Final Fancast – Details, episodes & analysis

In this bonus minisode, we take a moment to catch our breath after escaping After Years land. Mike is quizzed on moons. After Years factoids are issued as a deterrent.

At long last, the end of our Final Fantasy IV: The After Years series! In this special jumbo-sized two-part finale, Mike and Remy work through the extremely long final chapter, The Crystal: The Planet Eater.

In After Years II, we battle our way through the gauntlet of bosses on the alien lunar surface. Finally, we add one more creator god to our podcast's kill count.

Ursula and Yang have daddy-daughter drama. A monk in the bar knocks back kava dranks while a drag king shows us how it's done. Kain returns and he's changed his mind again. Adamantoise strikes back. Red Souls are especially noxious because they contain Red Dye 40. We blast House of Pain at the Impact Crater like it's a gd Pringles commercial, then trek, trudge, and traipse our way through the 'gator-infested Flashback Forest.

Hey, palm oil is a complicated situation in our world. It's not all hand harvested from a natural palm grove by a tortoise-punching baddie. Here's some links about that:

• https://apnews.com/article/palm-oil-abuse-investigation-cosmetics-2a209d60c42bf0e8fcc6f8ea6daa11c7
• https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/10/09/palm-oil-the-ingredient-behind-human-rights-abuses-and-eco-destruction-thats-probably-in-your-home-right-now/
• https://wwf.panda.org/discover/our_focus/food_practice/sustainable_production/palm_oil/responsible_purchasing/
• https://www.worldwildlife.org/resources/facts/endangered-species-threatened-by-unsustainable-palm-oil-production/ 

We're back! All our old pals are back, too. Dwarf Princess Luca has a new look – now with 100% more facial visibility. Calca and Brina are also back to battle on our side mostly. Hey, did you know that sometimes dollbots can combine into one big baby doll megazord thing? Sometimes big creepy baby megazords can shoot missiles. In those times, it's great to have one on your team. Plus you can repair the dollbots with junk you find in a cave and I'm pretty sure that's called upcycling.

Maybe Rydia can summon this goblin instead of summoning absolutely nothing. Goblin summons for everyone! Everyone got a goblin summon, right? Did anyone not get their goblin summon? Anyone?

Back to the underworld. Back to the Sylph Cave. Back to the Sealed Cave, which should be called the Not Sealed Enough Cave. If these walls could talk, they could probably coordinate their attacks a little better.

Getting punched by a big buff man doesn't often feel like winning – but sometimes it is winning sort of.

Remy's going on a big trip so the podcast will be in vacation mode until November 21st. If you want to help us out in the meantime, please send us some quiz questions we can use to stump Mike when we return.

Email: contact@finalfancast.com

Bluesky: finalfancast.bsky.social

Or hit us up on the discord. :)

Thanks, everyone, for listening! We're at nearly 30 episodes now but there's lots more Final Fantasy to come. See you in November!

Oh boy, Final Fantasy IV -Interlude- and the first chapter of The After Years were both much longer than we expected so get comfy because it's gonna be another extra long episode. Was Final Fantasy IV -Interlude- more like Final Fantasy: The After Thought? Is The After Years kind of good, actually? How many times is this big honkin' tower going to start glowing? I'm talking… dang ol' light pollution, man. Giant robots that combine into an even more gigantic robot are pretty cool, though. There is a little complaining about backtracking and surely this is the last we'll say on the matter for the rest of this series. The developer's room contains an UNSOLVED MYSTERY. Mike references Lord of the Rings again. Remy manages to reference the Dragon Ball franchise thrice. Can you spot them all? We say quite a few positive things about The After Years so far but don't worry – there's plenty to complain about later.

We kill SO MANY big scary moon critters. I'm talking behemoths, dark bahamut, a monster's breath, ogopogo himself. Ghosts and far-away friends send spiritual aid along the way. Some enemies stop being bad, which is nice. Some dead friends stop being dead, which is also nice. We unsubscribe from Kain's christmas card updates. Gamer Science returns with boss battle tips, like Zeromus is tough and may warrant a little grinding, but if you hit level 80, you've gone too far. Shout out to Maddy Morphosis and her ginormous hair. Shout out to Sweetums the Muppet for being ginormous hair.

Lunar Whale to the moon! Let's beat up behemoths, bahamuts, and one iron giant who enjoys being a gun. Meet our new friend, a beard with claws. Meet our old frenemy, Kain, who can't make up his mind about anything. We scheme to keep him as our pet mini pig-frog. You might assume CPU stands for "central processing unit" but no, it's definitely something else. Transporters are scary.

Special music for coffee shop scene:
"Happy Afternoon - Lopkerjo Jazz 902 by LOPKERJO"
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/john-lopker/happy-day-usa/happy-afternoon-lopkerjo-jazz-902/

CC BY 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Edge's parents meet a terrible fate. Can ninjas walk through walls? We get a sweet new hovercraft grabber for our airship. Dwarves are incredibly generous and possibly don't know about lying. Who spilled all this lava and acid on the floor? Remy finds a new vocational calling. How did Leviathan and Asura meet? Why are these doors so mean? We do a little escapism. Stops at the Adamant Grotto, Eblan Castle, Cave of Summons, the Feymarch, Sylph Cave, Sealed Cave, and the swear zone 'cause we're not bleeping those cusses anymore. Sorry, cool babies.

This episode takes us from Troya to the Magnetic Cave to Mithril to Agart and, finally, straight into a battle between dwarf tanks and flying airships full of monsters. Luckily the only people who die are the ones closest to us with the most to live for. Aw heck.

You better not bring any of that metal crap into MY magnet cave, bro. Edward knows a song dark elves hate. Please stop feasting on my blood, Zubats. If I had a quarter for every time I ran into a high tech tower in this episode, I would have two quarters -- which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice in one episode. This episode's swear jar, on the other hand, overflows.

At the beginning of this episode we describe the twins doing an act of heroic self-sacrifice in the last leg a la Minwu as a "Min-two" when "Twinwu" was right there and we're so mad at ourselves for not seeing it.