Maniax profiles: the Giants

   UNKNOWN ROBOT - WHITE GIANT

   A mysterious robot that arrived from the deeper universe. The Stardroids refer to it as “The Seal Keeper”.

If it determines an opponent to be “evil”, it will track it no matter where it may go, and will stop at nothing to see it destroyed.

  UNKNOWN ROBOT - BLACK GIANT

   While it is known that it is a rival opponent of the White Giant, any details beyond this are uncertain.

Maniax profiles: Duo

      UNKNOWN ROBOT DUO

    Duo was built by Dr. Cossack as a copy of “Gamma” based on Wily’s own research data, and was an anti-Stardroid combat robot.

…Supposedly.

When Rock and the others were deployed to fight the Stardroids, it entrusted a set of Hyper-Energy Crystals to Cossack.

But once the incident came to an end, Dr. Cossack’s databases were found clear of any and all information about Duo – nor has any sort of data ever surfaced since then.

The true form of Duo might well have been hidden in the core of the Giant’s left arm.

Maniax profiles: Sunstar

     SUNSTAR

    An aggregation of negative emotion, born from the negative emotions harvested from people’s hearts and refined by Dark Moon.

It is not a robot like the Stardroids, much less a living organism as commonly understood. Being an aggregation of disparate thoughts, it does not possess an individual sense of self; composed of fear, despair, and other negative human emotions, it is a collection of all that is negative in the world, and moved only by the urge to destroy its surroundings.

(The reason negative emotions win out during collection is simply that they are much easier to harvest from most people.) 

*Note: If you think of the HEC as doorways into an alien dimension, then Sunstar is a floodgate deliberately left open. The flames that keep flowing out from its body is the very energy of that alien dimension.

*Note: It is, in fact, most appropriate to think of the whole system as a weapon (the Stardroids are sent to an enemy, generate fear and despair through their presence, and said fear and despair are further gathered by Dark Moon).

Maniax profiles: Neptune

     SRN 009 NEPTUNE

     Neptune’s Salt Water, though it acts much like a supremely effective acid, is not actually a chemical but a solution containing a massive amount of microscopic bacteria.

Said bacteria devour everything they come in contact with.

The bacteria can only survive within the HEC’s energy field; when shot by Neptune, and therefore cut off from the HEC’s energy supply, they die within 33 seconds.

Although the bacteria can not properly be called sapient, they have an instinctive grasp of the symbiotic relationship they share with their host – which is why they know better than to try and devour Neptune.

Maniax profiles: Pluto

    SRN 008 PLUTO

   The majority of his HEC’s energy is allocated to mobility and his claws. As such, he has the weakest energy shield of all the Stardroids.

His “claws” are actually a highly, densely compressed mass of energy, and can cut through any and all things as if they were paper.

Maniax profiles: Uranus

   SRN 007 URANUS

    The quasi-totality of his HEC’s output is spent on his energy coating shield, granting him a much higher defense power than the other Stardroids.

In truth, their rough power output is more or less equivalent. But because of the robustness of his body, he can spend all of his energy without having to worry about overloading his own systems, and is therefore free to exert much greater physical strength than the other Stardroids.

Maniax profiles: Saturn

   SRN 006 SATURN

     Because the vast majority of his functions and energy are spent on his “space-intereference ability”, his power, speed, and practically inexistent defenses are the lowest among the Stardroids. However, that space-interference ability more than makes up for the lack.

As Saturn’s ring is a part of his body rather than a weapon relying on independent systems, it needs to be regularly re-equipped in order to recharge.

Maniax profiles: Mars

    SRN 004 MARS

     Mars’ body could be called an armory – or rather, a weapon factory, as all of his missiles and other such ammunition are directly produced inside of him.

The buster bullets of Saturn and Pluto are supplied by Mars as well.

In spite of his appearance, since the energy of his HEC is spent exclusively on that overwhelming firepower, Mars’ defensive power (or rather, his energy shield) is quite weak.

To compensate for this, Mars’ ammunition does not explode within two meters of him.

Maniax profiles: Venus

     SRN 003 VENUS

     To guard against damage from his own Bubble Bombs, Venus is, after Uranus, the Stardroid investing the most power in his energy coating shield. As a result, he can target not only his enemies but also himself with indiscriminate carpet bombing attacks.

Maniax profiles: Jupiter

   SRN 005 JUPITER

   When using his Electric Shock, Jupiter encloses the electric blast he releases within his own energy coating. Since he can change the shape of that energy film at will, it allows him to change the shape of the enclosed electric blast by proxy.

As a result, he can handle normally freeflowing current as one would solid matter.

(The attack that chopped Cut Man’s arms, for instance, is better thought of as a blade of electricity rather than a standard electric shock.)

Maniax profiles: Mercury

     SRN 002 MERCURY

    Mercury’s visible form is nothing but a temporary construct; his true shape is much akin to a force field. The sentient energy entraps  surrounding material within itself and gives it the shape and movement of a person, creating what is called “Mercury” by onlookers. That physical body is little more than a doll; no matter how much damage it is dealt, Mercury himself remains untouched.

Although it may appear to be a perfect ability, maintaining the force field in that state takes a tremendous amount of energy, leaving Mercury with little to no extraneous power, be it for attack or defense. The Stardroids’ creators considered this “simple immortality” as a flaw, and attempted to dispose of Mercury, until the development of the Grab Buster provided him with the means to attack while replenishing his energy at the same time, providing him with a practical use.

That history of constant threat of disposal is what caused him to develop such a twisted personality.

Maniax profiles: Terra

    SRN 001 TERRA

    The alien creators of the Stardroids discovered that the HEC reacted to a person’s heart and spirit at a very early stage of their research. This was largely due to the makeup of their civilization, which was not only heavily mechanized, but also focused on things we would likely consider as magic.

They thought that creating a receptacle with a strong spirit would be the best way to maximize the power that could be harnessed from HEC, and to do so, they created the device that would become known as Terra.

Yet for all that Terra was a perfectly good robot, he despite their hopes did not manage to draw much energy from the HEC at all (although of all the Stardroids, he did manage to draw out the most).

The aliens concluded that on its own, even the strongest will could only do so much, and so rather than keep using Terra alone as a vessel (lit: as a miko), they developed a new plan: finding a way to concentrate the power of as many hearts as possible within a single container.

(This container of hearts was Dark Moon, which, immediately after its birth, began to feed on the naturally-occuring negative emotions of the star’s inhabitants– but that is another story.)

     Terra’s main weapon, the Spark Chaser, keeps firing an invisible thread of energy after launch (which itself is tied to Terra’s energy shield). The laser is literally wired to Terra; he can not only manipulate and reorient it at will, but the laser itself also acts as a sensory organ for him. He receives tactile input from each of the lasers he fires, informing him of their surroundings, and enabling him to manipulate them with perfect precision.

Provided the fancy struck him, Terra could accurately shoot the eyes out of his enemies’ heads even if they stood on the other side of a planet. He can also use that unseen energy thread in a nonlethal fashion; by shooting it at a living being, he can connect, if imperfectly, to their thoughts and emotions, and even interfere to a degree. Terra was able to communicate with people all across the planet, as well as funnel their fear to Dark Moon, by using this ability.

       (Yes, it literally says miko. Yes, that’s where the haircut on my doodle comes from.)

Maniax profiles: Crystals

On Hyper-Energy Crystals

     The overwhelming gap between the combat prowess of the Stardroids and the Earth-built robots was entirely due to the hyper-energy crystals (from here on called HEC). (Which is why once Rock and the others equipped them as well they were able to give the Stardroids an even fight.)

Despite the impression given by the incredible destructive power of the Stardroids, the technological might of their alien creators was not all that different from modern day Earth’s (although it did evolve in a significantly different direction).

Below are the HEC characteristics that could be understood from the “Gamma incident”, the “Stardroid disaster”, and Dr. Wily’s own private experiments (as well as some investigation).

O   HEC contain an incredible amount of energy, but it cannot be drawn out with any sort of stability by a simple machine.

Although the International Energy Institute – which discovered and obtained the first HEC (TN: the one Blues would later receive) – successfully harvested power from it, they could not manage to keep its overflowing energy under control in their experiments, resulting in an enormous explosion.

The laboratory compound, in spite of having been built from a special steel alloy, was obliterated without a trace, leaving only the HEC intact at ground zero.

Experimentation eventually resumed, only for the incident to repeat over and over again. However, once an attempt to directly connect the HEC with a robot in possession of an artificial brain and have it control the energy flow was made, energy could (to an extent) finally be drawn at a stable rate.

(The robot, however, crashed and self-destructed fifteen minutes into the experiment.)

From the data obtained by these studies alongside with the data obtained from his own experiments, Dr. Wily deduced that a robot’s soul was the only way to control a HEC.

      O   HEC give access to an infinite amount of energy. They do, however, have a limited transmission capacity (which is how the International Energy Institute ended up underestimating their actual output).

    O   After asking himself “Can such a thing as truly infinite energy actually exist?”, Dr. Wily came to hypothesize that, if one instead thought of the HEC as “doorways”, then it could be possible for them to be bringing the energy in from outside this universe. He also deduced that while a robot’s mind could modulate the amount of energy flowing in from the “door”, if the robot was not remarkably strong-willed, the overflow of energy would swallow it entirely.

    O   To damage an entity making use of such an energy coating, one must either:

…Achieving the second is a rather complicated matter, as it requires an amount of power roughly equivalent to that of a batch of nuclear missiles.

    O   On top of all this, robots equipped with HEC seem to experience rather strange events. Blues, whose body should have shut down years ago, found his life inexplicably extended; Skull Man (whether it was truly him or merely an illusion; Skull Man’s actual status is unknown) appeared in the middle of Ring Man and Pluto’s battle; and so on. These phenoma too might result from the HEC’s reactions to the souls of the robots carrying them, although at this point any statement to their effect is merely speculation.

Here are some abandoned, eerie places!

Where I got them from and more pictures

More creepy posts

Talking about Deuil made me want to draw them again, so here they are. I had an extra space, so I thought I’d draw the god boy again. And Hatena cameo’d in the background.

Yuli, Ash, Smile, Deuil, MZD, Hatena and Pop'n Music belong to BEMANI and Konami. Line art: pencils

“I am telling you, that is not—” “…Uh, guys? What…is that…?”

Sporty wear Yuli!

I still can’t decide on how I want Ash’s hair to look like, specifically the locks at both sides of his head. Smile’s…just a set of teeth and his gloves…

Yuli, Ash, Smile, Deuil and Pop'n Music belong to BEMANI and Konami. Line art: pencils