indigozeal | Entries tagged with alphabet meme

Kitana, Mortal Kombat: Yeah, yeah, I know, but: I find it unfortunate that Kitana's role in the games has slowly sloughed toward damsel in distress as the series has gone on. In Mortal Kombat II, she's depicted as having her own agenda behind the scenes from the start, taking the initiative to talk to Liu Kang and whatnot, and engineers her personal uprising against Kahn, the rediscovery of her identity, and the reclamation of her kingdom all on her own reocgnisance/initiative. In the Shaolin Monks retelling, though, she's a passive slave under mind control and has to be freed by the heroes before she has any agency in the story. In the reboot, she doesn't know what the fuck and is clueless and unquestioning; she has to be led by the hand to the truth by Raiden and his associates, and even then ends up a very peripheral character, a jobber for Liu Kang to beat up and then a chained captive in Kahn's arena.
I always found her kind of memorably beautiful in her unmasked shot in her MKII ending. She's not made up to be glamorous, she doesn't have puffed-out lips or a dental-floss costume or whatnot, but she's looking rather steely toward the camera, hair down and devoid of her battle garb, and despite (or perhaps because of) stuff like a "non-normal" nose has a refreshingly relatable kind of beauty. The "flaws" make her look better.

Kefka, Final Fantasy VI: As mentioned in a throwaway comment I made a long time ago, for all that Kefka is lauded as the ne plus ultra of RPG villains, I've never been that impressed with him. I mean, he won for a bit, though through what seems to be a good deal of luck; I guess, based on his comments in the Magitek Factory, that he was investigating how to capture the Statues' power offscreen, but from what we see, that seems to entail just being the first one to stand in between them. A few stray steps from Gestahl (or Celes or whoever), and Kefka would've been SOL. I guess the craziest and most amorally bloodthirsty character ending up at the top of the heap can be construed as a thematic statement regarding war, but you have to have a conflict where both sides are equally destructive and uncaring re: collateral damage to make the most of that theme. That might work for FF7, maybe (and certainly for the War of the Magi backstory), but not FF6's main storyline. Even characterwise, though Kefka's a remarkably lively incarnation of capricious cruelty, I've never found him that entertaining or appealing; I suppose he sticks in the memory of those who grew up on 16-bit for being the first little pixel avatar they ever saw cheerfully commit a war crime, but he pales in depth next to your Ghaleons and Neifirsts. I'm loathe to chalk up anyone's character and story preferences to nostalgia, but it does seem to me that affection and esteem for him depends on when in their life a given player happened upons FF6. Kudos for that potshot at Squall in Dissidia, though.

Kaufmann, Silent Hill: As I've banged on about previously, Silent Hill doesn't really work for me as well as intended storywise. I admire its attempt to paint its picture through oblique hints and easily-missable stuff in the environment, but it buries its ledes too deeply and can easily leave the player utterly lost and narratively unsatisfied at the end, and the cult stuff, particularly in light of the series's reputation for psychological horror, is just dumb and hokey. A moment I really think shines, though, is in the good ending, which has this side character barge in and forcibly take control of the whole story. He's just supporting cast; he's not supposed to matter this much - but fuck you. Kaufmann doesn't care. He refuses to be dismissed, and he busts through the constraints of traditional plot structure to change the course of the entire tale through sheer force of will.

Kara, Phantasy Star III: The Phantasy Star franchise has given rise to a lot of odd theories, but the idea that Thea is actually princess Kara's mother is the one theory that I genuinely liked. I think it's more likely that the "two Karas" issue is just the game expounding on how a character can grow up into two different people depending on her environment, but I was attached enough to the "different mother" idea that I was outright disappointed when the original Japanese PS3 script seemed to scuttle parts of it. Apparently, Princess Kara is more useful than warrior Kara due to (what else) a bug in the latter's stat progression, but I honestly didn't notice in my recent runthroughs. PSIII is a patience-trying game in many aspects but not a really difficult one.

Keith Ingram, Deadly Premonition: Keith is one of the most likable and awesome characters in a quite likable and awesome cast, what with his stoner ghost stories and his Spy Fiction reference jacket and his killer guitar weapon. I'm struck, though, by the contrast between Keith's obliviously indefatiguable good nature and the depths of the horror that he just barely missed - Kaysen seemed to have been grooming his wife Lilly for the next red-tree incubator, which would mean her rape and grisly death, and his interest in Isaach and Isaiah can't bode anything good. The latter, in fact, is left unexplained, a dangling plot thread, which probably indicates that the twins aren't out of the (red) woods. It's a horrible fate for such an aggressively happy and innocuous family. But the same could be said for Greenvale at large, I suppose.
Exemplary quote from the Deadly Premonition wiki: "At home, he will sit in his armchair and mumble, 'Rock 'n roll, dude,' to himself."
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Mia, Lunar: The Silver Star etc.: Mia used to be one of my favorite characters in Lunar, but I kind of don't like her that much anymore. With time, I've come to care less and less about Silver Star's five ostensible main characters, whose own small character troubles seem self-involved and by orders of magnitude less interesting than the Ghaleon-Dyne ideological conflict on which the game is founded, and while Mia's the most tolerable and grounded - not to mention just the plain nicest - of the bunch, she does get dragged down by association. There's another part of the problem, though: she is, or at least is treated by the fans at large, as a reader wish-fulfillment character: she gets to be doted on by Ghaleon in what fan works are fond of interpreting as a half-parental, half-adult paramour way, and while I don't mean to be playing fandom police here, I've come to find the various expressions of this a bit creepy. The alternative is Funato's take on her as an empty-headed baby doll, which (rare for a Funato characterization for me) I find even less appealing. Also: I find Funato's manner of drawing her excessively sugary and yet at the same time unsettling. "It's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes..."

Morris, Lunar: Vheen Hikuusen Monogatari: Steelstrings has brought up how Vheen Hikuusen probably isn't better-known among Lunar fans due to availability. It's a pity, then, that Morris hasn't found a larger fanbase. I'm quite possibly his only fan, actually. The illustration of him sitting with the window open, sadly, slightly-sardonically and masochistically listening to the beautiful singing voice of the love he knows he'll never have, is one of Vheen Hikuusen's most affecting panels for me. For the bulk of the story, he seems suave and well-adjusted - a smiling uncle figure to his students, the mazoku group's liaison to the human community, kind of a...well, not a sybarite or hedonist, but almost there, someone who appears Teflon to life's disappointments - and yet in the end, you learn that he's been going through the same mental struggle as Latona, showing that you never really know everything that's going on with people.
But that is an aggravatingly condescending speech he gives about Latona in the end, in parts.

Mathias, Neo Angelique: Unfortunately, Mathias's story serves to illustrate neoromance's storytelling limitations: it's so often bent on being smotheringly fluffy that it cannot discern between negative emotions, which may or may not be justifiable, and wrongful actions borne of them, and it therefore considers the very state of having negative emotions to be evil in itself. It's telling that the miffing of Mathias's storyline in this manner was the turning point for the quality of the show, which until then had been going quite well.
Five thoughts on Mathias in general:
- This is indeed representative of the central tragedy of Mathias's character, but I can't envision him in any outfit other than his priest robes. They gave him a gold and green jacket-and-shirt combo on the cover of the Platinum Harmony CD, but even something that conservative doesn't work on him. When it comes to the robes, however, it's crucial that Mathias have all the various overlays and capes and whatnot. The whole ensemble looks beautiful, but the gown by itself looks like a granny nightgown. (And the gloves look like granny gloves. Never have the building blocks of an outfit looked so nice assembled and so dorky individually. And yet that's in line with Mathias, I think.)
- One of Neo Angelique's hallmarks was its thoughtful use of untraditional color schemes, and Mathias's own was among the best; it's a faded, worn version of Rene's palette. (Its pale pastels bring to mind Phantasy Star's Lutz, both he and and Mathias being self-sacrificing men with light, cool palettes dedicated to religious orders.)
- I want to get Mathias's ending in the game, but in an aggravating instance of visual-novel logic, it's inaccessible unless you've already gotten the ending for Rene, who, if you're partial to Mathias, is probably the character to whom you're least charitably inclined.) I am curious as to how Mathias's character is worked into the story of the game, which opens with Rene as already Head of the Order, as Mathias being forced out of the reins of power is the crux of his character arc.
- About Erenfried:"I did want to shake him and lock him in a cell for most of the first series, then Mathias did it for me, and all was well."I know that feel, bro.
- I have a hard time remembering these days if his name is spelled with one or two t's. Sad that Neo Ange's faded so from both my own and public memory, particularly when so much of its potential remained untapped.

Masami Eiri, Serial Experiments Lain: On further nomenclature debacles, I keep forgetting which is this man's given name and which is his family name. But regarding Masami:It speaks to just how smart Lain was that at the core of its labyrinthine, intellectualized jigsaw-puzzle conspiracy (the show midway through its run takes an entire episode to put everything from previous eps together in voiceover for the viewers so that they're up to speed for the big revelation) it put perhaps its most human character (besides ordinary schoolgirl Alice). Many villains present portraits of urban normalcy lapsed into madness, but Eiri is one of the best: his once-starched lab jacket, the last remnant of his time of respectable employment, wreathing his scarecrow frame like a cloak; his virtual body symbolically swathed with tape where it was in meatspace cleaved in three; his now-long and bedraggled hair that parts upon his debut to reveal a masterful smirk beneath, becoming a Sadako-esque symbol of weaponized submission and anonymity; his personal realm of a deserted suburban cityspace with scraggly telephone poles stark against a sickly orange sky; the backwards conversation he has with the heroine upon revealing himself; his diseased entreaties to her to "love me"; his impotent salaryman ranting of "I'll quit! I'll quit!" ground out beneath his breath through gritted teeth in the ending, which surely touches base with anyone watching. Lain didn't need a great villain to be great, but thank the Deus it got Masami anyhow.

Minax, Ultima: It occurs to be how Minax doesn't really get her due in the Ultima series. Perhaps it's because her installment is viewed as the "weird" Ultima, but her accomplishments are considerable - I mean, she actually won, conquering one planet and laying waste to another, and the good guys had to resort to time travel to stand a chance - and yet the series, just like the Britannians investigating the wreckage of Mondain's castle before Ultima II times, characterizes her as Mondain's less-powerful sidekick, his moll. Respect, people.
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Dain, Lunar: Like Ghaleon, more old news, but I'd be remiss not to talk about him when I had the opportunity. I love Dain. He's not smart, but he is wise, and I've never encountered a better or more endearing personification of unconditional love. This entry isn't much more than a declaration of affection, but in the respect of eschewing analysis for pure emotion, it suits its subject well.
(Bonus reflection: Stop teasing TnK Dain about his nose! What's wrong with his nose!? His nose is just fine! Stop it!)

Dixie Cousins, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.: A while ago, I made the unfortunate decision to revisit the Scream movies, which only cemented my conviction that stretching out "hey, we're pointing out how stupid the thing we're doing is before we do it" to film length even one time, much less three, is not a viable form of entertainment.
Anyhow, this endeavor had finally dwindled down to Scream 3, when I was distracted from the first attempted fake-out by trying to figure out from where I recognized the opening-act victim's girlfriend. I finally hit the IMDB, where I was floored - Dixie! Of course! Kelly Rutherford; she was Dixie Cousins! It's sad that Brisco County is so far from my mind (and that Kelly Rutherford got such a limited, thankless role, however bad the movie).
Dixie's role in the program is one of my favorite examples of smart storytelling. Dixie was a dance-hall girl who early on was slotted as the "bad girl" love interest for the adventure-western-comedy-sci-fi program's hero (Bruce Campbell - yes), poised opposite the fresh-faced daughter of the recurring mad-inventor character (John Astin) who appeared in the TV-movie pilot. TPTB, though, saw that Rutherford had such presence onscreen and such chemistry with Campbell that the daughter was never seen again and Dixie was bumped up to female lead. Nothing was wrong with the daughter character per se, but the show saw no use pretending that Dixie's behavior was borne of genuine malice rather than playfulness or in spending time on false posturing that they could on meatier stories; seldom do you see a program so swift and confident in identifying its strengths and willing to eschew convention so freely.

Daniella, Haunting Ground: The woman from my default icon, a supporting character in the meant-to-be-Clock Tower 4 title Haunting Ground, Daniella is memorable for one remarkable scene that signifies her definitive break from reality. The setup in brief: Daniella is a created being deemed unworthy by her creator; she can never rise above her hollow existence as a emotionless puppet. Her awareness of her lack of the spark of life leads her to develop an unhealthy envy of the protagonist, who is a flesh-and-blood, home-grown Real Girl. This mania reaches a head during the heroine's stay at Daniella's castle home: one morning, when the heroine wakes up, she finds Daniella standing by her side, staring covetously at the functional womb she herself lacks; the maid flatly and robotically informs the girl of her inexpressible bitterness that she is "not complete." Daniella then turns and calmly, unblinkingly beats her forehead against a mirror until it shatters, whereupon she takes a shard to use against the girl as a weapon. That is commitment to your insanity. That is an Argento-level fusion of art, violence, and character illustration.

Derek Cuttlebrink, The Cat Who...: There's this old Archie story I remember about Betty quitting the band because she didn't feel she added anything of value - "I just stand up here and shake the tambourine! Big deal!" At the gang's next, Betty-free concert, however, the audience is predictably unenthusiastic about the change-up - despite the band lacking only a tambourine, it's just not the same without Betty. Derek's the Betty to Moose County's Archies; he's seldom of practical use in Qwill's investigations and his activities never really have any relevance to the plot, but the books wouldn't be the same without Qwill dining at the site of his latest underachieving restaurant job and receiving a cheerful visit from his carefree universe. I thought he made a cute couple with the similarly breezy and sunshiny yet more self-directed young heiress-turned-independent aspiring businesswoman Elizabeth Hart, where Derek's world grew a little bit without betraying his core character, but then Elizabeth was killed off in the final books' "I woke up today and hated absolutely everything" stretch with nary a bat of an eye from Derek. I've no idea what poor Elizabeth did in LJB's eyes to warrant such a summary execution (or what Derek did to get such a character assassination), but the E's have passed us, haven't they.

Dietrich Troy, Spy Fiction: I'm glad the letter D got postponed until I got the chance to meet Dietrich - "Or 'unbelievable,' as the ladies call him. All the android ladies." After a while of watching supergreatfriend's LP of Spy Fiction, the Metal Gear Solid clone Swery developed before Deadly Premonition, it began to feel like a bit of a slog - supergreatfriend was doing his best, but the game simply seemed unremarkable. Then comes the second ending, and the scene on the bike where one character is two at once, and the confrontation where the villain explains to his only two friends his reasons for killing the good man he could have been, and, well, the game's remained in my memory for longer and more favorably than Deadly Premonition, which was memorably daring and endearing most of its play length but, in my view, crashed in the last act. The whole incident stresses the importance of ending well.

A side note: It's interesting to reflect how both York and Dietrich (and Billy, for that matter) are awfully fond of using pop culture to shield themselves against the harshness of the world. Both young parental desertees in Spy Fiction model their very disparate plans to set things right on the same creaky spy show.

Julious, Angelique: - It took me a good long while to come around to Julious; he's an easy scapegoat in the Clavis/255 affair. Upon reflection, though, 255 acted reprehensibly; her first act upon being awarded the crown was to order Julious to put a knife in his best friend's heart, and she deprived Clavis of his only emotional support at the same time she did her love. Granted, things would've gone over better had he let Clavis down easy instead of his "YOU THOUGHTLESS TRAITOR" tack, but it's understandable for even the Guardian of Light to slip a bit in the pressure of this particular situation.

Jan van Ruthberg, Anumamundi - I like Jan less for his character than for the image he cuts: the quiet delicate holy man with well-kempt golden hair and robes of purest white and gold, with polished, sickly long nails as black as pitch. Jan's an intriguing character, though - he can commune with the dead; he has a fatalistic view of the afterlife and his place in it due to his crimes; he shows a tragically misplaced yet oddly logical loyalty to his crazed employer - yet the game doesn't really do much with him beyond putting him in a half-realized relationship with the greasy Dashwood. He's also stuck in the disturbing bleh of a dead-end plot that is the Hellfire Club. Another game would perhaps do better by him; if Mephisto can do a crossover...

J.D., Neo Angelique: - The thing with Neo Angelique is that it has some characters whose plotlines aren't quite done justice by neoromance constraints. J.D.'s a fresh-faced flip on an old trope: instead of a robot who's learning all about what you hu-mans call "love," J.D. knows all about love! He's a Terminator of love! His mission is to spread smiles to other people's faces! (He's also, for this genre, built like bricks.) Back in the days on

angemedia before we really knew anything about Neo Angelique, I used to make fun of J.D. - he seemed to have no fans, and from what little I could tell, the sum total of his personality seemed to revolve around candy. Boy, was I wrong; he's one of my favorites now.

Jennifer, Clock Tower: Part of what makes Jennifer such an effective heroine for the first game is that the designers remembered to make her a good deal childlike - her soft taken-aback lurch of surprise; the wide-eyed, apprehensive-but-not-losing-it expression on her usual status portrait. It underlines Jennifer's vulnerability but doesn't oversell it.
I'm not that fond of CT2 Jen - her voice is too Chip 'n' Dale-meet-Disney-Princess - but her short li'l Don't Look Now trench seems an effective tip to her inspiration's killer fashion sense. (Those jumper straps on CT1 Jen's skirt have to go, though.)

Jennifer Corvino, Phenomena: Jennifer is the woman. Jennifer has it all going on - the bugokinesis; the Armani shirtdresses; the killer taglines ("Jennifer has a few million close friends. She's going to need them all."). One of my favorite moments is when shit's gone down and she's sitting pretty, and she allows herself this small smug, self-satisfied smile, as if thinking to herself, "yeah, I really am one BAMF." She revels in her accomplishments, doesn't take any guff, but is fiercely supportive of her friends - she's the rare prideful character that's not elitist.
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Idol, Magical School Lunar manga: Whenever I sit down with a piece of Magic School media, I think, "All right! A chance to see Idol again!" Then, if it's not the manga, I suddenly remember and think to myself, GodDAMMIT. Idol is Lunar's second-best villain: a bereaved husband and father who wants to protect a child that's not even really his beats the baddest and most foreboding God of Doom any day of the week. Idol's cool-headed and pragmatic, capable of hugely cold violence, yet heroically self-sacrificing; he's beaten into violence by atrocity yet has come to his ultimate position on mazoku-human relations through logic and necessity. The choice of a character in his position as an antagonist makes sense for a tale of child heroes. The MSL mangaka wasn't the best, but Idol was a huge gift she gave to Lunar that it never really got the chance to utilize fully.

Iason, Lunar: Strolling School: Odd sentence, but I find the game's portrayal of Iason's chauvinism refreshing - it's a small sidenote, it's never treated as anything but dismissively ridiculous, and it's pushed aside once Elie passes his test. Iason's a jerk, but not a jerk that poisons the well, and really not even much of a jerk at that rather than an otherwise OK fellow who somehow got to holding a couple seriously stupid beliefs. (This subplot is expanded to an entire chapter in Magical School Lunar, where it's dragged out to an obvious conclusion. I don't think that institutional prejudice is "dismissively ridiculous" - in fact, those kind of "harmless," unquestioned assumptions by gatekeepers to power are often the most damaging - but in a setting like this, I think the capableness of girls is better illustrated by getting on with the heroines' awesome adventures rather than acting out the kabuki of a hackneyed plotline, no matter how valid its point.)
(ETA: Hmmm. I'm rereading this, and if someone else had written it, I'd be rolling my eyes at the perceived excuse-making. To rephrase: not OK with Iason being a chauvinist; impressed with how the game throws it in without ruining the mood or character and still making it clear that Iason's totally wrong.)

Ignatius, Lunar: Genesis/Dragon Song: Cripes, this is shaping up to be another all-Lunar entry. Anyhow, I actually got excited when I saw Blatant Ghaleon Rip-off #1 there in some promo art; I looked at the angling of the eyes and the height of his forehead, factored in the game's time frame and how long mazoku tend to live, and I...I thought there was a possibility he might have been a young Rouj. Don't look at me like that! IT WAS POSSIBLE!

Iris Cobb, The Cat Who...: A very odd statement here, but Iris is somewhat of a counterpart to Clavis in her franchise: she was replaced (by Celia, as Shiozawa was by Tanaka), but it wasn't the same, and even though the series continued to produce worthy installments in the original's absence, something was missing that in retrospect kinda signaled the beginning of the end. I'm not sure The Cat Who... suffered as much from the blow, not immediately, anyway - it produced some of its best installments after Iris's passing, which was given due reverence and a book-long rumination - but it was the first instance of replacing a substantive, multifaceted character with a thinly-drawn, flatly cheery knockoff, a trend that would steal much of the heart from the series in later installments.

Isaac, Under the Rose: I've been reading through Akari Funato's Under the Rose Vol. 1 lately and having a somewhat mixed reaction: this is a great storyteller and artist (and, man, are her expressions in this thing off the hook; this is perhaps the most painstakingly-drawn manga I've seen) telling a story I'm not much interested in reading, due to personal prejudices against the Victorian era and the book's Game of Thrones-type treatment of its characters where no one's really bearable and the most objectionable types of all are the ones safely ensconced atop the food chain. It's wearing a bit better - I'm honestly intrigued in the denouement of the mystery, the "accidental" death of the mistress of an English count investigated by one of her children, and there's a character who's Vheen Hikuusen's Morris with a different haircut.
Anyhow, thirteen-or-so-year-old Isaac is one of the few characters to be somewhat consistently likable. As one of the count's bazillion children, his lives more or less in the shadow of his hot-blooded twin, Not Draco Malfoy. Isaac's more thoughtful than most here, though; he responds to the maelstrom of his household by devoting himself to more solitary pursuits (woodworking, baking, horses) instead of his family sport of Ruining Other People's Lives, and he's near-always attempting to do something constructive whenever another of his father's considerable brood barges in to turn everything tits-up. Every so often, however, his brothers and half-brothers will finally provoke him to an exchange of blows, which, considering how far these jerks can push, just means that, y'know, Isaac still has a heart. (The best way to approach this manga, really, is to treat it as a Victorian Arrested Development and marvel at how shamelessly, amorally horrible the characters can behave. How I imagine Arrested Development to be, anyway; I've never really seen it.)
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Harvey Moiseiwitch Volodarskii, No More Heroes: Harvey probably has the dodgiest voice-acting of the main characters - he sounds slightly Bullwinkle-ish. Those twin-beam wands are pretty stylish, though.
That's a bad death he got there, wasn't it? Eyes burned out, pleading piteously for light not realizing what's happened to him, buzzsawed in half while still alive. That's a sendoff you give a Captain Rhodes, and I'm not sure what Harvey did to deserve it - even Speed Buster, who killed Travis's master, got off with a clean shot to the neck. And yet, if you look back to the start of that cutscene, his act doesn't have many tricks that don't involve him skewering or chopping up his assistants, who do move to secure him to that iron cross pretty quickly. Maybe his employees got tired of catching bladed weapons.

Hyuga, Neo Angelique: I liked Hyuga a lot more before I read his first lead story in the manga, where he and Ange are sent to assist the relief effort in a burning village. Things turn bad, the fire isn't getting any better, and so Hyuga grabs Ange by the arm and tells her - doesn't consult with her; outright gives an order - that he's made a decision, she's leaving. Ange is understandably shocked and angered at what she perceives as Hyuga's cowardice - regardless of the condition of the buildings, there're plenty of people in need of medical treatment - and, quite atypical of a neoromance heroine, tells Hyuga to shove it, admirably standing her ground. Just then, however, the rafters of Authorial Fiat come crashing down from the flaming ceiling, and Hyuga sternly stands over her staring her down, less oh-my-God-are-you-all-right? than Daddy-told-you-so, to deflect the blow. He then turns in silent smug/angry satisfaction to leave the village, expecting his woman to follow. Ange follows sheepishly behind, like a chastened little girl.
Later that evening at Hidamari, however, her conscience gets the better of her, and she slips downstairs to make her way out and back to the village. Yeah! On her way, however, she overhears Hyuga asking Nyx to fund a rebuilding effort for the village once the fires die down. Ange is conscience-stricken that she didn't believe in Hyuga and, most dishearteningly, later apologizes to him for...caring about the innocent victims and having a mind of her own, I guess? Was there any good reason why Hyuga couldn't let Ange in on his plan before they left, even after they got home? The entire incident is hugely disappointing, particularly in view of how the artist in previous chapters went out of her way to make Ange a self-motivated, driven character in contrast with the usual neoromance perfect passive princesses.

Hugh, Phantasy Star II: While reading Hugh's mini-bio in the PS World Guide's character section, I was rather gobsmacked by its assertion that Hugh was mildly autistic. This was in the days when autism was still largely defined by Rain Man and the DSM committee hadn't yet resorted to the "broad side of the barn" school of diagnosis regarding the condition, so my reaction to this news was in the neighborhood of WHAT. I mentioned this tidbit to a friend, still incredulous, and he responded, "Oh, yeah! I was diagnosed with mild autism, too!" and I was WHAT. Still more sensitive and less ignorant than Autism Speaks, ladies and gentlemen!
Anyhow, Dr. Thompson impresses as an eminently presentable fellow, from the crisp bob of his bangs and cut of his chin to the bright and sharp contrast of his purple and green ensemble. He personifies the PSII aesthetic - of vivid and vibrant palette but cleanly futuristic and crisply utiliarian. (Someone from the PS Ages version saw fit to encumber him with a knitted muffler from the "I CAN'T PUT MY ARMS DOWN!!" school of winterwear, but inexplicable accessories seem a hallmark of that version.)
As mentioned in Anna's entry, I stuck religiously to guidebook party recommendations and didn't pay much attention to Hugh, and even in a runthrough where I leveled everyone up, I remember him as being merely OK. But I like Hugh characterwise. Character portraits convey a good deal in PSII, and the clean, cool lines of his, the alertness in his expression give the impression of someone clinical, still a scientist, a man of numbers - but the bright hues and slight faraway gleam in his eye speak to a man still a bit of a child, still in touch with the natural world.
(Excised from this already-long entry: a mention of the Hugh-centric fanfic "Restoration," unique in its focus on getting a Mota after Mother Brain up and running again - salvaging power sources from the dams, characters from a world of screens readjusting to little things like writing their own names by hand - and note of Hugh's odd but memorable exit line.)

Hahn, Phantasy Star IV: Back when newsgroups were still a thing, there was note of Hahn being a curiously fan-favorite character, and we stopped once to take stock why that was. I recall that the main reasons we came up with related to how uniquely everyman Hahn was - he's not the bestest ever in his field, he doesn't have an ostentatious wardrobe or dichroic hair; he's just a hardworking fellow holding down an unglamorous profession trying to save up enough to marry his schoolteacher fiancee. In the typical RPG world-spanning quests, it's remarkably refreshing to have a character with such relatively small, relatable, human goals.

Helen, Clock Tower: I like Helen over Jennifer as the Clock Tower (2) heroine; it's not often the spotlight's given to the older female instead of the younger, the level-headed professional instead of the virginal naïf, and Dr. Maxwell has a good chemistry with the entertaining(ly rumpled) Gotts, both on a personal level and in the amiably adversarial give-and-take of two professionals, each smart in their own way, who recognize their differences but fundamentally like each other anyway. (It wears particularly well when compared to 15-year-old Jennifer's creepy flirtations with the bland, late-twenties Nolan.)
And yet there's something within me that resists Helen. It has to do with a Clock Tower character-rating project in which I participated, in which I was pegged as Dr. Maxwell. Similarly, in

angemedia's chara rating post, it was suggested I was most like Luva. I can't fault anyone for this and would probably draw the same conclusions myself, and yet I hate being pigeonholed as the mature teacher type. I was thrilled when one of the CT folks suggested that due to a couple misanthropic comments I'd made I might be more like Ghost Head's cleaver-dragging Saidou.
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Mr. Bates, Clock Tower: The Struggle Within: I thought it was a real coup back in the day getting Roger Jackson for videogame voicework, but I guess this wasn't out of line with his other assignments if you look at his resume. Jackson's VA is an obvious highlight of the English version; I'm fonder of it than the voice acting for Shou, though it seems significantly less likely to be produced by the heroine's vocal chords.

Blueberry, Magical Vacation: This is the predecessor to the thoroughly mediocre-looking early DS RPG Magical Starsign, but it was on sale at the time at Play-Asia for six bucks. The game's character designs were done by Legend of Mana's Shin'ichi Kameoka, and the game as a result shares a lot of the Mana franchise's charm - not to mention a complex nature-based system of elemental magic (over a dozen elements, actually, including stuff like Sound, Metal, etc.). The game would in fact be better as an overworld-exploring SD2/3 clone - it's stuck with a rather musty turn-based combat that doesn't really fit - and the huge PC cast size (~15) makes getting through the "gather together your scattered classmates" opening that precedes the "real" story interminable; I'd played through what I think would've been the halfway point in most any other RPG and still hadn't cleared it. (That said, Magical Vacation does do a good job of portraying the web of relationships and sub-cliques in a middle-school classroom.)
But this is about Blueberry, my favorite character of the playable-character cast and the only one of that large horde to whom I really took; she had a Mia-from-Lunar-esque quiet, shy dignity that drew me to her. Actually, though she also shares Mia's lack of self-confidence, she's a bit more proactive; though Blueberry, too, is the equivalent of a princess in her land, her weak constitution inhibits her fulfillment of her royal duties, and so she joined the magic school to develop her magical talents, gain strength, and help her kingdom as best she can.
Her best friend, a dog-rabbit-peach creature who likes to talk cute, habitually appends "-chan" to her name, forming an appellation I'd be tempted to translate as "Bluey," but that sounds like the Horrendous Space Kablooie, doesn't it. (Then again, it would fit right in with some of the demented names they gave Blueberry's classmates, like Cabernet Cheaptrick and Cafe au Lait Rustynail.)

Barua, Lunar: Magic School: I'm inclined to place Barua as the least of the Magic School villains - she doesn't approach Idol's depth and doesn't help redress the male/female exploitation balance like Memphis. Villains, though (save, again, for Idol), aren't exactly the point of the Magic School games, which are more about close childhood friendship, but it's hard not to dismiss Barua as a brunette knockoff of Xenobia, a character who was hardly handled well in the first place. She's considerably more capable in the manga, though, despite her ridiculous wardrobe, as she's drastically more take-charge and ruthless, doesn't moon over her comely partner-in-arms, and actually makes a few salient points about the racial status quo in a way few on Lunar ever did.

Brown, Lunar: Magic School: He looks like Wyn, a grown-up Wyn, doesn't he? And they both seem to suffer from frequent flustering and a lack of self-confidence. Despite this, though, my love of Wyn doesn't transfer to Brown; they aren't really fundamentally similar. Wyn has a sweet, quiet wisdom to him that grounds his character; Brown is all nervous energy. Brown is immature; Wyn is wise.

Bruno Glening, Animamundi: I had a different fifth for "B" whom I cannot for the life of me recall (Beth from Clock Tower? Bernard from Neo Angelique?), but I lost my notes and am forced to resort to a more problematic choice.
Bruno's a difficult character to...well, it's tough even to bring myself to say "like," for reasons that are self-evident for those familiar with the story of the game. I'm constantly reconsidering having an icon of him.
The vocal performance by Koyasu Takehito goes a long way - when he gives his ridiculously over-the-top faux-innocent introduction in the drama CDs, you can practically hear the ASCII frills around his name. Then there's his tendency to let pent-up emotions win out over patience and product testing; he's capable of great genius but is undone by the one fatal, overlooked flaw in his work that leads to horrific consequences. I can relate, Bruno.
His ending in "A Subtle Poison" is uniquely heartbreaking, approached from either character's end: his ageless childhood friend Timothy sees that the person who's most dear to him - who should be estranged by their long years apart but, as evinced by Timothy's words, never really left his mind - is so turned and curdled that he has to be put down, and, in a long, halting recounting of memories that seems to have no purpose before the meat of the scene reveals itself, is telling Bruno before he does the deed how much he meant to him and all the reasons why. It's one of the deepest expressions of love I've seen in video games, albeit in the most fucked-up circumstances. And then there's Bruno crying plaintively as he dies about how he can't see, blindly clutching to his murderer for his only comfort, which is affecting in spite of all that Bruno's done. The drama CDs have a slightly more optimistic version of this scene - Timothy stabs Bruno and readies to stab himself, but Bruno stops him and asks him to make amends to St. Germant for him. Bruno actually regrets what he's done, and Timothy bittersweetly expresses the hope that maybe they can have pastrami sandwiches together again someday instead of spending all eternity in Cocytus. A shred of hope, at least.
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Glumm, Lunar: The Silver Star: Thought it was going to be Ghaleon, didn't you? I have too much to say about him to fit into one entry, but I'll use the appropriate icon to have him here in spirit.
Anyhow, Glumm's a curious creature, isn't he? He's Ghaleon's assistant, he's given a proper name - one that's suitably ominous - and even dresses the part of a minion, but when stuff goes down, he's just another blandly clueness NPC. Perhaps, as with Nash, Ghaleon was deliberately hiring for cluenessness in his cover gig. Still, a curious missed opportunity - right next to another, that oddly, OoC-ly prosaic diary on Ghaleon's desk.

Gwyn, Lunar: Eternal Blue: Gwyn is an archaeologist, but according to the Lunar I & II book, no one else in Lunar cares enough about archaeology to engage his talents. That about sums up the world of Lunar II - devoid of civilization and dead, its greatness consigned to a largely-forgotten past. Perhaps it's just the route Hiro ends up taking, but the world map consists of little but rough outposts that're struggling just to hang on (Larpa, Zaback, that one snow village - Zulan or whatever) or neglected ruins that've lost their grandeur and hold on the popular imagination - we've got the ruins of the Blue Spire, the ruins of the Grindery, the Mystic Ruins, *Vane itself*... The only bastion of civilization is Meribia, which seems to be caught in stagnant stasis. Lunar never favored strong central governments, but by the time of Lunar II, all its cultures have disappeared, the great places of Lunar I forgotten. It takes a bit to realize under the typical Lunar carnival of color, but it's a sad, distanced ruin of a world. You can see the lure of the Order of Althena for this hollow shell of a planet - of the security, order, and meaning to one's life it would provide.

Gabryel, Lunar: Genesis/Dragon Song: Yeah, Genesis/Dragon Song was a lousy game that no one counts as canon, but bear with me for a moment of faint praise: despire being a blatant rip-off of Jessica in many aspects - rebellious, blonde teenage daughter of Meribia's beastman governor who packs a mean punch with a claw - I thought Gabryel was an intriguing twist on her obvious template; she's Jessica if Jessica were raised to be her father's successor and sergeant-at-arms rather than a daddy's girl - a Jessica who has her father's full confidence instead of one who's playing against her mother's memory. Second, she clearly fulfills the role of sage in the group, providing the hero with ancient lore and wise advice that guides him along his journey, and it's refreshing to see a young female, much less a fighter-type character, take that position. A pity that, like everyone not named "Jian," she's nerfed in actual combat. (Despite this, she's still bested in cutscene combat by Lucia Collins' umbrella, of all things, a proposition that doesn't quite threaten Day-Glo Jason Voorhees for the throne of Most Ridiculous Lunar Idea but is, to say the least, up there.)

The Guildmistress, Lunar: Vheen Hikuusen Monogatari: I don't get what Zain sees in her. Funato conceived her as a "fiery woman" full of life, but she seldom comes off as anything but smug - a rare failing for Hikuusen, as the Guildmistress is supposed to be the sparkling specimen of humanity's promise for Zain that Dain is for Ghaleon. Grace King, the character from Funato's subsequent Under the Rose manga based on/"misappropriated" for the Guildmistress, has a bit more humanity to her from what I've read, but count me still on Team Latona.

Hey, four characters, four Lunar works. Why not go five for five? Time to eschew Gerhard and Gotts and St. Germant and discuss someone from Magic School. So, Grandpa Glen is oh the heck with it:

Ghaleon, Lunar Everything, Quite Nearly: Since I've written about Ghaleon's character at length in several places, here're instead five miscellaneous reflections on the man:
- My favorite joke of TSS, just after the Grindery's rolled over a town on the Frontier and crushed near-everything within, amid the townsfolks' lamentations of the loss of their homes and businesses:
NPC: That jerk Ghaleon just crushed the sun tea I had lying out!
Nall: ............Ruthless bastard.
- I wish this expression here (the first one, the rightmost one) had made it into a full-blown manga illustration.
- I've always found this outfit attractive on Ghaleon. Not necessarily the studs or enormous shoulder pads, but I do think that a long black coat in heavy material with shape to it would look quite nice on the elf. (Perhaps I'm mentally merging it with this outfit.)
- Unsurprisingly, I found Working Designs' ABBA jokes OoC, but I'd gladly have them back over the XSEED-inspired homophobic comments these days about John Truitt's performance.
- I'd ask the "what's with his face?" bit about his Lunar II appearance, but, y'know, I just don't care about Lunar II's Ghaleon material anymore. It's thematically consistent and there's nothing wrong with it, but for me, Ghaleon's story ended with Silver Star - maybe even Vheen Hikuusen.
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A little out of order, all right?

Francis, Angelique: Francis was the only one of the Étoile guardians who really took, wasn't he? Leonard is too abrasive and of the real world for Ange, and Heuye never really distinguished himself sufficiently from Randy (there's really not much characterwise you can do with "wild boy"; not much that's appealing, anyway). I am deeply fond of the idea of the Guardian of Darkness being a psychologist, someone charged with giving peace to others, but I've never seen that aspect of his character/profession actively employed. Characterwise, Francis is usually one big bundle of emo - which makes him redundant, as Tanaka Clavis fills that role already in the Étoile era. Why did Francis stick, then? My best answer is that he has a character design that's unique enough (distinctive yet attractive hairstyle, looks somewhat Victorian), has a somewhat interesting (if unexplored) premise for his character, and his temperament fits in with the Ange aesthetic. He's a nice enough guy. (Heuye is nice but not a gentle grown man, and we have enough genki kids in Ange, anyway, and his design is too derivative, Lunar tribal motif notwithstanding.)
Other thoughts on Francis - a) was his habit of inserting random French into the conversation inspiration for another dark Ange gentleman? b) despite the attempt at tragedy, his rabbit backstory is kind of ridiculous; c) Francis's seiyuu's notoriously bad singing (early on; he's better now, supposedly) inspires sympathy rather than derision, as it must be heck to have your work in your chosen profession screwed up by lack of such a demanding and rather irrelevant talent; d) I never did find out if Francis's boozy doppleganger from Koi Suru Tenshi was a coincidence or a previous incarnation or what.

Forrest Kaysen, Deadly Premonition: Omega spoilers go: I think the ending of Deadly Premonition was spectacularly wrongly chosen, and while Kaysen's character handled the abrupt transition from folksy bumbling lug to vicious, visceral sadist surprisingly well (the transition from there to giant MadBall not so much), it would've been far better for the integrity of the game's themes and mood had he remained in the former mode, an unwitting vector of a drug that turned his customers homicidal. I kinda liked him as a plain-spoken yet unexpectedly helpful ally in the hunts for Thomas and George.

Faithia, Lunar: Faithia doesn't work as a character. (I'm talking about the game Faithia here.) Rather, the process that created her doesn't work; splitting the complex emotions spurred by the mazoku's situation into separate spokeswomen makes the cast less complex than would portraying these various warring viewpoints within one conflicted leader. Faithia's meant to be the great conscience of the magic race, but instead, she's a character as thin as cardboard.
(Not much to say about the manga incarnation save that she serves her purpose and I like her dress.)

Fran, Final Fantasy XII: I haven't played FFXII - a decision only reinforced by Unskippable's screening of its opening, during which I was struck by its remarkable resemblance to the Star Wars prequels - but the total blase acceptance of Fran's character design is a bellwether of how ridiculous reductions of characters to T&A can get in gaming. A race of Playboy bunnies whose native dress is lingerie and whose pedal bone structure requires them to wear stilettos? How do you suspend your disbelief after that? How can you take anything seriously? It's the Death Bed of game writing.

And, finally:

Fëanor, The Silmarillion: was right.
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As B is done but not typed up.

Clavis, Angelique: The definitive mental image of Clavis I have was, oddly enough, taken from this Clavis/Julious fic I read once, from a scene where, after a bit of dithering between he and Julious, he somewhat timidly but chivalrously disrobed, took the initiative, and advanced unclothed, that dark, all-enveloping curtain of hair moving with him as he walked, enveloping and...well, never revealing, actually. It was not only a striking physical image but aptly defined Clavis as an inwardly, quietly strong yet sadly vulnerable presence inherently loathe to self-disclosure. (Oh, dear, I've confessed to reading a slash fic and must therefore surrender my membership in the Serious Gamers club.)
Anyhow, it's tempting, and at least partially accurate, to mark the loss of Kaneto Shiozawa as Clavis as the start of Angelique going downhill. It's perhaps not true, wholly - Shiozawa passed away during the Trois era, which was the franchise's artistic peak. Yet Tanaka's Clavis, while not bad per se, is soft and "wet" in the Japanese sense, overtly emotional, without Shiozawa's sarcastic bite that came from a lifetime of bitter experiences. Shiozawa Clavis was the franchise's heart, and without him, a significant part of its specialness was lost.
(That said, I don't think we can write off seeing good things from Angelique again entirely. I'm typically dour about continuing a franchise past the creator's interest, and great things aren't coming from the LoveLove Tenshi social game, surely, but the Six Knights of Dark Love title is an intriguing idea that would never have been produced under the original regime. It's a cliche to say, and one often voiced by those who were never buying what a given work was selling in the first place, but the franchise did need handlers who'd be rough enough to break it a bit, instead of letting it be mummified in doilies.)

Celes, Final Fantasy VI: Celes is a drip. So is Terra, even more so, but we're not to the T's yet. Celes's whole character arc is "stop insisting on personal independence and be content as a helpless damsel in distress." The backlash to the mostly female party/awesomeness of Faris in FFV must've been huge, since it takes three whole installments for FF to stop treating its female characters like crud despite placing them in higher-profile roles. Though we're not yet up to pimping out the entire female cast with FF6, we do get an FF with females in the lead who are nonetheless so spineless they're invertebrates. Anna would laugh at them. So would Amy. Well, maybe not laugh at her, but at least express contempt in her general direction.

Celia Robinson, The Cat Who...: I don't dislike her, and she's good when well-used (as in her first appearance in Went into the Closet), but I've never really warmed to the idea of Celia as a full-fledged supporting character like Braun thinks I should have. She's a bit too thinly drawn for the series at its best, too fatuously jolly - she can be like an old joke told one too many times. The series, when it was getting on, often introduced new characters that were shallower shadows of ones previous, and even though Celia was introduced when the series was still in its prime, I can't help but think of her as a knockoff of the multifaceted Iris Cobb.

Cecil, Final Fantasy IV: Call it the Rayne effect: I like Cecil way better when the narrative's not pushing him at the expense of other characters. For Cecil, that's been ever since the recent FFIV resurgence, where Kain and Golbez are compelled to atone endlessly more for their envy of and desire to surpass King Harvey despite their perceived inferiority to him than for their actual misdeeds. (This has kind of wrecked Kain's character in the modern FFIV follow-ups, where he suffers thoroughly wretched fates and is smeared as weak-willed and incompetent, but After Years is kind of self-wrecking in the first place. Shame about Dissidia, however.)
If I ever do get Dissidia, though, I'm still playing Cecil first. (But only because I don't think you can play Kain first.)
(Also: that recent Trading Arts statuette of Cecil is lovely and insanely detailed for the price. It's a small comfort in the age of Square's great selling-out, but it's a joy finally to see quality character merchandise after such a long drought.)

Carlo, Deep Red: If I had a knowledge of Inform, IF mechanics, and actual willpower, I'd love to make a text adventure of Inferno and have Carlo as a secret character. I imagine his withering running commentary on events would be far more entertaining than that of the ever-outmatched Mark. (Such a reimagining would be the only way to get any good out of the miserable Inferno, anyway.) I've seen Deep Red once and didn't have an overly positive impression at the time (memory has been kinder), but I recall taking to Carlo the most out of the cast. For all his self-despise and cynical bile, he seems rather (half-drunkenly) avuncular to others. Life is shit, but Carlo doesn't hold it against you.
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Ann, Clock Tower: Is there an "e" on the end officially? I forget. Anyhow, Ann/e is the "bad" choice of the two girls you can save, which is kind of ridiculous on reflection: she and Rolla get about two lines apiece to characterize themselves before they bite it. Hard to say even who has the better death, isn't it? Rolla's curtain-raiser is the "correct" choice, being scored to the game's theme and having that tense build-up and being genuinely scary, but checking out through a Suspiria homage isn't bad, either. I think this all just means that if you can't save Lotte, then it's not worth saving anyone; I always did like the C ending the best. Odd that Ann's deaths all involve falling (or sinking) in some way.

Anna, Final Fantasy IV: I've gone on about Anna a bit in the After Years post, but I want to note that I've always liked the sprite of her that appears to Edward in battle that night in Kaipo. I like the coloring, from her off-rose hair with those bright blue eyes to her sunny yellow dress. I like her anachronistic '80's yellow headband. This site has a spellcasting sprite for Anna posted and claims that she was supposed to be shown fighting in the battle for Damcyan at one point, though they don't say on what information beyond that sprite they're basing that claim. (On the other side of the coin, they also mention a spellcasting sprite for Cain but are puzzled as to its purpose, oblivious that he initially had a White Magic command, if early screenshots in the Settei Shiryou Hen are to be believed.)
Anyhow, I like Anna's spellcasting sprite, too.

Anna, Phantasy Star II: I always stuck Anna in my party once she arrived because she was a tough broad in a age where tough broads were in short supply and because I strictly conformed over multiple playthroughs to the hint book's Rolf-Rudo-Anna-Kain party. I experimented later on, though, with using every character and keeping their levels fairly uniform. I'm not sure, however, that Anna is that much more useful overall than, say, Hugh or Kain; while she deals damage to multiple enemies at once, that damage gets fairly slight as time goes on. I didn't go so far as to throw her out come endgame, though, so dependable across-the-board (or halfway across) non-elemental damage must still be preferential to the alternatives. And Anna's tough broadness, particularly untempered by the temptation to succumb with these characters to softhearted slop(*cough**cough*Celes), is still greatly appreciated.

Amy, Phantasy Star II: The other "A" of PSII. Being excluded from the hint book's recommended lineup, she was never a staple of my party, and upon reflection, that seems rather stupid, doesn't it? Traveling without a healer? I always got through with Dimates/Trimates, though. I should try that more often - going through an RPG with just item-based healing, though I'm not sure it'd go as well in a more boss-heavy title.
Anyhow, despite her assuredly estimable intellect as a doctor, she looks a bit like a Pekinese in that portrait, doesn't she? That filmy pale-blue wrap of hers must've been quite the affectation upon reflection in PSII society, given that clothing's all about clean, utilitarian lines in bold colors. She and Anna make for an interesting dichotomy - cold & aggressive as opposed to nurturing & healing, "masculine" vs. "feminine." All sorts of women can make a meaningful contribution to a group effort, without disparaging competition or value judgment! How low we've sunk since 1989.

(On a lighter PSII note: Welcome to Data Memory!)

Arngrim, Valkyrie Profile: Speaking of seven-letter "a" words. It shows how far the genre has to come that Arngrim got top billing in his segment over Jelanda, the true example of courage in their morality play. Arngrim's a black hole of ego, willing to sacrifice any loyalty to inflate his name, and it's poetic justice that he ends up framed for the vile crime he did. Despite copious kabuki in that direction, he never truly grows or learns, and it's one of the great hypocritical flaws of his heavily moralistic title that he's allowed its center stage. If RPGs ever get over their fetish for young men with swords, tragedies like Arngrim will never happen, and I'd like to go back to ignoring him now.
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You have to be "given" this meme, but I'm an antisocial loner who doesn't talk to anybody. I therefore claim it for myself in adapted form:

I will give a letter. Post the names of five fictional characters [beginning with that letter] and your thoughts on each.

No one's giving me anything, so I'll just take the twenty-sixth letter in the post from which I snagged this meme, which happens to be..."n". OK, let's do this:

Nick Bamba, The Cat Who... series: I always thought he was the best-realized of the Standard Issue Moose County Males and the one you'd most want as a friend. (Well, he's racing Roger MacGillivray on that - Nick has a slightly squirrelly/cowardly side to him - but he's still a good guy, and he's a more three-dimensional character.)

Nick-who-owns-the-A-&-G-Diner from Deadly Premonition: Let's give it to the man for taking the idea of pairing fruit chutney with meat and turning it into successful diner food, not to mention a cult sandwich. Other than that, he doesn't do much in the game except be a patently obvious red herring and a poor husband to the title's blandest character. I appreciate his chubby schlubbiness, though, which isn't often seen in games - at least without being ridiculously exaggerated or paired with buffoonish traits like sloppiness or a soft mind.

Nyx from Neo Angelique: Koei's songwriters don't really know what to do with his voice for his initial outings, it seems, as "Hidamari no Pureryuudo" is remarkably bland; he's best in the small, intricate turns - his solo in the bridge of the full-length "Silent Destiny," the "utsukushiku hibikiau" bit of "Home Sweetest Home." He's remarkable for being the first Angelique fellow, to my knowledge, whose LoveLove ending alludes, albeit obliquely, to sex between him and the heroine. I think he'd make a good Guardian of Darkness. I like him in a white jacket. I wish

sableblanc would pop up on

angemedia again. Other than that, I don't have much to say about the gentleman. (I guess that was enough, though.)

Niea from the Vheen Hikuusen Monogatari manga: I thought her hair was brown from the black-and-white inking in the manga, but that's apparently not (consistently) the case - while it seems to be more brown here, it's blonde here, and her mother's hair is blonde in color pics (though I wouldn't have pegged her as a blonde, either). Anyhow, I like Niea; she has some good little-kid dialogue that's curious and ha-ha misunderstanding without being too self-consciously cloying, and she brings out Ghaleon's softer side.

Nasch from Lunar: Harmony of The Silver Star Story: Nasch has never really fully worked for me. He's a bit too goofy - his hairdo, his voice (at least his English voice, which is a bit too cartoony), his exaggerated snobbishness. I could never buy him as Ghaleon's apprentice - though it's kinda-sorta explained retroactively through Vheen Hikuusen's past Rumacks when combined with Ghaleon's need for a capable dupe with a possible lingering vendetta against those who captured his brother's love/wronged his precious Dain. I wouldn't remove Nasch from Lunar by any means. (He's not totally obnoxious and incongruous with the other heroes, like Killy.) But I can't shake my reservations.
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