*tropical music playing*
Hey what’s the deal with video game bosses that have eyes in their hands?
There are so many boss fights with the same basic scenario.
A big monster has big hands and within those hands are eyes.
They’ll try to smash you, but before they can do that,
you gotta hit them in their palm ‘ball.
Nintendo is the main offender when it comes to eye-hand bosses.
We’ve got Mazaal, Gohdan, Eyerok, Knucklemaster,
Andross is CLOSE but those are gems or something, not eyes?
And Bongo Bongo… Doesn’t have eyes in his hands????
Although I could have sworn he did.
*UFO Music*
Anyway.
I am obsessed with eye-hand bosses, not just because they keep popping up in games,
but because I think they're great boss design.
Allow me to demonstrate why.
Zuko, I love you! Zuko, you're my favorite!
Watch how Zuko only pays attention to my hands, even though my face is the thing that’s
yelling kind words at him.
Why does he do this?
Is it because he doesn’t love me and blatantly ignores all the affection I show toward him?
No. That can’t be it.
*worry*
It has to be because my hands are moving in a more interesting way.
I love hand-eye bosses because of this.
They cut out all that boring shit, and allow you to focus on what matters,
which is the thing that is trying to hurt you.
And that’s why, even after seeing them a million times, I’m still obsessed with these boss battles.
I’ve been thinking about them a lot recently because I’ve been stuck at home,
and that usually leads to one of two things:
either watching a full season of anime in one sitting,
or getting really really into a weird topic.
Originally I had planned on just watching anime, but the problem is that
the anime I was watching also has references to eyeball hands. I can’t escape.
You see! You see what I'm dealing with?
So since the eyeball hand gods won’t let me rest, I’ve decided to dive a little deeper into this topic.
And I’m gonna take you with me on this dive.
First stop: My first eye-hand boss.
In order to get there, I asked my sister to play through Super Mario 64 while I wrote this script
just so we could get to Eyerok.
Eyerok is just a random small boss in Super Mario 64,
and yet it’s so much more memorable than any of the Bowser battles.
Complete snoozefest.
There’s the mystery of the pyramid top flying away,
the suspense of lowering deep into a secret room,
the surprise of Eyerok just popping out of what appears to be a stone couch.
It’s *chef's kiss* perfect.
But does it tell us anything more about eye-hand bosses in general?
No.
But while Laura and I played Mario 64, I realized that this symbol of eye-hand was familiar to me.
In fact, I see it every day I walk out the door of my apartment,
which hasn’t happened in a very long time.
This might be the oldest and most recognizable form of eyeball in a hand imagery.
It’s the hamsa, and you usually see it as a charm to ward off the evil eye.
This one was given to me by a friend of a friend
who came to a housewarming party I held two apartments ago.
He said that I should hang it by my front door, and so I did,
and now I do it at every apartment in honor of that guy who left a kind and lasting impression on me.
But most people hang up hamsas for reasons that are not related
to a random dude coming to their housewarming party.
The hamsa has been around since ancient Mesopotamia, and as I mentioned before,
it’s used to ward off the evil eye,
which is when someone gives an angry malevolent gaze that is is believed to curse a person,
kind of like the way Zuko stares at me when I’m making mac and cheese.
So does the hamsa have anything to do with hand-eye bosses?
Probably not, considering it's a symbol for warding off evil
instead of being a symbol for crushing Mario.
But if the hamsa doesn’t have anything to do with scary hand-eye monsters, what could?
Perhaps a scary hand-eye monster.
The tenome is a yokai that appears as a blind man, but has eyes in the palms of his hands.
In order to learn a little bit more about this yokai,
I looked up the artist who first captured his image, Toriyama Sekien.
Toriyama wrote and painted a lot of books in the 18th century,
and a lot of them were just wordplay and puns turned into yokai.
He basically just made monster manuals in the same style as popular encyclopedias of the time.
The Smithsonian has uploaded most of his books and they're all filled with these incredible creatures,
and you can just download them all for free, which is exactly what I did.
Look at this guy! Look at THIS guy!
Though there’s no explanatory text about the tenome in the original book,
the legend is that these yokai appear as a Zato, which is a member of a guild for the blind.
They usually roam graveyards at night looking for humans to eat.
There’s a book called Japandemonium Illustrated, which has English translations
and explanations of Toriyama’s encyclopedias.
And on the back of the book, there is a quote from Guillermo del Toro.
Which got me thinking about the Pale Man.
Similar to a tenome, it’s a blind creature that has eyes in his hands,
and given his quote on the back of this book, it’s possible that del Toro was inspired by the tenome.
There’s really only one way to know for sure, so I reached out to ask del Toro myself.
And then we’ll just cut and put in the interview I have with del Toro.
So Guillermo didn’t respond to me. But according to this article from New York Daily News,
del Toro's idea for the pale man was more about the catholic church,
and the weird idea of putting eyes into the stigmata.
So it’s possible this was more a case of multiple discovery, simultaneous invention,
where different people come up with the same idea without being inspired by each other.
Maybe the eye-hand boss was inspired by the tenome or maybe it wasn't.
Maybe it's just a good idea for a boss.
As I mentioned before, these bosses are super common, and yet I’m never upset when I run into one.
I personally feel cheated if I play a Nintendo game and don’t have to stab a large hand stigmata style.
I’m currently playing a lot of Animal Crossing
and though I haven’t reached Tom Nook’s third boss phase,
I am sure that the eye hands are coming.
The problem with using big hands as a mechanism for a boss is that there aren't obvious weak points.
In fact, a lot of these boss hands are literally made of stone.
And that’s where the eyes come in.
Eyes are both the window to the soul, and the weak point of every living creature.
Homer knew this when he made the cyclops arc of the Odyssey, which is objectively the best arc.
Everyone knows the Calypso arc is just filler episodes
I’m TALKING ABOUT ANIME AGAIN.
So you pop an eye in the hand, and you’ve got the perfect boss to fight.
Both dextrous and powerful but also incredibly vulnerable.
In order to get up into that vulnerable spot, you have to put yourself into danger.
You need to get right up in that scary hand in order to do any damage.
Or you shoot an arrow from far away if you’re a wimp.
And on the other side of the coin, it puts the bosses into a weird position.
There’s a trade-off between defense and offense.
Do they close off from the world and stay defensive while blunting their senses,
or do they open up and allow themselves a moment of vulnerability in order to make their attack?
That dichotomy is why I am so obsessed with these bosses.
Their design is integral to the mechanics of the fight.
It’s not just a big guy with a random glowing spot that you need to hit,
it’s a big powerful hand that has a weak point that makes sense in context!
Regardless of the origin of these bosses,
the best ones find a way to make sure that the danger and the vulnerability work well together.
They coordinate those two elements. What I’m saying is that
the best ones have good hand-eye coordination.
*music stops*
That’s the end of this video.
*synth music plays again*
Do you, do you see how much I love you, Zuko? No, he really doesn't pay attention at all.
He's, he's bad for this video. You're bad for this video.
You're good for every other video.