The Yakus

## The Yakus (ヤクス)

**The Yakus** (Japanese: ヤクス, Yakusu) is a cult mostly consisting of mythical Japanese creatures (being lead by a geisha) fought during the level **Osoroshidesu Shiai** on

Inkwell Isle 3. They are also minor antagonists turned minor characters in (an unnamed) Magical Girl anime, with all females and the kodamas being voiced by Saori Hayami in Japanese and Erika Harlacher in English, while the male kappa, is voiced by Hisao Egawa in Japanese and Austin Lee Matthews in English.

## Appearance

The majority of the cult consists of mythical creatures from Japan, being a kappa (the only male), a graceful kitsune who hides a bunch of kodamas in her six tails, a femme fatale amabie and yurei ghosts who are controlled by the cult leader Yoko Shima, a geisha who, despite being human, possesses certain abilities of a rokurokubi.

The Kappa has a turtle-like appearance bearing leaf-green skin with marks of a darker shade on the arms and webbed hands. He has a dark-green carapace on his back, sports a yellow beak, a pointy pink tongue and menacing bright-yellow eyes framed with gaunt, dark circles around them. On his head, he has black hair rounded in a sea anemone-like style.

The Kitsune is a blue eyed, warm-orange, six-tailed fox with lighter fur at the tail and paw-tips and the inside of her ears and on chest hair. She has vermilion markings above the eyebrows, beside the nose bridge and on the cheeks. She is usually seen smiling, and has a black nose and slanted eyes in a sideways teardrop-like style.

The Kodamas are personified spirits with a miniature, chibi-like appearance and are mint-green colored with a lit aura. They have hollow black eyes and have a v-shaped smile or frown depending on sprite. They do not have any fingers or toes.

The Amabie is a Japanese mermaid with a mustard-yellow bird beak and three tail-fins. Her tail is scaly and light-teal colored fading from the top to bottom. Her eyes are shaped like rhombuses and has stringy fin-like navy-blue hair and has blue fins for hands.

The Yurei Ghosts are levitating phantoms with a feminine appearance and thin, small eyes. They have pale-lavender skin with the top part of their faces shaded, and long, stringy bluish-black hair that reaches down to the waist with a white hitaikakushi around her forehead. They wear a white kyōkatabira with baggy sleeves. They either have their hands dangling lifelessly from the wrists in a zombie-like way, or have their heads cocked to the right with hollow eyes and mouth that is left agape with their arms at the sides of their bodies.

Yoko Shima has a rather prominent appearance from the rest of the cult, probably for her Heian geisha-inspired appearance and being a human. She looks rather short, has a slim figure and is revealed to be fair-skinned, judging by her feet and hands. To match with the style of the Heian drawings, her eyes are rather more thin and plain instead of pie-cut like the rest of the bosses, and her nose is more realistic and "human-like". Her face is caked in white face paint, additionally decorated with pale-red blush and eyeshadow (that is also dusted on her small, but thick eyebrows), red lipstick and has a deeper shade of the eyeshadow on the corners of her eyes. Yoko has black hair tied up in three *yakko shimada* buns with four chopsticks tucked in them: two on the top bun and one on each of the buns on the left and right side of her head. She holds a orange fan painted red at the rim. Yoko wears a leaf-green kimono layered over a light-grey nagajuban, tied together with a beige obi belt. The kimono sleeves are so baggy, that it is almost impossible to see her hands. On her feet she wears brown geta sandals with black straps.