PART III: AFTER THE UNSEALING OF THE BLACK MAGE

Chapter 37: Chu Chu Island

(A/N: As much as I love how cute Chu Chu Island is, it’s a colossal waste of time that could’ve been better spent building up the overall story. Most of the other regions of the Arcane River do something to test the Adversary by putting them in situations that force them to strengthen their determination and resolve. Vanishing Journey, for example, sets up the idea that the Adversary has already once failed to save the world, which eats away at the back of their mind and culminates in their choice to save Tana in Esfera, in which they have to decide whether to risk repeating history by saving her or giving the world its best chance at survival by taking her life.

Other regions like Lachelein are a literal nightmare that we have to break free from, while Morass makes us relive the fear and pain of Tana’s most traumatic memories. In contrast, the biggest stakes in Chu Chu Island are whether the friendly giant is going to like our sandwich or not. Chu Chu Island does absolutely nothing for the overall story, and it’s honestly a complete waste of an area that could’ve instead been used to improve the pacing of the Arcane River storyline.

One of the biggest problems with Tenebris is that it haphazardly rushed into a mediocre conclusion and forcibly made everything wrap up in an inorganic and contrived manner. The story that they presented was very clearly half-baked, not to mention that they didn’t even bother to address the dozens of unresolved plot threads that, even to this day, are still being completely ignored. Given that the writers made the moronic decision to turn not one, but two whole areas - Chu Chu Island and Arcana - into filler content, it’s not hard to see why. I really don’t mind having filler areas as breathers from the constant tension of the story, but if a full third of your story is filler, to the point that you have to severely compromise the quality of your decades-in-the-making finale, then that’s obviously a glaring problem.

If they wanted to keep some of the light-hearted atmosphere, it would’ve been nice if they’d explored the idea of the Erda fusions by adapting some of the ideas introduced in Yum Yum Island and showing us some of the fallen Commanders and other villains of Maple World, which would’ve given an excuse for cute character designs, and it would’ve gotten us to reflect on all the enemies that we’ve faced in order to get here. It also would’ve flowed nicely into the idea that later gets introduced in Limina about the Black Mage using and discarding them as tools.)

After helping the townspeople of Reverse City, the Adversary continued on their journey to the end of the Arcane River. At the cave exit in the Vanishing Journey, they jumped down a waterfall, where a Flying Fish caught them as they were about to fall into the water. They thanked the Flying Fish and wondered if they were one of the allies that Kao had spoken of.

They then asked the Flying Fish to lead them straight to the Black Mage at the end of the Arcane River, but they soon found the path blocked by a large stone giant. The Flying Fish then dumped them onto the ground before flying off. The Adversary approached the stone giant, Muto, who declared that he was hungry. When he refused to step aside, the Adversary gave him several sandwiches, which Muto found delicious. Though he was still hungry, the Adversary had no more food left to give him, prompting Muto to throw a temper tantrum.

Just then, a large lion theatrically jumped in and accidentally knocked the Adversary out with his staff. He then took the Adversary back to the village, where he hit them again in order to wake them back up. After they awoke, he introduced himself as Chief Lyon of Chu Chu Island. The Adversary asked who the people of the village were, but Lyon couldn’t remember, nor did he know who the Black Mage was when the Adversary accused him of being the Black Mage’s servant. He explained that the townspeople had no recollection of their past, and that he had volunteered to lead them as chief.

(A/N: Most of the life forms in Chu Chu Island are fusions of different types of Erdas, such as animals and food, or animals and monsters. You learn this later on, but Chief Lyon is a fusion of Damien and a lion. You can infer this even before we’re told in Yum Yum Island because his cape bears Damien’s curse mark. This is because the Erdas, which normally get recycled and reincarnate into new life, have been taken out of their natural lifecycle, forcing them to fuse inside a smaller pool of Erdas that flow within the Arcane River.

There’s one interesting interpretation based on this that I do like about Chu Chu Island as an area, although not enough for me to change my mind on its existence being completely pointless. Someone on Discord pointed out that Chu Chu Island can be taken to symbolically represent Damien and his endless hunger for power, with the monsters being food fusions, as well as Chu Chu Island itself being named after chewing food, which is made more apparent in how other regions spell Chu Chu as Chew Chew.

In a way, Chu Chu Island can be viewed as Damien’s hunger for power finally getting sated after he broke free from the Spirit of Vengeance’s control and made the choice to allow the Demon to end his life at the Dark World Tree. In the wake of him choosing to turn away from his obsession with power, he finally gets the chance to know peace, as he enters a spiritual form of heaven in the form of Chu Chu Island - a land of plentiful food and happiness where his hunger can finally be sated, which lies in stark contrast to how Damien had been starved and tortured for most of his life as a slave in Tynerum.)

Lyon then told the Adversary that Muto was the protector of their village against a giant monster named Gulla, who resurfaced every ten days in order to eat anything in sight. In exchange for being protected from Gulla, the townspeople would regularly prepare food for Muto. However, Muto had recently grown picky about his food and had stopped fighting Gulla. As the Adversary’s food had been accepted by Muto, Lyon proposed an alliance to help feed Muto so that the giant would move aside and allow the Adversary to continue through the Arcane River.

The Adversary then met Master Lyck, an anteater wearing a broccoli hat. Lyck was the master chef of Chu Chu Island, though his personality left much to be desired. (A/N: Master Lyck is basically the Gordon Ramsey of MapleStory.) In order to create his signature dish, Lyck ordered the Adversary to obtain Sweet Hooves from the Pinedeer. After obtaining the hooves, Lyck created the dish, but the Adversary was repulsed by the taste.

Upon learning that Muto had liked the Adversary’s sandwiches, Lyck took the remainder of the sandwich and tasted it before declaring that it was a travesty. After the other townspeople also agreed that the sandwich was disgusting, the Adversary attempted to argue that they and Muto had different tastes from the others. Lyck then told them that they should make their own dish for Muto if they were so confident.

As the Adversary began thinking of how they could make a meal with the ingredients around the island, they suddenly smelled something delicious and found a girl named Simia cooking a dish for three chicks named Pibik, Pimi, and Pidol. The chicks explained that they had been exiled from the village for having unusual taste, and that they had eventually met Simia, who would cook dishes that they loved. Simia told them that she worked as a kitchen hand for Master Lyck, though he never let her cook anything.

The Adversary asked Simia if she would help prepare a dish for Muto, who had developed unusual taste like the Pi siblings. Simia decided to make a sandwich, as Muto had seemed to like the last one, and asked the Adversary to collect ingredients after they named the dish. (A/N: You get to make up the name of the dish by choosing three adjectives amongst the prompts.) With the natural ingredients around the island, they were able to create substitutes for the original ingredients and even added special ingredients to give it extra dimension. For their special seasoning, Simia asked them to obtain a Slurpy Fruit from the dangerous Slurpy Tree. 

On the day that Gulla was set to attack, Simia and Master Lyck brought their dishes before Muto, who loved Simia’s food enough to protect them from Gulla. He then revealed that even though he had hated Lyck’s dishes from the beginning, he would still eat them in order to protect the townspeople. Lyck then apologized to both Muto and Simia for his arrogance and promoted Simia to an official chef. Muto then agreed to move aside so that the Adversary could face the Black Mage.

Before the Adversary left, Pidol gave them an Arcane Symbol and explained that though the people of Chu Chu Island had lost the memories of their origins, he could sense that the Adversary was under the guardianship of a great power. He also told them that when he had sensed that they possessed an Arcane Symbol, he knew that he had to give them the one that he had found. (A/N: There’s a running joke in this storyline that ever since Pidol hit his head, he frequently cycles between talking intelligently and acting dumb.)

Simia revealed that they occasionally stumbled across Arcane Symbols, which appeared more frequently in the wake of Muto’s fights with Gulla. (A/N: This is likely because their fights stir up Erdas, allowing them to coagulate into Arcane Symbols.) The townspeople explained that they were unable to leave the town, as an invisible barrier held them back. However, they were satisfied with their lives in the village and bid the Adversary farewell.