Revisting the Final Boss

Don't really know where I want to go with this topic, just a really obvious observation playing through the sequence again- in the high 60's on Mania. Suddenly the world collapses around you as you realize that the second form is so sluggish because he's meant to be giant war of attrition that you can very well lose; of course he's going to use weaker spells when the entire point is that he takes up so much of the field that with one wrong move he'll have your party all squished together most of the time. He doesn't really need to be harder, he just needs to make you use up those last few life bottles (well obviously   ).

But then I'm not a burning-fingered (  ) Tales master and playing on the hardest difficulty with less than ideal levels for it is going to do that to you.

As a child, when I first saw his second form, I thought, how creepy it looked (and where did it come from?).
What exactly is it anyway? By now I know about these three extra-bosses but I still do not know what they are, aside from pseudo-embodiments of fear etc.

There's a theory that those three embodiments signify Mythos' inner demons, which he could not quell and have taken physical form. Hence why defeating them makes Mythos significantly weaker in his final showdown (iirc it has something to do with which elements he absorbs/ is weak against?).

The theory further states that after the group defeats Mythos, he is overcome by his inner demons and takes on that weird second form because he can no longer control them.

This is not a theory I came up with, but rather one that has been floating around for a long time.

I heard that theory; I like it. Some way for Mithos pent-up insanity to spill over and sell just how out of it he is. I need to check the save and see if I ignored any of the three mini-bosses- that would explain why he's suddenly such a tank.