tale, it was the ones where the people who were turned to stone, could somehow be saved, that were even more interesting. In the first Kid Icarus game, Pit had that ability. If you picked up, or purchased some hammers you could free your fellow warriors, the centurions. They had been gathered up and were being used as decorations in Medusas fortresses. To get hammers you had to play a magic harp that would turn the baddies into mallets. The other option was to spend hard earned cash, sacrificing items for yourself, in lieu of a chance to save your friends. The centurions would come to your aide when it came time to fight the bosses. You could wind up with large troops of warriors to help you.

Centurians could only take a single hit, but then so many characters from games in the 80s could only take a single hit. With the proper skill you could easily best a boss with zero, to few casualties. So your skill reflected how well these warriors fared in the end. Despite this, there are so many jabs at them being useless in the Uprising game, back up with some horrible writing that is supposed reinforce the reasons.

Really now, how ingenious was it, that this ability was included on top of all the other game play features? Back then, the game really let you feel like a true hero. Your actions made a visible difference in the world.

All hope of you being able to do that in the new game fall instantly away in Uprisings anime into Medusa's revenge. In it, Medusa rains down hell upon the people War of the Worlds style. She turns people instantly to stone with her...FINGER? and they fall to ground crumbling on impact. This is a newer, darker world. The original manual featured images of people turned to stone by Medusa and even there it looked like they were still alive. (See below) That's not the case now. There's no mallets, no statues, nothing. There's no hope of saving anyone anymore. I have to say as a fan of the original I didn't really care for this change and the others that were soon to follow.

For some reason, Medusa turns herself into a monster...um..okay...

The original game was silly and cartoony. Medusa was evil yes, but probably more on the level of King Koopa then the malevolence shown in the anime above. But hey, whatever. It's only an anime and can easily be disregarded. What can't be however, is the games stance on spirits and the afterlife. It's pretty grim to say the least. Once Medusa is killed off in chapter 9, a new bad guy appears. He isn't really that terrible to be honest. I had a hard time hating Hades. Even though he takes an instant jab at the old game saying Medusa is old boring news. Great.... Still he's pretty darn likable. Maybe the writers were aware of this, so they tried to give him a very dreadful back story, one that contradicts the actual game world at times.

Medusa was inspired by Harryhausen, there's no doubt, especially when one sees TwinBellows and compares it to the two headed dog that protected Medusa in Clash. But Hades? He just seems a bit too similar to James Woods's character, with that blue Flaming hair and smart ass attitude. To be fair, he's a cool villain and one I enjoyed for the most part. He wasn't however, someone I felt was half as bad as they made him out to be. Even with the forced story line near the end, he seemed more playful then anything.

It comes out that Hades is using the spirits of the dead to make new underworld troops. Okay, so he takes a spirit and reuses it. Well, that's not too bad. You kill the monster and it can revert back to whatever it was and go on to eternal happiness right? WRONGO. You see, underworld creatures, creatures that were once described as residence of the underworld, the races that lived there, need the combination of several spirits to come into being. (or at least they do if Hades wants to make them from scratch.) In the original game, Medusa did give life to some creatures by adding a spirit to them, but not like this. I don't really get why we need more then one spirit per body. That's pretty strange. Intangible material, becoming tangible? Okay...

When you die in Kid Icarus's world, you are told, you are nothing. The spirit remains, but it's more like a resource. It has no memories. It apparently goes to the underworld, but what it does there is not explained. They say they find peace, but if they have no memories, or emotions and they are not human/dog/etc. Based on that, what kind of peace the do find, I don't know. The game goes on to talk about how if they linger for too long, they vanish, then they talk about how Hades enjoys eating them. Pit finds this digusting. He remarks that when they are consumed they vanish, when they could reincarnate, or something. Hades then fills him in that reincarnation is a joke, as since the spirits don't remember anything from their past lives, it's like they cease to exist anyway. Which is so wrong on so many levels. The writers fail to give Pit any kind of decent come back as usual. The subject is left as is, with Hades winning the argument.
I found it strange that Nintendo, a company that steers clear of any kind of religious content in their games would come right out and knock the belief of reincarnation. O__O I am sure more then a few Hindus are gonna be raising Cain at home when they hear about this being in their childs game. (I also found it odd that none of the Gods besides Hades new this. That didn't make any sense.)

Now in a childrens series where hope once flourished so much, to find this kind of dark hopelessness, it's just so staggering to me. It's appalling, really. I know if I was a child, I would have been horrified and steered clear.

Collin is a bad guy that had no spirit in the original game. The sad fate of a friend turned foe. This fallen soldier returns in uprising, but the explanation is ignored. The point is, baddies didn't even need a spirit before. So why the cockamamie story line now?

And yet on the other hand, it's hard to take this plot device seriously. See, all this contradicts many events in the game. There's ghosts and other things in the game that you fight. (I guess they are made the same way?) The baddies come back to life, like Medusa. (though if they are all copies, or if they contain the original spirits is left unsaid for the most part.) Pit remarks about how the Centuarians are brought right back to life after death by the goddess, as well as he himself. He says he is constantly brought back again and again. (Usually mentioned as he is verbally abused for being so weak.) That leads us to another problem. The emasculating of Pit.

I really didn't care for how every character in the game including the Goddess Palutena talked down and insulted Icarus so much. Up till about chapter 9 it was only slightly aggregating, but once Medusa is gone, a whole slew of new bitches appear that constantly take jabs at Pit, with Palutena often joining in with them! The writers did nothing to give Pit any kind of decent come backs. Even the ones that are slightly decent are often put down by Palutena herself. UGH. She's not very Godly. Not really the characters I envisioned from my childhood. Pit gets gang banged more in the game, then in the fan art you see online. U__U

Kid Icarus, Pit, was originally not a wimp. He was the last glimmer of hope for the entire world. A frail little light that shone from the depths of the underworld. Once the head of the guards, he was imprisoned and reduced to nothing. At this point, everyone else was either turned to stone, or dead. The Goddess had enough faith in you, that she used the last of her strength to free you from your hopeless situation in order to save her. The back story found in the Kid Icarus manual does a great job of explaining that.


So by fighting through hell you grows stronger. Pit gets more life, better arrows and superior weapons. He get's physically stronger after every level up and the game get's easier as you meet it's requirements. In the end he's given a manly body. When I first played the game and got the ending, I figured he grew up and turned into a super hunk. The idea was sexually exciting for me. As they years passed I often wondered if Pit was actually strong before the battle. Was he turned into a little guy by Medusa magic? Maybe he was just getting all his strength back as the game went on? After all, he is the commander of the Goddesses personal body guards. That would make sense. That's just a theory, based on my imagination. Funny thing about old games, they let your imagination soar. Not like Kid Icarus uprising. Everything is laid out for you, as dark as it can be.

So is Pit allowed to grow up in Uprising? Sadly no. Nothing in the game makes Icarus permanently stronger. To be honest, for a game that prides itself on it's story telling, the one obvious character arch that should happen, isn't allowed to take place. You see from the start Pit continually wishes he could fly on his own. It's a recurring theme time and again. Before the final battle takes place, he even loses his wings, having them burnt off like the classic Kid Icarus of myth and legend. The game then shows Palutena lamenting his fate as she reminiscing about all the times he wished he could fly. 'So' says I in my mind, 'this has got to be it, this is where he grows up again, after they save him, he'll become manly with great big wings just like at the end of the original Kid Icarus.' Oh hell no. That wasn't going to happen. Instead, all that character development is ignored. The past is ignored. Pit is made to fight all the bosses again and is then given a Gundam to pilot. I shit you not. If this was a movie, you know you wouldn't be giving it 5 stars. You would be sitting there stone faced, but because it's game should it get a free pass?

Oh look a Grecian old man. (One of the few cast members that looks like they are Greek, by the way.) Surly he will give you some divine weapons dripping in mythology. Hell no, he forges mobile suits. O__O

It was insulting enough to fans that they destroyed the three sacred treasures, but this just made the bile rise to the back of my throat. I'm all in for new and different, but this is just stupid.

Here's an interesting tidbit. Palutenas powers were originally from the 3 treasures, but in this game she constantly knocks them as being old and possibly outdated. (Really knocking the original game.) Um..how do magical objects become outdated exactly? Looks like the writers forgot the items role as the steamrolled over the importance of them to include their new and wonderful surprises. BARF.

In the Game Boy Game, they took out the mirror shield and replaced it with armor. Hey, that's cool. Medusa wasn't a threat. Still it was a bit strange, but at least they never knocked the treasures. The armor comes back in Uprising, but the game still only refers to there being 3 treasures. For some reason Pit is never allowed to use the Pegasus wings in Uprising, with Palutena saying they might not work. That was just a weak excuse to limit your flight time and include ground segments and nothing more as far as I'm concerned.

Kid Kratos Pit is. This is a side note, but in this game he becomes a God Killer. (True he did kill some Gods in the past as well, weak ones anyway and Medusa, who might have been demoted from God to Monster, the game is never clear on that.) I found it sad that you meet so many people with interesting personalities and you don't really make any friends, outside of Magnus. Even people that really don't seem to deserve to be killed you still kill. Pit doesn't grow as person. He's just a sad little slave, unable to make choices, or care for anyone. It's interesting to note that the more he does for the Gods the less they seem to respect him as well.

Isn't this just lovely? It's a nice piece of art, but what it has to do with a game set in ancient Greece, I have no idea. In the end, Pit hasn't changed. He hasn't grown stronger. Even his crazy new weapon fell apart. He wasn't even up to snuff as a pilot. During the credits the Gods continue to knock him. (Even after the credits are done, yeeeesh.) My favorite line came at the end of the game where Hades, now a ghost mind you, (having his memories etc. making no sense!!!) says that 8 Bit Pit couldn't have made it this far. Well, no of course not. 8 Bit Pit didn't have the difficulty lowered for him every time he died and he sure as hell wasn't given a mobile suit to fight it.


You guys might think I hate this game, but I don't. Really. I think it's one of the most fun games Nintendo has released in years. I had way more fun with it then the newest Zelda game. Yeah I got back aches. I had hand cramps. I suffered sever nausea that lead to migraines and me being sick to my stomach due to the 3D effect. Sure the camera is so in your face you can hardly see two feet in front of you when the action heats up. I mean, to RUN you have to double tap the control pad, but this is also how you dodge enemies. If a big enemy corners you, the camera will fuck up and zoom right in, so you can't see anything. If you try to run you will just keep dodging. You can't run away from bad guys attacking you! You can only walk and then you are likely to take some major hits. LOL sorry..XD little rant there.
Sure it has it's problems, but it's simple to play and very addicting. I just wish the games mythos had been left intact and not gone the way of crazy sci fi and bleak supernatural stuff. Maybe I wouldn't have minded the Gundam so much if it's existence did come at the cost of the original treasures. Still, I think back to my childhood. Given the choice back then, I would have Pegasus wings over a robot any day.


Well I hope that was not too ranty. I think I said just about all I had to say about this game. Anyway tomorrow is my birthday, so I may, or may not be posting! I might be too busy partying! LOL yeah right. Everyone is invited over for some ice cream cake. :P hee hee.