Enlil

Enlil is the main antagonist of Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth.
==History==
, also known as Ellil, is one of the three supreme Mesopotamian gods, alongside Anu and Enki (Ea). He was a god of wind, air, earth, storms, justice and kingship. He had many titles, such as "Decreer of Fates," The Great Mountain," “king of all the lands," "father of the gods" and "the well respected." He was the firstborn son of Anu and had many children himself, for example Nergal, Pabilsag and Ninurta, the slayer of Anzu. Sometimes Inanna and Ishkur (Adad) were called his children too. 
He was often described as the master of the Tablets of Destinies. In myths and prayers, when he decrees something, it cannot be undone (although he sometimes has to revise his decisions). He is also responsible for granting kingship to the rulers of ancient Mesopotamia. The term for supreme authority of both gods and mortal kings, ellilūtu, was derived from his name. In many texts, he's a destructive deity, sending floods, famines and droughts. Specific hymns and prayers were said to calm him down. In various versions of the Mesopotamian flood myth, it is Enlil who seeks to exterminate humanity; however, his efforts are thwarted by the god Enki, portrayed as an ally and protector of humans.
When Babylon became the preeminent power in Mesopotamia, Marduk gradually absorbed some of Enlil's functions. Assyrians conflated their national god Ashur with him.
==Appearances==
*Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth: Final Boss, Antagonist
==Design==
In human form, Enlil appears near identical to Nagi, the alter ego that she takes when assisting the party and Hikari. However, her lips and hair are red and she dons white beads on her hair. She wields a rapier in combat and unlike her elegant and kind-looking false identity, can make intimidating expressions and postures. Her speech patterns are also significantly more threatening than her false identity, and she uses the standard and less formal "watashi" to refer to herself.
In her true form, she appears as a white, muscular, feathered and masculine-looking deity. Her head resembles those of an eagle and is bronze in color, with a crown on top of it. The armor on her wrists has the same coloration as Humbaba. Her head also links to a red cape. She has two propeller-like objects resembling Namtar's core next to her shoulders, which float apart from her body. She has four arms, and the larger pair of arms holds a pair of weapons, with a staff on the left hand and a sword on the right. She has a pair of horns near her shoulders and a pair of wings on her legs and waist. Her voice is also distorted in this form, and her pronoun for "you" becomes "omae" instead of the usual "anata."
==Profile==
thumb|right|250px|Enlil boss fight.
Enlil is an administrator of the collective unconsciousness who is born from humanity's desire to end all of their pain. She is the ruler of the Theater District who runs a seemingly genuine, but heavily deluded and amoral "Salvation Plan" on humanity, which involves drawing in the souls of people with severe depression in the Cinemas inside her domain in the collective unconsciousness, where she attempts to relieve their pain by having them watch movies formed from their painful memories with all positivity cut out, portraying them in an unsympathetic fashion and keeping their real life person depressed and withdrawn. One such person trapped is Hikari, a girl who is so consumed by her past traumas, depression and grief to the point that she was barely functioning as a person and displayed a complete apathy towards life. All of the movies in her Cinemas are initially pure negativity created from people's thoughts meant to numb her clients from the pain of living, further increasing their depression to dangerous levels and preventing them from even considering leaving their confines.
In Hikari's case, this persisted until Doe appeared to transform the contents of the movies in her Cinema into forms that allow her to rehabilitate, although the influence of Enlil and Hikari's twisted cognition of herself is still existent, so the authorities of the movies are still "protagonists" and the resistance are still portrayed as "villains." For most of the game, Enlil assumes the false identity of Nagi to assist the party and watch their progress inside the movie world in the Cinema, usually alongside Hikari.
Nagi allows the party and Hikari to escape the Cinema after clearing all movies, but quickly drops off her guise and reveals to the party about her true identity as Enlil. She announces her twisted patronizing of humanity and her salvation plan, which was instantly met with resistance by the party. She reveals that Hikari is not the only person trapped in the Cinemas and other people are trapped inside them, who like Hikari, she did so as a part of her salvation plan because they were too weak to cope with the hardships of reality, and claims that it is the only way to end their suffering and thoughts. She also reveals that the people she trapped are technically allowed to leave their Cinemas whatever time they want to, but only their cognition prevented them from considering leaving it, effectively imprisoning and drowning themselves in their own apathy without any direct manipulation from her. Despite Enlil letting the party and Hikari leave, they do not approve of her salvation plan which inversely fuels negative desires and sacrifices freedom in place of false comfort, and decides to venture to the depths of her domain to confront her. Furthermore, if the party does not confront Enlil and destroy the district, it will encroach reality. Phunbaba and Namtaru act as her extensions and security guards.
The party and Hikari reach the depths of her domain and she summons a Rain Leg Musha and a Wicked Turret in an attempt to deter the party. After those two were done for, she sends them back to the Cinema. In the Cinema, the party finds four films of positivity, and devises to replace the negativity projections in her domain with them. All Persona users and Hikari then acknowledge themselves as a member of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. They venture to the depths again and replace the films of negativity with the edited versions of Hikari's films after defeating the projections of Kamoshidaman, Yosukesaurus, Mother Computer and Doe one by one.
After all of the films were replaced, they confront Enlil and send a calling card to her. She was enraged as her salvation plan has crumbled and combats the party in human form. In the middle of the fight, she unleashes a massive power that overwhelms the party, but Hikari announces to her that she wanted to free the weak from her Cinema and persuade the people to turn against her. Further angered by the "betrayal" from her former client, she transforms into her true form and attacks the party from that point. Despite their efforts, Enlil removes all combat members from battle, leaving the party navigators and Hikari in the field. Hikari steps in alone to confront Enlil. Ignoring the navigator's warnings, she attempts to persuade Enlil and while at first, the almighty administrator chastises her, she quickly stands completely still, leaving her open for a combined unison attack by the four protagonists.
After her defeat, she was at first in disbelief, but the people of the Cinema were all affected by Hikari's edited movies and became optimistic, encouraging all of them to leave the Theater District. Finally admitting defeat, she transforms back to the form of the black-haired Nagi and vanishes into light, admitting that she has seen the greatest potential of humanity. However, she also warns Hikari that as long as humanity wishes for her to, she will return. Her domain is destroyed afterwards and all trapped people are able to exit the Cinemas back to their realities.
While Enlil is antagonistic, her intention to help the weak and bring happiness to humanity seems to be genuine, although the method she used to bring it and her views towards humanity itself are delusional and inappropriate, completely ignoring the consequences that her actions will bring to the people that she is supposed to protect from harm.
==Music==
The theme when fighting Enlil's first form, "The Calm," samples melodies from "Road Less Taken." The theme when fighting her second form is called, "The Tempest," which also samples melodies from "Road Less Taken."
==Strategy==
After defeating the four projections, do not enter the center door before the party is fully prepared and has no more special screenings or any other errands to do, as the fight and epilogue will follow instantly. Do not bring any wind-focused personas because they will be useless throughout the fight.
The party will first confront Enlil in human form, which is relatively straightforward as she only uses damaging moves of Wind, Physical and Electric elements. Human Enlil is weak to Psy and Nuke and resists Electric and Wind. She is also affected by Agility Bind.
As HP and SP will be automatically and fully recovered during the next phase, the party can go with whatever strategy they want. Once her HP is reduced to one-thirds, she will cast an attack that deals extreme amounts of damage, then the fight ends.
After the next cutscene, Enlil will transform into her god form; By default, she is weak to Ice and resists Fire, although she can change her affinities via Aura attacks. She is consistently immune to wind, and unlike all other bosses in the game, she is also immune to all ailments.
Unless a party member needs a boost, focus on Physical offense; Magic does not seem to deal increased damage and has no merits other than snagging boosts, which is further compounded by Enlil's extremely high HP.
When her HP is above half, she will constantly switch affinities by casting Auras; In addition to shifting her affinities, they inflict Sleep, Panic, Curse or Agility Bind to the party. Prepare to null or resist them via passives or recover them if possible. Once she takes enough damage, she might also cast Retake, which automatically undos all progress during that turn regardless of friend or foe, then follow-up with an Aura that can cast lethal status conditions that can reverse tides easily. She casts Dekaja and Dekunda quite frequently, so recast if needed and do not stack too many buffs or debuffs.
At half HP or below, she will raise the sword on her right hand and will be weak to Ice and resist Electric. She will also begin to use Aura skills and Dekaja/Dekunda less frequently, so debuff/buff however necessary. At some time, she'll use Time Accelerate, which unlike Retake, she'll go forward in time and will know the attacks the party members and herself cast. During this phase, she will focus on Physical attacks and will charge using "Rage." After using Rage a few times, her sword will be glowing in white and the party Navigator will warn them. Guard at this point, as she will use Origin Strike, a physical attack that can instantly kill most party members at around 500-700 damage. She can also use Time Accel to skip the party's turn, then instantly charge and follow up with Origin Strike without warning.
Reducing her HP to 10% or below will trigger a scripted event where the party will be unable to select anything but "battle," in which she will spend three turns to delete all combat members before Hikari steps in alone to intervene. Use all of her support skills in order and the four protagonists will return to cast a Unison Attack on Enlil, finishing her instantly.
==Quotes==
===First form===
* 逆らうだけ無駄よ。(Intro)
** Translation: Resistance is futile.
* When attacking:
** 消えなさい！(Perish!)
** は！(Ha!)
* When attacked:
** 愚かな。(How foolish.)
** 無駄よ。(It's pointless.)
===Second Form===
* 絶命に逆らう愚か者を！(Intro)
** Translation: Foolish beings who resist their very demise!
* When using an "Aura":
** 真の力思い知れ！(Witness my true power!)
** まだ力を見よ。(Then see this power again.)
* When attacking normally:
** は！
** あ。。。は！(Aha!)
** 散るがいい。(Just get lost already.)
** 滅び。(Perish.)
* 切り伏せよ。
** Translation: I'll cut you down.
* When using Origin Strike:
** 蹴散らせくれる。(I will crush you all.)
** 消し飛びがいい。(Just perish already.)
==Stats==
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Phase 2=
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==Gallery==
==Trivia==
* While the original myth depicts Enlil as a male god, in Persona Q2, Enlil is identified as a female regardless of the situation.
* Enlil's traits are a combination of the past three major antagonists of the Persona series:
** Izanami in Persona 4, as both are chief deities of their respective religions who attempted to bring happiness to humanity, but end up being completely wrong by their methods of bringing them and their twisted perception of humanity. Both of them used screens to reflect the hearts of people as a part of their plans, and can remove party members from play completely as a last ditch attempt to dispose of them.
** Yaldabaoth in Persona 5, as both are administrators of the collective unconsciousness and a ruling deity of their respective religions who imprison and intoxicate the humans whom they are supposed to take care of in prison-like facilities, namely Enlil's Cinemas and Yaldabaoth's Mementos.
** The fact that she traps people in a state of severe, death-like state of apathy via the movies in her Cinemas might also refer to Apathy Syndrome.
** The Ultimate Personas of the protagonists are also direct opposition against these forces, with Izanagi-no-Okami being the antithesis of Izanami, Satanael the antithesis of Yaldabaoth and Messiah the opposition of the Dark Hour, which causes Apathy Syndrome.
** Her dialogues bear a similar premise with Kunino-sagiri and Yaldabaoth.
* Her motive mirrors the Clockwork God's; While the Clockwork God's motive is to make Zen continue his mission of guiding Rei's soul, Enlil prevents the depressed people she trapped in Cinemas from moving away from their suffering and moving forward with their lives.
* Enlil is the Mesopotamian god of justice and kingship. This is shown in how the movies in Hikari's cinema invariably portray supporters of the social status quo as good and disruptors as villains, regardless of the status quo's unhealthiness.
* Her plan of salvation to the weak involving locking depressed people in front of cinema screens might allude to toxic escapism, a tendency of depressed individuals to try and self-medicate by immersing themselves so totally in fiction they neglect other parts of their life. Usually, it involves the use of a smart device, such as a computer or smartphone connected to the internet. This generally has worse mental effects on them, as their growing distance from a support network causes them even more stress and a sense of alienation.
* Perhaps fitting as the god of wind, her human form resists Wind and her second form is consistently immune to Wind regardless of her aura.
Category:Persona Q2 Bosses
Category:Final Bosses
Category:Persona Q2 Characters
Category:Persona Q2 Enemies
Category:Mesopotamian Mythology