Keisar Ephes
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Keisar Ephes (Keisaru Efuesu, ケイサル・エフェス, alternatively spelled Qeysar Ephec, but pronounced the same in English) is a fictional character from the Japanese video game series Super Robot Wars. He has appeared as a non-playable enemy character in Super Robot Wars Alpha 3: To the End of the Galaxy.
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[edit] Appearance
Keisar Ephes appears to be a bearded old man wearing a heavy black robe with plates of polished black armor attached to the shoulders. He wears a tall headdress that seems to resemble the turbans that ancient Jewish priests are often depcited wearing, although Keisar Ephes's headdress is black instead of white. Both the armor plates and the headdress have red and a few gold highlights. He carries a harsh, malevolent visage and never seems to show sadness or happiness.
Keisar Ephes is depicted to have one other form which, although practically faceless, appears decidedly more demonic. In this form his face is covered almost completely by a jet-black mask, although it shows three blood-red eyes. (The third eye is in the middle of his forehead). He has two long, upward-curving horns. Apart from these his head and face are featureless. He is clothed in a tight black fabric of an unknown nature, through which his intimidating musculature is visible. (It is unknown if this is actually clothing or his skin) He has three pairs of arms and two legs, giving him an appearance that would have been similar to Hindu deities if not for his plain black costume.
In both forms he speaks with a distorted, echoing voice.
It is not known which of these two appearances is Ephes's "true" form, although he seems to assume the latter form only when about to use his most powerful attack. Ephes seems to be able to switch between both forms at will.
[edit] Who Is Keisar Ephes?
Keisar Ephes is the true ruler of the Ze Balmary Empire, the major antagonist body in some of the Super Robot Wars games. The Ze Balmary Empire played its most important role in the Alpha timeline (aka the Alphaverse).
The Ze Balmary Empire is ruled by the Spirit Emperor (霊帝/Reitei), a deified figure who served as the representation of Zfylud, the supreme Balmarian deity. In the Alphaverse, the apparent Spirit Emperor is Ruach Ganeden, a boy who had been ruling for 500 years already at the time of the story's beginning. However, Ruach is merely a puppet chosen by Ephes, altered physically to live much longer than a regular Balmarian. Ruach knew that he was only a puppet, but no other Balmarian (save for Shiva Gozzo) knew this until the planet Balmar was destroyed by a cataclysmic meteor shower towards the end of Alpha 3.
At various points throughout the game, a mysterious, seductive voice speaks to the protagonists telepathically, usually bringing messages of despair and offers of infinite power. It is only during the intermission before the final stage that the protagonist discovers the true nature of the voice he/she has been hearing.
[edit] Origins
Keisar Ephes was not always a brooding tyrant. He was originally known as the Psychodriver Augustus, a member of the ancestor race which sired both humans and Balmarians in the Alphaverse. Augustus was the biological core of the immense Geber Ganeden, a mobile weapon meant to defend the ancestor race from the STMC of Gunbuster. (Remember that SRW is a crossover game and takes elements from anime as part of its story.) The masculine Geber Ganeden had a feminine counterpart, the Nashim Ganeden.
The Augustus, Nashim and the two Ganedens departed for the planet Balmar in the ancient past to escape the STMC, along with a vast majority of the ancestor race. (The remnants left on Earth became humans as we know ourselves today.) The Nashim Ganeden and its pilot grew nostalgic and returned to Earth to become its guardians.
For millennia, Augustus ruled the fledgeling race, deified as the god Zfylud and as the Spirit Emperor. During this period, he began to change.
Alpha 3 explains that Augustus felt left out of the circle of death and rebirth by the Ide, a supernatural force of seemingly infinite power from the anime Ideon. In order to surpass the Ide, Augustus left the throne and the Geber Ganeden to his chosen puppet, Ruach, and began to devour the souls of the sacrifices made in his name. By the time the protagonists of Alpha 3 meet him, Augustus had festered into a tyrannical demon lord who had an innumerable legion of corrupt spirits, Neshamah, at his beck and call. His ultimate goal: the recreation of the entire universe as an eternal hell filled with wretched spirits. Augustus's fall from grace (and thus, his original role as an angelic protector) and his subsequent assumption of an evil-sounding name and a tyrannical role make him rather similar to Satan as depicted in Christianity.
[edit] The Mobile Weapon
Keisar Ephes does not dwell in a palace, but rather, inside a giant robotic machine that serves as an extension of his body. This machine is also known as "Keisar Ephes," but to avoid confusion it will be simply referred to as "the machine." The Balmarian High Priestess Etzira Torah referred to the machine as a "black archdemon."
The exact size of this machine is unknown, but it can be simply said that it dwarfs any other artificial structure on Balmar, save perhaps for the Geber Ganeden. It is almost entirely jet-black, with a lanky, awkward body and strange articulated wings that spew a shimmering gray substance. It also has an "egg" configuration in which the shimmering wing substance condenses into a protective sphere that surrounds the body entirely, at the expense of not being able to use its long-range weaponry. The machine is visible in its "egg" configuration at the very beginning of the game, after the opening FMV. In the final stage of the game, the "egg" must be destroyed in order to reveal its true form.
The machine helps Keisar Ephes channel his power into offensive attacks. It only has three primary ways of attacking:
- The Banquet of Despair (絶望の宴/Zetsubou no Utage)
This is a wide-area attack that damages anything that comes too close. When in egg mode, the machine is still capable of using this attack.
- Gospel of the Spirit Emperor (霊帝の福音/Reitei no Fukuin）
The head changes configuration to expose an enormous cannon concealed in the mouth. It spews a pinkish-red ray of light capable of extreme-range fire.
- The End of the Galaxy (終焉の銀河/Shuuen no Ginga)
Keisar Ephes begins by saying ”生命ある者よ、原初に還る時が来た。” "Inochi aru mono yo, gensho ni kaeru toki ga kita." (Rough translation: All who live, the time for thee to return to your beginning has come.) He exits the machine to reveal his six-armed demonic form while saying ”古の白き祭壇、今ここに” "Inishie no shiroki saidan, ima koko ni."("The white altar of old is now here.") He opens a portal to a hellish dimension and in a terrible commanding voice says "天よ聞け！ 地よ耳を傾けよ！" "Ten yo kike! Chi yo mimi wo katamuke yo!" (O Heavens, take heed! O Earth, incline thy ears!) Billions of evil spirits burst forth from the portal, swarming the enemy, smothering it in freakish visions of death, pain and mass annihilation. Psychotic screams and agonized moans create an even more unnerving audio backdrop to the macabre visual display. Planets are simulataneously destroyed, which ends with an image of the Earth being cut in half, as Keisar Ephes laughs hysterically. Many SRW players agree that "End of the Galaxy" is the most disturbing attack animation ever depicted in the franchise.
[edit] The End of the Spirit Emperor's Reign
After the destruction of Balmar in Alpha 3, Keisar Ephes pursues the protagonists in order to add their souls to his collection of Neshamah (their souls being the most powerful in the galaxy). This is no easy task, since his arch-rival, the Ide, resides in Ideon, which is one of the robots available to the player character. At the climax of the battle, Fire Bomber vocalist Basara Nekki of Macross 7 attempts to turn the tide by playing a new song, entitled "GONG." The sheer vastness of Keisar Ephes's power, however, silences the song outright. The outcome of the battle is decided when the song is blasted out by a fleet of ships (which ships play the song changes depending on the ending). Many of the Neshamah react negatively to the sound energy and desert their master, greatly weakening him. The death of Keisar Ephes, the Spirit Emperor, follows quickly. (It is up to the player as to who finishes him off.)
The ending that follows changes depending on the status of the game (turn counts, etc.), but it is safe to say that Keisar Ephes perishes in all of them.
[edit] Trivia
Keisar Ephes, like many other Balmarian names, is Hebrew in origin. Keisar is a localization of the Roman word caesar, and is generally used to mean "Emperor." Ephes is Hebrew for "zero."
The term Neshamah is meant to represent the innermost level of the human spirit in Hebrew lore, and is not automatically evil.
Keisar Ephes is voiced by Ichiro Mizuki (水木一郎）, a veteran Japanese singer sometimes affectionally referred to as "Aniki" (Big Brother). While his voice is barely recognizable due to the distortion effects that have been mixed in, his role in the creation of the game means a lot to mecha fans, as he had been singing mecha anime music since the mid '70s. In addition, he also mentioned in an interview that if the player attacks Keisar Ephes with a mecha whose theme song he has sung in the past, there is a chance that Keisar will quote from said song. This list includes Mazinger Z, Great Mazinger, Mazinkaiser, Koutetsu (Iron) Jeeg and Combattler V.
Ephes's theme song as the final boss of the game is "The End of the Galaxy"（銀河の終焉/Ginga no Shuuen), although the BGM is replaced by "GONG ver. Alpha III" once the weakening event occurs. The vocal version of "GONG" was performed by JAM Project, a band of the anison genre. Ichiro Mizuki was one of JAM Project's founding members.
Keisar Ephes' attacks use the names of last-stage BGM's from the Alpha series. His egg form's map attack, Zetsubou no Utage, is the name of the map BGM played in the last stage of Super Robot Wars Alpha. Reitei no Fukuin is the song that plays at the beginning of the last stage of Alpha 3, and Ginga no Shuuen is the song that first plays when you battle him.
