Land of Origin "Perfect Giant" Review: Definitely a Thing

The fight between Thingman and Sunshine always stuck up like a sore thumb to me.

Ok, I think that expression it’s too harsh. What I mean is that I always found that fight a bit…weird I guess.

The Perfect Origin was presented as this group of threatening, mythical Choujin, possessing thousands upon thousands of years of combat experience that you couldn’t take lightly at all, unless you wanted to instantly die.

All the fights that where an Origin participated ended up with said Origin completely crushing their enemies, like in the case of Ganman and Psychoman’s first matches, or if they were actually defeated, the new Dumbbell owners wouldn’t leave the ring unscathed. If fact they ended up so beaten up that they couldn’t even fight again for the rest of the arc.

But this match was the exception. I mean, sure, Thingman was a tough enemy for Sunshine, to the point that he almost defeated him, but then Sunshine was able to fool him.

 

He was able to fool someone with thousands upon thousands of years of combat experience. I guess they never used the pity card against him before.

And then Sunny D quickly turned the tables and defeated the Perfect Eighth, with his own weapon against him to boot. 

 

"I am free...free fallin'"

mean, yeah, the matches that Akuma Shogun had against Mirageman and Abyssman were stupidly one-sided, but, to their defense, they at least had a feel of mysticism and mystery, considering that we didn’t knew what exactly they were and what their connection to Akuma Shogun was.

On this case, this match felt like a half time break more than anything, with the only truly noteworthy thing that happened was the reveal that the Statue of Liberty was in fact a man. 

THE Man at that

Please keep this seemingly random tidbit of mine in mind because it’s going to make way more sense at the end of this review.

 

This is the team I to used for this Event:

I decided to go for a balanced team, with Satan Cross and Bockman as the main source of damage with their attack boosts, while Meat and Bibimba focused on the supportive side of things, healing the team, and on Meat’s case, decreasing the damage the team would have taken from volcanoes. Which isn’t exactly much to begin with, but I didn’t wanted to take the risk.

And with that said let’s start with

ROUND 1

Something that I found amusing about this Event from the get-go it’s that while the gimmick information in the game told us that there would be Ice Ropes, and the gimmicks would be Spikes and Volcanoes, they forgot to add that there would also be Current Ropes and Sand Towers. I guess they wanted to surprise us?

Anyway, conceptually speaking this rounds should be a very pressuring one, with the looming Thingman at the top of the ring with his finisher ready, and Grim Reaper summoning mini-Things that would use their finishers in 2 turns (kind of reminds me of another Ice Rope Event…)

But those threats can be easily disposed of with Bibimba’s friendship attack with a bit of help, so yay.

ROUND 2

 

This rounds uses the Spikes in tandem with the ropes in a more competent way than the first one, forcing the player to plan accordingly so the unit could be launched vertically between the spikes, or horizontally over the volcanoes, while also be aware of the Rope Rotations so it wouldn’t  be frozen or electrocuted…

Or just try to get rid of Nemesis. It’s a surprisingly legit strategy due to the low amount of HP he has for a gimmick summoner, only having like 50k, which can be easily taken down with some friendship attacks.

And then you have Goldman and Silverman. Goldman only uses his friendship attack that can be easily evaded, while also being rather frail, while Silverman is slightly harder to deal with it with his Perfect Defender and his finisher, but with a healer the damage he would deal shouldn’t a problem, even less with two.

ROUND 3

 

Now this is where the Event shows its claws. Its space, shoulder chain saw, claws. What the f**k Thingman is anyway?!

Moving that life-crushing existential question to the way, as you might imagine, this was the toughest round for me. 

This could have been a lot easier if I used Current Rope units that ignored Spikes, but I’m the kind of person who likes to not be taken by surprise, so that’s why I decided to use a full Ice Rope team, and it was probably the same case for other players, and it looks like DeNA was aware of that.

Positioning with a full Ice Rope team on this Round is nigh impossible, to the point I wasn’t able to fully heal my team with neither Meat of Bibimba, but at least I was able to put the units that take damage from volcanoes away from them.

ROUND 4

Quite the break time round I must say, even though this is a slightly harder version of Round 1 due to now both sides of the ring having Spikes, but after Round 3, this is nothing.

Due to the rope pattern, I wasn’t able to take out all the Spikes with Satan Cross, so Meat was damaged by some of them, which, I must say, the big amount of damage they dealt to him took me by surprise, considering that the damage everything else on this Event wasn’t exactly something to worry about.

Like Justiceman’s friendship attack, that despite being a Fire Attribute unit with Seigi Choujin Killer, it still dealt a surprisingly low amount of damage to Meat, a Wood Attribute unit that is a Seigi Choujin. What a crazy Event.

The Water Mirageman has been the most amusing unit I have seen on this Event though. 

They knew, oh boy they sure knew, although it puzzles me that each side has a different Mirage. I guess they thought that two of them would have been too much, even though that could made the Round, I don’t know, challenging. Just a gut feeling of mine.

FINAL ROUND

  It’s the Final Round, and it’s the only one without Volcanoes, when is commonly the opposite, but I guess they wanted to show the custom mat design for this Event, and I must say that it looks pretty cool, although I can’t help but find the USSR-esque design ironic considering that Thingman apparently hails from USA.

 

Another thing that I found pretty cool it’s how they decided to take players (that didn’t watched the SHOWROOM stream) by surprise by making the Icicle Ropes the only ones for this round, screwing up the Current Rope units, although due to some important factors, said screwjob can be considered just a silly joke that you should laugh at.

I really didn’t care much about the mini-Thingman (Thingmen?) and Sunshine. Meat and Bockman’s area of effect finishers dealt a decent amount of damage to them, and both even left Spikes on their own to make sure that would be taken down when they attacked

And then we have Thingman himself, having his finisher already ready to use in 4 turns, which at first it may look menacing. And then he actually uses his finisher.

(He uses the finisher at 11:40 Thanks to UNCHA 12/4!)

 

Besides being extremely similar to the finishers that previous versions of Thingman had (although to be fair, it’s not like he did much, so they probably were short of material), the amount of damage it deals is surprisingly low, and the speed decreasing effect is more annoying than crippling, which could be said about everything that happened on this Event, with the exception of the Spikes.

And that was the Event. I must congratulate DeNA for accurately depicting Thingman in such a majestic way.

Like I said at the start of the article, Thingman was a tough enemy for Sunshine, but he still was able to defeat him rather easily despite of that, and he was never referred again with the exception of group shots, in a similar way how this Event could be seen as a tough one (especially Round 3), but you shouldn’t have much trouble in clearing it, and then forget about it until he becomes a bond awakening material.

An Origin couldn't get a more dignified demise than a "Ding"

What gets me the most about this Event is how you can tell that they tried to make it challenging. Keyword being “tried”.

There are a lot of Volcanoes, with two rounds having central ones, which should be something to be really wary about, but on this case, with the amount of damage they deal, they aren’t a problem at all if you bring a healer.

And you may noticed that I didn’t talked about the Sand Towers at all, and it’s because is one of the very few cases where a gimmick was completely irrelevant over the course of the Event.

They are clearly there to either trap bouncers over the volcanoes, or slowing down piercers so they ended up near them, and while there are some useful bouncers for this Event like Illoukhine or recently added Benkiman (since I started playing I have never seen a recently added unit that wasn’t not even in the Top 10 for the Event that it was supposed to counter, until him), the amount of optimal piercers is so vast that the gimmick doesn’t matter, and once again, neither does the volcanoes.

The only noteworthy thing about them is how they helped me in Round 3, slowing my units down so they didn’t touch the Current Rope, and while it was bizarre, that was it.

 

Then we have the enemies themselves. It made sense why they filled the Event with Fire units due to a decent chunk of the most useful units against it have Wood attribute, but during the entirely of the Event there was only one time where the attribute resistance the enemies had mattered, and it was just for a random enemy instead of something important like a mini-boss. I was even able to take down Silverman before he could use his finisher!

And I’m still miffed that there wasn’t two blue Mirageman on Round 4. It would have been a nice obstacle before entering the Final Round.

Now, mind you, I’m not complaining that the Event was too easy. In fact, I appreciate that it is pretty accessible so that even low Rank players could clear it. We definitely needed something less stressful after Neptuneman and Runknight,but I feel that if a 15 Million Power Event can be cleared with other 3 Event Units, with two of them coming from 10 Million Power ones, something is wrong.

They clearly had a game plan, but it looks like said game plan was nerfed (weakened) during the last development steps, and they didn’t bother to properly adjust it for the new parameters, ending with something that looks harder than it really is. Literally.

And as a final nail to this underwhelming coffin…remember when I told you that this Event was going to be last Perfect Origin-related Event that they would release for quite some time so at least this…thing had that going? 

 

If anything, atleast we can say that this was definitely a thing.

 I would like to apologize for taking way more time that I should have on this article. There have been many things that halted my progress during the last few days, but hopefully I will be able to update my blog in a more consistent basis from now.

And most of you probably already know it, but I am part of a Kinnikuman Discord Server, where we talk about, of course, the series, Muscle Shot, and many other Niku-related and not related topics. So feel free to join! https://discord.gg/NFMBDY5