The idea of Fulgur being the ''base'' form is interesting, especially since the Guild simply found Anjanath first. This reminds me of Khezu and Red Khezu, with Red being the base but Khezu being more common so it's more popularly known, making Red the quote on quote ''subspecies''
@@unnaturalhistorychannel But I always thought feathers and fur are very different thermoregulators. So yeah having less fur makes sense, but with feathers what maters is how they interlock. So something like the big fluffy feathers of lets say an ostrich can help with circulating air around their body exhaustiing it better, than lets say the this oily but short feathering of a penguin.
It’s pretty true to life to include mistakes in ecological categorization, even if it wasn’t intentional by the game developers. Plenty of silly errors have slipped into scientific publications. 😂 Also FYI it’s “quote unquote” rather than “quote on quote.” Just for future reference. 😊👍
Despite the tyrannosaruine inspiration in his design, I've always seen Anjanath as having more of the ecological niche of a mid sized carcharadontosaur or allosaur. A mid tier predator that can bounce between upper and lower roles more then other predators in its ecosystem.
fun little headcannon: anjanath is possibly the missing link between bird wyverns like great jaggi and brute wyverns like deviljho sharing so many features of both brute wyverns and the small bird wyverns id love to see if this holds up to actual scrutiny
It's funny because I had that exact theory too. I speculated that as the world got cooler the fanged wyverns declined in diversity in the old world and the fanged beasts were on the rise there was still a vacant neich for large top order wyvern carnivore. So some of the earliest of dog wyverns like Great Macao became larger and more powerful. Like your comment a lot😊
I’m happy to say that I share your opinion of Anjanath’s design. I absolutely love how he starts off as a relatively plain tyrannosaur, before busting out the sails and fire breath during rage mode. His design is a perfect blend of reality and fantasy. Would it be accurate to assume that Anjanath’s metabolism plays a big part in how it interacts with (terrorizes) other monsters? It’s likely to be an endotherm considering its integument, size, and active lifestyle, so its belligerence is necessary to procure and defend large amounts of resources for its consumption.
Yeah anjanath probably burns through a good amount of food in its territorial patrols, and probably isn't a fan of anyone else eating his aptonoth. And I'm always happy to see anjanath support!
I've playin mhw, and anja is def one of my favorite designs. Love the tyrannosaur energy edit: the bazelgeuse tease with it just overtaking the audio was a genius bit lol edit edit: wtf is my grammar in the original comment? I have no idea what I was trying to type and I'm not even going to correct it
YEAH!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH THESE ARE LITERALLY MY FAVORITE BRUTE WYVERNS!! Now that my craze is done, I feel it’s more related to the bird wyverns than brute wyverns due to the enlarged claw on their forearms, similar to some raptorial bird wyvens
I've seen some others suggest this too and I think it's an interesting theory, brutes and raptorial birds may well be closer than the games suggest. I hope the video also lives up to the hype!
On the topic of rise, I think the reason of lack of ecology is probably because rise was made at the same time as world, and so some features from world were added in probably the last year.
Yeah, it's just not really the focus of Rise either. Instead of a living, breathing world, their intent was to create a short-lived but fun experience with a ton of QOL. That being said, I hope to god some of the Rise monsters return in MH6 because I want so badly to see how Rakna and Almudron interact with other creatures in a World-like setting, or hopefully an even more immersive entry.
@@prawn1717 Yeah, Rise is much more focused on the action aspect. A real pick-up-and-play version of Monster Hunter, compared to the more realistic ecosystems of World.
@@prawn1717 I like rise more, and i hope that they dont outright remove the cool stuff rise brought to the franchise, but i do want all the monsters to actually feel like animals instead of just monsters in gen6
I found your channel a few days ago,but your content is really interesting to me. Applying Rules of the real world to explain fictional creatures is just so fascinating to me.
The Monster Hunter series makes that easy. It's centered around fantasy tempered by reality, where you can learn a lot about the monsters by looking at their real life inspirations.
Anjanath is one of the biggest reasons why World is my favorite Monster Hunter game. And personally, I think he deserves to be co-flagship alongside Nergigante.
I came up with a little theory as to why Anjanath was deathly afraid of Rathalos in their turf war, despite the fact Anjanath could realistically at least fend one off with it's physical strength. It starts with when Rathalos first showed up to the forest, Adult Anjanath would more than likely fought off attacking Rathalos with no fear, but Anjanath's chicks would have had to look out now more then ever as a Rathalos could just swoop down and snatch one with out much trouble. The survivors would grow up fearing the shadow of Rathalos flying over head, and possbly passing on this to the next generation of Anjanath. With only the chicks that were weary of the skies being the only ones to survive, and pass on their genes. But this just a theory, something i thought of for awhile trying to figure out why Anjanath was the only monster to show genuine fear in it's turf war with Rathalos.
Anja's a pretty cool guy, I like how until Nergi shows up, he's almost the secondary flagship of World. I also agree that his design feels about where I like in terms of fantastical realism. Brachy and Glav are amazing ofc, but they do sort of cross that line where I don't feel as though I'm fighting a monster as much as I am a boss, especially Acidic Glav and Raging Brachy. Zinogre is about where the line is drawn for me, sure, he's a ridiculously anime thunder wolf but I love the explanation of his symbiotic relationship with fulgurbugs, it made me appreciate the flared hive spines that line his body. Anja fits right in with the Raths and the Pseudowyverns where I like trailing and watching him as much as I do fighting him. Edit: On the subject of maps in Rise (and Rise's take on ecology in general), I think my biggest problem with it is that they just half-assed the ecological aspects of the game. They brought back small monsters, cool. But then they just become nuisances and don't act as small prey would act around huge carnivores, as the infamous Bullfango attacking Magna showcases. They said that "endemic life" would be an essential part of your hunts, but no one grabs them unless they're convenient and the spiribirds honestly stick out like a sore thumb on the maps. They showed off the turf wars pre Rise's release and then those ended up being some of the only new turf wars in the game. I think they felt pressured by World's success to implement all those features, but it ended up taking development time away from what should've been the focus; the gameplay, and leading to underwhelming ecological interactions. I think the portable titles should be extremely fun bursts of hunting with tons of QOL but not much deeper substance than that, since the point of a portable game is to hold someone over for a bus ride, or at the airport. Leaving the deep environmental interactions and storytelling to the mainline games would give them the time they apparently needed to create a worthwhile endgame, and not give us the shoddy patchwork that Rise's ecology seems to be. I know I'm being harsh here, but I do love Rise, I just wish they focused a bit on the gameplay loop and difficulty rather than trailing in World's footsteps. That was a whole lot of nothing about the maps in Rise whoops, but I actually adore the Rise maps, partly attributed to the Wirebug. I think they look beautiful, I like the layouts and the little secrets, and overall they suit the purpose of getting to your location quickly and easily. They're a great example of what I think Rise should've been, a game that trims the fat and just shoots you into the hunting aspect. We can have the whole grand steak with MH6 (underwater combat and an open world Capcom, make it happen), but for now, I think Rise and by extension, its maps, should've been the cheap fast food you crave from time to time.
I think Rise was in something of a rock and hard place scenario. It effectively had to include some of the features of World or people wouldn't have been happy, but the lack of focus on them made them feel half-assed. I do think there will be a growing divide between Portable and Main series, but it's questionable how much the portable series can trim without it feeling a bit weightless.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel What do you think if a wire bug like system came back in mh6 but it only works when attached on solid mass like a grappling hook and isn't as clunky as the clutch claw?
@@unnaturalhistorychannel Agreed, it's obvious when you look back at pre-launch hype videos that people were expecting turf wars and World's focus on endemic life. Honestly I could see them making more Frontier-esque content for portable, where the combat gets taken to a whole new level. People really miss Frontier, so I think making a new MH MMO or MMO Lite could be fun for A: giving Frontier fans what they want and B: having something to hold over fans of the mainline series while they do whatever crazy innovations the devs can think of. Rise to me seems like it tried to cater to all parts of the MH community and ended up pleasing fewer people as a result, I would like it if they would take the portable line down its own unique road personally.
Hey man, great work. I've just recently discovered your channel, but I've been slowly but surely going through your videos. They're truly fascinating. Hope to see this community grow a lot more. On the topic of Bazelgeuse: I may be late to the party since most of the video has probably already been made, but I would love to see your angle on the possibility that Bazelgeuse's nomadic lifestyle may be a result of Seething individuals. My headcanon: The artbook suggests that Bazelgeuse hatch in the high altitude cavern ranges of the Elder's Recess and then proceed to raid the rest of the continent. The reason for that extreme lifestyle, however, might be the presence of incredibly strong (possibly Seething) specimens overlooking their "pride". Like the IRL lions bazel imagery usually alludes to, a dominant male might be the one forcing the younger, immature ones to leave the pride as a way to avoid competition. This might explain not only why Bazelgeuse don't seem to settle down in non-volcanic environments as well as why Seething, although seemingly more powerful in both an elemental and physical capacity, don't leave the Elder's Recess to obliterate other ecosystems like their regular counterparts do (and possibly, for that matter, why it doesn't seem to fly nearly as much as them). Seething's reign over the higher ranges of volcanic environments in which the species usually nests should also attract challenge from other males, specially younger ones who feel confident enough to take on a much more experienced and dangerous veteran. In this case, the Bazelgeuse's "usurping" the top of the food chain in other ecosystems might be part of their pilgrimage to either build or take over a "pride" of their own once they return to the Recess as more mature individuals (maybe even after they've attained the Seething status).
Thank you! It's much appreciated. Bazel's video is almost complete, but I came to a conclusion re: seething individuals that wasn't so dissimilar. Check back later in the week to see!
I can't believe it took me this long to make the connection but the new world's Rath's roar is probably less focused on intimidation and more on socialisation due to the more social life styles Rathian and Rathalos are able to live in the comparatively lax new world in contrast to the old world's more hostile and competitive environment.
One thing that I really love about Anjanath is that it just has that pure "childhood monster" design in the same way as something like Charizard. The basic idea of a fire breathing Tyrannosaur really does just feel like the first thing that a child would suggest for the game, but they took the idea, fleshed it out and made it very interesting.
I have the theory that anjanath is one of the most basal members of the brute wyvern species, as it has many similarities with brute wyverns such as deviljho and abiorugu from the fron saga Frontier
I’m SO glad to see another distinguished Anjanath enjoyer. While I like the classic brutes such as Glavenus, Jho, and Brachydios, I always felt like their designs were very cartoonish. Cool, but a little out there. Anjanath on the other hand is so wonderfully grounded and his belligerent school-hard bully motif is just so charming as well. Also, personal theory, but I always chalked up Fulgur Anjanath’s physical and combative superiority to the regular species as being a result of their differing environments. Think of a Gobi Bear compared to an Ussuri Brown Bear. Fulgur Anjanath has to regularly deal with a whole suite of competitors in a much harsher environment for the same food sources (we see this ingame with Fulgur’s turf wars against Stygian Zinogre, Tigrex, and Barioth). The regular anajanth species, by comparison, only really has to deal with Rathalos, Rathian, and maybe the occasional Tigrex should they overlap, whereas Fulgur is dealing with other large carnivores of similar ecological standing on a regular basis. Anyways, great vid as always, very excited to see what’s next
I guess that would make sense on paper but anjanath would have to deal with more than just rathalos and rathian. Anjanath’s territory’s overlap with nargacuga and yain garuga as well as zinogre too. and while anjanath probably doesn’t dominate these monsters he probably can give them a run for their money especially towards monsters like nargacuga who anjanath can probably defeat.
@@dapperraptor8789 Yian Garuga, based on what we see in World, is largely insectivorous and a scavenger of other predator’s kills. Zinogre and Nargacuga do most of their hunting in the forest’s interior, whereas Anjanath hunts mostly in the flood plains. It’s also worth nothing that Zinogre and Nargacuga, based on their old world counterparts, supplement a good majority of their diet with smaller prey, and are likely hunting mosswine, wing drakes, and kestodon on the forest floor, whereas Anjanath specializes in tackling big game exclusively
@@thewolfofcomedy5966 he would still probably engage with them, Anjanath is generally bilergant and still wanders the interior to mark his territory. anjanath would probably be hostile on sight to those monsters
@@dapperraptor8789 Yes but he isn’t directly competing with them for resources or territory, and so the animosity is most likely not as intense as it would be between Fulgur Anjanath and the other arctic predators
I just adore how World told you a little story basically with Anjanath. Before you fight it, its being just a massive bully to the weaker monsters. But when you fight it you have a chance to have Rathalos show up and just wreck Anjanath. That was just such a great "show don't tell" moment and Anji became one of my favs for that reason.
I absolutely agree that Anjanath is peak brute wyvern design, both in its fight and normal design. Out of most of the other big brutes, It feels like the only natural ones (regarding both design and abilities) are anjanath, tigrex, and banbaro. Even more tame ones such as diablos or duramboros dig at absurdly high speeds and turn into a damn helicopter. And then you have glavenus wielding a great-sword for a tail and a absurdly aggressive pickle shooting lasers at you. A majority of the designs or abilities of the larger brute wyverns really stand out compared to most other monsters like rathalos, so anjanath feels like a great step in the right direction for brute designs of future generations. As you mentioned; a perfect balance of fantasy and natural.
So happy you covered this amazing creature! Fulgur Anjanath is my favourite monster in all of Monster Hunter so it's a joy seeing him be covered by a amazing biologist like yourself!
Fulgur Anja has been one of my favorite monsters since it’s introduction, for one very specific reason (other than looking awesome) and that’s it’s use of electricity. Other than elder dragons, creatures that use electricity (Tobi, Zinogre, etc) allow electricity through outer means (Tobi’s static, Zinogres bugs) but Fulgur has some evolutionary trait that allows it to handle electricity within its own body, which is just incredible in my eyes.
thank you for covering my favourite monster, and I have been waiting on the edge of my seat after the tease in the future predator video. I think the idea that anjanath is newer compared to fulgur anjanath is a very unique and good concept. and it would explain how he can fight monsters like zinogre and tigrex. and when it comes to rathalos i think personally it's not as one sided as the turf war presents. anjanath is probably king of the lower sections and when rathalos goes down in the lower sections he might only stay there for a short while before making a break for the canopy.a rathalos caught on the forest floor may be a easy target for a anjanath. and when it comes to rathian I do think that if a rathian is caught with a kill anjanath might attempt to bully a rathian off a carcass. when it comes to the debate about anjanath and it being a "apex", I think he should be one. the argument that anjanath loses to rathalos making it a mid tier is a weak argument, not only is rathalos a powerful monster but other apexes seem to struggle with rathalos. anjanath might just have it the worse out of the group. and when it comes to everything else capcom seems to have a lot of love for anjanath. he was a pseudo flagship for world and before nergigante was revealed, anjanath was essentially the flagship of world. anjanath also made it into rise and stories 2 as well as being the first boss. and for the monster hunter world board game anjanath was shown in the promotional material more than nergigante. and capcom also confrimed that the ancient forest theme was his theme which I felt was deserved. anjanath along with nergigante and tigrex are my favourite monsters. his design and fight are fantastic and I am happy that the community no longer consider him a knock off jho for the most part and as a stand alone monster. I hope that he comes back in gen 6 with newer turf wars with new and old monsters as his turf wars were always fun to watch. thank you again for showing my boi in a amazing light this was worth the wait. and I can't wait for the video around the b52 bomber. (also I love the detail that bazel announce's his presence before you do XD) also I hope we get a odogaron video soon!
Really well done video on one of the best monsters in the series. I was expecting the Ostrich to be brought up,considering its the largest terestrial bird that also hapens to inhabit some of the warmest areas in the world,and how they use their feathers,bare legs and hollow bones to cool down and allow them to keep up their high speeds. Tho I do wander since scales on birds are modified feathers perhaps Anjanaths scales do that as well. As for the very intresting talk on Anjanath territorial battles and using Tyrannosaurs for an example we do have a specimen(I belive it was Stan could be wrong) that has a tooth injury literally inches away from the brain that had signs of healing,which is both insaine and incredible at the same time! Aplying that to points you brought up like the tusk like teeth during these confrontations might lead to some indeviduals having hides covered in colourful tapestries of scars and wounds if they have had alot of physical confrontations. Especially for young adults considering younger animals can be more confident and bold than expirienced adults. And I do agree about your points,Anjanath is by far the best of the Brute wyverns,he was a wall,and his design while may look simplistic has those hiden bits that help him not be over designed and the way the play a part of his actual ecology and fight is great to see. Really hope he sticks around for the future games to come. Looking forward to what may be ne-A SHOOT SOMEONE GRAB A FLASH BOMB! WHO HAS A FLA-
Cheers as ever! It'd be really cool if in future games they could make randomised texture packs for scars and wounds and such, or if nothing else for more fanart to show this. And very cool to hear about the tyrannosaur with the very close shave too.
You should really do a video on Najarala, it’s a monster I’ve never really heard much about so it’ll be pretty neat to know more about our old world snakey boi
@@unnaturalhistorychannel that’s literally what I was going to say, Capcom really didn’t give us too much info on our sneky boi, but hey, that’s why we use speculative science xD
For what Anja’s turf wars show, I feel that they also potentially use their special weapons to deter worthy or dangerous foes, we just don’t see that for the same reason we don’t see glavs use their tail, diablos their horns for impaling of goring especially after the first try occurs, the fact we don’t see nergi pin cushion elders and the fact that reused turf wars and the mid and more newer turf wars are often not up to par unless we are looking at specific iceborne turf war or the new rise ones. And for my opnion on how lacking rise is in the environments you fight in, yes I agree with you. I feel what world did was give more to do than just hunt and while I personally don’t have an issue with the apparent ease of rise yeah the way they handled the endemic life by just reducing them to use tools for the hunt instead of the animals you can fill your room with, I remember going on a gathering spree catching endemic life in world and filling out my room with some adorable and nifty critters. It kept me going through the borefest that is the golden goddess grind and Safi suffers from that especially since there should be at least something else there given the energy and how safi only really eats energy And yeah, rise really only focuses on the weapons and even then they left some weapons hanging compared to others and they also had several issues with balancing the monsters and the hunts but they did fix kush as a fight and all that as well as adding ‘hey look at that you can take advantage of that creatures and stuff’ which is really the only environment aspect that rise improved over world but world can always add those on.
Babe, wake up, Unnatural uploaded. It's really nice to see a video on Anjanath, he's definitely one of my favorite monsters ever for many of the reasons you stated. I don't really like what they did in Rise by giving him the turf wars of fulgur. It makes it very confusing to understand it's place in the ecosystem, because who handles zinogre and diablos like that and then freezes in fear when Rathian and Rathalos appear? Also in my opinion it's one of the cooler things about fulgur, the fact that it could put up a good fight against monsters that would normally beat his counterpart. Anyways, thanks for making this video! I can't wait for the Bazelgeuse one after that awesome tease-invasion.
I think Rise’s lack of ecological depth is probably just a result of it being a portable game developed simultaneously with World; the main games have always had more developed ecosystems in my experience, and nothing had ever done quite what World did with its environments. All things considered, it would’ve been far more surprising for Rise to have met the same bar that World set.
Honestly for me, I felt they just didn’t focus on that element, ecology wise the best that has been shown in the older series is with the flagships; Zinoger, gore and sere and that is when we see what happens when they invade other areas and they aren’t things we see. The older games were more focused on making these monsters in a way that fit what they were going for but not ecology otherwise they would have made more of an effort, but even then rise isn’t exactly the same with ecology care with the old world games especially MH1 and MH3. And that is because rise was more focus on gameplay and what the player does instead of the ecology and what the players may not see or care to understand.
@@marcusgo1160 well rise’s one focuses on their power and dangerous they are using the theme they are going for to express that. Best example is the bloodlust incarnate where they probably just slapped jho’s intro onto azuros. The best ones ecology wise would rakna (showing us her relation with her young who we see prior to her fight and what she is in the environment ‘a queen without a crown’), pukui and Chameleos as well as a few others like diablos and magna to be honest because they best represent the monsters and how they act naturally the rest either are close to on par or decide to lean away from it. But yeah rise kinda has similar ones to MH1 in that regard.
Yeah.. i love Anjanath! Hes intimitating and has a lot of tricks and was my first wall in world. Also heres a fun theory. Mayby Anjnaths Ability to breath fire is a relic from the past. Hes fire ability seems to not have evolved to be extremely strong. Id argue that even a Yian Kut-kus fire abilities are better than that of anjanaths. Of course this might be just that anjanaths fire breathing ability didint really need to evolve since he allready was a big monster even in Monster Hunter Standarts and posseses a powerful looking jaw. Also not sure if you did mention this but mayby he partly uses his Fire to Intimitate predators that are on par with him or even stronger. A Narcakuga for example hunts in simular grounds to a anjanath so they probably whould meet pretty often same for Monsters like Barroth, Almudron and even Banbaro even tho they probably dont meet often. Id also like to add that we do see Anjanaths in a snow biome in Stories 2 allthough im not sure if it counts as Canon. Edit: also whould be interesting to see you make a video on ambhibians at somepoint.
Froggies will be indeed featured in a future video. Anja's fire does seem a bit basal, but the notion of it being used to intimidate is a nice one. Fits as Nargacuga doesn't like fire much.
Great vid on Anjanath itself, but I have to question why Rise maps are held under this scrutiny of 'oh well there's nothing to do but hunt the monsters, therefor they're bad.' When that was the baseline for the entire series until World. And while you could argue World greatly raised the bar for map design, I think it also ultimately doesn't matter in the long run. You can explore it's vast maps, get flat-out lost in the Ancient forest of Coral Highlands, but ultimately once you do that once, maybe a few more times, then why bother doing it again? The maps once again boil down to arenas in which you fight monsters, and I think it's unfair to say Rise has literally nothing else when it still has the second-most in-depth maps after World, with plenty of areas map solely just for exploring where monsters can't go. Legitimately the only thing I can think of that really sets them apart in any grand way is the lack of Endemic Life collecting in Rise. Also on the point of turf wars, I think Rise gets a bad rap. I feel like it has more attention to detail while also having the issues of copy-paste, which I argue still aren't as bad as Iceborne's. The detail of Anjanath struggling longer to lift Tetranodon as it tries to keep on it's feet is a level of detail not seen anywhere in World or Iceborne. Even the detail of Volvidon rolling in recovery against Tetranodon is something. Meanwhile not a single one of Brachydios' turf wars use slime, or a single of Glavenous' uses the tail. Sorry for all the ranting, but I just think it's a bit annoying that Rise gets hit with these types of complaints when they could quite easily be applied to World, and ultimately are only considered issues when being directly compared to World instead of on it's own merits when both were developed around the same time.
I think you are right in that it's the point of World just raising the bar a lot. You can also say 'once you do that, why bother doing it again'? But then surely this applies to all aspects of the game too? Doing it once also adds at least some replay ability. I also think the difficulty of older games and the increased grind generally occupied you a lot more, taking that away from Rise also somewhat hamstrung the amount of time you'd spend on it. I will also give my thoughts on IB in another video.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel True. I do feel like I misspoke with the 'why bother doing it again' thing. I moreso meant/feel that exploration is a bonus gameplay aspect only ever introduced in World, and so judging a game harsher because it doesn't have the exact same level of exploration as it feels as though it's focusing too much on putting pressure on non-core gameplay elements of the series, especially when it's still the second-best of the series in that aspect. The difficulty thing I do agree with, but I also feel base World was pretty easy itself save for really Behemoth, and only felt so much longer because it had a metric ton of unskippable cutscenes and filler a la Pink Rathian investigation.
In a future episode, I would love to see you go over one of my favorite Pelagus monsters, the Bishaten from Monster Hunter Rise and the Kecha Wacha from Monster Hunter 4.
Credit to the Monster Hunter development team for paying attention to proper animal/dinosaur skeletal structure and anatomy. I won't take crank about "Well Anjanath is a magical dinosaur, he doesn't have to make any sense." No, the development team set out to make them as believable as possible, so some real world rules do apply. You can take some creative liberties but you can't make a t rex look and move in a away that would be impossible for it to do so and have it still survive. Like the Jurassic Park films make no sense in the fact that even if we could bring them back to life, how would we keep them alive against modern day pathogens, parasites and molds that wouldn't earn a polite chuckle out of current year reptiles? They have been extinct for millions of years and did not keep evolving along side other animals and develop natural resistances against things we see as harmless.
It's funny. In my quest to sort out the evolutionary line of every monster in the mainline series one of the theories that I came up with was that normal Anjanath are actually the subspecies not the other way around and that Fulgor's moved to the Ancient Forest and adapted to the warm climate. Another great video! It really is a small world we lie in.
My favourite monster! I'm happy to see my favourite brute get such an in depth analysis. Could some of Anjanath's heat dispelling elements have a secondary function of protecting it from its own breath attacks, or limited resistance against those of Rathalos? (That is just pure speculation from me btw) You really hit the nail on the head with mentioning how varied monster behaviours and a properly-tiered set of turf wars add to the richness of MHW. The main reason I got so sucked into that game for hours on end was as you said in your vid - it was immensely engrossing to explore this fictional ecosystem whilst observing monsters as well as just fighting them. Heck, one of my favourite things to do was aggro monsters towards each other so I could learn all the turf wars - both for my own benefit in hunting and because they are fun to watch. This is why in the next big MH game (haven't played Rise yet, but I gather it doesn't merit that title), I really hope they explore big wyverns predating other big wyverns in ways you discuss in your vids to flesh out the ecosystem more. Fulgar Anjanath is #1 on my wishlist for a new detailed Creator Series model. P.S TV Tropes references are always nice to hear.
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it. Anja's heat dispelling mechanisms might not protect it directly from fire, but the sinuses being extendable may well help it breathe fire due to the role the mucus play.
For my monster hunter head canon, I classified both Anjanath and Deviljho as monster hunter equivalents to tyrannosaurs. However because of Anjanath’s smaller size in comparison to Deviljho, the presence of feathers, and three fingered hands; Anjanath would be the most primitive of the two. It’s possible that when the Ancestors of both Deviljho and Anjanath split off tens of millions of years ago, the line that would’ve given rise to Deviljho gradually became larger (which caused them to drop their ancestral feathering due to their much greater size), specializing in hunting larger game, and the use of the dragon element rather than fire or electricity. But of course, both Anjanath and Fulgar Anjanath are way more successful than the “Great Devourer”. Since they seem to have no issues with habitat preferences, prey options, and no genetic issues due to inbreeding like Jho does. In the end, Anjanath (the most Basal of the two known surviving tyrannosaurs) is most likely winning the evolutionary arms race against their larger cousins.
I’m a good few years behind on putting my thoughts in, but another way the idea of Fulgur being the original could be supported is that the methods that allows them to use electricity evolved to be a spark that helps the liquid ignite into fire in case fsr the Anjanath couldn’t ignite it other wise. And fire becoming its primary weapon would be a bit better at defending at distance or covering its escape if the competitor or prey puts up a stronger fight than anticipated
I think Anjanath uses its enlarged nostrils to take in great amounts of oxygen to fuel their fire breath/electricity. The organs likely require soecilized organs to generate powers that are normally only seen in more powerful wyverns like rathalos and legiacrus. The sails serve as heat exchange to cool the Anjanath or wide surface area away from the central nervous system to protect against the thunder. It likely develeoped these in order to compete with other powerful wyverns. They likely have niche partitioning as they age, with the largest Anjas taking on large herbivores, while younger individuals use fire or electricity to take down smaller wyverns. This is likely why Tobi are so aggressive to Anjanath, as they likely compete with the young anjas. Rathalos also competes with the older Anjas which makes him have a rivalry with everyone in the base ancient forest
Might Anjanath use it's fire breath to cause brush fires and flush out prey? I've heard of some birds spreading forest fires on purpose via smoldering twigs.
There is no real reason for a game to make itself a massive time-sink. I got something like 80 hours out of it and I'm not necessarily done with it yet but it's pretty nice that an MH game let me go at some point so I can play other stuff too
A couple things I've seen in mhw regarding anjanath: an azure rathlos made a kill, and an anjanath came and scavenged it mere seconds after rathlos left, and later in the same session, anjanath sat down facing the ocean with its fins open. I've only seen these happen once, so I assume it's quite rare, and the first one was entirely circumstantial, but I feel they do support the related theories about anja ecology.
I've only seen ancient forest monsters' regular behavior. Simply exploring to take a break from the constant hunting. Anyways. Anjanath always rests on Zone 3 on the map. Its on a cycle and will always rest there if you follow it around. Stealing kills I've only seen twice. A rathalos came into Zone 1 slightly later than the anjanath. As the rathalos was preparing its hunt animation the anjanath got the kill first. Never seen it scavenge from a carcass, though.
That ending was fun XD. Can't wait to see the breakdown of B52 and his more explosive subspecies in the next video. Also for Fulgar Anjanath how do you think it fits in the Hoarfrost region? Why would a predator evolve to be better suited for the cold than become a nomadic monster like Ebony Odogeron? If its electricity abilities allow it to be so successful across different areas, how could have fire breathing Anjanaths come to be if originated from fulgar? Food for thought.
How Fulgur turned thunder into fire is indeed something to ponder over, and is quite hard to explain. It's also a bit weird that Fulgur decided to leave the hoarfrost too, although it could be possible a mix of the fleet and Velkhana drove some of them out.
Maybe Anjanath and Great Jagras’s story is similar to the one between Rathalos and Pukei. Anjanath might be a recent residence of the Ancient Forest that dethrone the Great Jagras as the top predator, forcing him to stay mostly in the dense jungle and hide in cave, only to came out in the open to hunt
Love when you upload. There's still so much of cast left in the roster to cover, I need more well researched videos making real world comparisons and analogues to my fake dinos, dragons, and wyvers, oh my.
"Anjanath is usually a wall for new players" Flashback to me stopping my Tobi-Kadachi hunt to fight the Anjanath that just showed up, far before I had even close to enough gear
You are one of the only people who has the same problems with Rise that I do. World was everything I wanted out of the MH franchise and Rise just took several steps backwards from what I liked
I love Anjanath, he's honestly my favorite brute wyvern despite the "generic" look. It's a really nice mix of realistic and fantasy. While unlike other people who had a chance to play world throughout the game, I first fought him in Rise and honestly loved his fight. I saw the Rathian vs Anjanath turf war and I agree that it is just kind of stupid that it was just a recolor of Rathalos' turf war. Despite me being a fan of Rathian over Rathalos, I feel that she would probably only be airborne to deliver her poisonous tail attacks onto it but she's probably gonna have to do that to surprise the Anjanath while it's probably gonna be awhile before she can do that. But it's probably be more difficult for her to repel away the Anjanath than it would be for Rathalos despite her larger mass, like you said, it's mostly her more ground based preference that's gonna give Anjanath a better advantage. Either way, Anjanath vs Rathian would just be a draw in the end.
I think rathian should draw with anjanath but showing a clear winner in the turf war having anjanath dodging fireballs from rathian when she’s grounded and having him grab and slamming her down to ground like he always does.Only to have her escape from his grip and start flying and doing a backflip having him knocked down for a longer period of time then usual.This shows a clear winner in the turf war while also showing off how rathian would deal with monsters deciding to fight her.But another idea for a turf war could be rathian going towards anjanath and doing a backflip then having anjanath dodge the backflip,glavenous style.And have anjanath grab the tail and slam her to the ground and rathian escapes this by firing a fireball showing anjanath can get a upper hand on a rathian basically 50/50 of either of them getting a upper hand.
I have a question? Is Kushala gonna be the only Elder Dragon you talk about? I know that Elder Dragons don't take the most naturalistic approach as they are explained to be natural disasters in creature form but I am just curious if you would tackle them even if they don't follow most laws of nature.
Amazing as always. I’m very interested in your theory that fulgur is the original species and “regular” Anjanath is more recent. I hadn’t considered that before but it makes sense. On the tusk teeth, I think that’s sort of what Deviljho’s mouth originally looked like before all the inbreeding occurred. Just with a set on both jaws for jho. Speaking of that, what are your thoughts on Anja and Jho being related? It’s a common theory and I’m curious what you think about it
@@unnaturalhistorychannel It's not the first time. Red Khezu are the original's. The white ones are technically variants not subspecies and are albino's and somehow more common.
Have you ever considered making a video analyzing the ecology of a piece of media that probably wasn't made with ecology in mind? Like analyzing the creatures of pikmin, or the wildlife in zelda.
Anji seems a bit simple in my opinion I still love her. Also anji may be at least partially related to deviljho. The fangs sticking out of the bottom jaw and tyrannosaur like design seem to show at least some kind of relationship. Lastly I really enjoyed the B52 Carpet Bomber invading the ending as the teaser.
"Coat of feathers" Meanwhile Capcom calls it fur just like they do with Narga even though Narga's quills are feathers and the bladewings are made up of hardened feathers/scales. I'm convinced the entirety of Narga is actually covered in feathers. I don't believe their "fur" lies. :D Capcom seem to call feathers "fur" overall in MH it seems. As for why Anjanath has feathers? It's supposed to be based on dinosaurs having feathers. Also I want to add that Yutyranus a tyrannosaur from Asia was fully coated in feathers and lived in colder climates. And then there's Dromeosaurids which were also fully coated in feathers which is what I find odd in MH because Kulu and Maccao are the closest to that for small theropods yet neither are fully covered. As for it's power level. Well Fulgur was made to be more on the same level as Rathalos and other similar monsters and they then updated the normal one to be this way in Rise.
Yeah Capcom are (as ever...) all over the place with their descriptions. Yutyrannus was indeed feathered, but also was only around 3 tonnes. Tyrannosaurs was *a lot* more, and anjanath even more so. Big difference in heat retention there!
Always fun to rewatch this video - its such a joy to see how well articulated and informative this breakdown on Angie boy. He's definitely a fight I'Il always remember, especially since I was really keen on killing him as a HR3 newbie (still going through the story at HR6+). I really wanted to get that tier two Defender HBW early on, and that Angie fight for his scale was... equally fun and frustrating. First time, almost got him but numerous fainting led to him running away before I could almost end him. Second time was much more successful, with his death in his little den.
Fulgur anja deals thunder damage, which rathalos/Rathian is weak to. It’s likely that if fulgur is the base form, then the normal anjas retain the alleles for that phenotype. Do you think that as time goes on, ancient forest anjas will slowly be selected for thunder instead of fire to better compete?
Yeah, Anjanath is perhaps my favorite monster/brute wyvern. While I have never played a MH game, World was the game that got me interested in them. Anjanath was the 1st monster in the previews and also one of the 1st depictions, for the time, of a T-rex in a way we didn't see to often in the west. A T-rex with fluff. Now a days that is much more common and now out of favor but it was unique for the time. Also I like the Anjanath is just this creature that sits in the middle of the ecosystem and also Capcom's roster of "mythic/legendary Pokémon". Everybody wants the next "epic monster", myself included, but it is nice to see something with a bit more give and take. Powerful but not a "Wyvern Sue" so to say.
beautiful video as usual, Anjanath is probably one of the most successful brute wyverns especially for the fact that he is one of the few to still show connections with bird wyverns, indeed I would not be surprised if in the future it turns out to be a relative of the "Jaggi" family who are also defined as canid wyverns for their strong jaw (plus it cannot be denied that the anjanath as a body resembles a Jaggia but much bigger), since we are talking about brute wyvern it would be interesting to know more about you have brute wyvern "mammals" aka Bambaro, Kestodent and Gestodont that we know from official sources to be natives of the new world.
Honestly, Rise & Freedom Unite are the two biggest hour sinks in the franchise for me. (500 in MHFU and 200 in Rise) What finally killed Rise for me is the RNG endgame. I was fine in base Rise grinding away creating every final SnS, and even swapping over to other weapon categories after I finished that... But something about the dice roll on the gear once you hit max level just makes me not want to play more. What I've heard is that World has the same style of end-game, where you fight just stat-buffed versions of the same fight multiple times for rerolls on what amounts to an equipment gatcha.
World endgame grind for weapon stones and decorations Rise endgame u grind for tickets to get roll for decorations Iceborne endgame you grind for deco Sunbreak endgame u grind for deco and anomalies World and Rise endgame are very diff, but sunbreak and Iceborne are similar except sunbreak u also grind for anomalies monster Plus ur talking about kulve from World, she drops u weapons it's RNG and Iceorne is Safi jiva and he drops u weapons it's RNG as well, but strong weapons that u can modify its stats. But its not a endgame stuff, the deco grind is, the Safi weapon are strong and the Safi armor is strong but there's a cost
@@junevue9665 It is optional... but its also the only way to get a smidge more toward an idealized build. That, and the anomoly monsters just being teh same monster, but with the occasional AoE if you don't hit certain parts enough and massively inflated HP pools... Well, I could blame that too. But I was fine slogging 40+ minutes soloing guild-fights in MHFU, but the pool of health in Rise/SB just made me not care about the fight anymore.
@@firebornliger rise/sunbreak gives me a very weird feeling, I like it but I hate it. To me it's too fast and the fights aren't memorable cause the game is arcadie. The maps are also dry to me. The endemic life is gone. I also found some of the fights to be easy due to ur skills. Thts why I went back to world cause it's slow paste like the og style and gameplay is slow, and yeah the anomalies are the same. It's basically an isekai mh arcade, basically. There's alot I dislike in rise/sunbreak, it's good game it ain't for me doe
Reminds me of the idea that Camels are now likely thought to have started out as tundra animals in the far north during the ice age. It makes sense when you find they have adaptations that can transfer over pretty easily. You can see how that would apply to Anjanath as well.
I haven't started the video yet but I'm so excited already!!!! Anjanath is one of my favourite monsties in the entire franchise, there's just an allure to him hat makes him stand out more than most momsters in my eyes, at first I wasn't impressed cause he was just a plain t-rex with fire breath but as I saw more and more monsters like brachydios or rathalos I realized how much he stood out. His nosebone and sorta wings also add to this, in my opinion the best monsters are always the ones that change a bit in design when mad, it really elevates the experience to somthing much greater.
Another great one, Anjanath is such a well designed monster both visually and in terms of ecology, I just wish its fight wasn't so spastic, for a large tyrannosaur-like brute wyvern it sure does use a lot of kicks and quick bites. One thing I'm surprised you didn't mention was how one of Anjanath's non-combat behaviors is how it will find specific spots to rest with its sails fully extended. I always found this interesting and was showing them giving off heat or taking it in, depending on the time of day/locale/subspecies.
Anjanath has got to be one of my favorite monsters in World, especially because I am a huge dino nerd. Such a fun fight too, with Fulgur Anjanath baing different enough to have surprised me the first fight with new moves and strategies to fight him
Going to throw out there the possibility of Anjanath's use of its integument as a heat dispersal method. This can sometimes be observed in birds, and as Anjanath's integument seems to consist mostly of a central vane without much in the way of barbs, at least from what I remember, and the central vane of feathers does contain vessels, I dont think its out of the question.
MHR is bloody boring by comparison to World. It’s completely unimmersive. Rise dumps a bunch of hunts on you with no background to have a reason for it other than just slaughter. It’s ok for hubs, but village quests need substance. All World quests given by NPCs within story bounds had a goal of some kind besides killing or capping a monster. Canteen improvement, farm improvement, Seliana development as a town. Rise makes hunts shallow and meaningless. Plus, ppl constantly fighting about capping vs killing gets beyond toxic and stupid. I expected Rise to elevate the series, instead I found myself missing World.
My favorite Brute Wyverns are in no particular order other than Barroth is my number 1. 1) Barroth 2) Brachydios 3) Durambaros 4) Uragaan 5) Banbaro 6) Raadoban 7) Anjanath 8) I dont know the new ones in Rise yet. Only got to the game a few weeks ago.
I gotta be honest: when you called Anjanath one of the most memorable new monsters from World I shouted *"What?"* out loud. Maybe I'm just biased, but I always thought Anjanath was really boring and uninteresting, both as a design and a fight. EDIT: Having now watched the full video, I was actually very surprised by what you said about World's maps compared to Rise's, because I kind of feel the other way around. World's maps are bigger and more intricate, sure, but I also found them confusing and tedious to get around in, while Rise's maps were smaller but more fun to run around and explore, especially since they had a lot of nooks and crannies to find.
ya know...I always just assumed Fulgur was just anjanath that ended up having fulgur bugs nestling in the nasel cavitty horn thing of an anji that had a damaged/under developed flame sac. Similar to how Fulgar bugs seem to nest in the fur of Zinogre and possibly inside its nose horns (they have holes in them similar to termite holes) so it could be similar. "feather/fur back with a hard and wide open nose horn" could just have had the bugs attempt to force a supportive relation ships like zinogre. so... TL;DR a weakened Anjanath with a poor flame sac ended up accidently being infested with Fulgur bugs and gaining a new power to let it continue on and ended up passing on its weak flame sac gene until it couldnt last WITHOUT a relationship with the fulgars similar to zinogre.
I think the turf war between Fulgur vs Diablos is plausible, as in world Fulgur is larger than Anjanath, which makes it more accurate for Fulgur to hold its own. However, I don’t think Anjanath vs Diablos makes sense, considering its size. I also used to think that Fulgur was a nomadic predator, who's main prey was Banbaros, as both monsters appeared everywhere. Until I saw that they didn’t have a turf war.
Basic my arse. He's great. It was kind of a missed opportunity in World to not have monsters' behavior change between night and day, even just a little. They could have even made a mechanic for this where you pick around what time to leave on a quest/expedition/investigation rather than just whatever time it is when you set out. Even if they didn't want to program in specific quirks, they could've tweaked around things like move priority, zone preference, how long it takes to go into rage and/or fatigue to at least give it a different feel, which could give us at least a little more insight into the monster's habits outside of just game mechanics too, even if very subtle ones. One of my personal favorite things about Anjanath is how you can't really effectively hide from it. If you sufficiently get its attention, which doesn't take much, then try to lose it by ducking into some bushes, it can and will sniff you out. I think I even recall it doing so if you *don't* have its attention, and just try to hide from one passing by. Last I knew, the same went for the ghillie mantle; unless you don it and run completely away, it doesn't totally throw one off your trail, so if you suited up you'd better keep moving rather than expect it to completely forget about you. (Granted I've had other monsters like Rathian do this too.) He's a very smart boy. Another thing I love is, as seen in 18:58, when they go to apparently take a breather in that one locale of the Ancient Forest. It kind of reminds me of how alligators will do something similar to help regulate their body temperature, but it's kind of odd that Anjanath might need to do the same given its other adaptations that already serve that purpose, so it's hard to tell what exactly it gets out of doing so. Still, it's neat to see something that's usually so aggressive just take a peaceful moment to itself like that. Maybe it's just for his blood pressure, innit? Also, maybe it's just me, but that moment before you properly fight Anjanath? The way it didn't want to let go of the Jagras it'd seized while the hunter tried to lure it was kind of...adorable. Like a giant murder-puppy with its favorite bone. Don'tjudgeme. Thank you as always for these videos. They're always good for finding new things to appreciate about the monsters.
I was playing monster hunter at the end of that video and heard the soundtrack for my boy along with his air raid and thought I was under attack. Then I remembered I was playing Rise.
I think the _type_ of feathers Anjanath has is important. These large, almost quill-like feathers aren't meant to *KEEP* heat, they *_EXERT_* it. Seeing that it possesses a gland in its throat that that can ignite the air when it's active, it's not difficult to imagine that it runs *VERY* hot when it's "inactive" as well, requiring a great deal of thermal venting even when it's not in use. The purpose for Anjanath "chicks" having so many more feathers then might be a unique morphological necessity to get their bodies used to running hot, so they don't die from heat stroke slowly as the gland grows larger next to other vital parts inside the body
I'm looking at that nose bone at 8:27, and I can't help but wonder how it fits inside Anjanath's head the way it does. Is it compressed when retracted due to the presence of cartilage? It doesn't look like it has any cartilage on its model at 11:32, though I could be wrong. Same goes for the frills/sails. Also, Anjanath has one of the mostly oddly charming "lounging around" animations. It just sits down and opens its frills - probably because it's sunning itself. Even though World has a lot more of these sort of things, you do see this in Rise.
Crackpot theory, but could Anjanath's sails be the vestigial remains of, or perhaps even some basal form of wings? Could Anjanath be a close relative of the ancestors of many Elder dragons? Again, crackpot theory, I hardly believe it myself, but if those fans were somehow developed into a sixth pair of limbs, it could be possible that the mysterious evolutionary past of the Elder dragons lies in an Anjanath's sails
Anajanth is probly my favorite monster. World was the firsr konster hibter i actually competed the story for and my second monter hunter game. He was the first challenge and quickly became by testing dummy. If i could kill one with a new weapob reltively easy i knew i was good to go on.
Another possibility is that it retained integument to combat the great heat and direct UV light of the Wildspire Waste’s direct sunlight; Anjanath’s scales appear to be much less keratinized than other wyverns and it’s possible that the feathery layers provided additional protection against the sun for the dermis along its topside. In this model, the original locality would have been the Wastes, with both Fulgur and ‘regular’ Anjanaths being adaptive radiations off of a common ancestor, possibly with a more restrained integument but more dispersed over the body, which then became concentrated dorsally over time.
I've always had a problem with how one-sided the Ratholos v Anjanath turf war is portrayed, it always looks like Anjanath just takes a dive to get it over with. I think Rathalos takes a real risk getting close enough for a physical attack and Anjanath would theoretically be able to snatch a leg or tail and drag/slam rathalos to the ground. Since Anjanath is shown to be fairly adept at jumping it could also take some initiative on closing the distance on a hovering Rathalos. Rise uses the Ratholos turf war for Rathian as well which makes the issue even clearer.
"When not fighting everyone else, Anjanath probably takes time out of its busy schedule to fight each other as well."
That sums Anjanath up Perfectly
The idea of Fulgur being the ''base'' form is interesting, especially since the Guild simply found Anjanath first. This reminds me of Khezu and Red Khezu, with Red being the base but Khezu being more common so it's more popularly known, making Red the quote on quote ''subspecies''
I feel it may be true with quite a few other species as well, but more on that in future videos.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel Looking forward to it ;)
@@unnaturalhistorychannel But I always thought feathers and fur are very different thermoregulators. So yeah having less fur makes sense, but with feathers what maters is how they interlock. So something like the big fluffy feathers of lets say an ostrich can help with circulating air around their body exhaustiing it better, than lets say the this oily but short feathering of a penguin.
It’s pretty true to life to include mistakes in ecological categorization, even if it wasn’t intentional by the game developers. Plenty of silly errors have slipped into scientific publications. 😂
Also FYI it’s “quote unquote” rather than “quote on quote.” Just for future reference. 😊👍
@@ZenBearV13 and no need to say "quote unquote" if you can literally type the quotation marks out
Despite the tyrannosaruine inspiration in his design, I've always seen Anjanath as having more of the ecological niche of a mid sized carcharadontosaur or allosaur. A mid tier predator that can bounce between upper and lower roles more then other predators in its ecosystem.
You could also look at it as a smaller Tyrannosaurid species.
I think it is an Dyrptosaur type tyrannosaur
That role isn't exclusive to allosauroids. It also applied to tyrannosaurs and abelisaurs
He looks like a vulture to me
Definitely came here to say this. The headgear on Anjie always reminded me of an Allosaurus.
fun little headcannon: anjanath is possibly the missing link between bird wyverns like great jaggi and brute wyverns like deviljho
sharing so many features of both brute wyverns and the small bird wyverns id love to see if this holds up to actual scrutiny
It's funny because I had that exact theory too. I speculated that as the world got cooler the fanged wyverns declined in diversity in the old world and the fanged beasts were on the rise there was still a vacant neich for large top order wyvern carnivore. So some of the earliest of dog wyverns like Great Macao became larger and more powerful. Like your comment a lot😊
In that case, what about Banbaro?
@@bigmoe9856 he just seems like a arctic duramboros
@@CreamIc7 I think they might be actually related to each other in terms of being cousin species.
@@TornaitSuperBird same
I’m happy to say that I share your opinion of Anjanath’s design. I absolutely love how he starts off as a relatively plain tyrannosaur, before busting out the sails and fire breath during rage mode. His design is a perfect blend of reality and fantasy.
Would it be accurate to assume that Anjanath’s metabolism plays a big part in how it interacts with (terrorizes) other monsters? It’s likely to be an endotherm considering its integument, size, and active lifestyle, so its belligerence is necessary to procure and defend large amounts of resources for its consumption.
Yeah anjanath probably burns through a good amount of food in its territorial patrols, and probably isn't a fan of anyone else eating his aptonoth. And I'm always happy to see anjanath support!
I've playin mhw, and anja is def one of my favorite designs. Love the tyrannosaur energy
edit: the bazelgeuse tease with it just overtaking the audio was a genius bit lol
edit edit: wtf is my grammar in the original comment? I have no idea what I was trying to type and I'm not even going to correct it
8:45 actually he does! One of its non battle animations it’s him standing on his “pounders” and using his horn to put some of his slime on the ground.
I think the technical term for it is "nose bone."
Edit: only now do I realize he was talking about Brachy.
@BANANA_stev the things he has on his arms
I also love how it explodes in his face and he sort of goes "oh. That was unexpected" and then goes about his day.
❤ca😂ta gr@@tdthedevilsrighthand712 hmm
YEAH!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH THESE ARE LITERALLY MY FAVORITE BRUTE WYVERNS!!
Now that my craze is done, I feel it’s more related to the bird wyverns than brute wyverns due to the enlarged claw on their forearms, similar to some raptorial bird wyvens
I've seen some others suggest this too and I think it's an interesting theory, brutes and raptorial birds may well be closer than the games suggest.
I hope the video also lives up to the hype!
On the topic of rise, I think the reason of lack of ecology is probably because rise was made at the same time as world, and so some features from world were added in probably the last year.
Yeah, it's just not really the focus of Rise either. Instead of a living, breathing world, their intent was to create a short-lived but fun experience with a ton of QOL. That being said, I hope to god some of the Rise monsters return in MH6 because I want so badly to see how Rakna and Almudron interact with other creatures in a World-like setting, or hopefully an even more immersive entry.
@@prawn1717 Yeah, Rise is much more focused on the action aspect. A real pick-up-and-play version of Monster Hunter, compared to the more realistic ecosystems of World.
@@prawn1717 I like rise more, and i hope that they dont outright remove the cool stuff rise brought to the franchise, but i do want all the monsters to actually feel like animals instead of just monsters in gen6
I can't wait for the dlc
Yeah wasn't anjanath literally one of the commissions favourite study topics of the new world because its biology was unique to it?
I found your channel a few days ago,but your content is really interesting to me. Applying Rules of the real world to explain fictional creatures is just so fascinating to me.
Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying!
The Monster Hunter series makes that easy. It's centered around fantasy tempered by reality, where you can learn a lot about the monsters by looking at their real life inspirations.
Anjanath is one of the biggest reasons why World is my favorite Monster Hunter game. And personally, I think he deserves to be co-flagship alongside Nergigante.
There was a prototype footage where lagi had a turf war with him, he was very terrified in the sea leviathan!
Who wouldn't be!
another sea leviathan perhaps?
I think it’s also interesting when you of how weak to water base Anjanath is
@@Miss_OnyxRoseNah bro lagi went full diablos there
I came up with a little theory as to why Anjanath was deathly afraid of Rathalos in their turf war, despite the fact Anjanath could realistically at least fend one off with it's physical strength. It starts with when Rathalos first showed up to the forest, Adult Anjanath would more than likely fought off attacking Rathalos with no fear, but Anjanath's chicks would have had to look out now more then ever as a Rathalos could just swoop down and snatch one with out much trouble. The survivors would grow up fearing the shadow of Rathalos flying over head, and possbly passing on this to the next generation of Anjanath. With only the chicks that were weary of the skies being the only ones to survive, and pass on their genes. But this just a theory, something i thought of for awhile trying to figure out why Anjanath was the only monster to show genuine fear in it's turf war with Rathalos.
Anja's a pretty cool guy, I like how until Nergi shows up, he's almost the secondary flagship of World. I also agree that his design feels about where I like in terms of fantastical realism. Brachy and Glav are amazing ofc, but they do sort of cross that line where I don't feel as though I'm fighting a monster as much as I am a boss, especially Acidic Glav and Raging Brachy. Zinogre is about where the line is drawn for me, sure, he's a ridiculously anime thunder wolf but I love the explanation of his symbiotic relationship with fulgurbugs, it made me appreciate the flared hive spines that line his body. Anja fits right in with the Raths and the Pseudowyverns where I like trailing and watching him as much as I do fighting him.
Edit: On the subject of maps in Rise (and Rise's take on ecology in general), I think my biggest problem with it is that they just half-assed the ecological aspects of the game. They brought back small monsters, cool. But then they just become nuisances and don't act as small prey would act around huge carnivores, as the infamous Bullfango attacking Magna showcases. They said that "endemic life" would be an essential part of your hunts, but no one grabs them unless they're convenient and the spiribirds honestly stick out like a sore thumb on the maps. They showed off the turf wars pre Rise's release and then those ended up being some of the only new turf wars in the game. I think they felt pressured by World's success to implement all those features, but it ended up taking development time away from what should've been the focus; the gameplay, and leading to underwhelming ecological interactions. I think the portable titles should be extremely fun bursts of hunting with tons of QOL but not much deeper substance than that, since the point of a portable game is to hold someone over for a bus ride, or at the airport. Leaving the deep environmental interactions and storytelling to the mainline games would give them the time they apparently needed to create a worthwhile endgame, and not give us the shoddy patchwork that Rise's ecology seems to be. I know I'm being harsh here, but I do love Rise, I just wish they focused a bit on the gameplay loop and difficulty rather than trailing in World's footsteps.
That was a whole lot of nothing about the maps in Rise whoops, but I actually adore the Rise maps, partly attributed to the Wirebug. I think they look beautiful, I like the layouts and the little secrets, and overall they suit the purpose of getting to your location quickly and easily. They're a great example of what I think Rise should've been, a game that trims the fat and just shoots you into the hunting aspect. We can have the whole grand steak with MH6 (underwater combat and an open world Capcom, make it happen), but for now, I think Rise and by extension, its maps, should've been the cheap fast food you crave from time to time.
It kinda reminds me of the mh generations wait to mhw
I think Rise was in something of a rock and hard place scenario. It effectively had to include some of the features of World or people wouldn't have been happy, but the lack of focus on them made them feel half-assed.
I do think there will be a growing divide between Portable and Main series, but it's questionable how much the portable series can trim without it feeling a bit weightless.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel Atleast all the fights in rise don't have cancerous elements like lunastra, azure rathalos, and kushala from world.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel What do you think if a wire bug like system came back in mh6 but it only works when attached on solid mass like a grappling hook and isn't as clunky as the clutch claw?
@@unnaturalhistorychannel Agreed, it's obvious when you look back at pre-launch hype videos that people were expecting turf wars and World's focus on endemic life.
Honestly I could see them making more Frontier-esque content for portable, where the combat gets taken to a whole new level. People really miss Frontier, so I think making a new MH MMO or MMO Lite could be fun for A: giving Frontier fans what they want and B: having something to hold over fans of the mainline series while they do whatever crazy innovations the devs can think of. Rise to me seems like it tried to cater to all parts of the MH community and ended up pleasing fewer people as a result, I would like it if they would take the portable line down its own unique road personally.
Hey man, great work. I've just recently discovered your channel, but I've been slowly but surely going through your videos. They're truly fascinating. Hope to see this community grow a lot more.
On the topic of Bazelgeuse:
I may be late to the party since most of the video has probably already been made, but I would love to see your angle on the possibility that Bazelgeuse's nomadic lifestyle may be a result of Seething individuals.
My headcanon:
The artbook suggests that Bazelgeuse hatch in the high altitude cavern ranges of the Elder's Recess and then proceed to raid the rest of the continent. The reason for that extreme lifestyle, however, might be the presence of incredibly strong (possibly Seething) specimens overlooking their "pride".
Like the IRL lions bazel imagery usually alludes to, a dominant male might be the one forcing the younger, immature ones to leave the pride as a way to avoid competition. This might explain not only why Bazelgeuse don't seem to settle down in non-volcanic environments as well as why Seething, although seemingly more powerful in both an elemental and physical capacity, don't leave the Elder's Recess to obliterate other ecosystems like their regular counterparts do (and possibly, for that matter, why it doesn't seem to fly nearly as much as them).
Seething's reign over the higher ranges of volcanic environments in which the species usually nests should also attract challenge from other males, specially younger ones who feel confident enough to take on a much more experienced and dangerous veteran. In this case, the Bazelgeuse's "usurping" the top of the food chain in other ecosystems might be part of their pilgrimage to either build or take over a "pride" of their own once they return to the Recess as more mature individuals (maybe even after they've attained the Seething status).
Thank you! It's much appreciated.
Bazel's video is almost complete, but I came to a conclusion re: seething individuals that wasn't so dissimilar. Check back later in the week to see!
I can't believe it took me this long to make the connection but the new world's Rath's roar is probably less focused on intimidation and more on socialisation due to the more social life styles Rathian and Rathalos are able to live in the comparatively lax new world in contrast to the old world's more hostile and competitive environment.
One thing that I really love about Anjanath is that it just has that pure "childhood monster" design in the same way as something like Charizard. The basic idea of a fire breathing Tyrannosaur really does just feel like the first thing that a child would suggest for the game, but they took the idea, fleshed it out and made it very interesting.
I have the theory that anjanath is one of the most basal members of the brute wyvern species, as it has many similarities with brute wyverns such as deviljho and abiorugu from the fron saga Frontier
I think something similar in it sharing a common ancestor with deviljho that was probably quite similar to anjanath.
I’m SO glad to see another distinguished Anjanath enjoyer. While I like the classic brutes such as Glavenus, Jho, and Brachydios, I always felt like their designs were very cartoonish. Cool, but a little out there. Anjanath on the other hand is so wonderfully grounded and his belligerent school-hard bully motif is just so charming as well.
Also, personal theory, but I always chalked up Fulgur Anjanath’s physical and combative superiority to the regular species as being a result of their differing environments. Think of a Gobi Bear compared to an Ussuri Brown Bear. Fulgur Anjanath has to regularly deal with a whole suite of competitors in a much harsher environment for the same food sources (we see this ingame with Fulgur’s turf wars against Stygian Zinogre, Tigrex, and Barioth). The regular anajanth species, by comparison, only really has to deal with Rathalos, Rathian, and maybe the occasional Tigrex should they overlap, whereas Fulgur is dealing with other large carnivores of similar ecological standing on a regular basis.
Anyways, great vid as always, very excited to see what’s next
I guess that would make sense on paper but anjanath would have to deal with more than just rathalos and rathian.
Anjanath’s territory’s overlap with nargacuga and yain garuga as well as zinogre too. and while anjanath probably doesn’t dominate these monsters he probably can give them a run for their money especially towards monsters like nargacuga who anjanath can probably defeat.
@@dapperraptor8789 Yian Garuga, based on what we see in World, is largely insectivorous and a scavenger of other predator’s kills. Zinogre and Nargacuga do most of their hunting in the forest’s interior, whereas Anjanath hunts mostly in the flood plains. It’s also worth nothing that Zinogre and Nargacuga, based on their old world counterparts, supplement a good majority of their diet with smaller prey, and are likely hunting mosswine, wing drakes, and kestodon on the forest floor, whereas Anjanath specializes in tackling big game exclusively
@@thewolfofcomedy5966
he would still probably engage with them, Anjanath is generally bilergant and still wanders the interior to mark his territory. anjanath would probably be hostile on sight to those monsters
@@dapperraptor8789 Yes but he isn’t directly competing with them for resources or territory, and so the animosity is most likely not as intense as it would be between Fulgur Anjanath and the other arctic predators
@@thewolfofcomedy5966 true, though he might be competing with nargacuga a little bit
I just adore how World told you a little story basically with Anjanath. Before you fight it, its being just a massive bully to the weaker monsters. But when you fight it you have a chance to have Rathalos show up and just wreck Anjanath. That was just such a great "show don't tell" moment and Anji became one of my favs for that reason.
I absolutely agree that Anjanath is peak brute wyvern design, both in its fight and normal design. Out of most of the other big brutes, It feels like the only natural ones (regarding both design and abilities) are anjanath, tigrex, and banbaro. Even more tame ones such as diablos or duramboros dig at absurdly high speeds and turn into a damn helicopter. And then you have glavenus wielding a great-sword for a tail and a absurdly aggressive pickle shooting lasers at you. A majority of the designs or abilities of the larger brute wyverns really stand out compared to most other monsters like rathalos, so anjanath feels like a great step in the right direction for brute designs of future generations. As you mentioned; a perfect balance of fantasy and natural.
So happy you covered this amazing creature! Fulgur Anjanath is my favourite monster in all of Monster Hunter so it's a joy seeing him be covered by a amazing biologist like yourself!
Thank you! Glad I delivered!
Fulgur Anja has been one of my favorite monsters since it’s introduction, for one very specific reason (other than looking awesome) and that’s it’s use of electricity. Other than elder dragons, creatures that use electricity (Tobi, Zinogre, etc) allow electricity through outer means (Tobi’s static, Zinogres bugs) but Fulgur has some evolutionary trait that allows it to handle electricity within its own body, which is just incredible in my eyes.
Anjanath is a fucking masterpiece of fictional ecology.
thank you for covering my favourite monster, and I have been waiting on the edge of my seat after the tease in the future predator video.
I think the idea that anjanath is newer compared to fulgur anjanath is a very unique and good concept. and it would explain how he can fight monsters like zinogre and tigrex. and when it comes to rathalos i think personally it's not as one sided as the turf war presents. anjanath is probably king of the lower sections and when rathalos goes down in the lower sections he might only stay there for a short while before making a break for the canopy.a rathalos caught on the forest floor may be a easy target for a anjanath. and when it comes to rathian I do think that if a rathian is caught with a kill anjanath might attempt to bully a rathian off a carcass.
when it comes to the debate about anjanath and it being a "apex", I think he should be one. the argument that anjanath loses to rathalos making it a mid tier is a weak argument, not only is rathalos a powerful monster but other apexes seem to struggle with rathalos. anjanath might just have it the worse out of the group.
and when it comes to everything else capcom seems to have a lot of love for anjanath. he was a pseudo flagship for world and before nergigante was revealed, anjanath was essentially the flagship of world. anjanath also made it into rise and stories 2 as well as being the first boss. and for the monster hunter world board game anjanath was shown in the promotional material more than nergigante. and capcom also confrimed that the ancient forest theme was his theme which I felt was deserved.
anjanath along with nergigante and tigrex are my favourite monsters. his design and fight are fantastic and I am happy that the community no longer consider him a knock off jho for the most part and as a stand alone monster. I hope that he comes back in gen 6 with newer turf wars with new and old monsters as his turf wars were always fun to watch.
thank you again for showing my boi in a amazing light this was worth the wait. and I can't wait for the video around the b52 bomber. (also I love the detail that bazel announce's his presence before you do XD)
also I hope we get a odogaron video soon!
Thank you as ever, and glad it was worth the wait! And agreed, I hope he returns in future games too.
We may well get Odogaron soon indeed...
also I hope my great jagras vs anjanath turf war footage was good
have a great day!
@@dapperraptor8789 It was, and cheers again for the link!
Really well done video on one of the best monsters in the series.
I was expecting the Ostrich to be brought up,considering its the largest terestrial bird that also hapens to inhabit some of the warmest areas in the world,and how they use their feathers,bare legs and hollow bones to cool down and allow them to keep up their high speeds. Tho I do wander since scales on birds are modified feathers perhaps Anjanaths scales do that as well.
As for the very intresting talk on Anjanath territorial battles and using Tyrannosaurs for an example we do have a specimen(I belive it was Stan could be wrong) that has a tooth injury literally inches away from the brain that had signs of healing,which is both insaine and incredible at the same time! Aplying that to points you brought up like the tusk like teeth during these confrontations might lead to some indeviduals having hides covered in colourful tapestries of scars and wounds if they have had alot of physical confrontations. Especially for young adults considering younger animals can be more confident and bold than expirienced adults.
And I do agree about your points,Anjanath is by far the best of the Brute wyverns,he was a wall,and his design while may look simplistic has those hiden bits that help him not be over designed and the way the play a part of his actual ecology and fight is great to see. Really hope he sticks around for the future games to come.
Looking forward to what may be ne-A SHOOT SOMEONE GRAB A FLASH BOMB! WHO HAS A FLA-
Cheers as ever! It'd be really cool if in future games they could make randomised texture packs for scars and wounds and such, or if nothing else for more fanart to show this.
And very cool to hear about the tyrannosaur with the very close shave too.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel How can you be this chill when a b 52 bommer just ate a man and his friend
You should really do a video on Najarala, it’s a monster I’ve never really heard much about so it’ll be pretty neat to know more about our old world snakey boi
I think Najarala is a decent monster for sure, I'm unsure if there's enough meat in the lore to bounce off but I'll take a look.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel that’s literally what I was going to say, Capcom really didn’t give us too much info on our sneky boi, but hey, that’s why we use speculative science xD
For what Anja’s turf wars show, I feel that they also potentially use their special weapons to deter worthy or dangerous foes, we just don’t see that for the same reason we don’t see glavs use their tail, diablos their horns for impaling of goring especially after the first try occurs, the fact we don’t see nergi pin cushion elders and the fact that reused turf wars and the mid and more newer turf wars are often not up to par unless we are looking at specific iceborne turf war or the new rise ones.
And for my opnion on how lacking rise is in the environments you fight in, yes I agree with you. I feel what world did was give more to do than just hunt and while I personally don’t have an issue with the apparent ease of rise yeah the way they handled the endemic life by just reducing them to use tools for the hunt instead of the animals you can fill your room with, I remember going on a gathering spree catching endemic life in world and filling out my room with some adorable and nifty critters. It kept me going through the borefest that is the golden goddess grind and Safi suffers from that especially since there should be at least something else there given the energy and how safi only really eats energy
And yeah, rise really only focuses on the weapons and even then they left some weapons hanging compared to others and they also had several issues with balancing the monsters and the hunts but they did fix kush as a fight and all that as well as adding ‘hey look at that you can take advantage of that creatures and stuff’ which is really the only environment aspect that rise improved over world but world can always add those on.
Babe, wake up, Unnatural uploaded.
It's really nice to see a video on Anjanath, he's definitely one of my favorite monsters ever for many of the reasons you stated.
I don't really like what they did in Rise by giving him the turf wars of fulgur. It makes it very confusing to understand it's place in the ecosystem, because who handles zinogre and diablos like that and then freezes in fear when Rathian and Rathalos appear? Also in my opinion it's one of the cooler things about fulgur, the fact that it could put up a good fight against monsters that would normally beat his counterpart.
Anyways, thanks for making this video! I can't wait for the Bazelgeuse one after that awesome tease-invasion.
Thank you, it's great to see the cheer for Anjanath!
I think Rise’s lack of ecological depth is probably just a result of it being a portable game developed simultaneously with World; the main games have always had more developed ecosystems in my experience, and nothing had ever done quite what World did with its environments. All things considered, it would’ve been far more surprising for Rise to have met the same bar that World set.
Honestly for me, I felt they just didn’t focus on that element, ecology wise the best that has been shown in the older series is with the flagships; Zinoger, gore and sere and that is when we see what happens when they invade other areas and they aren’t things we see. The older games were more focused on making these monsters in a way that fit what they were going for but not ecology otherwise they would have made more of an effort, but even then rise isn’t exactly the same with ecology care with the old world games especially MH1 and MH3.
And that is because rise was more focus on gameplay and what the player does instead of the ecology and what the players may not see or care to understand.
@@victory8928 Mh1 I think barely has ecology until stuff like the 2nd gen and onwards
@@marcusgo1160 monster ecology videos in the game: are we a joke to you
@@victory8928 Oh sorry, always forgot about these, thou they kinda still resemble like the rise intros
@@marcusgo1160 well rise’s one focuses on their power and dangerous they are using the theme they are going for to express that. Best example is the bloodlust incarnate where they probably just slapped jho’s intro onto azuros. The best ones ecology wise would rakna (showing us her relation with her young who we see prior to her fight and what she is in the environment ‘a queen without a crown’), pukui and Chameleos as well as a few others like diablos and magna to be honest because they best represent the monsters and how they act naturally the rest either are close to on par or decide to lean away from it. But yeah rise kinda has similar ones to MH1 in that regard.
Yeah.. i love Anjanath! Hes intimitating and has a lot of tricks and was my first wall in world.
Also heres a fun theory.
Mayby Anjnaths Ability to breath fire is a relic from the past. Hes fire ability seems to not have evolved to be extremely strong. Id argue that even a Yian Kut-kus fire abilities are better than that of anjanaths. Of course this might be just that anjanaths fire breathing ability didint really need to evolve since he allready was a big monster even in Monster Hunter Standarts and posseses a powerful looking jaw.
Also not sure if you did mention this but mayby he partly uses his Fire to Intimitate predators that are on par with him or even stronger. A Narcakuga for example hunts in simular grounds to a anjanath so they probably whould meet pretty often same for Monsters like Barroth, Almudron and even Banbaro even tho they probably dont meet often.
Id also like to add that we do see Anjanaths in a snow biome in Stories 2 allthough im not sure if it counts as Canon.
Edit: also whould be interesting to see you make a video on ambhibians at somepoint.
Froggies will be indeed featured in a future video.
Anja's fire does seem a bit basal, but the notion of it being used to intimidate is a nice one. Fits as Nargacuga doesn't like fire much.
Great vid on Anjanath itself, but I have to question why Rise maps are held under this scrutiny of 'oh well there's nothing to do but hunt the monsters, therefor they're bad.' When that was the baseline for the entire series until World. And while you could argue World greatly raised the bar for map design, I think it also ultimately doesn't matter in the long run. You can explore it's vast maps, get flat-out lost in the Ancient forest of Coral Highlands, but ultimately once you do that once, maybe a few more times, then why bother doing it again? The maps once again boil down to arenas in which you fight monsters, and I think it's unfair to say Rise has literally nothing else when it still has the second-most in-depth maps after World, with plenty of areas map solely just for exploring where monsters can't go. Legitimately the only thing I can think of that really sets them apart in any grand way is the lack of Endemic Life collecting in Rise.
Also on the point of turf wars, I think Rise gets a bad rap. I feel like it has more attention to detail while also having the issues of copy-paste, which I argue still aren't as bad as Iceborne's. The detail of Anjanath struggling longer to lift Tetranodon as it tries to keep on it's feet is a level of detail not seen anywhere in World or Iceborne. Even the detail of Volvidon rolling in recovery against Tetranodon is something. Meanwhile not a single one of Brachydios' turf wars use slime, or a single of Glavenous' uses the tail.
Sorry for all the ranting, but I just think it's a bit annoying that Rise gets hit with these types of complaints when they could quite easily be applied to World, and ultimately are only considered issues when being directly compared to World instead of on it's own merits when both were developed around the same time.
agreed, I like both games and this video but I also want questions from him answered.
I think you are right in that it's the point of World just raising the bar a lot. You can also say 'once you do that, why bother doing it again'? But then surely this applies to all aspects of the game too? Doing it once also adds at least some replay ability. I also think the difficulty of older games and the increased grind generally occupied you a lot more, taking that away from Rise also somewhat hamstrung the amount of time you'd spend on it.
I will also give my thoughts on IB in another video.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel True. I do feel like I misspoke with the 'why bother doing it again' thing. I moreso meant/feel that exploration is a bonus gameplay aspect only ever introduced in World, and so judging a game harsher because it doesn't have the exact same level of exploration as it feels as though it's focusing too much on putting pressure on non-core gameplay elements of the series, especially when it's still the second-best of the series in that aspect.
The difficulty thing I do agree with, but I also feel base World was pretty easy itself save for really Behemoth, and only felt so much longer because it had a metric ton of unskippable cutscenes and filler a la Pink Rathian investigation.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel atleast weapon designs in rise look like designs instead of the slap ons like world.
I vastly prefer Fulgur to "regular" Anjanath. Such a cool design, a better fight and man is that roar epic.
Same
Yay! New video!!!
My day be so shit then
BOOM
Uhc uploads
Got your back
In a future episode, I would love to see you go over one of my favorite Pelagus monsters, the Bishaten from Monster Hunter Rise and the Kecha Wacha from Monster Hunter 4.
Fanged beast
Credit to the Monster Hunter development team for paying attention to proper animal/dinosaur skeletal structure and anatomy. I won't take crank about "Well Anjanath is a magical dinosaur, he doesn't have to make any sense." No, the development team set out to make them as believable as possible, so some real world rules do apply. You can take some creative liberties but you can't make a t rex look and move in a away that would be impossible for it to do so and have it still survive. Like the Jurassic Park films make no sense in the fact that even if we could bring them back to life, how would we keep them alive against modern day pathogens, parasites and molds that wouldn't earn a polite chuckle out of current year reptiles? They have been extinct for millions of years and did not keep evolving along side other animals and develop natural resistances against things we see as harmless.
Anjan is a more scientific-dinosaur counterpart of devijohn chance my mind.
Anjanath is basically a more environmentally friendly deviljho.
@@obiguanche5512 true
It's funny. In my quest to sort out the evolutionary line of every monster in the mainline series one of the theories that I came up with was that normal Anjanath are actually the subspecies not the other way around and that Fulgor's moved to the Ancient Forest and adapted to the warm climate. Another great video! It really is a small world we lie in.
That theory is true for red khezu
There's so many evolutionary connections you can make for the monsters one example of course is the hipcheck lord
My favourite monster! I'm happy to see my favourite brute get such an in depth analysis. Could some of Anjanath's heat dispelling elements have a secondary function of protecting it from its own breath attacks, or limited resistance against those of Rathalos? (That is just pure speculation from me btw)
You really hit the nail on the head with mentioning how varied monster behaviours and a properly-tiered set of turf wars add to the richness of MHW. The main reason I got so sucked into that game for hours on end was as you said in your vid - it was immensely engrossing to explore this fictional ecosystem whilst observing monsters as well as just fighting them. Heck, one of my favourite things to do was aggro monsters towards each other so I could learn all the turf wars - both for my own benefit in hunting and because they are fun to watch.
This is why in the next big MH game (haven't played Rise yet, but I gather it doesn't merit that title), I really hope they explore big wyverns predating other big wyverns in ways you discuss in your vids to flesh out the ecosystem more.
Fulgar Anjanath is #1 on my wishlist for a new detailed Creator Series model.
P.S TV Tropes references are always nice to hear.
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it.
Anja's heat dispelling mechanisms might not protect it directly from fire, but the sinuses being extendable may well help it breathe fire due to the role the mucus play.
The fulgur anjanath instantly reminded me of Otachi from Pacific Rim when I saw it in this video.
For my monster hunter head canon, I classified both Anjanath and Deviljho as monster hunter equivalents to tyrannosaurs. However because of Anjanath’s smaller size in comparison to Deviljho, the presence of feathers, and three fingered hands; Anjanath would be the most primitive of the two. It’s possible that when the Ancestors of both Deviljho and Anjanath split off tens of millions of years ago, the line that would’ve given rise to Deviljho gradually became larger (which caused them to drop their ancestral feathering due to their much greater size), specializing in hunting larger game, and the use of the dragon element rather than fire or electricity. But of course, both Anjanath and Fulgar Anjanath are way more successful than the “Great Devourer”. Since they seem to have no issues with habitat preferences, prey options, and no genetic issues due to inbreeding like Jho does. In the end, Anjanath (the most Basal of the two known surviving tyrannosaurs) is most likely winning the evolutionary arms race against their larger cousins.
I’m a good few years behind on putting my thoughts in, but another way the idea of Fulgur being the original could be supported is that the methods that allows them to use electricity evolved to be a spark that helps the liquid ignite into fire in case fsr the Anjanath couldn’t ignite it other wise. And fire becoming its primary weapon would be a bit better at defending at distance or covering its escape if the competitor or prey puts up a stronger fight than anticipated
I think Anjanath uses its enlarged nostrils to take in great amounts of oxygen to fuel their fire breath/electricity. The organs likely require soecilized organs to generate powers that are normally only seen in more powerful wyverns like rathalos and legiacrus. The sails serve as heat exchange to cool the Anjanath or wide surface area away from the central nervous system to protect against the thunder. It likely develeoped these in order to compete with other powerful wyverns. They likely have niche partitioning as they age, with the largest Anjas taking on large herbivores, while younger individuals use fire or electricity to take down smaller wyverns. This is likely why Tobi are so aggressive to Anjanath, as they likely compete with the young anjas. Rathalos also competes with the older Anjas which makes him have a rivalry with everyone in the base ancient forest
I don't mind Rathian beating Anjanath it makes sense since she has wings.
Deviljho lite.
I love the outro! Damn Bazel always cutting in 🤣
He just can't help himself
Might Anjanath use it's fire breath to cause brush fires and flush out prey?
I've heard of some birds spreading forest fires on purpose via smoldering twigs.
All I gotta say is Anja is best boi ... always comes in clutch when you need him the most
28:15 dude what the hell i thought i was going crazy hearing this theme doubled up while i was playing world
Anjanaths, are you seeking single local Rathians in your area? Click here @17:30
I feel like a game doesn't need to keep you around? Not all games need to keep the players playing
There is no real reason for a game to make itself a massive time-sink. I got something like 80 hours out of it and I'm not necessarily done with it yet but it's pretty nice that an MH game let me go at some point so I can play other stuff too
A couple things I've seen in mhw regarding anjanath: an azure rathlos made a kill, and an anjanath came and scavenged it mere seconds after rathlos left, and later in the same session, anjanath sat down facing the ocean with its fins open. I've only seen these happen once, so I assume it's quite rare, and the first one was entirely circumstantial, but I feel they do support the related theories about anja ecology.
I actually didn't know monsters would eat from the kills made by others (except jho eating captured or killed monsters), that's quite a nice touch.
There was a dead aptonoth credited to anjanath, but I never saw it kill one while it walked up, so it might've been old
I've only seen ancient forest monsters' regular behavior. Simply exploring to take a break from the constant hunting.
Anyways. Anjanath always rests on Zone 3 on the map. Its on a cycle and will always rest there if you follow it around.
Stealing kills I've only seen twice. A rathalos came into Zone 1 slightly later than the anjanath. As the rathalos was preparing its hunt animation the anjanath got the kill first.
Never seen it scavenge from a carcass, though.
That ending was fun XD. Can't wait to see the breakdown of B52 and his more explosive subspecies in the next video. Also for Fulgar Anjanath how do you think it fits in the Hoarfrost region? Why would a predator evolve to be better suited for the cold than become a nomadic monster like Ebony Odogeron? If its electricity abilities allow it to be so successful across different areas, how could have fire breathing Anjanaths come to be if originated from fulgar? Food for thought.
How Fulgur turned thunder into fire is indeed something to ponder over, and is quite hard to explain. It's also a bit weird that Fulgur decided to leave the hoarfrost too, although it could be possible a mix of the fleet and Velkhana drove some of them out.
Maybe Anjanath and Great Jagras’s story is similar to the one between Rathalos and Pukei. Anjanath might be a recent residence of the Ancient Forest that dethrone the Great Jagras as the top predator, forcing him to stay mostly in the dense jungle and hide in cave, only to came out in the open to hunt
Love when you upload. There's still so much of cast left in the roster to cover, I need more well researched videos making real world comparisons and analogues to my fake dinos, dragons, and wyvers, oh my.
There is plenty more to come indeed...
"Anjanath is usually a wall for new players"
Flashback to me stopping my Tobi-Kadachi hunt to fight the Anjanath that just showed up, far before I had even close to enough gear
That's _the_ best "next video teaser" outro.
You are one of the only people who has the same problems with Rise that I do. World was everything I wanted out of the MH franchise and Rise just took several steps backwards from what I liked
I love Anjanath, he's honestly my favorite brute wyvern despite the "generic" look. It's a really nice mix of realistic and fantasy. While unlike other people who had a chance to play world throughout the game, I first fought him in Rise and honestly loved his fight.
I saw the Rathian vs Anjanath turf war and I agree that it is just kind of stupid that it was just a recolor of Rathalos' turf war. Despite me being a fan of Rathian over Rathalos, I feel that she would probably only be airborne to deliver her poisonous tail attacks onto it but she's probably gonna have to do that to surprise the Anjanath while it's probably gonna be awhile before she can do that. But it's probably be more difficult for her to repel away the Anjanath than it would be for Rathalos despite her larger mass, like you said, it's mostly her more ground based preference that's gonna give Anjanath a better advantage. Either way, Anjanath vs Rathian would just be a draw in the end.
I think rathian should draw with anjanath but showing a clear winner in the turf war having anjanath dodging fireballs from rathian when she’s grounded and having him grab and slamming her down to ground like he always does.Only to have her escape from his grip and start flying and doing a backflip having him knocked down for a longer period of time then usual.This shows a clear winner in the turf war while also showing off how rathian would deal with monsters deciding to fight her.But another idea for a turf war could be rathian going towards anjanath and doing a backflip then having anjanath dodge the backflip,glavenous style.And have anjanath grab the tail and slam her to the ground and rathian escapes this by firing a fireball showing anjanath can get a upper hand on a rathian basically 50/50 of either of them getting a upper hand.
Could you do a video on a hypothetical spinosaurid brute wyvern?
It looks kinda like charcharodontosaurid
I have a question? Is Kushala gonna be the only Elder Dragon you talk about? I know that Elder Dragons don't take the most naturalistic approach as they are explained to be natural disasters in creature form but I am just curious if you would tackle them even if they don't follow most laws of nature.
I will probably do a few more, but they definitely take a lot more thought and research.
idk why you talk so much shit on rise, like tbf i never played iceborne, but base rise stomps base world and sunbreak is amazing
I think people don’t like it because of it not really being hard
First
Amazing as always. I’m very interested in your theory that fulgur is the original species and “regular” Anjanath is more recent. I hadn’t considered that before but it makes sense. On the tusk teeth, I think that’s sort of what Deviljho’s mouth originally looked like before all the inbreeding occurred. Just with a set on both jaws for jho. Speaking of that, what are your thoughts on Anja and Jho being related? It’s a common theory and I’m curious what you think about it
Thank you! And I think anja and jho probably diverged from a common ancestor that was probably quite similar to anjanath.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel It's not the first time. Red Khezu are the original's. The white ones are technically variants not subspecies and are albino's and somehow more common.
But what rise does have is untapped potential.
Have you ever considered making a video analyzing the ecology of a piece of media that probably wasn't made with ecology in mind? Like analyzing the creatures of pikmin, or the wildlife in zelda.
Or, as I like to call him, Pinocchio
Anji seems a bit simple in my opinion I still love her. Also anji may be at least partially related to deviljho. The fangs sticking out of the bottom jaw and tyrannosaur like design seem to show at least some kind of relationship. Lastly I really enjoyed the B52 Carpet Bomber invading the ending as the teaser.
I agree, I think they may have a common ancestor.
"Coat of feathers" Meanwhile Capcom calls it fur just like they do with Narga even though Narga's quills are feathers and the bladewings are made up of hardened feathers/scales. I'm convinced the entirety of Narga is actually covered in feathers. I don't believe their "fur" lies. :D
Capcom seem to call feathers "fur" overall in MH it seems. As for why Anjanath has feathers? It's supposed to be based on dinosaurs having feathers.
Also I want to add that Yutyranus a tyrannosaur from Asia was fully coated in feathers and lived in colder climates. And then there's Dromeosaurids which were also fully coated in feathers which is what I find odd in MH because Kulu and Maccao are the closest to that for small theropods yet neither are fully covered.
As for it's power level. Well Fulgur was made to be more on the same level as Rathalos and other similar monsters and they then updated the normal one to be this way in Rise.
Yeah Capcom are (as ever...) all over the place with their descriptions.
Yutyrannus was indeed feathered, but also was only around 3 tonnes. Tyrannosaurs was *a lot* more, and anjanath even more so. Big difference in heat retention there!
There is always the possibility it being a translation error. Happens with most games from Japan
Always fun to rewatch this video - its such a joy to see how well articulated and informative this breakdown on Angie boy. He's definitely a fight I'Il always remember, especially since I was really keen on killing him as a HR3 newbie (still going through the story at HR6+). I really wanted to get that tier two Defender HBW early on, and that Angie fight for his scale was... equally fun and frustrating.
First time, almost got him but numerous fainting led to him running away before I could almost end him. Second time was much more successful, with his death in his little den.
Fulgur anja deals thunder damage, which rathalos/Rathian is weak to. It’s likely that if fulgur is the base form, then the normal anjas retain the alleles for that phenotype. Do you think that as time goes on, ancient forest anjas will slowly be selected for thunder instead of fire to better compete?
Yeah, Anjanath is perhaps my favorite monster/brute wyvern. While I have never played a MH game, World was the game that got me interested in them. Anjanath was the 1st monster in the previews and also one of the 1st depictions, for the time, of a T-rex in a way we didn't see to often in the west. A T-rex with fluff. Now a days that is much more common and now out of favor but it was unique for the time.
Also I like the Anjanath is just this creature that sits in the middle of the ecosystem and also Capcom's roster of "mythic/legendary Pokémon". Everybody wants the next "epic monster", myself included, but it is nice to see something with a bit more give and take. Powerful but not a "Wyvern Sue" so to say.
beautiful video as usual, Anjanath is probably one of the most successful brute wyverns especially for the fact that he is one of the few to still show connections with
bird wyverns, indeed I would not be surprised if in the future it turns out to be a relative of the "Jaggi" family who are also defined as canid wyverns for their strong jaw (plus it cannot be denied that the anjanath as a body resembles a Jaggia but much bigger), since we are talking about brute wyvern it would be interesting to know more about you have brute wyvern "mammals" aka Bambaro, Kestodent and Gestodont that we know from official sources to be natives of the new world.
Honestly, Rise & Freedom Unite are the two biggest hour sinks in the franchise for me. (500 in MHFU and 200 in Rise)
What finally killed Rise for me is the RNG endgame. I was fine in base Rise grinding away creating every final SnS, and even swapping over to other weapon categories after I finished that...
But something about the dice roll on the gear once you hit max level just makes me not want to play more.
What I've heard is that World has the same style of end-game, where you fight just stat-buffed versions of the same fight multiple times for rerolls on what amounts to an equipment gatcha.
World endgame grind for weapon stones and decorations
Rise endgame u grind for tickets to get roll for decorations
Iceborne endgame you grind for deco
Sunbreak endgame u grind for deco and anomalies
World and Rise endgame are very diff, but sunbreak and Iceborne are similar except sunbreak u also grind for anomalies monster
Plus ur talking about kulve from World, she drops u weapons it's RNG and Iceorne is Safi jiva and he drops u weapons it's RNG as well, but strong weapons that u can modify its stats. But its not a endgame stuff, the deco grind is, the Safi weapon are strong and the Safi armor is strong but there's a cost
@@junevue9665
It is optional... but its also the only way to get a smidge more toward an idealized build.
That, and the anomoly monsters just being teh same monster, but with the occasional AoE if you don't hit certain parts enough and massively inflated HP pools...
Well, I could blame that too. But I was fine slogging 40+ minutes soloing guild-fights in MHFU, but the pool of health in Rise/SB just made me not care about the fight anymore.
@@firebornliger rise/sunbreak gives me a very weird feeling, I like it but I hate it. To me it's too fast and the fights aren't memorable cause the game is arcadie. The maps are also dry to me. The endemic life is gone. I also found some of the fights to be easy due to ur skills. Thts why I went back to world cause it's slow paste like the og style and gameplay is slow, and yeah the anomalies are the same. It's basically an isekai mh arcade, basically. There's alot I dislike in rise/sunbreak, it's good game it ain't for me doe
Can't believe no-one has mentioned how amazingly relatable the ending of his video is, there is not a better way to segway into Bazel's teaser
Reminds me of the idea that Camels are now likely thought to have started out as tundra animals in the far north during the ice age. It makes sense when you find they have adaptations that can transfer over pretty easily. You can see how that would apply to Anjanath as well.
Love this stuff man, seen a few vids now and I'm loving it
I haven't started the video yet but I'm so excited already!!!! Anjanath is one of my favourite monsties in the entire franchise, there's just an allure to him hat makes him stand out more than most momsters in my eyes, at first I wasn't impressed cause he was just a plain t-rex with fire breath but as I saw more and more monsters like brachydios or rathalos I realized how much he stood out. His nosebone and sorta wings also add to this, in my opinion the best monsters are always the ones that change a bit in design when mad, it really elevates the experience to somthing much greater.
Good as always
Another great one, Anjanath is such a well designed monster both visually and in terms of ecology, I just wish its fight wasn't so spastic, for a large tyrannosaur-like brute wyvern it sure does use a lot of kicks and quick bites. One thing I'm surprised you didn't mention was how one of Anjanath's non-combat behaviors is how it will find specific spots to rest with its sails fully extended. I always found this interesting and was showing them giving off heat or taking it in, depending on the time of day/locale/subspecies.
Anjanath will forever remind me of Jack Horner’s scavenger theory and I’m not sure what to think of that
ah the anjanath one of my favorite brute wyvern a formidable predator and my monster of the ancient forest
Anjanath has got to be one of my favorite monsters in World, especially because I am a huge dino nerd. Such a fun fight too, with Fulgur Anjanath baing different enough to have surprised me the first fight with new moves and strategies to fight him
Going to throw out there the possibility of Anjanath's use of its integument as a heat dispersal method. This can sometimes be observed in birds, and as Anjanath's integument seems to consist mostly of a central vane without much in the way of barbs, at least from what I remember, and the central vane of feathers does contain vessels, I dont think its out of the question.
MHR is bloody boring by comparison to World. It’s completely unimmersive. Rise dumps a bunch of hunts on you with no background to have a reason for it other than just slaughter. It’s ok for hubs, but village quests need substance. All World quests given by NPCs within story bounds had a goal of some kind besides killing or capping a monster. Canteen improvement, farm improvement, Seliana development as a town. Rise makes hunts shallow and meaningless. Plus, ppl constantly fighting about capping vs killing gets beyond toxic and stupid. I expected Rise to elevate the series, instead I found myself missing World.
My favorite Brute Wyverns are in no particular order other than Barroth is my number 1.
1) Barroth
2) Brachydios
3) Durambaros
4) Uragaan
5) Banbaro
6) Raadoban
7) Anjanath
8) I dont know the new ones in Rise yet. Only got to the game a few weeks ago.
I gotta be honest: when you called Anjanath one of the most memorable new monsters from World I shouted *"What?"* out loud. Maybe I'm just biased, but I always thought Anjanath was really boring and uninteresting, both as a design and a fight.
EDIT: Having now watched the full video, I was actually very surprised by what you said about World's maps compared to Rise's, because I kind of feel the other way around. World's maps are bigger and more intricate, sure, but I also found them confusing and tedious to get around in, while Rise's maps were smaller but more fun to run around and explore, especially since they had a lot of nooks and crannies to find.
ya know...I always just assumed Fulgur was just anjanath that ended up having fulgur bugs nestling in the nasel cavitty horn thing of an anji that had a damaged/under developed flame sac. Similar to how Fulgar bugs seem to nest in the fur of Zinogre and possibly inside its nose horns (they have holes in them similar to termite holes)
so it could be similar. "feather/fur back with a hard and wide open nose horn" could just have had the bugs attempt to force a supportive relation ships like zinogre.
so...
TL;DR a weakened Anjanath with a poor flame sac ended up accidently being infested with Fulgur bugs and gaining a new power to let it continue on and ended up passing on its weak flame sac gene until it couldnt last WITHOUT a relationship with the fulgars similar to zinogre.
I think the turf war between Fulgur vs Diablos is plausible, as in world Fulgur is larger than Anjanath, which makes it more accurate for Fulgur to hold its own. However, I don’t think Anjanath vs Diablos makes sense, considering its size.
I also used to think that Fulgur was a nomadic predator, who's main prey was Banbaros, as both monsters appeared everywhere. Until I saw that they didn’t have a turf war.
Basic my arse. He's great.
It was kind of a missed opportunity in World to not have monsters' behavior change between night and day, even just a little. They could have even made a mechanic for this where you pick around what time to leave on a quest/expedition/investigation rather than just whatever time it is when you set out. Even if they didn't want to program in specific quirks, they could've tweaked around things like move priority, zone preference, how long it takes to go into rage and/or fatigue to at least give it a different feel, which could give us at least a little more insight into the monster's habits outside of just game mechanics too, even if very subtle ones.
One of my personal favorite things about Anjanath is how you can't really effectively hide from it. If you sufficiently get its attention, which doesn't take much, then try to lose it by ducking into some bushes, it can and will sniff you out. I think I even recall it doing so if you *don't* have its attention, and just try to hide from one passing by. Last I knew, the same went for the ghillie mantle; unless you don it and run completely away, it doesn't totally throw one off your trail, so if you suited up you'd better keep moving rather than expect it to completely forget about you. (Granted I've had other monsters like Rathian do this too.) He's a very smart boy.
Another thing I love is, as seen in 18:58, when they go to apparently take a breather in that one locale of the Ancient Forest. It kind of reminds me of how alligators will do something similar to help regulate their body temperature, but it's kind of odd that Anjanath might need to do the same given its other adaptations that already serve that purpose, so it's hard to tell what exactly it gets out of doing so. Still, it's neat to see something that's usually so aggressive just take a peaceful moment to itself like that. Maybe it's just for his blood pressure, innit?
Also, maybe it's just me, but that moment before you properly fight Anjanath? The way it didn't want to let go of the Jagras it'd seized while the hunter tried to lure it was kind of...adorable. Like a giant murder-puppy with its favorite bone. Don'tjudgeme.
Thank you as always for these videos. They're always good for finding new things to appreciate about the monsters.
I was playing monster hunter at the end of that video and heard the soundtrack for my boy along with his air raid and thought I was under attack. Then I remembered I was playing Rise.
I think the _type_ of feathers Anjanath has is important. These large, almost quill-like feathers aren't meant to *KEEP* heat, they *_EXERT_* it. Seeing that it possesses a gland in its throat that that can ignite the air when it's active, it's not difficult to imagine that it runs *VERY* hot when it's "inactive" as well, requiring a great deal of thermal venting even when it's not in use. The purpose for Anjanath "chicks" having so many more feathers then might be a unique morphological necessity to get their bodies used to running hot, so they don't die from heat stroke slowly as the gland grows larger next to other vital parts inside the body
I'm looking at that nose bone at 8:27, and I can't help but wonder how it fits inside Anjanath's head the way it does. Is it compressed when retracted due to the presence of cartilage? It doesn't look like it has any cartilage on its model at 11:32, though I could be wrong. Same goes for the frills/sails.
Also, Anjanath has one of the mostly oddly charming "lounging around" animations. It just sits down and opens its frills - probably because it's sunning itself. Even though World has a lot more of these sort of things, you do see this in Rise.
Crackpot theory, but could Anjanath's sails be the vestigial remains of, or perhaps even some basal form of wings?
Could Anjanath be a close relative of the ancestors of many Elder dragons?
Again, crackpot theory, I hardly believe it myself, but if those fans were somehow developed into a sixth pair of limbs, it could be possible that the mysterious evolutionary past of the Elder dragons lies in an Anjanath's sails
Anajanth is probly my favorite monster. World was the firsr konster hibter i actually competed the story for and my second monter hunter game. He was the first challenge and quickly became by testing dummy. If i could kill one with a new weapob reltively easy i knew i was good to go on.
Apparently Anjanath has feathers cuz Capcom wanted to honor the recent discovery (before World launch) of Tyrannosaurus having feathers
Another possibility is that it retained integument to combat the great heat and direct UV light of the Wildspire Waste’s direct sunlight; Anjanath’s scales appear to be much less keratinized than other wyverns and it’s possible that the feathery layers provided additional protection against the sun for the dermis along its topside. In this model, the original locality would have been the Wastes, with both Fulgur and ‘regular’ Anjanaths being adaptive radiations off of a common ancestor, possibly with a more restrained integument but more dispersed over the body, which then became concentrated dorsally over time.
I've always had a problem with how one-sided the Ratholos v Anjanath turf war is portrayed, it always looks like Anjanath just takes a dive to get it over with. I think Rathalos takes a real risk getting close enough for a physical attack and Anjanath would theoretically be able to snatch a leg or tail and drag/slam rathalos to the ground. Since Anjanath is shown to be fairly adept at jumping it could also take some initiative on closing the distance on a hovering Rathalos.
Rise uses the Ratholos turf war for Rathian as well which makes the issue even clearer.