Mayday: You can't do this to me! (...) I'm an artist! I'm a performer! A performer! I belong on this stage-!
The conclusion of Yinu's battle. The scuffle results in Yinu and her piano plummeting. Yinu's mother manages to catch Yinu but not the piano, which breaks in half as soon as it hits the ground. As Yinu somberly walks over to what remains of her instrument, Yinu's mother is ready to blow up again at Mayday and Zuke for interfering with Yinu's performance. Then she hears Yinu start playing, and instantly her wrathful expression suddenly reverts to normal. She actually starts to hyperventilate briefly, almost as if it finally hit her how much damage she caused to the stage in her anger, before slowly making her way over to her daughter. As she does, she slowly shrinks down to the size of a normal woman. Without saying a word, she joins in Yinu's performance, playing the keys on the other half of the piano. As she does this, her distressed daughter gradually begins to smile. For the first time, Yinu's mother actually appears calm and loving, suggesting that she had been too focused on protecting her daughter's career to the extent that she lost sight of why her daughter performed in the first place. Throughout it all, Mayday and Zuke silently watch.
The scene right before is not much better. By the end of the battle, Yinu's mother has completely taken over the performance. Just as Mayday and Zuke are about to hit her with their Showstopper, Yinu pops up with her piano and knocks them away. This pleases Yinu's mother, and she begins to encourage Yinu to "play one more time for Mama." Yinu's response, however...
Yinu I hate you all! I SO HATE YOU ALL! AAAAAAAH!!
Made sadder by the family photos unlocked in the game of Yinu and her family. She learnt piano from her father and it seems later on he passed away from an illness of some kind. Playing piano was Yinu and her mother's way of remembering him. They kept a photo of him on their piano at home.
After the fight, when everyone falls from the platformed battlefield and into the stage, Yinu's mother shields her from the fall and crashes heavily protecting her daughter, but Yinu doesn't even acknowledge this and instead runs immediately over to her piano, showing just how estranged she's become from her mother because of her Stage Mom actions. It isn't until her mother redeems herself in Yinu's eyes by remembering their reason of playing piano in the first place, that Yinu allows herself to smile to her mother.
If you imagine that the piano Yinu plays during her battle is the very one her father used during their first piano lesson, it makes her snapping at the two to "stay away from [her] piano" all the more sobering. Even more so when it's broken at the conclusion of the battle.
The first rap battle between Zuke and DK West seems like a typical argument between siblings. The second battle reveals just how deep the wounds actually go, with Zuke becoming progressively angrier with his brother's refusal to reconnect with him or accept any responsibility for his own actions, and in fact accusing Zuke of being at fault for both until the battle concludes with Zuke outright declaring that he has no brother. DK West tries to laugh it off afterwards, but it's clear that he's deeply hurt by this.
Zuke: In fact, forget this, forget you!
You're no brother of mine!
I disown you, we ain't related!
You're no brother!
You're no brother!
YOU AIN'T NO BROTHER OF MINE!!
Particularly notable is how West's shadow monster acts. Normally, when a verse ends, Zuke and May have to deplete West's health bar by striking the monster. A good player will usually empty the bar before the chorus ends, which will result in the monster cowering while the two continue the beatdown. When West is defeated after Zuke's outburst, the post-verse beatdown lasts an uncomfortably long time as they just keep attacking and attacking and attacking....
While meant to be Played for Laughs due to how utterly and uncharacteristically gaga she got for them, the fight with 1010 still ends on a somber note for May. She'd truly grown to like them to the point where she was barely able to bring herself to use the Showstopper. Even while she's doing it she sounds in the verge of tears. Her expressions are full of sadness and grief instead of the joy and radiance she normally has, and when the Showstopper finally fires she apologizes to 1010 before it hits them.
May: Bunka! Junka! Shakalaka BAM-I'M SORRYYYY!!
While similarly played for laughs, Neon J's breakdown in the aftermath of the battle is pretty sad when you think about it. He thinks Bunk Bed Junction are there to off him completely and when they say they don't want to actually kill him he doesn't believe them, screaming at them that he knows they broke Yinu's piano. After that he goes into a depressed rant about the war he used to fight in and how he mainly joined NSR so his home would remain peaceful forever and no one else would be forced to go through what he did. Knowing he probably lost more than a few men out there, it makes him futilely trying to protect 1010 during the Showstopper pretty hard to watch.
The battle with Eve might be the most somber boss fight in the game. It's revealed at the very start that Zuke and her used to date before he ran away from her, and despite the haughty pretentious air she puts on, it's very clear that she's desperate to be with him again and angry that he seemingly found another girl, even though they're not together like that. As she is defeated, her vandalized vinyl record depicts Bunk Bed Junction triumphing over her broken psyche. When she's defeated and retreats into a blank void, Zuke makes his way over to talk sense into her at the subtle quiet urging of Mayday. When approached, Eve breaks down, revealing that she feels incomplete without someone who can understand her unique world view, taking her defeat as a sign that she will always be alone.
Eve: There is no one, not even him.
None in this world to weave their senses with mine.
Everything is nothing.
Why should I continue to entertain this void?
So much to do, yet nowhere to go. I do not belong here.
Sea, fire, all for naught.
It is over, it is over, it is over, it is over, it is over!
Stay away! Your tongue is poison!
The stars, they are so beautiful. I will close my eyes now. Goodbye.
Things become even more painful when you unlock her old videos from moments in her past. In her first video, she hates herself, screaming "I HATE YOU!" at a sculpture of herself that she made and trying to cover up her pink side with white make-up. The second video takes place after she and Zuke got into a relationship where she's much happier, and she looked positively starstruck at just the simplest things Zuke did while assisting her performances. Then the very next video reveals that a performance where she set his hair on fire is what caused him to run out on her without even so much as asking for a break-up. The saddest part is that the way Eve described what happened, it seems as though she didn't even realize that she had caused Zuke any harm and was genuinely confused by his reaction. It ends with her deciding to take her art further, desperately hoping it will reach like-minded people she can share her vision with. As we see in the present, that never happened.
In the third video, Nadia says to herself "Looks like I am left alone again." But instead of being heartbroken, she sounds surprisingly unfazed, and the reason behind it is tragic: she somehow expected this to happen, that Zuke would leave her. "So, it did not hurt as much as I thought it would".
To twist the knife further, the second video shows one piece Zuke helped her create was one made of hanging colored bottles in the shape of a heart...which one can actually find on the outskirts of Evenfall Gallery, but adjusted into the shape of a broken heart.
Unlike in the other Showstoppers, Zuke doesn't smile at all, and speaks in a soft-spoken way. He might not show his sadness as openly as May did with 1010, but it's still there.
There's also the heartbroken tone in Mayday's voice when she wonders to Tataina "How could you change so much?" Tatiana may not think much of it anymore, but it's saddening to think about the scope of how badly she was affected when the Goolings disbanded.
