Kirby is a REALLY happy fellow, right? I mean, REALLY happy. You hardly ever see him without a smile on his face, happily swallowing enemies and food alike. In fact, Dream Land as a whole is just happy, and bright, and colorful, and fun. The famous bosses are a giant tree, a giant penguin with a hammer, and a one-eyed cloud with spikes. For the most part, you’d expect such an upbeat series to have final bosses that make you feel good, or cool, or have sympathetic motivations at least. Well. No.
Ever since Kirby’s second appearance, the Final Bosses have had a trend of being scary, imposing, or at the very least, based around dark concepts. It’s ridiculous at points, honestly. Why would you have such thematically dark boss fights in a series that stars a cute pink puffball?
In three of the Kirby games, released from 2005-2011, instead of having explicitly dark bosses with messed up concepts, Nintendo just decided to make these bosses look and sound creepy as all hell. These bosses all happen to be Souls- Drawcia Soul, Marx Soul, and Magolor Soul. They share some traits – they float, they have disgustingly creepy smiles, and of course, they screech and cackle with honest-to-god malevolence that makes you wonder- isn’t that just a bit scary for Kirby? Combine these traits with designs that look just unnatural and unnerving- I mean, really, is that Magalor’s actual EYE in its “mouth?” And you have villains that just seem a tad bit dark for the Kirby series.
That’s not all- if you look towards the newer Kirby games, namely Kirby Mass Attack, Triple Deluxe, and Planet Robobot, the darkness gets a bit more conceptual. Going down the list, we have Mass Attack, whose final boss is named Necrodeus, a name that directly means God of the Dead. He wasn’t the best villain, but still, this is a Kirby game! Next, with Triple Deluxe, we have Queen Sectonia, a bug that hails from, as the actual Kirby wiki puts it, a “parasitic species [that] survives by leeching power from other life-forms until they’re weak enough to be controlled.” Of course, we can’t forget about Planet Robobot, which brings us the Star Dream OS, a cold machine that, by the end of the game, threatens to delete the actual soul of its creator.
A God of Death, a legit parasitic species, and an emotionless machine that eats souls. Nice.
To wrap this all up, you can’t talk about Kirby’s bosses without mentioning Dark Matter, of Kirby’s Dream Land 2, Dream Land 3, and the Crystal Shards. Dark Matter is a creature that seems to consist of only, wouldn’t ya know it, dark matter. In its most iconic form, it is a pure white mass with only one red eye, enough for a kids game, right? What can be noted throughout these games, however, is a recurring happening that pushes Dark Matter over the edge- the fact that it bleeds from its eye when you fight it.
This is most explicit in the Crystal Shards, where Dark Matter reforms into a white creature with a halo, wings, and some sort of spiny green tail. Known simply as Zero Two, the seraphim-like figure is fought in a dark, red planet of its own creation. Armed with a crystal gun, you shoot shards into its eye to damage it, and, wouldn’t you know it, it starts bleeding from its eye as you do so. Thinking about it, how messed up is that? You have an E rated Kirby game, and you decide, “hey, for the final boss, how about we make it a fallen angel that bleeds when you hit it?” Gotta say, the fan art that has resulted from such concepts has been pretty awesome, to say the least.
Of course, perhaps this is taking it a bit far, exaggerating some details. But man, it’s just been kinda cool to me personally to see Kirby games push the envelope. It’s one of Nintendo’s quietest franchises from my view, but, at the very least, its final bosses are certainly worth discussion.
What do you guys think about this? Is Kirby really that messed up, or am I just being dramatic? Any good memories with the pink puffball? Comment down below, let’s talk about it!
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can i leave my theory about zero
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zero used to be a regular creature flying through the sky. however he was a very lonely guy. as you’d expect no one wanted to be his friend. cuz you know, big white ball with red eye. he found dark matter and asked who it was. it didn’t care and asked him to be it’s new leader. since he was lonely he said yes (you see how THAT turned out for him in dreamland 3). he used it to possess other creatures. that’s how he made his friends (real smart, dude…). as you’d expect he was seen as a villain. the dark matter force did more evil things overtime. zero was confused. he and the dark matter force were destroyed by kirby using the love-love stick (and gooey using mock matter). after three years (when crystal shards came out), he and the rest of dark matter came back to life. that’s when zero, now zero TWO, went mad. if he couldn’t be happy, nothing could. have a good night’s sleep! :D
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side note: your right! there IS some really good fan art! case in point the picture right above the comments section.
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Can confirm you aren’t exaggerating. Kirby’s just a fun series which explores some I N T E R E S T I N G concepts
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