#Fates has a similar issue but just with three routes to go by | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sealofreconciliation · 2 years

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Fates: was the story as bad as people say?: a response (Heirs of Fate)

> Before talking about Heirs of Fate, a few things have to be sorted out. The first is probably the biggest and most obvious one: this is just Awakening's Future Past DLC but with a different coat of paint.

Explain the similarities between the two DLCs, and why said similarities are a bad thing even if they do exist.

> There are several reasons as to why this structure works for Future Past but not Heirs of Fate.

> **1)** Future Past, in addition to providing challenging maps, also incentivizes players to bring the second generation characters' parents (or your version of the second gen characters appearing on the map) to unlock more dialogue - the fathers all have unique dialogue, too, despite not having unique supports, which serves as an extra reward for players who might prefer a certain "ship". Furthermore, if all of the second generation characters are kept alive, you're treated to some heartwarming epilogues. The character writing is very strong here.

Cool; why would Heirs of Fate need or want something like that, especially when the entire premise of the DLC is that the kids can't talk to their parents anymore, and why is it a negative that it doesn't? Is there a point to this other than criticizing HoF for not being a carbon copy of Future Past?

> **3)** Awakening had 13 second generation characters, one of which you got through the main story and one (or two, counting both genders) being used as an enemy with minimal dialogue. In Fates, there are 21 second generation characters (22 if you count both Kanas, which Heirs of Fate does), and no one is recruited in the main story. This means that, even if you've played all three routes, chances are there'll be quite a few characters you have no idea who they are. The same can be said about Future Past, of course, but with fewer characters and a previously established premise, more time can be spent on characterization than what Heirs of Fate can afford.

Irrelevant; not only are the odds of someone who's played all three routes not having recruited the vast majority of the child characters miniscule, especially with how easy it is to do so, but the entire premise of the DLC is the children getting a route all to themselves. Anyone who didn't bother reading up on some of their supports to get a basic idea of what their characterization is, even knowing full well that they were about to play a DLC where said characterization was going to be important, has no one but themselves to blame if they get confused.

> Heirs of Fate's first four maps are rather formulaic and cover a lot of the same information. The uniqueness comes from how the characters view and deal with their situation, which can be good, but as you'll remember from Conquest's four sibling fights in a row and then Revelations three dead parent fights in a row, Fates can be very repetitive.

Explain why the Conquest sibling fights are repetitive; you only said that they didn't make logistical sense, which i debunked, so this is an entirely new point you're making, not something you went in-depth on previously like you're trying to claim.

> Yes, that's right. They're drawing more attention to the Deeprealms.

They kind of have to; they're the reason the children even exist in the first place, and most of the children's lives and experiences while living in their respective Deeprealms are defining aspects of their characters and relationships, especially in relation to how they view their parents. What's the issue here?

> I generally stay away from discussions of power levels in anime,

Explains Kaze's speed feat of going to the border and back being treated as a contradiction in your prologue analysis, without even giving any anti-feats to explain why.

Also, the correct term is “power-scaling”; power levels are near-exclusive to Dragon Ball, and the art of trying to estabilish how powerful characters are in their own series relative to other characters is almost always done just by analysing and comparing feats and statements, including DB, since power levels were all but scrapped from the series after the Namek Saga.

> but it's curious to me that Corrin can get so easily overwhelmed, even as a dragon, and then the much less experienced characters are supposed to fight Anankos at his seat of power. Sure, Corrin was alone, but wouldn't Anankos have a much bigger and stronger army defending him? Oh well.

Experience can be, and often is, meaningless when it comes to how powerful a character is. This entire DLC is just confirmation that the second gen kids have already surpassed their parents in power by HoF; show some anti-feats that contradict that if you think it's inconsistent, not just “experience=strength”, which is something that Fates has never implied nor tried to portray as being true, especially when Gunter exists and is a walking debunk to that claim.

> I know Takumi's information may have been wrong but didn't Fuga say the Yato could also end the world?

If someone evil got their hands on it, which neither Corrin or Kana are, therefore it's destined to save the world instead. Besides, Takumi isn't present to hear Fuga's explanation in any of the routes; he very likely doesn't even know about that aspect of the Yato's prophecy.

> I'm surprised the Rainbow Sage didn't snap the thing in two when he saw it again considering how much he regretted making it (I think? I've spent so much time analyzing this game yet some things either just slip my mind or are so stupidly diffuse).

> Rainbow Sage: Yes. I am the dragon you've been searching for. Long, long ago... Twelve dragons were filled with desire... They fought over who would control the world... For my part, I create the Yato and the divine weapons. Doing so pulled humanity into our war. I wasn't able to die...until I had atoned for those sins...

He knows that the Yato's going to be necessary to kill Anankos and upgraded it because of that, to the point of calling said action atonement for making it in the first place; why would he knowingly doom the world by breaking it and making Anankos completely invincible just because he's sad that people died a long time ago as an unintended consequence of him making the divine weapons?

> Kiragi explains he's in the same situation as the other kids, and the conversation continues like thus:

> Kana: You think I can do it? Do you really think... I can fight the spooky men?

> Kiragi: I don't think so, Kana—I KNOW so!

> Kana: Thank you, Kiragi!

Which leads to...

> Kiragi: Whoa, what the heck? Why's the Fujin Yumi glowing?!

> Kana: My sword's shining, too! Kiragi, what's going on? Did I mess up somewhere? Yikes!

> Kana: The Yato's different now!

> Kiragi: Nice! I saw the beam of light shoot straight from the Fujin Yumi into the Yato... I think your sword has tapped into my bow's power! I have no idea how that works, but I'm not about to question it.

> They haven't been talking for five minutes and their legendary weapons click, while they're still surrounded by Vallites. Doesn't that seem awfully...simple? Convenient?

Well, there was more conversation than that prior to the Yato upgrading:

> Kana: Oh...but I'm not the chosen one. This is Papa's sword, not mine. I...I couldn't help him... I just had to stand there and watch him fight. I couldn't do what Kiragi did...

> Kiragi: You've got it all wrong, Kana! I was just like you a little while ago. I couldn't do anything to help my dad either. I was so mad at myself... But moping over the past won't help us now. We have to move on. Think about it, Kana. What do you want to do to change things?

> Kana: Um... I want to fight. I wanna beat up these guys my papa was fighting and rescue him. And that's why... That's why I wanna learn how to use this sword.

Kana was doubting her capacity, and even courage, to fight the Vallite soldiers, but Kiragi connecting to her on an emotional level and convincing her to stand her ground and fight's what causes the Yato to evolve; it's no different from how it worked in the main game, where it only evolves after Corrin undergoes character development thanks to connecting to one of their siblings, but this time with Kana in Corrin's place. Besides, it's not particularly convenient when there's no indication that they would have lost the battle if it wasn't for the Yato evolving when it did; Kana could have had that heart-to-heart with Kiragi at any point after this fight but prior to fighting Anankos and nothing would have substantially changed.

> ???: There. This is your Dragonstone. You must take very good care of it. Never let it our of your sight.

> **How are you doing this?!** Where do you get your rocks and your crystal balls from?! You're a ghost!

She never gave them a crystal ball and, more importantly, doesn't this just mean that, whatever state she's in, Azura can still carry stuff around? I'm pretty sure this is the first time ghosts have appeared anywhere in Fates, so it's not a contradiction for her to do this.

> Even with the world hanging in the balance, Azura refuses to stop being cryptic. I'm not sure why, since what ultimately saves them are superweapons, not some kind of personal introspection and growth.

Superweapons that only become usable after the wielder goes through personal introspectin and growth; the fact that the Yato only evolves after Corrin and Kana undergo character growth is so obvious and consistent that there's no way in hell you didn't notice that as you read the scripts. Stop being disingenuous.

> It does establish that they know each other, to which I ask: how? Weren't they locked in their Deeprealms until today? I know there's more shenanigans going on than meets the eye, but I'm still a little uncertain of this. It might be me misunderstanding something though, so I'll leave it at that.

There's nothing in the DLC stating that this map takes place the same day they lost their parents; the closest we have is Shigure saying that this was “shortly after the other Kana took the Noble Yato”, which could easily mean days or weeks after the fact, which itself happens an undefined amount of time after the deeprealms invasions, given how Kana hid in a cave for a while before wandering, giving the kids more than enough time to meet and get acquainted with each other. First baseless assumption of this post, i see.

> The scene transitions to Forrest, Nina, and Ophelia, and we notice a trend here: Hisame, Hinata's son, was with Kiragi, Takumi's son. Ophelia and Nina, Owain's and Niles' daughters respectively, are with Forrest, Leo's son. The retainers' children are with their respective lords, but there's an issue with this: one of the few good pieces of worldbuilding in Fates is that the Hoshidan retainers come from clans and families with a lot of history, so their children serving the Hoshidan royalty makes sense. The royal Nohrian retainers, however, are a ragtag bunch of misfits who got their job because they're good at what they do; their positions are *not* hereditary.

Nina and Ophelia are pretty good at what they do, better than their fathers even; why couldn't they have earned a position as Forrest's retainers out of merit or, if we're to take the more likely interpretation, that they just ran into each other by coincidence and teamed up out of either necessity or pre-existing friendship? Where is it even stated that they're working as his retainers officially? How would they have landed that job if they were in separate Deeprealms? Aren't they just playing pretend at this point? This is the second baseless assumption in as many paragraphs.

> You could argue Nina and Ophelia teaming up with Forrest makes sense since they'd know (of) each other, but I still think this throws away one of the few interesting pieces of worldbuilding in the whole game.

How is that aspect of the worldbuilding thrown away when Ophelia and Nina AREN'T Forrest's retainers? They're just friends working together for a common goal and who just so happen to parallel their fathers's dynamics; how does a symbolic parallel contradict the fact that Nohrians get their jobs out of merit when Ophelia and Nina don't even work for Forrest in the first place?

> Sophie: Dang! You know you've got a cool magic sword going when it GLOWS!

> All your parents just died and the world is ending.

Sophie still believes that their parents survived and are doing fine, they don't know that the world is ending yet, and it's mighty rich of a grown person to expect a jovial teenager to not be impressed or enthusiastic when they see a glowing sword for the first time; a lack of perspective and/or empathy, perhaps? It'd certainly explain your treatment of CQ! Corrin.

> The song was already only as powerful as the plot needed it to be,

Not really; it semi-exorcises Birthright Takumi because he's only recently been possessed, severely weakens and injures anyone who's been under Anankos's possession for too long and can't be saved, including Anankos himself, and calms people down, such as feral Corrin in the prologue and Xander and Ryoma in Revelation. The only other thing the song does in any of the routes is her using it to dispel Iago's magic in Birthright after he gets a power-up, and i assume that's only because said power-up had something to do with Anankos. It's actually pretty consistent in it's capabilities and limitations throughout all the routes, if you bother to actually look at when and how the song's used.

> and Anankos' crazy plan to weaken himself just enough to allow somebody to off him was already convoluted enough.

Again, he didn't have much choice; it's implied multiple times that the Omega Yato's the only thing that could kill him, the Yato chooses it's wielder and has spent a long time inside the statue in Hoshido, meaning he couldn't get it himself, and the song was more to make things easier for whoever was chosen to put him out out of his misery; it's convoluted, sure, but by necessity.

> Now you're telling me Anankos thought "you know what? I'll add an extra fourth verse. Just in case I'm too big and strong to be killed and the heroes *really* need some help. There's no way this plan can possibly backfire! Now, let's think of the lyrics...".

I...genuinely don't see the issue with this logic; he'd foreseen that he'd go insane when he made the song, knew he could still grow stronger if he started dimension-hopping, and made a fourth verse for if that worst-case scenario ever came to pass; what's the issue with any of that? How **could** it backfire on him when the only person that song hurts/weakens is himself and his entire plan is coming up with a way to get himself killed?

> Hang on, this goes against the canon established by Hidden Truths. Anankos blessed the new kings more because he wanted them to be strong enough to kill him when he became mad. The ancient kings should be weaker than the modern ones, but I guess that doesn't sound as cool.

This just estabilishes that the ancient kings were strong enough on their own that, even with less of Anankos's power than their successors, they were still the strongest. Hell, that's probably why Anankos had to start pumping up the power amps in the first place; he saw that, as the Vallite bloodline got more and more dilluted with each new king, so did their strength wane, and as such he was forced to give them more and more power just so they stood even a chance of beating him if and when he went mad, as opposed to Cadros and the first few kings, who could have beaten Anankos without needing nearly as much help from him. Not only is this not contradictory, this is actually pretty good writing if you think about it; with one throwaway line, it explains why Anankos felt the need to give the Vallite royal family more and more of his power as time went on, whereas that went pretty unexplained in Hidden Truths itself.

> The two discuss the ancient kings and that singing the fourth verse is dangerous. Considering the regular song turns Azura into bubbles in two out of three routes, I'm not sure the stakes needed to be raised even further.

Explain why the stakes shouldn't have been raised.

> The Kanas go berserk and turn into dragons, wanting to kill the other group despite the Dragonstones being meant to keep their impulses in check and everyone else wanting to stop the battle after seeing something else was going on. Sure, there *is* a lot going on, but the Kanas' rage sort of comes out of nowhere, and I imagine it's only there to justify Shigure showing up to calm them down with his song and inform them of what's going on.

> Kana: ... Kill them...

> Siegbert: Kana?

> Kana: They have to die...

> Forrest: Gracious, Kana, what's gotten into you?

> Kana: My head hurt when I got a good look at them...but that doesn't matter! They attacked my home and hurt Mama. If it wasn't for them, none of this would have happened! That's why... That's why!

They were put in an illusion that made them think the other Kana was one of the soldiers who attacked their Deeprealm and hurt Corrin, which understandably enraged them beyond what the Dragonstone could control, and the dialogue explaining that happens right before they transform. It's not a fault with the game's story that you're not paying attention to important plot points and dialogues and saying that things come out of nowhere as a result.

> Shigure can calm down dragons, weaken Anankos and dispel illusions. The problem with these vague powers, as I have mentioned before, is that they can easily fill whatever hole the plot needs.

Shigure can calm people in general with the sing, not just dragons, as demonstrated by Azura using the song again to calm Xander and Ryoma down in Revelation; Anankos made the song specifically to weaken him and, as such, anyone he possesses; Azura didn't know that she and the rest of the team were in an illusion when it happens in the main routes and, as such, didn't use the song to break out of it; those are the only things the song is shown or implied to be capable of doing, therefore they're the only things it can do unless you can prove otherwise, and as such it has estabilished rules and isn't vague.

> With that fourth verse, this problem is only amplified; for all we know he could sing Anankos to death without the kids' help and it would still fit within the realm of possibility because of the song's vague limitations.

Shigure can do that because the fourth verse is significantly more powerful than the normal song, therefore it fits the realm of possibility because it's a new power, not because the original power was vague.

> Do you think they speak English in Valla?

What?

> While not a bad idea to have your enemies kill themselves, doesn't Anankos have a massive army of undead, dimension-hopping invisible soldiers who are confirmed to be super strong? How couldn't they finish them off when they were wounded, tired, and in small groups? Also, while that might be part of the illusion, didn't the characters notice they were fighting alongside regular Vallite soldiers?

Because the kids are that much stronger than the soldiers; that's shown directly thanks to the fact that they body dozens of them while being vastly outnumbered whenever the two armies fight. You answered your third question; the Vallite soldiers they were fighting alongside were made to not look like such in the illusion.

> I'm still not sure why Anankos would be weaker outside of Valla, especially when his powers seem to work just fine, both in the form of his soldiers and whatever blessings Garon and Mikoto had.

Just because his soldiers, Garon and Mikoto can still use powers doesn't mean they're as effective at it as they would be if they were in Valla; this literally just means that whatever power they're shown to have outside of Valla is significantly weaker than what they would have inside of it, which is perfectly consistent with the statement that Anankos would grow weaker if he left.

> Also, how on earth would "warriors come running" if Anankos attacked a Deeprealm? They make it sound as though they'd instantly know another world is under attack and come running within a few minutes.

People have ways of coming and going from their Deeprealms; it's a certainty that civilians would run back to the main world to try and get help as soon as the soldiers started attacking and that people would rush in to protect the place, and with how quickly it'd happen, it doesn't even have logistical issues with the fact that time moves more quickly in the Deeprealms.

> I've read it over and over, and while I understand the words and that traveling to Valla is conveniently easier now, I don't get the part about the Astral Dragons or the kids' parents...is he saying he teleported the first gen characters to the Deeprealms to protect their kids? But if he had that power why not just drop them over a cliff? I realize there's a chance I'm just being stupid here, but this line is really all over the place.

Anankos's homeland is a Deeprealm? That's news to me, what an interesting lore develop- Shigure is obviously and unambiguously saying that Anankos teleported the first gen characters from the Deeprealms they were fighting in by opening portals to Valla and throwing them through said portals, presumably so he could possess them more easily; what part of that sentence is in any way vague or confusing, exactly?

> Again, lots of things going on here and while you can't expect the characters to be 100% calm and collected, this seems so contrived. They're angry for what might've happened in other potential worlds, all while they're slowly being brainwashed and having just gotten an explanation for what's going on as well as the target they need to defeat.

Explain why someone getting angry at people who killed their family and friends is contrived.

> It's easy to raise stakes and add drama. It's much harder to do it in a way that's satisfying and grounded in previously established conflicts. One of my favorite scenes in the entire series is Skrimir confronting Naesala near the end of Radiant Dawn, which serves to highlight Naesala's inner turmoil and closest relationships as well as Skrimir's character development. Here, we've got 20+ characters arguing about what might have happened in another world.

Firstly, what's satisfying or not in a story is entirely subjective; we'll get back to this next post.

Secondly, given how vague the described scene is and that i don't know what he's referring to, i'll just ask how the HoF scene doesn't do the exact same thing as the RD scene, with it highlighting Shiro and Siegbert's inner turmoils with them suspecting each other, their closest relationships with them being pissed because they think the other one killed their fathers, who they liked, and character development because they agree to bury the hatchet next chapter.

Thirdly and most importantly, giving an extremely vague description of a scene in another game that you personally like, making no comparisons between the two scenes whatsoever, and acting like you just made some deep, scathing critique isn't a point, or at least not a worthwhile one. Stop dickriding Tellius and make an actual argument for why the scene where the two teams suspect each other is bad instead of just appealing to this subreddit's massive, evident biases towards certain eras of Fire Emblem whenever you realize how shallow your point is.

> In essence, this goes exactly as you'd think. I'm not sure what Arete was thinking here. If she's that powerful, why not just zap them?

Because it's easier to kill isolated groups than it is to kill nearly a dozen at once; she didn't kill them on the spot because she couldn't, and splitting them up would make her job easier.

> Arete, Mikoto and Sumeragi serve as the bosses here. I was skeptical of their dying speeches in Revelation, but here their battle dialogues are even less impactful since they've never interacted with these characters before. The problem of the Nohrians having nothing to do with any of these characters remains,

Explain why it's a problem that characters with no relation to other ones don't have anything special to say when fighting them; you never did in your Revelation analysis, and i still want to read an explanation for that point.

> I do wonder if the Kanas are supposed to be as old as Corrin was when they were kidnapped, as Mikoto says they look identical to a younger Corrin, but that doesn't seem to line up with the very few memories Corrin has of Hoshido.

Yes, because the few memories Corrin has of Hoshido implies that they were decently old when they were kidnapped, and Mikoto's saying that Kana reminds her of a younger Corrin because she remembers Corrin when they were young. I still want evidence for your claims that Corrin was a toddler when they were kidnapped btw.

> He then says this:

> Shigure: The Silent Dragon now rules this world, just as he planned. But that wasn't enough. He invaded another realm, and then another. Those were your realms—worlds where the Silent Dragon is still sealed. Everyone you knew there has most likely fallen prey to the Vallite army.

> So one world wasn't enough. Apparently Anankos is so powerful he can conquer at least ~20 other worlds on his own. Doesn't this mean he can team up with his other selves too and rule all worlds?

He preferred to absorb them and hoard what little power they still had for himself, because he's paranoid and greedy like that.

> I guess Anankos is "sealed" in other worlds, but what does that even mean?

Him being sealed either means that he's incapable of doing anything to the world outside of ordering his soldiers and hosts to do things for him, aka he's back to square one but without any hosts (outside of maybe Gunter in Conquest if he survives that route) to do his bidding and is going to have a much harder time instigating conflicts between Hoshido and Nohr now that they're in a much more stable state than they've been in years, or that killing his hosts while he was in direct control of them, which are the only times Anankos directly intervenes in either of the routes and, as such, must be what “sealed” him in this hypothetical, rendered him powerless/killed him/whatever else that neutralized him in some way.

The second one has more guesswork than the first, i'll admit, but even going for the simpler explanation of “Anankos was sealed the whole time” makes it pretty clear that him being stuck in Valla was what Shigure was referring to.

> We've seen that Anankos is capable of influencing the world from Valla in all other routes,

Give an example of Anankos interacting with the world outside of Valla in any way that isn't through a third party in the main routes.

> and the excuse we've been given for why he stays in Valla is that his powers will disappear outside of it.

These aren't mutually exclusive; Anankos can't directly interact with the real world from Valla and would lose what little power he has left if he were to try and travel to the real world himself. What's the contradiction?

> ...Wait, then how does he keep his powers in other worlds?

A sealed, weakened Anankos follows different rules than an Anankos at the peak of his power, plus when we don't even know if the main Anankos got weaker when he dimension-hopped.

> One might assume Anankos being sealed is why he needs Corrin as his vessel, but this is so incredibly underdeveloped that I don't even know what this means or why it's necessary.

It's there mostly to prove that the Birthright and Conquest worlds are doing fine, either by having everything return to the status quo with Anankos or by implying that Anankos's no longer a threat in those timelines.

> Another question I have is what the point of there being a bunch of other worlds is. Is it an excuse for why all routes are canon, or is it to show how cool and strong Anankos is? Regardless, I'm more confused than awed, but that might just be me.

The fact that there were three different worlds in the main game wasn't proof enough that there were multiple worlds in Fates, and as such, all of them were canon? How did it take you this long to realize that?

> I think the most important takeaway from this is that the world gets messed up if you play Birthright or Conquest, confirming that those routes are bad endings.

I already said why they aren't in the previous paragraphs, but even steelmanning you on this, doesn't this mean that Revelation is also a bad ending by your logic? Shigure comes from a Revelation route where Anankos won at the end and killed everyone; how is that any less confirmation of Revelation being a bad ending for the game than the fact that there are some Birthright and Conquest routes where the Anankos from the failed Revelation timeline showed up and also killed everyone from those worlds?

> Moving on, Shigure says he'll take on Anankos on his own with the power of his song.

> Shigure: Essentially... Though dying in this way would release far too much power. Instead, I would have to absorb the curse entirely. This would prevent me from death and condemn me to eternal suffering.

> So, he's going to sing the secret fourth verse no one has been able to use and he knows that absorbing the curse will condemn him to eternal suffering presumably even after Anankos dies. How does he know that and what even is the curse at this point? In the main route you just can't talk about Valla but in this DLC it seems to erase memories and slowly brainwash others,

I'll give you that it's weird that Shigure knows exactly what singing the song will do to him, presumably without even asking Azura about it, but where are you getting the idea that whatever is causing the kids to lose their memories is some sort of curse, let alone that it's supposed to be the same curse from the main game? It clearly doesn't have the same prerequisite for being activated and does something completely different from the main game's curse.

> all while Anankos has the power to invade other worlds, raise undead armies and cause mass hallucinations.

He could and did raise undead armies just fine in the main game; the other two are explained by him breaking free of the seal and absorbing multiple other Anankos, giving himself a massive amp in the process.

> This seems like typical shounen power level spiraling out of control, but this is an optional DLC seemingly trying to hype up Anankos way after the player has likely put him down like the sad, dying animal he was in Revelation. It's hard to take such a pathetic villain seriously after such lackluster evil monologues and immature arguments like "I'm not a dick! Humans are the real dicks!".

Firstly, it's power scaling/escalation. This isn't pre-Cell Saga Dragon Ball Z, stop using terms that only apply to that series, and even then only at a very specific time-frame.

Secondly, main game Anankos and HoF Anankos are two completely different beasts; the former is an insane, power-hungry animal barely capable of forming a rational argument when pressed on it out of his blind anger towards humanity, and was also nerfed during that time, as estabilished by this very DLC. HoF Anankos is a nearly all-powerful being that got to where he was by not only beating his route's protags, but breaking free of his seal, meaning he was at full power again, destroying his world, and proceeding to give himself a massive power boost by absorbing multiple other dimensions's Anankos; any normal version of Anankos pales in comparison to the power of HoF Anankos, and that's why he can do all this significantly more powerful shit now than he could before, and why he's threatening. This is the strongest being in all of Fates, and unlike his old self, he's not a pathetic animal anymore; why is he hard to take seriously now?

> The kids are discussing how to get back to save Shigure, and they start quoting what Azura said. For some reason they don't remember her name but they remember what she said about the ability to weigh one's memories against someone's life. They all surmise that they can sacrifice their memories to stop Shigure from dying when singing.

Azura said that certain memories would remain. What she told them is what remained, and the name is what left.

> I think we're due for a summary of everything that has transpired up until this point because while I'm trying to make this easy to take in, I realize this must be a confusing mess if you haven't played/watched the DLC.

> * All kids have lost their parents from their respective worlds, and apparently only this lost world remains. They spent four out of six chapters fighting each other due to Anankos' illusions

> * Anankos went on a killing spree across at least 20 other worlds

> * The curse now also erases memories and slowly indoctrinates you to serve Anankos

Again, show evidence that this is the same curse from the main game.

> * The curse can be absorbed by a secret fourth verse of Anankos' song, but the singer would be subject to an eternity of torment from absorbing so much power. These consequences can be offset by people sacrificing their memories.

Shigure states that he could die after singing the song if he wanted to, but that it would “unleash too much power”, and therefore he needs to absorb the “curse” (much more likely to be a metaphor for the consequences of singing the fourth verse rather than any actual curse from Anankos, especially given that such a thing is never mentioned elsewhere in the game). I have no idea what he's talking about when he says it'd unleash too much power if he did it normally, but he's not talking about the memory-wipe thingy. Otherwise, nice summary.

> This is a lot of really out there stuff. Practically nothing of this gets elaborated on to any meaningful extent,

The third and fourth one sure, but characters talk about the first two plenty of times throughout the story, even if mostly in relation to how scared they are that their parents might be dead. Even then, explain why a lack of elaboration is a bad thing.

> and character interactions are primarily solely tied to the plot. Yes, you can discern their personalites from how they talk, but they say so very little of value. It's not odd considering there are over 20 characters involved.

There's still a pretty solid chunk of interactions that showcase the kids's personalities, and again, it's the player's fault for not doing a minimum amount of research into the characters that they know are going to be the protags of a DLC.

> What's worse, there's a very clear solution to everything here: Azura and Shigure have repeatedly said that killing Anankos will return everything to normal. So...yeah. I wonder how this will end.

It's implied that Shigure would have stayed in eternal torment if he'd used the song to kill Anankos, so no, not everything would have gone back to normal.

> The discussion continues, and Ophelia and Soleil reveal that they do in fact have teleportation crystals on hand; they just didn't know what they were. Apparently Owain and Inigo decided not to head back to Ylisse in their worlds after failing in their mission, and then they didn't explain what the magical teleportation rocks did.

Owain and Inigo's mission was to help Corrin gather the legendary weapons, go back to Valla, and kill Anankos. Their mission still wasn't over given how Corrin had only upgraded the Yato twice, the legendary weapons could still pick other wielders, and Anankos was still alive; why should they have quit their task mid-mission when it hadn't even failed yet?

Laslow and Odin not telling Soleil and Ophelia that the crystals are teleporters when they were getting overwhelmed is stupid tho, i'll give you that.

> Forrest, however, says the two crystals are too small to teleport them all back to Shigure (apparently he used a much bigger one). Upon hearing that, Lilith shows up (yes, really) and gives the last of her power to charge the crystals. ..Except she shows up later again.

Lilith showing up here is an asspull, sure, but just because she gave the last of her power doesn't mean she'd die because of it; she could easily mean that she wouldn't be able to help anymore, plus the world resets at the end. Why would she be exempt from that when everyone else that died got restored?

> Why on earth would you include this teleportation back and forth if it was solved this easily and quickly?

To give Lilith something to do; as poorly done as the execution was, capitalizing on the relevance given to Lilith by Hidden Truths was a decent enough idea.

> Honestly? I like the idea of this villainous motivation. However, it is a motivation that requires far, far more build-up than what we've got. Anankos casually invading at least 20 other worlds and killing all humans there is so far removed from what the main story dealt with that it just becomes noise. It means nothing.

Explain why it needs more build-up or why it being different from Anankos's motivations in the main game makes it bad.

> How can I put this...imagine if Anankos had said this in Revelation, that he looked across 20 different worlds for a better Valla and couldn't find one - what would that actually change? Nothing. Different worlds and all that they imply are such a massive concept that they need more fleshing out than a few lines said in passing.

Well, it would have raised the stakes significantly, for one; now the team isn't just fighting to protect their world, but to protect multiple worlds, and the consequences for failing would be even more disastrous than it already was, along with giving Anankos slightly more depth by estabilishing that he wants to go to a world where people liked him/he suceeded, instead of the one he lived in where he was a failure and a pariah.

More importantly than even that, though, is the fact that he wouldn't have said that at the time because that wasn't his motivation back then; he was still pissed at and wanted to destroy the world, and presumably couldn't even dimension-hop due to the sealing on him nerfing his power, only doing so after regaining his full strength and becoming curious as to whether there was another world where he suceeded. This doesn't become his motivation until Heirs of Fate, so criticizing it because Revelation Anankos didn't want to dimension-hop back then is nonsensical.

> Anankos: Yes... A promise that spanned vast reams of time and space... Fulfilled by the power inside those crystals of yours...

> Anankos destroyed this world and then at least 20 more so their daughters had to step up and clean up their mess, but yes, well done, Inigo and Owain. Promise fulfilled.

When does he thank Inigo and Owain? When he talks about the power in the crystals, couldn't he be talking about either Lilith or his good half from Hidden Truths?

> So, here we are. The entire DLC has led up to this point. Basically, you hit the reset button. The memories of what happened here will be erased, everyone will go back to their worlds and all of their loved ones will be alive. It'll be as if nothing ever happened, to which I ask why the DLC was even made to begin with. If they wanted to flesh out the second generation characters, there must have been better ways of doing it than this, and if it was to flesh out Anankos, well, that should've been in the base game (and he had a starring role as it were in another DLC as well). This is one hell of a plot convenient song.

Just because things get reset doesn't mean that the information learned wasn't valuable; Anankos got a decent chunk of extra characterization and the kids all had a chance to show off their personalities in non-optional ways. Besides, again, Anankos didn't have the motivation he does here in the base game; it would have been impossible to flesh him out like this, or in Hidden Truths for that matter given how Evil Anankos has five seconds of screentime there and the DLC is focused on Good Anankos.

> You get a quick look into the characters' personalities, yes, but I don't think that's any writing worth celebrating.

Explain why writing that estabilishes characters's personalities, motivations and histories isn't good.

> Anankos is given a decent motive after the main routes are over and both he and the curse are made much more powerful for no real reason other than to raise the stakes, which in turn get annihilated by a convenient song power-up.

Is there any serious story in which an antagonist gets more powerful for reasons other than to raise the stakes?

Unless you're talking about in-universe logic, which only makes this worse, because Anankos is so heavily implied to have absorbed the other Anankoses he met it's barely even sub-text, and it's directly confirmed that he broke the seal on him after beating the team at the end of Revelation, which can be easily seen as having nerfed his power in some way, both of which are perfectly reasonable explanations for why he got so much stronger in HoF.

And for the last time, give me a single piece of evidence that the memory loss is a curse, let alone the same one from the main story.

> Heirs of Fate tries to be Future Past but fails in the important areas where Future Past succeeded. I think nothing shows this better than the battle conversations of Heirs of Fate vs. the parent conversations in Future Past. I'll take two random examples to compare the two.

Was the transcribing the reason why this comment was too long to be integrated into the main post? Why? The only point made by doing that is proving that the fact that the fathers talk to their children in Future Past but not in Heirs of Fate is true, which you not only already argued for in your main post (without any elaboration as to why that's a flaw with Heirs of Fate or why the two DLCs are even being compared), but i highly doubt someone was going to try and challenge you on the claim that FP has different conversations than HoF. I'm challenging you on the claim that a difference in intent, tone and context makes one better than the other, especially when it's never explained why, but that's a different conversation altogether. As it stands, this is painfully redundant.

> In Heirs of Fate they're talking to dolls and like I said before, while that's better than nothing, it's much harder to establish a dynamic when one character out of two speaks in ellipses.

Both the conversations you transcribed make it perfectly clear what the children's relationship with their father was like prior to their being possessed; why do you keep debunking yourself throughout these posts and not realizing it or pointing it out?

> Future Past having superior characterization and interactions doesn't automatically mean Future Past is bad, and sure, there's even more Fates DLC where the parents interact with their kids. However, given how big of a deal the loss of the second generation characters' fathers (parents, I guess, but they really do keep saying "fathers" specifically as if the mothers never existed) is portrayed as, I think the battle conversations simply aren't enough.

They spend the rest of the route being pretty worried and upset that their fathers probably died; i fail to see how that, along with their heart-to-hearts if they ever fight them directly, isn't enough.

> There's on question above all others which remains. Shigure singing this song hits the reset button and everything returns to normal, but does that mean Anankos is dead in all other worlds, or did he just erase everything Heirs of Fate Anankos did in other worlds? As in, when Heirs of Fate Anankos entered another world, would there be two Anankoses in that world? Keep in mind in both Birthright and Conquest, Anankos survives in Valla. If he's killed in all worlds, then no main route ever needed to be played as this world's Shigure took care of Anankos by himself, but if he only killed the Heirs of Fate Anankos, then the Anankos of Birthright and Conquest remains to threaten the world forever, cementing those two routes as bad endings.

> Anankos: No harm has come to them. The world will return...to what it was... Your father...your mother...and all of your friends... You will find them at the end of the path that was meant to be. The one where I no longer exist.

The fact that Anankos told this to the Kanas who come from the BR and CQ worlds is confirmation that whatever happened to him at the end of those routes (presumably killing his hosts) neutralized him to the point he's no longer any threat to those worlds, and that Shigure did nothing more than restore the worlds to what they were like prior to HoF Anankos's rampages.

Even going with the theory that Shigure killed all Anankoses, Hoshido would have lost to Nohr in BR if Corrin hadn't killed Garon, causing multiple unnecessary casualties by the time Anankos was killed, a lot more people would have died during Nohr's invasion in Conquest if Corrin hadn't helped, along with the kingdoms probably not being in good terms by the end, and ditto for what would have happened in Revelation. Hoshido and Nohr would have already torn each other apart by the time Anankos was killed if Corrin didn't kill his hosts and put him in a coma/killed him directly, so there's still story value to them.

> I'll just say it, this DLC is a confusing mess, the song is poppycock,

How dare you. Lost in Thoughts All Alone is an excellent song; sure it's overused in the game, but that doesn't make the song itself bad.

> it doesn't succeed in what it set out to do due to a lack of focus and poor structure, and returning everything to normal was a cowardly move.

Yes, because i'm sure that having the children be stuck in Valla, literally alone in the universe because Anankos had a sperg-out and destroyed everyone else in every universe in a fit of rage, would have been such a satisfying and brave ending that would have made perfect sense after it was thoroughly estabilished from the very start of the story that killing Anankos would fix eveything.

> I wish I had more positive things to say here outside of not minding Anankos' motivation on paper and Mitama's way of speaking, but as it stands, Heirs of Fate is just a worse Future Past. I somehow feel worse being so negative about Heirs of Fate than most other things because due to its structure, it's hard to really convey how contrived it is so I just sound like an angry old man. Well, more than usual.

Maybe that's just a sign of your lackluster analysis skills, not age or the game.

In summary: this might have just dethroned Conquest part 2 as the worst post so far. Large portions of the “analysis” here is Odo pointing out something that happens in the story, saying that it's bad, and refusing to give any semblance of a explanation as to why it's bad, which was an issue in other posts but hit critical mass this time around, along with unprovoked comparisons (mostly Radiant Dawn and Future Past shilling) and the typical issues of asking questions he'd know the answer to if he paid more attention to the story/read between the lines more and using heavily subjective arguments. This is a disaster.

See y'all one last time in the next post.

#fire emblem fates #reddit #corrin fire emblem #fire emblem #story analysis #fire emblem fates heirs of fate #heirs of fate #anankos #kana fire emblem #fire emblem shigure

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sketching-shark · 3 years

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I think it's the ironic fact that JTTW fans already know how DBK and Sun Wukong's friendship broke apart but are more curious on LMK versions of Sun Wukong and the Six Eared Macaque were friends alongside falling out.

HA! Well, while it often does seem that way, I'm going to go ahead and be a complete snob in a Journey to the West purist kind of way by wondering how many Six Eared Macaque fans would consider themselves more JTTW fans or more Monkie Kid fans, or if they feel they're a mix of both...

I've seen a lot of people argue that these two works of fiction are their own thing and that as such Monkie Kid (and associated fanworks) shouldn't be expected to follow the canon of JTTW, and fair enough for some parts. I've also, however, seen people who argue for this complete separation seeming to use it as an excuse to not acknowledge or learn about ANY original aspects of characters such as Sun Wukong and the Demon Bull King, or even very important deities such as Guanyin and the Jade Emperor, and who as such end up making some pretty gross generalizations/assumptions about them even though they are of great religious and cultural importance.

For example (and while I know a lot of the fun people get from fan works is in exaggerating certain traits), Sun Wukong seems to often be presented with an "inherently" evil/thoughtless/chaotic character, while his intelligence, deep love of his family, genuine efforts to become a better person, & many acts of saving lives, as presented in JTTW, aren't even mentioned. I feel like a lot of this is due to the way he acts in Monkie Kid (while I maintain that this version of Sun Wukong seems to be Bad End Monkey King, he does do a lot of deflecting his issues with a show of humor/a carefree attitude & does seem really bad at communicating due to a fear of making things worse). Even so, the popularity of Thoughtless/Evil/Selfish Sun Wukong that doesn’t really allow for any of the nuance or a display of his beneficial traits as shown in JTTW does make me wonder how many people have been exposed to a good translation of og classic Sun Wukong...As I've said before, I've noted that a number of Chinese people on this site have expressed frustration with the fact that a good chunk of the monkey king’s Western audience seems to be getting their impressions about Sun Wukong, the Demon Bull King, the Six Eared Macaque, etc. from some mix of Overly Sarcastic Productions, Monkie Kid, and social media instead of from at least a translation of the original text, and it is true that a LOT of the nuance of these work and these characters can be very easily lost, especially if your drawing your information of them primarily from a cartoony version of the original source.

That would be an interesting poll though...out of curiosity, how many of you fine folk have read the break-up & fight between Sun Wukong and the Demon Bull King either in the original text or in a translation, or is your exposure to them primarily through Monkie Kid?

Again, I need to make it clear that I'm not Chinese & didn't grow up with the story, but I will admit for my own part that reading the DBK/SWK break-up in the Yu translation actually made me more curious about how their dynamic is going to play out in Monkie Kid than I am curious about what's going to happen with Mr. Macaque.

This is primarily because besides SWK’s fight with Princess Iron Fan and DBK being given a LOT of page space in JTTW, there seems to have been some serious stuff that went down between the three of them in the events post-JTTW and pre-the main plot of Monkie Kid...the last we see of DBK in JTTW (if memory serves correctly) was him being hauled off by a host of heavenly warriors to be judged for his crimes of not giving SWK the palm leaf fan & also eating humans. When Monkie Kid starts, however, we are told that DBK had emerged “from the Netherworld” & immediately starts wrecking everything around him. What this suggests--if Monkie Kid is something of a fan continuation of JTTW--is that DBK ended up being executed by the heavenly forces, but managed to fight his way out of the underworld in a manner somewhat similar to SWK, who we are told he is equal in strength to in JTTW. In that beginning fight of Monkie Kid DBK is also shown as so enraged that he won’t stop his path of destruction until SWK buries him under a mountain for 500 years. It’s never said in the show, but--and this is important--this is basically exactly what Buddha did to SWK to start him on the path of atonement. So there seems to be some very intentional parallels between SWK’s havoc in heaven & DBK’s havoc on earth, which may suggest that one of the things Monkie Kid SWK really wants is for his former dear friend, his sworn brother, to find a way like him to be less violent and thus ultimately less vulnerable to destructive and self-destructive behavior, and that the way he tried to start this was by giving DBK the same treatment he got when he was a raging warlord.

We are furthermore told that it was right after DBK was sealed that SWK disappeared for all those centuries, and while the impulse may be to write it off as him just wanting to enjoy himself (given a lot of his behavior in the show’s timeline), given the indications that this SWK may be deeply depressed, I feel like the answer could be something a lot more tragic...there seem to be a number of clues in Monkie Kid that while the journey of JTTW happened, something made it end disastrously, with SWK either assuming or knowing that Zhu Bajie, Sha Wujing, Tang Sanzang, and Bai Longma are dead. And per JTTW, this wouldn’t be the first time that he’s experienced a horrific loss, given the war with heaven and the burning of Flower-Fruit Mountain. And then right after THAT, it seems DBK emerged from the underworld, and so Sun Wukong was put into a horrific position: either murder his sworn brother, or let him continue to rampage & harm and/or kill who knows how many humans. SWK ultimately gives up his staff to do the repeat of “500 years under a mountain in solitary confinement route,” which as per JTTW he considers better than the alternative, but he immediately follows that by exiling himself. In JTTW SWK is a really sociable person who makes friends wherever he goes, but man, for this SWK...his life must at that point just feel like one failure after another, that in spite of all his best efforts he wasn’t able to save anyone he really cared about, and now he just trapped someone who was so important to him under a mountain & fated him to suffer the same things he had when he was in that position. How much more does he have to hurt his fellow yaoguai? How many more times does he have to choose between yaoguai and humans, feeling like no matter what he decides it’s just going to result in pain for him and/or his loved ones? I can easily imagine super sociable & easily upset (he cries a LOT in JTTW) SWK feeling like after sealing DBK, he just can’t do this any more. He just...can’t.

This is all just speculation, but knowing the JTTW backstory between SWK and DBK does, at least for me, make their Monkie Kid relationship a lot more intriguing than it might be otherwise. Especially now that DBK seems to actually be making some small steps to quell his constant rage & lust for power. He even saves SWK and Qi Xiaotian from an explosion/nasty fall in the season 2 special! The Bull family weren’t really present in season 2, but I really hope they make a comeback in season 3 (if/when we get it) precisely because Red Son, Princess Iron Fan, and especially DBK have such an involved history with SWK. Plus it would be really fun to see two old warlords trying to awkwardly make amends with each other & struggle to be good teachers & positive role models to their student & son.

In any case I feel this potential is more interesting than whatever fanfic The Six Eared “I’mma Plagiarize The Demon Bull King’s Backstory Of Being Best Friends with Sun Wukong” Macaque is creating lol.

#monkie kid #journey to the west #lego monkie kid #lmk #lmk sun wukong #lmk dbk #lmk six eared macaque #anon answered

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ayuuria · 3 years

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Yashahime Translation: Animage October 2021 Issue

Please do not repost this translation without my consent! This includes screenshots of any type and amount. If you wish to share this translation, simply link to this post.

For more information regarding the use of my translations, click here.

¡Por favor, no repostees esta traducción sin mi consentimiento! Esto incluye capturas de pantalla de cualquier tipo y cantidad. Si deseas compartir esta traducción, usa simplemente el enlace a este post.

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The Beast King’s Daughter

“Hanyō no Yashahime” depicts the battle of three princesses who carry the blood of a demon king. In ‘The Second Chapter’ which broadcasts in October, the one who holds the key to the story is another princess who makes a new appearance.

With overwhelming strength, Sesshōmaru and Inuyasha’s father, the Dog General, was known as “The Beast King of the Western Lands”. The three (girls) Towa, Setsuna, and Moroha inherited the said beast king’s blood.

Despite being inexperienced, Towa and the others have constantly grown in battle. In episode 24 of ‘The First Chapter’, an evenly matched battle unfolds between Towa and Moroha, enraged by Setsuna’s death, and “The Beast King of the Eastern Lands”, Kirinmaru, who is equal to the Dog General. Though Kirinmaru was injured, he successfully landed a single stroke.

Starting from ‘The Second Chapter’, another daughter of a beast king appears before Towa and the others. Her name is Rion. Surprisingly, it is said that Kirinmaru also had a daughter. Rion is an existence who for 600 years has been sealed in Mt. Musubi, which is said to be where the Dream Butterfly is. Exactly who sealed her and for what purpose? Just like Towa and the others, within her is likely an inherited strength of a beast king but her powers are unknown.

There are still many mysteries surrounding Kirinmaru’s daughter, Rion. While it is not yet known whether she is an enemy or an ally to Towa and the others, if she is willing to lend her strength, she will likely become a reliable existence to them as they shoulder many difficulties.

Character Bios

Rion Kirinmaru’s daughter who has been sealed within the barrier of Mt. Musubi for 600 years. It seems her meeting with Towa, Setsuna, and Moroha will move destiny but… …?

The Dream Butterfly The butterfly of the dream world. A spirit. It is said that when they appear in the real world, they devour people’s dreams and those who have been devoured become unable to sleep or dream entirely.

Higurashi Towa Sesshōmaru and Rin’s daughter. She fights with Kikujyūmonji, a demon sword with a blade created from demonic power. The attack she unleashed when she became enraged from Setsuna’s death took on the shape of two blue dragons.

Setsuna Sesshōmaru and Rin’s daughter. In episode 24 of ‘The First Chapter’, despite wounding Kirinmaru during their battle, the tables turned on her and she lost her life.

Moroha Inuyasha and Kagome’s daughter. When she puts on rouge, she goes on a rampage that ends quickly but when Setsuna lost her life, she managed to fight without losing her composure.

Kirinmaru The Beast King of the Eastern Lands. It appears he spares some leeway with the Yashahimes such as naming Towa’s technique ‘Twin-Headed Azure Dragon Wave’, but?

The Parent Needs to Pull It Together More!

Kirinmaru has considerably complicated child rearing. In contrast to that, Rion is a girl with a straightforward upbringing. I can’t say the specifics yet but when I see parent and child, as a father of a daughter in her 10s myself, I think “The parent has to pull it together more” and I also get a sense of “I guess even if the parent complicates things, kids will grow up on their own.” By the way, Fujita Saki plays the role of Rion. She also took on the role of the mean heroine in my previous work “Fairy Ranmaru~ Anata no Kokoro Otasuke Shimasu~”. Just when I thought I finally defeated her in “F Ran” (Shortened name of said previous work), I meet her again in “Hanyō no Yashahime”… … I felt a mysterious fate (laughs).

- Director Hishida Masakazu

I Felt Destiny from the Lives of Towa and Co. Director Hishida Masakazu

Synchronizing With His Own Life?! Empathy Towards Towa’s Situation

— In the previous issue’s interview, Director Hishida, you said that you felt that “it was fate that I should accept” the offer for this current work which was memorable.

Hishida: I worked at Sunrise’s Studio #1 for a long time, but I started to do work for Tatsunoko Production in 2008. From there, I mostly worked at Tatsunoko but now Sunrise has called me back for the first time in 13 years. Just as I’m wondering what sort of work it’s going to be, they tell me it’s a work that carries on the world of “Inuyasha”, (the work) that taught me the foundation of production. Not to mention, the protagonist, Towa, is a girl who was flung from the feudal world where she was born and raised, to the modern era, and then returns to the feudal (era) again after 10 years. I felt Towa’s situation synchronized with mine and all I could think was that this was fate.

I’m about the same age as the director of ‘The First Chapter’, Teruo-san (Director Satō Teruo), and our careers are just about the same too. Teruo-san worked at Studio 1 for the longest time while I on the other hand, got thrown outside and came back… … I thought that aspect felt similar to Towa and Setsuna’s life (laughs). That’s why watching Towa and Setsuna’s relationship in “The First Chapter” was very tough. Like, they were such close sisters so why doesn’t she remember… …

— To change it to your position Director Hishida, it’s like “You returned to Sunrise for the first time in a while but the people you used to get along with have forgotten about you” kind of a situation.

Hishida: It’s exactly that! The current staff of Sunrise’s Studio 1 don’t know me, and they don’t thank me (laughs). You see, I was the one who revived the steppingstone for the “becoming a producer by being a production assistant” route that came to an end at Studio 1! There weren’t many before me but afterwards, there were a lot of people that took that route and flew the nest like Fujita Yōichi-kun, Watada Shinya-kun, and Kyōgoku Takahiko-kun! No one is really grateful so Fujita-kun and Kyōgoku-kun would always say to me “I should’ve crushed you back then!” (laughs). As I watched Setsuna not remembering Towa, I ended up remembering that.

— You seem to have an unusual attachment to Towa and Setsuna’s relationship (laughs). Well then, what sort of impression do you have of Moroha and Sesshōmaru?

Hishida: Moroha has a brilliance to her. It’s amusing that she inherited Inuyasha’s mischievous side, and she’s got a similar silhouette to Inuyasha as well, so I feel that she is a real eye-catching character. When Towa and Setsuna take center, the story becomes heavy no matter what, so it’s fun to watch Moroha soften the place up.

Then, regarding Sesshōmaru in this current work, I felt “He’s a father”. I bet in his own way, as a father, he wonders how to interact with his daughters. Even while carrying out a strict “trial of courage and cowardice”, he still concerns himself with his daughters which I feel is a little human like. I’m also a father of two girls so I can relate to him somewhat. In the last (scene) of “The First Chapter”, he purposefully hands over a broken Tenseiga to Towa but he wouldn’t do that if he didn’t care about them. He just gives a pass like “Do something about it with this” and I think that is also (a form of) training in a sense.

Also, drawing wise, the pattern of Sesshōmaru’s kimono is still brutal (laughs). “Inuyasha” was an analog cel anime back then so (drawing) that pattern was even more difficult. At the time, the suggestion “Let’s omit the pattern on Sesshōmaru’s kimono” was made but Director Ikeda Masashi opposed it. I didn’t understand why Director Ikeda was so fixated on that pattern back then but thinking about it now, I think it was the right call. Since it could be said that Sesshōmaru’s existence is one of two wheels in the work that is “Inuyasha”, he probably didn’t want to make him plain wherever possible.

The First Attempt At ‘The Second Chapter’ Storyboard Was Like A “Trial of Courage and Cowardice”

— Next, please tell us about Kirinmaru’s side. In ‘The First Chapter’, many of their actions were puzzling so by all means, any hints to their activity in ‘The Second Chapter’!

Hishida: At first, I couldn’t quite understand Kirinmaru, but once I heard he was a father with a daughter, I understood. While he is a person who’s thinking “I want to surpass the Dog General”, his feelings of admiration towards that man and wanting to show his strong side to his daughter are feelings that I completely understand now. Kirinmaru has had many mysterious aspects up until this point, but I’d like to depict his emotions in ‘The Second Chapter’.

Just like her younger brother, Kirinmaru, Zero has also become obsessed with the Dog General. In any case, she lives on her “love”. Zero’s womanly heart is a little complicated, but I also feel that seeing her persist with her earnest feelings for the Dog General is cool.

Also, I think the parts of Riku, who’s neutral towards Towa and the others, that were difficult to see up to this point will become clear in ‘The Second Chapter’. How he feels about Towa will be brought to the forefront, so I told Fukuyama Jun-kun who plays him, “In ‘The Second Chapter’ please go with a slightly handsome boy feeling route” (laughs). By the way, Fukuyama-kun was the one who played the main character in my director debut work “Onmyō Taisenki”. The name of the role (character) was ‘Riku’. ‘The Second Chapter’ is a story about the ‘fate’ that connects people together, and I also felt a mysterious fate from that.

— What did you think of production for episode 25 (episode 1 of ‘The Second Chapter’) which continues from the shocking last scene of Setsuna’s death in ‘The First Chapter’?

Hishida: It was such shocking last scene that I was overcome with the feeling of “Why are you passing the baton to me at such a difficult spot!?”! I truly thought this was a ‘trial of courage and cowardice’ (laughs). I did the storyboard for episode 25 myself, but coming into the work midway, it took me some time to understand the story, so I really struggled. Until now, the record holder for storyboard that took me the longest was episode 13 of “Gundam Reconguista in G” with 2 months. However, this time, it took me 3 months.

— To say that it easily overtook that “G Recon” (shortened form of “Gundam Reconguista in G”) that you struggled so much with (laughs).

Hishida: Yes. My worst record was brilliantly made new! However, on the reverse side, I thought with ‘The First Chapter’ ending like this, there’s no doubt you’d want to see the continuation. In that sense, they passed the baton in the best way so I should meet up to that (expectation). It was tough but I put my all into it!

— ‘The Second Chapter’ is loaded with things to be curious about aside from what will happen to Setsuna like Rin who’s sleeping within the Tree of Ages and Inuyasha and Kagome who’ve been trapped within the black pearl.

Hishida: I can’t talk in detail about that yet but I will say “There’s no way it would end like this!”. I would certainly like for everyone to look forward to October.

In the new key visual for ‘The Second Chapter’ that is overflowing with lively motion, the three princesses show gallant expressions with weapons in hand. What exactly is beyond Towa’s reaching hand… …? Also, when will we get to see ‘Sesshōmaru & Rin’ and ‘Inuyasha & Kagome’ standing side-by-side together as shown in this picture?

#Yashahime #Hanyou no Yashahime #Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon #translation

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akampana · 3 years

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Because of zero 10th anniversary I have a lot of people are #Remakesaberroute, and I have mixed feelings about this in one part it would meant the remake of the final farewell of saber and Gilgamesh in 4k, 144fps l, but in the other it would meant suffering trough saber x Shirou again, want do you think, would you like a remake or are satisfied with the original

Do I want a remake?

Actually, I like the idea of a remake, as long as it corrects a critical flaw the Deen adaptation had: the lack of Shirou's internal monologue.

Especially after reading the visual novel, you just realize how much of Shirou the anime, well, left out. Compared to what we get in the VN, the Deen FSN is so half-baked it's like he didn't even make it into the oven.

In the end, the anime was...well...limited by its own medium. There is so much that goes on in the VN that they just couldn't cram it all into 25 half-hour episodes. Not to say the VN is perfect, there are still some issues that I have with it and Nasu himself also said he has some issues with the way things were written, but the depth of Shirou's incredibly messed up state of being is explored there, while the anime doesn't quite get that right.

UBW did a better job of showcasing Shirou's trauma, by frequent flashbacks, Shirou's expressions when he isn't able to save Illya, how they portrayed him and Rin when inside the Blood Fort and all their classmates were unconscious etc. but I still think more can be done.

So I'm not satisfied with the original anime. (VN is better tho xD)

Ship Stuff

Also, while I don't main Shirou x Saber, I definitely realize its importance and respect it (Admittedly, that took me reading through the VNs. I went on this whole obsessive arc after Deen FSN where I was like "No that can't be it! That CAN'T BE IT!" while eating up all three routes like a starving dog.) It's got its own space on my dock, although I haven't boarded that ship in years, and only mention it in passing in most of my works. To see that relationship done right would make me happy. Shirou's relationship with Saber was the most idealistic and well, romantic in the literary sense (come on, endlessly pursuing, endlessly waiting, that shit slaps) and to see it given the justice it deserves would be great actually.

And yeah, Gilgamesh's goodbye? I'd love to see how they showcase that. Tomokazu Seki's delivery of his last words really sold the Deen version and damn I'd like to see him give it another go (FGO's similar line aside).

Other stuff

Whether or not we'd actually get a remake, though? That's the real question. It's more of a want than a need in the Fate fandom, y'know? Especially since a large part of the fanbase swears by the Deen version anyway, and anime aside Arturia and Shirou are very much beloved by the fans.

Plus, a re-adaptation would probably warrant Nasu going back to correct or improve the parts of the route he would have wanted to change. I'm not sure what his stance would be on doing that (and uh, please Nasu, get some sleep) and well, from what I see, the new LB is clearly an ode to the Fate Route. So he might not even have to go back, and instead just continue writing new things.

I would be happy to get it, but I'd be okay with not getting a remake. At this point a remake seems like the stuff of dreams. Tsukihime got its revival though, so you never know.

If anything, maybe at least a wide release of the Last Episode. I'd wanna see that. I mean we have all three routes adapted now, so haven't we unlocked this ending yet?

This?

"Yes welcome back, Shirou." The dream, finally announced its end here.

This I'd love to see.

#akampana asks

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butwhatifidothis · 3 years

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I did it! Finally fucking did it! I 100% the support log for 3H….Holy shit, that took longer than I was expecting, lol.

(Long rant, so heads up.)

I came in thinking “Oh they finally time-locked the supports, so I don’t have to have the damn cursor mocking me every time I open the menu like in Awakening and Fates, hurr hurr”. No no no no no. At least for Awakening and Fates, it was on my dumb ass for pressing the S-support and saving when I knew I shouldn’t. First off, if they wanted us to regain supports for Byleth in NG+, why the heck are supports for characters like Edelgard, Rhea, Dorothea and Lindhart locked? I don’t mean time-locked like the post-TS supports in a regular playthrough, I mean deadass “you can’t buy this, period” locked. “Oh it’s because you haven’t advanced that far in the story yet”. I can buy post-TS supports for the other characters, what makes El and Rhea exceptions?! The only thing that would be lost is that I don’t have to replay their entire route to get their S-support twice. It’s not like there’s enough differences between Bylad and Bylass to warrant the supports being locked, none of the characters specify a specific gender in their dialogue, and as far as different models go, changing models during a cutscene is coded into the game, so that should be no issue.

After going through the monastery option enough times, the hubworld is in this weird limbo state where it feels like it was made specifically for Byleth’s benefit (faculty training, recruiting party members, etc,) but the rest of the party seems to benefit from it instead (Instructions, Motivation points, etc). The Explore vs Battle options just don’t mix well, which feels like poor design choice. You can focus on auxiliary battles to raise your party’s level, but at the cost of potentially missing out on more party members. You can instead focus on the monastery to recruit party members, but at the cost of Byleth falling behind due to splitting activity points between recruiting and faculty training, and being in the monastery means less time grinding for levels. This isn’t as much of a problem in NG+, but if a game needs NG+ to lessen a design problem, then that’s more of a sign to me that the idea itself needed more ironing out.

As far as using the monastery to raise support points goes, the hubworld definitely needs a revamp. The only (good) options available are Meal Time and Choir Practice, with the latter being limited to once per week and the former making me think that the monastery must eat their own weapons to survive due to how fucking scarce food ingredients are. Getting meat and fish isn’t too big of an issue so long as you have enough money, but produce might as well be an urban legend. There were too many times where I had 60+ fish/meat, but produce was at fucking 1. I get that they wanted to be “realistic” in having seeds grow once per week, but if it’s at the cost of a gameplay element being nigh unplayable, then some more thought needs to be put into it. Sothis is a goddess of life and time, maybe her powers allow Byleth to make plants grow faster. Just something to make this section actually playable.

The final thing I wanted to talk about when it comes to the monastery is that, for some baffling reason, it is entirely possible to lock yourself out of key events like S-supports or being able to choose CF, simply by skipping to the end of the month. I’m not sure why this is a thing. It’s not like the game was designed with speedruns in mind (I mean, it is possible to beat a route in an hour, but fuck me if I ever succeeded in that), and nothing happens like a prompt popping up that you have to explore the monastery during that month or even limiting your options to just Explore (which the game has done before). This is especially weird for the quest in getting Jeralt’s ring (how to access S-supports), since Byleth is supposed to be sad in this month, so not being able to do seminars or Byleth being undeployable during auxiliary battles would make sense.

The option to choose CF is even worse though, because at least for Jeralt’s ring it’s a Red Quest that doesn’t allow you to finish exploring unless you complete it. For Edelgard, however? A dime-a-dozen quest prompt you can entirely look over and skip. No prompt by the game, no indication to talk to Edelgard, nothing. FFS, Rhea’s tea time quest was given more thought. At least her quest marker is a unique color.

(End of rant…sort of)

…So anyways, that was my experience with the game, lmao. Now you or someone else may be thinking, “nonnie, if you had this many problems completing the game, why did you bother?”, and the answer to that good question is…I’m not completely sure, lol. I know there’s more than one reason why, so bear with me here. I know part of it is due to sunk-cost fallacy (“I’m already this far into the game, I might as well fully complete it”), but I think a bigger reason is because I knew ahead of time that the routes were so similar to each other that there was little point in having a route split to begin with (except for CF, but who gives a fuck about that?). Despite all of my bitching, I do really like 3H even if I admit that it’s my least favorite FE game that I’ve played so far. I guess a part of me just wanted to like the game more despite my issues with it.

Now that I think about it, maybe the main reason was for fear of future mainline games. People are fear to like whatever part of a game that they wish, but I do think that 3H introduced some fundamental storytelling flaws that I’d rather not see repeated in the future, with me focusing on 3 in particular: 1) The Monastery, 2) Route Splits and 3) Byleth.

Aside from what I already talked about in regards to the monastery, if we are going to get another hubworld in the new FE title, have it to where it doesn’t conflict with how the rest of the story is presented. Is it better to simply tell us that the Western Church is xenophobic in an easily skippable side quest early on, or is it better to show us? Enemy Western Church NPCs going after foreign party members like Dedue or Petra more aggressively and calling them “animals” or the like, the map having Duscari NPCs locking themselves indoors for fear that the Western Church will persecute them, things of that nature. Is it better to tell us that there has been civil unrest in the Empire and the citizens revolting against Edelgard, or is it better to show us? Enemy Adrestian Civilian NPCs, assassins specifically going after Edelgard in a map, maybe one where a large farmland has been stripped bare. Things like that.

I’d rather do away with the Persona-calendar/Monastery hubworld, but if they are here to stay then they need enough content in it to keep the player engaged for 20-odd chapters, because there isn’t enough content in Garreg Mach to even hold up 12 chapters. Speaking of more content, if there’s going to be another route split in the next title, then there needs to be enough differences in the routes that actually warrants having a route split. Fates already did this well in having the route split be early in the game, along with the plot and story maps of each route being different, you could even skip to the route split moment on subsequent playthroughs, so 3H’s approach in having to play the same 12 chapters 3-4 times just felt like a massive downgrade. Playing multiple routes should feel rewarding rather than tedious, is what I’m trying to say.

Finally, and most importantly, I know that no one at IS is reading this but on the off chance that someone is - please, for the love of God, do not make another blank-slate/self insert main character like Byleth. Or at the very least, don’t have them be the focal point of the story, it’s a big reason why AM just works better than the other routes. For a game like FE, “self-insert” and “protagonist” goes as well as oil and water. Now, out of those three flaws listed, the Byleth one is what I’m hard set on. The monastery and route split flaws, my opinion might be flexible within reason, but the Byleth one…not so much, lol. If we really do get another self-insert doll for a main character, that alone is going to make the next game a hard sell for me, because seeing all the praise Byleth got (and has been getting) makes me fear that IS is going to take the wrong lesson from this and think they don’t have to put effort in making their protagonist anything resembling an actual person and their audience will still lap it up. It would be one thing if I just hated the character, but I don’t. I’m disappointed, which is even worse.

…With that said, it’s still better than whatever the heck Cap’n’Crunch is doing. Okay, rant over. For real this time.

—

I agree with a lot said here! But I do have a few disagreements, though they’re mostly my opinion than anything else lol

And this first one is probably like, extremely unpopular given how much shit I’ve seen flung at this aspect of 3H, but like… I actually really like the Monastery? Like yes, absolutely, it should have done more to not shelter the player from how bad the war is and it should change more with the world instead of being in this mostly limbo state where apparently seasons don’t real. I definitely also have those complaints, but to me, the Monastery was fine for the most part. A lot of the issues you brought up, like supports and Faculty Training and supplies for eating, weren’t a problem for me almost at all. My only real gripe is with how hard it is for Byleth to get training in Flying, Mounted and especially Heavy Armor without NG+ unlocking weapons ranks, since they don’t have access to Weekly Chores. I do believe I still managed to recruit everyone while only unlocking C in Faith on my Maddening playthrough of GD, but it certainly wasn’t easy. But I feel a lot of the problem people have with it are on subsequent playthroughs where they’re trying to do things like 100% any aspect of 3H, which yeah is gonna exacerbate the issues tenfold. Cuz like, while those three weapons ranks I mentioned are hard for Byleth to raise, on Normal mode you have unlimited auxiliary battles to help with all the other ones.

Like, I wanted to get Claude’s Dex to the max amount right? Just cuz I felt like it. And in doing that I found out just how tedious it is to get levels once a unit gets to a certain point, just cuz while Normal Mode gives you the Retreat option that lets you keep exp so you can drop a unit down on a yellow spot and get a decent boost in exp… you can do that like, twice or thrice on a story chapter. Once if it’s auxiliary (and not the freebie one). And that’s if you even have internet. And using the greenhouse to get Ailiell Pomegranates was a pain because they weren’t really guaranteed even if I used nothing but the right seed - doing that is more consistent, but not always, and I usually only got one anyway. It was annoying! But I was also doing a specific thing that’s gonna heighten the flaws in the system that I never would have noticed - didn’t even notice - unless I did that. The flaws are still there, don’t get me wrong! The Monastery definitely still needs improvement, battles still need to be a little more streamlined for future playthrough, but the flaws can seem a bit bigger than they are once you do certain things outside of a casual playthrough, know what I mean?

But, for example, when replaying 3H on hard mode and looking to recruit everyone after my no recruitment run, I didn’t come across any dilemma over “recruitment or Byleth being good, pick one.” That was the run my Byleth was usable, in fact - my first blind run that was no recruitment (save for Shamir) had my Byleth be pretty much completely useless while literally everyone else was fine. Also never came across problems with supplies for cooking (or at least not any big enough to comment on). So like, while these (and the above stuff) can certainly be problems for players trying to do everything everything in 3H, at least from my experience I just haven’t come across them. The monastery itself definitely needed a better story implementation, but yeah. I could’ve just been lucky tho lmao

I don’t mind how they implemented trying to get on CF at all tho lol. If you’ve been playing the game like it suggests you do - supporting characters and exploring the monastery there’s no reason for players to have missed getting on CF. If players wanted to ignore one of the biggest aspects of the game I don’t really feel that bad for them when they miss out on very achievable things. Plus, CF’s requirements are nothing in terms of FE’s madness when it comes to getting on a route. It may be more specific than any other route, but like I said, playing the game as the game tells you to would naturally land you in it (the only thing that might be a bit unfair is that I think if you talk with Edelgard at all that month you have to decide right then and there, and then the whole month is lost. Kinda ass).

Binding Blade, for example, requires you to do specific things that few first time players would think to do in multiple, random chapters in order for you to get the best ending. With absolutely no warning as to when these chapters happen and what to do in them. And some of these requirements are not fun lmao, I’d prefer how they did it with CF than with how they’ve handled ~secret~ stuff before personally

Pretty much agree with everything else though! While 3H is actually one of my more favored games in the series, I’ll be the first to admit that its storytelling is in dire need of improvement. Having the story and lore of the game just be spat out in lore dumps and this or that NPC just isn’t that good. Or if they are going to do that, at the very least give some visuals to go along with it! Imagine how much impactful Rhea’s story would have been if it was in a visual format, like CGs and/or a cutscene. It still would be an info dump, but at least we can see for ourselves how horrific the Red Canyon was for her! And I do not want another avatar in whatever next mainline game we get, personality or not. We’ve evolved past the need for self-inserts that all the characters Just Like lmao

But thanks for sharing your thoughts!! And sorry that it took so long for me to get to answering ;w;

#submission #anon #exqueuese me princess #but hey I found the og submission at least!! for some reason it got thrown in like the middle of my drafts?? weird lmao #but yeah overall I do think 3H could've done with some refinement for later more intensive playthroughs #and on the other hand I get why they didn't immediately think of them if that makes sense #also lol yeah the base game is infinitely more fun that whatever Cap'n'n doin' lmao

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aegonbeingfakeisracist · 3 years

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Also, if Lyanna and Rhaegar had survived, do you think Rhaegar would have kept trying for his Visenya after Jon was born, or do you think his prophecy obsession would have switched to Jon since he embodies both fire and ice? Or would he have rethought the entire prophecy at that point? Sorry. I like speculating about this stuff.

Never apologize for that! I love, love, love speculating. I’m going to answer this one first, because this is one of the minor issues about which I have a pretty strong opinion.

I know I’m in the minority here, but I think this would be the point that Rhaegar rethinks his concept of prophecy. I don’t think he’s going to keep trying for a daughter without missing a beat; I don’t think he’s going to pivot to “Jon must be the prince that was promised because he embodies fire and ice thanks to me and his mom” in the same way he pivoted to “there was a comet when Aegon was conceived, that must mean he’s the real prince that was promised”. The reason being that he bet everything on having another daughter. All the shifts in thinking he had before - it’s about Aegon, not him; there isn’t just a prince that was promised, he needs to recreate the three heads of the dragon; oh, Lyanna will be the mother of the third head - were pretty minor shifts, all things considered, with no real consequences attached to being wrong? But here, he’d realize his interpretation was wrong after he’d sparked a war that got thousands of people killed and could have easily gone the other way. That’s not something that can easily be glossed over.

I make fun of Rhaegar a lot, but I think here, we have to remember that he wasn’t stupid - he was just blinded and driven by prophecy. I think it was @samwpmarleau that said once that he had very good intentions but was incredibly short sighted and lost sight of the forest for the trees. That was in regards to his daughter’s name, but I think it applies here, too. But that only goes so far - I think sooner or later, he’d have had to come crashing down to earth, and Jon’s birth would be very likely to be what made that happen.

The shock of not getting a daughter after thousands of people died for a war would be enough for him to realize that he fucked up. I don’t think he’d stop believing in fate and destiny, but certainly he’d reconsider enough to stop barrelling down this same obviously insane path. Even Rhaegar isn’t going to persist down the same path after he’s seen how wrong he was. His head was in the clouds, but now he’s seen real war. Like, near the end of his life, he’d come to realize he was going to have to do something about his father because fate alone wasn’t going to solve the problem. Had he lived long enough to see that he’d been wrong about a Visenya, that his children nearly died because of his actions? I imagine that being a real wake up call for him.

In one of my fics, I went the route of him crashing back down to reality after realizing the Visenya he’d been so sure about was in fact a Jon. However, his personality is still such that he’s susceptible to fixating on similar ideas - like, instead of continuing to fixate on the prophecy he did in canon, he finds Rhaenys a dragon egg and fixates on that, thinking about how surely it has to be fate that he gives her a dragon egg, because her name is Rhaenys and both of her ancestors with the same name were famed dragon riders. Not the same idea, but still, the same concept of fate. And that’s the way I see Rhaegar behaving in most universes where he made it out alive. He’s learned something, but not necessarily the full or right lesson.

#hchollym #replies

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fic-art-blurbs · 3 years

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How “Lost In Thoughts All Alone” Connects To Each Route Of Three Houses

OKAY. SO RIGHT OUT THE GATE. I KNOW THIS SOUNDS MONUMENTALLY STUPID BUT HEAR ME OUT. I KNOW THERE IS 0% CHANCE OF THIS BEING INTENDED BECAUSE INTSYS IS INTSYS AND ALSO THESE ARE TWO ENTIRELY DIFFERENT WORLDS BUT THESE VERSES ACTUALLY FIT SOMEWHAT AND IMMA TRY TO BREAK IT DOWN. FAIR WARNING THERE’S GONNA BE SO MUCH STRETCHING THAT YOU’RE GONNA THINK YOU’RE IN A YOGA CLASS.

You can listen to the song itself in its entirety here, I’ll be going by verses and talking about the routes/characters I think each fits. And I’ll be putting this under a read more because I know this is going to be long also @iturbide here’s the essay

Also spoilers

First Verse/Opening Verse - Byleth/Sothis

You are the ocean's gray waves, destined to seek Life beyond the shore just out of reach Yet the waters ever change, flowing like time The path is yours to climb

This one isn’t too difficult to talk about. This is the opening verse of the song, and the first verse Azura sings in Fates. This verse also plays in between almost all of the verses in the song - note I said almost. It also plays at the end of the song. This fits Byleth, and by extension Sothis rather well. Byleth is the driving force behind how each route, behind each character’s growth. They manipulate time, constantly going back in time over and over again, whether it’s to take another path, or to try and save a life. Byleth is the one with the power here, and no matter how many times they go back, no matter how they make time bend to their will, it always flows back - the “Golden Route” so many desire is always out of reach, no matter how many routes they play.

And yet no matter what, you keep going back. Byleth, though I guess at this point I’m talking about the player, is destined to continue trying to reach that happy ending, they’re destined to keep searching for a way to make that happy ending a reality.

The path is yours to climb indeed - as many choose to try and make one, unaware that the path they create is one treaded many times over.

Birthright’s Verse - Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd (Azure Moon)

In the white light, a hand reaches through A double-edged blade cuts your heart in two Waking dreams fade away, Embrace the brand-new day Sing with me a song of birthrights and love The light scatters to the sky above Dawn breaks through the gloom, white as a bone Lost in thoughts all alone

I imagine the white light being referred to here being the reunion scene, and the hand as being Byleth’s. Remember how Azure Moon’s reunion scene left Dimitri shrouded in the darkness, and Byleth in the light? The double-edged blade here could refer to Edelgard herself - he may have been happy to reunite with his step-sister, but it was the reveal of her being the Flame Emperor that “cut his heart in two”, breaking his heart and making him fall victim to his rage. His “waking dreams fading away” to “embrace the brand new day” may refer to his ghosts, how they grow quieter (not quite disappearing entirely, but fading away for now) in the wake of Rodrigue’s death and Byleth’s words finally reaching through to him.

“Sing me a song of birthrights and love” I think could refer to Dimitri’s mindset. He feels bound by his birthright as the future king of Faerghus, and the love he feels for both his family and his country. When Edelgard’s deception is revealed, a good chunk of the reason his breakdown is so bad is due to the fact she seemingly betrayed that love, betrayed the love that was shown to her by his father and her mother. He views it as her willingly betraying them and directly causing their deaths along with Glenn’s and the genocide of an entire country. He feels it is his birthright not only to right the wrongs committed by his country, but to avenge what happened to his loved ones.

The next two lines I think reflect his finally quelling his rage, no longer letting it consume him. That “white as a bone” line I can imagine talking about his path - his intentions may have been honorable at the beginning, but his path is no less gory than the one he wanted the head of.

And the final line? It describes Dimitri for a good portion of Azure Moon. He’s lost in his thoughts, all alone, pushing away his support because he believes himself unworthy.

Conquest’s Verse - Edelgard von Hresvelg (Crimson Flower)

Embrace the dark you call a home, Gaze upon an empty, white throne A legacy of lies, A familiar disguise Sing with me a song of conquest and fate The black pillar cracks beneath its weight Night breaks through the day, hard as a stone Lost in thoughts all alone

No I did NOT just pick this verse for Edelgard because of the conquest thing I PROMISE. I SWEAR THERE’S MORE TO THIS THAN JUST THE CONQUEST LINE I PROMISE

ANYWAY I imagined that first line referring to Edelgard marching home and assuming the throne. The Empire is far from a bright place, and she’s embracing it as she declares herself emperor in order to declare war on the church. The “empty white throne” line? It could mean one of two things, if not both. The first thing could be telling her to gaze upon Faerghus’s empty throne, the throne she made empty by killing her step-brother - even if she didn’t remember him being her brother. The second thing could be referring to Sothis’s empty throne, as she’s unknowingly following in the footsteps of Nemesis by killing the Goddess and her followers - first with the death of Seiros, and then the dissolution of Sothis’s crest stone (even if she didn’t directly play a part in the latter, Edelgard’s route is the only route where the crest stone disappears for good). If you stretch, you could also make it so that this refers to if you kill Claude, but the throne of Almyra wouldn’t be empty - it would just be angry and ready for war.

The next two lines could refer to the Agarthans. “A legacy of lies, a familiar disguise” could refer to Patricia and Arundel respectively. Edelgard’s mother was revealed by Cornelia to maybe having a hand in the Tragedy of Duscur and making that image of Patricia as a kind woman a lie - though this is in the Azure Moon route, so this could be handwaved. This line could instead refer to how Edelgard views Rhea and the church - they’ve passed on a “legacy of lies”, hiding the horrific truth behind the Relics and the Crests, claiming them to be gifts from the Goddess. The latter line, “a familiar disguise”, could be about Arundel. It’s revealed that Arundel is actually Thales in disguise, and Arundel is Edelgard’s uncle - someone she undoubtedly would’ve been familiar with.

“The black pillar cracks beneath its weight” could be talking about the weight of Edelgard’s war. Even if the game states that Crimson Flower had no consequences in the end, there are undoubtedly consequences scattered across the land. The newly “unified” Fodlan would be cracking under that weight, with new cracks appearing with every new rebellion, every new attack. Every instance that could tell Edelgard that perhaps declaring war so hastily might have been a mistake.

“Night breaks through the day” can very easily be equated to Edelgard’s war in conquering all of Fodlan. “Hard as a stone” would be her resolve - no matter what route you choose, Edelgard is steadfast in her belief that she is in the right. She never falters, never once wonders if she was wrong. Her only regret when you kill her in Azure Moon is wishing Byleth walked at her side - not regretting her war, regretting that Byleth was not on her side.

And of course, the final line. Edelgard is alone in her thoughts, even with Hubert seemingly knowing everything. She’s lost in her thoughts of conquest, and similar to Dimitri, vengeance. She may not be haunted by ghosts like he is, but she’s certainly haunted by her ticking clock and the deaths of her siblings as they fell in the experiments, one by one, until she stood alone. It could also refer to the ending of Crimson Flower - now that she’s won her war, what now? Stability would not come right away, and the increasing attacks and rebellions depending on certain choices could have Edelgard lost in her thoughts, perhaps wondering for the first time if she should have chosen differently.

((Fair warning, this is where most of the stretching begins - Revelations is strange in that it actually has 2 verses of its own - it has an opening to replace the “You are the ocean’s grey waves” verse, and a verse more similar to the other two routes.))

Revelation’s Verses - Claude von Riegan & Rhea/Seiros (Verdant Wind/Silver Snow)

The path you walk on belongs to destiny, just let it flow All of your joy and your pain will fall like the tide, let it flow Life is not just filled with happiness, or sorrow Even the thorn in your heart, in time it may become a rose

A burdened heart sinks into the ground A veil falls away without a sound Not day nor night, wrong nor right For truth and peace you fight Sing with me a song of silence and blood The rain falls, but can't wash away the mud Within my ancient heart dwells madness and pride Can no one hear my cry?

Again, there’s gonna be a LOT of stretching. I think that first verse might not actually be for Claude or Rhea exactly - that verse sounds a lot more like it’s meant for Byleth. Telling them to accept that they’ll not have their golden route, accept that life isn’t just happiness - but it isn’t just sorrow either. And yet Byleth persists.

The second verse though - the first half I think fits Claude more, and the second half fits Rhea more. Though you could argue those last two lines also fit Nemesis emerging from Shambala in Verdant Wind - I don’t think so, but it’s there.

Claude’s definitely got a burdened heart - he’s got so many trust issues that if you could build with them, you’d have a skyscraper. But it’s through his interactions with the Deer, and by extension Byleth, that the walls he put up to protect himself slowly fall away. The mask he put on of a carefree individual silently gets dropped, and by post timeskip, you can see that Claude trusts his Deer - and Byleth, if this is Verdant Wind - with everything. He’s the neutral route in this, he doesn’t choose to fight for either side, his fight isn’t for either side. He’s fighting to destroy the borders between lands, fighting for the truth (in that his route is the one where you learn everything), and for peace, equality. He may be the funny upside down meme to most, but he’s the only one of the three to actually fight for truth and peace, the real versions of both - you don’t get to learn the truth in Azure Moon, and in you only get to see what Edelgard believes is the truth in Crimson Flower.

Rhea’s the one who knows everything. She knows the truth behind the Relics, the Crest Stones, Crests, everything - and yet she stays silent. She stays silent, afraid that more would follow in the footsteps of Nemesis and bring more bloodshed - hence the “sing me a song of silence and blood”. The next line could refer to how no matter what she does, the darker parts of history wouldn’t be scrubbed away. Even if she did succeed in her attempts to bring back Sothis, in an attempt to wash away the dirt from their past, what then? Did she really think Sothis would welcome her back with open arms, with what she’d done to achieve her goal? And the last two lines...those are rather self-explanatory. Say what you will, for a time, Rhea did indeed go mad. She believed herself to be in the right, much like Edelgard did, and became furious when anyone said otherwise. That’s shown in her ruthless execution of those who opposed her, and her downward spiral in Crimson Flower. The final line, “can no one hear my cry?” may refer to how, even if one of her brothers and her niece were there by her side, neither knew what she had become. Neither ever knew what lengths she went to, nor did they know how much pain she was in to have driven her to madness, driven her to the belief that creating and killing at least twelve vessels in an attempt to create the perfect one for Sothis was right. Perhaps if someone had heard her cry, things would have been much different.

Interestingly, this is the only verse to not end with “lost in thoughts all alone”. If you think about it in the terms of Claude and Rhea, this may be for different reasons. Claude is remarkably well-adjusted for someone thrown into war - he gives a “power of friendship” speech during the final fight for crying out loud, if anything, he’s actually grown for the better. He’s not lost in thoughts all alone because he’s learned to actually lean on others for support. In Rhea’s case, her not being lost in her thoughts all alone would be for an entirely different reason - she isn’t lost in her thoughts. She’s not thinking clearly, but she isn’t lost like Dimitri or Edelgard. She isn’t so lost that she can’t command troops outside of “KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM”, nor does she question if she was in the wrong like Edelgard might’ve had the latter won her war at the cost of stability. To the very end, she doesn’t regret her decisions - she may not have made them with a clear mind, but she knows what she did, and she isn’t lost thinking of what might have been.

((TECHNICALLY there is one more verse, sung by Shigure in the Heirs of Fate DLC. The reason it’s not brought up? That one is much more context sensitive - the only line I can really think of fitting anywhere is “Endless dawn came but not without a price” possibly referring to the end of the war in every route, with “dawn” here referring to peace, and the price being the countless lives lost in the war. Then again, each route’s definition of “peace” is rather shaky, some more so than others, so it could refer to each individual leader’s goals being reached in their routes at the cost of a war.))

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kiarou · 4 years

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Fire Emblem Three Houses is, to date, the most successful Fire Emblem game- both commercially and critically. It took me a while to play and complete the routes, but after having done so, I can understand why. FE3H is a radical departure that really emphasizes the characters over the gameplay. The FE series is currently going through a rebirth process that mixes several genres, resulting in a massive game that has its ups and downs. When it’s good, it’s really good- better than FE4 and FE6. But when it’s bad- it’s worse than FE Fates.

As a FE veteran, I had many moments where I was questioning if what I was playing was actually an FE game. At times it felt like a dating sim and other it felt like a visual novel. Both of those aspects aren’t bad, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that some of the more interesting map designs and FE game mechanics got lost in the rebirth.

However, I pleasantly surprised by the main three lords. These three are some of the most interesting Lords to ever be in FE. I tend to have a penchant towards Dimitri since he is the most traditional FE lord with complexities and morally gray areas built into his character. The result is a character with massive amounts of depth and nuisance. The same goes for the Edelgard and Claude. I think all three complement each other as difference aspects of FE archetypes, highlighting the positive and negatives of those traits. Edelgard is the idea of empire- that only the strong would be able to rule. Dimitri is the idea of the king- that only the chosen should be able to rule. And Claude is the idea of the Machiavellian politic- that only the exploiters can rule.

The concepts of war, tragedy and perspective are the most interesting part of the game. However, the scope and breadth of those concepts lead directly to my biggest criticism. Most of which revolves around the writing and how the events unfold from point A to B. This problem is twofold- first from a game play perspective and second from the perspective of Byleth.

My first point is simple- the individual routes are simply too short. 21 chapters did not seem enough to wrap up each of the routes. I can’t help but get the feeling that the original story for the game was sliced up into subpar outlines to produce passable plots that end without a proper conclusion. I can’t play BE and gain closure on TWSITD, and same goes for BL. But both routes provide satisfaction for the larger geopolitical situation. Meanwhile GD rushes through the political conflicts with flippant ease only to fully delve into TWSITD as a true ending- while most of the characters have very little to do with the organization. Both Edelgard and Dimitri have more reason to seek the truth than Claude.

And even within the routes, I feel not enough time was given to the world, specifically in part II. How great would it have been to have a map showing Dimitri’s escape from execution, similar to FE7 Chapter 11 Hector Mode where you control only two units (Dimitri & Dedue) and have to make it from one end of the map to the other. Or to have a map where Edelgard storms the castle to reach her father so that she can become the new emperor. A lot of plot points in the game happen off screen and with very little explanation. As much as I love Dimitri’s exile and fall into madness, I never got to see it and it made it that much harder for me to understand him, which really hurt his eventual character arc. My point here is that each route would have benefited from 28-35 total chapters to flesh out the events of part II.

I understand that a lot of plot threads were split up and placed in other routes to provide incentive to play the other routes (so that one can see the full conclusions), but I would argue that part I makes the replay value excruciatingly painful and that the strength of the characters fully explored would be reason enough to replay (like FE8’s split route)

On a side note, was anyone else confused by how the time skip was handled? Byleth just fell asleep? Why do that when you have a perfectly good mechanic already introduced. The spell of Zahra would have worked as a perfect reason for a time skip. Byleth gets trapped, escapes but time has passed differently and it’s now 5 years later. This handling of the time skip had me completely flabbergasted.

On the note of Blyeth, that leads me to my second point. Byleth is a narrative road block. On one hand, I understand the reason for Byleth’s inclusion as a self-insert character. But on the other, many of the decisions in how he/she interacts with the world really hurt the story. The decision to make Byleth never speak or have a defined personality made every interaction awkward for me and difficult to take anything relating to him/her seriously. Another point of serious contention is how the story treats Byleth as the main character.

The three new lords of the series are so interesting yet they are treated as side-exhibits for the main attraction of Byleth. When I chose a route, I chose it to spend time and see one of the three Lords be the protagonist. Instead, in every route, the majority of the time and effort are spent on Byleth and his/her past and super-special-ness. In my opinion, the houses leaders should be the main driving force and the focus of that route, like any other Fire Emblem entry sans Fates.

Despites these negative points of a rushed story in all three routes and the annoying intrusion of Byleth, I greatly enjoyed the game and appreciate how many new fans it has brought to the series. I have high hopes that they can fix some of the writing issues and improve on their map designs for the next entry.

#fire emblem #fe3h #dimitri #fire emblem three houses #FE風花雪月 #DimitriAlexandreBlaiddyd #fire emblem 3 houses #my art

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iturbide · 3 years

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Character Breakdown! - Marianne 💖 and Dorothea

MY GIRLS

How do I feel about this character?

I love her. I love this gentle girl who has gone through so much pain and hardship, who’s lost her parents to what she believes is a curse that she shares, who is afraid of herself as much as she fears the hatred of those around her. I can’t tell you how many times I started talking to my screen while going through her supports, because you’re wrong Marianne you do deserve happiness you are good at things I believe in you even if you don’t believe in yourself. She’s very relatable, honestly, with her shyness coupled with self-deprecation as a defense mechanism to keep people away, not to mention the deep depression; again, mental health issues are generally a taboo thing in media, so I was more than a little shocked when I got her A support and realized just what she’d been praying so fervently to the Goddess for. But I also love that about her: she held strong, and she made it through to a better place, which is such a wonderfully hopeful story for anyone with similar struggles, showing that things can get better if you just hold on.

Who do I ship this character with romantically?

I have an answer this time and technically I spoiled it in an earlier character breakdown. Because it’s Dimitri. I love these two broken people and the idea of them managing to support each other, using one another as an anchor to keep from falling further and slowly pulling themselves back out of the lonely places they’ve fallen, both with the other’s help and with the other in mind. I think they would make a wonderful pair since they understand the other’s struggles so deeply, and I’m aiming for their paired endcard in my AM run in progress.

Also, not gonna lie, I do low-key ship her with Hilda because cotton candy girlfriends. I just think they’re sweet and I love how Marianne laughs in their A support, how bright and open and cheerful it sounds. It just does my heart good.

Who is my brOTP for this character?

Marianne deserves to have so many friends. Aside from Claude (who is friends with just about everyone, this is non-negotiable with me), I really love her supports with Ignatz, and how he’s so gentle in coaxing her out of her shell and reassuring her that he enjoys sharing time with her. They’re sweet, and I love their friendship dearly. Also, surprisingly, Lorenz is another one who comes to mind; their A support was one of those that hit me right in the heart, and the fact that he’s so conscious of her feelings and urges her not to force herself to talk about things that upset her makes me think they would be very close friends, with Lorenz looking out for her and even running casual interference for her when she gets overwhelmed before inviting her to tea so she can calm down.

What’s my Unpopular Opinion™ about this character?

Okay so I know that Fandom loves the idea that Marianne is Berkut and Rinea’s kid. And my unpopular opinion is that that is a terrible, terrible thing to do to her.

It’s not that I don’t find the idea appealing, because in all honesty, I do. The notion that Berkut and Rinea, or some reinarnations of them, had another chance in Fodlan and fell in love and had a daughter is delightful, and I would love to see it. But let’s not forget that canonically, Marianne’s parents disappeared and are presumed dead, deeply traumatizing her and leaving her terrified of her own Brand and the monster she might become. After what happened with Berkut and Rinea in Valentia, having them meet a fate that scars their daughter so utterly in another land and another life is utterly devastating, so I would much, much rather have her parents be anyone else than see these lives destroyed again and in the process destroy their child’s peace of mind.

What’s one thing I wish would have happened with this character in canon?

Okay so this is maybe a weird one but I wish she could appear in every route even if you don’t recruit her. Because I obsessively collect every student I can recruit in my own runs, I’ve had to do a fairly substantial amount of digging for fic writing purposes, but everywhere I look for non-VW runs...you don’t see Marianne. She doesn’t appear at Gronder in AM, nor does she appear at Myrddin or Derdriu in CF. And while it’s entirely possible that her absence has a benign cause...well, if you’ve read her Supports, there’s a far more likely, far more dire explanation -- and that thought breaks my heart like little else. So I wish she could have appeared somewhere over the course of non-VW routes, just so that we can see she made it through her depression and found something to cling to. Even if it does open up the possibility that she might fall on the battlefield, the idea that she might have fallen outside it where no one could see or know hurts somehow worse.

and of course the diva herself

How do I feel about this character?

Glorious. Stunning. Inspired. Dorothea is a phenomenal character, someone who I endlessly enjoy seeing and talking to through the game. She’s cultivated this perfect image of herself for the monastery to see, but as you get to know her the truth is so heartfelt: while she comes across as just a girl looking to find a husband during her time at Garreg Mach, she came from nothing, enduring abuse during her life on the streets of Enbarr before she was found by chance and brought into the Mittelfrank Opera Company; she’s terrified of going back to that when her looks and her voice no longer pass muster, and she’s looking out for her future with a keen and critical eye, even though she has no real expectations of finding love through it. And this can all come out before the timeskip, no less: afterward it’s...honestly a little heartbreaking, to see how deeply the war has affected her.

While Marianne has found something to fight for and managed to get her depression in check, Dorothea has gone in the opposite direction, seeming to succumb to depression instead. The war has had a dire effect on her mentality, such that she feels it’s stripped her of all but the ability to survive (”only thorns left on this rose,”) and so many of her lines and comments just feel bleak and lost. There aren’t that many characters in 3H who really embody the impact that war can have on people, because so many of the characters are stepping up specifically to fight for what they believe in and holding strong to their resolve for the sake of their loved ones and their homes. Dorothea is the standout example of someone who’s fighting just to make this all stop, because she can’t take it anymore. The war affects her so deeply, in ways that it doesn’t seem to hit other students, and I end up feeling like she more than anyone is at risk in the War Phase because of it.

Her character is just very raw and very powerful in surprising ways and I love her.

Who do I ship this character with romantically?

hhhhhh

it’s Lorenz okay

It’s always been Lorenz and you know what I’m already under the cut so just skip to the next header if you don’t want to read my long rambling explanation of where the fuck this comes from.

So in my first playthrough (Golden Deer forever), I spent...roughly 170 hours getting to the end. This is almost entirely because I played on Normal mode and did an endless number of auxiliary battles grinding supports between all the characters -- and since I did, in fact, go the extra mile of recruiting every single student and professor I could in my first playthrough, I had a lot of characters to work with. (I actually still missed out on some because I didn’t unlock their C’s soon enough -- Marianne with Ashe and Ingrid with Annette didn’t get unlocked until my next run since I knew what to look out for.) This is a big part of how I ended up liking Lorenz in the first place: I worked through all his supports this way, and saw the full measure of him rather than just writing him off after how rough his C supports were mostly across the board.

Out of all his different supports, though, there were three in particular that stood out to me: Leonie, Mercedes, and Dorothea. With Leonie, he learned to relax his strict notions of separation between nobles and commoners and accept the idea of friendship with her as equals. From Mercedes, he got rightly scolded about treating commoners as beneath his notice and unworthy of consideration where marriage was concerned, and rightly corrected when he floated the idea of marrying her since it continues to fall in line with valuing nobility and Crests over personal character. And in Dorothea, he absolutely met his match: not only is she someone who has near-identical motives in her quest for a spouse (not necessarily looking for romance so much as the perks that come with an advantageous marriage), but she’s someone capable of playing him directly, playing his emotions to reveal the folly of his mindset. The way he laughs in their A support...I don’t think he laughs like that anywhere else. It’s open and it’s earnest and it’s joyous, even as he concedes that she has utterly bested him.

And that, really, is what sold me on them. Having grown so much over the course of those years, having met so many people who affected him and broadened his view of the world, when Dorothea bested him at his own game, I think he really did fall for her in truth, rather than just admiring her beauty and her craft. In the end, both of them get everything they wanted and more: Dorothea gets the reassurance that she’ll be taken care of for the rest of her life, Lorenz can boast if he wants about marrying the star diva of the Mittalfrank Opera...but more than that, they’re equally matched as partners, both bringing different strengths to the table to improve conditions in the Alliance for everyone (and especially the commoners), and able to engage in productive back and forth with one another, challenging the other thoughtfully and coming to agreements and compromises on good terms. I love how well-matched they are and how well their personalities play off each other and I think that they could have an incredibly powerful, productive partnership.

...also I totally ship her with Petra too because their supports are fantastic and also Petra is wonderful and deserves the best.

Who is my brOTP for this character?

Ferdinand von Aegir. I love their supports so much and how he goes out of his way to try to understand her perspective, and changes her understanding of him as a person in the process. She understandably has things to work through, given their history and her own misconceptions about him back then, but I love the idea of them banding together as dear friends who do their best to support each other as best they can. Also, Dorothea and Bernie is a delight, and I love the idea of Dorothea keeping in touch and helping to draw Bernie out of her shell bit by tiny bit.

What’s my Unpopular Opinion™ about this character?

Are. Are there popular opinions about Dorothea? I actually don’t see that many character impressions about her: most of what I see is fanart, and it mostly seems to be because she’s pretty. I guess if I had any unpopular opinion, just based on the way I usually see her on my dash, it’s that she’s a whole heck of a lot more than just a pretty face: she’s cutthroat when she needs to be, incredibly capable as a fighter as much as a singer, and would probably make an excellent spy if the situation called for it. I don’t think it’s fair that she’s treated mostly as eye candy when the truth is that her character is so much deeper than shallow beauty, both before and after the timeskip.

What’s one thing I wish would have happened with this character in canon?

This is silly but I wish we could have heard her sing more. The only real song we hear from her if I’m remembering right is in her supports with Edelgard, where she improvises a few lines about the Empress-to-be. And her voice is glorious! I would have loved to hear her sing more, rather than getting so much from Manuela (which was...pretty painful, honestly, I do not care for her singing voice at all). Especially considering how important singing is to her, not just as a former opera diva but just as a part of her life in general, it feels like a shame that we couldn’t hear her sing more throughout the game, either in her Supports or even in the choir sections at the monastery.

Give Me a Character

#answered #fallingfruitfish #meme #fire emblem: three houses #marianne #dorothea #my girls deserve nothing but the best #this got way out of hand though so be warned #and don't feel obligated to read the long sections if you don't want to #i just have no concept of brevity

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carlatsukinamistolemyhamsandwich · 4 years

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9, 12, 14, 25, 28, 30, 31, 34, 37, 40, 41, 42 and 50 for the Diabolik Lovers Ask Game please! By the way, I love your blog SO MUCH. ♡♡♡

From this ask game.

Thank you for the ask anon, I’m really glad you like my blog :)

This got kind of long so I’ve put my answers below the cut.

9. Do you hate anyone in DL?

Hate is a very strong word, but if you saw my recent post on Shuu’s CL route then you’ll know that I am not the biggest Karlheinz fan. Richter and Cordelia are also fairly awful but I can’t help but feel some sort of pity for Richter as it seems he had a pretty miserable life and while some of the things Cordelia did are just horrible, my negative feelings towards her have somewhat lessened since we got a bit more of a glimpse at her backstory in DF. Menae must have died before Cordelia could really remember her, and we have to remember that she was heavily manipulated by Karl. Like yes, Cordelia is dreadful, but I still think Karl is the big bad of the series. He does so so many awful things and no matter which game you look at, I can’t help but feel that his reasoning is always pretty bleh (even if that probably is just due to not great writing).

Also after that Subaru LE ending Seiji Komori can eat dirt.

12. What do you think of the fandom?

Hmm... While I know some people hold negative views of the DL fandom at large, I don’t think any fandom is entirely unproblematic. My personal experience has generally been pretty good but I will admit I have seen some fairly terrible behavior in the 3 and a half years I’ve been seriously into DL. Then again I also haven’t been this deep in any other fandom and, sadly, I think that is just the nature of the internet.

Still, there are some amazing and very talented people in this fandom, and I feel extraordinarily lucky to have been able to interact with them, so I prefer to focus on that over anything else.

14. Sub or dub?

Sub all the way. When I first started watching anime, I initially just watched dubs, but after I started learning Japanese, I switched to subs to try and pick up some more vocab and now I can’t go back. Also I really like a lot of the Japanese voice actors in DL ^^

25. What do you think of DL haters?

I generally hold the attitude of “live and let live”. If someone doesn’t like DL because of the triggering content (and the way it deals with it) or the sometimes questionable plot then fair enough, it’s not like I think the series is without its problems. The only time I will have any issue at all is if they actively attack fans of the show. If someone is just minding their own business and not hurting anyone then under no circumstances is it okay to blindly attack them over a work of fiction. So yeah, you do you as long as you’re not being a twit about it.

28. Would you ever show your parents DL why/why not?

For anyone who remembers some of the random stuff I post, you’ll know that my mother is indeed aware of Shin’s existence (and Carla’s) which perhaps would have been difficult to avoid given that he’s plastered all over my bedroom wall and I talk about him A LOT (I am just as bad irl folks), but I’ve never gone into the details of the series with her as I feel like she’d be fairly disturbed at some of the content (and it’s for this reason that I would never show her the anime).

You will understand then, why I was slightly horrified when she told me she’d read the wiki because she wanted to know more about the characters I loved so much (like bless her, but also O.o). Apparently Carla is “a baddie” but she thinks Shin is okay.

My parents are also aware of the existence of this blog but, fortunately for me, have no interest in reading it.

30. What do you think of Yui?

I like Yui (I mean what is there to dislike?), she’s a lovely character and has a really good impact on the boys. I’m not as invested in her as perhaps some of the fandom but that’s because I am unapologetically here for the dumpster fire that is the boys.

I prefer writing reader inserts over Yui x diaboy fanfics, simply because it’s fun to see the boys in a slightly different relationship dynamic to that we get in the games (like if you look at my most recent Shin drabble, Yui would never tease Shin like that but I would so reader insert it is).

31. What is your favourite Dialover song and why?

What do you mean I have to pick just one??? Gahhh I love love love Kessen no Dies irae, because it features the Tsukinami bros and it’s just my sort of music but I think my favorite might actually be I.M.I.T.A.T.I.O.N.G.A.M.E. I’m not the biggest Kino fan but Maeno’s singing voice is phenomenal and it also brings back happy memories of when I finished Shin’s LE route for the first time.

34. Tell us your top three routes! Why are they your favourites?

Hooo boy, this is a tricky one because we all know my bias at this point ^^;; I’ve limited myself to one Shin route because otherwise this list would just be me waxing on about Shin and goodness knows I do that enough already.

1) Shin’s Lost Eden Route

While I like his DF route, I love that Shin’s LE route pays a bit more attention to his feelings towards Yui than his complicated relationship with Carla. I love that it really stretches him as a character and we get to see him relying on Yui, like I don’t know who came up with that plot but BLESS. I think the pacing is very good and the bad endings are just so tragic (and I love really angsty bad endings). And some of the scenario chapters from this route just make me melt.

I also love this route for personal reasons. I’d only just fallen into Shinhell when LE was released and I remember seeing the CGs for his route but there was no information on the plot in the English speaking side of the fandom and it was driving me nuts because I just wanted to know that he was okay. It was at this same time that I had a bit of spare money so I... bought a PSVita and a copy of Lost Eden so I could find out what happened (I was planning on getting a Vita anyway just maybe not THAT soon). I’d only been learning Japanese for 6 months (I am nothing if not horribly ambitious) but I didn’t let that stop me and played through the route. And I loved it (even if I struggled a little with the language) and I was so happy to find out what happened to him. So yeah, I just have warm memories of it.

2) Carla’s Dark Fate Route

While I like Carla’s LE route, I think the pacing and plot of his DF is just a bit better. I love that it gives us the best glimpse at the backstory of the founders (I will take any and all Krone and Giesbach tidbits I can) and I think the progression of Carla and Yui’s relationship is really well handled (even if he is dreadful towards her at times). Also I like Carla, I think of all of the diaboys, he’s one of the ones I’m most similar to so I find it easy to empathize with him.

3) Subaru’s Dark Fate Route

It’s been a while since I played this route but I remember having a really good time when I did. The Vampire Ending is incredibly sweet, as are some of the scenario chapters and I thought the plot was fairly well structured. Plus Carla and Shin are in it so bonus points there.

37. If you could change one thing in your favourite Diaboy what would it be?

I never want to answer questions like this because I love Shin as he is, I don’t want to change him.

I mean I would like for him to see more value in who he is than just his bloodline and get it into his skull that he is not inferior to Carla but only as gradual changes based on environment (or just idk talking to Carla but goodness only knows that won’t happen unless Carla’s on his deathbed again).

40. Your thoughts on Karlheinz?

See above. But yeah, not a fan, would not be sad if he became the victim of a bizarre fishing accident and never again appeared in the DL franchise but I think that’s a bit too much to hope for. Sorry Karl fans but I can’t get over the stuff he’s done (and also I have had enough of “and it was Karl’s fault all along” coming up in the games).

41. Would you buy the games if they were released in English?

I’m a little torn on this one because I love supporting Rejet and otome game localisations but I own all of the games aside from VC already so there wouldn’t really be any point. I think if I had a LOT of money to spare then I would, but as my finances stand at the moment then it’s a no.

42. If you got to design the 14th Diaboy what would he be like?

Oh this is a difficult one, ideally I’d like to see someone who was a member of one of the other demon races but I don’t think you can really have a diaboy without the blood-sucking, so I guess I’d make them half vampire half adler (as I think they’re the race we know the least about). As for personality... It’s tricky because I feel like the diaboys already cover a pretty wide spectrum. I’d probably make him a cocky jerk because I love cocky jerks and I’d make him fairly witty too but more logic than feelings orientated. I’d have him kidnap Yui because he wants to use her as a pawn against the diaboys in some nefarious plot (that I’m not going to think too much about because this post is not meant to be an OC planning session) and not because he has any interest in her or plans for her himself. I guess he’d sort of be a cross between Kino and Carla?

I’d give him a vendetta against Karlheinz too because I can :D

I had to cut this short because I started coming up with a backstory an everything but I think that’s too much ^^;;

50. Do you think Richter should have a route of his own?

Honestly? No. It’s not that I wouldn’t be interested to see the story of Richter with someone who is not Cordelia (even if he is not my favorite dude from the franchise) but more that I can’t see Rejet dropping Yui as a heroine and RichterxYui? No thank you. After all the stuff he’s done in the games and his obsession with Cordelia? I just don’t feel comfortable with that pairing, sorry.

#reply #ask game #I'm always super happy/surprised when people say they like my blog #because I feel like it's kind of chaotic but if you guys like it then I must be doing something right #character hate #?#I feel like I've been relatively polite but just to be safe #I have half tried to proofread this but it's so long #bless you if you made it to the end

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gascon-en-exil · 4 years

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Bottom Ten Three Houses Characters

I decided after a while that I couldn’t fulfill an anon request to do a top 10 list for the whole series, because it would overlap too much with ones I’ve already done - lord privilege is a thing that exists, and I’ve ranked those before - and because it’s really difficult to compare so many characters (~600 if we’re being thorough) across so many different games. Instead I decided to go negative with it, although around 2/3rds of these ought to be totally uncontroversial at least in my corner of the fandom. Starting from the one I dislike least:

(Dis)honorable Mention: Anna, for putting in such a lackluster showing that she doesn’t deserve a spot on this list despite technically being in the playable cast. It’s not only the lack of supports, although that hurts, but also how obvious it is that the writers have no new material for her. Anna’s gimmick worked fined when she was an NPC and perhaps for the space of a single game as a playable character, and Fates originated the meta idea of making her paid DLC so you have to shell out real money to use her, but that’s the extent of her here too. As a unit she’s far from spectacular, and her paralogue isn’t even good for much but a ton of (mostly mediocre) drops and a tiny bit of context for that Pallardó guy from non-CF Chapter 13. Here’s a revolutionary idea: for the next original FE it might be good to have Anna back to being only a wacky dimension-hopping NPC shopkeeper.

#10 Constance - It pains me that she’s on this list, more than anyone else by far. I really wanted to like Constance, and at first glance she’s right up my alley as a haughty impoverished aristocrat coping awkwardly with her diminished status. I like the dark flier class she’s built around, and her default personality is an even louder pre-timeskip Ferdinand whom you know I love. However, it’s that “default personality” bit that sours me on her, because she’s got two of them. What could have been an interesting take on Constance’s struggles with identity and self-esteem in the wake of her family’s disgrace is presented in such an over-the-top comedic manner that it’s impossible to take her very seriously. It’s more reminiscent of FE13′s Noire than anything, and at least she has the excuse of a mother who performed dark magic experiments on her and fractured her psyche. Constance also supports Jeritza and yet somehow they do no more than lightly allude to their personality issues which is as much a missed opportunity as you can get with such a terrible character (see below), opting instead to try softening Jeritza with his fondness for roses. Lovely.

#9 Leonie - Fandom exaggerates her Jeralt fixation, although it does pop up at the worst times (see: her Byleth support right after his death). As I’m not very concerned with Byleth’s nonexistent feelings though this placement more comes down to general indifference. Leonie feels completely disconnected from the rest of the Deer, and although she’s a supposed reflection of the house’s more egalitarian bent there’s nothing connecting her to the politics or larger culture of the Alliance until you learn about her student loan debt. She really is best understood as a Jeralt fangirl first and foremost, which is why perhaps the most surprising thing about her is when reality comes knocking in her endings and it turns out she picked up her mentor’s vices as well. Jeralt himself would be even further down this list were he playable, but as he isn’t I’ll have to settle for side-eyeing all of his adoring fans. Which brings me to....

#8 Alois - Remember that dating sim Dream Daddy that people were talking about a few years ago? The one that willfully misunderstands what the term “daddy” means in gay male spaces to write fluffy dad joke-laden romances intended for a presumably not-gay audience? Alois is the spirit of that game personified as an FE character, which is not something I ever would have thought to know that I didn’t want. He’s got some funny lines here and there, but that’s the most you can say about him when otherwise he’s just passable midgame filler (of a unit type each house including the Wolves already has one of) standing in Jeralt’s imitation Greil shadow. I don’t even mind the platonic S support all that much because it’s still only Byleth, but it occurs to me that just about the only thing that would have made Alois memorable would be if his S support was romantic but he remained married to his wife. I can’t think of a time when this series has allowed the player to indulge in adultery, so even if it had been limited to an option for f!Byleth it would have been a fascinating option.

#7 Cyril - This isn’t about his devotion to Rhea, which is fully understandable given his circumstances. Nor is it about his performance as a unit which in my experience at least is actually rather good for a Donnel/Mozu-style villager archetype. No, what gets me is that he’s a self-righteous workaholic which makes for quite the grating personality trait. I understand that he finds meaning in his work and that he’s got some entertaining supports calling other characters to task for their terrible work ethics or ignorance of the lives of commoners (VW should have really dug more into his back-and-forth with Claude), but the lectures on not interrupting him or telling Byleth to get back to work are as tiresome as they are frequent. It’s petty I know, but one can only hope he grows out of it eventually. At least he doesn’t wear a pot on his head....

#6 Mercedes - Like Constance, she’s the type of character I wanted to like from the start. She’s pious pseudo-Catholic clergy, with a quirky thing with ghosts and some quiet lesbianism with her BFF that I can take or leave but that I know some people really enjoy (and also she’s bi-for-Byleth, but no one talks about that). Unfortunately as I touched on when talking about Marianne in my Top 10 characters list, Mercedes’s appealing points are sharply contrasted against her more annoying ones. The breathy voice acting I can mostly get used to, but her backstory is unnecessarily convoluted - three families and two flavors of evil adoptive father - and as is also true of Constance her association with Jeritza drags her down a fair bit. To this day I still have no idea what we’re meant to make of the Lamine siblings’ dynamic, but Mercedes’s eagerness to overlook her brother’s crimes and unrepentant bloodlust so she can coo over what a sweet boy he is deep down say some pretty odd things about her personal moral code. Maybe it was implied all along with the paranormal fascination that she’s not as orthodox as she appears to be, but the dissonance is real especially in CF where she gets a support line with Jeritza that tries to woobify him and affirms how much she loves him...and meanwhile in monastery exploration she’s wringing her hands over how much she hates the idea of fighting Faerghus and the church. There’s no through line here, and as justification for characters siding with Edelgard go this one is pretty flimsy.

#5 Gilbert - Similar to Cyril, I don’t dislike Gilbert for the reasons that most of the fandom does. Yes, he’s a crappy father, but as I’m pretty indifferent to Annette and to father-child bonding in general I can appreciate the fresh spin he places on the archetype of the devoted knight. In short, he’s a knight who wasn’t devoted and ran away from his duty, and his arc in AM is all about making up for his past failures both to his family and to his liege. This is an angle to knighthood FE doesn’t delve into often, and it makes him an explicit foil of Dedue as explored in their supports. The reason that Gilbert is on this list though in fact has more to do with that opposition, because I am painfully aware that had AM not killed off Dedue by default in service of self-insert romance Gilbert would not have had to be scripted as Dedue’s replacement both as a unit and as a retainer figure. It’s not his “fault” of course, insofar as one can ever blame fictional characters for the actions of their writers, but whenever I’m running AM and have to take those randomized supply run quests from Gilbert instead of the route’s actual retainer I’m reminded of how we were robbed of power couple Dimidue (in AM anyway - CF of all routes delivers on this point). Gilbert could have been father of the year to Annette and freely given Byleth his (grand)daddy dick and it still wouldn’t overwrite the fundamental problem that Byleth screwed over all three AM-exclusive characters in different ways. As to that, well...look at #1.

#4 Raphael - It’s hard to describe just how much wasted potential there is to this guy. Along with Ignatz and Leonie he could have illustrated the greater social mobility of the Alliance and the increased opportunities non-nobles enjoy there, but all three are mostly side characters. He’s repeatedly positive in the face of tragedy and remains motivated by his love for his remaining family, but 90% of his dialogue revolves around either eating or training to the point that he’s arguably the closest FE16 comes to gimmick character writing (something almost every FE is guilty of, but that has come under heavy scrutiny in recent years because of how much Awakening and Fates used it). He has a sweet friendship with Ignatz with even a bit of chemistry that sits in good company with the kind of simply affability he has with almost everyone he supports, but they have a no homo ending involving one of the game’s eternally offscreen characters. He supports Dimitri, but the bara content is thin on the ground and their line stands out as easily the least substantial of the house leaders’ cross-house supports. Even as a unit he’s lackluster, in the same repetitive category as Alois with nothing that makes him really stand out from the other axe-and-brawling guys. Highest HP growth in the game...whee. I’ve seen arguments that Raphael’s simplicity is the source of his charm, and while I can sort of see that he feels like he belongs in a game like the GBA or Tellius titles where characters have a much smaller amount of overall content to their name. In a game like Three Houses the sheer torrent of lines about food and training wear thin quickly.

#3 Bernadetta - see #8 here. To sum up, she’s annoying, her sex appeal falls flat with me and is frankly just kind of confusing, it bugs me that a significant portion of the Ferdibert fandom headcanons her as Hubert’s bestie when the man clearly does not do besties, and the most positive thing I can think to say about is that based on her habit of befriending known murderers among other things she might be a bit of a sociopath. That’s not very flattering, but at least it’s somewhat interesting. Oh yeah, and Edelgard setting her on fire at the Gronder rematch is good for a meme although I suppose that isn’t technically attributable to Bernadetta.

#2 Jeritza - Jeritza sucks. Everyone, apart from the small number of fans into Bylitza for some reason, is aware that he sucks. He’s a bloodthirsty serial killer we’re meant to like because he killed his father to protect his sister and also because he likes ice cream and kittens...and because he’s clearly mentally ill in some way and Edelgard is weaponizing his illness for her war which means all the murder is okay, I guess. Jeritza is like FE7 Karel if he was somewhat important to the plot and that instead of a redemption arc between games he got Karla and some other characters swearing that he’s really sweet deep down and also he can romance the male self-insert - yay. I love the line of thinking sometimes espoused in anti circles that M/M Bylitza is the only non-Problematic™ Byleth ship because he’s their only gay romantic S rank partner who’s not one of their students, a loli, or Rhea who is obviously the most evil character in the game. As I’ve mentioned above Jeritza also makes other characters he supports worse by association, although he’s not quite as bad in that regard as #1. Do I even need to bring up the painfully affected voice acting? It’s ironic that the vocal director for the English localization turns in unquestionably the worst performance among the named cast, and I have to assume he picked the role for himself solely because he sounds like an imposing Death Knight and not because his voice is at all suited to the troubled twunk underneath the armor. Just about the only thing that would have salvaged Jeritza for me would be if he and Hubert got to have an epic competition to determine once and for all which of them is more evil. Hubert would wipe the floor with this poser.

#1 Byleth - see here at the bottom. They fail as a self-insert, they fail to be a properly realized character even more than previous Avatars, they damage other characterizations and arcs all over the place, and Three Houses overall would have been vastly improved if they didn’t exist or at least weren’t the PoV character. In that previous post I listed just two reasons why I still prefer Byleth to Robin as an Avatar, one being that their significance to the plot is set up before the game even begins and the other being that their lack of a voice makes f!Byleth a less obtrusive presence when it came time for me to have her S rank all the guys to fill out the support log...not enough to where I could treat her as a self-insert, but any amount helps. I do however have to add a third small bit of praise for Byleth, in that they apparently drive antis up the wall for the most asinine of reasons which is always entertaining to witness. I recall when this game’s school setting was first revealed that everyone in the fandom nodded their heads and made the easy prediction that there would be teacher/student sex because that’s just how FE rolls, but somehow still there’s outrage over it. Even so, Byleth is horrible by every significant parameter, and it’s a shame we’ll only be able to imagine what FE16 would have been like had the developers not felt the need to write the whole thing around an Avatar.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses

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four-loose-screws · 4 years

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What would you rank all the fire emblem games that you have played.

Thank you for waiting, anon! This essay is finally finished! XD I don’t know if either of us ever intended for this to end up so long, but it did.

It’s interesting to see how each person experiences each game, so I hope everyone enjoys reading this. If anyone wants to ask questions for more details or just for conversation, please do!

I did a tier grouping ranking as well as ordering from bottom -> top, because that helped explain my feelings a little better. This isn’t really reflecting my nostalgia or personal feelings for the characters/world quite as much as “how much fun I had in my initial playthrough(s).” Because I think that’s what these sorts of lists are generally asking for.

First, I’d like to make a general statement about why I love FE games so much: Well, most simply it’s because I have more fun playing FE than any other series. That much is obvious though, right? I also love them because they all stand out in their own way, with their own unique combination of features, and because they are all super ambitious titles. It may lead to some rushing and half-baked ideas, but ambition is what excites me the most in any series. Even if the creators are not able to fully realize the ideas they had, the hard work still wows me as I play, and I can see hints of the full vision they had in every nook and cranny. Even the lowest games on this list are pretty high up there for me in fun level. The “fun but flawed” games just had glaring issues that interrupted the fun from time to time.

...FEs 1 & 3 are overall exceptions to the “unique and standing out rule,” being early games in the series; and FE6 set up post-Famicom FE, so it’s pretty basic, too - but they still get their own awards for setting a solid foundation for a fun video game series that withstands the test of time.

I can’t fully explain it, why I attached to FE the most over all other game series out there. But when I play FE, I usually don’t think about what’s not so great about the games. I just have fun. The gameplay always has me thinking, and I get engrossed in the stories and unlocking convos and supports.

Basic Tier

These games are really hard to judge properly in the ranking system, because they are just so basic for the series.

FE1 / FE11

When FE11 came out, I remember it getting so much flack for being really, really boring. But I didn’t get that. I like FE gameplay and storytelling at its core, so I don’t need the bells and whistles to have a good time. I knew this is where the series started, and was surprised with what content there was considering this is a remake of a game on the Famicom (NES).

FE1 set a very solid foundation for what the core of the series would be. Load it up next to a modern game, and it feels so the same and different all at once. I’ve only played a little bit of FE1 itself. I just can’t get through it because FE11 is SO similar to FE1, so you really only have to play one to get the whole experience. I didn’t feel like playing the same game over again at the time, so FE1 is still on my unfinished list.

Basic, solid foundation for the ages / 10

FE3 / FE12

After FE11 played it “safe” and took an “upgraded graphics with a few new ideas tacked on” approach, I was blown away by how much FE12 did, even if it was more for worse than better sometimes. It added so many conversations, was the first to tinker with the idea of a more fleshed out Avatar, added more story… and so on.

From what I’ve read recently, the new story stuff isn’t that great, but I don’t remember now. I’ve only played this game once. Overall, despite some clunk with the giant maps and so on, this game really challenged itself to improve from FE11, and it’s how I learned to love remakes that aren’t afraid to deviate from and add a lot to the original!

Set the stage for what kind of fun and ambition an FE remake could have / 10

FE3 is way more of a classic than any of us in the West can truly understand. It sold insanely well (the best in the series until Awakening I believe?), challenged the programmers to put FE1 on the cart as well, long before re-releases were a thing in the industry, and the game even made it to the Super Famicom Mini! I haven’t played it yet because again, it’s hard to get the motivation to play through the slow speed and clunkiness when I’ve already experienced the remake, but I’m looking forward to it some day.

The good ol’ days of the Super Famicom & SNES / 10

FE6

This was the first game without Kaga (the series original creator), so it set the stage for a future without him. The series might have strayed far from his plans for story and such, but this game, while it was pretty basic, firmly established a new foundation for the series on a new system, and gave a glimpse of what greatness the future had in store.

Overall though, this game is harder to commit to memory than others, except for classic characteristics like how terrible Roy is until, finally, BAM he gets his sword in the final stretches of the game; and running in circles from Douglas so you can avoid fighting him and successfully recruit him after the chapter.

Awkward, but sets a solid foundation for post-Kaga and post-Famicom FE / 10

Fun But Flaws Distracted From The Fun A Lot Tier

FE16

I really, really hate to say it, because this game tries to mix up the FE formula with the school setting and other new features and changes, and brought in a good mix of old and new, just like all the other FE games. But this game left very little impact on me for such a big experience. And I’m leaving out the fact that trying to play all four routes is dull as heck when I place the game this low. I’m basing it off of just how much I enjoyed the first playthrough.

Overall, I was most turned off by the class system. Which is funny, because I’ve seen others praise this as FE’s best class system. Everyone’s different. Classic classes like troubadours are just gone. The top tier classes are super limiting. Of course, you can just stop one tier down, but that’s not emotionally satisfying to me - I want my characters to reach the top! Despite having such free choice, I feel more limited than anything. If they’d just stopped at 4 tiers and not tried to go to 5, I think that would have been best. They had to stretch out the available classes too much to get to 5. ...Although being able to have an army of dragon riders is awesome, I’ll give it that. Dragons are too cool.

I was also really disappointed by the story. Fire Emblem has established that it can write a really emotional plot, and not be afraid to pull punches, with games like 4 and 8. I was expecting a huge contrast between part 1, where everyone is friends and classmates, and part 2, where war rips them apart, transforms them into different people, and forces them to brutally slaughter each other.

But in reality…the hate between Dimitri and Edelgard has nothing to do with the school at all… That was jarring to me. Of course there is no one right direction to take a story in. But the worldbuilding and story writing… feels even less coherent than Fates. That’s an accomplishment.

This is the one time I say ambition was really just too much. The game didn’t get enough polish. A game about the seasons doesn’t even have seasonal differences...

While my friends who don’t usually play Fire Emblem have had a fantastic experience with this one, after all I’ve been through, I found that I liked other FE’s more.

I think the best part about this game is the characters and supports. After Fates had a ton of supports in it just because it had to have them, the creators of this game weren’t afraid to change up the support formula once more, so they could balance quality and quantity. ...And then, ironically, this game went for the (almost entirely) mute, personality-less avatar character. Funny how that works out. XD

Dragon Lord Army Go! / 10

FE14

I feel this game deserves way more credit than it gets, while also agreeing with the critiques. The ambition was as great as ever. But then it got stuck in development hell and we got what we got. (For those who don’t know, the team was divided in two - the team that wanted a more fanservic-y experience, and the one that wanted to make a standard FE.)

I think the gameplay is the best part of this game, Conquest is great, and the gimmicks are indeed gimmicks, but still fun. In offering three different experiences, the entire package will please few, but that was the point of the multiple routes, to give everyone one route they would like, not to please everyone with all three.

But beyond the gameplay, the story is all over the place, the multiple routes just create more questions than answers; and features like an increased number of support convos and children feel like they are there only because of a desire to bring back “popular” features. After multiple food/cooking supports in a row, I couldn’t take it any more. There was so little that the characters were actually talking about in their supports vs. Awakening. I generally feel that more supports = better, because character interaction through supports is of course a highlight of post-Famicom FE, but in this case, the numbers did not do any favors.

Bringing back weapons that don’t break didn’t feel well done, either. I just ended up using basic weapons the whole time because I didn’t want to deal with the drawbacks of the higher level weapons.

Back to a positive for me: The hub world was neat, though it needed some convoluted story writing to be included. I was amused by going through the different features and collecting the items. I agree with Nintendo of America taking out the “petting minigame,” but since I lived in Japan when Fates released, it was amusing to do on the train and weird out the bored Japanese people who peered over my shoulder.

Since all three routes were different, this game was fun enough until the end in comparison to Three Houses, of which I am STILL trying to slog through the last route one year after release. But Fates was made for every route to be different, whereas Three Houses was not, so it’s not surprising I feel like that.

But time for the real talk about this game… why is everyone’s HP so low??? What happened?????

Up and down and all around in quality from start to finish / 10

FE15

I really want to like this game more. Oh, do I. It’s absolutely GORGEOUS, the character art makes my heart skip a beat, the game proved that full voice acting does fit FE really well, it fleshed out things like the dungeon crawling & story, and added support conversations & skills, etc. while still staying kind of basic, retaining the feeling that the original was on the NES. The momentum for the fun and ambition that an FE remake could have transitioned well from FE12 to here and led to this being a stunningly presented game.

But the creators totally missed the point on what were the defining features of the game in my opinion, and that mismatch of vision ruined a lot for me. I loved the imbalance, struggling as I placed my units in corners of maps just to survive, until I obtained all those OP items, and my super soldiers marched into battle and did wild and amazing things. Valbar with +5 move and 40 speed with the Speed Ring is the one thing I remember the best of FE2 and oh man was it fun, and did I love it.

And I mean, I understand why the creators weren’t going to keep that imbalance, it doesn’t make the game good for everyone. It’s just something I found fun, and made the game stand out among the other FEs. But the developers really just replaced old imbalance with new imbalance, the dread fighters being the one thing I remember in particular.

And they defined FE2’s best defining features as “the maps and the terrain effects” and I just did not agree. That was the stuff I DISLIKED about FE2! And that’s what they wanted to keep most? The terrain that made battles one giant miss, and the gigantic maps where I’d spend half the time just getting to the enemies? No thanks.

Then the story only cranked up the horrible treatment of the women, with Faye… being Faye, and I hated the direction they went in with Celica’s story... Ugh.

For every step or two forward, there’s one back / 10

FE10

FE games are always ambitious, but this one cranked the dial up to 10 and tripped over itself a lot. Still, it provided (even if it is info dumped) an intense and satisfying ending to the Tellius saga, and is another classic for the ages. I found the pacing boring and slow until then, though.

I think now that I’m older I can appreciate the story much, much more - and how it shows the story and aftermath of the Mad King’s War from multiple points of view - but the lack of the support conversations, and too much going on for any aspect of this game to be properly refined, still make this one lower on my list.

If only I could have played it more than once, to really get a good memory of the events of the game. My Wii actually scratched up my disk (How this happened, I don’t know, and it’s the ONLY disk my Wii ever slaughtered). It only held out long enough for my sibling and I to enjoy one playthrough each. I’ll get to playing my Japanese copy eventually!

Part 4 = Laguz Royals Emblem / 10

Somewhere Inbetween Tier

FE5

The last of the Kaga games. Still clunky and difficult, but with it’s own super unique features in capturing, stamina, and stealing weapons.

The brokenness of staves is not at all a flaw, but a feature in my opinion. Encouraging bizarre thinking and finding new ways to plow through maps is fun. I would probably be critical if this was a modern game, but I think older games need these quirks to stand out among modern titles with better graphics and decades of gaming history behind them.

And you still can complete the maps in a more traditional manner if you are determined. I did even for Reinhardt’s map.

Also, I gotta say... I don’t agree that this is the most difficult FE overall… it just has the hardest individual maps. The difficulty spikes are all over the place. The game goes from bashing your head against a wall to snoozefest constantly.

Fog of war was a mistake though, if I was a time traveler, I’d go back and make sure the programmers never figured out how to include it. XD

Steal ALL the tomes! / 10

FE13

Experiencing this game and its release in real time was an experience. The fandom really, truly thought this game might not only be the last FE ever, but also that it might not get a localization. Thinking there would never be a localization, I spent a night of my first trip to Japan buying a Japanese 3DS and a copy of the game. I only had 2 weeks on that study tour, but I was so determined that I used some of my precious free time to go shopping for it. To afford it, I even used the money my college gave to me for food, then subsided off of cheap convenience store meals with what little I had left. I barely had any true understanding of Japanese at the time, but I wanted other fans to experience this game, so I worked as hard as I could to translate as many supports as I could. This game is why I got into translation, and was what I really thought might be the end, so it will always have a special place in my heart for that.

Now to actually talk about playing the game itself. I really enjoyed it the first couple of times. Who cares that pair-up and the kids were OP, you either blast through the game with them and have a good laugh, or ignore them, set some challenging rules, and enjoy having at least a little challenge. I didn’t care much that the supports were a little lower quality because of the sheer number of them, I eagerly awaited unlocking each one, and reading what the two characters would talk about. (We fans have fanfiction to turn to if we hunger for more development. :p) The bonus content was plentiful, and a great fanservice-y way to bring the series to a close.

After all is said and done though, the game left me feeling empty when I thought about replaying it any further. The maps and story felt empty in comparison to previous games. Now that it’s been 8 years since the initial release, I’d of course enjoy a replay or two, but after having played FEs7-9 5 or 6 times in a row before moving on to the next game… anything less than that level of excitement was surprising for me. I placed this game kinda high on the list because it’s fun when you play it. It’s just doesn’t have as much replay value, I feel.

Also, as a group, the children characters are my favorite in the series. They all come from deeply traumatic backgrounds, and the way they work through that trauma and navigate being given a second chance, but also not a true second chance because this timeline is different from their own, is endlessly fascinating for me. I don’t know if other fans give them enough credit, so I wanted to point them out in particular.

Would have been a fantastic way to send off the series, despite the flaws / 10

FE2

This game is flawed, imbalanced, makes me want to throw things, and it’s all, somehow, in a way that makes me LOVE IT. ...So long as I’m playing using an emulator with a speed up button.

This game is so hard, and the hit percentages are such garbage. But as I played, and unlocked more and more OP weapons and items, until I reached a point where the zombie dragons - what once took all my efforts - were an enemy that can easily be slaughtered in 1-on-1 combat... I felt so satisfied.

Old games need some kind of charm to make them still worth revisiting in a world of much better graphics and features that have now had decades to be refined. For me, this game has that perfect kind of quirky charm in spades.

The maps and terrain though… I have no words, just bash your head into the wall and you will understand how I feel.

Also, this game reminds me of Zelda 2 in it being a black sheep of its respective series… that’s a fun little nugget of info.

Duma’s sprite / 10

FE7

I don’t remember this game as well, despite it being one that I’ve played about 5 times? I don’t know why, it’s yet another fantastic Fire Emblem with its own ways that it stands out, managing not one, not two, but three lords, introducing the tactician, and so on. Guess time has just not been kind to my memory on this one.

I remember being really impressed with the length of this game back in the day, and Hector’s mode offering enough differences to make it totally fun to replay the main game again.

Lyn gets kind of pushed to the side (because that’s what generally happens to women main characters in Fire Emblem, if there’s a male lord around), but having the three lords was really fun. With three people, you get a great balance between all of their personalities, and they all play off of each other well.

Of course I loved Lyn and Hector, most everyone does, but I was always just as much of an Eliwood fan. His average stats pushed people away from liking him as much as the others, but I always looked up to his kindness. Eliwood / Ninian was an especially favorite pairing for my sappy teenage heart. Eliwood was just so romantic and sweet to me.

And though the game was made easier with international audiences in mind, the developers hadn’t invented all of the “easier/for convenience” features yet, so this is the last time we got to enjoy some “harder” features like needing to buy weapons during battles, and a convoy separate from the main lord. That’s cool if you like that stuff.

Unlocking the paralogues is hard though / 10

Favorites Tier

FE8

When it comes to FE8, while there’s plenty to like about the gameplay (despite the game being so easy, but again, like I said with Awakening, you can just set your own challenge rules), what I really love to ramble on about is the story and its emotional impact. Lyon is so precious and kind, but has so many inner conflicts stewing deep inside of him, leading him to elder magics, and… The Demon King is just ends up as a sideshow compared to Lyon coming face to face with his own demons. Both the characters - and many players, I’m sure - hope and hope to find a way to save him, but there just isn’t one. There are never any real leads. There’s nothing. Only the harrowing reality that some people cannot be saved, no, that some people do not want to be saved. The inevitability of Lyon’s demise, and seeing it all play out, packs a punch most plots can only dream of.

But it’s not like I won’t talk about the gameplay features either. Bringing back much of the best of FE2, the overworld map and everything to do really enhances the experience. I mean, yeah, I guess two side dungeons isn’t that much to get excited over, I can see that critique… but I didn’t care, it allowed me to easily chase support conversations, and (with some RNG abusing to obtain enough Boots and money to buy the stat-boosting items, but hey, whatever it takes) I could max out my characters’ stats and truly “complete” a Fire Emblem game.

Sacred Stones is so awesome.

Finally! A postgame! I sure hope the developers keep this up in all the future games… oh. / 10

FE9

This is the first FE game I ever played, so it will always occupy the most dear and special place in my heart, even if FE4 eventually won over as my favorite.

Do you believe in first sight? I do, and this is what taught me it’s real. From the first second of the first cutscene, I was enthralled. ...And that’s saying something, when the FE9 cutscenes are the kind of thing only a mother could love. But I just knew. I may have been a wee lass of 14, but I knew a love that would last a lifetime was being born. ...Or that would at least last 14 more years. I can’t predict the future. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and hate Fire Emblem with a burning passion? 2020 has taught me that tomorrow is always a big fat question mark.

Fun fact: in case you are wondering exactly what inspired my very initial interest in this series, it was a TV commercial. Probably this one. I just remember Ike running, of all things. My sibling and I both thought FE9 looked interesting from this commercial, and sought out the game all on our own with zero private knowledge that anything FE even existed.

This is where obsessions are born. Or mine at least. / 10

FE4

As I’ve established, this is my favorite of favorites. The bizarre way money, arenas, items, and more were handled, actually made the game more and more fun for me. Big maps are just so fun. Gen 1’s story is a tale for the ages, and Gen 2’s story is… well, classic FE, which never gets old for me. It will never cease to amaze me even today what the SNES/S Famicom could handle.

All I’d want added is a “warp between conquered castles” feature. I’m completely neutral on a remake otherwise. Of course a lot more could be added and detailed upon that I’d be happy for, but that’s my one specific wish.

Calvary Emblem Forever / 10

Bonus:

FEH

I played this game every day for around 2 ½ years before I finally felt I had to break the habit, so I’m not leaving it out! This title got a lot of flack for simplifying FE gameplay, but… looking at it that way completely disregards the niche app games fill, and the interesting ways developers view what type of games app games should be, and how the developers work hard to both innovate for the format yet stay faithful to the source. It is surprisingly deep, and the maps + higher focus on unit skills make you think entirely differently about how to win in what is, in essence, the same gameplay as the main series.

Plus, what fan couldn’t get suckered into the fanservice of it? My best moments include attaining a +10 Nephenee while only spending money to get 2 of her, the other 9 were all F2P orbs; and becoming a Narcian/Valter shipper after supporting them on impulse because they were both on my flier team, and realizing the sick, twisted chemistry afterwards. Discovering rare-pairs is fun.

Also, finally, this game dared to nerf magic users a bit by making them RNG 2 only. If only the main series could do something like that.

I really enjoyed Heroes a lot, I just quit solely because it was a time drain. It was time to move on and play other things. And I’m glad I got out when I did. Seeing the game stoop to over-the-top powercreep (above and beyond what it was always implementing) and add the monthly service to keep the $$$$$ raking in was hard to watch.

Perfect app-style game gameplay-wise and fanservice-wise, but why aren’t gacha illegal yet / 10

FE Warriors

Oh yeah, this game exists too! It’s a Warriors game. If you like the formula and it never gets old for you, you’ll have fun with this game. If you don’t mind the limited game representation too much, you’ll have fun with this game. For me, the answers to those questions were a yes, so I enjoyed FE Warriors. Yay for wailing on hordes of enemies / 10

#fire emblem #favorites

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fallintosanity · 4 years

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What are your thoughts on 7 Remake’s ~controversial~ ending? It’s been a few weeks now since I finished and I legit feel like I’ve journeyed through all 5 stages of grief and finally landed on Acceptance 😅

haha that’s fair! I have a lot of thoughts about the remake, but they’re coming from three different angles.

(Spoilers under the cut obvs; also this got fucklong even after I cut a bunch of non-ending-related thoughts, and I apologize to those of you on mobile)

From the POV of someone who played and loved the original

Overall, I really enjoyed the remake, ending and all. I replayed the OG prior to the remake’s release, finishing literally four hours before the remake became available in North America, but it had still been months since I did the Midgar parts so it wasn’t too immediately fresh in my mind. Still, I was impressed by how faithful the remake is to the OG for the vast majority of the game. They noticeably cleaned up a few things, like Tseng slapping Aerith, which didn’t age well or stopped making sense with regards to the greater Compilation, which was nice to see. But they also doubled down on some of the ridiculousness of the original. I can’t tell you how much I cackled when the Hell House showed up, or how many times I said to my fiance in joy/disbelief, “They really managed to fit that in!”

I also love all the little nods to the greater Compilation. I saw one interview excerpt from like... 2015 or 2014 or something that said the Remake is considered canon to the Compilation, and the content of the Remake itself suggests this. While some of the cameos could be considered nothing more than cameos (as much as I love Kunsel, I don’t think his name being dropped means anything other than that they needed a name and wanted to give a nod to him), there are other clear hints that Crisis Core and The Kids Are Alright, at minimum, are canon to the Remake. Hojo mentions “S and G type” SOLDIERs, i.e., Sephiroth-type and Genesis/Gillian-type. (Roche is a G type I am not taking arguments on this point) The description of the Buster Sword says it carries the hopes and dreams of those who came before, implying more than just Zack (i.e., Angeal). Zack’s scene right before he charges the ShinRa army is shot-for-shot the one from Crisis Core, which could have just been a nod, but the fact that he also says the same lines as the original is telling. There’s a lot of lore loaded into those lines. Leslie and Kyrie are both from The Kids Are Alright (which makes me wonder if the third ShinRa half-brother is floating around somewhere). You could make an argument for Before Crisis being partially or completely canon to the remake as well, since someone mentions a previous assassination attempt on the President, which happened in BC.

But now we get into the issue of whether Advent Children is canon to the remake, i.e., the ending and the thing you actually asked about. ^^; This is where I’m more torn. My initial reaction to the ending was “Oh crap, we went from FFVII-Remake to Kingdom Hearts - oh shit now we’re in Advent Children - oh fuck now we’re in fanfiction-land.” Which... is definitely not what I was expecting from the ending of Part 1.

On first playthrough it feels a bit like they overplayed their hand with Sephiroth in the ending: “everyone wants a Sephiroth fight in a FFVII game, so we’ll give them a Sephiroth fight”. I’ve seen a lot of complaints about the fact that Sephiroth appears in person in the Midgar sequence, when in the OG all we see of him before Kalm is the aftermath of President Shinra’s murder. I do think Sephiroth’s appearances prior to the ending were done well - the writers clearly intended to emphasize Cloud’s mental issues, and Sephiroth is too big a part of them to ignore. His appearances prior to the top of Shinra Tower both serve as a bone tossed to those who wanted to see him in the remake, and set up the Cloud-Sephiroth relationship a lot earlier and in more depth. You can see how utterly terrified Cloud is every time Sephiroth is around - even sometimes frozen into immobility. Depending on how things go with the Kalm flashback, this may also help cue new players in to just how wrong things are with Cloud. (After all, a SOLDIER First shouldn’t be afraid of another SOLDIER First, should he?) But the final fight against Sephiroth, or at least, a clone wearing Sephiroth’s face, felt premature, out of place, something that’s only there to appease people who wanted to fight Sephiroth now.

Aside from the Sephiroth thing, I’m reserving judgment a bit on the ending as a whole. On the one hand, I’m deeply curious to see where the story goes from here, and how the writers use their newfound freedom (more on that in a minute). On the other hand, I don’t want this to turn into Kingdom Hearts 4, and I don’t trust Nomura in that regard, especially after all the bullshit that went on with KH3, Verum Rex, and FFXV/versus 13. I love Nomura, but like George Lucas, he desperately needs someone to rein in, edit, and shape his ideas.

I’m also not sure how I feel about all the theories being thrown out there - such as that at least one of the Sephiroths we see is the one from after AC, somehow flung back in time to fuck things up; or that the OG was, 999-style, Aerith seeing into the future and now in the remake she’s taking control to put everything on the path she wants. They’re interesting, for sure, and I think that with careful handling, it’s possible Squenix might be able to pull one of them off - but given what I know of Squenix (again, more on that later), I don’t trust them to do it well. I am, to be blunt, very concerned that later installments of the remake are going to turn into an incoherent tug-of-war between those who want to be faithful to the original, and Nomura’s desire to inject weird Kingdom Hearts nonsense everywhere.

I say this with all the love to Kingdom Hearts, but it’s a very specific kind of story and it’s not what I want to see in my FFVII.

On a writing meta level

On the meta level, I’m fascinated by the choice to go with the whole Whispers/Arbiters of Fate thing. I don’t know how much of that is pure Nomura-injected BS vs how much was a deliberate choice by the writing team, but for right now I’m going to assume it was mostly a deliberate and unanimous choice.

I’ve seen a lot of other Remake opinions along the lines of a reluctant, “I guess they had to put the Whispers in there because a perfect remake wouldn’t have been satisfying to everyone. There’s always someone who would have complained.” I... don’t think that’s entirely true. Like, yeah, sure, someone’s always going to complain if it’s not a pixel-perfect remake, but based on the overall satisfaction I’ve seen from OG fans (including myself) regarding the parts that are true to the original, I think Squenix would have done just fine if that was the path they chose. And given how much attention they paid to making most of the game into a nearly-perfect recreation, I think the writers knew it.

So why’d they go the whole Whispers route?

My guess would be that the writers were giving themselves freedom, on a meta level, with the Whispers. It’s a way of both poking fun at, and solving, their own dilemma: do we make a perfect, hi-res copy of the original? Or do we change things to make it our own?

The “change something to make it your own” is a longstanding trope when someone new is put in charge of something old. You see it in everything from Disney live-action remakes to new managers who change their employees’ routines just to “make an impact”. Most of the time, these changes are neutral / un-impactful at best, or outright frustrating / terrible at worst. I wonder if the Remake writing team wasn’t fully aware of this, and possibly tangled up in knots internally about how to handle it. Would it be seen as a bad, “make it their own” change to have Tseng not slap Aerith? What about adding Chocobo Sam, Madam M, and Andrea Rhodea to the Wall Market sequence? What about the changes to how the Avalanche gang reacts to Cloud, now that we have full animation and voice acting and it’s clear Avalanche has no reason to want to keep him around except for Jessie being horny on main? Where’s the line?

I could see the Whispers being the writing team’s way of making sure they stay in line where it’s important, while also giving themselves the freedom to make the updates needed to allow the remake to work. They’re kind of a meta nod to the audience, a “don’t worry! If we get too far out of line, the Whispers will bring us back.” In that sense, the entire ending where you (the player) kill the Whispers and free yourself (the player) from destiny is you giving the writers permission to continue making those small changes.

In FFXV, almost the entire ending sequence is a cutscene: Noctis on the throne, being murdered by his ancestors and descending into the spirit realm. But there’s one single quick-time event in there, one point where the player has to take action and push a button. It’s not even difficult, and on the surface it seems pointless. Except, if you don’t, Noctis lives. (Trapped in purgatory maybe, but he’s still there.) If you never push that button, Noctis doesn’t sacrifice his spirit and those of the Lucii to destroy Ardyn and wipe the Scourge from Eos. By asking - requiring - the player to push that button to commit that final act, the game makes the player complicit in Noct’s sacrifice. It’s a powerful moment, and similar to what (I suspect) the Remake writers intended with the Whispers.

Because they could have left the Whispers in forever. They could have had them be a continuous presence throughout all episodes of the Remake, a little reminder that no matter what tweaks the writers might make to update the story, to “make it their own”, the Arbiters of Fate will ensure things are on track. That things will play out exactly as in the original. But by asking the player to destroy the Arbiters, the writers are asking for the player’s permission to make changes. And by killing the Arbiters, you’re granting it. Because, just like you can keep Noctis alive by not pushing the button when prompted, you can keep the original game more-or-less on track by never stepping through that portal, never killing the Arbiters. But if you do step through that portal and go through with it, you’re agreeing to accept that things might change, thus freeing the writers from the constant double jeopardy of changing things vs keeping them exactly the same.

On a business meta level

As cool as (I think) that all sounds, the bigger question is, can Square Enix actually pull it off? And here’s where I start to have my most significant doubts. After the FFvs13/FFXV debacle and the hopeless mess that was KH3, I do not trust Nomura to tell a coherent story, even if it’s supposedly a retelling of an existing, well-known story. I don’t know anything about the inner workings or politics at Square Enix, other than that there are politics at play, so in fairness to him I can’t really say it’s because he himself is bad at telling a story, or just doesn’t have the support he needs to convey his vision well. But that gets into other issues with Squenix. We know their last several major games have had long and troubled developments. Someone way more attuned than me to the Japanese video games industry can talk in depth about why; all I know is that it happened (is happening?) and that it’s something of a miracle the remake came out as well as it did.

On top of that, I’m a bit concerned that even if Squenix can get (and keep) its shit together, it might be up against external forces that constrain how it can tell the story of FFVII in the present. For example, from what I’ve heard, the reason Crisis Core never got ported the way so many other games did, and the reason Genesis Rhapsodos has never been seen outside it and a Dirge of Cerberus cameo, is due to image licensing fights with Gackt, Genesis’s face model. CC established Genesis as a key player in the events leading up to the original game’s story, and enough hints have been dropped about CC in the remake that, like I said earlier, it appears to be canon. But if Squenix can’t reach an agreement to use the character again, they might be trapped in a corner where they either have to completely rewrite the parts of the story involving Genesis, or dance around his existence.

And on top of all that, it’s just expensive and time-consuming as hell to make games on the remake’s scale. Everyone expects the PS4 to be retired by the time Remake Part 2 comes out, which is going to pose huge logistical issues for releasing it. Squenix has been having a rough time of it lately, from what I’ve heard - are they, as a company, capable of handling all those logistical issues? I don’t know, and that makes me nervous.

Still, they did do a remarkable job with the remake overall, even grappling with the pandemic around the launch date. So maybe they’re getting their shit together again, and things will be smooth sailing from here. We’ll have to wait and see.

#anonymous #final fantasy vii #ffvii #ffvii remake #spoilers #meta #sanity replies #sanity talks a lot #tumblr massively fucked up the formatting somehow sorry

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