Hu Mons

Original comic by Happyroadkill.

A pal that is very similar to humans who hunt and live in the forests. It may prove to be a key for understanding what Pals are and how they diverged from humans so long ago.

— Robinquill's Paldeck entry, Palworld

Mons that, for some reason or another, resemble human beings. This may be done to convey the possession of human virtues or flaws, to appeal to human conceptions of beauty, or perhaps both. They usually aren't absurdly common and weak; likewise, they are rarely extremely rare and powerful. In-Universe, they tend to be treated in one of two ways. The first possibility is that they're treated like any other Mon and the potential issues and implications of humans owning things that look and act like humans are quietly ignored. Alternatively, they may be treated as being equivalent to strong humans rather than animals. They may help with tasks that require human physique (like picking up heavy packages), or be treated as closer companions than the more monstrous Mons. There may even be some humans who find these Mons attractive.

Appearance-wise, they tend to range between Beast Man and Little Bit Beastly. One trait that these mons may have is a pair of wings. Sometimes, Mons may become more humanoid as they become more powerful and cross the Bishōnen Line.

For the author of Scandinavia and the World, see here. Not to be confused with Hugh Mann, which is about non-humans doing a poor job of disguising themselves as humans but still fooling people.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Shadow Star: Most of the shadow dragons in this Mons deconstruction manga are Starfish Aliens that barely resemble any sort of living creature. One of them, however, looks like an attractive female angel with claw-tipped wings growing out of its head.
• In Yo-kai Watch, Yo-kai that resemble humans are common. Many of them are based on actual mythological Yōkai who are said to resemble humans, such as Frostina and Blizzaria, who are based on the yuki-onna.
• Zatch Bell!: The series is abundant with demons that can easily pass as humans without disguising themselves. Zatch, Tia, Brago, and Zeno are some of the most noteworthy examples.

Films — Live-Action

• In Jellyfish Eyes, all the F.R.I.E.N.D.S resemble monsters except Koko, who resembles a blonde-haired girl in a red dress.

Multimedia Works

• Digimon has included humanlike Digimon from the beginning, with the same type popping up more often in recent times. The likes of Angemon and Devimon (winged humanoids with helmets or masks), as well as Omegamon/Omnimon and Gallantmon (fully-armored humanoids), are the most well-known examples. This trope is later used as a distinction in Digimon Frontier, where Spirits and the occasional regular Mon are divided into Human and Beast categories, with the majority of the former having a mask, cowl, or at least a visor so you never see their whole face, or at least their eyes.
• Dragon Quest features plenty of these kinds of monsters, some games categorizing them under the humanoid family. Hoods, Headhunters, Puppeteers, and especially Weartigers are prominent examples.
• Pokémon: There's an entire Egg Group, aptly called the Human-Like Egg Group, dedicated to mons like these, including but not limited to:
  • The Machop line resembles bodybuilders with grey-blue/purple skin, and appear to be wearing black briefs and championship belts. They have also been shown helping with construction projects and moving boxes. Though Machoke is the most humanlike; Machop has a tail and Machamp has four arms.
  • The Tyrogue line plays with this trope. Tyrogue itself resembles a martial arts trainee with purple skin and brown shorts, but its evolutions vary in their resemblance to humans. Hitmonchan closely resembles a human boxer, having red boxing gloves as well as a purple tunic, kilt, and pair of "shoes". Hitmontop has a more deformed appearance, as it primarily resembles a top, but it's still fairly human-like. Meanwhile, Hitmonlee barely resembles a human, looking more like a sack with long arms and feet.
  • Mr. Mime is based on a mime and looks like a person in clown get-up, complete with goofy hair and pointed shoes. The Galarian version and its evolution Mr. Rime are instead inspired by tap dancers and wear tap shoes made of ice. Mr. Rime takes it a step further by also being based on Charlie Chaplin's 'Tramp' character; it has a bowler hat, mustache, and a cane!
  • Jynx is a humanoid female Pokemon (their species is even classified as "Human Shape" by the Pokédex) with a design that's partially inspired by ganguro fashion; it sports the blonde hair, high-contrast makeup, and dark skin associated with the style.^note Originally, it didn't have skin at all, just eyes and a mouth floating in front of an empty black space beneath its hair, as implied with its fainting animation from Pokémon Stadium, where upon defeat, it fades away and leaves behind just its hair, which then falls to the ground. But due to the similarities to Black Face, she was recolored to have light purple skin instead.
  • The Ralts line introduced in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire are among the most human-looking Pokémon. Ralts itself looks like a little girl in a long dress with bangs, its evolution Kirlia resembles a ballerina with pigtails, and the final evolution Gardevoir looks like a lady in a ballroom gown with pseudo-bangs — and when Mega-Evolved, looks like it's wearing a wide-skirted wedding gown. The alternate final evolution Gallade, introduced in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, is more masculine and resembles a knight. Gen 9 introduced the line's Paradox Form Iron Valiant, a form that has elements of both the Mega Evolution of Gardevoir and Gallade clad in armor.
    • Note that the Ralts line was NOT in the human-like egg group until Gen 8, and was only in the Amorphous group until then, meaning it reproduces with things like Muk (a blob of stinky slime) and Chandelure (an animated chandelier).
  • Hariyama is a stylized sumo wrestler with attributes of its appearance that resemble the attire such a wrestler wears, and has hair that looks like the traditional haircut they have before it's tied in a topknot. Gen 9 gave us its Paradox form Iron Hands, which is basically Hariyama clad in armor and become an Eletric / Fighting type.
  • Sawk and Throh are a pair of martial artists clad in black belts and gi, one tall, one stout. Aside from their skin colors—blue and red, respectively—they're very much human-shaped.
  • The Gothita line appears to wear Gothic Lolita fashion, as their bodies resemble black dresses and are adorned with bows.
  • Hattrem and Hatterine are basically Magical Girl in Pokemon style.
  • The Tinkatink line is a line of a small chibi version of a little girl with pink skin and no ears.

Tabletop Games

• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Human-like monsters are abundant, primarily among the Warrior and Spellcaster-types. Notable examples include Yugi's Dark Magician archetype and Jounouchi/Joey's Flame Swordsman.

Video Games

• Dragalia Lost: A fair number of dragons are human-like in appearance. Certain fiends also look humanoid, these fiends often being raid bosses.
• Monster Rancher has the Magic, monsters who resemble bald humans with Pointed Ears. Due to their shyness, they tend to disguise themselves as Monols or Galis, but their true forms can be seen in a mirror. Several Pixie sub-types also count, with many even having ordinary human skin and hair colors.
• Monster Sanctuary:
  • Monk and Ascendant are Super-Deformed humanoids, though the former is mostly covered by its cloak.
  • Promethean is a cyborg zombie based on Frankenstein's Monster.
  • Asura is a humanoid with six arms and bright red skin.
• Palworld: Par for the course, when the game is an Affectionate Parody of most monster tamer games. Specifically:
  • Robinquill (who looks a bit like Marvin the Martian took up life as a Forest Ranger) is the most prominent, as a Pal that actively uses a bow and arrows to hunt others down and guard its forest. The Paldeck explicitly states the similarities are big enough it's being studied as a lost link between humanity and Pals.
  • Bushi is less explicit, being closer to Pokemon's Mawile in appearance (without the jaws, naturally), but it's still a species of outright Rōnin who wanders the land with a sword spawned from the death of their predecessors; they have the straw-pipe, the blade, the hat and even the Master Swordsman skills.
  • Downplayed with Paladius and Necromus, whose humanoid, heavily armored halves very much count; they're essentially Centaurs where the human half is instead hu-mon, and act as a Knight in Shining Armor and Black Knight respectively.
• In Puzzle & Dragons Z, there are two groups of dragonoid-type monsters, both of which are inspired by real life mythologies. One of them resembles armored knights that can evolve into specific figures such as Prometheus or Cu Chulainn, while the other group is comprised of female mythical creatures such as a succubus, a valkyrie, and a naga. It's said that they're all species of dragons that evolved differently over the course of the thousands of years they spent underground.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • Several of the demons you can fuse or recruit are based on humans or demigods from various mythologies, such as Ame-no-Uzume, Cu Chullain, Okuninushi, and Yoshitsune, and even some historical figures like Jeanne D'Arc and Guan Yu. As such, they resemble humans with clothing and weapons symbolic of their role in mythology.
  • Exaggerated in the first two SNES games; the heroes could recruit humans, who can be ordered around in battle like any other demon ^note Not to be mistaken with the human party members, who join and leave at plot-relevant intervals. These humans are special because fusing them with a demon gives a random demon within a certain level range (the player can see the result of the fusion before ordering and can cancel, so they can try again and again until finding the desired demon).
• Parodied in Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth with Sujimon, described as "monsters of men that make you super jittery". Most of the enemies you encounter in the games (save for story-critical battles) are Sujimon. Infinite Wealth takes the concept further with full-blown Sujimon Battles and a Sujimancer class that uses Sujimon to attack enemies.
• Temtem:
  • The Houchic line are humanoids with octopus tentacles for hair.
  • Hocus and Pocus are purple-skinned humanoids with bangs.
• In World of Warcraft, the Warlock can summon demon minions to fight for them. The Felguard and the Succubus are the most human-like, the former resembling a muscular blue-skinned man in spiky armor, and the latter resembling an attractive woman with purple skin, horns, hooves and wings.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Most Blades are human in form, to such a degree that many can disguise themselves as humans by simply hiding their core crystal. Some have forms that are more animalistic, monstrous, or alien, but human and humanoid Blades are the majority. However, all Blades seem to be fully sapient, regardless of form.
• ZanZarah: The Hidden Portal: Most faeries of the Nature, Air, and Light elements look basically human except for being tiny and sporting wings. This is in contrast to the fish-like Water faeries, ursine Ice faeries^note although one Ice faery, Glacess, is a regal winged lady, monstrous Chaos faeries, etc.

Webcomics

• El Goonish Shive: Pretty much all of the `mons... er... Graces in the Grace-A-Monsters NP arc. Yes, all the Grace-A-Monsters are Grace, and the majority are pretty solidly humanoid.
• Lampshaded in this Happyroadkill comic, in which the father is concerned about how most of the Pokémon his son is catching are ones that look like muscular men.

Web Original

• Goodbye Strangers the fictional strangers video game Zeroworld has several humanshape-type strangers. The first of them is the dudedroni. Although not all of the ones classified as humanshape actually are human-shaped, like how the lume is humanshape-type because it carries around a fake human head.
• Mortasheen has the Lesters and their feminine counterparts the Lesleys, monsters intended to study the last few pureblooded humans left on Earth (most are infected by The Virus or got that body upgrade they were working towards years ago) through infiltration tactics. However, their extreme Uncanny Valley appearance results in people instantly distrusting them, much to the Les series' chagrin, as they were assured their disguises were flawless (at least, most other monsters are fooled).
• Neopets:
  • Subverted with the April Fools' Day prank for 2005: the revelation of fifty new pet designs that would supposedly be released. One of these was a baby called Hughman. While some of these were eventually added as Petpets and the Lamameeah was remodeled into the Gnorbu after being chosen by vote to be made into a Neopet, the Hughman was only ever part of the prank and was never seen again.
  • In the earliest days of the site, three of the original pets were human: the Mellish (based on one of founder Adam Powell's friends), the Macy Gray (a crudely-drawn caricature of Macy Gray which had a ray gun for some reason), and the Bruce Forsyth (a photo and then caricature of Bruce Forsyth). The Mellish and Macy Gray were both gone before the site's first anniversary; the former being an inside joke in the first place and the latter due to legal trouble. While the Bruce stuck around a little longer, it eventually vanished as well in order to fit in with the other pets. They were replaced with the monkey-like Mynci, the cow-like Kau, and the penguin-like Bruce respectively.

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