Giygas - Concept and Creation

Concept and Creation

Giygas was created by Shigesato Itoi, the creator of the EarthBound series in the original Mother. He went under the name of Giegue in the cancelled English localisation. In an interview on his website, EarthBound creator Shigesato Itoi describes how his inspiration for the final battle with Giygas resulted from a traumatic childhood event. When Itoi was a young boy, he accidentally viewed the wrong movie at a theater, a Shintōhō film entitled Kenpei to barabara shibijin. According to Itoi the film featured a murder scene near a river that Itoi mistook for a rape scene that traumatized Itoi so much that his parents began to worry about his well-being. Years later, Itoi integrated the experience into Giygas' dialogue for the final battle. Itoi described Giygas as something that people cannot make sense of, but also as a living being who deserves love. He compared this part of him to the breast of Hisako Tsukaba, the victim of the film. He described this scene as a combination of atrocity and eroticism, and that is what his lines are in the end, one of them being "it hurts..." While designing this battle, Itoi spoke all of the text out loud while another staff member, Matchan Miura, wrote it down. He spoke each hiragana character one by one, commenting that he felt the hiragana made it scarier. Itoi explained that the subtitle to the Japanese version, which exclaims that "Giygas strikes back", was inserted to instill that he did not die in Mother, as well as to show to the readers what to expect from the final boss. Music composer Hirokazu Tanaka described Giygas as the "embodiment of evil". As a result, he composed the music in a certain way based on the player's proximity to him. For example, in battles where Ness and company encounters someone or something under Giygas' control, the music and sound effects reflect this. However, when Ness and company are in a peaceful area such as a Sanctuary, the music has a spiritual nuance.