Dirty Pair

[Caldwin]

Mughi!

---Dave

??

Okay, so quick history of the Displacer Beast.

It started as the alien menace called the Coeurl (yes, Final Fantasy grabbed the name) from A.E. van Vogt's short story "Dark Destroyer." Felinoid with tentacles and the ability to extract potassium from living things as it fed, not to mention other atomic-manipulation tricks that made it hard to contain. This was the inspiration for the Displacer Beast, but ALSO the inspiration for Mughi, the companion of the Dirty Pair. (The anime made him more of a furball, but the original light novels and manga had him pretty closely modeled on the Coeurl.)

---Dave

From the pre-anime design, one of the novels from about 1980. Mughi-as-Coeurl postdates the earliest Displacer Beasts, but it seems to be a parallel evolution rather than van Vogt -> D&D -> Dirty Pair.
View attachment 18212

Here's the Marvel adaptation of the 1939 story (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Destroyer), published in 1974 (I have a later reprint of this, IIRC):
View attachment 18213
This interpretation of the Coeurl probably inspired the Displacer Beast directly, given the timing and the general Fandom Culture crosspollination.

---Dave

I figured I'd start a new topic rather than bog down the D&D chat just because Mughi has a resemblance to a displacer beast.

I just finished the book I was reading, so now I can start reading this. But one thing puzzles me. I mean, of course I expect designs to change slightly when being adapted from book to film/animation. But did the makers of the anime not look at the book cover? Because it feels pretty jarring to go from

to

 

[Dvandom]

I don't know why they went with Loveable Furball Mughi for the animation...while the Pair themselves had significant redesigns for animation too (the Affair of Nolandia OAV was the closest to their original looks), Mughi's change was a lot more drastic. My best guess would be that animating extra limbs is HARD (I know that a four-armed mech from Black Magic M-66 got changed to two-armed in the anime because of this), and animating a furball with feet is VERY easy and cheap.

---Dave

 

[Blot]

At least they were aware enough to poke fun at what they did.