Shantae Wiki

Seven sirens shantae(Draft)

READ MORE

Shantae Wiki
Register
Advertisement

Shantae is the eponymous protagonist of the Shantae series. A half-genie, and the guardian of Scuttle Town, Shantae works tirelessly to thwart the plans of the nefarious lady-pirate, Risky Boots, or other forces threatening the town. The character was created by Matt Bozon and his wife Erin Bozon.

SRR sprite - redbook x2 There happens to be a Library article on this topic: Shantae at the Shantae Wiki Library

Physical Appearance

Shantae is a young, purple haired, tanned skin girl. Her outfit is as follow: on her upper half her breasts are covered by a red bra linked together between her breasts with a yellow ring. This leaves the rest of her upper half bare, revealing her belly button. She wears a large, slack pair of red pants just below her buttocks and privates. She wears a pair of black panties above them to protect her buttocks and privates. She also wears small, pointed shoes to cover her bare feet, and her whole body is decorated with jewelry.

Dancer

Shantae in her dancer uniform is dressed sparser, with a small bra only half covering each of her breasts. Her legs and feet have been stripped bare. She wears a towel that covers her rear, and below her blue loincloth lies a very slender thong that only partially covers her buttocks and privates. Her hair is also done up differently, now braided.

Princess

Shantae in the princess outfit is again, dressed sparser. She now wears a bra with a spiral pattern that only covers part of the front of her breasts. Her feet are bare. In her sprite, her loincloth is now all she wears on her lower half, and her privates and buttocks are bare under it. This conflicts with her portrait, in which she simply wears a decorated, blue thong with no loincloth. She is decorated much further though, having been dressed up like a desert princess.

Monkey

Shantae in her monkey form resembles a small, purple monkey with blue eyes and a yellow circlet.

Elephant

Shantae in her elephant form resembles a grey, Indian-style decorated elephant with blue eyes, a yellow circlet, and a blue saddle.

Harpy

In her sprite, Shantae as a harpy resembles a cross between a human and a bird, having blue coloring, feathers, talons and wings. To make her look human, Shantae wears a yellow cicirclet and a human face. She also has a pair of breasts and a belly button.

In her artwork, Shantae in harpy form looks almost the same, but has eyelashes and a blue bra to partially cover her breasts.

Spider

In the first game, Shantae as a spider looks basically like a giant spider, albeit with human eyes. In Half-Genie Hero, her look was revamped to resemble a cross between a human and a spider. To look like a spider, she has eight legs and sharp teeth. To look like a human, she has long hair, a belly button, and a pair of breasts with webbing on their sides.

Mermaid

Shantae in her mermaid form resembles a mythical mermaid, having green coloring and reptilian features. Her lower half resembles the lower half of a fish. To make her look human, she has eyelashes, a belly button, and a pair of breasts. A set of 4 tentacles on Shantae's back wrap over her shoulders and touch the sides of her breasts.

Crab

Shantae in crab form resembles a small crab with red coloring, pincers, and yellow eyes.

General Information

Shantae is a half genie with long purple hair tied in a ponytail with a gold tiara with light blue eyes with dark skin. She also has pointy ears with golden earrings. Her parentage is unknown, but it is known that her mother is a genie and theorized that her father is the warrior from the village of lost souls from the Pirates Curse.

Personality

Shantae

Shantae at her lighthouse (GBC)

As the Guardian Genie of Scuttle town, Shantae lives in the small snug lighthouse by the sea where she can spot incoming ships and trouble. During the events of the first game, she is portrayed at the beginning as young and somewhat naïve. In addition, her strong sense of justice drives her to help people in need. She chases Risky Boots across the map in order to stop her plans, and has a strong enmity for the Pirate as a result.

Slightly shy, Shantae is initially afraid of the citizens of Scuttle Town discovering her status as a Half-genie. In addition, she often puts herself down; believing that only being half-genie is not good enough. After being tricked by Risky near the end of the game and subsequently thwarting her plans, she overcomes her ingenuity and shyness and comes to terms with these anxieties, and is happy that the townsfolk still accept her.

Shantae has a deep care for her assumed uncle, Mimic, as well as her friends Sky and Bolo, and at the end of the first game gives up on the chance to enjoy eternal peace in the Genie Realm in order to be with them. She also considers the zombie Rottytops as her friend, although Rotty's own attitude towards her, while friendly for the most part, is more ambivalent, as she does not hesitate in claiming she would like to eat Shantae's brains (which Shantae seems to take as a joke).

In Risky's Revenge, she's shown to have grown more confident, enough to believe that she's the only person able to stop Risky Boots and discarding Mimic's suggestion that Sky and Bolo should go instead. In the end of the game, Shantae is betrayed by Rottytops to Risky Boots in exchange for her brains (although Risky chooses to back down from the deal) and loses her genie powers, she is then shown to be much less self-assured, despite the fact that she manages to defeat the evil embodiment of her powers, Nega-Shantae. She is then comforted by her friends who tell her they will help her protect Scuttle Town.

In The Pirate's Curse we see her forming an alliance with her nemesis Risky Boots despite not trusting her at all. Over the course of the game however, she slowly forms a bit of an attachment to her, asking her if she could "join the good guys for once" and even going as far as saving her life later on. Squid Baron calls her a tomboy at some point. Shantae's more unusual habits are revealed during the game's progression; we learn that Shantae once accidentally destroyed Sky's Library Card by nibbling on it when she got nervous once, and that she considers herself a bad role model due to her bad temper and fashion sense.

It is mentioned several times that she doesn't know who her parents are, only that her mother was a genie. Although she's willing to explore more her genie side hoping that it will bring her closer to her mother, as mentioned above she turns down at the end of the first game the genies' offer to stay in the Genie Realm, and at the end of Risky's Revenge is shown expressing sadness as being even farther from her half-genie nature and subsequently her mother after having lost her magic powers. It is strongly implied in the events of the game that the mysterious Warrior she meets inside the Village of Lost Souls is none other than the spirit of her father, who went into the land of the dead to search for his daughter and never returned. Neither Shantae nor the Warrior himself seem to realize the possible connection.

Abilities

Shantae's Half-genie nature gives her several magic abilities.

  • Hair Whip (aka Ponytail Whip) - Shantae's trademark move. Shantae can use her long purple ponytail hair as a weapon, cracking it like a whip by shaking her head. It was revealed in Shantae: Risky's Revenge that this skill is not a by-product of her genie half, as she is able to use this ability after her powers are removed. It's possible that this skill is a product of her own magic not tied to her genie side, or may have come from her father.
  • Magical Belly Dances - Shantae can use her ability to bellydance to cause various kinds of magical effects, most notably teleportation and transformation. Although her dancing style is certainly mostly fanciful, similarities have been noted with the Turkish Oryantal Dans style of belly dance.[2]
  • Magic spells and magic items - Shantae can use various kinds of magic spells and items that are bought at shops. The magic properties of these items are apparently not tied to Shantae's genie powers, as she retains the ability to use them even after her powers are taken away in Risky's Revenge.
  • Fighter Moves - Having received training from Bolo and through upgrades in the shop, Shantae can perform various martial arts techniques such as Backdashes, Recoveries and several types of kick attacks (Power Kick, Drill Kick, Uppercut Kick)
  • Costumes - Shantae has different outfits she can wear that change her stats and abilities.

Creation

Pping

Shantae's appearance in working mock-ups ca. 1997

In 1994,[3] as Matt Bozon was still engaged with his future wife Erin, she got a flash of inspiration while coming back from her camp counselor days, and created the character of Shantae, named after one of the campers. Later on, Matt Bozon asked her what she would come up with if she was to create a video game character. She disappeared, and when going after her after some time, he found her working on sketches of a character, Shantae, in dancing poses.[4] Matt Bozon liked the idea and fleshed out the background and mythology surrounding the character.

Matt Bozon has provided two contradictory versions of the creation of the Hair Whip. In the first one, he stated that at the time, Erin had very long hair and Matt would often take a blow in his face each time she turned around, which inspired him for Shantae's trademark attack. However, he later stated that Erin's first sketches of Shantae already featured the Hair Whip.[4] Erin also came up with the idea that the character could use dances to conjure animals or charm them.[5] A 1997 archived version of WayForward Technologies' site shows that it was indeed one of the original point of her magics.[6] It was later refined as the transformation dances.[5]

The archived version of WayForward's site also depicts Shantae with a very different appearance, as a brunette with a less manga-ish appearance. She is described as a troubled genie, born without any magic power, although she was capable of hair whipping already.[6]

Her catchphrase, "Ret-2-Go", came from a friend of the Bozons who kept using it in the animation clean up team for the Warner Bros. movie The Iron Giant to break for lunch. The phrase then reached the Shantae team and ended up as Shantae's catchphrase. In Matt Bozon's vision, Shantae uses it because she thinks it's cool but her friends actually can't stand it (although other characters have used it in-universe).[4]

Gallery

SRR sprite - greenbook x2 The Shantae Fandom Portal has Fanart of Shantae: View Shantae fanart

References


Advertisement