User blog comment:BannedLagiacrus/Monster Appreciation Week: Anjanath/@comment-4969421-20180320123704

Anjanath would be a good monster if it didn't suck in every way possible.

I think it's really pathetic and sad how we got a monster like Anjanath in 2018. You'd think, on a series that is now 10+ years old, designs would progresively improve. That is most often the case. But then there's this. There's literally nothing going for Anjanath's design. It's just a pink dinosaur. That's it. Yeah, monsters resemble animals. But they have key design elements that separate them from their real-life counterparts. This is not the case of Anjanath. I will repeat myself. There's quite literally fucking NOTHING going on on its design. I can google "t-rex" and I will find the exact same thing. And it's like the creators know this. They were making a dinosaur monster, and that is fantastic, but when they were done they went like "oh shit, we forgot the actual originality to the design". They notice this, and try to fix it with its rage mode. Which is why its nasal cavity and wings magically pop out of its body when it's enraged. This is nothing new: Seregios, Zinogre, Gore Magala and many others all "grow" extra body parts in their Raged States. However you can still see those "rage-only" parts when the monster is calm, with their spikes/claws/horns folded against their bodies when not in use. With Anjanath, there's zero previous indication those extra body parts actually existed. Said body parts just materialize into reality like they were some kind of afterthought (which I honestly think they are). But hey. Can't really complain. They make Anjanath a shitty uninteresting monster but that's better than being a shitty uninteresting dinosaur at least.

Gameplay-wise, while it's true Anjanath has a fair share of moves, they are nothing you already haven't seen before. Anajanth has no mechanics, gimmicks, or quirks of its own. Its attacks you've already seen other Brute Wyverns performing them a million times, and even for those that are truly new, they are always generic run off the mill attacks: Bites, kicks, bodychecks, etc; all entirely uninteresting and commonplace, specially among Brute Wyverns. The class has fairly similar fighting styles all around, but when you go through them individually, I think it's pretty easy to remember signature attacks they have. Off the top of my head, Barroth has its charge, Uragaan rolls, Duramboros has its helicopter spin, Glavenus has the roundslash etc etc. I think the single most impressive attack I've seen from Anja is its fire sneeze, and even then, that's more of a funny unexpected attack rather than a "wow, that was impressive" attack. Oh yeah Anjanath uses fire because Fire is a exceptionally underused and uncommon element and because of this MHW needs as many as it possibly can because fire element monsters make a game good.

Cherry on cake is, being possibly the single most uninteresting monster in World/the entire franchise it's the one that (of course) gets shilled beyond comprehension and makes it into most promotional material even though literally any other monster in the game would have been better to showcase the range of designs MH is capable of. But it's a dinosaur so that means every 13 year old (mentally or otherwise) will simply flock to it and Capcom wants that audience, so smart move from them. This also means the normie media will catch onto this and point out how MH is TOTALLY Jurassic Park x Dark Souls, because that's what it is right. (Although to be fair, I bet they would have done the same thing with any other vaguely theropod monster). And everyone is happy at the end.

In my judgement, Anjanath is simply not up to standards. It's not fit to be called a monster, much less a Monster Hunter monster, being simply a dinosaur that breathes fire.