For a lot of us, anime is the first step into more ‘mature’ storytelling. Since it’s animated it still taps into the cartoon segment of our brains, but with blood and tits and stuff like that. Whether that interests persist as we find more complex stories outside of it is more dependent on the individual than anything. Sometimes however, we don’t progress. We regress, taking the tinges of adolescence back with us into the reaches of childhood. Sometimes we return, and we bring something terrible with us.

According to the Newgrounds wiki, Final Fantasy Sonic X is a 6 episode series of flash games that are a crossover between final fantasy, sonic, mega man, and the legend of zelda, and is praised for it’s “slick visuals and final fantasy style combat”. It also says every episode has it’s own intro starting with episode 5 even though there are only 6 episodes, and I find that sums things up pretty fantastically.

I’d like to preface this saying that when I was younger, I was one of these people. I had the sonic page of newgrounds bookmarked and I’m pretty sure I tried to finish some of these but never could. Now, as I have succeeded in several SMT games (SEVERAL) I feel much more confident in my ability to analyze and finish this disgusting eraserhead style abomination. Bandage up your arms and start moosing your hair, we’re playing final fantasy Sonic X!

Before we begin we have an old fashion start screen. It’s weird to harken back to an era where videos didn’t autoplay, especially considering newgrounds is still a place that still functions this way.

In the description which is on the video even though I’m pretty sure even in 2004 newgrounds had descriptions. Here we can see we have xanadu32 and imageball to blame for this monstrosity crawling out of the depths of Tartarus. In the old days of “Televised Entertainment” there would give you an address and a PO box to send your dead squirrel to directly, but now you have to do some digging to upset someone.

We can also dress up sonic and sonic’s mirror verse counterpart Cinos, if that’s the type of life you choose to lead. Spoiler alert: IT TOTALLY IS

We should probably start the game.

castlevania sprite: I cant let Cain get this sword!! I have to something! For the sake of the world he Not used the sword to open the “Gate”.

Since most of this is just sprites talking while being static I’ll give a context screencap and then continue the text, typos and all. I didn’t miss a period or apostrophe, those are accurate transcriptions.

For those not in the know (losers) most of newgrounds is people taking sprites from games (not themselves, that would require effort, they get it from a multitude of websites) and them vaguely animating them. Which can actually work if you’re an amateur animator since you’re just sort of setting canned animations together. I don’t know who this guy is but I’m assuming from his flowing coat and reasonable proportions lead me to believe he’s from some castlevania game, one of the 80 GBA or DS ones.

In case you’re wondering no this doesn’t work better in motion, the sprite immediately “teleports” without seemingly being there at all.

If you don’t know where you’re teleporting it wouldn’t it be more likely to end up at the bottom of the ocean or in the depths of space? Also, Metal Sonic shows up.

Technically this is Mecha Sonic, a character who showed up an awful lot before the Sonic series shifted to 3d which is when it started to become as anime as possible. He shows up a lot in flash videos for some reason. He also has laser eyes here, and kills castlevania here. So long new friend, we hardly knew ye.

Oh hey tails is here. I’m assuming this sword is important to saving the world which is why you wouldn’t WANT to teleport it into the ocean but a junkyard seems pretty bad too. I mean this sword’s not particularly festive it’s just a big hunk of crap, wouldn’t someone melt it down for scraps? I’m assuming it’s like the master sword and timeless so you can’t do that but even so, it would just get revealed that much sooner.

I also feel I should mention the background. While I’m pretty sure it’s from Mega Man 8, it reminds me of the junkyard from Sonic The Movie, a made for TV special that was released straight to video in the states. If you haven’t seen it you might want to since it was probably the first real attempt to turn sonic into an actual narrative rather than just an excuse to platform. As far as I know none of the movie’s elements crossed over into the actual games, which might be because it wasn’t very popular. The movie builds a pretty big world with what it had and I think it’s by the same studio that animated the opening to Sonic CD.

After this screen we go back to the title screen I posted at the start, which plays ‘eerie’ music of someone chanting and it’s incredibly annoying because I can’t mute an individual tab. I will point out that there’s no X on the title screen, even though there’s considerably more mega man in this than final fantasy.

We get a brief screen telling sonic a new adventure awaits that I wasn’t able to screen grab and then go immediately into his house. This brings up two interesting questions: 1 is where in the continuity this is. Are we starting from scratch, or is sonic a known figure already? 2 is since when does sonic have a house? Since there’s no wiki page for it I’m assuming he simply doesn’t have one, instead he’s just a hobo drifting about mooching off his friends or sleeping on the beach and crying himself to sleep because he’s saved the world, but he can’t find a warm cot. I mean at least Knuckles has a giant glowing emerald to act as a night light.

Hey look who’s here. I said earlier the shift to 3d was the shift into DBZ territory but Sonic CD had a fair bit of that as well, introducing a HIP AND WITH IT girlfriend character and an evil corporate machine made by THE MAN.

Amy shows up a lot in this fan stuff as sonic’s undeniable gal or not at all. Here we go with undeniable gal.

Sonic: zzzzzzz

Amy: SONIC!!!!!!

See they get on each other’s nerves but it’s all in good fun, and not cliche or trite or anything.

Sonic: Alright alright I’m up! What do you want?

Amy: Thank Chaos! Knuckles is looking for you!!

I hate it when fantasy stories take everyday sayings and SPICE EM UP for their dumb made up world. No one says ‘thank jehovah!’ why would anyone say thank Chaos?

Amy: he says its important! Hes over at tails!

Sonic: I’m on my way!

And then Sonic walks out of his house like a fucking dork. What’s going on outside!?

OH BOY I HOPE HE WANTS TO HAVE A FRIENDLY SPARRING MATCH BUT TAKES IT TOO SERIOUSLY!

Called it.

Oh hey it’s a video game! Neat!

in terms of mechanics FFSX (I really hate myself for typing that) was really ahead of it’s time. Final Fantasy XIII wasn’t released until 2009, but SSFX was making users think they had more choices than they really did in 2004!

The only option you can select here is attack, the other choices don’t even make noises when you over them making them seem broken rather than deliberately blocked off.

Afterwards you wait for your opponent to select an option from their menu.

Why you’re shown this and it isn’t instantly automated I don’t know.

After a while Shadow will bitch out and defend, at which point you can access your special menu, ‘special’ presumably because it was written by a slow child. Power blast seems to do more damage but defense break has a chance to negate a defensive state, but who gives a shit? No one defends in RPGs outside of tutorials.

There’s also a typo in this description but everytime I look at it I can’t really discern what it is, like some sort of lovecraftian horror. I think it’s the music. I thought it was the song that plays during the choa race but it’s actually the song that plays during Big’s fishing segments in Sonic Adventure, which is way too intense for such a sedentary activity. I think it’s suppose to mean that sonic is taking this COOL AND BREEZY BRO because I don’t think he’s physically capable of caring anymore, he’s the lost the chemical ability to be anything but cheerfully extreme.

It doesn’t matter what move you select, both beat shadow. also all the menu sounds are from Earthbound, which is kinda cool.

At this point I think another song loaded and I was listening to both ig’s fishing music and some other indiscernible tune, perhaps the true form of that eldritchian typo from before.

Shadow fucks off angrily and then we go to Tails’ house after earning some experience that doesn’t matter.

This segment uses the Mystic Mansion music from Sonic Heroes, which has a pretty groovy breakdown to it. I remember as a kid thinking Sonic was the hardest series in the world, and me and my friend having sleepovers trying to get just a little further in the games, and now I won’t play DMC4 because the Nero segments are too easy. Strange world.

Tails: look at this

I can’t look at this image without laughing. I mean it just encapsulates everything wrong with RPGs, With Anime, With japanese medi all at once. It’s amazing.

Tails: From the looks of it you can tell its not something you can just buy...

But I can find it at Goat’s Local Dump in the two dollar pile!

Tails: Why don’t you hold onto it Sonic…

And then tails flings it across the room into Sonic’s fat fucking face!

Prick.

When I was a kid I watched a flash where in Amy went to Tails for advice on why Sonic didn’t love her and they ended up banging. Then I watched the exact same flash with shadow instead of tails. Then I watched another where some guy had used the paint tool to color in tails and named him shade. I never found out if it was all the same guy or not. I had a point to this paragraph at one point.

Shadow: I tried to defend her but they were too powerful…

sonic: WHAT!? dammit let's go!

And then they run out like a bunch of a holes.

Yup. This is what this is.

Sonic: Who are you? Why are you here!?

Some dude: ………

Sonic: ANSWER ME!

Same dude: my being here is of no concern to you…

Well shit sonic maybe you should leave him alone.

Or we could fight.

This fight’s unwinnable, I think he one hits you no matter what.

Man this Cain guy’s a prick. Well, I guess that’s that! Kind of morbid but- oh wait there’s more.

Red question mark: How is he???

Blue Question Mark: Hes suffered serious slash wounds… Hell survive but we had to redo his structure. We also found this sword on him…

Red: Sword you say? So he is one…Well now this is his story...it’s up to him to stop the rise of the darkness…

I don’t think those games sell very well, I mean people like them but I wouldn’t consider them some sort of threat.

Red: Status report on the other one?

Blue: He’s fine. Minor injuries and a broken pride

Just the one though!Blue: but otherwise hes OK… Oh!! He’s waking up!!!

oh gee, I wonder who red and blue could be.

Oh it’s mega man and zero I’m so shocked. I’m not really sure what song plays during this segment but it’s a really shitty loop I can tell you that.

Sonic: My body! What happened to it! Your the one that took amy! Give her back!

Mega Man: Calm Down! I’m not the one your looking for. This is Elysium.

You mean I’m in a subpar follow up to a phenomenal movie? NO!!!!!

Mega Man: We bought you and the...other one when we saw you dying. the one.. your looking for is a man called cain. He and his group must have been after the sword you found. Your friend is training.

As if we weren’t already ANIME’D THE FUCK OUT all our problems are solved by training offscreen.

Mega Man: if you want you could try out your new body.

Here we’re offered a choice like a real RPG, and just like a real RPG it’s ultimately cosmetic. If you say “Alright!” a copy of the “Assassin” shows up and he and sonic jump around the screen like dorks. If you say “No Way!” they just skip it.

Neat.

Mega man: let’s go. Go get shadow.

That’s technically the correct way of writing that but it’s just so jumbled. Try hard BlackDevilX.

Mega Man: First we must pass Through Hyrule…

Before continuing I’d like to point out that earlier the old 16 bit sonic sprites were used rather than the newer ones, but newer ones were used for amy and shadow. The two were very jarring at first but the whole “new body” thing was actually a smart way of handling it. However this raises some questions: Do shadow and Amy have superior bodies because of this? Is Sonic a robot now? What does new body mean? I feel like the author watched a lot of Bleach but didn’t understand some of the concepts.

OH BY THE WAY WE'RE SLEEPING IN A FIELD.

This raises some questions itself. Before Megs said we were in Elysium. Is that the afterlife or just a place named after it? is hyrule the afterlife in the sonic universe? I mean it’s a step up but heaven? Nah.

Thankfully Amy has killed the Colossi and merged with the dark god Dormin, growing ehr to Titanic size so she doesn’t need to be rescued! Or maybe Sonic’s day dreaming.

Also, mega man is clearly still awake, most likely awakened by the colossal entity above him, staring. Preying.

Hey it’s morning!

I'm not sure who this is, but I'm almost certain he's an original character (do not steal) rather than a proper mega man character. More importantly, he's being followed by the one and only LORD CAIN. Are you as excited as I am about what the mysterious Lord Cain looks like-

Oh it's just a palette swapped Zero. Okay.

And...then it’s over! Wow that was considerably more difficult than I expected but hopefully you enjoyed it. I didn’t, and I’m certain the future installments will some how be even longer! Oh boy! oh...oh boy.

For a lot of us, anime is the first step into more ‘mature’ storytelling. Since it’s animated it still taps into the cartoon segment of our brains, but with blood and tits and stuff like that. Whether that interests persist as we find more complex stories outside of it is more dependent on the individual than anything. Sometimes however, we don’t progress. We regress, taking the tinges of adolescence back with us into the reaches of childhood. Sometimes we return, and we bring something terrible with us.

According to the Newgrounds wiki, Final Fantasy Sonic X is a 6 episode series of flash games that are a crossover between final fantasy, sonic, mega man, and the legend of zelda, and is praised for it’s “slick visuals and final fantasy style combat”. It also says every episode has it’s own intro starting with episode 5 even though there are only 6 episodes, and I find that sums things up pretty fantastically.

I’d like to preface this saying that when I was younger, I was one of these people. I had the sonic page of newgrounds bookmarked and I’m pretty sure I tried to finish some of these but never could. Now, as I have succeeded in several SMT games (SEVERAL) I feel much more confident in my ability to analyze and finish this disgusting eraserhead style abomination. Bandage up your arms and start moosing your hair, we’re playing final fantasy Sonic X!

Before we begin we have an old fashion start screen. It’s weird to harken back to an era where videos didn’t autoplay, especially considering newgrounds is still a place that still functions this way.

In the description which is on the video even though I’m pretty sure even in 2004 newgrounds had descriptions. Here we can see we have xanadu32 and imageball to blame for this monstrosity crawling out of the depths of Tartarus. In the old days of “Televised Entertainment” there would give you an address and a PO box to send your dead squirrel to directly, but now you have to do some digging to upset someone.

We can also dress up sonic and sonic’s mirror verse counterpart Cinos, if that’s the type of life you choose to lead. Spoiler alert: IT TOTALLY IS

We should probably start the game.

castlevania sprite: I cant let Cain get this sword!! I have to something! For the sake of the world he Not used the sword to open the “Gate”.

Since most of this is just sprites talking while being static I’ll give a context screencap and then continue the text, typos and all. I didn’t miss a period or apostrophe, those are accurate transcriptions.

For those not in the know (losers) most of newgrounds is people taking sprites from games (not themselves, that would require effort, they get it from a multitude of websites) and them vaguely animating them. Which can actually work if you’re an amateur animator since you’re just sort of setting canned animations together. I don’t know who this guy is but I’m assuming from his flowing coat and reasonable proportions lead me to believe he’s from some castlevania game, one of the 80 GBA or DS ones.

In case you’re wondering no this doesn’t work better in motion, the sprite immediately “teleports” without seemingly being there at all.

If you don’t know where you’re teleporting it wouldn’t it be more likely to end up at the bottom of the ocean or in the depths of space? Also, Metal Sonic shows up.

Technically this is Mecha Sonic, a character who showed up an awful lot before the Sonic series shifted to 3d which is when it started to become as anime as possible. He shows up a lot in flash videos for some reason. He also has laser eyes here, and kills castlevania here. So long new friend, we hardly knew ye.

Oh hey tails is here. I’m assuming this sword is important to saving the world which is why you wouldn’t WANT to teleport it into the ocean but a junkyard seems pretty bad too. I mean this sword’s not particularly festive it’s just a big hunk of crap, wouldn’t someone melt it down for scraps? I’m assuming it’s like the master sword and timeless so you can’t do that but even so, it would just get revealed that much sooner.

I also feel I should mention the background. While I’m pretty sure it’s from Mega Man 8, it reminds me of the junkyard from Sonic The Movie, a made for TV special that was released straight to video in the states. If you haven’t seen it you might want to since it was probably the first real attempt to turn sonic into an actual narrative rather than just an excuse to platform. As far as I know none of the movie’s elements crossed over into the actual games, which might be because it wasn’t very popular. The movie builds a pretty big world with what it had and I think it’s by the same studio that animated the opening to Sonic CD.

After this screen we go back to the title screen I posted at the start, which plays ‘eerie’ music of someone chanting and it’s incredibly annoying because I can’t mute an individual tab. I will point out that there’s no X on the title screen, even though there’s considerably more mega man in this than final fantasy.

We get a brief screen telling sonic a new adventure awaits that I wasn’t able to screen grab and then go immediately into his house. This brings up two interesting questions: 1 is where in the continuity this is. Are we starting from scratch, or is sonic a known figure already? 2 is since when does sonic have a house? Since there’s no wiki page for it I’m assuming he simply doesn’t have one, instead he’s just a hobo drifting about mooching off his friends or sleeping on the beach and crying himself to sleep because he’s saved the world, but he can’t find a warm cot. I mean at least Knuckles has a giant glowing emerald to act as a night light.

Hey look who’s here. I said earlier the shift to 3d was the shift into DBZ territory but Sonic CD had a fair bit of that as well, introducing a HIP AND WITH IT girlfriend character and an evil corporate machine made by THE MAN.

Amy shows up a lot in this fan stuff as sonic’s undeniable gal or not at all. Here we go with undeniable gal.

Sonic: zzzzzzz

Amy: SONIC!!!!!!

See they get on each other’s nerves but it’s all in good fun, and not cliche or trite or anything.

Sonic: Alright alright I’m up! What do you want?

Amy: Thank Chaos! Knuckles is looking for you!!

I hate it when fantasy stories take everyday sayings and SPICE EM UP for their dumb made up world. No one says ‘thank jehovah!’ why would anyone say thank Chaos?

Amy: he says its important! Hes over at tails!

Sonic: I’m on my way!

And then Sonic walks out of his house like a fucking dork. What’s going on outside!?

OH BOY I HOPE HE WANTS TO HAVE A FRIENDLY SPARRING MATCH BUT TAKES IT TOO SERIOUSLY!

Called it.

Oh hey it’s a video game! Neat!

in terms of mechanics FFSX (I really hate myself for typing that) was really ahead of it’s time. Final Fantasy XIII wasn’t released until 2009, but SSFX was making users think they had more choices than they really did in 2004!

The only option you can select here is attack, the other choices don’t even make noises when you over them making them seem broken rather than deliberately blocked off.

Afterwards you wait for your opponent to select an option from their menu.

Why you’re shown this and it isn’t instantly automated I don’t know.

After a while Shadow will bitch out and defend, at which point you can access your special menu, ‘special’ presumably because it was written by a slow child. Power blast seems to do more damage but defense break has a chance to negate a defensive state, but who gives a shit? No one defends in RPGs outside of tutorials.

There’s also a typo in this description but everytime I look at it I can’t really discern what it is, like some sort of lovecraftian horror. I think it’s the music. I thought it was the song that plays during the choa race but it’s actually the song that plays during Big’s fishing segments in Sonic Adventure, which is way too intense for such a sedentary activity. I think it’s suppose to mean that sonic is taking this COOL AND BREEZY BRO because I don’t think he’s physically capable of caring anymore, he’s the lost the chemical ability to be anything but cheerfully extreme.

It doesn’t matter what move you select, both beat shadow. also all the menu sounds are from Earthbound, which is kinda cool.

At this point I think another song loaded and I was listening to both ig’s fishing music and some other indiscernible tune, perhaps the true form of that eldritchian typo from before.

Shadow fucks off angrily and then we go to Tails’ house after earning some experience that doesn’t matter.

This segment uses the Mystic Mansion music from Sonic Heroes, which has a pretty groovy breakdown to it. I remember as a kid thinking Sonic was the hardest series in the world, and me and my friend having sleepovers trying to get just a little further in the games, and now I won’t play DMC4 because the Nero segments are too easy. Strange world.

Tails: look at this

I can’t look at this image without laughing. I mean it just encapsulates everything wrong with RPGs, With Anime, With japanese medi all at once. It’s amazing.

Tails: From the looks of it you can tell its not something you can just buy...

But I can find it at Goat’s Local Dump in the two dollar pile!

Tails: Why don’t you hold onto it Sonic…

And then tails flings it across the room into Sonic’s fat fucking face!

Prick.

When I was a kid I watched a flash where in Amy went to Tails for advice on why Sonic didn’t love her and they ended up banging. Then I watched the exact same flash with shadow instead of tails. Then I watched another where some guy had used the paint tool to color in tails and named him shade. I never found out if it was all the same guy or not. I had a point to this paragraph at one point.

Shadow: I tried to defend her but they were too powerful…

sonic: WHAT!? dammit let's go!

And then they run out like a bunch of a holes.

Yup. This is what this is.

Sonic: Who are you? Why are you here!?

Some dude: ………

Sonic: ANSWER ME!

Same dude: my being here is of no concern to you…

Well shit sonic maybe you should leave him alone.

Or we could fight.

This fight’s unwinnable, I think he one hits you no matter what.

Man this Cain guy’s a prick. Well, I guess that’s that! Kind of morbid but- oh wait there’s more.

Red question mark: How is he???

Blue Question Mark: Hes suffered serious slash wounds… Hell survive but we had to redo his structure. We also found this sword on him…

Red: Sword you say? So he is one…Well now this is his story...it’s up to him to stop the rise of the darkness…

I don’t think those games sell very well, I mean people like them but I wouldn’t consider them some sort of threat.

Red: Status report on the other one?

Blue: He’s fine. Minor injuries and a broken pride

Just the one though!Blue: but otherwise hes OK… Oh!! He’s waking up!!!

oh gee, I wonder who red and blue could be.

Oh it’s mega man and zero I’m so shocked. I’m not really sure what song plays during this segment but it’s a really shitty loop I can tell you that.

Sonic: My body! What happened to it! Your the one that took amy! Give her back!

Mega Man: Calm Down! I’m not the one your looking for. This is Elysium.

You mean I’m in a subpar follow up to a phenomenal movie? NO!!!!!

Mega Man: We bought you and the...other one when we saw you dying. the one.. your looking for is a man called cain. He and his group must have been after the sword you found. Your friend is training.

As if we weren’t already ANIME’D THE FUCK OUT all our problems are solved by training offscreen.

Mega Man: if you want you could try out your new body.

Here we’re offered a choice like a real RPG, and just like a real RPG it’s ultimately cosmetic. If you say “Alright!” a copy of the “Assassin” shows up and he and sonic jump around the screen like dorks. If you say “No Way!” they just skip it.

Neat.

Mega man: let’s go. Go get shadow.

That’s technically the correct way of writing that but it’s just so jumbled. Try hard BlackDevilX.

Mega Man: First we must pass Through Hyrule…

Before continuing I’d like to point out that earlier the old 16 bit sonic sprites were used rather than the newer ones, but newer ones were used for amy and shadow. The two were very jarring at first but the whole “new body” thing was actually a smart way of handling it. However this raises some questions: Do shadow and Amy have superior bodies because of this? Is Sonic a robot now? What does new body mean? I feel like the author watched a lot of Bleach but didn’t understand some of the concepts.

OH BY THE WAY WE'RE SLEEPING IN A FIELD.

This raises some questions itself. Before Megs said we were in Elysium. Is that the afterlife or just a place named after it? is hyrule the afterlife in the sonic universe? I mean it’s a step up but heaven? Nah.

Thankfully Amy has killed the Colossi and merged with the dark god Dormin, growing ehr to Titanic size so she doesn’t need to be rescued! Or maybe Sonic’s day dreaming.

Also, mega man is clearly still awake, most likely awakened by the colossal entity above him, staring. Preying.

Hey it’s morning!

I'm not sure who this is, but I'm almost certain he's an original character (do not steal) rather than a proper mega man character. More importantly, he's being followed by the one and only LORD CAIN. Are you as excited as I am about what the mysterious Lord Cain looks like-

Oh it's just a palette swapped Zero. Okay.

And...then it’s over! Wow that was considerably more difficult than I expected but hopefully you enjoyed it. I didn’t, and I’m certain the future installments will some how be even longer! Oh boy! oh...oh boy.

No More Heroes is a strange game, that much is true. The follow up \ of bizarre master Suda51’s Killer7, No More Heroes follows all around garbage human being Travis Touchdown, jobless, ambitionless, friendless, Travis is drowning his sorrows one night when a sultry woman approaches him with a job offer. With nothing but popped collars, a cat named after his ex, and a beam katana he won on eBay, Travis takes to the United Assassination Association’s official rankings to become the number 1 assassin in the world.

Even by the standards of character action games No More Heroes is a strange game that keeps getting stranger. Suda51 manages to pull off the surreal by committing to it fully. Killer7 as well as No More Heroes are insane stories but only to us. In the logic of the world, the events make perfect sense, and as you submerge yourself into the world they begin to make sense to you as well.

in the world of No More Heroes killing is a sport, and not in the dystopic “oh look what we’ve become” sort of way. No in No More Heroes chopping heads is like buying some spandex and joining the local wrestling league. The fact that Suda51 is a massive wrestling fan (his first game was Super Fire pro Wrestling X) helps this interpretation hold water.

This was my mindset as I replayed the No More Heroes series last week, and this was my mindset when I came to my own interpretation of No More Heroes: There’s a lot more going on than we see. Travis’ story is only one of several plots going on at once. But first, a recap.

Since No More Heroes can be a struggle to understand even for those who have completed it, let’s have a recap of Travis’ plotline. As previously stated Travis is a popped collar gelled hair type of guy who is drowning his sorrows in a bar when he is approached by a woman. This Woman turns out to be Sylvia Christel, representative of the UAA scoping out talent. With nothing to lose except his head, Travis accepts and begins the slaughter. Before the events of the game Travis manages to kill the 11th ranked assassin and get into the big leagues at rank 11.

Along the way up the Ranks Travis becomes a bit more reflective. He spares the life of the 8th ranked assassin, Shinobu Jacobs, since she’s still a young girl and they shared a master (Shinobu’s father, although Travis never met Jacobs, he just watched his tapes). He also meets Holly Summer, an assassin initially disgusted by Travis’ refusal to kill a woman, she is never the less happy to have met him. Travis himself trains under the ever hygienic Thunder Ryu, an eccentric man who himself is in the UAA. There’s also the mysterious Henry, an assassin who steals Travis kill in the rank 5 fight.

As the game draws to a close Travis finds out the UAA is a hoax set up by Sylvia to trick murderers into giving her money, but being so high in the ranks Travis decides to go ahead and try for the top. On the outskirts of town Travis meets Rank #1, Dark Star, a man who also happens to be Travis father. And then Travis’ Ex murders Dark Star and fights Travis himself.

Jeane, the aforementioned Ex, decides to reveal the truth to Travis, but fast forwards the segment to avoid bumping up the game’s rating. Despite this you can actually slow it down to hear it perfectly, which I’ll link below.

The jist is Jeane was abused by Travis’ father all her life, being part of his secret family. When she was old enough to leave she traveled the world using her body to pay for training, until she was strong enough to murder Travis parents, leading to their break up. Travis’ alcoholism was a product of seeing the slaughter, and his blood lust was actually for this very reason. Follow a fight that Travis wins with the help of Shinobu, Travis forgives Jeane before murdering her.

Now Rank #1, an unlikely face returns to challenge Travis in the form of Henry, the irish assassin who stole his spot. Here it’s revealed Henry is Travis twin brother, as well as the husband of Sylvia. The game proper ends with Travis and Henry seemingly about to kill each other in the streets of Santa Destroy.

With this in mind I’d like to jump into what I think may be happening behind the scenes of No More Heroes 1-Namely, in Sylvia’s Plotline. First we’ll use No More Heroes 2 to confirm a few things. First is that Henry and Sylvia were indeed married, though they separate by the time of 2. More importantly, 2 shows that not only does the UAA exist, but it never implies Sylvia was orchestrating a hoax.

I’m also going to take a stab and say the ranks aren’t really Ranks but rather tiers, since multiple times we see several assassin’s of apparently the same rank attempt to kill ranked assassins. So instead of 1 rank 10, there are several.

So in what I’ll call Sylvia’s plotline in our Primer style multiple storylines, Sylvia is married to Henry, son of Dark Star who i’ll also assume was telling the truth and is Travis’ father. Presumably Henry is rank 2 along with jeane or rank 3 below her. We’ll also assume Jeane is working with Dark Star since she makes a point to murder him in front of Travis.

Since Henry seems to take his marriage fairly seriously, and since being an assassin is fairly lucrative, Henry may have quit the assassin biz with enough money to live a modest life with his wife. Considering Sylvia’s got such high class tastes (Henry effectively admits she’s a gold digger) she’d logically want her husband raking in a fair bit more. She may also want bigger things for Henry, who seems content with being a lower rank than his family.

Now at this point Sylvia would need to give Henry a motivation to re-join the assassination gambit, and she has it: Travis. Now jeane’s rant implies she and Travis are not blood relatives, so it’s possible that not only is Dark Star Travis father, but Jeane also killed his parents in front of him, his ADOPTIVE parents. This means that forever reason, Dark Star gave Travis up for adoption, potentially because he found him unsuitable for the assassin biz.

Since Jeane is in the rankings now Sylvia would be able to give Travis a clear motive for joining himself, and then getting slaughtered. Once the brother he never knew was killed, Henry would be ungry for answers, return to the assassination game, and slaughter his way to number 1. Once there, Henry would surpass his father, and then his pride would keep him in the number one slot for the foreseeable future.

The only problem being that Travis turned out to be pretty fucking good at killing. Instead of falling to his first fight, Travis becomes Rank 11. Figuring the plan won’t work without Travis dead, Sylvia intentionally sets Travis up with fights he can’t win. The first boss of the game is Death Metal, a man called “The Holy Sword” who seems content with life at Rank 10. If Death Metal was actually stronger than his Rank would make him seem, certainly Travis would fail. But again, Travis blood lust proves too greatt and he becomes victorious. So the first act of the game goes, with Sylvia setting up fights against incredibly sadistic opponents like Destroyman, or ones who would hold a grudge like Shinobu.

The second hitch in the plan is that at some point Sylvia begins to care for Travis. in both games Sylvia shows little affection to anyone except for Travis, though she seems cold at first. Potentially Sylvia doesn’t want to see Travis dead anymore, and gives him easier opponents such as Harvy, and outright helps him by sending him to assist Thunder Ryu. Ultimately, Sylvia attempts to get Travis out of the game she so desperately tried to get her husband back into, but it simply doesn’t work. Eventually Jeane catches wind of this and murders the first rank, Travis ture father, in front of him, and he murders her in turn. Finally, the only remaining Rank 2, Henry, faces off against Travis.

With most of the UAA’s top fighters dead there’s a massive power vacuum, and the UAA has increased in popularity drastically. Inspired by Travis’ everyman appeal, rudimentary assassin’s are able to climb the ranks quickly, requiring the UAA to drastically expand their ranks. Sylvia breaks up with Henry, but manages to make a good living for herself organizing the new fights.

Of course a lot of this is conjecture; we don’t know a lot about anything that happens beyond Travis’ own scope, and even then we’re left in the dark on a lot. But I find it fits, and explains a lot of the less logical parts of No More Heroes, for me anyway.

No More Heroes is crazy, but it’s a good kind of crazy, the kind of crazy that makes you want to know a little more about it, to uncover it as well as submerge yourself in it. And it’s got a really phenomenal soundtrack.