God Games | EPIC: The Musical Animatic - Reaction - Neal Illustrator!
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• God Games | EPIC: The ...
Zues: I love it when my daughter does well.
"Never once has he cheated on his wife"
Zues: I hate it when my daughter does well.
Neal's portrayal of Athena is VERY intentional. Specifically, it was made to look very similar to Zeus' design, sharing his fancy hair, as Zeus is Athena's sole parent in Mythology
Kinda, her mom is Metis, Zeus ate her when she was pregnant because if she had a son he would overthrow him.
@@Kirachan3 popped out of his head fully formed like a weird anime. Makes me wonder if putting Dionysus in his leg was him putting the baby furthest away from his head like “never again!” XD
As well as being zeuses favorite
@@Gh0stlyfool I actually bark laughed while reading this.
@@Gh0stlyfool "Leg" was a euphemism. It was actually a more sensitive area, that YT doesn't like me to mention.
Fun fact: Hephaestus is actually voiced by Jorge’s dad. First his mom playing Odysseus’ mom and now his dad is playing the god of the forge. We love a supportive family. 😁
And his sister voiced a winion in the Vengeance Saga 😆
His dad helped him build his new recording studio.
The fact that if you look at his first ever musical before epic, the storyline is about a character based around him and how he changed his track in college to theatre and how it probably caused a slight change in the family and most likely made them upset. But for jorge maybe somewhere between those years they started supporting his newly found career and i just find it so sweet
Thing about Athena is that she is Zeus' daughter and his favored child. Unlike all his other children, she came only from him. She has no mother. In Zeus' chambers as she enters, if you look at the statues, you see every one of them is Zeus hamming it up in poses except one... Zeus holding a baby with an owl emblem on her wrapping. Out of all the gods, even his brother, Out of everyone, Athena is the one he cares about. Everything else is about him.
Neal further shows this when the two fight, Athena is smiling. She loves battling with her father and she loves her father. Whole reason Zeus attacks was because she hit his tender spot and he has quite the temper. Then at the end, he is holding her as she hugged him, he realizes he gone too far. Because out of all the gods, Zeus is the only one that can actually kill other gods and he almost killed his favored child.
Also in older mythos, she is the daughter of Zues's first wife. The only woman he truely loved. He devourerd her in fear of there child overthrowing him and taking the throne of olympus. Of course Nature always finds a way though.
Don't be afraid to revisit songs just to check out other artist's animatics. There are so many that are just "chef's kiss".
The different interpretations of even some of the smallest moments are what makes exploring the EPIC animatic fandom so fun! Unique designs, small references or easter eggs, a completely different vision/take, it's all very interesting to discover.
True I recently viewed two versions of god games and thunder bringer both amazing
HAH Studios is one of my favorites. While it's hard to say anyone is better than Neal, HAH does some extremely interesting choices as they make the gods more dragon like and Athena, Areas, and Zeus all turn into full dragons during the animatics and fight and it is so cool.
@@SunSlayerKD It makes it even more fun when EPIC itself is has a fun and different interpretation of the Odyssey.
@@wynnefox I like their Get In The Water a lot lol
Neal Illustrator is a she, Her name is Leann, and Neal is basically Leann backward. (I made the same mistake, so I ended up feeling silly) Her work is so amazing.
Oh awesome!
One thing I love about Neal's art style in general is that she seems incapable of drawing a character that doesn't look like they can bench-press me. Even Apollo, typically seen as a lanky and more youthful god, and Aphrodite, the standard of beauty, are depicted as what I'd call realistically broad rather than being built on Barbie-proportions.
In this video in particular, Neal is often praised for showing the Olympians as a family, albeit a dysfunctional one, as well as presenting the game players showing up as a united front against Zeus, which goes a long way into making Zeus's angry reaction feel like a reasonable response.
Well Apollo is a very athletic guy despite what he may seem, according to Herodotus and Ptolemy Hephaestion he defeated Ares in a boxing match and beat Hermes in a race, he is definitely not a weakling, he is one of the most powerful Gods of Olympus, it's notmal that he is bulky
In the same way although Aphrodite is usually imagined as weak and delicate, in reality in many parts of Greece such as: Kythira, Cyprus, Argos, Taras and most prominently in Sparta she was represented as a Goddess of War with armor and weapons, she was no damsel in distress and she knew how to fight in battle.
A great thing to remember about the Greek Pantheon is that it is a lineage defined by children murdering their parents. Uranus was killed by his son Cronus who was in turn killed by his son Zeus. If you know ANYTHING about the circumstances of Athena's birth it should be that she was prophesied to be the son that would eventually kill him and continue the cycle. But she was born a girl and was also Zeus' favorite child.
In this we are watching a Zeus that's decided this is the moment he has to kill his kid because she's about to overthrow him.
That last shot of Zeus being stunned by the hug is him realizing he was wrong and holding his baby. Just like the statue shown in the very first seconds of the animatic.
This ending is my favorite.
It comes down to a parent and child; zeus and his favorite child
a desperate daughter, begging and HUGGING her father on behalf of a beloved friend
Another neat detail is that the hallway to Zeus's chambers is lined with statues of himself, but one that shows up in the foreground is one of him holding a baby Athena. A visual nod that amidst all his ego, there's a father who does care for his daughter.
6:58 Hera: HONEY!!! I'm siding with your daughter on this!
8:40 Athena is Zeus's favorite kid btw, the shield she carries is actually his, gifted to her so she can be safe.
I feel like, of all of the God Games animatics I've seen, Neal's really understands the "spirit" of Jorge's vision, tbh. Jorge has been clear from the beginning that Epic takes a lot of inspiration from anime and video games, and Neal portraying this gauntlet as a series of fights, ending with the Crazy Space Fight with Zeus, really speaks to those things. plus, I think Zeus walks away from this song in a much better light in Neal's version, with his affection for Athena (she is his favorite daughter, after all,) and his regret over his actions more clearly communicated to the audience, even in such a brief moment.
Yeah, I love how clear it is that this is a physical fight as much as it is a fight of wits, with the difficulty and strain of each fighter depending on how invested they are.
Apollo is just throwing out some arrows, doing the bare minimum to check her conviction.
Hephaestus let loose his golem and sulked a bit as it was destroyed, but still gave her a shield knowing she will need it later.
Aphrodite is one of the more emotionally invested, so she is seen literally about to assassinate her, and then later buffing Ares as assassination failed.
Ares was just straight violence and pushed her while she tried to play defensively, basically a prelude to the Zeus fight where she needed to be aggressive to just survive.
And then there's Hera, who is very dismissive of the thing, not being emotionally invested, so she just lets her servants fight instead.
Just great stuff.
Ofc then zeus decides he wants to be a raidboss
The Ares/Aphrodite tag team design is so good. It may be a 1-1 recreation of bosses from Dark Souls 3 and Elden ring, but quality is quality
Since you were a bit confused right before Athena got her Heroric Second Wind she had flashbacks of her and Odysseus during happier times, and remembering those allowed her to gain the last bit of strength to strike back at Zeus enough to convince him to let him go.
IT'S NOT THE END
I'd definitely day it's worth checking out
It's simplistic, but you've done a great job of showing the dichotomy of Calypso being understandably upset that the only other person in her life is leaving; but also refusing to grow as a person and accept her own wrong doing at anything more than surface level.
Calypso was a victim just like Ody, but that didn't give her permission to assault him and try to force him to love her; just to turn around and say it's his fault because 'her love was too much for him'
Can confirm that it works just fine. I do think the animatic implies something that wasn't confirmed in Epic, that being the fact that Calypso's magic was what kept Odysseus on the island, but other than that, it's good c:
@@milliegoodwin5389 THANK YOU!! That's exactly what I was going for. I really wanted to make her come across as both a victim but also manipulative and self-centered, refusing to grow. Basically everything you said.
And yes, @taurbeer I did take some creative liberty with that but if not literal it's also kind of symbolic for her wanting to keep him there, that's more or less why I chose to depict it this way.
Pretty sure I've seen atleast 1 full animatic for Dangerous too
@innerdemon5555 Yes, my favorite Dangerous is by irunaki xd
All songs have animatics now except Charybdis, but there's probably gonna be lots of new animatics over the next week/s
i dont think ive ever seen u have such a giggle watching this series lmao
As much as I love all the animatics that have been made for God Games Neil’s is by far my favorite.
10:37
To me others feel like she’s the strategist, like shes relys on it to win, Neal’s to me looks more balanced to me, her armor looks like it’s not super bulky because she doesn’t need to rely on her physical strength, like it’s only part and she also has enough strength in her physical ability but she needs to be light enough to dodge attacks so she can also strategize without taking too many blows due to the armor making her more slow but she also needs time to strategize in the fight, she’s smart but she can’t just automatically have a strategy before the fight even starts.
Both versions of her I see as equally good, I love both equally for different reasons but I think Neal’s is my favorite because of this animatic.
She has hair similar to Zeus and she actually resembles him, she was was his favorite child too so the statue of him holding her as a baby and her in the end hugging her dad and begging him felt so….personal? Like suddenly he wasn’t angry about her embarrassing him by bringing up his constant cheating, she hugged him and he looked like suddenly he didn’t see someone who embarrassed him in public but rather his favorite child and to me it looked like he was just suddenly hit with the realization that she’s still his baby and as children do they ask parents for things and she wasn’t just some other god she was his child and she wasn’t asking as some other god asking for a favor but instead his daughter asking for her dads help.
Getting these small glimpses into the characters that are so subtle but it reminds you they have they’re own stories, even if we don’t see them in the story we’re looking at now doesn’t mean they don’t matter, everyone’s story can effect everyone else’s stories and stuff like this just reminds you in such subtle ways but it kinda grounds you even more within the story, the glimpses of what’s outside the path we’re on is almost breathe taking to me lol.
I’m probably being overly dramatic about it but get super nerdy about this no matter if it’s Greek mythology or something else, I just love it so much.
She/her pronouns for Neal Illustrator btw
Anyways, Zeus forms a cloud around himself. So when Athena cuts off his hand/shatters his face, she's swiping at the cloud formation, not Zeus' actual body
She forms the owl around herself to dive-bomb past the clouds & get at Zeus (where she hugs him)
An excellent reaction as always, im so glad you wen with Neal (who is a woman i believe).
If you are impatient there is a live stream of the Vengeance Saga, which has the lyrics for all the songs and rotating animatics by a lot of the popular animatic artists from the Epic fandom (Gigi, Wolfie the Witch, etc).
You can definitely react to thet and still break it up song by song to discuss.
Or you can wait a month or so for all our lovely artists to start releasing their own individual animatics.
Britt *JUST* released her animatic for the first song, and there's more coming every day. We're eating good for the next month.
I can’t believe this started when I suggested ruthlessness in a shenanigans stream
What I love is that she actually resembles Zeus, who is her Father. We also get a mild resembles to Ares, her Brother. We also in this video with Hera and in Ruthless we see the resembles of Poseidon, both are siblings to Zeus. We know the brothers but many don't actually remember that Hera is their sister, so yes Zeus married his sister.
My other favorite is when Athena is walking through the hallway we see a quick but Highly detailed statue in close up frame of a baby being held. That is Athena when she was born, is meant to mirror the ending with Zeus hold his daughter in his arms, like when she was a baby. His favorite child.
I have been waiting for this one as soon as I saw it drop on Neal’s channel! I am so happy to see you react to this and I cannot wait for you to continue on this journey!
I love Neal makes the characters hearty, their power really shows through
I've heard several people call this song an entire season of a show in 5 minutes and I completely agree, its a work of pure art and talent
I think it’s super clever. Like she realised she couldn’t use logic to convince Aphrodite, she realised she couldn’t make demands of Zeus so she clung to him and begged as his daughter. And in the myths, Athena is known as Zeus’s favorite child. So she played on both his affection (very little to be fair in the grand scheme of things) but also his pride by begging, saving his face since he can now give in to her plea not as the king who lost the game but as a father indulging his favorite child. It also makes him feel like it’s his own idea.
Completely fits with Athena as the goddess of wisdom
this version of Athena bears a strong resemblance to her father Zeus.
Other versions of God Games are kinda darker about the ending. But above it all- Neal's Zeus is true to title: Epic. In thunder bringer and here. I can definitely forgive his thunder bringer being less "Canonical" because Zeus' depiction just rocks...
I love how Ares is the _only_ god that Athena doesnt have a rebuttal for
Apollo: The sirens started it tbh
Hephaestus: His crew didnt listen + there are ppl he loves More & would never betray
Aphrodite: its not his fault, he was stuck in a war!
Aphrodite: Nice try! I meant his pride in antagonizing the cyclops!
Athena: . . Please 🥺
Hera: He's _special_ because he's faithful!
But she has no rebuttal for Ares, because everything he says is TRUE
Ares: He betrayed his friends & uses underhand tactics to fight!
Athena: . . well, you got me there ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ares: Also, his kid SUCKS
Athena: hold on, you cant talk about my friend that way! 😡
She convinces Aphrodite & Ares by promising them Odysseus WILL fight for his loved ones & not fail them
(by appealing to their _hearts_ )
Courage, the courage to face his foes, the courage to protect his loved ones, and the blood he is willing to spill for their protection.
I can't help but to think back to OSP's video on Aphrodite, when she and Ares fight Athena here.
Didn't she have some war goddess traits in Sparta? Could be another reason why she goes with Ares.
This one and Anniflamma are probably my favorite, Flamma has a flashback to Odysseus shows Athena his new born son showing how close they were.
Loved to see the fun you had with this one ❤ Neil did a great job with the god games animation.
I love that Neal gives the Olympians a family resemblance.
to be honest... if she had to convince poseidon moment she walked into room he would been like "relase him :)"... he wants him for himself.
Very important! At the end of God Games in the original stream animation, Zeus has left Athena as a broken, bloody mess. It is extremely uncertain whether or not she even survives.
But given how the myth goes, it's likely she's okay.
@ while I agree that I think she’s probably going to be okay, original Odysseus had a child with Circe, so it is clear that Jay is taking artistic liberties with his retelling.
@treynix8871 From what I know about the myth, that didn't happen in the original version, it being a later addition.
@@samiamtheman7379 I mean, that’s not the only change, it was just the first to come to mind. Aeolus was a mortal king, Zeus didn’t need convincing to let Odysseus go, Polities survived to at least Scylla, etc.
@treynix8871 While true, they weren't as important as the literal god characters in the story. Plus, I don't think Hermes would've been as jolly as he was in the Vengeance saga if Athena had died.
Old man I laughed when you did when Athena told hera oddesdy never created on his wife 😂😂😂😂😂 and in the beginning, when Zeus said to remove oppohensions on that greek meant that all the fuckuy on oddesdy was on purpose
BRO NEAL IS PEAK IM GENUINELY TWEAKING RN
There’s animatics for the first two songs of vengeance saga already! Not Sorry For Loving You done by BrittPowwPixel and Dangerous by Lampyrcy are both good!
The fight with Zeus (that you said was confusing) is different here from the official animatic. When Ares says "Is she dead?" she is on the ground, then she has a flashback of Odysseus giving her baby Telemachus after his birth (you can hear Odysseus' and Telemachus' motifs in this moment) and this is what makes her stand up again
10:50: What I got to say to that, Athena maybe the tactician between her and Aries, it doesn't change the fact that she's still a WAR goddess, and all the strategies in the world isn't going to do you any good if you can't lift a spear much less throw a punch that's actually going to leave a decent bruise, and Athena is definitely smart enough to know that for a fact. So, I find a more athletically built, Sparta worthy Athena to be a much more realistic one and I applaud the dialing back on the owl imagery and leaving it purely to her clothing, it's way too common in these animatics to basically make her an anthro-owl, or have her begin to take on more physical owl traits when her temper rises with Aphrodite and Aries; so I think this design really makes Neal's work stand out all the more.
Also, yeah, I also find Hera's reaction and Athena resorting to THAT funny. It almost feels less like 'damn, I can't even say that about MY husband' and more 'touche', cause it feels more like Hera was actually encouring Athena to think outside the box and convince her; like she actually respects her unlike her other stepchildren; which makes sense if you remember, Athena isn't a loce child from an affair; she's that child from the previous marriage!
This interpretation of Athena really accentuates the fact that she is Zeus' daughter. Their hair and some facial features are so similar. And while she is a bit more built than other versions, Zeus is also like twice as muscular as any other version I've seen of him lol.
Yeah, I like Neal's "She-ra" take on Athena, but the Owl-y Athena is more inhuman which I feel explains a lot of the disconnect between her and Ody. His Ares and Hephaestus are (pun intended) God-level.
Love the little scp-999 in the back!
I'd recommend watching jorges livestream then coming back for animatics its fun to see how he shows his of vision versus the fans interpretation
Athena being Zeus' favorite probably helps. Ares is basically a dumb jock and is treated like one often in myth, even down to the other gods making fun of him. Ares is explicitly not Zeus' favorite and you could easily go as far as saying his dad is embarrassed by him.
The reason the final bit feels weird is because (spoilers)
Athena gets killed or at the very least knocked out (the "let him go" being right before she falls to the ground) but Neal made it wholesome, also to make it worse, that soften version of the warrior of the mind during it, is her actually remembering holding Telemachus as a baby.
It’s not confirmed if she actually dies or not, but she does lose consciousness
I get it's a loose adaptation, but I'm pretty sure Athena doesn't die here since she doesn't die in Homer's epic, and she's the one who tells the rest of Ithica not to get any sort of revenge on Odysseus for killing the suitors.
I don't know where people got the idea that she perma died at the end of God Games. Was Calipso saying that "goddesses can't die" in the same saga not proof enough that she will recover from this?
Pretty sure Hermes wouldn't be so playful/coy if Athena had died
I think she was just badly hurt/drained from the fight
There's a 95% chance she shows up in songs 38 or 39 (or else that Hermes tease was for nothing. No one outside of Olympus knows what Athena did, who else would tell Odysseus?)
There are so many good god games animatics you should also check out which I think you'd like
next up Not Sorry For Loving You there's a few different animatics out as of current, whenever you feel like checking that out, maybe by BrittPowwPixel
second to last saga....
if you want a,series suggestion, i have 2, one is called epithet erased and it's really good, sadly only 7 episodes were done, the other is "cursed items in csgo"(and cursed items in tf2) by lichtenstein, theose are kind of funny but some have cursed moments in them
Athena was always the favourite
the first time I wathed this I KNEW that was gonna be the argument to win Hera over, she's the goddess of marriage !!!🤣🤣 aand Zeus' wife
as for what comes next, the saga just came out, so animatics are just begining to arrive. For the first song of the next saga (the song after this) Id reccamend this th-cam.com/video/CMpSJmyjEHg/w-d-xo.html one, by The Traveling Pen. They are underated, and capture the complexities of this song some seem to sadly be lacking in some interpretations, not the insult of any artists. Alternativley BrittPowwPixel released one just today, which also does it failry well. More animatics will come with time. And just as some other's have said, Anniflamma's God games would be wonderful to visit, among other artists for past songs if you'd enjoy doing so
vying for attention among the commentors, really have loved seeing your thoughts on this musical
I saw that the person that makes the playlist you use put the Vengeance Saga stream in there. I really hope you react to it. You can still make each song its own video since the song title comes up when each song starts. The animatics Jorge commissioned are insane. Plus it would be great for you to see exactly what Jorge had in mind before any animators put it in their style. Anyway great reaction!!
Yes please react to the vengeance saga animatics Jorge commissioned!
If you are interested you can check the Epic livestreams officia visuals! They contain comissioned animatics and art that usually depict Jorge's inicial view of how things play out! I encourage you to check at least God games' one since the ending of it might impact your experience in a very different way going forward (it's ok if it's on your own time too!)
Also! Official animatics and visuals for Vengance Saga are already OUT! You can check them too if you want and then check other animatics that come out later after that :DD (I'm so exited for you to watch it, you're going to have... MANY OPINIONS about it, this is surely another Thunder Bringer type of hype moment)
I also recommend checking out anniflamma's version!
dont be sad when u have to wait for the next part, it means you can start reacting to Hadestown! :D its a semi-contempory musical telling of the myth of Orpheus and Euridice perfect followup imo
You should start doing other animation for it now!!
There are already some animatocs out for im not sorry for loving you, the next song.
I enjoy neils style and you need to see his ruthlessness. For me athena has always been slimmer from when i was 14 and read the Odyssey. I think it is because of the wosdom bit, but can see why neal went this way.
Watched someone react to ruthleness and one thing that was said when he 1st saw posidon was wow he looks just like a greek god.
I must admit i do prefer other versions where the fight between zeus and Athena, i like the fight being at the at end not in the warrior of the mind/legendary bit. I love gwendys version of that fight bit from the live stream.
In the livestream almost all of god games has been animated as such.
Love your chats at the end.
Please react to neal illustrators broken mast bay it is heartwarming
9:22 Hephaestus' Roman name is NOT Perturabo. How dare you.
Wasn't it Vulcanus? Or was it Volcanus?
@KimFareseed Vulcan
For the Vengeance Saga, I highly recommend the animatics from the Livestream of Vengeance Saga release. It's on Jorge's channel. Wonderful reaction!
My only real complaint with many God Games animatics are them being portrayed as a physical fight, when they should be, imo at least, purely verbal debates. In that way it adds to the end when Zeus does choose violence and proves just how petty he really is. Athena wins the game with her mind as opposed to her might, proving she's a Warror of the Mind.
That's the same with a lot of portrayals of God Games, tbh.
you cooouuuld always watch the vengeance saga release stream with the animatics there
His livestream has animatics please watch them they’re the cannon ones watch the end of his most recent stream please please please😊😊😊
Can you react to the live stream for the vengeance saga - the context is definitely invaluable and is absolutely incredible but it could be very confusing without the animations at the end
Honestly found it weird that Apollo cared more about the sirens than his immortal cow friends.
Wrong sun god. During the Homeric era, sun god would have referred to Helios, while Apollo was the god of music and healinf
@@eleonorawitzky5832 Yes, It's during the later Hellenistic period that the two become largely assimilation with each other in much of Greece, and became the accepted viewpoint of the Roman organized religion leadership with the further inclusion of their indigenous God of the Sun Sol.
I’m not the biggest fan of Neil’s version of this. It’s really well made, it just feels weird for Athena to be able to even fight someone like Zeus. This is just me however. It’s still very well made and Neil’s got some serious talent.
That's an interesting take 🤔 and completely fair. I actually really like it because it's very good at making the Pantheon feel like an actual family. I really enjoy Neal's animation because it really feels like they bring a lot more story telling elements to the song you wouldn't get from just the music which comes from her experience story telling via visuals in making a webtoon. Like in her version of Ruthlessness where the crew are comforting each other in the background after Poseidon's wrath and in this with all the camaraderie and caring the family show each other.
SPOILERS FOR VENGEANCE SAGA
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It feels a lot less weird than ODYSSEUS BEING ABLE TO DEFEAT POSEIDON. Considering that canonically happened in Epic, I think Athena being able to go toe to toe with Zeus for a few strikes in Neal's animatic makes perfect sense LOL.
@@vkdragonfire2123I’m not talking about that till he gets there.
@@jazzr7817I agree that Neal’s animatic makes them feel like a family. I generally defer to the Odyssey and Greek mythology in general when it comes to how powerful they are and how they’re portrayed. The family dynamic is my favorite part of Neal’s version.
@@blitz0590 Word. That's true. I love the canon that shines in Epic but I am more easily convinced to wave when it's not since Jorge takes a lot of creative liberties. But I can understand when it's a bit jarring to others.
Hera the worst god I swear she would say the worst war criminal should go free because he never cheated on his wife.
we stand buff Athena, i also highly recommend Noir.Hyacinth god games amination.
www.youtube.com/@noir.hyacinth