Characters / No Straight Roads

All of the characters in No Straight Roads.

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Main Characters

Bunk Bed Junction

An underground (both literally and figuratively) indie rock band who rebels and stands against NSR to liberate Vinyl City from its control, and are the protagonists of the game.

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In General

"We're gonna bunka, we're gonna junka, and we're gonna BAM in their faces!"

• 11th-Hour Superpower: The duo obtain an incredibly powerful and unique Ultimate Duet for quashing Kliff's plans during the finale.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Mayday is orange, Zuke is green.
• Anti-Hero Team: While they're up against a corrupt EDM empire seeking to stamp out creativity and individuality, the artists they go up against aren't exactly evil. At most, the megastars are just haughty. Some are even quite sympathetic, while B2J are crashing their concerts and beating them up even though they're just trying to entertain their audiences, and they carry their own negative personal biases regarding EDM. That said, NSR is making it so only their megastars are getting access to backup power during the blackout, and Tatiana outlaws rock itself, despite the fact that rock is just as capable of providing power to the city.
• Casting a Shadow: Their Ultimate Duet moves are described as casting shadows that do damage, though uniquely the shadows aren't the usual black but rather resemble colorful shadow puppetry.
• Coordinated Clothes: They both wear one half of a full ensemble. Zuke wears the black jacket, Mayday wears the black pants, and they split the pair of black gloves.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Their choice in clothing uses a lot of black and darker colors and their methods are actually as destructive as NSR claims they are. They still do what the do for the sake of the people and ensuring creative freedom in Vinyl City.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: They both wear a black glove out of a pair. Mayday cut the fingers off of hers because they were messing up her fret hand.
• Foil: Mayday is incredibly energetic and passionate, Zuke is much more subdued and calm. This is also reflected in their colour schemes' Orange/Blue Contrast. Gameplay-wise, Mayday focuses on power and offense, while Zuke is on speed, defense and utility.
• Finishing Move: The Showstopper. Mayday and Zuke fist bump saying "Red Light!" "Green Light!" Mayday changes out the "capacitor" on her guitar as Zuke taps his drumsticks together, shout a battle cry of "Bunka! Junka! Shakalaka BAM!", and launch a rock-fueled energy ball at the boss's face.
• Full-Circle Revolution: Ultimately averted. They fought back against a music genre for the sake of the city, just like Tatiana did when she was Kul Fyra. They realize their mistake when Kliff has NSR's satellite fall on NSR's tower to re-establish rock, making them no better than what NSR did in the past. All this leads to them working with Tatiana and NSR to save the city from the satelite crashing down.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: They can win healing mods that allow them to recover health mid-fight if equipped.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Ultimately defied. After witnessing the path Kliff's fanatical dedication to rock leads to, Mayday realizes that they've become just as bad as NSR when it comes to restricting other genres of music. It prompts her to team up with Tatiana to defend the city from the satellite Kliff downed. Zuke supports Mayday's decision without hesitation.
• Home Base: Down in an Absurdly Spacious Sewer. Different rooms unlock as the story progresses.
• Hostile Show Takeover: What they do to each NSR artist they face. Although it's a mostly heroic example of this trope. Mostly.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • For as indignant as they are of the villains lambasting rock-and-roll, the duo start out as rather contemptuous of classical music until Yinu shows them how it's capable of great speed, power, and complexity.
  • They claim to fight for "the little guy", but shortly after they declare this, they attack a quartet of college kids who were given their big break by NSR (the protagonists are both in their twenties) and a nine-year-old pianist who raises millions of dollars for charity with her concerts.
• La Résistance: Explicitly state their goal is to fight NSR, and remove their choke-hold on the music industry of Vinyl City, and all the other utilities they've got in their hands like the power grid.
• Leitmotif: Naturally in a musical game about a rock band, theirs is their respective instruments, more audible in the game's Variable Mix depending on who's currently being controlled. Notably, when Mayday takes charge in the third rap battle against DK West, the backbeat prominently features guitar.
• Limit Break: They gain access to one called an Ultimate Duet that becomes useable when both of their energy meters are completely full. There are a total of three, each one earned completing a segment of the DK West subplot.
• Magic Music: Quite a few of their mods seem to work in this fashion.
• Meaningful Name: There's a reason the band is called "Bunk Bed Junction". First, because Mayday really likes bunk beds. The "Junction" relates to NSR. At first, the band goal was to join NSR and create a "junction" to NSR's "highway" to bring fans of different music genres to NSR. After declaring war against them, The junction is now meant to lead people away from NSR's toxic influence.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Downplayed. Their manner of fighting NSR is to disrupt the performances of its key artists similar to how their own performance was disrupted and unfairly rejected at the start of the game. Their generally contemptuous attitude towards EDM as a whole muddies the morality of the conflict a bit.
• Platonic Life-Partners: There is barely, if any, romantic subtext between them despite their loyalty to each other. The strongest term of endearment Mayday ever gives Zuke is "buddy".
• The Power of Rock: They rely on this to fight NSR. All forms of music can provide power in Vinyl City, but Bunk Bed Junction chooses rock as it had once been the standard in the city's past.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Mayday is the Red Oni, impulsive and passionate. Zuke is the Blue Oni, relaxed and analytical as he follows May's latest plan. Uniquely, the dynamic shifts when dealing with DK West; Zuke becomes the Red Oni, angry and aggressive with his older brother due to past grievances while Mayday becomes the Blue Oni that tries to calm him down and keep him from ruining his relationship with his brother.
• Rock is Authentic, Pop is Shallow: Mayday's opinion of what's best for Vinyl City. Due to a series of poorly timed coincidences at the start of the game, Zuke reluctantly supports this notion. It's ultimately subverted at the end.
• Rotten Rock & Roll: How NSR's propaganda machine tries to portray them. They come dangerously close to living up to this trope near the end of the game until they realize what they're becoming.
• Rule of Symbolism: Their clothing. Since their band is a duo, Mayday and Zuke bought an all-black outfit and both of them wear parts of it. Zuke wears the jacket, Mayday wears the bottoms, and both of them share a pair of gloves between them. It symbolizes that they're one unit working together.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: The two share this dynamic, with Mayday being energetic and impulsive, while Zuke is thoughtful and observant.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Throughout the game, others tease or suggest that the two are an item, much to their shock as they're entirely platonic.
• Ship Tease: flip-flopped fairly regularly, somewhat justified. As the plot of the game isn't focused on it so much as it is the relationship between artists, their fans and their music.
  • On one hand, May and Zuke mainly act supportive of each other in a platonic sense since they are bandmates. When characters mistake them for a couple they either don't seem to get it (Mayday) or act like it never occurred to them that they may like the other (Zuke). Mayday also shows attraction to 1010, so it isn't quite a matter of then not being romantically inclined.
  • On the other hand, They are almost always together (whether it's living in the base, out roaming on the field or fighting opponents), and despite not being blatant about it, various aspects of the game show how close they are, particularly interactions with their opponents
    • promotional art for the Encore Edition has Mayday getting close to fuss with Zuke's bowtie while they're gussied up for an event.
    • When Sayu explains she sees the love between them, Zuke is notably flustered and starts overcomplicating it. Mayday for her part is more focused on fighting her.
    • 1010 getting Mayday to want romance gets Zuke to do one thing that's very surprising, have a Freak Out, an consistently get annoyed trying to snap her out of it.
    • DK West teases Zuke about being a couple with Mayday, while it's mainly because it's a point of contention the Zuke got the attention of a girl West liked, neither Zuke or Mayday argue that it's not the case.
    • Eve's subtext of being Zuke's ex-girlfriend is fairly heavily blatant, especially with her backstory videos, art, and the creators confirming her to be Demisexual. The fight itself has her try to get Zuke back, lash out after being rejected, insult May for being "pedestrian" out of jealousy, see how strong his and Mayday's bond is, assume they both hate her, and push Zuke away at first only to become Amiable Exes. On Zukes side, he's verbally supporting Mayday in the face of everything including being separated, more or less asks for May's Permission to speak to Eve alone, and he praises her greatly, going as far as to say Eve giving Mayday a chance could help her see what he sees in her an become friends.
• Theme Music Power-Up: More of a genre power-up, but when the tide turns in B2J's favor during a boss battle, the Battle Theme Music becomes a rock version just before the Showstopper.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: They're very hesitant to harm Yinu despite her being one of the Megastars, being quite aware that, while she has an attitude, she's just a talented yet impressionable young girl caught up in NSR's schemes. They're very relieved when told they only need to break her piano to beat her, and the only things they attack in the fight are the strings connecting her to her mother, and the mother herself. She's also notably the only NSR artist they never attempt a Showstopper on.

Mayday

Mayday

Voiced by: Su Ling Chan (EN), Kelly Marot (FR), Marta Domingo (SP) Ayane Sakura (JP)

"No more injustice! It's time we fight EDM with the power of ROCK! The music revolution starts right now!"

The guitarist and vocalist for Bunk Bed Junction.

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• Affectionate Nickname: "May", courtesy of Zuke.
• Armor-Piercing Response: In the final DK West battle, Mayday's response to West's claims Zuke hates him is telling him the truth; Zuke has always and still does look up to him despite everything. West is clearly surprised by this enough to admit he wants to believe them as true, which finally allows Zuke to properly talk with West without his anger overtaking him.
• The Atoner: She's horrified upon realizing the end result of her already destructive revolution would have simply been replacing NSR's EDM elitism with Rock elitism. The last part of the game is spend trying to rectify her impulsive actions by restoring power to NSR's Megastars and then working together with them to prevent Kliff's hijacked satellite from destroying NSR Tower and wreaking massive collateral damage. When Tatiana finally offers Bunk Bed Junction a chance to be a new NSR Megastar, Mayday declines believing that her actions prove that she's too immature and not ready for that sort of responsibility to the point where it even seems like she's about to give up on playing music period. The whole situation leaves her on the verge of tears and when Tatiana urges her to keep playing rock and carry on Kul Fyra's legacy, even handing her Kul Fyra's guitar, Mayday is reduced to a sobbing mess.
• Big "WHAT?!":
  • When DJ Subatomic Supernova calls Bunk Bed Junction irrelevant, Mayday's first reaction is "Say whaaaaat?"
  • She lets out three of these in quick succession upon learning that Tatiana and Kul Fyra are the same person.
• Boring, but Practical: The More Than One Transformer mod creates a shockwave that does no damage, but instantly morphs all transformables in its radius. Additionally, while Zuke's prop transformations have various different effects, Mayday's is pretty straightforward, usually just making turrets that shoot at the bosses.
• Catchphrase: "Let's rock-a-tock!", spoken at the beginning of each boss fight.
• Christmas Elves: Her very festive Christmas outfit combined with her naturally pointy ears makes her vaguely resemble one of these.
• Classical Music Is Boring: She seems to think this judging by her interactions with Yinu, NSR's classical musician, although even she is reluctantly impressed by Yinu's skill.
• Crazy Enough to Work: Despite having no prior experience with rap music, she decides to challenge DK West to a rap battle and use it as a chance to get him and Zuke to reconcile. She doesn't manage to rap very well, but it worked.
• Curse Cut Short: When she and Zuke get rejected at the audition and told that rock is irrelevant.
  Mayday: Oh yeah!? Well how about you take all these X's, and shove 'em up your-! (Cut to her and Zuke standing outside the building)
• Didn't Think This Through: When Tatiana asks how Mayday would even run Vinyl City after NSR is overthrown, Mayday struggles to come up with an answer.
• Distracted by the Sexy: She seriously considers calling off her revolution to have a "jacuzzi party" with 1010.
• Energy Donation/Mask of Power: After she and Zuke defeat Eve, Mayday gets the "Two-Sided Mayday" mod, where she plays a guitar riff that generates a vertical half-face mask in Zuke's likeness that floats around her head. While wearing it, she converts all the damage she sustains into health for Zuke.
• Evil Laugh: After defeating Sayu, she scares her production team by laughing creepily before unplugging her.
• Exotic Eye Designs: Her pupils are star-shaped. Curiously, when she realizes she's on TV after beating Sayu, her eyes become normal with black irises when she shoves her face up to the camera.
• Gatling Good: Her prop transformations turns props into gatling turrets that rapidly chip away at boss health.
• Genius Ditz: She's a talented guitar player and decent singer, but she's pretty much a colossal idiot when it comes to everything else, often requiring other characters (usually Zuke) to either rein her in or keep her in the loop.
• Genki Girl: Extremely energetic and passionate about her music and everything she does.
• Girly Bruiser: She's the heavy-hitter of the duo. She also has no problems gushing over Sayu's cute appearance or going gaga for 1010 after they throw some pick-up lines her way.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck!: Overlaps with Unusual Euphemism. Getting kicked out of the audition prompts a furious "That was BULLDOZER! Bulldozer, you hear me?!" from her, and upon learning that rock is banned in Vinyl City, she asks, "What the slimy possum did she [Tatiana] say?" The battle against Tatiana also has her say “I don’t give a freaking cupcake what you think!” at one point.
  • When she starts using actual swears like "damnit" and "crappy" after discovering that Tatiana used to be Kul Fyra, the rock musician that she herself was inspired by, it hits home just how shocked, betrayed, and hurt she is by the revelation.
• Green Thumb/Transmutation: Her "More Than One Transformer" mod, which she gets after she and Zuke defeat Yinu and her mother, allows her to summon vines that morphs every transformable prop on screen.
• Grin of Audacity: Very much so, almost verging on a Slasher Smile at times like when she's about to slam a boss with a Showstopper.
• Heal It with Water: Her "Pyurifying Water" mod, which she gets after she and Zuke defeat Sayu, allows her to heal herself by playing a tune that generates a small beam of water energy that twirls around her before dissipating. And no, the mod name is not a typo, as it's based on Sayu's tendency to say "pyun!".
• Hidden Depths:
  • During the radio segment where the below mentioned Kick the Dog moment is brought up, Mayday admits she got carried away in the moment and apologizes to Zuke for both snapping at him and breaking his drumsticks. This implies despite being impulsive and reckless, Mayday's also a person capable of recognizing her mistakes when it comes down to it. As shown in the climax, she doesn't hesitate to restore the districts to the NSR artists to stop the falling satellite she unwittingly had a hand in causing.
  • Mayday ends up the voice of reason to Zuke's anger at his brother, being quick to call Zuke out on disowning West after the second battle. Then when it becomes clear to her in the final battle the brothers won't ever reach an understanding if left on their own, she steps in to force them to finally talk to each other and succeeds. Which supports why Zuke considers Mayday the leader of the band.
• Homing Projectile: She can transform the grounded satellites scattered throughout DJ Subatomic Supernova's vinyl-like arena into rocket launch pads to damage him from afar. She's later on able to summon and launch a guided missile of her own at any enemy, thanks to the "Missile Launched!" mod she gains when Bunk Bed Junction defeats 1010.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • She tells Zuke to be nice to the judges before they go out on Lights Up Audition. When the judges negatively judge their performance, Mayday is the one to blow up at them, to the point of climbing up to Tatiana's face to insult her.
  • After DJ Subatomic Supernova compares them to Pluto (calling them insignificant), Mayday shouts that Pluto is still relevant after defeating him. She then immediately turns to Zuke and asks, "What's a Pluto, anyway?"
  • Despite her strong principles against NSR and their products, Mayday's hopelessly charmed by Sayu and 1010 (especially in the latter's case). This doesn't actually affect her from both a gameplay and story perspective however, and she's still capable of kicking their butts with no issues (although she's still visibly reluctant to use the Showstopper on 1010).
• Idiot Hero: Her very declaration of war against NSR was a completely impulsive decision motivated by their rejection of Bunk Bed Junction. She continues to barely think through her actions from that point on until the end when she's faced with the most destructive consequences of her actions. She's horrified when she realizes just what she did.
• Improvised Catapult: She can transform the remains of any 1010 destroyed member into catapults that are pretty much made from that member's arms. Debris will then be launched from the conjoined hands of the makeshift catapult at other surviving 1010 members or Neon J.'s Mini-Mecha whenever it hovers over the band for support.
• Inelegant Blubbering: In the ending, she's reduced to a sobbing mess after Tatiana gives her Kul Fyra's old guitar and encourages Mayday to keep playing rock and carry on Kul Fyra's legacy. While we don't see much of it because the screen fades out, her voice and the sounds make it pretty clear.
• Insane Troll Logic: The second time Mayday punches the TV in her and Zuke's hideout, she feels hilariously unwarranted vitriol towards the TV chef whose program she and Zuke are watching at the time, and he's understandably exasperated by her enormous leap in logic as a result.
  Zuke: Can you please stop punching my TV?! Why did you even punch it this time?
  Mayday: Hey look, I've already scrolled through all the channels and I couldn't find a single news about NSR! That chef had it coming.
  Zuke: Is that really the excuse you're going with?
  Mayday: Yeah! I mean, what's up with her hair, man?! *Blegh!* And she kinda looks like Tatiana's sister...
  Zuke: Forget it.
• In-Series Nickname: Zuke calls her 'May'.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Destroys Zuke's NSR drumsticks midway through the game due to them being affiliated with the organization they're trying to fight. He responds by putting them back together and refusing to stop using them as they're genuinely useful, high-quality instruments.
  • During Tatiana's fight, Mayday angrily shouts at Tatiana in a Boss Banter that the NSR artists are talentless hacks — even though she had previously complimented Sayu's creators and found herself at least respecting their skills — just to get back at Tatiana and EDM. It's a sign that Mayday is almost Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and turning into the new oppressive tyrant with Irrational Hatred for a specific genre of music.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Her Kick the Dog moment comes back around on her when at the end of her game her trusty guitar doesn't survive the final Showstopper. She doesn't object to this, as she's realized just what her revolution almost led to.
• Meaningful Name: "Mayday" is a distress call used to indicate someone is in trouble, and Mayday is a trouble maker. It causes a funny moment when an exploding Neon J. actually screams "Mayday!" in that context, prompting Mayday to wonder why he's calling for her.
• Mighty Glacier: She has slower but more damaging attacks than Zuke and more health. One of her late-game mods has her put on a Zuke mask, converting all damage she accrues while wearing it to health for her bandmate.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After Kliff exposes himself as a Loony Fan who is willing to cause legitimate damage to the city just to seize control of Vinyl City in the name of rock, she realizes that she's just been pushing out talent because of her personal vendetta against a music genre, just like what Tatiana was doing. It prompts her to restore the megastars' districts to prevent the NSR satellite from destroying the city.
  • Similarly, she immediately regrets destorying Zuke's drumsticks due to her hatred of their makers (NSR), and apologizes to Zuke for breaking them and snapping at him.
• Not So Above It All: She has strong principles in objection to NSR and all its products yet finds herself hopelessly charmed in spite of herself by their most artificial megastars, Sayu and 1010.
• Older Than They Look: Mayday is 21, to where she refers to Sayu's teenaged creative group as 'kids'. Her appearance and energetic nature do make her appear younger though.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Even though she uses an American accent, her voice actress occasionally slips into her natural Malaysian accent during certain lines.
• Painful Rhyme: One of her quotes when switching to her is "it's my turn, python!", but she tries saying it in a way to make "turn" somehow rhyme with "python".
• Pet the Dog: After destroying Sayu's construct, Mayday opts to spare the four young people controlling her of a beatdown, seeing them as talented kids who were just led down the wrong path by NSR.
• Piss-Take Rap: In the third rap battle against DK West, she takes charge and her inexperience relative to him and Zuke shows. While not horrible, it's not very on beat or flows well, mostly sounding like her hastily sing-talking an argument to reassure DK that Zuke still cares for and respects him as a brother (which she succeeds in doing). A collectible earned after the battle states she learned by taking notes from their previous two battles.
• Playing with Fire/Precision-Guided Boomerang: After she and Zuke defeat DJ Subatomic Supernova, she gets the "Mars Attack" mod, which allows her to use her guitar as a boomerang after revving and charging it up with flaming energy.
• Pointy Ears: Subverted. While Mayday has some pretty pointy ears, they're not exactly a sign of supernatural origin on her part. However, as noted above, they go well with her Christmas Edition outfit, making her look like a Christmas elf.
• Pun: After defeating Sayu, Mayday leaves her creators behind saying, "Sayunara", a pun on Sayu's name and "sayonara", Japanese for "goodbye".
• Red/Green Contrast: While both colors are present in each member of B2J's Christmas Edition outfits, the red is more prominent in Mayday's, fitting her cheerful and energetic yet rash personality.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: She's the Red to Zuke's Blue.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: Does "Pew pew pew" noises when performing ranged attacks.
• Shoot the Television: Mayday punches the TV in Bunk Bed Junction's hideout twice to vent her anger at NSR.
  • The first time is after BBJ's victory against DJ Subatomic Supernova, which, to May's anger, was seemingly all for nothing, thanks to the launch of a new NSR satellite that the pompous DJ was apparently supervising behind the scenes.
  • The second time is after the band's victory against Neon J. and 1010, where she does it out of frustration over not being able to find any more news concerning NSR. As noted above, she's so mad that she somehow believes the TV chef, whose program was running at that moment, "had it coming" and could be related to Tatiana.
• Sour Grapes: After the tutorial, she becomes grossly critical of everything related to NSR, lambasting products associated with the company whenever she can, and decrying its artists as "sellouts" when the game opened with her trying to be one of those sellouts.
• Strong Girl, Smart Guy: With Zuke. Mayday is the Hot-Blooded heavy hitter of the duo, while Zuke is the calm and collected combo master and technical engineer.
• Superior Successor: In a very specific fashion to Kul Fyra. While Mayday has a multitude of flaws, indecisive leadership is not one of them.
• Tears of Joy: In the epilogue of the game, Mayday falls to her knees bawling while thanking Tatiana profusely when the latter entrusts Mayday with her guitar and encourages her to keep rock music alive and succeed where she, as Kul Fyra, had failed.
• Technicolor Eyes: Her eyes are pink, the same as Tatiana/Kul Fyra.
• The Turret Master: Mayday's transformations turns props into attack turrets.
• Uptight Loves Wild: Inverted. While she's a hard-living rocker type who lives in a sewer, she has a strong preference for "gentlemanly" men, if her going gaga over 1010 is any indication.
• What the Hell, Hero?: She's not impressed when Zuke disowns his brother, DK West.
  Mayday: Jeez, Zuke!
  Zuke: What?!
  Mayday: "You're no brother"?! Can you get any more emo than that?!
  Zuke: Hey, look, I tried to be nice, okay?! I've looked up to him all my life, and for no reason he treats me like garbage! Who do you think has been trying to reach out to him all year? ALL YEAR LONG! And now, he just pops up from GOD KNOWS WHERE, and he still has the gall to say that all this is my fault?! ARGH!
  Mayday: Uhuh. You keep this up, and it'll definitely be your fault, Zuke.
• Wingding Eyes: Mayday sometimes gets heart eyes when fawning over how cute Sayu is or how hot 1010 are.
• Wrecked Weapon: Her guitar doesn't survive the final Showstopper and she doesn't bother to try to fix it given her guilt over what her impulsive crusade had wrought. In response, Tatiana chucks her the guitar she'd carried as Kul Fyra to encourage her to not give up on music.

Zuke

Zuke

Voiced by: Steven Bones (EN), Donald Reignoux (FR), Sébastien Baulain (SP), Jun Fukuyama (JP)

"You're disrupting our music revolution, man!"

The drummer for Bunk Bed Junction.

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• Accent Slip-Up: When interacting with his brother DK West, he'll sometimes drop one or two lines in Malay.
• Air Guitar: Drums without...drums. (His drumsticks seem to generate holographic ones).
• All Drummers Are Animals: Subverted. He's actually quite calm, controlled, and subdued, especially when compared to Mayday. Also note Gadgeteer Genius below.
• Armor-Piercing Response: Happens during the final verse of the second rap battle against DK West where Zuke unceremoniously disowns DK West. While his frustration is somewhat understandable given his brother's tendency to deflect blame and run from his problems, the comment completely catches DK West off guard, and he's clearly hurt by it. Mayday directly calls out Zuke on saying that afterward. While Zuke tries to defend himself, it's clear that Mayday thinks he absolutely crossed a line with his last rap verse, which sets her up during the third rap battle to force the two to actually talk this out rather than blaming each other.
• Beehive Barrier: His "Bio Tactical Shield" mod has this looks when generated. Because he gains this mod after Bunk Bed Junction's battle with 1010, it's naturally similar to the shields that the members would generate around themselves.
• Berserk Button: Zuke usually has such a long fuse that it takes a lot to set him off. However, the one person that really knows how to grind his gears and get some volume out of him is his brother DK West. This is most pronounced when it comes to West's habit of blaming everyone else, Zuke specifically for problems he himself caused. Deconstructed as Zuke getting irritated by West's words only worsens their already estranged relationship to where Zuke disowns him by the end of the second battle. Mayday has to intervene in the final battle by getting West to admit he wants to talk with Zuke, giving the opening needed for Zuke to finally do so.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Zuke is a Nice Guy who only got on board with Mayday's Rock revolution when it became clear that NSR was negatively impacting the public with the way they run the city. He's calm and reasonable even in the middle of a fight, never unnecessarily antagonising anyone and regularly keeping Mayday from going too far. He might engage in some playful banter, but he doesn't go around insulting people for kicks. And then his older brother arrives. At first it seems like a slightly more irritated sort of playful bickering, and once DK West initiates a rap battle his lyrics mostly seem to be petty insults, almost like he's trying to embarrass his little brother in front of his friend as a game. Zuke responds to this by tearing West apart, doing everything he can to assassinate his character, decry his career, dismiss his every accomplishment and rub his own successes in his brother's face. This prompts West to start hitting harder in turn and it soon becomes apparent there's a lot of resentment in this relationship, and things only escalate from there— to the point that Mayday repeatedly tells Zuke to calm down and stop being such a jerk, as he's only making things worse.
• Bilingual Bonus: He speaks and raps in Malay at some points in DK West's boss fights.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: In his last verse of DK West's third rap battle, he slips West's "ewah" catchphrase into the lyrics a couple of times as a show of reconciliation with his brother.
• Broken Pedestal: Thought the world of his older brother until he squandered all his potential and blamed Zuke for it. After the second rap battle, Zuke tells Mayday that he's been trying to contact his brother all year long with no response, and in the third Mayday defuses the situation by telling West how much Zuke still admires him, implying that Zuke was only angry because his big brother basically cut him out of his life.
• Catchphrase: Zuke is the one to signal the Showstopper with the same phrase.
  Zuke: There's only one way to end this!
• Classy Cane: Zuke's Idle Animation has him standing with his drumsticks connected at the ends for him to pose with like they were a cane.
• Dash Attack: As a nod to the whole hair burning incident that drove him and Nadia/Eve apart, he gets the "Burning Hair Fashion" mod after he and Mayday defeat her, which allows him to dash at enemies while burning them with the fiery streak he leaves behind.
• The Dog Bites Back: He immediately goes for his brother's metaphorical throat during DK West's first rap battle, and never relents until the third one.
• Driven by Envy: At least DK West believes so. In his mind, Zuke was always envious of his brother's accomplishments and popularity and would always copy him. Even when Zuke proved himself more skilled or more popular, he would keep reaching because he still had to show him up. In reality, Zuke just wanted to reach out to him because they were still family, and the fact that DK West continued to blow him off for years is one of the reasons their relationship is so bad.
• Flaming Hair: As stated above, this is the effect of his "Burning Hair Fashion" mod, where he dashes toward enemies and damages them with his burning hair.
• Fragile Speedster: His attacks are faster than Mayday's, allowing him to quickly chain combos, but he also has less health compared to her.
• Gadgeteer Genius: His Master's Degree in Fine Arts and Music aside, Zuke is responsible for the fantastic, combat-capable elements of his and Mayday's instruments. His workshop is also the upgrade page.
• Grew a Spine: While he steadily moved out of his brother's shadow when he entered college, a video from his school days implies that he let Nadia walk all over him and make all the decisions for their band, and used her setting his hair alight as an excuse to bail on her rather than confront her directly on their relationship issues (something he acknowledges was cowardly by present day). In the present, while genuinely laidback, he's grown more responsible and self-possessed, evidenced by how he firmly refuses to stop using NSR drumsticks when Mayday keeps urging him to ditch them, and when he goes to talk to Nadia to break things off with her the right way rather than taking the opportunity to run away from her again.
• Handwave: When Mayday asks why his brother has such a strong accent and he doesn't, he sardonically replies by asking her why her hair is yellow.
• Hard Light: His drumsticks can create energy drums on the fly. Which is just as well, given that his brother apparently sold off his original kit for reasons undisclosed.
• Healing Hands/Star Power: After he and Mayday defeat DJ Subatomic Supernova, he gets the "One with the Universe" mod, which as its name implies, allows him to regain a portion of his health by seemingly drawing power from the cosmos itself, if the miniature solar system that floats and bounces around him before falling and disappearing is any indication.
• Healing Shiv: If he parries Eve's attacks in "the void", the redirected shots will heal her rather than damage her, symbolizing that Zuke means his ex-girlfriend no harm. They'll still raise the combo meter though.
• Hidden Depths:
  • He has a Master's Degree in Fine Arts and Music.
  • He's also good at rapping if the boss fights with DK West are any indication.
• Improbable Hairstyle: Blue hair that seems to jut out straight backward ending in short dreadlocks.
• Jerkass to One: The only character he treats with any degree of contempt is his brother DK West. The feeling is mutual for much of the story until Mayday convinces them to reconcile.
• Man on Fire: As referenced above, Zuke and Nadia (who later reinvented herself as "Eve") were both an item and old bandmates during their college days, but they broke up due to Nadia/Eve setting his hair on fire during a performance for whatever reason.
• Musical Assassin: After he and Mayday defeat Yinu, he gets rewarded with the "Arpeggio Assault" mod, which enables him to launch musical note projectiles at faraway enemies, mimicing Yinu's own ability to do the same (albeit in a more rapid-fire manner in her case).
• My Greatest Failure: After a performance gone wrong that involved his hair catching fire, he ran away from a woman he was in a relationship with named Nadia, which in the present he acknowledges was incredibly cowardly of him. Nadia ended up being so hurt by this that she isolated herself in her work, turning her into the megastar Eve.
• Nice Guy: He joined Mayday's crusade more out of loyalty to their friendship and to free Vinyl City of NSR's stranglehold than for a shot at fame. Notably, he was actually willing to give NSR the benefit of the doubt for rejecting their audition, unlike Mayday who blew up at the judges for their verdict. Also unlike Mayday, he barely engages in heckling the megastars. In the case of Eve, he even sticks around to try and console her when she goes into a depressive episode after being defeated.
• Older Sidekick: Mayday's 21 and the one considered the leader of the band in Zuke's opinion, while he's a college graduate implied to be roughly 27.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Zuke is normally the calm and thoughtful side of Bunk Bed Junction. But when his brother gets involved, his personality takes an aggressive turn, which especially shows in his rapping. It tells you just how bad their relationship is when it's Mayday telling Zuke to calm down.
• Poor Communication Kills: Zuke always looked up to his brother and was deeply hurt when DK West left Vinyl City and cut off contact. Rather than saying that, Zuke channels his hurt into anger and his arguments with West get increasingly loud and cruel until Mayday intervenes to tell West the honest truth, which defuses the latter's anger entirely. Given that West is Improperly Paranoid that Zuke wants to actively sabotage him, a belief which apparently stems from college when Zuke's "pride got a hold on [him]"; Zuke refutes his brother's own grievances as illegitimate when West openly admits them; and West is completely blindsided when Mayday tells him that his little brother was only emulating him, there have probably been communication issues between them for years.
• Prongs of Poseidon: After Bunk Bed Junction defeats Sayu, he gets the "Trident of Nepyune" mod, allowing him to transform his drumsticks into magic tridents to attack enemies with increased range.
• Random Effect Spell: His transformable items do something different in each boss battle.
  • Actually a Doombot: He can transform the intertwining hand sculptures in Eve's stage into hovering decoys that bear his likeness. Once transformed, the decoys will draw attention away from him for a short period of time, namely from the Hand Blasts of the giant hand sculptures that pop up at the end of the room and the Eye Beams of the giant face sculpture hidden inside the wall. When fully transformed, the decoys carry bombs to damage Eve with.
  • Deflector Shields: He can transform the folder icons in Sayu's stage into holographic clams that generate protective fields so that he and Mayday can be safe from Sayu's attacks for a time.
  • Energy Absorption: He can transform the stage lights in Yinu's stage into fans that absorb and convert her music note projectiles into Ammo Notes for him and Mayday to pick up and attack her piano with.
  • Nitro Boost: He can transform the ground satellites in DJ Subatomic Supernova's stage into dash pads, obviously for increased movement speed.
  • Status-Buff Dispel: He can transform the destroyed remains of any member of 1010 that's been temporarily taken out into weird pump machines that nullify the shields of the surviving members.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Averted. He's a generally very mellow and friendly guy. Unless you're his brother.
• Red/Green Contrast: While both colors are present in each member of B2J's Christmas Edition outfits, the green is more prominent in Zuke's, fitting his peaceful and more levelheaded demeanor.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: He's the Blue to Mayday's Red. His skill set and solo "summons" are more based around support and defense as opposed to Mayday's more aggressive skills.
• Sibling Rivalry: With his brother DK West. Their rap battles have them blame the other for the problems they faced in their respective lives, and it gets intense. Mayday steps in to mend their relationship, realising they're not going to sort this out themselves.
• Strong Girl, Smart Guy: With Mayday. Zuke is the calm and collected combo master and technical engineer of the duo, while Mayday is the Hot-Blooded heavy hitter.
• Support Party Member: His skills revolve around accumulating ammunition and regaining health through indirect means.
• Tempting Fate: Tries to defend NSR by saying that they're is doing a good job running Vinyl City. Cue the blackout.
  Mayday: Zuke?
  Zuke: Yeah?
  Mayday: If I could see your face, I'd punch it.
• Undying Loyalty: He always has Mayday's back wherever she goes, and even when Mayday gives him the opportunity to leave the conflict at the end of the game, he staunchly refuses despite the danger.
• Unreliable Narrator: In the rap battles he has with DK West the two lay out their problems with each other, basically having increasingly vicious arguments set to music. One repeated accusation from Zuke is that West runs away when things get emotionally difficult rather than deal with them; Zuke later admits after the Eve fight that he ran away from his troubled relationship with her rather than break things off after an honest conversation, outright calling himself a coward for the act. Given that all we know of the brothers' backstory is from those very rap battles, it throws a lot into question.
• Vague Age: Zuke's exact age isn't given, but it's implied to be around 27 due the fact he attended college with Eve.
• Working with the Ex: Entered the Lights Up contest at the start of the game knowing that he would've had to work alongside his ex-girlfriend Eve/Nadia in some capacity if he and Mayday had passed the audition.
• Wrecked Weapon: Halfway through the game, Mayday destroys his NSR drumsticks because she thinks that using them doesn't mesh well with their music revolution. Players aren't likely to notice given that he painstakingly glues them back together.

Others

Ellie

Ellie

Voiced by: Putri Dina Megat Dziauddin

May and Zuke's pet alligator and a secret assist character who tags along with them, and is the third playable character in Assist Mode exclusive for the Nintendo Switch version.

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• Big Damn Heroes: After Tatiana's boss fight, she shows up in the B2J helicopter to ferry the duo off to the districts to try and restore them before the satellite crashes.
• Noodle Incident: Exactly how Ellie got the helicopter she ferries Bunk Bed Junction or how she learned to fly the thing in the first place is left unexplained.
• Sewer Gator: She's an alligator they keep in the sewer, presuming that's not where they found her in the first place.
• Team Pet: Of Bunk Bed Junction. There's even a buyable skill that allows her to bring in healing items when the team is low on health in battle.
• Videogame Caring Potential: Feeding her several times will earn the team the ability to fast travel around Vinyl City. Which comes in the form of Ellie flying them from place to place in a helicopter whose origins are never explained.

No Straight Roads

"NSR" for short, is a record label giant and EDM empire run by Tatiana, the governing body of Vinyl City, and are the titular main antagonists of the game. Their main job is to convert music into energy for the city, but following the rejection of Bunk Bed Junction, Tatiana decides to ban rock and roll from all further Light Up auditions, and then straight up cuts the juice to the whole city, using the backup energy for their elites.

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In General

^{Click here to see NSR's key figures}
Tatiana and NSR's musical superstars: DJ Subatomic Supernova (left), Sayu (far right), Yinu (far left), Eve (right) and 1010 (on top)

• All Your Powers Combined: A fairly villainous example as they'll take artists who specialize with other genres and tweak their sound to incorporate NSR's brand of EDM. They also pull off a more heroic example in the end where they rally behind Bunk Bed Junction to pull off an extra-powerful Showstopper.
• Antagonist Title: This company is what the game is named after.
• Big Blackout: They cause this following Bunk Bed Junction's audition, only using the back-up power for the label's elites. As it turns out, the blackout was going to happen anyway due to the energy shortage in the city. NSR was just diverting what was left into the areas they believed needed it most. Part of the issue comes from the fact that Tatiana refuses to believe in the Power of Rock due to personal bias.
• Hanlon's Razor: As it turns out; the blackout was due to an infrastructure problem and running out of power reserves; they rerouted power to their HQ so that their performers could recharge the batteries.
• MegaCorp: Referred to as an EDM empire and have taken over the music scene in Vinyl City.
• Predatory Business: NSR promotes and sells their EDM music by restricting the creation and promotion of all other genres, and crushing those who try to compete with them. This is because the CEO has a legitimate personal vendetta against rock.

Tatiana (Unmarked Spoilers)

Tatiana Qwartz/Kul Fyra

Voiced by: Priscilla Patrick (EN), Céline Monsarrat (FR), Ethel Houbiers (SP), Yuuko Yamashita (JP)

Gender: Female

Age: 48

Position: CEO of NSR, Prime Charter of Vinyl City, Lead Guitarist of The Goolings (former)

Genre: Drum and Bass, Rock

Instrument of Choice: Clock Hands, Guitar

"The age of rock is over. EDM rules this city!"

The CEO and founder of NSR, prime charter of Vinyl City, and the primary antagonist of the game. She's a pompous, snooty woman and a bit of perfectionist when it comes to musical talent.

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• Actor Allusion: Her various PR announcements are modeled after those of her voice actress, Priscilla Patrick, a famous Malaysian television news personality. She even wears similar shades.
• All There in the Manual: Her full name, Tatiana Qwartz, is only revealed through a collectible magazine.
• Ambiguously Human: She looks human, but her skin is chalk-white and looks almost rocky. She also has the ability to become made of burning rock and flame, which also changes her appearance post-Heel–Face Turn.
• And Then What?: She asks this to Mayday before their fight. Sure, after beating her, Bunk Bed Junction will succeed in their musical revolution, but what about the NSR employees that will be out of work afterwards? What about the people who genuinely love EDM over rock music? Despite Tatiana being in the wrong for stifling musical creativity just because Mayday acted uncouth, she does bring up some good points.
• Battle Theme Music: Befitting her final boss status, she gets a grandiose, epic theme that mixes in basic elements of EDM with an ever-present electric guitar, even in the purely-EDM version of the track, which also means the song itself has no definitive "rock" version, unlike the other boss themes in the game. This is all to fit with Tatiana's past as Kul Fyra, as even with her oppressively EDM hold, she's still sulking over her past as leader of the Goolings.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: When she lead The Goolings as Kul Fyra, she did very little in trying to lead them or come together, which resulted in the band constantly disagreeing with each other and leading to the band breaking up, which led to Tatiana deciding to become far more controlling as the CEO of NSR, to the point of viciously shutting down people she disagrees with, and hates Rock & Roll, the genre she pioneered. After the events of the game, she decides to calm down on this approach, not only lifting the rock & roll ban but promising to try and be more inclusive in general.
• Benevolent Boss: Her potentially corruptive influence towards the megastars aside, she does seem to legitimately care about her employees. When fought, one of the things she calls out Mayday for is potentially costing hundreds of NSR workers their jobs. And when the NSR satellite is careening towards NSR Tower, she immediately goes to alert and evacuate all the employees on the premises.
• Berserk Button: Rock in general is this, any mention of it prompting a brutal shutdown. It's because it reminds her of her failure to keep The Goolings together. She gets over it in the end after Mayday and Zuke use the Power of Rock with the NSR artists to stop the NSR satellite.
• Big Bad: The label head of NSR and the one who leads the charge against musical creativity in the city.
• Big Damn Heroes: She arrives with her guitar to combat Kliff's forces so that Mayday and Zuke can stop the falling NSR satellite, and clears out the entire mob with one fiery riff.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: After rejecting rock for so many years, she finally picks her old guitar back up to help Bunk Bed Junction get through Kliff's forces.
• Broken Pedestal: Mayday is heartbroken to find that her idol Kul Fyra has become such a rock-hating Control Freak. Tatiana doesn't have much sympathy for Mayday because of all the chaos Mayday caused in her name. She's also this for Kliff, who reacts even worse when she shows no regrets for turning into the woman she is today. In Mayday's case, it becomes a case of Rebuilt Pedestal after they join forces with NSR to stop the falling NSR satellite, to the extent that she's reduced to Inelegant Blubbering when Tatiana passes her guitar on to her.
• Burning with Anger: Her body literally bursts into flames during the last phase of her boss fight. Considering Kul Fyra was heavily associated with flame iconography, this is also an example of Foreshadowing.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Manages to hold together the troublingly eccentric and uniquely disparate megastars quite well especially given her failure to effectively lead The Goolings, who all played the same genre and were part of the same band. However, as a firm believer of taking responsibility for one's own actions, she doesn't go out of her way to help them with the issues that make them so unstable.
• Cold Ham: Her body language is very expressive, and her put-down of Bunk Bed Junction's audition is fairly calm despite it being obvious she's very angry with Mayday mouthing off to her at that point, only raising her voice to tell her to stop living in the past.
• Control Freak: Her say on what's considered good music is the only thing that matters to her. Any opinions to the contrary are stamped out with extreme prejudice. It's overcompensation for the lack of order that destroyed The Goolings.
• The Corrupter: It's implied that she was this to Eve, exploiting her desire for validation and heartbreak over Zuke leaving her to shape her into The Dragon. Though given that she ultimately is revealed to be a Reasonable Authority Figure, this might have been accidental on her part as she, like Zuke, failed to grasp the full extent of Eve's issues.
• Crazy-Prepared: Has a contingency plan in place to turn the NSR tower into a giant robotic fist in case it was ever the target of a high-speed aerial assault.
• Creepy Long Arms: Her arms and especially her hands are very big and long compared to the rest of her body. They're also quite strong, as she shows in her boss fight and when she uppercuts Kliff to shut him up.
• Cynicism Catalyst: The dissolution of The Goolings, which she blamed on her inability to lead with a firm hand, prompting her to go in the complete opposite direction as CEO of NSR.
• Deadpan Snarker: Hoo boy, when she gets angry, her tongue turns positively acerbic.
• Disproportionate Retribution: She reveals before her boss fight that she banned rock from Vinyl City because of Mayday's outburst during the audition. It was likely a result of Mayday unintentionally opening an old wound by accusing her of never holding a guitar in her life (when Tatiana in reality was the famed rock star Kul Fyra), but it still was a pretty big overreaction.
• Dramatic Irony: Mayday and Zuke want to bring rock & roll back to Vinyl City in honor of Kul Fyra. Tatiana herself turns out to be Kul Fyra, and is annoyed that people idolized that part of her.
• Dual Wielding: She wields a clock hand as a sword during her boss fight, then wields two at once later during the fight.
• Establishing Character Moment: In the tutorial, her optimism notably dips when she hears that Bunk Bed Junction's genre is rock & roll, which indicates she has a bias against the music genre even before she fails the group.
• Evil Is Bigger: Like Eve, her boss battle model is noticeably larger than the one used in cutscenes, presumably to make her and her hitboxes easier to spot.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: After playing one last note on her guitar and creating a burst of fire, Tatiana's head now has a faintly glowing red crystal growing out of her scalp. This symbolizes that some of the spark she had in her youth as Kul Fyra has been restored.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Her hatred of rock ends up causing her more problems than it does help. Besides motivating Bunk Bed Junction to dismantle her operations, she fails to see that including rock could have assisted in resolving the city's energy crisis, as the city is literally powered by music. In the end, she realizes her mistake with restricting the kind of music that should represent the city.
  • Her Control Freak nature also causes this, as prioritizing only EDM because she refuses to accept too much variation ultimately hurt the city in the long run.
• Fiery Redhead: Inverted. Her hair turns red after she plays her guitar again after swearing off rock for so many years. She comes out of the experience a much calmer person, having finally made peace with her past.
• Final Boss: Though there's still some game left after her, she's the last boss B2J faces.
• Flash Step: Via time manipulation.
• Foreshadowing: There are a few signs that Tatiana is just not what she seems.
  • At the NSR audit at the start of the game, Mayday tells Tatiana that she and Zuke are there to perform Rock, which triggers her to ask her to "say it again". Since neither Mayday nor Zuke had personally met Kul Fyra before, when their audit failed Mayday asked Tatiana if she had "Held a guitar before", but that noticeably pissed her off even more and she gives a final vote to disqualify Bunk Bed Junction as well.
  • When Kliff shows Bunk Bed Junction his poster of The Goolings and Kul Fyra, the center figure representing Kul Fyra is largely a featureless, flaming humanoid. However, it does have hair and arms that look exactly like Tatiana's.
  • As her boss battle progresses, Tatiana becomes a person of fire just like Kul Fyra and the backdrop displays a Goolings concert. There's even a picture of Kul Fyra in all her fiery glory shown behind the also flaming Tatiana. Though at that point it's almost more just spelling it out rather than foreshadowing. Tatiana ends up having to actually spell it out to Mayday afterwards, anyways.
  • Another hint to her motives is with Yinu. She has accepted Yinu despite not being an EDM artist and adjusted her neoclassical genre to incorporate dubstep. Despite not being EDM either, Tatiana didn't offer to adjust Bunk Bed Junction's genre to be a hybrid Rock and EDM which means she has a vendetta not against non-EDM, but Rock specifically.
• Freudian Excuse: Her hatred of rock music and her obsession with order all stem from why the Goolings broke up. Back in her days as Kul Fyra, she believed all of her bandmates should have an equal say in matters. However, none of the Goolings could agree on any choice, leading the group to eventually disband. Tatiana then saw that she had been too lenient in her authority and came to believe strict order was necessary in everything from that day forward. Rock music reminds her of her past failure, which spurs her anger.
• Glass Cannon: She's a lot more hands-on in a fight compared to her musicians with all the power and vulnerability those sort of tactics would imply.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: When she goes all out in her boss fight, they glow a solid-bright yellow. After playing her guitar and reclaiming her past as Kul Fyra, her irises acquire a permanent bright red glow.
• Heel–Face Turn: Teaming up with Bunk Bed Junction to stop the falling NSR satellite causes her to realize the mistakes she made in assuming absolute control of Vinyl City, leading her to release NSR's stranglehold over it and lift her ban on rock.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Her time manipulation device is turned against her, forcing her to spend the last phase of her fight on the stage of a Goolings concert.
• Honest Corporate Executive: Yes, really. It's downplayed, as she's a massive Control Freak and has a Bias Steamroller against rock to a self-destructive degree, but she genuinely worries about her employees, maintains the power grid to the best of her ability, and is more than willing to bury the hatchet she has if it means saving lives. She even reigns in her hatred of rock slightly and allows Bunk Bed Junction to finish their audition instead of pragmatically dismissing them, and probably belived her critique of their genre choice to be genuinely constructive.
• Hypocrite:
  • She tells Mayday to "stop living in the past" in trying to bring rock & roll back to Vinyl City. It's later revealed that Tatiana not only held onto her old guitar back when she was Kul Fyra, her Control Freak nature and hatred of rock stem from being unable to move past her failure to keep her band, The Goolings, together. To hammer the point home, her boss battle involves overcoming her ability to rewind the battle, which she'll do continuously if you don't stop her. In essence, she's trying to literally lock you and herself in the past forever. There's also her dismissal of Bunk Bed Junction's revolution as nothing more than Mayday acting out impulsively, while her ban on rock was also an impulsive decision based on Mayday unintentionally opening a personal wound during her outburst in the audition. She eventually realizes this and makes amends.
  • She continues to call rock dead after it's revealed rock and EDM produced the exact same amount of energy, despite getting on Mayday's case about it. She eventually realizes she was wrong.
  • She chastises Mayday and Zuke for their decision to starting their revolution being a reckless act of impulse and not having in consideration the people who like EDM, despite earlier she banned rock out of spite, thinking the two rock zealots would be fine with it.
• I Hate Past Me: She loathes looking back on her time leading The Goolings, only seeing the mistakes she made as a leader that led to the band falling apart.
• Having a Blast: In the final phase of her boss fight, she can charge up and explode in a burst of flames that engulfs the entire arena.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Is repeatedly stabbed in the chest by a metal golden key throughout her boss fight, apparently unlocking memories from her past.
• Improbable Weapon User: Giant metal clock hands that she either swings like swords or uses to summon fireballs.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: "You have no chance against me. For I have time on my side!"
• Iron Lady: Granted, she's more the CEO of a record company than an actual politician, but since said company basically controls Vinyl City, she still fits this trope anyway, what with her stern, no-nonsense demeanor regarding managing the company and city.
• Jerkass Has a Point: When she reveals she’s Kul Fyra, she is quick to dismiss both Mayday and Kliff’s adoration of her past identity and criticism for shiftng to EDM as Tatiana. While harsh with her words she’s right in that she has the right to choose her own path, just because a fan likes your music doesn’t give them the right to dictate your life or demean your life choices. Something that both Mayday and Kliff are guilty of.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Her extreme bias against rock and Control Freak nature aside, she does genuinely want to make Vinyl City a better place and has nothing but respect for the megastars she employs. Notably, she's the only member of the Goolings who bothered sticking around to continue helping Vinyl City. And during Bunkbed Junction's audition in the tutorial, despite not being happy about their choice of genre, she genuinely compliments the meaning behind their name, lets them complete the audition instead of summarily dismissing them, and tries to be polite about her team voting them off the show until Mayday hits a nerve.
• Large and in Charge: She completely towers over Mayday and Zuke.
• Light Is Not Good: Her main colors are white, red, and orange with a bit of magenta thrown in. Her skin is a chalky white, her outfit bears some resemblance to one that a priest would wear, and when she boasts about EDM's superiority at the Lights Up Audition, the "X" behind her resembles a pair of wings, almost like an angel. She's the CEO of NSR, a MegaCorp who crushes opposition by any means necessary. She also becomes made of molten rock and fire in her boss fight.
• Limp and Livid: When she finally jumps down to fight, she's hunched over quite a bit with her arms limply hanging down. Once she starts dual-wielding, her left hand holds her giant clock hand low so much that it's almost dragging against the ground. She's also hit her breaking point having given up entirely on trying to reason with or talk down Bunkbed Junction and choosing instead to simply take them down herself.
• Made of Iron: Getting hit with the Showstopper and engulfed in the explosion of her golden guitar case leaves her none the worse for wear, and she's more angry that she was beaten by the protagonists than anything else.
• Magma Man: The last phase of her boss battle shows her to be this, her skin being nothing more than cooled magma. Additionally, when she performs a chord using her old guitar, her hair crystals explode as a burst of magma forms a new hairstyle.
• Meaningful Appearance: She has a swirl of red in her otherwise white hair. It completely turns red again after she breaks out her guitar to help in the finale, symbolizing the re-ignition of her love for rock.
• Mirror Boss: Compared to every other member of NSR who rely on either fantastical technology or supernatural abilities to fight in unconventional ways, Tatiana's primary means of offense is simply either rushing in with melee attacks or blasting May and Zuke with projectiles from a safe distance. Much like how May and Zuke fight enemies too.
• Mirror Character: She and May are shown to be bullheaded and stubborn about their opinions, just in the opposite direction, and both have a vicious tongue to people who annoy them. They even both punch out a TV in frustration at separate points in the story. Eve even compares Mayday to fire during her pre-battle conversation, something also associated with Tatiana as Kul Fyra.
• Never My Fault: While she has a point in that Bunk Bed Junction's revolution was poorly thought out and that they ultimately caused more harm than good, she also completely refuses to acknowledge that it was her unfairly banning Rock because of her Dark and Troubled Past that caused the energy crisis and Bunk Bed Junction's uprising to begin with. Subverted after the satellite is repelled. She admits to her bias having taken over and actually offers Mayday and Zuke a place in NSR after apologizing.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: While her having fire powers makes sense given her past, her time manipulation abilities are acknowledged but never elaborated on other than being powered by her guitar.
• Not So Above It All: She's fairly stern, serious, and generally tries to maintain a level of professionalism, but will drop said professionalism if you annoy her enough. At one point she even gets sick of Kliff's rambling, briefly ignoring saving the city just to uppercut him.
• Obviously Evil: Compared to the rest of NSR who just look like the extragant performers they are, Tatiana's intimidating stature, somewhat inhuman characteristics, and choice of clothing doesn't give a particularly inviting image. The faces she makes both in-game and in a lot of pictures and animated sequences are also disconcerting ranging from stern looks, to utter disdain, to oddly off-putting smiles.
  • We later find out that she truly isn't that evil at all but in the process of saving Mayday, Zuke, and the city as a whole, she takes on an ignited look with red eyes that's rather hardcore-looking though Mayday seems to like it. The smiles she makes at this point also seem a bit more earnest compared to before.
• Passing the Torch: She gives her guitar to Mayday in the end after Mayday wrecks her own stopping the NSR satellite, hoping that Mayday will succeed in rock where Kul Fyra had previously failed.
• Playing with Fire: She throws out large fireballs and can explode in a fiery blaze during her boss fight. In hindsight, it's not that surprising that she's Kul Fyra herself if she can control fire.
• Power Hair: She sports a short and severe-looking hairdo that highlights her position of authority.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: The head of NSR is someone Mayday assumed would be a harmless businesswoman compared to NSR's artists. She's suitably surprised when Tatiana actually gets up to fight.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Gives a brutal one to Mayday in the intro. As it turns out, there was a very personal reason for that.
  Mayday: What do you know about rock!?! I bet you've never even held a guitar in your life!"
  Tatiana: ...Okay, listen, honey. You think you can just walk in here and drag us all into your silly fantasy? You are so naive to think that rock is still relevant. Stop living in the past! There's only one music in demand right now, and that is... EDM! The age of rock is over. EDM rules this city!
  • This trend also continues in her final battle, where she points out the holes in Mayday's revolution and addresses that she has no desire to be Kul Fyra anymore.
  • She also gives one to Kliff when he shows up after the final battle.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Downplayed given her vendetta against rock and Control Freak tendencies, but she is ultimately this. When the NSR satellite starts careening towards NSR Tower, threatening everyone in Vinyl City in the process, she doesn't hesitate to work with Mayday and Zuke to put a stop to it. She also seems to give each Megastar quite a bit of leeway in how they decide to operate their districts considering the major distinctions between them. And she did at least attempt to be polite with Bunk Bed Junction during the intro when she and the Megastars voted to reject them, only raising her voice once Mayday pushed her buttons.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Inverted. Her eyes turn red after she plays her guitar again, signifying the return of her love for rock. She becomes a lot more level-headed and friendlier afterwards.
• Retired Badass: She used to be a great musician and is shown to be powerful enough to destroy an entire army of robots with one chord...but she's largely retired from music to become a CEO. She's still powerful enough to be the Final Boss. This is why she gives Mayday her guitar: while her love of rock has been reignited, she's retired and thus wants her to act on it instead.
• Rule of Symbolism: After her Heel–Face Turn, her hair more closely resembles her Kul Fyra hairstyle and her eyes are still red, which indicates that she's become at peace with herself over her past.
  • A lot of her abilities in her boss battle involve warping time to the past, up to and including undoing the damage the player did to her if the player doesn't stop her in time by attacking the clock arena's power source which is revealed to be her old guitar, while the arena's background is that of a Goolings concert. In the end, to defeat Tatiana, you have to get over her past literally.
• Self-Made Man: Built NSR from the ground up after reinventing herself as a businesswoman.
• Sell-Out: Subverted. Kliff thinks she's one, but in fact she just lost faith in rock as a whole after she felt there was no way to focus it. She hasn't actually lost her talent, she's just into EDM these days.
• Signing Off Catchphrase: When Tatiana finishes her public announcements to Vinyl City, she always ends it with the same phrase.
  Tatiana: Order. Order leads to progress in Vinyl City. That is all. Have a pleasant evening.
• Sinister Shades: Wears a pair of small, round, magenta sunglasses. They don't cover her eyes but they do enhance her pompous looks of disdain. She loses them after rediscovering her love of Rock.
• Sore Loser: She doesn't take getting defeated very well, and is argumentative and petty for the denouement of her boss fight until Kliff steps in.
• Stop Worshipping Me: She has No Sympathy for those who idolized Kul Fyra because she never wished to be idolized in the first place.
• Take Up My Sword: She tosses her old guitar to Mayday at the end of the game to replace her broken one and to help her break out of her guilt-induced Heroic BSoD.
  Tatiana: My love for Rock may have returned but my performing days are behind me. Someone else needs to take that mantle.
  Mayday: No, Tatiana! I can't! I don't deserve-!
  Tatiana: Mayday. You are a performer. Where I have failed, I want you to go beyond. Carry on the journey for me. Long live rock!
• Technicolor Eyes: Pink eyes, the same as Mayday. They change to red after Tatiana regains her love for rock.
• Time Master: In her boss fight, she manipulates time to teleport around the arena. At times, she'll do miniature timewarps which will teleport both her and the player to previous moments. When she retreats to the upper platform, she'll retcon entire phases of the battle including the damage done to her if the player doesn't do enough damage to the clock arena's power source in time, with the clock arena's ticking audibly getting louder as time runs out. Appropriately, her weapons during the battle are giant clock hands.
• Time Stands Still: In later phases, she starts creating localized time bubbles that can freeze the player if they're caught in them.
• Tragic Keepsake: While she's done everything in her power to cut ties with her past as Kul Fyra, she's kept her guitar around in a protective gold "crown". Hitting its container enough times is the only way to get her angry enough to leap down from her podium to fight Mayday and Zuke directly.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • There's no denying that Tatiana is at fault for most of the problems in the game due to her negative bias against rock music keeping her from seeing Bunk Bed Junction's genuine talent that could've greatly helped in solving Vinyl City's energy crisis. Upon being confronted in her office by the duo at the game's climax, however, she makes several sensible callouts towards Mayday in how her and Zuke's actions against her company were really not that well planned out since their music revolution involved ruining the careers of the genuinely talented musicians of NSR, possibly putting hundreds of NSR employees out of work, and not bothering to think about how she would run the city upon taking it over nor the backlash she would get from people who genuinely loved EDM, who wouldn't take too kindly to the defeat of the megastars.
  • On a lesser note, while it was rather dickish for her to go as far as to outright ban rock musicians from performing in Vinyl City, she correctly points out that Mayday did herself no favors when she reacted so negatively to being rejected during her and Zuke's audition. Had this been a more realistic setting, this level of unprofessionalism on Mayday's part would not give Bunk Bed Junction a good rep, and her subsequent actions against NSR throughout the game simply for being rejected would get her and Zuke blacklisted in the music industry. That said, she was being far from professional herself at the time.
• Visual Pun:
  • Her ashy white skin and hair in the present contrasts with her fire elemental appearance as Kul Fyra. She's burnt out.
  • Her Christmas Edition skin gives her a resemblance to The Snow Queen, making her a literal Ice Queen.
• Voice of the Legion: During the last phase of her boss fight, after she literally ignites with rage.
• Walking Spoiler: Everything during and after the boss battle with her illuminates a lot about her prior actions.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: She legitimately believes that stricter control will lead to a better city down the line, having seen an example of pure democracy fail with her old band. However, she eventually realizes that she was being too controlling, to the detriment of the very citizens she wanted to help.
• What the Hell, Hero?: All of her dialogue before and during her boss fight consists of her calling out Bunk Bed Junction for upending the order NSR brought.
  • She also calls them out for insulting the other members of NSR, after Mayday calls them talentless for being EDM composers. This also includes a 9 year old prodigy. Needless to say this doesn’t endear them to Tatiana.
• Willfully Weak: She keeps her guitar inside her crown to give her Time Master powers...but the one time we see her actually use it to directly attack with music, she obliterates an entire army with a single chord, making it clear using it this way was actually weakening her. She fights this way due to her feelings about her past self.
• Younger Than They Look: Looks like she's in her sixties with her mostly grey hair and her cracked, chalky skin, but she's actually only 48.

Megastars

NSR's top talented artists who each control a district in Vinyl City, and are major antagonists and bosses in the game.

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In General

• Allegorical Character: Each of NSR's megastars represents a dark aspect of the music industry.
  • DJ Subatomic Supernova represents a star's ego getting too big and thinking they're superior, as shown that he's only ranked 5th out of the Megastars, calls May and Zuke irrelevant and doesn't even care what happens to his own company. For all his "enlightenment speeches," he's nothing but a sell-out and the embodiment of Small Name, Big Ego. According to the developers, his last phase of being a black hole represents him being eaten by his own ego.
  • Sayu is literally a virtual idol, controlled by a team of people who animate and program her. The last phase of her fight has the creators have a breakdown and mess-up while trying to evolve again, causing the idol's appearance to glitch out and turn into a reverse mermaid. Though capable of some great programming and musical feats, they're also all naive and impressionable nerds implied to be college kids whose talents are used by NSR to have the idol Sayu be a figurehead for their products.
  • Yinu is a talented child whose giant, violent Stage Mom / Mama Bear pulls the strings of her performance. As the fight rages on, the mother gets more and more involved, and eventually fights you all by herself with Yinu's presence minimal at best. Tellingly, you don't harm Yinu directly at all during the entire fight, with your attacks targeted at her instead severing the literal puppet strings connecting her to her mother. It also represents how fame can strain the relationship between mother and child.
  • 1010 satirizes over-produced boy bands as identical, synchronized, autotuned androids only superficially distinguished by color and hairstyle. Neon J. can also replace any of the band members that fall in combat with a machine, making them a literal manufactured band.
  • Finally, Eve represents "tortured genius" artists who are ultimately taken advantage of for their genuine talent, while little to no attention is given to any underlying issues the artist might be dealing with (in Eve's case, her crippling insecurity regarding her unique worldview and the pain of Zuke leaving her).
• Anti-Villain: While a majority of NSR's artists are fairly arrogant, they're also doing their part to keep power coming to the city, making them a necessity to keeping the city powered, which makes it difficult to see any of them as truly evil, though they're also complicit in enforcing Tatiana's restrictive nature regarding musical creativity. By the end, they're edging out of this after Tatiana decides to reform the company to be more open.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Being or becoming huge is a common trait shared among their boss fights. They all (with the exception of 1010) briefly become giants during the finale when their districts are returned to them. For some reason.
• Book Ends: The first (DJ Subatomic Supernova) and last (Eve) megastars the protagonists face are both intensely egotistical geniuses who actively warp the battlefield around them in combat.
• Easily Forgiven: They don't seem to hold any grudges against Bunk Bed Junction for crashing their concerts post-Heel–Face Turn. Justified, as they weren't completely in the right either, being complicit with and enforcing NSR's unjust policies. But also Played for Drama, as Mayday is racked with guilt and breaks down at being forgiven despite all she's done.
• Heel–Face Turn: They all help Bunk Bed Junction to repel the NSR satellite and later join Tatiana in welcoming rock and other genres back into Vinyl City.
• Leitmotif: Each of them who the heroes' fight plays a genre of music they represent outside EDM.
• Light Is Not Good: Their work often feature a lot of bright colors and the artists are themed after conventionally peaceful concepts (such as space, the ocean, and flower gardens), but work for NSR, a restrictive MegaCorp who maintains their grip on the city through shady means.
• Multinational Team: Tatiana claims that her stars come from all over the world.
• Open Secret: The creative teams behind Sayu and 1010 don't set out to deceive audiences as to how "real" their stars are in so much as they manage them like any firm would a virtual celebrity; the pretending is part of their entertainment value. Unfortunately, some of the more impressionable portions of their fanbases fail to read the disclaimer.
• Replacement Goldfish: It's implied that Tatiana sees them as collective replacement for the Goolings, and even has a massive stained glass mural featuring each member in her office.
• Sinister Silhouettes: While acting as judges for Lights Up auditions, they're all cast in shadow, even when Tatiana makes herself visible.
• The Sixth Ranger: The stained glass murals in Tatiana's office of the group reveals there was a sixth megastar (the farthest right one), but he doesn't appear in the game proper. His mural does get a Christmas makeover like the others in the Christmas edition, though.
• Villains With Good Publicity: While they're affiliated with NSR and are bad guys by default, they seem to be genuinely talented at their craft and earned their place at the top, allowing them to accrue and maintain their popularity.

DJ Subatomic Supernova

DJ Subatomic Supernova

^{Click here to see his album cover}

Voiced by: Mohamad "Uncle" Ali Imran Bin Darus (EN), Éric LeGrand (FR), Enrique Fiestas (SP), Tomohisa Hashizume (JP)

Gender: Male

Age: 41

Position: Charter of Cast Tech District

Genre: Disco Stellarum

Instrument of Choice: Orbital DJ-9000

Place of Concert: Club Planetarium

"Don't you know who I am? I... am... DJ Subatomic Supernova! My music will reach the furthest corners of the galaxy. What have you done today? Simpletons!"

A space-themed megastar DJ and the charter of the Cast Tech District. Subatomic who will settle for nothing less than his music reaching the farthest corners of the galaxy, partnering with NSR as a means to do it. He represents a form of disco, and his concert is at Club Planetarium. He's the very first NSR artist and boss to face off against Bunk Bed Junction.

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• A God Am I: A parody of it. In his audio tapes, he believes he is the only one fit to lead humanity, and he comes up with a scheme that will allow him to last an eternity, hijacking NSR's satellite to do so and spreading his "gospel" to the stars. Such lofty goals would fit the main villain of an anime or an RPG that was this trope, except he's really just referring to letting his music broadcast on an endless loop in space. Fitting for a character who's basically named Small Name, Big Ego.
• Alliterative Name: Subatomic Supernova.
• Ambiguously Human: His appearance makes it difficult to tell whether he's a regular human or not, especially since 1010 and Neon J. establish that robots and cyborgs exist in this world. The only really human looking things about him are his legs, which he hides most of the time behind his DJ booth, and his hands, which are only visible in his Christmas attire.
• Atrocious Alias: For as much as he likes to associate himself with the vastness of the universe (and for as awesome as it may sound), his moniker effectively means DJ "really-small supernova".
• Bad Santa: His Christmas Update skin has him looking like one. Concept art for the Christmas Update shows that not only was his Santa Claus costume supposed to come with a beard, but also that his other potential costume choices would've ranged from creatures common to Christmas lore like reindeer and Christmas fairies to more infamous figures like Krampus, Ebenezer Scrooge and even the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
• Badass Teacher: Was a college professor before becoming a DJ, and still uses his knowledge of astronomy as a part of his image. Appropriately enough, he's a Warm-Up Boss meant to teach you the mechanics of the game.
• Battle Theme Music: A smooth, suave beat with clearer elements of classic Disco amidst the electronic beats, meant to invoke a "cosmic" feel.
• Bigger Is Better: Seems to have an obsession with big numbers. DJ Subatomic Supernova is always going on about "millions" or "billions" or "thousands" of whatever, whether people or his fans or stars or planets, presumably because he's projecting his own feelings of insignificance and wants to make himself appear bigger by making his listeners feel smaller. Just how pathetic that is is exemplified when he's defeated, as his final audible words upon flying off into the sky are "but the millions and the billions and the trillions -!..."
• Boss-Only Level: His boss fight happens immediately after the game's tutorial/opening, with no level leading up to it.
• Brick Joke: Calls B2J as relevant as Pluto, referring to them as Plutonians. Mayday's a bit confused as to what this means, but he's basically calling them irrelevant. When B2J bring back control to the megastars in the finale, DJ Subatomic Supernova, in a moment of gratitude, says "You Plutonians are not so bad after all."
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: When Mayday and Zuke confront him, he has no idea who they even are, despite voting against them in their audition only a few hours ago.
• Cool Chair: His couch is also used as his DJ table.
• Cool Helmet: Much like Daft Punk, Deadmau5 or Marshmello, he's a DJ known for wearing a helmet on stage.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: The very final phase of his boss fight is rather imposing, but he loses access to most of his attacks and can only spam a single one that can be hit back at him.
• Creepy Long Arms: As his helmet gets more damaged, his physical form begins to bend all out of shape. Most notably his arms becoming extremely long and flat, allowing him to spin his records more effectively.
• The Faceless: He's never actually shown without his helmet. One of the pictures in the credits even shows him in a salon chair getting his hair done, which is presumably a wig he's wearing on top of the helmet.
• Fling a Light into the Future: Possibly one of the most narcissistic examples of this trope as he sneaks in a huge batch of his personal drones onto the NSR satellite so that when it launches into space, they'll detach and drift off into the cosmos to transmit music throughout the stars. His music.
• Hates the Job, Loves the Limelight: While he doesn't hate making his music (it's his music after all), being a headliner for NSR isn't all that appealing for him as he's aware that he'll likely only be in vogue for a generation or two. Rather, he's more focused on creating a legacy for himself, using his fame as a platform to spread his egocentric academic ideals and the corporation's resources to do such.
• Hidden Depths: He seems to know a bit of rocket science when lambasting a worker on the phone about the NSR satellite launching. Turns out he was an astrophysics professor before being inspired to combine his passion for astronomy and music.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The planets that he attacks you with in the second phase of his fight can be launched back at him using the speed pad that Zuke creates with his transformation. You even get an achievement for doing it the first time.
• Honest John's Dealership: His "One Night Only!" rave at the city's observatory has been going on for about three years by the time the story starts, with him not even bothering to change the poster and taking advantage of the loose constraints of his promo to duck out of actually performing concerts sometimes.
  "Exclusive for one night only! DJ Subatomic Supernova's underground rave!" Puh-lease. They've been performing that gig for over 3 years now.
• Hypocrite: He talks about everyone else as if they're insignificant and will amount to nothing, but it's heavily implied that he's struggling with his own insignificance in the grand scheme of the universe, and uses the NSR satellite launch to send drones out to the galaxy so that even long after he's gone, his music will resonate through the cosmos.
• Ignored Epiphany: Returned to his hometown in the country after his academic career fell through. Without the noise and pollutants of the city, he was able to gaze up into the clear night sky, whereupon he felt a sense of tranquility when it reminded him of how small he was in the vastness of the universe, which in turn inspired him to create music. The fame that his tracks won for him then turned the DJ into a vain snob who became obsessed with showing the world how big he was.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes: The solar system depicted on his hoodie actually moves.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: In the ending montage, Tatiana lists "self-importance" as his reason for playing music. His constant proclaiming that his music will reach the ends of the universe, and his later claim that Bunk Bed Junction's endeavors mean nothing compared to all the stars and planets in the universe, comes off as him attempting to maintain his oversized sense of self more than anything else. Tellingly, as he says the latter comment, he begins to be metaphorically swallowed by his ego. Some recordings you can unlock reveal that before he made it big as a musician, he bored people to tears with his very long-winded lectures, indicating that his fame was just a way to get people to actually listen to what he had to say for once. Even after that, he states he still feels empty because his music will "only" be in-vogue for a few generations. Ultimately his goal of making his music ring out for eternity likely comes from a fear of being as inconsequential as what he accuses everyone else of being.
• Insufferable Genius: He speaks like Carl Sagan about the vastness of the cosmos, but applies it to the context of dismissing the significance of everyone except him. The reason he seemed to get into music in the first place was because it was the only way he could get people to listen to his incredibly long-winded lectures on the subject.
• Jerkass: He's an all-around egotistical jerk who treats everyone around him with contempt.
• Kiai: The Japanese dub has him let out comically overblown screeches when he attacks or is attacked.
• Large and in Charge: He's a massive Top-Heavy Guy who's the Charter of the Cast Tech District, basically putting him in charge of the whole place.
• Lazy Bum: Unlike those of the other bosses, the protagonists don't really interrupt his concert as he's just lounging about and snacking while his audience stands around waiting for him to play the music they paid to listen to.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Much of the weirdness of his boss fight can be chalked up to him manipulating the props of the planetarium with special effects. Then his head explodes and becomes a black hole.
• Mean Boss: He's introduced directly insulting the intelligence of one of NSR's workers over the phone before angrily demanding another off-screen one fetch him a new ice cream bar just because the one he's currently eating is starting to get runny.
• Meaningful Name: A guy named "Subatomic Supernova" acts like a Small Name, Big Ego White-Dwarf Starlet.
  • His name also hints at his goals and hypocritical self-image; while recognizing that as a person he is miniscule on the cosmic scale, he thinks of himself as a star sending music into space, sure to get mankind noticed across the universe... like a bright, massive explosion. (His self-importance comes in when you put the words together and realize what a small explosion that would be.)
• Narcissist: He believes that because of how electromagnetic waves work, his music will reverberate across the entire universe even though all music transmitted by that medium would. His boss fight reflects this by him being in the center while controlling everything around him.
• New Era Speech: His Trailer is an in-universe NSR commercial where he gives a speech about music.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: A DJ playing disco-inspired music who's never, ever seen without his helmet? Thomas or Guy-Man?
• Non-Human Head: He appears to have human skin based on his exposed legs, while a shot from the credits showing him without his helmet seems to show that the miniature black hole is his actual head.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: According to himself, NSR's goals mean less to him compared to letting his music be known.
  Mayday: NSR's dominance over Vinyl City ends today!
  DJ Subatomic Supernova: NSR? Maybe. My music? Highly unlikely.
• Overly Long Name: None of the other NSR bosses (except Tatiana) have names with more than five letters. Compare that to this guy, whose name is three whole words.
• Pants-Free: The top half of his body is completely covered up in a space-themed outfit, but on the lower half, he's just got some sneakers and either a pair of short-shorts or boxers, which expose his fleshy, hairy legs. However, they aren't visible most of the time since he's behind a DJ booth.
• Pet the Dog: When Mayday and Zuke rescind control of their district to him, he says that maybe they aren't that bad (albeit still calling them "Plutonians"), which is the closest he gets to giving a compliment.
• Rule of Symbolism: His outfit and battlefield both have a "planets orbiting a star" motif with him in the center which fits his personality, taken further when he's critically injured and his helmet is revealed to contain an Unrealistic Black Hole. The developers describe the latter event as him being swallowed by his own ego.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Downplayed. When Mayday and Zuke burst into his concert, his startled shout sounds an awful lot like Mickey Mouse.
• Small Name, Big Ego: He's got the ego the size of a galaxy, but for all his grandiose posturing, he's fairly weak compared to the rest of NSR's top talent, being the first boss of the game and being at the lowest on the charts.
• Starter Villain: He's the first boss of the game, and is fought directly after the game's tutorial fight. His own boss fight serves as a tutorial on how to tackle the rest of the bosses, teaching the player about parrying and dodging telegraphed attacks.
• Stationary Boss: Stays in the center throughout the whole boss fight.
• Tiny-Headed Behemoth: His head is positively tiny compared to the rest of his body.
• Top-Heavy Guy: He has a large, wide upper torso and short, hairy legs.
• Token Evil Teammate: Most of the megastars have at least one positive or sympathetic quality to them. DJ Subatomic Supernova is just a condescending jerk who is loyal to no one but himself; Tatiana even aptly lists "self-importance" as his reason for playing music. His backstory revealed through unlockable tape recordings also paint him as egocentric from the start rather than give his character a tragic element (unless you count his persistent need to be acknowledged pitiable). Though it's downplayed in that he doesn't have particularly destructive intentions.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: His first tape recording set during his days as a professor shows DJ Subatomic Supernova was quite self-centered from the start, but he seemed genuinely grateful for the mere 3 people who attended his lecture, and the janitor; as a famous DJ with plenty of audience numbers he no longer expresses gratitude towards anyone, his ego has inflated to uncharted levels.
• A Twinkle in the Sky: What befalls him after his defeat, which is fitting considering his theme.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Left the Cast Tech district as a disgruntled academics professor, and returned to it as an NSR megastar who proceeded to turn what was once a center of learning into an enormous monument to himself.
• Unexplained Recovery: He somehow comes back after his district is restored despite getting blown out into the stratosphere at the end of his boss battle. A news broadcast after the battle even shows him flailing helplessly as he flies past his own satellite that's currently in orbit. Maybe his base of operations has a teleporter?
• Vague Age: Unlike the other megastars, his age isn't mentioned, though his mature-sounding voice and past as a college professor imply that he may be on the older side.
  • Now averted. The official NSR Twitter account shared his unused briefing profile, confirming him to be 41 years old.
• Villainous Breakdown: He steadily starts to lose his composure over the course of the fight until he's just screaming wildly about how Mayday and Zuke are insignificant compared to him and his music. He then suffers a literal breakdown when his head explodes and turns into a black hole.
• Warm-Up Boss: His attacks are generally slow and incredibly telegraphed, giving the player ample time to react. Less so on Crazy Mode where his attacks are far quicker and more numerous. The final segment of his fight also works as a tutorial for parrying, since that is the only way the player can damage him.
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Asks this question almost verbatim in his introductory cutscene.
  DJ Subatomic Supernova: Great. What else could possibly go wrong today?
  (Mayday kicks open the door to the planetarium, DJSS lets out a comically high-pitched shout)

Sayu

Sayu/Tila (voice), Remi (artist), Dodo (motion actor), and Sofa (editor)

^{Click here to see her album cover}

^{Click here to see her creative team} Clockwise from left: Tila, Sofa, Dodo, and Remi

Voiced by: Nikki Simmons (EN), Anaïs Delva (FR), Christina Rosmini (SP), Ai Yamamoto (JP)

Sayu's creators voiced by: Ellie A.K.A. SillieJellie (Tila), Ben Fong (Remi), Danish Mak Mun Choon (Dodo), Aidi G.V. (Sofa)

Gender: Female

Age: 16

Position: Charter of Akusuka District

Genre: Cutecore

Instrument of Choice: Pyun Pyun Trident

Place of Concert: Kura Kura Stream Hub

"Seems like I have no choice but to defeat you with the power of... Love Love Sayu Pyuu~n!"

A bubbly, mermaid-like megastar digital idol and the charter of the Akusuka District who represents cutecore. She was designed by four kids. Her concert is located in the Kura Kura Stream Hub.

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• Art Evolution: An In-Universe example with the collectibles earned from her battle. The first is a piece of Sayu fan art created by her soon-to-be voice actress Tila, which is fairly crude and mostly seems to serve as a way for her to live out her fantasy of confessing to her crush at school. This version of Sayu is also depicted as a human and not a mermaid. The second is a drawing of Sayu by her creator and illustrator, Remi, which is obviously leagues above Tila's work, but also features a significantly different design for Sayu. The third and final collectible is another drawing by Tila, featuring the finalized design of Sayu along with her, Remi, Dodo and Sofa celebrating getting signed by NSR. While still not as good as Remi's work, she has vastly improved in the three years between her first drawing and this one.
• Ascended Fanboy: Tila was originally a fan of Sayu back when she was a video game character in the in-universe Doki Doki Mermaid Club visual novel. After making an AMV featuring a piece of official art with herself providing the vocals and arranging the music, she felt self-conscious when her humble project received thousands of views, and approached Remi, Sayu's creator, to apologize for using his illustration without permission, believing that the only reason anyone enjoyed her video was because they were fooled into thinking it was an official promotion. Rather than get angry, Remi was impressed when he heard that Tila was the one who created the track she used to accompany the drawing, and offered to collaborate with her for future projects.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Attacking the icon representing her animation is what actually damages her health bar, with the others needing to be attacked first to make the animation icon vulnerable.
• Background Boss: She cannot be harmed directly due to being a hologram or so it seems. Instead, the player has to attack icons representing the four people controlling Sayu's program to defeat her. The only direct hit you land on her throughout the entire fight is the Showstopper.
• Battle Theme Music: A Cutecore song actually sung by Sayu herself, where every lyric is about The Power of Love and making ocean-themed analogies tying back to that theme. As the fight goes on, it becomes steadily more energized and aggressive to the point the singing itself is pretty much turned into Sayu screaming the lyrics in rage. At the final phase and after Sayu's form is horrifically changed, the beat is at its most forcedly-happy while the vocals are audibly glitching and fading in and out.
• Beware the Silly Ones: She's a bubbly and cheerful girl who behaves in a rather spacey manner. She's also the first to demonstrate to Bunk Bed Junction just how powerful and complex EDM can truly be.
• Bland-Name Product: Advertises both a noodle snack simple branded as "Shellfish" and a wifi provider that doesn't even get a name.
• Break the Cutie: After destroying the character design barrier, Sayu's creators start to panic, causing Sayu in turn to start glitching out and become angry while her equally cute team despair and rage.
• Breakout Character: Originally one of the five heroines of the in-universe Doki Doki Mermaid Club video game, Sayu managed to become a successful solo act.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Dodo uses a homemade mocap suit and carries around a prop katana, but his motion capture work with Sayu is rather expressive and sharp.
• Cast as a Mask: Sayu and her in-universe voice actress (Tila) are voiced by different real-life voice actresses.
• Catchphrase: "Love Love Sayu Pyun!~"
• Collective Identity: Sayu is really four college age kids and their idol program.
• Cute Giant: A towering mermaid idol who's considered very cute.
• Cuteness Proximity: Despite Sayu being the opposition, Mayday has this reaction to her appearance. She's utterly horrified when a programming error causes Sayu's appearance to become significantly less flattering, to the extent that she even asks for the creative group behind her to never allow Sayu to look like that again.
• Dual Age Modes: As the fight progresses, she takes on larger, taller more mature looking forms. The vocals on her battle theme seem to reflect this with certain verses alternating between her singing in a youthful, cutesy voice and then a deeper, older sounding one.
• Ear Worm: One of Sayu's catchphrases gets stuck in Mayday's head.
  Sayu: One, two, three, peaaaaaace!~
  Mayday: One, two, three, peaaaaace!
  Zuke: May!
  Mayday: ...What's happening to me?!
• Exotic Eye Designs: She has heart-shaped irises.
• Eyes Always Shut: Even when cowering in fear of an encroaching Mayday, Remi's eyes remain shut.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: When Sayu's editor shows up, he darkens the arena. As in, he literally pulls the brightness setting from your computer up and sets it to max darkness, dimming the whole screen. His attacks also involve him using the mouse cursor to strike Bunk Bed Junction.
• Friendly Enemy: Sayu is nothing but friendly to Bunk Bed Junction, her Mood-Swinger personality really due to Tila yelling at her teammates, and Mayday becomes fond of her. At the end of her boss fight, Mayday tells the four behind her they're genuinely talented and to keep at it - just please do not do the reverse mermaid thing again.
• Fun Size: A much smaller version of Sayu appears at the very end of the game alongside the rest of the NSR megastars. It's unclear whether she's some kind of hologram or a Mini-Mecha.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: On harder difficulties, Sayu will have access to Remi and Sofa's art and "editing" attacks much earlier when they ought to only appear when that particular member of her creative team is introduced.
• Geek Physiques: None of Sayu's team are exactly the athletic types. Tila and Remi are both extremely short and have large glasses, Dodo is lanky and blue-skinned, and Sofa is outright obese and has buck teeth.
• G.I.R.L.: Only one member of the creative team behind Sayu is female. Even her mocap model is a guy.
• Girliness Upgrade: Subverted in that her appearance was already girly to begin with, but as her boss battle goes on, Remi the illustrator changes her appearance. She begins the fight with short hair and a petite frame, but each phase her hair grows longer and her body becomes taller and more curvy. However, this all backfires in the final phase when she becomes a reverse mermaid, though she's still about as girly-looking as a fish with human legs can get.
• Humble Beginnings: In-Universe, this was her origin. Tila was a fan of the character Sayu from a video game, and she ended up using Remi's art of a mermaid for the cover of her song. Remi liked Tila's song and they collabed together. Along the way, Dodo and Sofa also teamed up with them, and their virtual idol Sayu was so popular that they were scouted by NSR for their viral creation and eagerly took it as their big break.
• Idiot Hair: She's got a prominent strand sticking out of her head. It's still there when she turns into a reverse mermaid. Interestingly, her artist sports a similar strand on his head.
• Idol Singer: Her overall design, her bubbly character, her district's name, and her genre as an NSR artist invoke this.
• In the Hood: Tila wears a hand-covering hoodie.
• Instrumental Weapon: In her Christmas Edition makeover, she counts as one to her production team, due to her fish-tailed lower half being replaced with a Christmas bell. Naturally, this carries over into her reverse mermaid form as well, with a Christmas bell as the body.
• Kid-Appeal Character: In-Universe, according to her description briefing and Zuke, she's really popular with younger children.
• Love Freak: As she puts it in her banter during the fight, her attacks are her way of showing the power of her love.
• The Man Behind the Curtain: Sayu's not exactly intimidating outside of her queen form, but she is quite large and impressive-looking. Behind all of her animation and special effects, the real idol is actually just a scrawny, nerdy-looking teenage girl with large glasses and baggy clothes, with the mermaid idol's graphics being provided by three similarly nerdy-looking boys.
• Mecha: Though she initially seems like a holographic character, it's revealed after her defeat that she's actually a machine controlled from within by four college-age looking kids.
• Mood-Swinger: Sayu starts switching between her normal bubbly personality and a much more overtly angry one when the team controlling her devolves into in-fighting.
• Nerd Glasses: Three out of the four members of the team wear glasses, the exception being Dodo. In terms of nerdiness, though, Sofa takes the cake, with his big round anime-style swirly glasses.
• No Name Given: The names of the members of Sayu's creative team are not mentioned in the actual fight, although Kliff's briefing description for Sayu does name them (Tila, Remi, Dodo, and Sofa as the voice, artist, motion actor, and editor respectively).
• One-Winged Angel: Destroying her program the first time causes her to change appearances to that of a queen, complete with longer hair and dress. In the final stretch, she tries this again, but Sayu's program glitches out, causing her to degenerate into a reverse mermaid of sorts, with a fish head and torso but human legs, much to Mayday's horror.
• Only Sane Man: She and her creative team have almost no baggage compared to the other NSR artists. Theirs is a rather uplifting tale about four friends joining forces to construct a work of art, and sticking together once their creation attained popularity. They also seem to be the only of the NSR artists to be genuinely happy with no regrets. Granted, it hits a speed-bump when a pair of disgruntled, indie rockers crash one of their concerts and thrash them around. But even then, Mayday doesn't actually hurt them, nor actually damage their ability to keep Sayu running as they do to Yinu and Neon J.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: She's a virtual idol who looks like a mermaid, swimming in the electronic sea. Her last phase seems to reference a Cryptid called a reverse mermaid, something that Mayday dislikes.
• The Power of Love: She certainly believes in this. She asks why hate when people could love, saying that love is the most powerful power in the world. Her boss theme has lyrics that are all about love mixed with a lot of sea puns.
• Power Makes Your Hair Grow: Sayu's hair grows longer with every upgrade she receives during the fight, except for the last phase.
• Prongs of Poseidon: Starts wielding a trident after her first phase. The prongs of her trident are modeled after the USB symbol, adding another mix of underwater and virtual to her character.
• Pungeon Master: Her boss banter has her making numerous sea puns. Several puns she can do during her fight are:
  "Please take me sea-riously!"
  "Water you doing?"
  "The ocean is making you salty!"
  "Please hear my song! It's fin-tastic!"
• Punny Name: The names of her creative team, Tila, Remi, Dodo, and Sofa, comprise the syllables used for music notes (Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do).
• Shipper on Deck: It's unknown if this is just her being The Gadfly, but she claims that she's as real as the love Mayday and Zuke have for each other. Mayday and Zuke are quick to try to refute this.
• Shout-Out: Sometimes during her boss fight, she'll declare "In the name of love, I'll punish you!"
• Sirens Are Mermaids: She invokes this, being a mermaid-themed pop idol.
• Stealth Pun: While most of her underwater puns are pretty blatant, there's one that's a bit more subtle. There are three versions of her boss theme, being the regular EDM version, the rock version that plays when B2J are close to victory, and a third version which is more mellow. That third version is, appropriately enough, a vaporwave remix of the track, which plays when icons for the phase are destroyed.
• The Smurfette Principle: The only member of her creative team that's a girl is Tila, her voice actor.
• "Super Sentai" Stance: Her creative team make a pose like this before her final phase, with their symbols floating behind them.
• This Loser Is You: Sayu is animated, programmed, and voiced by a group of college nerds. The voice is a mousy-looking girl with round glasses, the artist is short and possesses a prominent pair of Nerd Glasses, the motioner is lanky and has a prop sword, the editor an obese kid with an umbrella on his head, and when they try to have Sayu evolve again, they take a Super Sentai stance, complete with all of their symbols appearing behind them.
• Tron Lines: She gains these along with a more digitized voice when the brightness of her stage is turned down by her editor.
• T-Word Euphemism: More like the R word, but according to Zuke, in Akusuka, it's taboo to point out that Sayu's not real.
• Unusual Eyebrows: They're made from bubbles.
• Verbal Tic: As expected from a Japanese pop-culture-inspired digital idol, "pyun!", as well as an excited "ehek!" As a reverse mermaid, her Verbal Tic becomes a less flattering "gwaaah!"
• Villainous Breakdown: After destroying Sayu's code again, the editor gets pissed and tries to take over the animator's board while the voice and animator try prying him off and the motioner panics in the background. This causes Sayu to get pissed herself and tries to get them to leave. In the last phase, they're all crying pathetically before the animator motivates them for one last hurrah.
• Virtual Celebrity: Sayu is shown to be a digital persona controlled by a creative group and is noted to be popular on the internet.
• The Voiceless: Of her creative team, the only one shown speaking is Tila the voice actress, and even then only as Sayu rather than as herself. The rest of the time, the group, including Tila, only perform unintelligible grunting.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Once she finally gets involved with the fight, her attack patterns prove to be a lot more unpredictable compared to DJ Subatomic Supernova, especially when coupled with the persistent environmental hazards of her arena. Her attacks only become even more erratic after her program glitches out and the music with it.
• Wingding Eyes: During a commercial for a snackfood, Sayu's eyes turn to arrows(><) as she gives her Catchphrase. During the battle when damaged enough, Sayu slumps forward with two X's for eyes.
• Your Size May Vary: She's a giant during her boss fight, but human-sized during the game's intro and ending.

Yinu

Yinu

^{Click here to see her album cover}

Voiced by: Damia Huda (EN), Lola Nédélian (FR), Christina Rosmini (SP), Eri Saita (JP)

Gender: Female

Age: 9

Position: Charter of Natura District

Genre: Neoclassical

Instrument of Choice: White Bloom Pianoforte

Place of Concert: Natura Concert Hall

"Stay away from my piano!"

This little girl megastar child pianist prodigy, known as the "Golden Maestro of Vinyl City", and the charter of the Natura District who represents neoclassical music. Her concert is located in the Natura Concert Hall.

---

• Adaptational Personality Change: In the sense that the initial demo pitch and the final game could be considered separate. In the first demo, when she played her piano solo to show-up Mayday and Zuke, she had a markedly smug expression on her face. In the final game, her smile starts out more serene before turning into a scowl, which indicates less a sense of superiority and more general anger towards two disrespectful people who refuse to take her concert seriously.
• Ambiguously Human: Due to it being ambiguous what her mother is, it's unclear if Yinu is completely human or a Half-Human Hybrid.
• Animal Motifs: She has a bird motif, specifically the canary. Her design uses large amounts of golden yellow, she has a bright yellow mark on her nose that gives it a resemblance to a bird's beak. She spends almost the entire battle in the air. And when her mother lifts her out of the way using strings, the strings noticeably go around the piano, which makes it look similar to a birdcage.
• Attack Its Weakpoint: Mayday and Zuke are initially hesitant to attack Yinu the same way they did previous bosses, but Kliff assures them that they just need to destroy her beloved piano to take over her district.
• The Baby of the Bunch: By far the youngest NSR artist, being 9-years old while all of the others are teenagers or adults.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: Yinu is made out to be the boss of the Natura Concert Hall, but her overbearing Stage Mom quickly takes over the fight after the end of the first phase. Downplayed in that Yinu does get one phase all to herself at the very end of the fight.
• Battle Theme Music: A piano melody incorporating a "Pachelbel's Canon" Progression at the beginning, which quickly becomes more sophisticated and aggressive when the fight begins in earnest. That being said, it only gains elements of EDM when Yinu's mother makes her presence known, and becomes a full-on Dubstep beat when she completely overshadows her daughter as the boss. When Yinu retakes the battle in the final phase during her frenzy, it goes back to being purely classical-based, as shown by the meter going crazy between rock and EDM, since both genres are being smothered by the piano notes.
• Big Guy, Little Guy: She's short even for her age. By constrast her mother is big enough to hold her and her piano in one giant hand.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: During her trailer, she talks to "Mr. Voice Man".
• Call-Back: Like Mayday and Zuke, she can use musical notes as damaging projectiles, and hers come in a variety of sizes and speeds. Thankfully for the player, none of them have the unerring homing accuracy of Bunk Bed Junction's.
• Catchphrase: She's fond of shouting "Feel the Impulse" during the fight. Her mother says it too during her attacks, making it a Share Phrase between the both of them.
• Childish Tooth Gap: Depicted as having a couple missing teeth in her in-game animated promotion on television screens, the spaces resemble the black piano keys. Her actual character model in her boss fight doesn't have them though.
• Child Prodigy: No older than 10 years old. Plays well enough to put a brief halt to Mayday and Zuke's disparaging of classical music. Winner of 6 consecutive international BAKAT awards. Puts said prestigious awards beside her toys Alice, Puddles, and General Stragovich. It's been noted by fan during her final phase, she begins playing some really advanced stuff, even for adults with years of training, showing she more than has the skill to back it up.
• Classical Music: Her genre is neoclassical. To fit with NSR's EDM artists, dubstep is added in.
• Classical Music Is Cool: One of the top 3 most popular artists working with NSR.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: In the very last phase of her fight, she creates a towering golden rose reaching high into the sky and rains down a flurry of notes from atop it. However, she has no health remaining and you'll win automatically as soon as you make the relatively quick trek to the top, where Yinu awaits...
• Determinator: Is the one boss who's able to keep fighting with an empty health bar.
• Disappeared Dad: Her father is seen in her family photos (as confirmed with her first photograph's text being "Yinu's first piano lesson with Papa"), but is nowhere to be seen or mentioned in the present. One of the photographs detailing her past you can unlock heavily implies that he passed away from an unknown illness some time ago as he has a visible IV sticking out of his hand.
• Dual Boss: Alongside her Mama Bear-of-a-mother.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: In the collectible family photos, it's shown that Yinu used to wear her hair down in two curly side tails back when her father was still alive. The last photo, implied to have been taken after his passing and just before the concert that put her on the map, shows Yinu wearing her hair tied back for the first time. In the present, she wears her hair much shorter, indicating the growing pressure and forced maturity early stardom has forced upon her.
• Flower Motifs: Golden roses, shown especially in her hair, which appears to be braided to actually resemble roses.
• Foreshadowing: Tatiana's rant at the prologue has her lambast rock music as outdated, but she has Yinu as one of her top stars whose neoclassical concerts barely incorporate EDM, hinting that her adversarial stance on Bunk Bed Junction's genre is more personal than she claims.
• Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: She is the Girly Girl to Mayday's Tomboy, but despite it actually wears a boy's suit while the latter wears a skirt.
• Glass Cannon: When she finally fights you all by herself, her health bar is completely empty and she's defeated automatically as soon as you reach her. The difficulty is in actually getting to her amid the torrent of music notes she sends down at you. It's also implied she won't be as resilient as other Megastars due to her age and stature, as Bunk Bed Junction are hesitant to harm her directly.
• Hero Antagonist: When all is said and done, she's just a 9 year old kid who wants to stop two angry rock fans from ruining her concert and breaking her piano. (Which is a memento of her father, to boot) Her boss fight is one of the first indications that the protagonists aren't as heroic as they think they are.
• Hidden Depths: After the battle gets so heated preceding its final phase, Yinu says "I hate you all!" by pulling her final solo effort, implying Yinu has some deep seated anger for what her mother has become; someone incredibly suffocating. The fighting ending with Yinu playing a solemn little melody on her broken piano, with her now calm mother playing at her side, is a sign of what Yinu actually played her piano for. Her family photos support this, as it's revealed Yinu was originally given piano lessons by her father, who's implied to have passed away.
• Morality Pet: Seems to be one to the other megastars, or at least Neon J, given how he calls out Bunk Bed Junction for breaking her piano specifically.
• Musical Assassin: She attacks by playing her piano, which conjures giant music notes.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Lacks the exaggerated, large hands every other character has on top of simply being much smaller than the others too though both are presumably due to her being the youngest character by far at age 9.
• Older Than They Look: She's 9, but her small stature and immaturity for her age cause her to seem much younger than she actually is.
• Our Angels Are Different: Her Christmas Edition skin has her resembling a Christmas angel ornament.
• "Pachelbel's Canon" Progression: Her boss theme; the beginning, in particular, is the "Canon in D" chords.
• Parents in Distress: Stops Mayday and Zuke from using a Showstopper on her mother by flinging them off the giant gold rose they're standing on.
• Pint-Sized Kid: Even for a nine year-old she's tiny, not even a third the size of most adult characters.
• Potty Emergency: At the end of her televised interview, she complains to the "Mr. Voice Man" that she needs to go wee-wee. It helps establish how, despite her musical proficiency, she's still a little kid.
• Rage Breaking Point: At the beginning of the final phase, she interrupts Mayday and Zuke's attempt to use a Showstopper on her mom, but when the latter urges Yinu to keep playing, the girl finally snaps and starts shouting how she hates everyone for taking things too far, leading into going into a furious emotional piano solo so high-speed and frantic that it completely drowns out all aspects of rock and dubstep during her final phase, reflected in the meter rapidly blinking between Rock and EDM .
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: She tries to deliver one to Mayday and Zuke about how they're only good at wrecking other people's performances, but the acoustics of the concert hall result in Mayday and Zuke barely hearing her.
• Red Baron: She's known as "the Golden Maestro of Vinyl City", due to her golden yellow colour scheme and her prodigious talent in playing the piano.
• Rule of Symbolism: Her stage (both in the musical and videogame sense) have strong nature motifs, such as the lid of her piano being shaped like a leaf, Yinu's hair being like a rose bush, and especially the thorny rose stems and vines that shape the security gate. As Yinu's mother becomes more and more enraged and involved in the fight, the stage turns to a barren, nightmarish forest surrounded by sharp, thorny trees and vines.
• Skilled, but Naive: Yinu is a talented and famed pianist, but she's still very much a child.
• Something about a Rose: Her hair looks like a rose bush, her logo has a rose form the "i" in her name, and her stage has rose motifs. Her final phase has you ascending the stem of a gigantic golden rose.
• Tragic Keepsake: The piano she plays on is this for both her and her mother, as it originally belonged to her father.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: As seen in her family photos, she used to be a lot more cheerful.
  • She seems to cheer up a lot after Bunkbed Junction return power over Natura District back to her, repairing her broken piano in the process as she happily thanks them. She even enthusiastically throws up "Rock horns" when Tatiana announces "Long live Rock!". She's last seen playing piano with her mother with a content expression.

1010

1010 (pronounced Ten-Ten)

^{Click here to see their album cover}

Voiced by: Muhammad Zulhilmi (EN), Idir Alexander Ould Braham (FR), Victor Costa (SP), Ryuichi Kagehira (JP)

Gender: Genderless; all members use male pronouns

Age: N/A

Position: Charter of Metro Division District

Genre: Funky House

Instrument of Choice: Vocals & Dance Routines

Place of Concert: Barraca Mansion

"You better put on your tactical thermal goggles because we're gonna bring the heat! Uh!"

A megastar robotic boy band and are the charters of the Metro Division District who represents funky house. Their concert is located at Barraca Mansion, their home.

---

• Absurdly-Long Limousine/Cool Boat: Fitting their naval theme, 1010's mobile stage is either an absolutely gigantic hover-limousine decked out like a battleship, or a decommissioned flying battleship retrofitted into a party limo.
• Agent Peacock: They are powerful and successful singers who flash some very flamboyant poses.
• Ambiguous Situation: It's never really made clear if 1010 are their own people (or robots) or if Neon J is just puppeting them. Their personality is vastly different from his, but there are several parts in the battle where Neon J sings in an autotuned voice almost identical to theirs. They were also present during Bunk Bed Junction's audition at the beginning of the game, with Neon J nowhere to be seen, but the five of them also act as a single judge.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: Similar to Yinu's fight, the fight is quickly revealed to be more against Neon J than it is against 1010 themselves. He directs all of their attacks and is the one you actually have to damage to progress the fight. By the last phase he takes over entirely, though he does use attacks based on the members of 1010.
• Battle Theme Music: A Funky House-style beat meant to sound clean and neatly-produced to reflect 1010's artificiality, which also becomes more oppressive when Neon J enters the fray.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: The red one's eyebrows are noticeably thick.
• Boy Band: They're a satirical parody of the trope, particularly of Korean boy bands; they're a band made up of attractive boys who are Chick Magnets, but they're still clearly robots and everything about them is manufactured and mass-produced, both their music and the members themselves.
• Call-Back: Like Mayday and Zuke, they use fan power to strengthen themselves with the wrinkle that they can do this mid-fight.
• Calling Your Attacks: They shout out and sing before performing every action in battle even if it's just repositioning and bringing up their shields.
• The Casanova: They cause Mayday to mindlessly swoon with their flirtatious comments, to Zuke's horror.
• Catchphrase: The white-haired unite calls his fellow singers to "Attention!" when leading them in a salute or a "wefie".
• Chick Magnet: To the extent that they recharge their shields by receiving the screams of adoration from their female fans. Even Mayday, despite opposing them, is actually reluctant to destroy them because of how handsome they are.
• Color-Coded Characters: Each member has his own color scheme shown in his hair, eyes, sidelights on their heads, and ties. These colors, other than white, also correspond with Neon J's attacks when he takes over the fight.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The hairstyles and hair colors of all but the white member correspond with Neon J's attacks.
• Cool Shades: The blue-haired member of 1010 wears sunglasses with round lenses.
• Dance Battler: They never stop their routines during the fight, following Neon J's prompts.
• Deadpan Snarker: They can be rather sarcastic for a vapid, mechanized K-pop team.
• Death from Above: With the shout of "To the sky", the members rocket into the air, and then slam back down onto the field.
• Delinquent Hair: The red and yellow members possess exaggerated versions of these, red having a massive mohawk and yellow having a very tall and pointed pompadour.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Upon closer inspection, their boss side profile portraits reveal that each of them has their own distinct eye shapes.
• The Dividual: They might have distinct colors and hairstyles, but they all seemingly share the same personality and seem to prefer to speak or sing in unison. Even the white one, who speaks independently the most often, speaks more on the behalf of the entire group than to actually vocalize his own thoughts. Also, during Bunk Bed Junction's audition at the beginning of the game, the five of them act as one singular judge.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: In the game's earliest trailer, they all had the same black hairstyle, more mechanical-looking faces, and their outfits lacked the sailor theme. Also possibly counts as Divergent Character Evolution as they were given distinct colors, hairstyles, and facial features in the final game.
• Face Death with Dignity: They take getting destroyed by the Showstopper rather well, striking one last handsome pose while Neon J panics and tries to protect them with his own body.
• Facial Horror: When their faces get burned off when you defeat Neon J the first time, their heads look like green skulls with Tron Lines. When their fans see this, they scream in horror, and 1010 explodes.
• Flat Character: Even collectively they show little personality beyond being a stereotypical dreamy boy band, serving mostly as minions for Neon J, who's treated as the true boss/NSR artist of the district.
• The Generic Guy: Their white-haired leader is so unremarkable that Neon J doesn't even have a corresponding special attack for him. Instead the limbs having white lights seem to represent him. Important, but boring in comparison.
• Groupie Brigade: When they reach the end of their initial attack pattern, their battleship stops and the five of them pose in front of the camera, causing a brigade of fangirls to start screaming. However, when they do this after Neon J's duplicator explodes and singes their faces off, their fans' screams of glee turn into screams of horror, causing the entirety of 1010 to explode.
• Hand Blast: One of their primary attacks is to blast lasers from their fingertips at Mayday and Zuke.
  "Mark targets! Load and shooooot!"
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The third phase is a subversion since 1010's shields never break unlike in the second phase, but survive long enough and the final phase begins.
• Improbable Hairstyle: The green one's hair forms a giant vertically-standing ring. Somewhat justified in that he's a robot and the hairdo is likely just a metal construct.
• The Leader: The white one is often in the center and seems to be the face of the group, being the one who does most of the talking in their In-Universe vlog tour of Vinyl City when they're not speaking or singing in unison.
• Living Toy: Given their robotic nature, the band's Christmas Edition makeover evokes this trope, giving them outfits commonly seen on toy soldiers and nutcrackers.
• Meaningful Name: 1010 calls to mind binary numbers, which highlights the robotic nature of the band. Funnily enough, 1010 in binary translates to... the number Ten.
• Mildly Military: Their band gimmick is having a military theme: their mobile stage is shaped like a battleship, they "salute" their groupies, refer to their performances as "missions", their mansion's name is a corruption of the word "barracks" (aka military housing) and their outfits resemble navy uniforms. More darkly, it also shows how 1010's members are replaceable foot soldiers, and that their music is regimented and curated.
  • The rock version of their battle theme incorporates the sound of soldiers marching and ammo shells dropping at certain points.
  • As stated above, the band's Christmas Edition makeover keeps the military theme intact by giving them toy soldier/nutcracker-like duds.
  • their Hairstyle (while also looking like the number 10 or the "1/0" symbol) - apart from White's - are in reference to different kinds of war equipment. Green's looks like the pin of a grenade, Yellow's is a missile, Red's is a buzz-saw, and Blue's appears to be a radio. It's best exemplified in the final stage, where the Robotic factory begins swapping between their colors to use those weapons, the only one that doesn't correlate is Blue, who's attack is a staff.
• Nice Character, Mean Actor: Downplayed, in that it's a reaction to a known foe, but while they act like pleasant ditzes in their promotional materials, when Mayday and Zuke hijack their concert, they show a much more serious and dangerous side to themselves, their typical innuendo-laden dialogue becoming riddled with veiled threats. Their voices also become subtly deeper and huskier.
• Nightmare Face: The transition from the second phase to the third phase does this to 1010 after you deal enough damage to Neon J.
  White: (In a horrifying voice of distortion) Baby, I'm electrifying!
• No Name Given: None of the members are given individual names. Their signatures can be found in the district, but being signatures, they're hard to decipher, and there's no way to tell which name belongs to which band member.
  • However, fans have deciphered said signatures and used them as fan nicknames for the members. Rin is white, Eloni is green, Haym is yellow, Purl-hew is blue, and Zimelu is red.
• Non-Human Head: The game's Christmas Update replaces the group's humanoid heads with cartoonish reindeer heads, while retaining their unique hairstyles and eye colors.
• Not in the Face!: Is sometimes screamed by the band members when hit.
• Progressively Prettier: One of the displays in the Metro Division District shows how 1010 has been upgraded over time, with each iteration becoming less robotic in appearance.
• Robosexual: Since the members of the group are very obviously robots, it's implied that the female side of their fanbase has at least some of this going on considering the rather...innuendo-laced comment the white one makes towards them in their In-Universe vlog tour. Mayday also completely lusts over them after they give her a few flirtatious comments.
  White: We're tall and grand too, ladies. (Smacks his lips seductively)
• Selfie Fiend: During their tour of Vinyl City, the Band ends every visit by calling for a "wefie", a group picture of them all striking stereotypical boy band poses.
  Atten-SHUN! Wefie!
• Sentai: They have elements of this trope, being a color-coded team, and they also do a "Super Sentai" Stance when posing for the fans to recharge their shields. Whilst not a Combining Mecha, the factory has the powers of all members of 1010 (sans White), allowing it to fill the role of the Mecha nicely.
• Significant Double Casting: In all languages, not only do they all share a voice actor (demonstrating their lack of individuality), but they also have the same voice actor as Neon J, their creator.
• Speak in Unison: They engage in this along with singing, as demonstrated in their In-Universe vlog tour of Vinyl City, which highlights both their incredible coordination and lack of individual identities.
• Sultry Bangs: The yellow one's hair covers his right eye, as one of the traits the group possesses that are designed to be attractive to fans.
• Sunglasses at Night: The blue one is shown always wearing aviator shades.
• Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: They're the latest version of Vinyl City naval soldier androids, complete with lasers, force fields and rocket jets, repurposed and reprogrammed into a band of musicians.
• Take That!: While the game references a lot of music industry practices through the Megastars, 1010 is more blatantly satirical than the others; 1010 as a group is identical with no individual characteristics beyond their colors, faces, and hairstyles, and are literally mass-produced (a play on the term "manufactured band"). They also wear sailor-esque clothing, to lampoon South Korean compulsory military service. Their "army" theme indicates they could possibly be referencing BTS specifically, due to their fanbase being referred to as such.
• Tear Off Your Face: When Neon J's duplicator machine blows up, the explosion singes off 1010's faces, leaving them with the android equivalent of skulls for heads. Mayday laments that they're no longer handsome, but still ultimately wants their autographs.
• Tron Lines: Their bodies and their mobile stage have a lot of glowing lines, which help reinforce their futuristic image.
• Unusual Eyebrows: The green one's eyebrows are segmented.
• Victory by Endurance: Once they lose their faces, they'll keep their shields up for the duration of the last phase of the fight. The only way to beat them this way is to last long enough for their fans to become horrified by them, causing them to overload.
• Virtual Celebrity: It's not brought up with 1010 like with Sayu, but they are mass-produced robots serving as a boy band.
• We Have Reserves: They actually go down in just a decent number of hits individually. However, after their attack phase is over, Neon J. and his mobile factory flies in to replace whichever members are lost. The aim of the fight thus becomes defeating Neon J. instead.
• Wingding Eyes: When empowered by their fans cheers, 1010's eyes flash with green triangles. When they scream in horror at their lack of faces, the eyes flash with red X's before they self destruct.
• Wolfpack Boss: The fight is against all five of them at once.

Eve

Eve/Nadia

^{Click here to see her album cover}

Voiced by: Joanna Bessey (EN), Françoise Cadol (FR), Rosa Ruiz (SP), Mariko Honda (JP)

Gender: Female

Age: 27

Position: Charter of Dream Fever District

Genre: Psydub

Instrument of Choice: Body and mind

Place of Concert: Evenfall Gallery

"We can save each other, as today, we celebrate your redemption, Zuke."

An intense, eccentric megastar diva and the charter of the Dream Fever District who represents psydub. She is also Tatiana's right-hand woman and is considered the most dangerous NSR artist. Her concert is located at the Evenfall Gallery.

---

• Acquired Situational Narcissism: Fame and success bloated her brittle ego, while leaving it just as fragile as ever.
• Aloof Ally: Post Heel–Face Turn, she continues to avoid ever referring to Mayday by name and only addresses Zuke, urging him to help the other NSR Megastars reclaim their districts. When Tatiana later declares "Long live Rock!" with the other Megastars showing support and approval, Eve is the least enthusiastic simply putting a hand on her hip.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Even though the rest of the cast includes characters with technicolor skin tones, Eve stands out, as her half-white and half-pink skin seems to be natural as opposed to part of her stage makeup. Videos of a younger Eve show her trying to cover up her pink side with white makeup, but eventually she stops trying to hide it.
  • Which leads to some further Fridge Logic, as, in a world where people regularly sport skin in every color of the rainbow and beyond, Nadia still felt very ashamed of her own, unusual one. This may lead one to question whether, for example, having that kind of skin coloration might actually represent some sort of medical condition or disfigurement (another possibility is that, perhaps fitting with the character, the skin color is actually symbolic and rather than representing a person who actually has half a pink-body, instead stands for her mental instability.
• Ambiguously Bi: She was in a relationship with Zuke in the past, while the exact nature of her "love" for Tatiana is left ambiguous (though in Japanese, she says "aishiteru" in regards to Tatiana, which is as explicit as it gets when expressing romantic feelings in that language). It should be noted that she made a gold statue of Tatiana embracing her while she poses as a chair. However, the one she wants to actually "sit" in the chair is Zuke.
• Artistic License – Geology: She uses a very strained metaphor to compare Zuke and herself to the ocean and the tectonic plates; it doesn't figure very well. Of course, the fact that she finds it sensible may be a testament to her mindset as much as anything else.
• Battle Theme Music: A Psydub beat, naturally, which sounds very melancholic and sorrowful, meant to reflect Eve's mental state and feelings of inadequacy she hides underneath her diva persona. Just like how Eve splits the duo apart in her boss battle, the music is also split between the two zones, becoming harsher and destructive with Mayday while keeping its original calm sadness with Zuke.
• Body Motifs: Hands, arms, and eyes are heavily featured in her clothing and art gallery. When examining the art, Zuke explains that the eyes represent how Eve feels like the world is staring and judging her for her abnormal appearance and worldview, while the hands represent her desire to reach out and find someone who sees the world like she does.
• Broken Bird: Zuke leaving her messed her up badly. While she hides it behind a haughty exterior for most of the fight, in the final phase, she reveals that she's ultimately an incredibly depressed woman desperately searching for someone who can understand her. The player can collect videos of her past which show that she was broken even before she met Zuke as she screams "I HATE YOU!" at a sculpted bust of herself, although she was momentarily better during their relationship when she thought she finally found someone who understood her.
• Childish Tooth Gap: She has a distinct gap between her two top front teeth.
• Cloudcuckoolander: She has her TV in Tatiana's office, and some of her rationale behind her art only seems to make sense to her. It's Played for Drama in her backstory, where she unintentionally caused Zuke to run away without even saying goodbye because she didn't realize that lighting someone's hair on fire was harmful. And as it turns out, she's actually fairly self-conscious about this aspect of herself, wishing to find someone who understands her worldview.
• The Comically Serious: She takes herself extremely seriously and often describes things in the most obtuse way possible, such as describing burning Zuke's hair as "illuminating it with bright lights".
• Dance Battler: While warping the world around them in her boss battle, Eve is always seen dancing, doing pirouettes and straight leg kicks even as she teleports about.
• Disc-One Final Boss: She is the last megastar you must defeat, before taking on Tatiana.
• The Dragon: To Tatiana. She's seen assisting Tatiana in an early cutscene (making her the only megastar that's previewed early instead of right before their boss battle), and Kliff refers to her as Tatiana's right-hand woman. According to her debriefing bio, she was NSR's first megastar and the one to put the record company on the map.
• Entitled to Have You: The last phase of her boss fight has her rave about how she was the best thing to ever happen to Zuke and that he'd be nothing without her so he ought to return to her side or else. However, after a heart-to-heart with Zuke following her defeat, she silently accepts Zuke's departure.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Due to her jealousy of Zuke seemingly moving on with another girl, she tries her hardest throughout the battle to deny the bond Zuke and Mayday have, which eventually escalates to her proclaiming that they are only together through their mutual fear of her. After she's forced to accept the reality that Mayday and Zuke are indeed a strong team, she retreats into the void, seeing it as confirmation that there is no one in the world for her to connect with.
• Evil Counterpart: To Mayday as a fellow blonde, passionate, and occasionally insensitive artist of fiery temperament who hurt Zuke with their well-meaning recklessness (Mayday by destroying his NSR drumsticks, and Eve by...setting him on fire).
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Her entire visual motif is based on contrast, having her right half pink, left half white, bangs styled to cover only the right side, and more
• Foreshadowing: When fighting DK West, he mentions that Zuke stole a girl named "Nadia" from him. Once he raps to this part, the on screen mines also spell out "EVE". It turns out that Nadia was Eve's real name.
• Freakiness Shame: A collectible video recording suggests she had a bit of this when she was younger. In the first video, the pink side of her face is somewhat messily covered up by white makeup to make both halves of her face match, and she's shown pelting a bust of her head with paint balloons shouting "I HATE YOU!". By the time we see her with Zuke in the next video however, she seems to have become comfortable with her asymmetry.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: Eve never actually attacks using her real body. She instead creates giant illusions of her hands, feet and eyes to attack Mayday and Zuke while she teleports around the room, and later on in the fight, switches back and forth between two rooms.
• Giant Foot of Stomping: One of her attacks. The color of the feet actually correspond to her own, and changes depending on which room the player is occupying.
• Green-Eyed Monster: It's very clear from the start that Eve's utter contempt for Mayday is rooted on an intense jealously. Also with a dash of It's All About Me, since Eve seemingly can't comprehend how a woman like Mayday could connect with Zuke better than she ever did, to the point of delusionally claiming herself as the reason for Bunk Bed Junction's powerful bond.
• Hey, You!: Never addresses Mayday by anything else but "(pedestrian) girl".
  Mayday: Hey! The name's Mayday, okay!?
• I Just Want to Be Loved: The core of her issues is this. She is desperate for a soulmate who actually understands her unique perspective on the world and feels isolated as a result.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Downplayed. When DK West enters Tatiana's office, she excuses herself by claiming to see if the editors need her help. While a legitimate excuse, it's pretty clear she just doesn't want to be in the same room as him.
• If I Can't Have You…: States this word by word to Zuke at the start of her second phase, although specifically singling out Mayday instead of a "nobody can".
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: She puts up a pretentious holier-than-thou front, but in reality, she is terrified of being rejected for her unique view of the world, which leads her to cling to anyone claiming to share her vision. It's how Tatiana got a hold of her in the first place. At the end of the fight, Zuke encourages her to overcome her fear and reveal her true self to the world.
• Insufferable Genius: Heavily resents and lambasts people who don't understand the meaning of her work.
• Interface Screw: When she's fought on Crazy difficulty, the screen will occasionally flip upside-down.
• Involuntary Group Split: One of the gimmicks of her fight is that after the first phase, she forces Mayday and Zuke into separate rooms, forcing the player to switch between the two of them to attack Eve in whichever room she's in.
• Irony: Despite being the city's most popular megastar, music isn't her main artistic focus, so her district has some of the worst energy problems seen in the game, with multiple entrances being incapable of functioning due to a lack of Qwasa. All this in spite of it being right next door to the NSR tower itself.
• Laughing Mad: In the Japanese dub, during her final stage she devolves into one long distorted Noblewoman's Laugh.
• Light Is Not Good: Due to her Christmas Edition outfit incorporating light sources. Eve wears a very twisted and bent candelabra on her back (possibly a menorah, in reference to Hanukkah), with fake flames on the ends of some branches and hand sculptures on others. Additionally, her hair is tied up with a white disc-shaped accessory that has eight candles connected in a star-like formation on the front of it. She subverts this trope by assisting Bunk Bed Junction in the end, like Tatiana and the other NSR megastars.
• Lonely at the Top: She is the most popular artist in her city and has legions of adoring fans, but none of her colleagues share her artistic vision so she feels isolated and alone.
• Mad Artist: Though unlike a lot of other examples, the manner in which her artistic works are constructed isn't so much the issue as her utter commitment to her vision of the world is. Deconstructed as it left her feeling like an outsider, especially after Zuke, the one person she believed understood her, left.
• Master of Illusion: She manipulates the mirrors of her gallery during her boss fight to make it appear as though she's fighting with multiple arms and legs at the same time.
• Meaningful Name: Her real name Nadia can mean 'delicate' in Arabic. Which aptly describes her true mental state from the loneliness of no one understanding her unique view of the world.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: She uses an illusion and mirrors to create the visual of having multiple arms attack Bunk Bed Junction from the walls, ceilings, and floors of the stage. After each phase, she'll also strike an intimidating "Let's Get Dangerous!" pose with four extra arms on herself. On close inspection, those arms are actually just mannequin arms attached to her back (you can see the wooden textures and the parts where they're screwed together) and don't actually get used beyond Eve's posing for artistic effect. Although when she poses with them in the finale section of the game, they're real arms complete with a wider range of flexibility and no longer having the wooden textures and screw joints.
• Never My Fault: Accidentally set Zuke on fire and viewed his resulting flight as a betrayal; she even chides him for mentioning it during her boss fight. Granted, from the way she described the incident, it was possible that she legitimately didn't know what she did wrong, which speaks more to her mental state than anything else.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Aside from her outlandish clothing, her skin color is split down her body between white and pink, and the game itself heavily implies that this is her natural skin color due to her trying to cover up the pink half of herself with makeup at some point.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Apparently, her boss fight isn't the first time she's trapped Zuke in a trippy, post-modernist hallway full of giant versions of her limbs, judging by his rather calm reaction to it at the beginning of the second phase.
  • The performance that lead to Zuke running out on her had her putting 'bright lights' in Zuke's hair, which according to him, involved setting his hair on fire.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: She's typically very verbose, but she expresses her disdain for DK West in a curt and indirect manner, no doubt still disgusted by his antics from their college days.
• Ow, My Body Part!: Screams about her legs getting struck when she's damaged.
• Perpetual Frowner: While she does smile in her collectible videos from the past, her present-day self is rarely, if ever, seen smiling.
• Portal Picture: She teleports around her boss arena by jumping in and out of the paintings on the walls.
• Powers Do the Fighting: None of the attacks in the fight come directly from Eve herself, instead they come from the walls and floor in the form of illusions she conjures.
• Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: To Zuke. Years ago, after a performance went wrong from her setting his hair on fire, he left her, and the pain from that experience and isolation afterward warped her into what she is in the present. During her boss fight, she tries to convince Zuke to return to her, while throwing disparaging comments towards Mayday, who she pegs as his new girlfriend.
• Reality Warper: She's seemingly able to warp reality at will until it looks like a surrealist painting under her control (although it's implied that she's just employing illusions). Zuke implies she's always been able to do this.
• Rule of Symbolism: Her boss fight is jam-packed with symbolism, giving insight to her psyche.
  • The pink and white motif on her skin and stage may represent Black (or pink)-and-white thinking.
    • Additionally, she places Zuke (saint) in the white hall and Mayday (devil) in the pink.
  • The mirrors and tattoo on her left thigh represent her fragmented self-identity.
  • The chair in the beginning cutscene is meant to represent Eve. It symbolizes her desire for Zuke to give her purpose.
  Eve: ...a chair without a seater is left with no purpose to exist.
  • The climax of her fight has her literally sucked into a Blank White Void, representing her internal emptiness.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Bonding with Zuke caused her to go from a frumpy, self-loathing art geek to a more clean-cut and well-spoken young woman who hated herself slightly less. Unfortunately, though she does become even more extravagantly beautiful after joining NSR, her self-loathing returned due to failing to find other people who she could connect with.
• Stage Names: Eve is the name she goes by as an NSR artist. Her real name is Nadia.
• Statuesque Stunner: She's nearly a head taller than Zuke.
• Stealth Insult: Encourages Zuke to save the day in the game's finale, while pointedly ignoring Mayday.
• Stripperiffic: Her current outfit is a black leotard cut scandalously low with only two cups to cover her chest. Needless to say, it doesn't leave much to the imagination.
• True Art Is Incomprehensible: Both in-universe and out, she is the most abstract of the megastars. She has the most obtuse promo out of all them, and she does some genuinely odd things in the name of art. However, she's also praised for how unique and well-made all her projects are, even if they're not to everyone's tastes. It's Deconstructed as her current personality is a result of her failing to find people who find her work comprehensible, leaving her isolated.
• Undying Loyalty: To Tatiana. When Eve is representing herself as a chair, a gold statue of Tatiana is embracing her. According to Eve, Tatiana embraces her for who she is in spite of her eccentricities. Subverted later on, when a frustrated Eve angrily shoves the statue out of her way and by the end of the battle is crying that she's all alone, implying she's aware Tatiana still doesn't understand her just like everyone else.
• Ungrateful Bastard: She was intensely resentful of a rabbit's foot lucky charm Zuke gave her while the two were together, as she believed that it implied that she wasn't skilled enough to succeed under her own power. Years later, she made a sarcastic sculpture of that same item, a blithe insult that only Zuke would understand.
• Villainous Breakdown: She really starts to lose it after the second phase, unable to understand how Zuke and Mayday have such a strong bond, coming to the conclusion that formed a bond through their shared hatred of her, which only further drives her further up the wall as the fight continues. After she's beaten down and Mayday bluntly tells her that Zuke is better than her, Eve's ego shatters completely, causing her to retreat into a white void symbolizing her own repressed self-loathing.
• Voice of the Legion: In the third phase of her battle, as reality becomes more distorted by her will, even her voice duplicates like her arms and legs.
• Walking Spoiler: Specifically because of her relationship with one of the major characters that's referenced earlier in the story.
• Yandere: She wants Zuke to return to her side badly. She even modeled the shape and color of her jacket after his scalp.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: After retrieving her from the void, Zuke tells her that she doesn't need someone else to complete her or validate her work because she is already the strongest person Zuke knows.
• You Are Not Alone: The other part of the message that Zuke imparts to her after her fight is to encourage her to overcome her fear of not being understood and put her true self out into the world.
• Youthful Freckles: They're only really visible up-close due to the freckles almost blending in with the pink half of her face, but they are there.

Other Antagonists

DK West

DK West

Voiced by: Alfred Loh (EN), Clyde Rabatel (FR), Wladimir Beltran (SP), Takuya Matsumoto (JP)

"Just sharing with the people here what real music sounds like."

A very famous rapper and Zuke's older brother who has mysterious ties to NSR and possesses the ability to control shadow puppets. He appears after beating Sayu, and can be challenged a total of three times to unlock the Ultimate Duet skill in battle.

---

• Aerith and Bob: While Zuke isn't an entirely unheard-of name, it's still way less common than "West."
• Aloof Big Brother: From what can be gleaned by the lyrics during his boss battle, Zuke used to tag along with him all the time when they were younger, which he brings up in a negative light. In the present, he doesn't respond to any of Zuke's attempts to reach out to him. Deconstructed in that his aloofness is partially a shield against dealing with emotionally difficult situations, making it selfish in nature, and contributed to the breakdown of his relationship with Zuke.
• Always Second Best: His major grievance with Zuke is that he always proved himself better at everything DK West tried to do. Zuke became more popular than him and took away his friends. Zuke got to be with the girl DK West had the hots for. Zuke got a Master's Degree while West dropped out of college. Even now, Bunk Bed Junction is proving more successful in overtaking NSR than his own Underground Movement was.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Green, just like his brother.
• Animal Motifs: Bulls; his iconic shadow puppet is a giant minotaur (half man-half bull), he has a nose ring, and his obnoxious behaviors could easily be called bullheaded.
• Battle Rapping: His boss battles consist of him having rap battles with Zuke. Because the brothers are on bad terms, it's as vitriolic as you'd expect.
• Berserk Button: To Zuke. He is a walking frustration in Zuke's life. Under any other circumstance, Zuke would take it on the chin, but when it comes to DK West, Zuke loses it easily due to years of frustration. Even Mayday is shocked, but West seems unsurprised and loves to antagonize his brother in ways only a brother knows how. Of course, as we see, a lot of is is due to jealousy at his younger brother's success, and he doesn't genuinely mean any of it that seriously.
• Big Brother Bully: Has shades of this. During their first encounter, West admits that he once sold Zuke's drum set, and later on, he plays an embarrassing recording of Zuke as a child seemingly to get a rise out of him. He also doesn't seem to understand why Zuke would be angry about his brother forgetting his birthday and never answering his messages.
• Bilingual Bonus: About half of his lines are spoken in Malay.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: To his credit, Zuke and DK himself both call attention that he's a self-made man, and a pretty talented rapper. However, Zuke repeatedly calls mention to the fact that as soon as things get difficult for West, he just immediately quits and leaves instead of sticking with it.
• Buffy Speak: While he boasts about having an extensive vocabulary, he'll butcher a word to fit his flow such as changing "nothing" to "nothingtry". Note that this isn't unheard of in rap following a particularly long-winded rhyme scheme, which is the case here.
  You just did it to get back at me
  It stemmed from your jealousy
  Your never ending rivalry
  Well, Imma bring my cavalry
  My rhymes loaded with poetry
  My words laced with symmetry
  My rhythms pure artistry
  What you got besides
  Oh yeah, nothingtry ewah!
• But Now I Must Go: After the last rap, he and Zuke make peace, and he decides to leave to meditate.
• Call to Agriculture: He's seen in the rice fields on the outskirts of Vinyl City before Tatiana calls him back.
• Casanova Wannabe: Flirts with Eve, much to her disgust. According to Zuke during their first rap battle, she still wasn't a fan of him when she was known as Nadia.
• Casting a Shadow: In the chorus segments, DK West controls a giant wayang kulit shadow puppet that Zuke and Mayday have to attack.
• Catchphrase: Has a habit of shouting "Ewah!" Zuke accuses him of using this as filler in his rapping when he can't think of anything else to say. Zuke starts using West's ewahs alongside his brother in their final battle.
  • His crowd has their chant of "DK West, DK West. He's our man he's the best." between verses and to the beat.
• Dark Is Evil: While not evil, he "fights" with a large minotaur shadow puppet which symbolizes his obsession with overshadowing and being overshadowed by Zuke.
• Disowned Sibling: This happens near the end of the second fight with DK West. Zuke, after being fed up with his brother's attitude towards him, outright declares that West is not his brother. This shocks both West, who is genuinely hurt by this, and Mayday, who calls Zuke out on it.
• Dirty Coward: Zuke calls him one, pointing out when he's overshadowed or things don't go his way, he tends to chicken out and run rather that stick to it. Zuke later admits on a couple of occasions that he can be guilty of the same.
• Easily Forgiven: Vinyl City music lovers welcome the very difficult West back with open arms, arms that once set his car on fire and shoved him out of town.
• Everyone Has Standards: While he does blame Zuke for his life taking a nosedive, he's genuinely hurt when Zuke disowns him as a brother.
• Evil Gloating: When Zuke tries to form an alliance with West to fight NSR, reminding his brother of how the label treated him poorly, West gleefully dedicates an entire stanza of lyrics to revealing how he's basically working for them just to get back at Zuke.
• Eyes Always Closed: Never actually opens his eyes, though looking at the in-game model shows that they're red like his brother's.
• Fat Bastard: Significantly wider than any of the other character designs, West was called upon (reluctantly) by Tatiana against Eve's protests to hinder Bunk Bed Junction, seemingly happy to do so for nothing more than the pleasure of tangling with Zuke. This is quickly subverted when he's revealed to be mostly obnoxious and a little bit petty; even his resentment for Zuke, which he isn't shy about throwing in his brother's face, seems to dissipate entirely after some emotional honesty and a little appreciation.
• Fiery Redhead: Although it's ambiguous as to whether it's dyed or not. Given the Amazing Technicolor Population here has more than just rainbow skin tones, it's a bit of a moot point.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: West is the foolish one, with him being immature, brash, and unwilling to own up to his mistakes or to face emotionally tense situations when compared to Zuke, the responsible one, with him being level-headed, rational, and unafraid to fix his mistakes. Played with in their interpersonal dynamic, where Zuke responds to West's foolishness by becoming increasingly angry and accusatory, which only drives their relationship deeper into the ground. West in turn always starts each encounter with the same friendly levity as his first meeting, no matter how brutal the previous rap battle got for them both.
• Genre Shift: The protagonists can't shift the music of his boss fights from rap to rock. What they can do is soundly trounce him with scathing lyrics.
• Green-Eyed Monster: When they were both college age, Zuke finally started coming into his own, but as they both got into music DK felt like he was ganking his style and got jealous Zuke was going to surpass him when Zuke was just trying to emulate the big brother he looked up to all his life. He's particularly bitter about him hooking up with a girl West liked named Nadia (known in the present as Eve) which seems to have been The Last Straw leading to their falling out.
• Heel Realization: West admits during his last verse in the third fight that Zuke disowning him made him realize what a terrible brother he'd been and that he'd been legitimately upset about it.
• Hypocrite: During the zenith of his rap career, he was quite vocal about not wanting to get into the city's musical politics whilst lambasting NSR fans relentlessly. A large amount of the things he accuses Zuke of being (jealous, not accepting fault, and being irresponsible) are things West himself does, which Zuke calls him on... though we later learn that Zuke's not immune to this either.
• Hypocritical Humor: He makes the claim that Zuke makes mismatched tempos in the very same bar that he veers off beat himself.
• Improperly Paranoid: West seems to believe that his struggles in college were the result of Zuke actively sabotaging him. Zuke refutes this repeatedly and accuses West of deflecting blame, but Zuke's uncharacteristic anger and harsh words don't exactly help. It's also worth noting that Zuke makes a point to counter every accusation thrown his way except for stealing West's friends, something he's accused of at least twice (though given West's behavior, it's implied West drove them away himself). Even after Mayday insists that Zuke was only trying to emulate the big brother he admired, West accuses her of "creating stories" and demands to hear it from Zuke himself.

"But I have the feeling you got things hidden
Ulterior motives, got my mind buzzing"

• It's All About Me: While Zuke raps on beat, West treats the rhythm as largely perfunctory to his wordplay. Zuke flat out tells West that he thinks the world revolves around him and West's verse's largely consist of trying to make everything about how great he is or how he was wronged... for things that might well have been his own fault. Highlighted by his Villainous Breakdown during the first battle where he repeatedly, and almost desperately, keeps shouting this, as if trying to convince himself he's as important to Zuke's life as he thinks he is:
  West: You ain't nothing without West! You ain't nothing without West! You ain't nothing without West!
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: His first boss fight shows that he's envious of Zuke for his better lot in life, most of the characters can't really stand his obnoxious personality (Tatiana only tries to put up with it to get him to fight Bunk Bed Junction), and habitually dodges blame for his actions. However, the only person he's outright mean to is Zuke, and once Mayday steps in during the third encounter it really takes very little coaxing from her to get West to ease off his paranoia and open up to the possibility of being okay with his brother again. Once Zuke tells West that he honestly still admires and loves his brother, and regrets disowning him, West basically drops years of built-up resentment and apologises for his own behaviour, hugging his little brother happily and promising to keep in touch.
  West: Sorry, bro. Sometimes I just...
• Knight of Cerebus: He has a very goofy intro, but he introduces themes of deep-seated personal dysfunction into what started as a wacky rhythm-based action game. All of the bosses after him, with the exception of 1010 and Neon J, tend to be more somber, from Yinu's issues with her mother, Eve's need for acceptance, and even Tatiana's regret over her failed leadership of the Goolings and deep-seated hatred of a genre she used to love. The narrative also makes it more and more clear that Bunk Bed Junction might not be doing the right thing. Lampshaded when Neon J tries to have darker themes with his ending monologue, but ends up being played for laughs.
• Lone Wolf Boss: The only boss who isn't directly affiliated with NSR. The "Rock/EDM" meter at the top of the screen during most of the boss battles is missing entirely during his fight, which is as much a minigame as anything.
• Lyrical Dissonance: The chorus of his raps proclaiming his excellence when set after lyrics exposing him for the failure he actually is.
• Manchild: Zuke flat out calls him one, stating for as big and bad as he is, he acts like a child when things don't go his way. This is one reason West loses their rap battles: his insults towards Zuke are largely childish deflections, projecting his own flaws and laying out old grievances from college; while Zuke's uncharacteristic temper leads him to be far more hurtful.
• Meaningful Name: His name references part of his musical genre, "dikir barat," a Malaysian form somewhat akin to Battle Rapping with a team. ("Barat" literally means "West" in Malay.)
• Miles Gloriosus: DK West is all about puffing up his ego to compete with Zuke's popularity and uses rap battles to show off his talent as he tries to rail his brother into submission that he is the superior man, but West doesn't fare so well against Zuke's scathing retorts. Justified as a rap battle against another artist is more about skill and wordplay, while the rap battles against his brother are full of personal resentment and the familial intimacy to really emotionally wound, which is far harder to take.
• My God, What Have I Done?: While he tries to act like it's no big deal, it's clear that he's hurt after an enraged Zuke declares that he has no brother during their second rap battle, even seeming like he's going to cry when he sees how his aloof behavior has cost him his little brother.
• Never My Fault: He deflects all blame for any conflict or strife he causes onto others. He'll isolate himself from people he fell out with and only starts communicating again on his terms, when he thinks they're going to apologize to him. He accuses Zuke of stealing his crush and friends, (the latter of which Zuke notably doesn't dispute) but Zuke and West's general personalities imply it was because West has a habit of alienating others and drove them away on his own. It's this trait about him that seems to aggravate Zuke the most, especially when West blames him for their estranged state.
• Non-Standard Game Over: Fail to fully deplete his health bar during each chorus segment and he'll automatically win his boss fight, regardless of how much health Mayday and Zuke have.
• Noodle Incident: He did something to incite NSR fans so viciously that they set fire to his car and chased him out of Vinyl City. Which, given how these people can tolerate the similarly egotistical DJ Subatomic Supernova, really says something about West.
• Superboss: The first battle against him is required, but the second and third encounters are completely optional and much harder.
• Paper Tiger: A smart, charismatic, and hardworking fellow who folds and flees when his self-image is threatened. Also exemplified in his boss fight, as the shadow puppet he conjures is a giant, sinister-looking bull shadow that can't hurt you at all, even if you miss its weak point, and curls up into a ball when damaged enough. The first battle has Zuke directly call him out on this.
  Feels like he's entitled to everything, tells the birds for him they should sing! Chest up, walks around proud, But a small push and he'll sure drop loud!
• Psychological Projection: A great many things he accuses Zuke of being actually apply to him, something Zuke calls him on, implying West is doing this. This is part of why he loses their rap battles: because all the things he accuses Zuke of can actually apply to him, Zuke has no problem ripping them apart and turning them back on him. Given that the only information we get on West is through their bitter arguing, and Zuke later in the game admits that he can be a bit of a coward without Mayday around to give him a shove, it's possible that some of West's accusations are similarities rather than projection.
• Punny Name: The name DK West is a nod to a type of musical performance native to Malaysia known as Dikir Barat (with Barat itself meaning 'west' in Malay).
• Recurring Boss: He's fought three times in the game, although every time after the first is optional.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: As Zuke angrily calls him out, whenever a situation ends up emotionally charged, he bails on it and refuses to address it. He dropped out of college when it proved too difficult, left Vinyl City when NSR started cracking down on his underground movement, and cut himself off from Zuke because his little brother was more popular than him. Given how Zuke ran away from Nadia/Eve and ghosted her rather than honestly breaking up, this is something the brothers have in common, which might be why it upsets Zuke so much.
• Self-Made Man: He created his success as a rap musician from the ground up, and was so popular that NSR ended up interfering to take him down a peg. Evidently, an incident where EDM fans set his car on fire was the reason he left Vinyl City, as he was only interested in making music, not being involved with politics.
• Self-Serving Memory: During their first rap battle, West claims that Zuke only started dating Nadia (Zuke's old girlfriend) because he knew West was into her. However, Zuke retorts that Nadia never liked West due to his attitude, and she still doesn't as Eve. Zuke outright implies that everything he accuses Zuke of is actually West's own fault for how he treats everyone else.
• Smug Snake: West thinks he's a lot better and more important than he actually is, and tends to fall apart when things don't go his way.
• So Proud of You: During their final rap battle, West admits repeatedly that he's proud of Zuke finding his own success, and for leading the rebellion against NSR.
  To a leader, to a man, to the leader of the rebellion
  and let me say ewah brother that makes me proud inside
• Stunned Silence: His attempts at retorts during his second battle with Zuke wither and die entirely after Zuke finally has enough and disowns him as a brother.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Despite being hurt by Zuke disowning him, West is Improperly Paranoid that Zuke is out to get him and a Big Brother Bully, so he neither attempts to seek out Zuke to repair the damage done, nor is he going to apologize as soon as possible, all which isn't helped by Zuke being too provoked by his jabs to properly communicate with him. It takes Mayday stepping in to extend the olive branch between him and Zuke before he finally lets go of his paranoia and resentment to open up to his little brother.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: His boss battles plays more like an actual rhythm game that forces Mayday and Zuke to move on a grid in tandem to the beats of the music. It's also the only time the player controls both members on Bunk Bed Junction at the same time.
• Unreliable Narrator: Flip-flops between positioning himself as an unassailable genius and a blameless victim, sometimes in the same stanza. Zuke's replies highlight how West glosses over how his situation is his own fault.
• Unwitting Pawn: Tatiana called him in to undermine Bunk Bed Junction's efforts against NSR by exploiting his relationship with Zuke. Instead she not only helped the brothers reconcile, but also gave BBJ access to their Ultimate Duets.
• Vague Age: His exact age isn't given, though given he's the older brother and Zuke is implied to be around 27, he's at least older than that.
• "The Villain Sucks" Song: His songs quickly go from Boastful Rap to him being lambasted (by Zuke) for his numerous failures and character flaws.
• Villainous Breakdown: He undergoes something like this when remembering Zuke's 'stealing' of Nadia from him, implying that his feelings for her and the hurt from 'losing' her are genuine.
  DK West: You ain't nothing without West. You ain't nothing without West. YOU AIN'T NOTHING WITHOUT WEST!

Yinu's Mother

Yinu's Mother

Voiced by: Azah Boémia Anuarul (EN), Zahia Ould Braham (FR), Manoli Fernandez (SP), Keiko Kobayashi (JP)

"Yinu, my dear, please... stay calm. These bullies are nothing compared to you."

Yinu's nameless mother, who is very protective of her daughter and her musical career, and will quite literally crush those who threaten to ruin it without a moment's hesitation.

---

• Ambiguously Human: She looks like a towering wraith who showcases bizarre shapeshifting abilities during later parts of the fight. Even when she's calmed down and is back to human size, she still doesn't look quite human. If nothing else, she very much seems to be part plant, resembling an Ent.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The aftermath of the battle with her and Yinu shows she's fairly normal-sized usually but can grow to Kaiju size. It's not clear whether she does this under her own power or only when angry.
• Badass Fingersnap: For one of her attacks, she snaps her fingers and smashes rocks around the edge of the arena.
• Big Guy, Little Guy: Absolutely towers over her tiny daughter.
• Brains and Brawn: In an interesting inversion of how this dynamic usually works, Yinu is a Skilled, but Naive Innocent Prodigy while her Unskilled, but Strong mother is in charge (and the one Mayday and Zuke have to actually fight). As it turns out, both of them share the "brains" as her mother joins her daughter in playing a duet at the end.
• Creepy Long Arms: She has very long tube-like arms that she uses to shield Yinu whenever the strings connecting her to Yinu's piano begin to fray.
• Dark Is Evil: As the fight shifts to involve Yinu's mother more, the light garden theme is gradually discarded in favor of darker colors.
• Dubstep: Though Yinu is the one classified as dubstep's representative in NSR, it's really her mother who is associated with it. When the fight begins, it's pure classical music (representing Yinu), but dubstep elements are introduced the moment Yinu's mother shows up to protect her. The dubstep aspect of the music becomes increasingly pronounced as her mother takes over more and more of the fight until it's practically drowning out the classical instrumentals by the fourth phase. When Yinu takes over for the very last phase and fights you by herself, it shifts back to pure classical.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: In the earliest demo, she had perpetual white Glowing Eyes of Doom, her hair protruded upwards, and her dress was only black. The second demo trades her glowing eyes out for yellow pupils (but does get white eyes in the fourth phase), her hair goes down her back (although still protrudes upward), and her dress has red flower patterns on it. The final game ultimately gives her yellow pupils in the second phase, and features her white eyes in the third and fourth phases to signify how angry she is.
• Evil Puppeteer: She keeps Yinu suspended away from the action using marionette strings. Notably, all the attacks targeted towards Yinu to make her mother vulnerable sever the strings rather than harm Yinu directly.
• The Faceless: In Yinu's animated trailer, her mother appears but you can only see the bottom part of her dress.
• Fatal Flaw: Wrath. She ultimately does the most damage to her daughter's performance as she destroys the arena in her increasing rage towards Bunk Bed Junction, in the end even momentarily estranging her from her own daughter, who's just grown fed up with the whole situation.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: As the fight progresses, Yinu and her mother will slowly deteriorate in relationship, which results in Yinu attacking less and less during the fight. Notably, in her second phase the joint attack has Yinu tracking someone while rapid firing while the mother slams the ground, but in the third phase Yinu doesn't join her in this attack. When she fully takes over Yinu's boss fight, she loses access to her daughter's musical note attacks since she's battling on her own.
• Gasp!: Does this in shock and hurt after hearing Yinu say that she hates her.
• Girly Bruiser: She has a feminine appearance (long hair, wears a flowery dress, has a thin frame relative to her size, etc) and most of her attacks consist of trying to smash you with her hands or crush you with giant rocks.
• Hulking Out: The ending of the fight reveals that her size is seemingly tied to her emotions as she shrinks down to the size of a normal woman at the end after Yinu's music calms her down.
• Humanoid Abomination: Appears somewhat humanoid, but she speaks with a Voice of the Legion, seems to be part plant, towers over both B2J and Yinu, seems to make wooden creaking sounds when she moves, and only becomes more monstrous as the fight goes on, growing in size and then taking the form of a beating heart inside a cage. However, when the fight is over and she hears Yinu playing her broken piano, she turns far less monstrous all the way down to shrinking until she is human-sized, which implies that her physical state is connected to her emotional/mental state. That said, she still isn't quite human looking
• Hypocrite: When she first appears during the boss battle, she urges her daughter to stay calm so she can continue playing. By the last phase of the battle, she's screaming like a madwoman and completely ignoring Yinu's attempts to get her to stop. And this is after she wrecks the concert hall in anger over Bunk Bed Junction ruining Yinu's performance.
• The Lost Lenore: Her husband. She wears his wedding ring prominently on the left hand. This is also the same hand she uses to hold Yinu during the battle, symbolizing the two most important things to her.
• Made of Iron: She takes a lot of punishment during Yinu's boss fight and is still ready to take down Mayday and Zuke after falling dozens of stories to the ground.
• Mama Bear: Very protective of her daughter and Yinu's piano, to the point of holding them aloft and out of Mayday and Zuke's reach with one hand. When the strings holding Yinu aloft are cut, she catches her and cradles her protectively, leaving herself vulnerable to attack. As everyone falls to the ground after the battle, she grabs Yinu to protect her from the fall, even as the piano also plunges and is destroyed, showing that when not blinded by anger she genuinely loves and cares about her daughter first.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Has this look on her face after hearing Yinu play a song on her now-wrecked piano, seemingly realizing how much damage she caused in her anger.
• No Name Given: She isn't given an actual name. Yinu just calls her "Mama". She's just "Mother" in the credits.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Compared to the other humanoid characters in the game, she's designed rather unusually; her hair looks more like an extension of her head, resembling dead tree branches, her arms extend in unnatural ways similar to DJ Subatomic Supernova, and her facial design is a bit more realistic than the rest of the cast, albeit with less detailed yellow eyes.
• One-Winged Angel: After Mayday and Zuke completely sever the strings connecting her to Yinu's piano, her mother goes completely berserk and morphs into a blob-like monstrosity that encompasses the entire area, with her head dangling overhead like a beating heart while her vine-like hair encases the arena like a cage.
• Parents as People: The ending of the fight as well as the end credits has her calmly and lovingly joining her daughter in playing a duet on what remains of her piano, suggesting that she does indeed love her daughter but was just too consumed by her rage.
  • Perpetual Frowner: She doesn't really smile much at all on-screen even when she's not enraged. She briefly smiles when Yinu interrupts Mayday and Zuke before they can hit her mother with a Showstopper, only to be aghast when Yinu starts yelling about hating everyone including her. Much like Yinu, an old photo of her family shows how much happier they all were when her husband was still around.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Complete with Punctuated Pounding. "ENOUGH! You are RUINING! HER! PERFORMANCE!!"
• Red Is Violent: Her whole body is red and she's a destructive force of nature when angered enough.
• Scary Teeth: After she's been sufficiently angered, her teeth go from normal looking to square and spaced apart.
• Shockwave Stomp: Her hands are so large that they can generate shockwaves that cover the entire arena whenever she slams them down.
• Stage Mom: It's telling that she pulls Yinu to safety using marionette strings. Likewise, though Yinu is the NSR artist, she's the one Mayday and Zuke actually fight. It's subverted by the end of the fight, however, as it shows that Yinu's mom truly does love Yinu, but got over protective during the performance.
• Tragic Keepsake: Even after her husband has long since passed away, she still wears her wedding ring, which visually contrasts her prominent red design.
• Use Your Head: In her final phase of the fight, she uses her vine-like hair to turn the arena into a giant cage, with her face dangling in the center. This leaves her with only a couple direct attacks, one of which is to bang her face into the ground and create shockwaves.
• Vicariously Ambitious: Heavily implied, befitting her Stage Mom status. As Yinu begins voicing her concerns over how much the fight is escalating, her mother shouts that Mayday and Zuke are making a fool out of her and pushes Yinu to keep the concert going. Considering she's the one who takes all the damage during the fight rather than Yinu, she seems to view the two of them as equally involved in the performance. However, the ending of the fight suggests that she simply just became too involved in protecting Yinu's performance and began projecting her own wrath.
• Villain Has a Point: She accuses Bunk Bed Junction of being "bullies" and that they're at the concert to "ruin" it. The pair are, in fact, out to destroy the piano of a nine-year old girl who wouldn't have the means of stopping them if her mother wasn't around, which would in turn ruin said girl's performance.
• Villainous Breakdown: She completely loses it after Mayday and Zuke manage to completely separate her from Yinu. By that point, Yinu doesn't even want to continue her performance because of just how far the fight's escalated, but her mother screams at her to keep playing.
• Visual Pun: She appears behind the stage and eventally becomes a part of the platform and stage itself. She's a literal Stage Mom.
• When Trees Attack: Similar to her daughter's rose motif, she visually resembles a giant tree. Her hair looks like the branches of a leafless tree, her torso is tall and narrow like a tree trunk, her legs aren't visible and the arena becomes surrounded by roots once the fight moves away from the concert hall. In addition, the sounds of creaking wood can be heard when she moves. Naturally, the Christmas Edition takes the tree correlation further by giving her a white dress with garlands incorporated into its design, making her look like a giant Christmas tree come to life.
• Wicked Heart Symbol: She has a prominent heart-shaped mark on her face that cracks when you face her directly.

Neon J.

Neon J.

Voiced by: Muhammad Zulhilmi (EN), Idir Alexander Ould Braham (FR), Victor Costa (SP), Ryuichi Kagehira (JP)

"You mess with my troops, you mess with me!"

1010's manager and a cyborg military official with a sonar screen for a head that's very loyal to NSR.

---

• A Father to His Men: Zig-zagged. On his first appearance he proclaims that whoever messes with his "troops" messes with him and starts directing all of 1010's attacks. But at the same time he's pretty quick to replace any member who goes down with an identical double without raising much of a fuss. When his factory is destroyed and Bunk Bed Junction goes in for the Showstopper, he panics as he realizes he can't just make more of 1010 if they get destroyed this time and attempts to shield them with his body.
• Black Comedy: His attacks have such charming epithets as "Collateral Damage" and "Preemptive Strike."
• Body Horror: He's a cyborg who's had his limbs and head replaced with high-tech prosthetics. And if Word of God is to be believed, he's basically organs perserved within a robotic shell.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Kliff repeatedly warns the protagonists not to underestimate him due to his status as a veteran soldier of the Border Wars. Notably, he's the first boss to come at the band with actual weapons.
• Calling Your Attacks: Telegraphs both 1010's and his own attacks by loudly calling them out beforehand.
• Colonel Kilgore: He continues to act like a military commander even after changing professions. After his defeat, he ends up going through a breakdown like a general who just lost his platoon to Bunk Bed Junction's confusion.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Neon J's factory's walker form has color-coded attacks based on four of 1010's members (and also on their hairstyle). For the mohawk-topped red member, his mech changes its hands into circular saws and charges forward; for the yellow member with a pointed pompadour, he fires a missile that causes a large explosion in the center of the stage; for the green member with a ring-shaped hairstyle, he pulls the ring pins on several grenades and scatters them across the field, and for the flat-topped blue member, his mech pulls out two bludgeons and executes a Spin Attack.
• Cyborg: It's revealed in the briefing of 1010. He even angrily calls himself this after Zuke questions how a robot could even cough or feel pain.
• Dance Battler: The robot Neon J controls performs dance moves between and during attacks. If not for software limitations, he himself would've been dancing on its head and piloting it Motion-Capture Mecha-style.
  • A post launch patch for Encore Edition updated the 1010 battle to have Neon J. shuffling and posing atop the mech during the final section of the fight.
• Dark and Troubled Past: As over-the-top and comedic as he acts in the present, the unlockable figurines reveal that he was conscripted to fight in the Border Wars. During it, he suffered significant enough wounds to have to be rebuilt as a cyborg.
• Dual Wielding: During his "red" and "blue" attacks. His "red" attack has him wield two saw blades and rush at Zuke and Mayday. His "blue" attack has him wield two tonfas and do a Spin Attack.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: A former toy maker turned soldier turned megalomaniacal inhuman super robot boyband manager.
• Full-Conversion Cyborg: Not a single visible part of his body is organic, to the point where Zuke mistakes him for a robot at first.
• Go Through Me: Tries to shield the last of his 1010 androids from the Showstopper. He fails.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: When in his mech phase, Neon J's mech will produce 1010 androids as weapons for his attacks.
• Heel Realization: As he's left a rambling mess after his defeat, he realizes just how many terrible things he did in the name of NSR. Unfortunately, he's so long-winded about the whole thing that Mayday and Zuke lose interest and just walk away.
• Hidden Depths: He apparently makes collectible figurines by hand if his unlockable backstory is any indication, not to mention that he does NSR's bidding because of genuine belief that they can maintain order.
• Horned Humanoid: The Christmas Edition for the game gives him reindeer antlers.
• Insistent Terminology: When Zuke questions how a robot can feel pain (or cough), Neon J angrily replies that he's a cyborg, not a robot.
• Irony: His boss fight implies that he legitimately loves singing and dancing, which makes the fact that he no longer has use of his natural arms, legs, or voice rather tragic.
• Kavorka Man: His complete lack of a human face doesn't stop him from gaining smitten fangirls of his own.
• Living Toy: Like his robotic creations, Neon J. also gets a toy soldier/nutcracker outfit for his Christmas Edition skin.
• The Man Behind the Man: Is the one behind 1010, being both their manager and creator. In various parts of the finale that depict all the megastars, he's used instead of 1010 themselves, implying he's the one that truly holds the position in NSR. Notably, when Bunk Bed Junction returns the districts to NSR during the climax, it's Neon J who is given back control of the Metro Division district, not 1010.
  • To be fair, the 1010 androids are broken (with the white one definitely missing a leg), and the factory that made and replaced them is destroyed at that point. It's possible that the manager, Neon J, was the only one well enough to recieve the district at that time.
• Meaningful Name: J is the 10th letter of the Alphabet, neon is the 10th element in the periodic table, and he is the manufacturer of the 1010 band robots.
• Me's a Crowd: Neon J acts like the Commander/Manager of 1010 but his identical voice pitch and clear control over the quickly replaceable 1010 units imply he is the actual talent behind 1010, being in fact 1010 itself, however the boyband theme takes the center stage so Neon J puts the robots forward while he just manages.
• Mini-Mecha: He pilots one in his boss fight that also doubles as a factory that spawns the 1010 robots.
• No Indoor Voice: He talks in nothing but loud dramatic proclamations.
• Old Soldier: He's been fighting wars since the late 60s at least.
• Operation: [Blank]: When joining the battle against Bunk Bed Junction, Neon J commands 1010 to continue "Operation: Party All Niiiiight~!", using the same auto tune singing that 1010 does.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: He mentions being deployed in the Border Wars and to an "Azkar Faction" during his post-fight dialogue, and his time in those battles have clearly affected him.
• Significant Double Casting: In all languages, he has the same voice actor as 1010, his creations.
• The Theme Park Version: Repurposed the city's naval shipyard into a military-themed amusement park, but kept the massive artillery guns around because you can never be too careful.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: His "green" attack has his mech scatter explosives all over the field, while his "yellow" attack drops one massive bomb in the centre of it.
• TV Head Robot: He has a green sonar screen for a head.
• Unexplained Recovery: After taking enough damage, his flying factory disappears in a screen-filling explosion, only to come back a phase later with only minor damages.
• Vague Age: Neon J's exact age isn't stated anywhere in the game. However, the fact he's a veteran from the Border Wars implies he's one of the oldest, if not the oldest NSR artist.
  • Game Director Daim Dziauddin confirmed in a Twitch AMA that he’s older than DJ Subatomic Supernova, and could be somewhere in his forties.
• Villainous Breakdown: After his defeat, he goes into full Shell-Shocked Veteran mode. Despite him very likely suffering from actual PTSD, it's played for comedy as he goes on such a lengthy recollection of his past experiences in the war and music industry that Mayday and Zuke wind up getting confused and just leave him mid-ramble.
• Vocal Dissonance: He's older than DJ Subatomic Supernova, who is 41, and yet sounds like a spirited young man in his mid 20's at most. Being a cyborg with an autotuned voice might have something to do with it.
• We Can Rebuild Him: Heavily implied given his status as both a war vet and cyborg.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Joined NSR to keep peace through order so that no one in it would ever have to experience the horrors of war ever again. The means with which he's enforced that order haunt him though.
• What the Hell, Hero?: He calls out Bunk Bed Junction for breaking Yinu's piano while hysterically accusing them of going after his factory.

NPCs

Kliff (Unmarked Spoilers)

Kliff

Voiced by: Jay Sheldon (EN) Julien Chièze (FR), Olivier Peissel (SP) Eiji Miyashita (JP)

"Before you go, it would be an honor for me to brief you on your next fight. May I?"

Number 1 Fan of Bunk Bed Junction, he helps Mayday and Zuke overthrow NSR and reestablish rock to Vinyl City. However, his fanaticism towards rock leads him to try to trash NSR Tower with a satellite...

---

• Abhorrent Admirer: It's quite clear Tatiana hated him long before he decided that destroying a city was worth proving a musical genre's superiority, and it's clear from his patronizing and entitled attitude as to why.
• Allegorical Character: While not an NSR artist, Kliff represents a Loony Fan who only saw the stage persona of Kul Fyra and not the person underneath. He believes that he's entitled to a performer's time of day, and when he doesn't get it... tries to drop a satellite into the middle of a populated city.
• Ax-Crazy: It takes a special kind of crazy to think that crashing a satellite into NSR Tower is a perfectly rational brand of poetic justice.
• Colony Drop: Attempts to destroy NSR Tower using the company's very own satellite, an act that would have had significant collateral damage.
• Conflict Killer: Once it's revealed that his hatred of EDM and NSR could result in mass civilian deaths, Bunk Bed Junction and Tatiana mutually agree to drop their grudges against each other for the sake of saving innocent lives.
• Cool Old Guy: He was around to see the heyday of rock that May and Zuke admire so much. Until his fanaticism towards rock leads him to drop the NSR satellite onto the city.
• The Cracker: Strongly implied, considering he seemingly pulled Mayday's phone number from nowhere, has a lot of intel on NSR's megastars, and eventually sets NSR's satellite to come crashing down to earth. The altering of the satellite's screen display from the NSR charts to "Rock Rules!" also seems like something Kliff would do.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Tatiana bluntly tells Kliff that he isn't entitled to anything from her. Kliff in response tries to drop a satellite right into the middle of a populated city.
• Entitled Bastard: He was utterly obsessed with Kul Fyra during her hey-day and believes that gives him a say in the direction of her career. When she turns against rock, he resorts to extreme measures to, in his own mind, make her see the error of her ways.
• Evil Reactionary: He wants to return to the times before NSR, when rock dominated Vinyl City, to the point of trying to crash satellite into NSR headquarters, being unconcerned for collateral damage.
• Evil Redhead: He's a deranged former fan of Kul Fyra who is willing to potentially destroy Vinyl City just to assert rock's dominance.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: He wears thick square glasses and turns out to be a very amoral and unhinged fanboy.
• Hate Sink: In a game where all of the “villains” are either sympathetic or haven’t done enough to be considered evil, Kliff is noticeable that his true personality traits are nothing but a petty obsessed fan willing to cause mass property destruction just because he hates EDM and nothing that makes him sympathetic at all.
• Hidden Depths: He seems to legitimately enjoy the Natura District for all the plantlife there despite being a product of NSR's rule. Considering how much he hates NSR, that means a lot.
  "Ahhhh, now this place is more to my liking. Say what you want about NSR, but having more greenery is never a bad thing."
• Honor Before Reason: He would rather the city either stay in the dark or burn to the ground than admit that rock and EDM are on equal-footing with one another.
• Hypocrite: Kliff texts Bunk Bed Junction that Tatiana is "using" them in the final act of the game, to try and dissuade them from saving NSR, which rings hollow given that Kliff relied on the two to defeat NSR's artists throughout the entire game, and was not upfront about his revenge until the last minute.
• Loony Fan: He was Kul Fyra's self-proclaimed number one fan and was driven to fanaticism when she turned against rock. Tatiana, the true identity of Kul Fyra, just treats him as a nuisance when he tries to give her a "Reason You Suck" Speech. This prompts Kliff to drop the NSR satellite on NSR Tower, threatening the entire city in the process.
• Made of Iron: Downplayed. While Tatiana did break his nose after she uppercuts him to shut him up, she didn't just uppercut him. She sent him flying, then he landed on his head. Something like that should have done more than just break his nose.
• Mask of Sanity: He spends much of the game playing the role of a chill but dedicated tactician for Bunk Bed Junction. Then it's revealed that he's a Loony Fan willing to resort to destructive extremes just to establish rock's dominance over Vinyl City.
• Mission Control: He acts as this to Bunk Bed Junction, giving information they need for combating the NSR artists. This becomes Mission Control Is Off Its Meds in the finale as the NSR satellite is now falling thanks to him, and he tries to dissuade you from giving control back to NSR's megastars. At one point during the finale he "attempts" to trick B2J into letting the hijacked security bots hit them.
• Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: In the final level, Kliff desperately tries to convince BJ2 to not to destroy the generators, at one point even pulling a Flowey and attempts to convince them to stand in the enemies' attacks.
• Mr. Exposition: He provides information regarding every megastar.
• My Nayme Is: "Cliff" is a common boy's name but usually spelt with a 'c'.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: He doesn't care at all about the energy crisis, unlike Mayday and Zuke. The only reason he supported them was because he just wanted to spite Tatiana for turning her back on rock. When she refuses to budge despite her defeat, he downs the NSR satellite to take her out permanently.
• Post-Final Boss: He's effectively this. The "fight" against him just involves dismantling his generators to give the megastars back control over their districts. When he appears to challenge Bunk Bed Junction head-on, Tatiana comes in to blow his forces away.
• Secretly Selfish: He appears to Bunk Bed Junction as their Number #1 Fan and offers valuable information on the NSR Megastars they need to fight. But while Mayday and Zuke's reason for their music revolution was to protest NSR pushing out other styles of music and wanting to provide power to stop the energy crisis, Kliff reveals at the the end that he doesn't care about the energy crisis, and was merely using Mayday and Zuke to usurp EDM's control over Vinyl City and make Rock the dominant genre purely to spite Tatiana for turning her back on Rock,
• Shadow Archetype: Is this to Mayday. They both idolized Kul Fyra and hate EDM because of how much it's taken over the city while believing rock to be the only true form of music. However, Kliff takes these aspects to truly obsessive levels, not even caring about the lives of the city's people as he tries to make rock the controlling force of the city.
• Stalker without a Crush: Implied, judging by how he somehow got Mayday's phone number and knew where Bunk Bed Junction's sewer base was. Zuke is a little unnerved for both instances. In hindsight, it probably should have been a red flag to how far he's willing to go in the name of rock.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: In-Universe and Deconstructed: He took it as a personal betrayal when Fyra moved from rock to EDM, to the point where he's willing to tear NSR and Vinyl City to the ground just to prove rock music as the superior genre.
• Villainous Breakdown: When Bunk Bed Junction decide to stop his plan by teaming up with Tatiana, he starts texting the group to try and convince them that Tatiana is just using them, which grow progressively angrier as the final act continues.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: He isn't shown at all after him and his forces are blown away by Tatiana's guitar strum.
• Walking Spoiler: There's a lot more beneath his seemingly chill surface, namely that he's completely nuts.

Celine

Celine

Voiced by: Jerrica Xufei Lai (EN), Roxane Turmel (FR), Nayeli Forest (SP), Matsuri Mizuguchi (JP)

"Her music, her style, her designs... even her aura is one-of-a-kind!"

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• All There in the Script: Bizarrely inverted. Her name is readily available to see both in-game and on any out-of-game info involving her, but for whatever reason the game credits only list her as "Fashionista" rather than by her name.
• The Fashionista: She's big into fashion, especially clothing approved by Eve.

Zam

Zam

Voiced by: Azman Zulkiply (EN), Emmanuel Bonami (FR), Diego Asensio (SP), Kazutoshi Hatano (JP)

A radio DJ, and Bunk Bed Junction's host in the sewers. He prepares them to go live on radio.

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• Buccaneer Broadcaster: Runs a pirate radio station from Bunk Bed Junction's lair in the sewers.
• Sweet Baker: A picture in the credits shows him having baked some cookies for Mayday and Zuke.

Barbara

Barbara

Voiced by: Fathimath Nuha (EN), Eva Engler (FR), Suryana Leaud (SP), Yurie Ariga (JP)

A music journalist in Vinyl City. Knows all there is to know about NSR's megastars.

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• Knowledge Broker: She gives Mayday and Zuke info on NSR's artists.

Amal the Unicorn

Amal the Unicorn

Voiced by: Maxime "Sora" Cohen (EN/FR/JP), Idir Alexander Ould Braham (SP)

A man in a unicorn kigurumi that Mayday mistakes for a real unicorn.

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• Paper-Thin Disguise: It's rather obvious he's just a guy in a costume, but Mayday nonetheless believes he's a real unicorn when she first sees him.

Mia

Mia

Voiced by: Mina hazard (EN) Roxane Turmel (FR), Nayeli Forest (SP), Ayano Watanabe (JP)

A booth attendant working for NSR.

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• Nervous Wreck: She becomes utterly terrified whenever Mayday and Zuke try to talk to her, although this is somewhat justified considering their crusade against her bosses.

Retdex

Retdex

Voiced by: Colin Kirton (EN), José Luccioni (FR), Jordi Batalle (SP), Yuzuki Hara (JP)

A washup music artist who spends his time reminiscing about his former glory days.

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• Cool Old Guy: A genuine, old school music veteran, albeit one who's not as cool as he likes to think he is.
• Jaded Washout: A washed-out artist always spending his time reminiscing about his Glory Days.
• Recognition Failure: Meets Bunk Bed Junction hoping they'll recognize him from his old days as a musician. They don't.

Aunty

Aunty

Voiced by: Sarah Nadhirah Azman (EN), Odile Schmitt (FR), Laetitia Lefebvre (ES), Momo Michishita (JP)

A food stall owner and fan of Bunk Bed Junction.

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Timmy

Timmy

Voiced by: Colin Kirton (EN), José Luccioni (FR), Jordi Batalle (SP), Suguru Shimizu (JP)

A technician who often works on Qwasa installation repairs.

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Zed

Zed

Voiced by: Nabil Zakaria (EN), Mathieu Solans (FR), Diego Asensio (SP) Junya Miwa (JP)

A resident who just moved into Vinyl City. Hates loud music.

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• Didn't Think This Through: A guy who hates noise probably shouldn't have moved to a place that literally runs on loud music.

Joey

Joey, the Music Elitist

Voiced by: Joey Bizinger (EN/JP), Bruno Meyere (FR), Alonso Venegas F. (SP)

"The latest hits?! Hah! More like a bunch of misguided tunes!"

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• The Cameo: Being a fan of anime, a solo musician in his own right, and an aspiring voice actor, his cameo in No Straight Roads makes quite a bit of sense.
• Hipster: Constantly complains about how great music was "before", and is utterly impossible to please no matter what the player does.
• Ink-Suit Actor: His design is clearly modeled after his voice actor.
• Irony: His shirt has a picture of a smiling sun on it, and yet his personality is anything but sunshiny.
• Not Bad: Beating a boss on Crazy difficulty will get some variant of this out of him, which is the highest praise the player can hope to earn from him.

Kul Fyra

Kul Fyra

A legendary rock star and the lead guitarist of the rock band "The Goolings", she's considered to be the best rock star in Vinyl City history - before the band broke up and she vanished, Kliff used to go to her concerts and Mayday sees her as a role model.

For tropes regarding her in the present day, see Tatiana.

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• Fake Ultimate Hero: How she describes herself in her prime. While The Goolings were a beloved and successful rock band, they were secretly fraught with strife and indecision with Kul Fyra too soft to lead them, causing the group to implode and leave Vinyl City to fend for itself.
• Feet of Clay: Spectacular frontman, abysmal leader.
• Fiery Redhead: Her poster makes it look as though she styled her hair to look like an actual fire.
• The Perils of Being the Best: She set such a high bar for the Rock music genre in Vinyl City that the band breaking up was considered a Jump the Shark moment for Rock leading to the rise of EDM. In truth, it was because she never did anything to lead "The Goolings", which made her decide that rock and its chaos were nothing but trouble.
• Punny Name: Her name is pronounced "Cool Fire-a". Because she's cool (as in, awesome) and also has a fire motif and can become fire.

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