Moss-Clump Plant Progress, and the Inspiration Behind the Shell-Born Creatures

I’m still working on the plants. This week I worked on the moss-clump-like (or coral-like) plant in the foreground of this rough image.

Ideally I would have finished it by adding the small flowers it blooms, but I prioritized the bouncy, boing-boing reaction when you touch it, along with the fish-like creatures that swarm around the moss, so I didn’t get that far. I wanted this plant area to have an aquarium-like atmosphere, so I wanted to add creatures that move like fish first and see how the mood turned out.

Now, this newly added creature is also descended from shellfish, just like Grilim and Mootra: its head is the shell, and its body is the part evolved from the mollusc’s foot.

Which brings me to something I promised two posts ago and then forgot: an explanation of where this “creatures descended from shellfish” idea comes from.

Do you know the manga Uchu Kazoku Carl Vinson (The Space Family Carlvinson) by Yoshitoh Asari? If I remember correctly, it was first serialized in the now-defunct Shonen Captain and eventually ran in Monthly Afternoon. The story is an ensemble piece. A girl named Corona loses her family in a collision between spaceships, and the troupe of traveling alien performers who caused the accident takes her in. The troupe believes she’ll eventually be rescued by her own people and return to her home planet, so in the meantime they raise her, pretending to be her parents, pets, and neighbors. Each character has a deep past and secrets, yet they live peacefully day to day. It’s a wonderful manga that’s basically a comedy, with serious moments peeking through now and then. The troupe crash-lands on a planet called “Anika,” and the drama unfolds there from then on, but the planet already has its own native alien race.

These aliens have a unique shape in which the face and body are one, and partway through the manga, it’s revealed why they look that way, along with their evolutionary lineage. The natives’ ancestor was the nautilus, which gradually stood upright, and grew fingers on its head-feet to become their present form.

Asari-sensei also drew Manga Science (a landmark of science manga for kids), so his work is remarkably accurate and convincing in its scientific and sci-fi details. I was deeply impressed by this setting for the natives.

However, Carl Vinson is a fairly old manga, and I felt that people who know this story might disappear entirely (personally, I’ve never once talked about it with anyone), so I thought: let’s include “creatures evolved from shellfish” as a spiritual successor to that setting!

Come to think of it, Asari-sensei is also famous for designing Sachiel in Neon Genesis Evangelion, and the area around Ode’s face is actually fairly influenced by Sachiel (though that was unintentional).

Asari-sensei’s sci-fi works gave me a lot of inspiration in my youth, and I’d like to incorporate elements of them into this game as a homage.