FINAL FANTASY IV
MANTCORE PROJECT #628 CREATED: MAY 2019 The monstrous Mantcore, similar in appearance to the Chimera, was a three-headed beast dwelling within the Sealed Cave in the depths of the Underground. During their exploration of the cave, Cecil Harvey and his team of freedom fighters would occasionally encounter a TrapDoor. If they failed to destroy the TrapDoor quickly, it would call forth the dreaded Mantcore to do its bidding. Like the Chimera, the Mantcore used a Blaze attack, engulfing the entire party. Despite appearances, this attack delivered not fire damage, but ice-based damage. Mantcores were capable of absorbing magical attacks of the lightning, ice, and fire varieties, and thus alternate speelcasting techniques were required to destroy them. (The creature's name was likely intended to be Manticore, but the alphanumeric limiations for Final Fantasy IV prevented monster names with more than eight letters. In real-life Persian mythology, a manticore actually has a human's head and a lion's body, similar to the sphinx, so the name is technically a misnomer. Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest at least got this much right! In the remake of Final Fantasy IV for Game Boy Advance, the Mantcore was renamed Chimera Brain.) The Mantcore shares a game sprite design with the Chimera; the main difference is that one is predominantly red and yellow, and the other is shades of green. So, I bought two chimera figurines from Safari, Ltd. in order to build both monsters simultaneously. I had to swap the position of the lion's head and the goat's head, replace the tail, and replace some of the monster's feet. I also patched a hole in the dragon's right wing, which was a deliberate aspect of the original sculpt. three-headed monstrosity was part lion, part goat, and part dragon, possessing the most brutal and vicious characteristics of each. Cecil's group first encountered a Chimera as a surprise monster-in-a-box while exploring the expanses of the Tower of Bab-il, earning a Blizzard spear for their troubles. Additional Chimeras patrolled the corridors of the tower, sometimes accompanied by a FlameMan or Tofu. The Chimera was capable of a powerful Blaze attack that affected the entire party, engulfing in flames anyone not sufficiently protected from such an attack. As a magical creature, the Chimera was resistant to magic attacks. Casting any form of lightning, fire, or ice magic actually fueled the creature's powers rather than weakining it, making it particularly difficult to defeat. (The Chimera was among the few monsters who was never renamed for any of the various Final Fantasy IV remakes.) Safari, Ltd. makes an excellent chimera figurine that has an exceptional and detailed sculpt. It wasn't built quite like the Chimera as it appears in Final Fantasy IV, however, so I had to make some changes. I swapped the position of the goat head and the lion's head, building a new neck for the goat and a new mane for the lion. I also cut off the snake-for-a-tail and gave it the tail from an elephant toy I had laying around. The original toy had a couple of lion's paws and a dragon's talon, but the game sprite shows the Chimera with four goat hooves, so I had to replace three of the creature's feet. After all that rebuilding, it was time to paint the toy, predominantly based on the the S-NES 16-bit game sprite colors (the Chimera got a color scheme makeover for the PlayStation Portable remake, but it's a major departure from his original look). |
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