Yinu (2024)

"I'll show you why they call me the Golden Maestro of Vinyl City!"

―Yinu, to Bunk Bed Junction

Yinu, aka. The Golden Maestro of Vinyl City, is a child pianist prodigy, one of NSR's megastars, and the charter of the Natura District. She, with the help of her mother, represents neoclassical. Yinu is the third boss in the NSR company, and the fourth boss overall in No Straight Roads.

Overview

Yinu is a highly acclaimed piano prodigy, a fitting Charter for the sophisticated crowd at Natura. While often seen as cute and innocent by the public, she can be bratty at times due to her young age.

Appearance

Original Designs

Yinu's physical traits include pinkish-red eyes with little glimmers, red blush cheek marks, an apricot skin tone, and yellow roses imitating curly locks. One of her most noticeable features is her yellow leaf-shaped mark that is placed from her nose through her head. When she becomes angry, her eyes become slightly darker and the glimmers disappear.

Her signature clothing is a white formal top suit, orange pants with red, swirl-studded highlights, and a red ribbon bow on her top. As a child, she has a crooked tooth on her top left teeth, and the other on her bottom right.

Yinu's motif design is based on the environment of nature, hence her golden hair resembles a rose bush, and her white signature piano has a leaf-shaped lid. Her advertisem*nt and possessions in Vinyl City also fit her physical motif. Compared to Yinu, who represents the innocent side of nature, her mother symbolizes its violent side.

Early Concept Designs

Her eye glimmers and small gaps on her top left and bottom right teeth do not make an appearance on the game's 2018 and 2019 demos and promos.

Personality

Yinu is a young child, and has an innocent personality. In her trailer for the release of NSR, she seems to have little filter, questioning why she is "in a forest" when presented playing in a forested environment, and telling the male voice presenter that she needs to use the toilet. Like any child her age, she nicknames belongings and toys, citing three of her music awards as "Alice, Puddles, and General Stragovich".

Yinu is supremely confident in her skills as a pianist, and was offended when Bunk Bed Junction insulted her, "schooling" them by playing a speedy and complex piece. Unlike the other NSR artists, she herself does not perform EDM; her mother is the representative of NSR's EDM focus during their battle, while Yinu simply plays piano. As her boss battle progresses, Yinu becomes progressively more worried and frightened, relying on her mother to protect her while she is forced to continue playing.

She's also seen to be emotional. She throws a tantrum when she's at her wits' end like any child would, and somber when her piano is broken from the fall at the finale of her fight.

Relationships

Yinu's Mother

While she loves her mother deeply and calls her "Mama", Yinu is also stifled by her mother's overprotective, controlling behavior. She becomes distressed as her mother grows angrier at Bunk Bed Junction for ruining the performance until she finally loses her temper near the end of the boss fight, screaming that she hates everyone and initiating the final phase as she unleashes wave after wave of heavy attacks. After the fight, she is saddened while playing on her now broken piano until her mother joins her. She loves her mother when she is happy, but is afraid of her mother when she is angry.

NSR

She feels pressured by her mother and NSR to continue playing in such a pivotal environment.

Bunk Bed Junction

Like any other NSR artist, Yinu initially dislikes Bunk Bed Junction for crashing her performance, commenting that they "are only good at breaking stuff". They in return mocked her skills as a pianist and deliberately misheard her when confronting Yinu in her concert hall, seemingly getting a kick out of making fun of her. During the long-con sequence, however, Yinu's piano is fixed and she thanks them.

Possessions

• Natura Concert Hall - The central place of concert Yinu and her mother are located.
• Natura Botanical Gardens - A line of gardens.

Boss Battle

"Stay away from my piano!"

―Yinu, to Bunk Bed Junction

Stategy Info

"She may be a kid, but make no mistake. Behind the piano, she is unstoppable. The best option is to remove the piano from her hands and victory is ours."

Phase 1

Yinu begins the battle with seemingly a straight shot between you and her piano. As you move to approach, notes will appear in front of you, each appearing when a note is played. They will bounce towards you along with the beat, starting when a low note plays, and you can either roll through them or position yourself by the gap. As you approach the foot of the stage a wooded gate appears, along with a lock. The lock itself is breakable, and you must do so to advance. As you attack the lock, Yinu attacks with an explosion visible from crosshairs similar to those in Sayu's fight. Once the lock is broken, Yinu's Mother lifts her and her piano into the air by strings. Yinu creates more musical notes, now including double notes which move towards the player faster than the regular notes. After the notes disappear, they leave behind ammo for you to attack the strings holding the piano up (on higher difficulties, more strings get added). Finally breaking the last string will make a cutscene play showcasing Yinu's Mother revealing herself, and the battle moves to Phase 2.

Phase 2

Similar to the last phase, Yinu will begin making more notes, a combination of single notes and double notes, the latter of which bounce twice every beat compared to the single notes. During the second part of this attack, on Normal the last note will be counterable (on harder difficulties the counterable notes will be more erratically placed). This repeats four times, as ammo is left behind for you to attack the newly replaced strings with. Also added to this phase are the Transformables, accessible from multiple parts of the stage. The music and attacks shift after this, as Yinu attacks repeatedly with a direct barrage of notes, with Yinu's Mother attacking with a slam that creates a shockwave (on higher difficulties, a note will appear during the slam that can be countered). The section ends with several more targeted explosives, which grow larger and more numerous on higher difficulties. The phase will loop until Yinu's strings are destroyed, which causes Yinu's Mother to protect her from Bunk Bed Junction. Attack her however you wish until she either recovers and you continue with what you were doing prior, or you do enough damage to send her into the next phase.

Phase 3

Yinu's Mother destroys the stage, which you can now fall off to injure yourself. The phase continues similarly to the last two, avoiding or countering the increasingly hectic notes. The second half of the section is replaced with more direct attacks from Yinu's Mother. She will either slam her hand on the center of the stage, creating a shockwave that can do very significant damage, or snap her fingers and summon the 8 pieces of land around the stage to slam down onto the stage directly, shown through red outlines, with only a center area that is safe. This is followed by the explosions again. Knocking down Yinu's piano and doing damage against Yinu's mother is once more the key to his phase.

Phase 4

Yinu's Mother completely snaps at this point, and she ignores Yinu entirely to focus on Bunk Bed Junction. She transforms into a giant spider-like being and covers the stage. She has several attacks with this form.

• She will attack the stage with timed explosives set off by a vine. This vine can also attack you as part of a separate attack.
• Unleash an attack where red outlines rapidly blanket most of the stage, aside from a clear patch, followed by piano hammers slamming in those places. As a note, the Transformables will often be in places the hammers don't hit.
• She will hit her face repeatedly into the ground, causing shockwaves each time. Not counting using the transformables or shooting, this is the one time you have a chance to do melee damage to her.

On harder difficulties she will often combine the second and third attacks at the same time, leaving less windows to attack. Once you finally knock her health down, you can do the Showstopper, and it's all over...

Final Chase

…Or so you think! Before you can finish off the Showstopper, Yinu pops up and knocks you to the base of a large flower. Enraged by her Mother acting like a monster, Yinu begins to play all out. You will automatically run towards her piano on the flower as a flurry of notes come your way in similar ways to the first phase, though far faster. You can't dodge traditionally here, but you can as you would in a DK West encounter by moving around the notes. Finally reach Yinu, and the battle is truly over as Mayday slams her guitar through the petals, destroying the flower and making them all fall, destroying the piano as it lands.

Story

Past

“I wanted to capture the innocence and loneliness of our child prodigy. [...] The back-lighting and grand stage dwarfs our little pianist, amplifying her ‘smallness’ and isolation.
As you move closer, you’ll see a hand lifting her up. This is part of her story arc, where she is still being controlled by a higher authority. Shadows and an air of mystery is what I’m going for here, thus the simple use of lights and focus.”

―Ellie Yong, concept artist
Growing up with her mother, Yinu becomes an amazingly talented pianist at a very young age, gaining 6 international BAKAT awards. We do believe that three of her BAKAT awards are named Alice, Puddles, and General Stragovich. Meanwhile, she was enrolled to be one of the most prominent artists in NSR; with her piano talents combined with its EDM element: dubstep.

Lights Up Auditions

Yinu, along with Tatiana and the other NSR artists, are judges towards Bunk Bed Junction (Mayday and Zuke) at the Lights Up Audition. They've dismissed them because rock is overshadowed by EDM.

Vs. Bunk Bed Junction

Yinu holds her concert at Natura Concert Hall, where Zuke and Mayday interrupt. Yinu's Mother initially tells her to not worry about them and keep playing, but as the battle goes on Yinu's Mother becomes increasingly ignorant of her well being, showcased as Yinu isn't even present in the fourth phase. Once she knocks down Bunk Bed Junction, Yinu declares that she hates everyone including her mother for ruining her performance and acting childish.

She is clearly distraught by the breaking of her piano, but as she plays a sad tune on one half of it, her mother shrinks down and joins her, showing that she is aware of how badly she has been acting.

Trivia

• Each character has an underlying trope that corresponds with their music genre. For Yinu, she embodies child prodigies and their loss of control when becoming famous.
• Yinu's name means "righteous anger" in Chinese, which also means "adopted daughter" or "foster daughter".
  • After the game's release it has been fully confirmed that she was not adopted.
• The signature rose on Natura Botanical Gardens' trademark is the one that is on Yinu's trademark on her advertisem*nt.
• At the start of her boss battle, Yinu plays a famous excerpt of Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D.
  • Mayday's comment on how she has "heard this a craptillion times" refers to the song's real-life popularity and common use in contemporary music.
• If you listen carefully to Yinu's original teaser, the narrator says that she will be live at Natura Concert Hall. However, in the promotion for Paris Games Week 2018, the narrator says that she will be live at this convention.
• During the boss fight, Yinu's piano is held by strings by her mother. Giving off a puppeteer look, what's also unique is during the 4th phase of her battle, Yinu's mother is telling Yinu to play harder.
  • Also, the achievement for defeating Yinu is called “Puppet Petals”
• Yinu's European-Spanish voice actress, Christina Rosmini, also voices Sayu.
• In Photograph #1 - #3 it's revealed that Yinu's father died from an unknown illness seemingly around the age of 35 years old.
• In her district, Natura. There are statues which honor Lilan and Reka, Lilan, identified as female, could possibly be either her mother or another person. Same goes to Reka. There are also statues to Ghii, Muru and Armik. One of them could possibly be her father.
• Yinu is the first and so far only boss not to be defeated by the showstopper.
  • No matter what track you use during the boss fight, the last part when you run up the stem towards Yinu is always played as Classical.
• BAKAT is Malay for Talent.

Gallery

See Yinu/Gallery.

References