Akami Karubi Edges Out a Long Boss Fight in Blind Dragon Quest V Playthrough

INDEPENDENT — Akami Karubi, an independent streamer on Twitch, won a drawn-out boss fight in her first-time playthrough of Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride on Monday, saying afterward that she had believed the party was finished. The stream was the eighth in the series and was billed as nearing the end of the game, with viewers asked to keep spoilers out of chat.

She opened by greeting viewers and admitting a scheduling slip: she had marked the day in her calendar for an event that turns out to fall a month later, on the 19th of next month. She also explained a 3D-model image she had posted the day before. She had been photographing her 3D model’s expressions for the thumbnails of YouTube clips of her streams, she said, and shared one shot she liked.

“I really thought we’d lost. I thought it was over partway through.” — Akami Karubi, after the fight

The fight came a little over two hours in. Chat noted the party was short on magic points, and an ice spell failed to affect the party’s yeti, whom viewers described as a snow-country native with full resistance. After the party won, Karubi said she thought the battle was lost at one point. Story scenes followed.

Later in the stream, a character in a town told her about an evil temple atop a mountain, and viewers pointed out that she had just been to a place that sounded the same. In a tower scene, another character said an ancestor had sealed a demon in a pot 150 years earlier and that the seal was fading; a very large enemy appeared soon afterward. Viewers joked that 150 years seemed too short for so many generations.

Around the five-and-a-half-hour mark she learned that the Killer Machine monster has roughly a 1-in-256 chance of joining the party, and wondered aloud why the monster is so popular among Dragon Quest fans, since it is not especially more striking than others. Chat answered that it is strong and well designed, and one viewer said they had defeated 1,000 of them. At the close she praised the Hanamaki Dragon from the Monsters games, which chat said looked like her. She said she wanted to restore her sleep rhythm and take walks, and might stream the next day, though not necessarily Dragon Quest.