Beating Killers’ Heaven will unlock the secret Killer Ate mode. Rather than the eighth personality awakening, the new mode will feature a morbidly obese, wheezing, diabetic Dan Smith. The aforementioned flashbacks will also include several bizarre scenes of Dan angrily shoving cake into his mouth in a dimly-lit kitchen. Some of these scenes will span as long as half an hour.

The long-awaited sequel to the masterpiece that is Killer7 will be called Killers’ Heaven. It will detail Emir’s life after the first game, as well as Harman’s eventual reestablishment of the Smith Assassins, and the worldwide aftermath of Heaven Smile threat. It will be interlaced with flashbacks about the lives of the Smiths before they joined Garcian, and even before they were indebted to Harman. Most importantly, the title well sound exactly the fucking same as the first installment when said out loud.

What was so special about Ryuji anyway? Travis claims he hesitated to kill him because he was a “true warrior,” but was he really? As I recall, his battle was absolutely full of surprise attacks, heavily-modded motorcycles, and a barely-avoidable magic dragon that was reminiscent of Dark Star’s. In a few ways, he was similar to Travis, but using that as a basis for a true warrior seems a bit vain for Touchdown, honestly. If you ask me, what makes much more sense is that Travis wished to spare him because he reminded him of his greatest former master, Thunder Ryu. Aside from the name, the two are quite similar in appearance.

Further, maybe his similarities to Travis are significant, after all. Maybe Ryuji is Thunder Ryu’s son. Perhaps these similarities are what caused Thunder Ryu to take Travis in.

That sure takes their “bonding sessions” to a whole new level of uncomfortable.

Though Silvia is seen at the end of NMH with a young girl named Jeane (implied to be her daughter), no such character appears in Desperate Struggle. This strikes me as odd because both of her supposed parents, Henry and Silvia, appear in the game. Given the things that happen to them (Henry is frozen in carbonite and Silvia works at a brothel, both for an undisclosed but possibly very long period of time), neither could be spending much time with the girl.

What makes more sense to me is that the art gallery scene in NMH takes place after Desperate Struggle, and Jeane is Travis’s daughter. After all, why would Henry have named his daughter after Jeane? She may be his sister, but what would suggest he ever even met her? We already know that Travis was once in love with Jeane, and now knows the truth about her. At least at one point in his life, he considered her important enough to name his cat after her—why not his daughter too?

From what I can tell, any evidence pointing to Henry as the father is as inconclusive as Travis, if not more. Jeane probably is fascinated by the painting because it features her father, who could be either of the two men. And Silvia retaining her first-game appearance isn’t anything a little retroactive continuity wouldn’t fix. When that scene was made, Suda51 wasn’t even planning on a sequel, so there would have been no need to elaborate. It was kind of like an open ending.

The akashic points were an interesting plot device used so that No More Heroes 2 would be able to feature a few assassins who did not necessarily live in or around Southern California (apparently, Assassin Country, USA). With these wormholes, Travis could travel to faraway, unusual locations. The most mysterious, however, is the akashic point that leads to Alice Twilight. Though it takes place in a relatively-normal urban living area, Silvia calls it a “mystery location,” and never elaborates on just where it is. Travis is able to identify the correct spot as a very tall building has been painted with his face on the side.

The “mystery location” was Santa Destroy, all along. The akashic point didn’t jump through space, but through time. Though Santa Destroy didn’t have particularly tall buildings in the first NMH, the second one featured a few on the overworld map, appropriate as Pizza Batt’s developments changed the city considerably. Travis finds himself in a future where the UAA’s ranking fights have continued to rise in popularity over many years. Where thugs heavily populate tall urban developments just for the purpose of the fight. Where psychotic hack-and-slashers like Travis are glorified as heroes (don’t forget, NMH 1.5 showed that the city had actually built a statue in his honor). Where career assassins like Alice join in hopes of becoming like Travis, and end up losing their families and friends in the process. The significance of Alice’s fight is that Travis finally realizes the consequences of his actions (including the loss of her husband, son, and sister) because of his hand in glorifying the act of killing. Thus, Travis vows to bring down the UAA, and erases this future from history forever.

I always felt like 11 was as many ranks as they had back then, but it still seems odd that someone who seemed so qualified would be so low in the ranks.  I didn’t much care for Helter Skelter originally, until I read No More Loser.  The fact that he frequented the assassin scene to pay for his brother’s tuition is touching, and I love that both of them are painted as sort of tragic heroes (while Travis is contrasted as a bit of a psychopath).

He mentioned he didn’t want Skelter to end up like himself or his mother, but the latter was never elaborated on.  I can’t imagine Mama Skelter being an assassin we’ve seen before— part of me doesn’t think she’s an assassin at all, but a prostitute (I seem to have a strange affinity for that conclusion) or something equally deviant.

Some personal (i.e.: baseless) headcanon since I was doing that meme: HS is both way more jaded and way more mature than Travis, but both he and his brother have an affinity for the Final Fantasy series.  And their mom used to listen to The Beatles a lot when they were growing up.  Sorry if that’s a little vanilla. :P

Personally, I don’t see what the big deal is…he laments dishonoring Holly by effectively forcing her to kill herself, but I never felt like he really made a promise to kill no matter what.  Where his fight with Holly reflects his romanticist side, his fight with Kimmy reflects his realist side.  Here he’s come face-to-face with a young girl who’s turned into a killer because of an obsession over the now-public ranking fights that he helped to create.  Though (iirc) he dares her to face him again when she’s older, I think he’d prefer that she changed her mind.  Even though he respects (even loves?) Holly greatly, he doesn’t want to be the kind of person who creates the Holly Summerses of the world.  His hands are bloody enough.

It makes sense.  Depression seemed to be a common thing among assassins— Alice and Death Metal were very much the same way.  It’s ironic that Travis tells Alice to “just fucking quit,” because he’s the only one who ever really had that option.  Everyone who remains stagnant in the ranks reaches the same conclusion eventually, especially guys like Death Metal and Nathan Copeland who are already impossibly rich.  No matter what you have, you’ll never be able to truly enjoy it with people constantly trying to kill you.  This is especially true of Nathan, as he is at the bottom of the ranks at a time where ranking battles have become very popular.  He probably couldn’t even leave his suite without people trying to murder him, so he decided he wanted to go out in style.

Anyway good observation, anon.  I didn’t even consider Nathan before.

Charlie was always an odd character.  A lot of the assassins in NMH2 are.  I always felt that when Jasper bought out the UUA and made the ranks a national sport, he basically ranked whoever he wanted, including a confused old Russian cosmonaut, a vampire in a maximum security prison, a ghost, and of course, our boy Charlie (there are a few exceptions—Alice, Margaret, Ryuji, etc, actually did earn their ranks).  Given his unlikely proportions, Charlie is probably killer (heh) at what he does, so he caught Jasper’s eye easily, and accepted quickly when he was handed a thick wad of cash.  He demanded that he rank with his ladies because he won’t let them out of his sight (he’s very jealous), so Jasper forked over a giant robot to keep them all together.  Jasper had no problem with this as he fashioned this whole bizarre game with Travis in mind, and wanted to keep things interesting.

I’ve done a couple of posts about Bad Girl on this blog before, but if I may speak without evidence, I don’t like when people try to justify the way she is: I think she’s absolutely an unlikable, spoiled brat.  Or she was, growing up, until she got kicked out of her parents’ house.  With no actual skills, she turned to (very unusual) prostitution as her only choice.  Further, Bad Girl has intimacy problems due to being insecure about her occupation, so she pushes guys like Travis away before they even have the chance to judge her.  I am almost positive she has had at least one fling with Silvia though, and maintains strained bffsies with her.